Female vampires once ruled the world. Now they are overlooked for glittering guys with big hair. It's time to point out why the female of the species should be the center of attention.
The Gist: A retelling of the Hammer Horror vampire film, Dracula A.D 1972.
Clarification: Dracula A.D. 1972 would be the one Christopher Lee Dracula film that doesn't get mentioned at all in my blog entry on Hammer Horrors Dracula. The reason being that it was the one Dracula film that didn't have any female vampires in it (a no, no for Hammer Horror vampire films as a whole and not just the Dracula Series). The premise was that after being killed (again) during his time a distant relative of a follower of Dracula tricks some young people in 1970's London to participate in a seance to bring him back. The kids freak out, Dracula comes back and one by one begins picking off the participants of the seance. The problem with the film was that Dracula waits till the films end to decide he wants to turn a female (as he chooses to kill all the females instead) and is killed in the process. Dracula without vampire brides is like James Bond hanging out at all mens clubs for an entire movie. No one wants to see that. Anyway if you want to see the original I've included it below.
Changes between that film and this are very few premise wise. Instead of London they're in New York and the "hippie kids" are now college students. The film even uses actual audio from the original film among other Hammer films. Selling Point: Not only does this movie go out of it's way to correct the fatal flaw of the original film but it has several tributes to the female vampires of other Dracula films as well.
Female Vampire Factor: The first major change when it comes to the story is that the one who brings back Dracula is a female college professor named "Ingrid Stensgaard" (Bessie Nellis). For you Hammer experts that is a combination of the names of the first two actresses to play Carmilla Karnstain for Hammer, Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard. If you watched the original film you know that person does get turned which means you officially have female vampire #1.
In a tribute to another hammer Dracula film Ingrid get's offed in the exact same manor as Barbera Shelly in "Dracula: Prince of Darkness"
In fact in other tributes to that film the iconic "You Don't Need Charles" scene is used when Jennifer is looking for her boyfriend Andrew and one of her friends who has been turned "Diana" (Madelyn Wiley) is there to greet her instead.
Diana later on uses the "Let Me Kiss You" line from that same scene from Prince of Darkness
Joshua Kennedy does an EXCELLENT job with this film. Despite it being a low budget film it doesn't come off as cheap IE effort was definitely put into it and it is a fitting tribute to the source material. I honestly can't say enough good things about it. A must see for fans of Hammer Horror and gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5.
The Gist: After dying in an accident that stemmed from an argument with a group of jocks that led to a high speed car chase, a group of cheerleaders are brought back to life through black magic but are now linked to each other and must survive off of human blood.
Clarification: A remake of a 2001 movie this film has no clue what it wants to be. Then again maybe it does. If you take the films "The Craft", "Mean Girls" and "Jennifers Body" and put them together this is pretty much what you get. It might have a decent scare factor if it weren't for the fact that the film doesn't actually have a protagonist at all. Basically a group of macho jerks act like jerks to annoying slutty, snobby cheerleaders who then die and become blood sucking, annoying, slutty snobby cheerleaders. Let's be honest here if everyone in this film died for good that school would be a whole lot more tolerable to go to for a lot of people.
The film is divided into 3 sections basically. You've got your beginning which is your run of the mill coming of age teen drama filled with people in cliques walking in slow motion down hallways.
Then you get to the middle which is more or less a supernatural comedy filled with sex and teen girls in Underwear.
And then the films finale which is where the horror portion comes in.
The comedy portion of the film feels extremely out of place as pretty much anything that would be scary ends up having some joke factor involved IE a scene where one of the girls is in the middle of threatening to kill someone but goes down in what you think is terribly acted pain like she's about to vamp out just to find out one of the other girls was having sex which lead to the rest having orgasms where they stood since they're linked to one another. Also two of the girls are sisters whose souls were switched during their reanimation which leads to awkward horror comedy scenes where the younger sister starts living out her older sisters life (including sleeping with her boyfriend) resulting in the older sister going homicidal at people that have no clue they've done anything wrong.
Selling Point: No nudity but tons of National Lampoon level T & A and lesbianism.
Female Vampire Factor: So this film isn't advertized as a vampire film but it is in fact a vampire film and with the exception of the witch who revives them, all the female main characters are vampires (below).
From Left to Right: Amanda Grace Cooper, Brook Butler, Reanin Johannink and Caitlin Stasey
By the way what high school on Earth are the above cheerleader uniforms standard? also for the record the one on the far left is the schools mascot because as we all know, really attractive women are normally what's under those furry costumes.
Anyway here's the disappointing factor for some of you. While they do drink blood, have superhuman strength and are in fact the living dead (there's a scene where Reanin Johanninks character takes her boyfriend (or in this situation her sisters boyfriend as her and her sister switched bodies) virginity and he goes around bragging about it but at the same time being confused because no one told him vagina's were cold), unlike your standard movie vamps they function just fine in the sunlight and they don't have fangs. Ironically enough these girls are more vampiric than most of the movies I review where they do have fangs but never actually use them. Especially the character Tracy played by Brooke Butler (the blonde) who pretty much kills anyone she's alone with.
The rest you never really see feeding outside of a group feeding scene just after they are revived. The one exception being the witch letting the girl she has a thing for feed off of her hand.
Despite that I actually found the film to be very entertaining. (spoiler alert) it does have an open ending so either there will be a sequel or this ends up like "Vampire Academy" and you just have to live with the anti-climatic ending you're dealt. I give the film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 of out 5. As long as you can get passed the lack of fangs and know what you're getting. It's a pretty decent vampire comedy like film.
Clarification: Same general story but makes way more sense than the original. Charlotte is a mousey shy young woman who is off to college on a fencing scholarship. When she gets there she has to deal with having really slutty roommates, really pushy team mates along with having black outs which results in her having sex dreams (which is really traumatizing for a sheltered virgin). She eventually finds out the sex dream problems stem from her being the ancestor of a powerful vampire and one of her victims is coming for her as drinking her blood would regain his humanity. Low and behold that vampire just so happens to be her fencing coach.
Selling Point: In this version you don't have to wait till the end of the movie for the (much hotter and graphic) lesbian scene. This time it's between Charlotte and one of her fencing team mates Sarah (played by Chelsey Reist) which ends in fangs (Below).
Who needs feminine protection with friends like these?
Vampire Beauty Rating: Outside of the above scene the only other female vampire is Charlottes vampire ancestor Sorina played by Claire Smithies. Sorina is only scene in flashbacks and takes the place of the three random naked women briefly show in the original.
Well we went from hardly any female vamp action in the original to an upgrade to barely any in the remake. On the bright side, as stated, the lesbian scene (which is the only thing that made the original worth watching) has now been tied in to a female vamp scene. Otherwise there is probably more gratuitous sex in this film than the original but nowhere near as kinky (no random threesomes this time around). At the end of the day I'm actually sold on this movie just because it actually made sense and wasn't made for shock value. In other words they actually attempted to tell a story and a very well done one at that. Anyway this film gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5 (for those keeping count that's one more than the original got from me).
Jaime Murray who will be playing "Geri Dandrige", Charlie Brewsters hot blood sucking college professor in the upcoming sequal to 2011's Fright Night remake gave fans a bit of hope that her character is in fact close to what we were given in the 1988 film "Fright Night 2" which starred Julie Carmen as the female lead vamp whose description matches what Murray says of her character pretty well. Check out the interview from Red Carpet News below.
Fright Night is one of the most successful vampire movies of the 1980's. In it's release in 1985 it was the second highest grossing horror movie of the year behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and well deserved. The original film is easily one of the top 5 greatest vampire movies of all time (then again the 1980's knew their stuff as far as vampire films in the Horror genre go. Especially compared to now). The story of Fright Night follows a teenage boy named Charlie Brewster who finds out through snooping that his neighbor (a smooth playboy named Jerry Dandridge) is actually a vampire who is killing the women he's bringing back to his house nightly. Unfortunately for Charlie, Jerry knows that he's been found out and uses his debonair ways to make everyone think Charlie is crazy while torturing him at the same time by going after his friends, family and girlfriend. There aren't too many vamps in these films but the ones they do have are VERY memorable.
The B movie Vampiress
She's not significant but she is kind of hot. This is the opening scene in the original 1985 Fright Night film. While Charlie is trying to get some from his girlfriend Amy, A "B" grade vampire movie is playing on Peter Vincents "Fright Night" TV show where Peter saves a guy from getting bit after "putting his head on the woman's breast". This makes you miss the days when films like this were actually shown on late night TV. There are what seems like millions of television channels in the world at least one of them should still appreciate a good, bad late night vampire movie on a Friday or Saturday Night.
Amy (1985)
Ten points to me for finding a sexy girlie pic of Amanda Bearse (you know, the lesbian who played "Marcie" the neighbor on "Married With Children"). To be totally honest, in the last fifteen minutes or so of this film she is REALLY hot as she is making her transformation into a vampire. She goes from quite boyish looking to sexy vixen with red hair in a white dress which is almost see through from how hard she's sweating in her transformation. Unfortunately like Lindsay Lohan with plastic surgery she turns too much and scares the daylights out of you after one run in with a cross.
Amy (2011)
Fast forward almost 30 years and this is what Amy has evolved into in the 21st century. Imogen Poots is much sexier in the "Seducing Charlie to take a bite out of his neck" department than Bearse was, choosing to jump on top of him and straddle him when she does it. Bearse doesn't even touch the poor guy in 85. Unfortunately her turn isn't as long and spread out but it is still pretty sexy.
Doris
Emily Montague plays "Doris", one of Jerry Dandridge's young victims in the 2011 Fright Night Remake. Doris is found locked in Dandridges home when Charlie Brewster goes snooping around after he sees Dandridge leave for the night. Unfortunately Dandridge comes back too soon and while Charlie hides, Jerry continues to make a snack out of her (turning her). She doesn't vamp out as she doesn't even know she's turned and doesn't find out till Charlie helps her escape in broad daylight just to watch her explode into dust which Jerry (who seems to know about the whole escape) gets a kick out of. This marks the biggest difference between the two films as in the modern version most of Dandridges victims do turn and don't just die off (most being seen as vampires in the movies final fight).
Regine Dandridge
Good Gawd was Julie Carmen hot in this movie as Regine. Regine was the sister of Jerry Dandridge in the 1988 (extremely rare to find) sequal Fright Night 2. She came to town for the sole purpose of getting revenge on Peter Vincent for killing her brother the same way her brother tortured poor Charlie. Her plan included taking his spot on his own TV show, Turning Charlie into a vampire and attempting to turn Charlie's new girlfriend Alex by way of her therapist. In my opinion she was much more powerful than her brother as she has the ability to haunt Charlie in his thoughts and dreams which she uses quite a bit. Something Jerry never did. (Side note: Carmen also played a vampire similar to Regine on an episode of the Dick Van Dyke series "Diagnosis Murder")
Gerri Dandridge (2013)
Played by Jaime Murray, In 2013 the story gets told one more time but this time the pleasant surprise is that Gerri is a sexy female teacher who seduces her students and especially females so she can bath in the blood she doesn't drink in order to stay young. In the words of Duke Nukem....Ahhhh much better.
Amy (2013)
Seemingly the Amy vampire turn gets less and less sexy as the years go by. Kind of a shame but it could be worse, they could have taken it out all together. Played by Sacha Parkinson the 2013 version of Amy is less about seducing and tricking Charlie and more about throwing him around and killing him.
For more on the Newest Fright Night film check out my full review HERE.
