Having had a virgin or two in my day and having been one once, I'm not quite sure why this state of inexperience is so prized in our society and, for that matter, the world over. I surmise some folks want to be the first, whether it's for an iPhone purchase, the initial screening of a Star Wars entry, or just saying hello to a clitoris.

I've always felt being second or third or tenth is much wiser, whether it's walking on ice, being on a conga line, or having intimate relations. Technique can improve over the years. Just take a second and ask yourself whether you'd want your gall bladder removed by a newbie or an experienced M.D.

If you are conflicted, you are not alone. As the writer Edward Dahlbert noted, "What men desire is a virgin who is a whore."

Well, clearly, the still pure-as-driven-snow Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is no whore, but she's getting quite horny in this latest and best of The Twilight Sagas. Director David Slade, who won much acclaim with his Hard Candy (2005), a saga of a possible pederast, and who garnered slightly fewer cheers for 30 Days of Night, a tale of vampires in a rather cold town, is clearly responsible for this success. After all, the reprehensible Melissa Rosenberg has once again adapted Stephenie Meyer’s supernatural tales of teens in lust in Washington State, so there’s little refinement dialogue-wise.

What’s improved here is that much of the endless, saccharine prattle between the one-note Bella and the mournfully romantic Edward Cullen has been jettisoned in favor of enjoyable action scenes and some slight humor.

For instance, in a pivotal tent scene, while the werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) tries to warm up the shivering, sleeping Bella with his pumped-up pecs, the jealous Edward admits he could be friends with his Indian rival-in-love under different circumstances. However, the way the scene's played, you get the sense the duo would have preferred enacting Brokeback Mountain if only Bella had been shacked up elsewhere. But she isn't, Blanche!

Anyway, the storyline this time has Riley (Xavier Samuel), an attractive young man, creating a Newborn Vampire Army in Seattle to kill Bella and eradicate the Cullen clan. But why? My fangs are sealed.

Secondary in importance is the upcoming high school graduation and Bella's inability to seduce Edward. The shimmeringly pasty boy is apparently old school and refuses to copulate with a woman he isn't married to. Then, of course, there's Bella’s dilemma: should she turn vampire so she won't age while her spouse remains a teen, or should she hitch up with Jacob and stay human so she can have kids and still visit her parents on the major holidays?

With enough exposed male chests for a dozen Calvin Klein ads, superb action cinematography and editing, plus a little campiness, this blood-sucking ode to abstinence and the eternal battle between the Apollonian and Dionysian desires in us all (think Death in Venice) easily eclipses its predecessors. That's not saying much, but it's a bite in the right direction. - Brandon Judell

Mr. Judell is featured in the forthcoming documentary Activist: The Times of Vito Russo and has been edited out of Rosa von Praunheim's New York Memories. In the fall, he'll be teaching "American Jewish Theater" and "Theater into Film" at The City College of New York. He has written on film for The Village Voice, indieWire.com, The New York Daily News, and The Advocate, and is anthologized in Cynthia Fuchs's Spike Lee Interviews (University Press of Mississippi).