Dr. Claire Archer is back!

Having gotten away with murder at the end of the first Body Chemistry, Claire (played again by Lisa Pescia) is now working as a radio psychologist, taking the 9 pm to 1 am slot at a station managed by a sleazy chain smoker named Big Chuck (played by real-life sleazy chain smoker Morton Downey, Jr.).  Claire invites her listeners to call with their deepest desires.  “Without pain, you’re not truly alive.”

One night, “John” calls.  When Claire looks at the list of callers and sees, “John likes rough sex,” she immediately put him on the air.  John is actually Dan (Gregory Harrison).  Dan is dating Claire’s call screener, Brenda (Robin Riker), who cannot recognize her own boyfriend’s voice over the telephone.  Dan is a former high school football star who left town and became a cop in Los Angeles.  When his violent impulses became impossible to control, Dan was kicked off the force and he returned home.  Dan wants to suppress his dark side but Claire has other ideas.

Body Chemistry II is a marginal improvement over the first Body Chemistry, because Dan is a more sympathetic victim character than Marc Singer was in the first film and Body Chemistry II puts Lisa Pescia’s vampy performance front and center.  Though both films tell the same basic story, Body Chemistry II is stylistically a very different film.  Body Chemistry II takes it cue from film noir, which means a lot of dark rooms with Venetian blinds.  Dan’s flashbacks and nightmares also add some surreal moments to Body Chemistry II, distinguishing it from the more straight forward first film.

Though there would be two more Body Chemistry sequels, this would be the last time that Lisa Pescia would play Dr. Archer.  Keep an eye out for Clint Howard, Jeremy Piven, and director John Landis, all of whom show up in small roles.

For tomorrow’s movie a day, Shari Shattuck takes over the role of Claire Archer in Body Chemistry III: Point of Seduction.