Vampiress After Dark Review: "The Dark Gift"

 

The Gist: While a girl is pledging for a sorority, she rents a video tape that turns her into a vampire by watching it. 

Clarification:  That's the best you're going to get as an explanation for this film because it really has no coherent story.  Things just happen in random orders and honestly this could be split into two different films.  The first being the kind of coherent story of the sorority girl turning into a vampire after watching a cursed video tape. 

and a secondary less coherent and overall pointless one of a mad scientist kidnapping sorority girls and attempting to force them to have vampire babies.  

Final Opinion: The concept of the story sounds great in principle, but the execution is horrible.   It would honestly be better off as just a compilation of standalone vampire scenes as there is quite a bit of those that aren't horrible if it weren't for the fact that everything setting it up is bad and barely comprehendible.  On top of that the vampires in the cursed video tape get a ton of time and it's not like some mysterious video like The Ring.  It's literally just softcore vampire posing. 

So despite all the great vampire media you get from it I can't really give it more than a Vampire Beauty Rating of 1 out of 5.  If this were to be re-made but with them completely ditching the vampire doctor trying to breed babies thing it might work.  Then again just watch the film Vampires of Sorority Row which at this point for me is the standard for low budget, badly written but watchable due to hot female vampires B-movies.   

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Vampiress Review: "A Feast of Flesh"

The Gist: A woman is taken in by a vampire in order to be turned into a vampire call girl and it's up to her ex-boyfriend and a group of vampire slayers to save her whether she wants to be or not. 

Female Vampire Factor: Every female but one in the film is a vampire. The bulk of the fang outs you can see come in the form of the main character Theresa being turned.

 And the scene in which the main characters friends enter the brothel and get laid before being fed on. 

Other than that, you can see them very quickly throughout the film during the movies multiple fight scenes. 

Final Opinion: This film is very hard to follow and not exactly worth trying too anyway.  The problem being it's one of those films that tries so hard to have a plot that it feels super forced and barely makes sense.  What makes matters worse is plot wise it's nearly a really poor adaptation of the story from Vampz: Sista Vampires whose plot was also pretty rough, also being about an abused woman who gets taken in by a group of vampires who do sexy stuff to bring in victims, but the execution was much better in that movie.  By the end of the film all the fighting the vampire hunters did was made irrelevant almost as if they just didn't feel like or got writers block from coming up with a good ending and just decided to wish away the whole plot.  Not that the fate of the hunters really matters as they might as well be the villains of the film as there is nothing really likeable about them as they literally kidnap and force a couple of innocents including the main girls ex-boyfriend into unsafe situations at gunpoint. By comparison the vampires seem to have more emotions and empathy for others hence them voluntarily taking in Theresa.   I give the film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  As mentioned Sista Vampires is the better option is you're looking for a film with a plot like this. 

  

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Vampiress Review: Sinners (2025)

The Gist: When twin brothers from Chicago (Micheal B. Jordan) move to the Jim Crow era south and start a juke joint, the music grabs the attention of a vampire preacher looking to make the patrons part of his congregation. 

Female Vampire Factor: (SPOILER WARNING) There are a lot in the film as by the films end nearly everyone who attended the juke joint gets turned but the one who gets the most screen time is Mary (Hailee Steinfeld)

Mary is the product of a mixed-race father and a white mother who was raised around the black community to the point that she is considered one of them.  She had a relationship with one of the twins (Micheal B. Jordan) who left her high and dry after sleeping with her by leaving before she woke up but we eventually learn that despite him trying to make it look like he didn't care he did it to protect her from people finding out she was with a black man and the danger it could cause her.  

When the vampire pastor and his minions arrive asking to come in and party with the black towns people she volunteers to go out and interact with them to see if they are legit or if they had ulterior motives.  This results in her being bitten off camera which starts the horror portion of the film.   Her, already having the trust of the community would then be let back into the club where she would seduce and then bite one of the twins killing and turning him. 

Final Opinion: To say the story of this film is deep is a major understatement and it has enough plot for three different movies which explains the nearly two and a half hour run time.  The first hour and fifteen minutes covers the lives of the twins and their younger cousin who is the son of a preacher but who wants to be a blues musician which his father disagrees with.  This is mostly them planning the business which could have been condensed honestly.  Then the next 45 minutes to an hour introduces the vampires with the final 20 minutes being an action drama about black gangsters taking on the Klan which wraps up everything that was set up before the vampire part.

Similar to From Dusk Till Dawn the vampire portion is the most memorable part of the movie but also the shortest part.  In fact, the first thought that came to my mind is the film does borrow a lot from that movie with a strip club being replaced by a juke joint. 

It does border on being a musical with the amount of performing that goes on in the film as even the vampires get a turn singing and playing instruments.   

The most interesting thing in my opinion is that the vampires aren't necessarily villains.  I mean they are definitely villains but in the films hierarchy of monsters the vampires are nowhere near as bad as the Klansman with the head vampire somewhat having a Jim Jones mindset in that he is not killing people in his opinion and constantly tells those that he wants to turn that as vampires there is no racism and everyone is equal so he is liberating them and that's exactly how it comes across once they do turn as even the Klansman that he turns lose the hateful mindset once they're vampires since I guess all blood tastes the same regardless of race.

As a film on its own it's definitely 4.5 stars (only thing keeping it from a 5 is just how needlessly long it is).  As far as a Vampire Beauty Rating though 3 out of 5.  The limited time Mary gets post turn is good and some of the other main female characters get a few seconds of screen time with fangs but overall, they are an afterthought in the film that mainly exists in the background as random faces in a fight scene otherwise. 

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Vampiress Review: Abigail

The Gist:  A group of criminals are tasked with kidnapping a 12 year old ballet dancer not realizing that not only is she the daughter of a powerful mob boss but she is also an unstoppable vampire. 

Clarification: I would best describe this film as if Home Alone was a horror movie. I mean it's literally about a little girl who is left at home alone who must deal with a group of criminals trying to get her and using underhanded tricks and tactics to protect herself.  She's basically girl MaCauley Culken with fangs. 

Female Vampire Factor:  Of course we have the title character Abigail played by Allisha Weir.

She is basically what happens if Claudia from Interview with a Vampire made it to modern times and became a mafia assassin. The anti-hero of the film, we find out that she's a woman eternally stuck in the body of a twelve-year-old who is an assassin for her fathers criminal organization specializing in getting rid of those who wrong him.  The criminals who kidnap her then find out the hard way that the kidnapping was just an elaborate plan to get them trapped in the house with her so that she could kill them.    

Once she reveals herself she spends a majority of the movie being very sarcastic and sadistic, working in a lot of ballet dancing in with her pursuit of her victims showing that she's toying with them more than anything. 

At one point she does bite and turn of her kidnappers in the computer hacker "Sammie" played by Kathryn Newton.

Sammy gets bit while the crew were trying to subdue Abigail.  At first it seems that she will be fine but we then find out that in the vampire mythos of this film anyone bitten by a vampire can be controlled by that vampire to the point that the person becomes an extension of them which is what happens to Sammy. Abigail eventually takes over her body and uses her to attack her fellow kidnappers. 

Problem is, even though she herself is not a vampire but the puppet of the vampire she still has the same weaknesses.  Because of this we also learn that sunlight unlike in other movies where it's a agonizing painful burn is an insta kill. 

Final Thought:  I give this one a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5 as clearly you aren't getting much out of a movie about a killer 12 year old but from a purely entertainment standpoint it's a 5.   Like I said above, if you like the movie Home Alone and you like horror films it's a perfect combination of the two genre's and it's not bogged down with a lot of backstory.  The plot is exactly what's happening from beginning to end and anything you learn about the characters is learned while the events are happening and not through flashbacks that kill the mood of the film.  I definitely recommend it. 

 

Vampiress TV Review: Glory Days

Lost Girls

Season 1

Episode 5

Glory Days was a short lived night time supernatural drama that aired on the WB Network in late 2002/early 2003.  The premise is basically a cop and a writer living in a small town where weird things happen every week resulting in cases they have to solve. 

In this episode three vampire women show up in the town of glory around the same time a womans body is found drained of all her blood. 

The first of the vampires we meet is Rosalyn who seems to have a thing for Sherriff Rudy as she shows up wherever he does determined to get him to be with her. 

Then you have Jade who is the ring leader of the group who does most of the talking.  Her eyes are specifically on young Zane.  She is played by the legendary Canadian vampire actress Meghan Ory (Supernatural, Vampire High, Sanctuary)

And finally, you have Sharla who is just a background character who says nothing but makes really good fang out faces in the scenes where the other two do.

We eventually find out they are not vampires but college girls doing a sociology experiment where they see how people react to being attacked by a vampire and have nothing to do with the murder in the town.  

It's lazy writing as clearly they just needed an excuse to have hot vampire women on a show on the WB without outright biting off of Buffy or Angel and this was the best they could do.  Thankfully the network would do a bit better over the years for the vampire genre after the WB/UPN merger into the CW in 2006.  Outside the horrible reveal this was a decent episode. 

Vampiress Review: Fright Club

 

The Gist: In order for a group of friends to join an exclusive club they must impress the elder with scary stories.

Female Vampire Factor:  Story number two in the film is told by the character Omar and is titled "The Boy who Cried Vamp".  In it he describes an unemployed DJ named Jamal who ends up getting a job at a nightclub not knowing that it is run by vampires and that he was being turned into one as well.  The female vamp of the story is a stripper named Nisa.

In a twist we also briefly see his girlfriend Kendra with fangs as well. 

Final Opinion: Best described as kind of a watered down "Tales from the Hood" the vampire story itself is short and to the point with a run time just shy of 25 minutes with a good majority of it just being gratuitous shots of Nisa fanging out

For that I'll give it a vampire beauty rating of 4 out of 5.  The rest of the film is ok, you get a weird modern retelling of little red riding hood and Frankenstein followed by finding out that the club was really full of demons.  I wouldn't exactly blame anyone for skipping to just the vampire story and not watching the rest. 

Vampiress Review: "Club Vampire"

The Gist:  A stripper struggles with becoming a vampire while the vampires who accidently turned her are out to destroy her. Luckily for her one of them has feelings for her.

Female Vampire Factor:  The main protagonist if you can call her that in the film is Corri (Starr Andreef)

She is a single mom whose son does not respect her and does not approve of her lifestyle as a stripper (and apparently she's also an alcoholic).  She is accidentally turned when giving a lap dance at the strip club she works at to Laura who was there along with her brood mate Zero and loses control of her blood lust (Diana Frank) 

Problem is their brood leader Alko (Marrium Parris) 

has strict rules for their brood and turning someone without authorization breaks that so Zero is tasked with destroying Corri but instead chooses to take her in and show her how to function as a vampire. 

The Gist:  So this is a ridiculously cheesy fangless vampire film.  Actually I can't really call it fangless since there is a fang scene in it as one of the strippers dresses like a vampire

and Corri herself also does a vampiress stripper routine where she has fake fangs.

but the actual vampires when they feed use cutting tools and just end up becoming demon like after drinking blood but with no fangs. 

This is somewhat addressed as there is an entire dialogue of Corrie being super upset that if she's going to be stuck as a vampire why she can't have fangs since that would've been the only positive of it for her. 

I've seen others call this one of the worst vampire films ever made.  I personally wouldn't go that far, not because it's better than expected but because I've definitely seen worse. Though it is pretty bad I wouldn't call it unwatchable.  If it weren't for the nudity it would have definitely qualified for spoofing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 during it's time since it does qualify as laughably bad. I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 1 out of 5.  The story itself has potential though to the point that it's actually pretty entertaining when it was done as the plot of the skinamax film Embrace the Darkness 2 nearly 4 years later.  Marium Parris would go on to play a vampiress again in her short acting career on the daytime soap opera Port Charles.