Written by Leland Zaitz and directed by Mike Kesey, this film was originally released in 1997 from Mystique Films, a studio that specialized in erotic thrillers that seemed to be more aimed at couples than typical softcore films usually were.

This film stars Francois Rodrigue and Kristin Herold as Ryan and Lisa, a couple who’ve been together for a year, and Breck Harmel and Lisa Krispin as their friends Jack and Cyndi, who’ve been together for about 3 months. The two couples plan a trip together, to spend a weekend a Ryan’s cousin Brad’s vacation home in Mexico. It’s established early on that Ryan and Lisa are in a bit of a rut sexually. The film opens with them having sex in bed, but are interrupted by a phone call from Ryan’s boss, which he insists on taking, leaving Lisa frustrated. She goes to the bathroom to take a bath, and Ryan joins her and they begin having sex again, but that turns out to just be a fantasy that Lisa is having. By contrast, Jack and Cyndi are still hot and heavy, and much more sexually adventurous.

So this is a good setup for a film, as you have the two couples spending time together in this beautiful house, but showing their conflicting attitudes about sex, and seeing how that affects each relationship as well as their friendship. Jack and Cyndi are quickly getting naked and doing in the outside hot tub. But when Ryan and Lisa are alone in their room, Lisa tries to get Jack to use some handcuffs, nipple clamps, and a blindfold on her during sex, but Jack is too inhibited to go along with it. Later, while the four couples are sitting by the fireplace in the living room, Jack and Cyndi start having sex, and Lisa manages to entice Ryan to do it with her, so the two couples each have sex in front of each other, although Ryan feels a bit weird about it the next morning.

So, again, if the movie stuck with the premise of the two couples exploring their sexuality together, with Ryan in particular learning to be more uninhibited, I think this film could have been really great. But then Lorissa McComas suddenly shows up as a woman named Veronica, claiming she’s a friend of Brad’s and was invited to spend the weekend at the house too, along with her boyfriend Vic (Sam Anno), who arrives later that night. Since the house is big enough, they agree to let Vic and Veronica stay too. But things quickly get suspicious.

Veronica starts aggressively flirting with Ryan behind Vic and Lisa’s backs. Vic is vague about what he does for a living, and he has a big briefcase that he won’t say what’s in it. They hear over the radio that some escaped convict is on the loose, and Ryan begins to suspect that Vic is the convict, especially after he later spies on Veronica and Vic having sex in their room, and sees them open the briefcase which has a ton of cash money in it (which their spread on the bed to have sex on).

So then the film switches into some kind of crime drama. And it just loses all of its focus, in my opinion.

As I was watching this I thought some of the plot points seemed a little familiar. And so I looked it up and sure enough, there was the episode of the softcore series Passion Cove called The Getaway, where you had a couple in a vacation home who are suddenly joined by a strange woman who comes to stay at the same house, along with her mysterious boyfriend, whom they begin to suspect is an escaped convict that they heard about on the radio. And that episode was also written by Leland Zaitz.

But that episode was more interesting than this movie. It just dragged on a lot, and by halfway through it I was getting bored and skipping forward to the sex scenes, of which there were some good ones among the various couples (Lisa McComas in particular is always amazing), but ultimately I found When Passions Collide to be rather passionless.

Chacebook rating: THREE STARS

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