• Written and directed by Sybil Richards
• Starring
  • Venesa Talor
  • Bethany Lorraine
  • Joshua Edwards
  • Summer Leeds
  • Damian Wells
• Produced by Pat Siciliano
• Executive produced by Charles Band (uncredited)

Telling you that this movie is probably better than the original Femalien is almost meaningless. We all know that Surrender Cinema movies exist solely to display nudity and Playboy Video-style faux sex, with just enough plot and genre trapping to keep the viewer from getting bored (and yes, it’s very possible to be bored by an endless parade of softcore, especially once you’re older than 25). To judge the quality of these flicks by the standards of mainstream cinema is like grading a poledancer on her adherence to classical ballet forms. So when a Surrender Cinema feature — and what’s more, a Surrender Cinema sequel — shows any hint of wit about it, I’m generous with the gold stars.

If you remember the original Femalien (and no, I don’t blame you if you don’t), then the plot structure here will seem very familiar. Two aliens “beam down” naked to their safehouse in Venice, California. There, they confer with Dak, the sentient computer thingie that was Kara’s sidekick in the last movie. (Dak’s gone through a lot of changes; instead of a cybernetic genie bottle, he’s now an internally-lit sculpture of quartz slabs, such as one might find at Pier 1.) Their mission is to figure out where Kara is, since she was only meant to observe Earth for a single day and has now been AWOL for a full year. Dak helpfully assigns them names instead of code-numbers to help them blend in — Xeda (Playboy model Bethany Lorraine) and Trion (Josh Edwards), named after circuitboards — and lets them loose on an unsuspecting California.

Thus sparing me the necessity of editing the image before posting. Ta-dah!

Meanwhile, UFO aficionado Lester (Damien Wells) and his girlfriend Terry (softcore professional Amy Lindsay, billed here as “Summer Leeds”) are having an argument — which, in this universe, means that they have sex, and THEN continue the disagreement. Terry’s a hardnosed news photographer, and she’s fed up with him pissing away his trust fund on flying saucer research. She demands that he grow up if he wants to have a future with her. At this opportune time, Lester’s handheld UFO detector (ionization reader, Geiger counter, whatever) starts beeping at him. There ARE aliens on earth! And if Terry will just come with him this one day, he’ll prove that he hasn’t been wasting his life and money.

And really, I think you can sketch the outlines of the plot from there. Xeda and Trion will review one of Kara’s reports on her explorations of Earth’s pleasures (which will usually involve sex, complete with a pr0n rock soundtrack); they will try to find her at that location (which will usually involve sex, at least by observation); Lester and Terry will always be one step behind following the ion trail (which will usually NOT involve sex). There’s also a mysterious man in black (Kurt Schwoebel, in a different role than in the first Femalien), who dogs their trail and occasionally speaks cryptically to Terry when Lester’s not looking.

“But I’ve almost perfected my handheld satellite TV!”

Thus:

Xeda and Trion review Kara’s report on eating — in this case, a binge of desserty chocolates. (Said reviews are accomplished by Xeda and Trion each bringing a palm up almost touching the other; they then get to see the second-unit footage shot of Kara). So they beam out to the cafe at which said binge had taken place. Lester and Tera show up at the safehouse moments after they’ve beamed out, but Lester says that now that they’ve gotten some up-close readings, they should be able to follow them all over town.

At the cafe, they watch a depressed beat poet talk about the immensity of space (after which Trion tries his own hand at beat poetry, because after all, how hard could it be?). Then the poet and the sole waitress on duty at lunchtime go in the back room for a quickie, and the aliens sneak in to watch. By the time Lester and Terry arrive, Xeda and Trion have eaten half the menu apiece, then left quietly without paying — and because Lester acts like he knows the people he’s tracking, the waitress slaps him with the bill. Comedy!

“It appears that Earth receives the Home Shopping Network, too.”

Then Xeda and Trion observe another report from Kara getting it on in a massage parlor. So they beam to the same massage parlor, and watch from behind a potted plant as masseuse Kiki (porn veteran Summer Knight, here under the name “Debra Summers”) and the guy who’s supposed to be watching the front desk (Steven Albrecht) get snorgly on a table. (One of the main lessons of this movie: If you’re ever in Venice, California, and wander into a commercial establishment that appears unstaffed, everybody’s probably in the back room having sex.) The aliens ask Kiki about Kara, and she agrees to leave work for the day and take them around to all of Kara’s favorite haunts. Naturally, Lester and Terry show up right after they’ve left.

You could probably make up the rest of it from here: A gentleman’s club, a VR arcade called “Virtual Encounters” where Kara programmed the simulations herself (sex in a waterfall for female patrons, a bikini-wrestling exhibition for males), yada yada. I have to tell you, if you’re not watching these movies for the sex (which I wasn’t — I’m only in it for the film criticism, I tell you!), you don’t feel bad at all for leaning on the fast-forward button for five minutes at a time. As noted in other reviews, the Surrender Cinema movies all have in common a sex-positive attitude which doesn’t play the “sex for suspense” card of erotic thrillers; unfortunately, that also means that nothing of consequence, plotwise, will ever happen during the softcore writhing.

“I used to be as good-looking as you before they stuck us in these damned human bodies!”

Eventually, Lester and Terry catch sight of the aliens just as they beam out of the VR arcade, and then chase them back to the suburban safehouse where everyone’s finally brought together, including Kara, who’s been drifting around watching all this time. Xeda and Trion, like Kara before her, have decided that the pleasures and emotions available on Earth are too great simply to be given up, especially because they’ve found that they have feelings for each other, and Terry is of course not going to leave Lester now that she knows he hasn’t been frittering away his trust fund on nonsense. Everybody’s happy, though unlike the previous movie, this one doesn’t end in the middle of a three-way snuggle.

Now to justify what I claimed way back when, that there’s more wit in evidence here than in the first Femalien. For one thing, there’s a rudimentary plot, or at least a plot hook; we’re not falling back on the “evil developer” shtick that half-heartedly held the previous one together. For another, there’s more humor here, both with the aliens’ slight misunderstandings of Earth culture (and California culture in particular), and Lester’s comic relief antics as he tries to track the aliens in their midst. (I’m a sucker for a running gag.)

“So tell me, Mr. Man In Black, are your clothes black all the way down?”

On the other hand, you’ll note we’ve done away with even as transparent an exploitation device as the “love zap” that Kara deployed so frequently in the last movie. Here, the characters all simply know what kind of movie they’re in, so why bother with a reason? They just have sex at the drop of a hat — fairly easy to do in a movie universe which is entirely populated by, in the words of the waitress, “gorgeous L.A. types.” Venesa Talor, whose wide-eyed innocent act went far to make the first movie palatable, only shows up in a few isolated scenes, and without nearly the energy or curiosity; and of course, any sequel to a movie co-starring Jacqueline Lovell is the lesser for not having Lovell in it.

The music? Standard interchangeable softcore/porn tracks. The acting? Not great, but at least performers who are used to being nekkid in front of the camera don’t get too self-conscious. The cinematography? Bright and clear, and given that the main goal here is to show the boobies clearly, good enough.

So if that’s what you’re looking for, then that’s what you’ll find here.

Some Notable Totables:

(all from the unrated “director’s cut”)

• body count: 0
• breasts: 18 (not counting 2 in flashback footage from the first Femalien)
• male butts: 4
• …and sausages: 1
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
• “Summer Leeds”, aka Amy Lindsay (Tara) played “Lana” in the Voyager episode “Endgame Part 1″