Devil in the Flesh 2 (2000)

Rating: D+

Dir: Marcus Spiegel
Star: Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, Jsu Garcia, Katherine Kendall, Jeanette Brox

Same slut, different day, as it were. Except that replacing Rose McGowan is O’Keefe, probably something of a down-grade, in that you lose the sense of genuine psychosis McGowan brought. Still, it begins brightly enough, with Debbie (O’Keefe) escaping from the asylum, and taking over the identity of a rich bitch who is on her way to start college life. This offers a whole new playground, and her corruption of her innocent room-mate (Brox) – introducing her to booze, porn, curfew-breaking and unlawful killing in one night – is delightfully forthright.

Instead of playing on this angle further, however, the movie eventually becomes a retread of the first with Debbie falling for another pedagogue. And just to show how bankrupt they are for ideas, once again it’s a creative writing teacher. Yawn. There are some minor differences: this time, he does sleep with Debbie, though the attempt to go into “erotic thriller” mode are hampered by O’Keefe’s refusal to get her kit off. Debbie is also more sympathetic this time, partly through an unfortunate tendency for her to be around when people have nasty accidents. It still ends up wildly dumb: Debbie stalks her crush’s fiancee through a house – when Debbie is knocked out, and the girlfriend doesn’t bother to leave, the last hope for the film flickers into darkness.