Vampiress TV review: First Kill

First Kill is a Netflix original series which debuted in 2022.  The story revolves around two teenage girls.  One a vampire named Julliette and one a monster slayer named Calliope.  Both are going through a kind of puberty for their kind in which getting their first kill will launch them into adulthood.  

By chance they end up targeting each other for that but botched it during a round of spin the bottle. 

In the throws of passion Julliette bites Calliope leaving herself open for Calliope to stake her but neither get the kill as Calliope runs away before confirming the kill. 

To make matters worse they fall for each other when Calliope begins questioning her clans blind hatred of vampires when Julliette goes out of her way to save her from the rest of the vampires.  This leads to a rift between the two girls and their families launching a supernatural Romeo & Juliette story. 

Julliette is one of those "vampires that really doesn't want to be one and just wants to be a normal girl" vamps.  She comes from a line of first generation vampires which is why she can walk in the daylight and wasn't killed when staked through the heart. She tries to hold back her vampire urges through taking blood pills but much like regular puberty she has issues keeping her fangs in in emotional situations. 

Thow everyone in her family are vampires with the family being described as a matriarch (vampire leadership being passed from mother to daughter)

 there is only one in the family that falls into vampire in the traditional sense (meaning she openly stalks and feeds during the series) and that's Juliettes older sister Elinor.

Elinor is the prototypical upper class debutont Barbie.  While she does come off very cold overall everything she does is in an effort to protect her little sister including seducing, biting then hypnotizing townspeople to cover up a murder she believedJulliette did. 

Then when she found out Juliette hadn't had her first kill doing everything in her power to help her sister kill while covering it up to the family that it hadn't happened. 
  

Though at the end of the day her motivations are all selfish as she's only truly thinking about how her sister being shunned would affect her standing in the family. 

Final Opinion:  I don't have too many complaints about season 1.  When I first heard the premise I thought it would be a bit corny and overwhelmingly teenage girl angsty ala Twilight or the web series Carmella but was pleasantly surprised to find a well balanced horror drama. I definitely recommend it. Unfortunately in August of 2022 even with a very loyal fanbase Netflix announced the show would be cancelled after only 1 season.

 

Vampiress Review: "Vampire Virus"

 

The Gist: A girl seeks out her one night stand as she wakes up the next day in an ally with a virus that's turning her into a vampire.

Female Vampire Factor: The film starts by showing us a nurse named Isabella at some sort of facility on her way to do something.  She hears the cries of a woman locked up in the facility who then asks her to take away the pain.  As Isabella opens up the womans cell she's bitten by her.  As security comes in to contain Isabella she escapes. 

Fast forward to someplace else and a girl named Jennifer is out with her friends and getting ragged on for being single.  She agrees to go out to the club with them to help find her a man.  Instead of finding a man though she runs into Isabella who is now in sexy seductress mode.  

Jennifer accidentally cuts herself on a glass and Isabella offers to dress her wound back at her place which is a shady location in a back ally.  Jennifer at this point learns that she's bi-curious and goes back with her and Isabel pulls the old lesbian vampire get in between her legs then bite her trick. 

Jennifer wakes up in the ally with a fully recovered hand but a nasty infection on her abdomen.   Instead of going to the hospital she goes back to her place and tries to shower it away I guess?  

When she gets out of the shower she notices she no longer has a reflection. She attempts to fix that by wiping the mirror harder (thinking that would bring her reflection back maybe?) but instead breaks the mirror.  Her roommate comes to check the noise and cuts himself on the glass shards.  Though it's hinted, no real vampirism happens and the roommate insists she sees a doctor and takes her.  While at the office she sees that the police are looking for Isabella for spreading a virus so she runs out of the office with her roommate and goes back to the back ally hideout.  Once there she sees Isabella and another hot vampire woman feeding on a male vampire.

Jennifer wants to know what's happening to her (because she's not a genius obviously).  Izabella tells her she's one of them now and if she wants that infection to go away she must feed.  Jennifer freaks out and leaves the lair just to find her roommate being attacked by some homophobes.  This results in her fanging out and killing both attackers. 

She takes her roommate back to his boyfriends house and not a hospital (again, she's not a genius).  Izabella then shows up and tells her he's going to die but she can save him as long as she does something for her. 

They take him back to Izabella's lair and Izabella informs Jennifer that she will turn her roommate in exchange for her becoming her new vampire recruiter.  Since the police know her face she can't get into nightclubs anymore to turn people.  Jennifer agrees and Izabella and the nameless hot asian vampiress mount Jennifers roommate to prepare to bite and turn him.  Funny moment when the very gay roommate Jack looks up at the two super sexy women on top of him and asks "Am I in hell?"

Jacks cop boyfriend Freddie goes to the nightclub Izabellla frequented looking for Jennifer.  After having to trade clothes with someone to get in he finds her in super slutty mode seducing people. 

Freddie informs Jennifer that the cops followed her and know exactly where the vampire lair is and are on their way there to kill all of them including Jack so they take off back to the lair.  The cops have basically came in and killed all the vampires but Jack who was hiding.  As Jack attempts to escape he is shot in the abdomen.  When the head cop corners Jack, Freddie tries to back him off.  Jack offers to turn Freddie and bites him and when the cop goes to kill them both Jennifer shows up and bites the cop. 

The film ends with Jennifer picking up some random girl as an uber driver and biting her. 

 

Final Opinion: I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.  My only real complaint is that the majority of the film is filmed in that dark red and blue lighting, especially during scenes where vampirism is involved which made seeing it more difficult than it needed to be.  Otherwise Isabella was a near perfect seductive female vampire antagonist. 

Vampiress Review: "Bram Stokers Dracula's Curse"

 

The Gist:  When a rogue vampire Countess and her brood break a truce between humans and vampires,  It's up to a disbanded group of vampire hunters along with the fiance of a woman kidnapped by the countess to stop them.

Female Vampire Factor: The main villain of the film is Countess Bathorly (Christina Rosenberg)

The film follows a similar premise as Kindred: The Embraced were vampires are divided into mafia style clans.  The Countess leads a clan that consists of all females.

She is pretty obviously inspired by Countess Elizabeth Bathory as her background story is exactly the same.   When it came to established vampire names, they changed a few letters I guess to establish them as their own. 

While all the other clans agreed to the truce Bathorly was nowhere to be found and presumed dead thus never agreed.  Once all the other clans became weak from not drinking human blood she sets out on a plan to send her vampiresses to hunt pure blood descendants of "Dracoolia's" original brides as drinking their blood would give them the strength to then destroy or force all the rest of the vampires to worship her.  

Most other female vamps in the film are just background T&A but there are A LOT of them.  You do get reveals that Dracoolia's brides looked exactly like the descendants that are being hunted.

Who themselves are revealed to have been turned by the films final battle including the sister of one of the vampire hunters and the missing girlfriend.

Finally the love interest of vampire hunter Jacob Van Helsing also turns out to be a vampire. The hunter in reality wants to be turned but she refuses as she loves him too much to curse him.

 She is forced to change her mind when he has fatal injuries and she turns him to save his life.

 

Final Opinion:  The film is probably 85% hot female vampires though they really don't do too much vampiric other than the above kidnapping and turning scenes and one scene where the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl is trained on how to kill a vampire by being confronted with a sexy vampire to see if he could do it. A scene which in itself is odd as it's addressed in the film that not all vampires are bad and they don't kill the ones who aren't and she does nothing to instigate being used for target practice. I guess we are to assume she is one of Bathorly's girls.

Otherwise they're just eye candy in the background of scenes which includes a small bit of vampire lesbianism and a lot of fight scenes.

I give this a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5.  It's pretty corny and the ending twist is best described as super convenient as it completely nullifies the rest of the movie but it is definitely watchable if women with fangs is your thing. 

Vampiress Review: "Blood Immortal"

 

The Gist: Three stories of female vampires trying to survive over generations.

Female Vampire Factor: The film is divided into three chapters.  

In Chapter 1: "The Founding (Origins)" we get the story of a woman and her daughter (Josephine and Fiona).  They are alone as Josephines husband died in war.  She herself is also deathly ill. 

One day a mysterious man comes by claiming to be from the government with an offer to buy their land.

 In reality he's a vampire who wants to take Josephine for his bride.  He eventually bites her and turns her. 

When she realizes what's become of her she and Fiona attack and eventually kill the stranger.  The Chapter ends with Fiona offering to feed Josephine her blood. 

In Chapter 2: "Isolation, Caution"

Now in modern times Fiona now a vampire herself is struggling to survive as the blood population is tainted.  With every female (as she's apparently a lesbian) she bites she gets sicker and sicker. 

 During this time she's also attending night classes that focus on economics.  Her professor is a lonely woman and they hit it off immediately striking up a friendship.

The Chapter ends with the depressed professor seeking Fiona out for comfort after being embarrassed attempting to ask a colleague out for a date. Fiona sick with blood lust seduces then feeds on her. 

In the third and final Chapter

Now in the future, civilization is in ruin and two vampires, Josephine and her daughter Eliza, are struggling to survive.  Eliza is deathly ill due to the poisoned blood supply of the humans. 

Josephine decides to bribe the worker at a blood bank with ancient coins in exchange for fresh blood to feed her daughter.  

The blood bank worker trades those coins to a group of shady people who decide they are going to find the source and rob them.  

The Chapter ends with the daughter Eliza dying from blood poisoning and the mother Jospehine murdering the attempted thieves.

 
Final Opinion: My only real complaint is just the fact that I'm not sure if these are continuous stories or not.  The girl in chapter 2 has the same name as the daughter in chapter 1 and the mother in chapters 1 and 3 are played by the same actress with the same name as well but different daughters.  Other than that not half bad.  Chapter 2 is definitely the highlight of the film.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.  Only thing keeping it from a straight 5 is Chapter 3 being more of a post apocalyptic survival film than a vampire horror.

Vampiress XXX Review: "Dracula in a Womens Prison"

The Gist: A woman goes to a corrupt third world country in search for her sister who was wrongfully incarcerated at a womens prison controlled by vampires.

Female Vampire Factor: Despite the title the vampirism is few and far between.  All the prison guards are female vampires but the only time you see them fang out is during prison break scenes just prior to being offed. 

Also the occasional inmate does turn like Franca who the head guard Perez gets to feed on her cell mate.

In the big plot twist the main protagonist Elizabeths sister who she spends the film looking for is revealed to have been turned as well.

and in a running theme if a woman shows her fangs in this film, she's not going to make make it long.

By the end of the film all the inmates have been turned so there's that but the rule of thumb still unfortunately stands.

Final Opinion: This film doesn't know whether it wants to be a skinamax film or a dramatic horror.  Funny thing is the dramatic portions are actually pretty respectable with a pretty well fleshed out back story, it's the horror and action parts that are pretty cheesy and horribly acted to a Seduction Cinema degree. Much to my surprise this is part 2 of a trilogy with the first dealing with werewolves and the third which the ending of this film sets up where one of the surviving inmates is "Dr. Victoria Frankenstein" and she devices a plan to use the bodies of the inmates killed by the vampires to create a monster.  I give this film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5.  It's a cheesy film full of fake boobs, gratuitous lesbianism and sexy costume.  Not much to watch for other than that.