After five years of kinky sex and murder, the Body Chemistry franchise ended with Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure.
Like the third film, Full Exposure was directed by Jim Wynorski and produced by Andrew Stevens. Shannon Tweed stepped into the role of murderous Dr. Claire Archer, replacing Shari Shattuck. Shannon Tweed was always one of the most talented of the actresses who regularly appeared on what was then nicknamed Skinemax. It wasn’t just that Tweed always seemed to being give it her all in her films’ frequent sex scenes. Tweed also had the look and style of an old-fashioned femme fatale. It was easy to imagine her trading sultry quips with Alan Ladd or Tom Neal. This made Tweed perfect for the role of Claire Archer and her performance was a noticeable improvement on Shari Shattuck’s. It’s just too bad the rest of the film was such a snoozefest.
In Full Exposure, after getting away with three murders in the first two Body Chemistry films, Claire has finally been arrested. She is on trial for killing Alan Clay (Andrew Stevens) at the end of the third film. However, she has a hotshot lawyer named Simon Mitchell (Larry Poindexter) and she is soon up to her old tricks, having sex with Simon in his office, a parking garage, and an elevator. Simon’s aide, Lane (Marta Martin), has come across proof of Claire’s crimes but Claire has a plan to take care of that. She always does.
Full Exposure starts out as a typical Body Chemistry film, with neon-lit sex scenes, but it quickly get bogged down in lengthy courtroom sequences. In the previous three films, Claire at least had some sort of motivation but here, it’s never clear why she would try to destroy her lawyer’s life during the trial instead of waiting until he had, at least, gotten her off the hook. Tweed is a perfect Claire but the rest of the cast is just going through the motions. Though Claire once again got away with murder, there were no more chapters to her story after this one. The Body Chemistry franchise managed to do a lot with a very thin premise but Full Exposure shows, that by the fourth film, there was no where left to go.