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» » Final Embrace (1992)

Short summary

Candy Vale has it all. Hip and sexy she rules the MTV crowd with her voluptuous voice and her beautiful body until one morning, when the police discover her brutally beaten corpse...Enter Laurel, Candy's younger sister, who is determined to uncover the mystery of her sister's death. She teams with Kyle, a hotblooded young cop. What the two discover is a world where music and murder dance hand in hand and best friends can quickly turn into deadly enemies.

Film debut of Wally Kurth.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: Beranyle
    You know, if it wasn't for seeing the cherubic old Dick Van Patten playing a hardboiled detective in this B-grade suspenser, it wouldn't be worth the film it was photographed on. None of the cast really stands out, the plot doesn't offer much in the way of surprises, and the finale leaves a whole lot to be desired. Then again, what can you expect from one of these generic, cookie-cutter films? To be honest, you do have to throw the genre a bone for this one: Seems like these films always try to spice things up castwise by having someone with some name recognition play a COP! I'm still waiting to see Bob Newhart play a detective in one of these erotic throwaways.
  • comment
    • Author: Shakataxe
    With this Roger Corman produced "erotic thriller", some talented personnel are on board, particularly as members of the crew, but a silly script handily jettisons any chance this work may have had to climb above the standard of its scarcely engrossing genre, with additional shortcomings being poor acting and desultory direction. The movie opens, as may be expected, with the first of several softcore love scenes, this one connecting Holly Parish, or "Candy Vale" (Nancy Valen), a pop singer, and her lover, police detective Kyle Lambton (Robert Rusler), assigned to protect her following death threats, and obviously paying specially close attention to his duty, with the pair's amourous activity a shallow substitute for development of characterization, in any event here but sketchy. After the culmination of their lovemaking, Holly informs Kyle that he has meant little to her other than for his basic masculine virtues, and the lovelorn lawman exits in a huff, whereupon his charge is promptly murdered in her home, an act that serves to emphasize probable dereliction of duty on the part of her affectionate bodyguard. An obvious suspect for the slaying is the anonymous author of the threats, a Scripture babbling stalker fan of Holly Vale, who has named himself "John/Peter", but as Kyle and his senior detective partner, played by Dick Van Patten, investigate the facts relating to the homicide, they discern that others may have benefited from the permanent sealing of the singer's lips, among them an aspiring successor to Vale, Jeri Page (Linda Doná), whose modest warbling skills are plainly quite as undernourished as those of the late vocalist. A previously unknown to the world and ostensibly shy identical twin sister of Holly, Laurel Parish (naturally also portrayed by Valen), enters the story only to discover that, whereas she is the only living relative of the deceased, a scheme is afoot by Jeri along with her and Holly's video director to defraud the twin of her due proceeds from Vale's songs, while a record company executive is also somehow engaged in the fiscal plotting, with all together forming ingredients to elicit interest from the concerned detectives. As will be surprising to only the most sluggish of viewers, Laurel then assumes the persona of her expired sibling, donning the latter's wig and so forth, causing comically reestablished warm responses from Candy's lover Kyle, her rival Jeri, and peripatetic murder suspect John/Peter, and the entire cycle of bizarre goings-on resumes, as corpses proliferate. The film is weakly directed and the playing is uninspired at best, the wooden Rusler only sporadically altering his expression of vague confusion in order to yell a bit, but one may well enjoy some interesting scoring from composer Daniel Licht, and design based production values are quite high for this budget deficient affair, but these are scant help against a hopelessly foolish screenplay that allows the greatest entertainment yield to come from the appearance of a body double for Valen in a shower sequence.
  • Complete credited cast:
    Robert Rusler Robert Rusler - Kyle Lambton
    Nancy Valen Nancy Valen - Candy Vale / Laurel Parrish
    Dick Van Patten Dick Van Patten - Larch
    Dee McCafferty Dee McCafferty - Adrian Waring
    Linda Dona Linda Dona - Jeri
    Wally Kurth Wally Kurth - Devon
    Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
    Mike Castagnola Mike Castagnola - Waiter
    Toledo Diamond Toledo Diamond - Dancer
    Max Hunt Max Hunt - Video Editor
    Benjamin Jurano Benjamin Jurano - Sergeant Petrie
    Justin Lazard Justin Lazard - Pierce
    Gloria LeRoy Gloria LeRoy - Velvet
    Howard Shangraw Howard Shangraw - Coroner
    John Shepphird John Shepphird - Crashing Cop
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