Vampiress Review: "Bloodrunners"

The Gist: Crooked small town cops in the prohibition era 1930's bite off more than they can chew when the speakeasy they try to shake down for bribes ends up being run by vampires.

Female Vampire Factor:  One of the vampires pays a visit to a cat house one evening and takes a bite out of one of the whores Violet (Tammy Jean).

Later in the film as the cops go to the cathouse for comfort she finally turns and drains a cop.  She doesn't last much longer after that as she's staked the next time you see her as the main human characters raid the speakeasy (the vampires come and retrieve her after she turns and takes her back).

The master vampire Chesterfield played by Ice T has a female vampire that he is regularly attached to who's a lounge singer at the speakeasy named Alexandra (Julie Ek).  In most scenes he's training her in how to enjoy blood drinking basically

She doesn't do anything really vampiric and much like the other female vampire is staked shortly after the first time you see her fang out in the last ten minutes. 

Final Opinion: This in reality is about 10 to 15 minutes of actual vampire movie that takes place at the end of a somewhat hard to follow period movie.  I put it in the category of a film that tries to do way too much when the main premise was more than enough to fill an hour and a half.  Instead of telling one story well it tells a bunch of them poorly to where you're introduced to a ton of characters that you have no attachment to whatsoever to really care what happens to them.  I give this a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  The scene of Violet turning is what you're looking for if you do decide to check it out but the overall enjoyment factor of the film isn't that great.  Everytime it feels like the momentum of the movie is about to go up it shuts itself down with unneeded backstory and side tracking.

Vampiress Review: "Monster X"

The Gist: A collection of horror shorts being viewed by a couple at a haunted theater.

Female Vampire Factor: In one of the short films a man and his mistress are in bed when his wife comes home from a business trip early.

The mistress hides in the couples closet but the wife is on to them, breaks out a gun and shoots both.

As she drives out to the middle of nowhere to dump the bodies she notices bite marks on her husbands bodies.  The mistress was a vampire and she turned him. 

They then come after the now very afraid wife.  Instead of finishing her they decide to torture her by turning her then tying her to a tree to let the sun finish her off.

Unfortunately for the couple they end up having car trouble.  To make matters worse a bystander finds the wife and unties her. 

In the end the wife makes it home before the cheating husband and mistress prior to the sun rising.  The couple ends up burning and she gets her revenge.

Final Opinion:  The other stories in the series include a woman who is being stalked by a banshee after it kills her husband, A group of werewolves capturing a young girl who sneacked into a movie theater that ends up being the daughter of Satan, and a babysitter that ends up being eaten by the monsters that live under the child she's watchings bed.  They're all tied together as being films being played in the movie theater a couple is trying to escape from as they slowly realize it in itself is haunted.  

As far as the vampire portion of the movie goes I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  Very short film where them being vampires does more to set up the twist ending than it actually being about that.  As far as the entire film go it's pretty entertaining if you're into films like Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Darkside as it's absolutely inspired by those films with the short horror movies inside a great horror movie format.

Vampiress Review: "Xane: The Vampire God"

The Gist: a group of friends on a camping trip are ambushed by vampires.  They are saved by a vampire god named Xane who ends up being a vampire version of one of the campers sent from the future to save himself.

Female Vampire Factor: Every main female character in the film does at some point become a vampire but only in a matter of factly sort of way.  First the evil vampire king Cain's wife Lillith (Zoe Kelly) is one but you only see her do anything vampiric once and her fangs are only seen during a scene when she's being tortured by her husband Kane.

Next one turned is Lilliths apprentice Gentry (Michelle Oneida). She is used to trick the main character Titus by disguising herself as his girlfriend Jocelyn.  Her reward for helping Cain in the plan is him turning her (top photo) but you never actually see her do anything vampiric as she still spends the rest of the movie disguised as Jocelyn (Bottom photo).

Finally is Jocelyn herself (Jenna Farden), the girlfriend of the main character Titus.  She is turned so that she wouldn't die after her friends abusive vampire stepdad bites her.  She has one fang scene where she has to be held down and kept from feeding on Titus' brother.

Final Opinion:  This is one of those films where once it gets going it's pretty good but needs a ton of editing.  It's a two hour film with the first hour being downright hard to watch as they spend way too much time and effort on the "After school special" style backstory of Titus's brother having ALS and him not going to college so that he can get a job to pay for his brothers treatment. All things that really have no bearing on the actual plot of the film.  Then again since the movie doesn't have an actual ending pretty much nothing that happens has an actual bearing on the plot.  That's right, nothing gets resolved.  You sit for two hours for a film with no resolution whatsoever that just cuts to credits on a cliffhanger.  I give this one a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5. 

Vampiress Review: "Bit"

The Gist:  A small town girl is turned into a vampire when a brood of feminist vampires take interest in her during her first night in Los Angeles.

Female Vampire Factor:  It's a feminist lesbian coming of age film with vampires so pretty much everyone right?

The lead character is Laural (Nicole Maines)

Small town girl from Oregon who goes to stay with her brother in L.A. for the summer to find herself and day 1 just kind of goes off with a bunch of women she doesn't know and is turned into a vampire. Then spends the rest of the time basically doing the same stupid slacker stuff most 18 year old non vampires do while ignoring her gay needy best friend she left behind and her family. As all this is happening her vampire friends are fighting a literal war with slayers and playing vampire superhero killing men they've determined are evil.

Then you have the vampire clique

First up is the leader of the clique "Duke" (Diana Hopper).

Turned by Dracula himself in New York in the 1970's.  She was glamoured to be with him as she herself is a strict lesbian.  When she got the opportunity she turned on him and is keeping his heart to prevent his return.  She has since deemed that no other man can be turned.


Izzy (Zolee Griggs)

The vamp who took interest in Laurel that got her into the situation.  She was supposed to be feeding on Laurel but ended up falling for her (Izzy fed on Laurel anyway with Duke making the call to turn her). 


Frog (Char Diaz)

The glamour of the group and seemingly the only straight woman as she is usually the bait when the girls plan to seduce men before feeding on them. Pretty sure she's named after the family of vampire hunters in the Lost Boys.


Roya (Friday Chamberlain)

She's your stereotypical masculine lesbian character who basically just stays in the background and barely talks.

Finally you have Dracula's brides

The dark haired one ends up being the loan survivor of the attack that killed Dracula as she killed him herself and joined Duke.  She's actually the first vampire seen in the film.  As the film starts she had just turned a man into a vampire and was caught doing so by Duke and the group.  They kill him and sentence her to isolation in a hole.

Final Opinion:  Have we seen this story before?  Yeah Blood Angels, Cold Hearts, Lost Boys, We are the Night etc.  I guess if a story works it works.  What separates this film from those?  Not much other than maybe it's a lot less sexual than most of those films other than Cold Hearts since it centers more on the fledgling vampires life issues than the vampirism which only really comes into play in the films final act as she finally loses control from not feeding.  Otherwise most of the vampire groups hunting is done in montages as the movie is mostly about Laurel with the vampires just being background characters.

The one thing I will mention is that the Laurel character is supposed to be transgendered but it's never outright said at any time in the movie unless I missed it which makes a lot of the stuff that goes on with her not make much sense if you don't know this in advance.  It's hinted throughout the film that she's different and struggles with acceptance.  There's a lot of people talking throughout the movie about how much she's been through and how proud they are of her. The first thing she asks her brother in L.A. is if his friends will accept her and her brother at one point goes on a rant on having to defend her to her parents and being tired of her needs always coming first growing up. Even Vlad (Dracula) when he first encounters her has a one liner where he says "I suppose it is the new millenium" after looking her over which is the one line that eliminates the unmentionable thing they're discussing being that Laurel is a lesbian which otherwise the movie could have gotten away with (It's established well before that point that Vlad is fully aware of lesbians and has no issue with them for the statement to be about that).

Problem is instead of the beating around the bush they do, there was a clear scene in the beginning at a graduation party where this could have been addressed head on so the comments characters make about it in the rest of the film wouldn't be so cryptic.  Since it's not ever actually said you're leaving it up to the viewer to have either read up on the films production (which mentions it) or to have done enough research on Supergirl TV series actress Nicole Maines to know she herself is trans since that's not an easy guess just using the eye test.

So without that info it just kind of comes off as your standard situation of Hollywood casts a glammed up actress to play a character that would never have the problems her character would have since she looks like any other young eye candy Hollywood actress in a film mostly walking around in very distracting (in a good way) booty shorts like it's a Micheal Bay film.  That little bit of info would make her a much more sympathetic character or just not address her lifestyle at all.

I give this film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.  I highly recommend it and it has pretty high re-watchability.  I think it does a much better job of telling the story that the Second Lost Boys film attempted. I only wish Laurel would have struggled more with her vampirism and less with her social life.