Sunday, March 29, 2020

Vampiress Review: "Renfield the Un-dead"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1325026/

The Gist: Renfield of the Dracula novel who is now a vampire himself sets out to stop Mina Harker and her son Quincys attempt to resurrect Dracula in modern times USA.

Female Vampire Factor: First thing to mention is the film attempts to retell the Dracula story midway through so every vampire in that is revisited in a way.  As it's explained Renfield is fed on by Dracula's Brides before he's sent back to England.
Then through a quick montage flashback you're shown Lucy Westenra's affair with Mina followed by her vampire transformation.
As far as the films main plot goes one of the films main antagonists is a turned Mina Harker
Her along with her son Quincy are going around an American town biting and turning people.  Renfield is then going behind them, staking the victims and chopping their heads off to prevent them from turning.  This leads to the local police believing Renfield is a serial killer and calling him "The Butcher".  One of Quincy Harkers victims who does get to turn before she's quickly offed via decapitation is a female police officer.
In the film the main female protagonist is a coroner named Dr Bonnie Johnson.  Basically it's explained that all the main male characters in the film (Quincy Harker, the main police officer on the vampire case Detective Paul Cranston and Renfield) have a thing for her.  Pretty much every vampire including Mina gets to bite her at least once. 
So it's pretty much obvious early on that she does become a vampire herself by the end of the movie
After attempting to seduce Detective Cranston "Lucy" style he stakes her as she goes in for the bite.
There are also a few others that Quincy turns that get their heart ripped out about 30 seconds after they're introduced heading into the films big ending fight scene between the vampires.
and the final female vamp is shown in the movies end when a now insane Detective Cranston is broken out of an asylum by what seems to be a vampire Lucy Westenra.  The film prior to the end credits then announces a future film called "Renfield II: Lucy the Un-dead" which since this film was made in 2010 I'm pretty confident isn't happening.


Final Opinion:  I give this a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5.  Yes there seems to be a lot of female vampirism in the movie from this review and if this was a standard length film this would be a lot but the run time of this film is nearly 2 hours.

This is one of those films that would go from nearly unwatchable to somewhat enjoyable if only someone would have gone through and edited out the vast amounts of pointless scenes that do nothing to forward the plot or make characters you're supposed to be sympathizing with seem annoying. For example the whole movie is supposed to be a story from a comic book being read by a woman that Quincy picked up from a bar so you have to wait a good 5 minutes before the actual movie starts.  On top of that it's a good 20 minutes before we're even told who Mina and Quincy are even though they're introduced in the first 5 and they're the films main villains.  Instead its a lot of random dialogue between the cops on the case that don't connect the vampires to the Butcher case because Renfield himself isn't introduced until afterword and his initial introduction has no connection at the time to Mina and Quincy.  Because of that the films plot isn't truly explained until 25 minutes in then the film takes roughly a thirty minute break to tell you the story of Dracula before finally restarting at around the 1 hour and ten minute mark.

Another fault with the film is that it's a definite "yell at the screen" movie as the writing makes pretty much every human character a complete idiot.  From a photographer that has no baring on the plot yet for unexplained reasons is always at the scene of the vampire murders and is standing in plain view taking flash pictures with nothing bad happening to him as a result to the coroner who explains "dead guy with machete stuck in chest and clearly looks like a monster getting up when large knife is pulled from chest and walking away as "he must be on some type of drugs". You do get that feeling of the person who wrote it never really had a conversation with a real person so this is how they think human interaction would go.

In the end if a directors cut would be made this film could work.  Otherwise sitting through the full two hours was a definite chore.

1 comment:

  1. if you use fast-forward, it's actually a classic, I would say.

    ReplyDelete