Not to give out spoilers, I won't reveal the genuinely surprising finish to "Looker 2", which solves the serial murder case dating back over 4 decades in novel fashion. But auteur Nic Cramer messes up on the way to that conclusion, relegating this forgotten follow-up to the dustbin of Adult Cinema history.
As with Part 1, which won innumerable unearned industry awards, Nic delivers the patina of a story and characters one could expect in a decent B-level film noir. The visual stylization is less exaggerated than in the first part with its smoke-filled studio-shot alleys and Venetian Blinds lighting effects, but the frequent flashbacks and arbitrarily included sex scenes wander irretrievably from the main plot and characters, harming the movie.
Randy Spears is the dogged police detective following in Vince Vouyer's footsteps from Part 1. He's out to solve a case dating back to 1954, which cost Vince's dad (played by Mickey G.) his life. The serial killings by a mysterious Femme Fatale are occurring again, so Spears seeks out Vouyer's now-retired cop partner Shanna McCullough for help in solving the mystery and catching the current killer.
Shanna, with only minor aging makeup and styling to suggest a passage of time, relates flashbacks which naturally are the springboard for a total of eight sex scenes, finally leading Spears to the out-of-left-field solution. Several cast members from Part 1 return in smaller roles, notably original Femme Fatale Lauren Montgomery and the ultimate Adult Cinema beauty Silvia Saint, certainly back by popular demand rather than due to any importance plot-wise.
Perhaps the best ingenue actress in Adult of her day, Gwen Summers is terrific in a dual role that is central to the rejiggering of the story and build-up to its shock conclusion, while original leading man Vouyer gets to hump Ilanna Moore in a scene that had me scratching my head as to its provenance. In "Looker" (1998), Moore was mysteriously credited at the end in a scenes deleted manner "Cutting Room Casualty" so perhaps her sex scene missing from the finished first film was resurrected usefully for inclusion in the sequel.
Oddest element of "Looker 2" is the unspecified time frame. There is only one hint that the story is way off in the future, when Spears whips out a small ear piece (looks like a large hearing aid) and asks it to connect him with somebody's phone -this futuristic parallel (picture was shot in 1999) to modern-day cell phones implies we're in the future, but judging by the ages of the characters one infers from the finale, the story is taking place around 2022 without any other indicators (clothing, cars, technology) to establish that fact.
