This first season of Femme Fatales began with a two-part story, Behind Locked Doors part 1 and Part 2, and now it’s ending with another two-part story, this one titled Visions. What’s particularly interesting about these episodes is that although it’s an anthology series, it brings back several characters from previous episodes.

Written by Stanton Carlisle and directed by series co-creator Mark A. Altman, this episode stars Marc Crumpton, as Foster Prentiss, aka The Amazing Mysterium. He’s a stage mentalist, like Derren Brown and The Amazing Kreskin. He performs shows in which he singles out various audience members and proceeds to appear to read their minds and reveal private details about them. Of course, this is all a trick, his beautiful assistant/lover Tara (Jasmine Waltz) is secretly backstage feeding Foster the information about the audience that she looks up on the internet, via a secret earpiece. But after the opening show of this episode, when they’re back in Foster’s mansion, Tara demands more money for her job. Foster tries to reject her, on the grounds that he’s not making as much money as he used to, and is heavily in debt. But Tara threatens to go to the press and reveal all of his secrets if he doesn’t give her what she wants. So Forster pulls out a gun and shoots her dead.

This is all before the opening credits and Tanit Phoenix’ monologue.

When the story restarts, it’s unclear how much time has passed (or what Foster has done with Tara’s body), but he’s asleep in his bed when he’s awarked by the sound of someone in his outdoor pool. He goes out to investigate and finds a naked woman swimming. It’s Stacy Stas Hurst, returning as Jessica from the episode The Clinic. Now, if you’ve seen that episode, you already know that Jessica is up to no good. She tells Foster that she heard he’s looking for a new assistant, and she wants the job. After going up to his room and having sex with him, she tells him that the reason she wants the job is because she knows of a rich older woman whose daughter is missing and presumed dead, and that if Foster can convince her that he’s speaking to the daughter’s spirit (another talent he claims to have), they could make some serious money.

Foster agrees and hires her. At his next show, we see Kevin Freeman (Reggie Hayes) from Speed Date in the audience on a date with Holly Brown (Tiffany Brouwer Santino) from Haunted.  In a funny nod to both of their episodes, Holly says that Kevin doesn’t look anything like his profile pic and asks if he’s really a doctor. He sheepishly admits that he’s not, and then asks her if she’s really a “demonologist,” to which she replies that she is.

But when Foster starts to do his act something goes wrong. As he’s speaking to a woman in the audience, Jessica is backstage on a laptop trying to look up information on her, but there’s some kind of electrical failure that cuts off the internet and the microphone that she’s speaking to Foster on. So his act is failing, and he tries to bluff his way through it, giving the woman some vague prediction about good things coming to her, and when he stands up he briefly touches the shoulder of another woman in the audience. That woman turns out to be Violet McReady (Christine Cailler) from the episode Bad Medicine. Foster suddenly gets some visions in his head, and he sees everything that Violet did in that episode, including killing the criminal Laz (Robert LaSardo) in the end.

Backstage Foster is panicking, telling Jessica what he says, and he’s worried because he thinks she now knows that he knows that she killed a man, but Jessica slaps him and tells him to snap out of it. She doesn’t believe his story and thinks this is some new scam he’s running, but the important thing is that it’s working, as the audience loved it. So she convinces him to go back out and finish the show.

But the next audience member Foster chooses is Tiffany (Catherine Annette) from Girls Gone Dead, and he gets a vision from her, seeing how she and her friends set up and killed Jay Roma (Charlie O’Connell), which freaks him out again, and he abruptly ends the show.

Back in the mansion, Jessica still doesn’t believe Foster and tests him by having him touch her to see if he sees anything, and when he gets a vision of her actions from her previous episode, where she helped set up her boyfriend to be killed to harvest his heart, she realizes that he’s telling the truth, and is ready to take advantage of his new abilities. TO BE CONTINUED.

I loved this episode, the story itself is intriguing enough, but the cameos from previous characters make it feel even more special. We only get to full new sex scenes, Foster with Tara and then Foster with Jessica, but in the flashbacks we get glimpses of earlier sex scenes. Marc Crumpton is a good leading man, and Stacy Stas Hurst really stands out here, she has a larger role than she did before and this time she really shines as the “femme fatale” of the episode.

I want to also note that while researching the credits I’ve come to conclude that Stanton Carlisle is just a pseudonym for whoever wrote these episodes. This is their only writing credit on IMDB and Stanton Carlisle is the name of a character who became a carnival mentalist in a book called Nightmare Alley, which was made into two movies, one starring Tyron Power and one starring Bradley Cooper.

Visions Part 1 had me hooked, I can’t wait to watch Part 2 next. Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED 3-disc DVD set of Femme Fatale season 1 for $19.99. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list.