A Brad Armstrong feature from Wicked is always treated as a big deal, driven by marketing considerations I guess. This poorly done thriller has the requisite big name cast but lacks both thrills and heat.
The premise is no more ridiculous than an all-time favorite genre picture of mine, "Four Flies on Grey Velvet", the Mimsy Farmer thriller directed by Dario Argento which I loved way back when (even bought a 16mm 'Scope print back in those film collecting days before home video was invented) and only found an audience decades later. But I loved Dario's early films, while Brad blows hot and cold for me.
The gimmick relies on a time-honored horror notion, one of many spin-offs from Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein conception. Dating back to "The Beast with Five Fingers", it concerns our natural fear of transplants. Usually it's the old "hands of a murderer" taking over the will of the hapless recipient of such a transplant, but this time it's about Kaylani Lei getting transplanted eyes. The obsession with the visual images "inherited" from the orbs' previous owner is a lame starting point, and Brad fails to make it interesting or even scary.
He packs in eight sex scenes featuring the starry cast that includes another Wicked girl Jessica Drake as well as fabulous supporting femmes: Lezley Zen, Monica Sweetheart, Lauren Phoenix and Ava Vincent. Charmane Star is cast for doppelganger effect -not really looking like fan fave Lei but as a fellow Oriental actress fitting the role. For a while the clues as to the mystery involving those images that haunt Lei via her new eyeballs (the scientific underpinnings are absurd, but one has to suspend disbelief in sagas like this one) are interesting at first, but Brad's tying up loose ends is unexciting. His attempt at a spooky climax involving Charmane is underwhelming.
A clip from Armstrong's "Red Dragon" starring Stephanie Swift is included, and only made me want to watch that Wicked release instead of this one, especially as it is one of Brad's little films, running an hour shorter than this bloated effort.
