It was 1996, right in the middle of what I consider the Golden Age of softcore, when MRG Entertainment released this erotic thriller from writer Jalee Bailey and director Eric Gibson.

Erin Lanza stars as Rebecca, a woman who works at an ad agency alongside her ambitious husband Peter (Stephen Michael Pace). But their marriage has not been happy for some time, as Peter neglects Rebecca in his drive to become the company President, and he also rather openly cheats on her. One day on impulse Rebecca places a personal ad in the newspaper, seeking a “discrete man for romantic encounters.” 

Simon Page plays David, the first man who answers her ad, and whom she agrees to meet in a park one afternoon. The park meeting leads back to his place and they have sex. But then Peter suspects that something is going on and he tells Rebecca he wants to work on their marriage, so when David calls her again Rebecca tells him it’s over. But David doesn’t take no for an answer.

And from then on we’ve got a gender-reversed version of Fatal Attraction, or a standard Lifetime Original Movie but with nudity. David becomes increasingly obsessive, all leading up to a dramatic and violent climax.

The movie is decent, but flawed in some ways. It’s about an hour and a half long but drags a bit sometimes, Rebecca doesn’t even meet David until over half an hour into the film. And a lot of time is spent on subplots involving some ad campaigns that Peter and Rebecca are separately working on. I felt like more time could have been spent on building up the affair between Rebecca and David so that David’s sudden switch in behavior could have felt more dramatic.

But Erin Lanza does a good job in the lead role, so much so that it’s surprising for me to see that, according to IMDB, this is her first professional acting job. And then she only had one other role a year later. I would have liked to have seen her in more softcore roles after this. It was also Stephen Michael Pace’s first role, and he also only did one more film. He was suitably smarmy as Peter and showed potential for a longer career, I think.

The film also features Tracy Dali, a former Playboy Playmate, as Peter’s assistant Laurie, and Shari Eckert as Nicole, a model hired for an ad campaign that Peter is running. And Edward Cragen as Marc, Rebecca’s assistant.

There are several sex scenes, we see Peter banging both Laurie and Nicole (separately), and Marc and Laurie also hook up once. Erin Lanza is in three scenes, as Rebeccas has sex with David twice and Peter once. There’s also a scene between Tamara Landry and Glen Hill, who play two characters that we only see once (she’s a model appearing in some commercial, and he’s the director) and then never again, which feels like they were just added to pad out the film…but Landry is a favorite of mine so I’m not complaining. There’s also a brief scene featuring De’Ann Power and a random man, which is just a fantasy sequence.

It’s all done well but definitely has a very “1990s” feel to it. It’s not a classic, but it’s worth a watch. Chacebook rating: THREE AND A HALF STARS

Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED DVD for $19.99. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list