Thin, sleepy, drug addled and, of course, largely naked, Olivia (Misty Mundae) is a very, very bad girl living in a very, very bad world. Alternately lusted after and hated by her “pimp” Claudio (a greasy looking Dean Paul), her life seems to consist largely of seducing young, wayward women, plying them with drugs and then performing all manner of lesbian sex with them. But her debt to Claudio – whatever it might be – can’t be fully repaid unless Olivia then finishes off her Sapphic lovers through various means of prolonged erotic-asphyxiation. Yup, that’s stranglin’ to you and me.

Perhaps we’re supposed to care that Olivia has set her sites on a couple of more innocent types who don’t seem to “be asking for” the Hell that they’re about to be tossed into, but honestly it doesn’t seem that way. As Melody, one of the new girls, AJ Kahn manages to use her natural beauty and innocent wide eyes to project the necessary unease she feels as she falls into Olivia’s web, but as Melody’s worried roommate Alice, Julian Wells seems ready to dive head-long into the fire… or at least Misty Mundae’s crotch.

Yes, when you get right down to it, despite the occasionally protracted death-by-kinky-suffocation sequence, this movie is all about the muff diving, a fact that’s none-too-surprising as Olivia is played by Misty Mundae, the queen of lesbian softcore budgeted with lunch money. Misty dives on no less than four other actresses in this flick: the aforementioned Kahn and Wells, as well as Ruby Larocca (in an uncredited role) and Katie Jordon. Director Bill Hellfire’s main squeeze at the time, Zoe Moonshine, is also thrown in to keep Julian Wells jaw in shape while she’s fretting over the whereabouts of her missing roommate.

As Olivia, Misty Mundae brings along her usual sleepwalk charm, disrobing at the call of action and looking every bit the Lolita that her fan base so wishes she was. What’s unfortunate is that this is a jucier part than usual for Seduction Cinema’s poster girl, but she looks completely indifferent to the proceedings. Yup, she can fake the big-o right up there with the best of the gals in softcore (Kira Reed, Susan Featherly, etc.), but in recent years there have been numerous instances where Mundae has looked more thespian than lesbian, so anyone seeing her performance in Flesh for Olivia will come to one of two conclusions:

1. This was actually shot very early on in her career and she was still green to the whole “acting” thing.
2. She just didn’t give a damn.

Sometimes when I watch Mundae, I think she’s just had a few too many hits off a bong. The lazy delivery, half-open eyes and foppish way she carries herself reminds me of most of the art school chicks I knew during my college years. Another commonality they seem to share is there apparent indifference to just about everything. In this movie, Olivia never comes off as anything other than bored with life, a fact most helped by Mundae’s lifeless narration. How can you believe she’s killed anyone when she makes it sound as banal as eating a cheese sandwich?

The odds were stacked against Flesh for Olivia to be anything more than a skin flick, and it probably should have been sold with a box of Kleenex just so there’d be no confusion. Purportedly Mundae’s last role for the New York Underground film studio Factory 2000 (and ex-boyfriend Bill Hellfire, who got Mundae started in the field), this could have been a swan song that wasn’t just filled with sex and a few token periods of supposedly “disturbing” sequences. And as a sequel to the obscure fetish video Silk Stocking Strangler, Olivia probably was supposed to be disturbing throughout. At times, (like when Mundae lets her fingers do some walking up Kahn’s back-end) it seems as though Hellfire seemed interested in evoking the perversions Jennifer Connelly's character sinks to in Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. But that’s a pretty huge leap considering the dream he seems to have is getting his girls naked and moaning - a Requiem for Steam and nothing else. Yes, there are somwhat effective moments of moral squalor, but thelazy acting and production values make it all feel disingenuous.

Neither fun as a bad movie or disturbing in a thought-provoking way, Flesh for Olvia is a pretentious mess that succeeds at the one thing it doesn’t seem to want to be: a flat-out sex movie.