The package includes Lust For Dracula, Witches of Sappho Salon, Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde, and Sinful, three of which star softcore porn queen Misty Mundae. I'd heard her name before, thanks to her role in Lucky McKee's "Sick Girl" episode of "Masters of Horror", but that's the only point of reference I had for any of these movies. Now that I've watched three of them (the disc for Sinful was too scratched to play), I'm pretty sure I never need to see a cheesy softcore skin flick again. There's nothing wrong with pornography or lesbian lovemaking, but collectively, the films really pushed my interest in seeing it to the limit. Marsiglia's a big fan of slow build-up and slow-motion, but he doesn't seem to know how to apply either in moderation, making him the asleep-at-the-wheel Zack Snyder of softcore directors. Just for fun, I cranked the speed of one of the films up with fast forward, and even then, the makeout sessions still became slow to the point of boredom.

So, what about each film individually? Lust For Dracula spins a completely incomprehensible yarn involving Dracula and babies that wants to start in the middle and let the audience play catch-up, but Marsiglia doesn't give the viewer enough information to connect the dots. Who's a vampire and who isn't? Is Julian Wells dreaming because of the pills she's popping, or is she really at a blackboard with two vampires masturbating behind her? Why is Mundae locked up in a house all day? Since it's the first film in the collection, I thought maybe it was one of Marsiglia's earlier, less-assured efforts, but it's actually the most recent of his films. There's also a handful of completely unexplained scenes that seem to suggest incest and transsexuality, but since the direction is a mess and the movie's only a softcore, there isn't much elaboration on either point.

The Witches of Sappho Salon is comparatively much better, although in another sense, the more like a real film Marsiglia gets, the easier it is to tell how far away he is. In any case, Salon tells the story of three witches (one of which is a dude, just for the record) who sacrifice a virgin every 30 years in order to continue living forever. Their latest target is Elizabeth Grace, a Cameron Diaz-ish blonde girl without a care in the world, who goes to get a makeover at the salon despite her boyfriend's assertion that it might be a weird place. As I previously mentioned, Marsiglia lets scenes go on way, way, way too long (every scene, not just the sex scenes), and the special effects budget on this is non-existent, which leads to some funny half-assed attempts at movie magic, but the plot makes basic sense and there's even an amusingly simple twist ending.

Last but not least (thanks to my broken Sinful platter) is Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde, which stars Wells as a scientist (the classic, colorful-liquids-in-vials kind) who thinks the female psyche has two distinct parts: the pure and the lustful. After a failed test that sends one girl to the insane asylum (Marsiglia hints that she's unable to stop masturbating), Wells tries it on herself and has endless sex with Mundae in an empty warehouse of some sort. Marsiglia stages stunning visuals against gorgeous backdrops, such as a steel garage door, and eventually there's some revenge against Dr. Jekyll's slimy husband, who looks like the rugged, buff porn star version of Clint Howard.

All I gleaned from these movies was a sense that the softcore film is an outdated model. Like Sex Stories, the films feel trapped between failing to be a good film and pulling their punches in terms of being pornography, delivering bad plots and bad acting on top of non-explicit sex sequences. It doesn't help that Marsiglia fails to make those sex scenes very interesting. At the very least, Marsiglia could reign in his love of slow-mo and these things could be a bit shorter. Not to be crude, but as attention spans shrink, it's hard to believe anyone watches more than a scene of these things at a time. If you told me the only people who had ever watched a softcore from beginning to end in a single sitting were DVD reviewers, I'd believe you.

The DVD
Bloodlust is akin to a DVD Quadruple Feature. Both Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde and Sinful are old discs, while the disc containing Witches and Dracula is new. I don't know why they opted to put Darian Caine on the cover instead of Misty Mundae or Julian Wells, but they did. The back cover could use a little work to save it from being a wall of text, and the three-disc set comes packaged in the flimsiest, cheapest 3-disc case, which was unable to withstand being crammed sideways into the box DVDTalk shipped it to me in. Against all odds, the case contains an 8 page booklet, a comment postcard, and a flyer for AlternativeCinema.com.

The Video, and Audio
Seeing as it's the newest one, Lust For Dracula's 1.33:1 transfer is slightly better than the others. There's a bit more clarity and depth than the other two movies I was able to view. The others feature heavy mosquito noise and a bit of softness, but on the whole, all three of them look better than some of the major studio DVDs I've reviewed as of late. Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks are provided on all the films, which get the job of conveying cries of passion done perfectly fine. That said, volume levels for people speaking in these things could be a little higher, or subtitles might've been nice (yes, it's extremely silly that I watched a softcore porno and thought, "You know, I wish this had an English subtitle track", but don't the deaf and hard of hearing want to understand why Misty Mundae is naked too?).

The Extras
Extremely brief behind-the-scenes clips (6:01, 4:27) are included for Lust For Dracula (clearing up the fact that, yes, the film contains incest) and Witches of Sappho Salon are included on the first disc, along with an audio commentary by director Tony Marsiglia and producer Michael Raso. I only sampled it and it didn't blow me away, but I'm glad that even within the first few seconds of Marsiglia's chatter, you can tell that he's not taking his job as seriously it might seem from the film in question.

Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde comes with a ridiculously massive making-of documentary (1:16:39) that contains tons of B-roll footage and candid interviews with the cast and crew, who mostly sit around smoking. It's actually kind of fascinating to see what goes into one of these films, and the enthusiastic British voice of director Johnny Crash from behind the camera helps propel it along. The disc also comes with eight Retro Seduction Cinema trailers, which, unfortunately for Seduction, are cool for the footage of vintage softcore rather than the studio's modern recreations. A second gallery contains standard Seduction Cinema trailers (which all look quite a bit funnier than the movies included here, especially Lord of the G-Strings), and the trailer for Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde is also included.

Conclusion
Fans of Misty Mundae will probably be happy to plunk down their hard-earned cash, but the glimpses of goofier films from the Seduction catalog were a complete 180 from the dragging, endless bore of watching make-out sessions that seem to take themselves so seriously. Seduction Cinema also recently put out a package of spoofs that includes their Lord of the G-Strings and Playmate of the Apes, among others, and while I haven't seen it, I'd bet dollars to donuts it's more entertaining than this set. Skip it.