Brad recently told me that he missed out on Late Night Cinemax in the 90s so, for this week, I’m going to review a few films from the era. I’m going to start with Stormswept, which is currently available on Prime.
Dottie (Melissa Moore) is a Louisiana realtor who has been assigned to show a plantation to Marla (Kim Kopf), an actress. When Dottie enters the main house, she has flashbacks to a traumatic experience that happened years ago. Dottie tries to talk Marla into looking at a different house but both Marla and the crew who are shooting her latest movie are drawn to the plantation. On a stormy night, a game of truth or dare leads to hypnosis, nudity, attempted murder, more nudity, the supernatural, and even more nudity.
Stormswept is the epitome of a 90s Cinemax film. Before Cinemax became a semi-respectable network and all of the old direct-to-video softcore films moved to streaming platforms, late night Cinemax was the main place to see films like Stormswept. Movies like this are why Cinemax was, for the longest time, nicknamed Skinemax. (Even Jerry Seinfeld made a joke about it on an episode of Seinfeld when he said, “People don’t just bump into each other. This isn’t Cinemax.”) Most of the movies that showed up on late night Cinemax in the 90s weren’t very good but, for viewers of a certain age, they were very popular.
So, what about Stormswept? Is it any good? The plot is impossible to follow and the dialogue is so risible that it could have been written by AI but it’s a still a film that, for better or worse, epitomizes an era. Whatever else, Stormswept does generate some atmosphere and, even more importantly, it features some of the most popular B-movie actresses of the 90s. Melissa Moore, Kim Kopf, Lorisa McComas, and Kathleen Kinmont are all featured in the movie and they all give better performances than the material probably deserved. Melissa Moore, who I will admit is one of my favorite Cinemax actresses, is especially good as Dottie. Even though the camera ogles her and, as soon as Moore opens her bedroom door in a towel, it’s obvious that the towel will be on the floor within minutes, Melissa Moore still gives a committed and sincere performance as the only person in the house who truly seems to understand that something bad is going to happen. She is still sympathetic and believable as Dottie and you actually do want to find out the secrets of her past experiences with the mansion.
I should give proper warning here. Stormswept is definitely a softcore film, make no mistake about that. Even by the standards of 90s Cinemax, a few of the scenes are unusually explicit. But, with its game cast and occasionally interesting story, it’s also a pretty good example of what made late night Cinemax memorable beyond the nudity.
Through the Shattered Lens 