Michael Ninn's sequel to his multi-award-winning SEX has a rushed feel to it, largely because over half an hour of flashback footage from the original has been incorporated into it ! This time around, the much abused Heather (Sunset Thomas) comes to town to retrace her errant boyfriend's footsteps in the hope of rekindling their past romance. On her odyssey (the movie strives, not altogether successfully, for the kind of epic proportions to warrant such heavy-handed terminology), she meets the vultures who preyed on Pike, with the voracious Miss Million (Sandra Margot a/k/a "Tyffany Million") leading the pack. You may recall she was none too thrilled about Pike's refusal to become her private toy boy in exchange for fame and fortune, so Heather's appearance provides an opportunity for this woman scorned to get even and then some. Turning the girl into an even bigger media icon than her lover ever was, Million wants to subjugate Heather by turning her into her devoted sex slave. No more morally upstanding than Pike, Heather sells out to the highest bidder. In an astonishingly bleak ending, she drives her Limo to the gas station where Pike ended up at the original's fade-out, only to have him turn down her offer of a life by her side as the sidekick to a superficial tabloid sweetheart !
Realistically downbeat ending and killer credit sequence aside, this undernourished sequel scores strongest whenever it stays close to the deliciously diabolical Million rather than the hard to fathom supposed heroine. For a girl this allegedly pure and naive, she sure has no qualms about instantly getting down with whoever crosses her path. Margot's given a welcome opportunity to flesh out the fascinating character that won her a slew of prizes the first time and she seizes it, inevitably to the detriment of the late Jon Dough's Mr Morgan character who dominated the first film but is now relegated to playing second fiddle in a couple of disembodied scenes and a whole lot of flashbacks. Unfortunately, Thomas proves far less convincing here as well now that she has to carry the bulk of the film. She's just not good enough an actress to pull it off. Sexually she shines though as her Sapphic trysts with both Million and the amazing Debi Diamond, not to mention a lovingly captured rectal encounter with then husband Zack Thomas, are seriously scorching.
This wouldn't be a bad flick if it didn't feel like such a cheat. Like some money-grabbing editor decided to release the final chapter of a good back as a separate novel, with lots of references to and quotations from the page turner in question to beef up the page count. Such practices are entirely worthy of a talented adult filmmaker like Michael Ninn, even if they occur at the urging of VCA who wanted him to strike the iron while it was still hot, expanding on a feature he believed already complete. Ninn's lack of emotional commitment to the endeavor even makes it slip into self-parody at times, especially with Simon Delo's ominous voice-over spouting ever more absurd philosophies at every turn. On the upside, the camera work's as great as ever, garnering this very fitfully effective follow-up its single prize at the 1995 AVN Awards.
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