When your movie opens up with a bunch of random shots of corpses resembling an SFX crew demo reel, it just gives me the feeling you’re running on a premise that ain’t got much substance. This barrage of dead women set to some shitty music has already got me nervous. So, dead women. Ok. Shady car mechanics acting shady. Ok. Two detectives refusing to comment on murders. Ok. Wait. A vampire?! What the fuck? So a lawyer gets bit by a vampire but he was already a psychopath but now he’s losing it even more and the scatterbrained presentation just kinda throws all this at you and in capable hands it may have been impressive. Following a flashback of why the psycho lawyer is the way he is, we are treated to an extended scene of a rope dancer doing what she does. It’s impressive but after that jumble of an opening, I just want shit to get going. Rope-performer-lady is stalked as she leaves the theater and is attacked by the vampire-lawyer as she enters her car. The cops see that the killer they’ve been tracking has changed his MO, of course they aren’t aware he is now a vampire but you’d probably be mentally ill if that was immediately where your suspicions jumped. The lead detective has poorly-acted family issues at home and is feeling the pressure… it’s a micro-budget vampire film so I’m not surprised at questionable performances. I’ve seen worse in larger budgeted films so I’m not upset or anything. Also, the serial killer is losing it because he’s no longer in control thanks to his bloodlust and the vampire that turned him is still following and feeding on him. There’s also an old guy hanging around her, helping and having “deep” conversations about the way things were and the current sorry state of vampirism. After this we journey to one of the lamest night clubs I’ve ever seen… and as a teenager I went to some very lame nightclubs… and watch as the vampire lady picks up a chick after some lazy dancing and talks a bunch to her in between scenes of their lethargic nightclub gyrations. After that brief trip to watch our lady vampire get a snack, she welcomes the killer she’s just turned to the family. People die, the cops close in, the new vampire recruit may be a bit more trouble than he’s worth and all action plays out like it’s filmed in a few gallons of thick molasses. In between the boring cop drama I don’t care about and the boring vampire drama I don’t care about, there’s a bunch of people who did all they could with the money they had. There’s some cheap violence which gives me those warm backyard movie vibes and the actors are at least fuckin’ trying (Imma give James Craven his props, probably a wonderful stage actor). It’s ambitious, which I respect, but unfortunately it’s not all that entertaining. I feel bad for movies like this because these are the types of flicks I want to like, there’s some admiration there… it’s just really hard to stay awake when nothing is getting the ol’ ticker ticking.
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