It's unfortunate that soft-core porn is required to have a plot. While Triple-X movies take occasional stabs at narrative (er, so I'm told), the current trend in hardcore pornography is to string together a bunch of sex scenes and call it something cogent like "All Anal Fun #2." In soft-core porn, a climax is not a climax--(recycled) story elements and (bad) dialogue replace penetration. Most softcore pornos fall under the category "erotic thriller"--when will they learn that erotica is thrilling enough without the introduction of some stupid villain? I've only ever seen one genuinely good example of soft porn: Last Tango in Paris, because it was about getting laid, the possibilities and the consequences, the joy and the sorrow. It starred human beings, not sex objects.

Alyssa Milano, like many an ex-sitcom starlet before her (Dana Plato, Justine Bateman), took a detour into straight-to-video cinema after her popular show ("Who's the Boss") ended a years-long run. Her B-flicks were big renters back in the mid-nineties; now New Line has put them out on DVD, perhaps hoping to capitalize on Milano's career resurgence as a witch on the WB hit "Charmed". If you're dying to see Milano nude--hey, I was--then DVD, with its eye-popping clarity, is the way to watch Embrace of the Vampire and Poison Ivy 2: Lily, but little else makes these two movies noteworthy.

Embrace of the Vampire's prologue shamelessly imitates Ridley Scott's Legend. Amid fluttering fireflies and shimmering waters, Martin Kemp, billed as "Vampire," meets with the woman of his dreams, a princess. (She even resembles Legend's Mia Sara.) Wouldn't you know it--as soon as she leaves, three very naked vampire chicks maul him and leave him for (un)dead. Many, many decades later, Charlotte (Milano), a goody-gum-drops virgin, starts having sexy dreams about Vampire. He's out to corrupt her--or is he out to mould her in his true love's image? Six or one half-dozen of the other: Charlotte winds up stripping for a lesbian photographer (Charlotte Lewis), partying hard, and dragging her patient boyfriend (Harrison Pruett) and dormmate (Rachel True) into Vampire's naughty world.

No, none of it makes a lick of sense. The only reason to see this movie is for the naked images of Milano, and director Anne Goursaud knows its financial success will hinge on those money shots, so she avoids the film noir lighting and saxophone music that cheese up many a boob fest. Milano's without her clothes often and under bright yet flattering conditions. Splendid.

Goursaud's Poison Ivy 2: Lily is more conventionally made, its rumpy-pumpy numbers playing like outtakes from Playboy Channel specials. The story is surprisingly unstirring, too. Where the first film (not reviewed; for some reason, New Line sent me only two-thirds of the Poison Ivy trilogy) had a lesbian chic hook, not to mention a Drew Barrymore performance that entertainingly mocked her "Little Girl Lost" image, Poison Ivy 2 is of interest only to those who want their college-age angst served up with T&A and a dash of homicide.

Lily (Milano again) is the newest art student in school. She moves in with three creative types and winds up dating one of them, a sculptor (the humourless Jonathan Schaech) who hates her realistic work. One day, while rummaging through some boxes that were left in her room by the previous occupant, she discovers a diary--dum! dum! DUMB!--which was kept by that crazy bitch Ivy. Lily makes herself over in Ivy's image and becomes simply irresistable to the men in her life, especially Donald Falk (Xander Berkeley), her drawing teacher, who begs her to pose for a painting. Her beauty has inspired him to put brush to canvas (paging Freud) for the first time in years.

Poison Ivy 2 is dramatically impotent. Promises are made on the jacket art that are never fulfilled: "Passion. Seduction. Betrayal." Lust is not passion. Siccing Alyssa Milano on a horny man is not seduction. Betrayal is nowhere to be found. There's not even a supernatural element to the story, as is suggested within the cover synopsis: Lily's transformation has nada to do with possession, she's just insecure. The most ludicrous development sees Mr. Falk becoming a psychopath for the last ten minutes of the movie to qualify it as a thriller.

Poison Ivy: The New Seduction is even trashier. Essentially a remake of the original, this one introduces Jaime Pressly as Ivy's twin sister, Violet, who returns to the scene of a family catastrophe, a suburban mansion, to exact revenge on the man she perceives as having betrayed her mother. Violet was Joy's (Megan Edwards) best friend when they were little girls, but that won't stop her from ruining Joy's father's (Michael Des Barres) life.

The film exposes oodles of flesh at regular intervals, and its screenplay contains flashes of wit. (Upon seeing Violet--who's a hooker by night--dressed in leather and fishnets, Joy's boyfriend (Greg Vaughan) asks, "Where was it you said you work?" Violet's uproarious answer: "Denny's.") However, its characters are so thoroughly repugnant that watching them go through the motions of a sub-standard genre entry is a chore. (Joy's beau, for instance, doesn't exactly have our sympathies when Violet kidnaps him, because after cheating on Joy with Violet for the second time he barks: "This didn't happen!") Helmer Kurt Voss also has a ridiculous aversion to violence; Violet does her victimizing off camera. Voss hasn't a problem with Pressly's frequent disrobing, but blood--fuhgeddaboudit.

New Line presents all three films (as well as the first Poison Ivy) on DVDs that utilize the "seamless branching" technology the studio previously employed for Crash and Damage, thus enabling viewers to watch R or unrated versions of Embrace of the Vampire, Poison Ivy 2, and Poison Ivy: The New Seduction. (Your player performs the edits--there will be a slight pause when this occurs, not unlike the interruption of a layer switch. FYI, the differences between the various R and unrated cuts is fractional.)

The DVD format emphasizes the el cheapo production values of Embrace of the Vampire, et al as much as it does Milano's wondrous, expensive physique. The films have been matted at 1.85:1 (each disc also includes a fullscreen version) and enhanced for widescreen sets; picture quality is above average for the Poison Ivys, especially. Embrace of the Vampire displays some wear and tear, and shadow detail during moonlit exteriors is poor, but the all-important skin tones are good and compression artifacts are minimal. (Such praise also goes for the other two.)

More surprising than the fact that these neo-classics made it to DVD is that they've been remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, all. I was most impressed by Poison Ivy 2's mix, which features a song by Enigma and other electronic music. Really, though, these are hemispheric soundtracks--Poison Ivy: The New Seduction would practically sound the same coming through a television speaker. (Its Mike Post-style score only stresses how much the pic belongs on the small screen.) Lastly, the discs also have cast and crew bios in common.

If you can't get a date, you're too embarrassed to rent the hard stuff, and Alyssa Milano or centerfold Jaime Pressly is your notion of a dreamgirl, take the above as a recommendation.-Bill Chambers