The Gist: British mobsters get more than what they bargained for when they find out that the rival mobsters who just came to town from Eastern Europe are vampires.
Clarification: Also known as "London Underworld" If you ever seen From Dusk Till Dawn it's basically that but if it started out as a British mobster movie instead of a Southern outlaw action film. You have some British mobster types with the main one Freddie owning a strip club. Then you have some creepy foreign people who take over the strip club through a questionable bet. When the mobster types go to take the strip club back and things get bloody the girls and the management all of a sudden start sprouting fangs so the mobsters types and the one stripper that didn't get turned now have to find a way to escape. You know...like From Dusk Till Dawn.
Female Vampire Factor: Well, a lot since it is a film that primarily takes place in a strip club full of vampires. The Romanian contingent has a girl in their group named Tatiana.
She acts as somewhat of a translator until the vampire portion of the film comes about. Then she's a bit of an enforcer sent to pay a visit to the family of Freddie.
Then you had a vampire hunters backstory where he talked about how the vampires killed all his family except for his daughter who they turned and who he had to kill himself.
Then comes the strippers who all except one get turned. Two of them get actual screen time. First is the head stripper who after she turns confronts her ex boss and instead of biting him stops to brag how she got turned that lead to her being staked.
Next you have Katie who's another stripper who gets a ton of screen time only after she turns. She's even on the cover of the DVD even though you only really get introduced to her in the last 10 minutes of the film.
Freddie (the main protagonists) wife does get bitten in the film but does not turn. Freddie does have a nightmare about it and there are production stills of her with fangs so even though it's not really in the movie that does kind of count.
I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5. Can't give it a 5 because vampires aren't even in 75% of the film. Much like From Dusk Till Dawn it's 25% vampire horror and 75% something else. With the exception of Tatiana if you see a female vampire introduced she's going to be stake fodder within 5 minutes.
The Gist: A group of friends decide to check out the brand new strip club in town unbeknownst to them it is run by a group of vampires who use it to lure in victims.
Clarification: So, if this story sounds familiar it's because it's been done about a million times before especially in low budget "B" movies like this. While it's not the worst of them it's still pretty bad. Luckily, it's a watchable bad as the corniness of the film is slightly entertaining if you're attracted to that kind of film (IE you were the type to watch USA Up All Night level or local TV ghoul host type cheesy movies.)
The first thing you will notice about the film is that it's extremely low budget. I'm talking the film has 3 locations, an apartment, the outside of some type of warehouse and the inside of the warehouse which is made to somewhat resemble a strip club by way of decorations that look like they were stolen from a high school home coming celebration which is OK since they don't actually strip anyway.
The second thing that you will notice is it does suffer from that low-budget film cliche of just trying way too hard by adding film cliche after film cliche. You've got three vampire strippers; they don't need any reason as to why they're doing what they're doing other than they're three vampire strippers yet for whatever reason every murder they commit outside the main plot has some type of justification to it. A good example is the below scene where the worst vampire hunter in the world admits to stalking the women for years without doing a thing when he was supposed to be avenging his brother and when he finally gets the opportunity acts like he has absolutely no clue how to handle vampires. By the way just so you know he's a vampire hunter he's wearing a long leather coat and a hat when you first see him.
Selling Point: The third thing you will notice about the film which is a positive is that all three of the vampires have different styles of fangs from each other though it's a much more radical difference then we saw in Dracula 2000 who also had different fangs for each female turned. Oh yeah and they're hot.
Female Vampire Factor: Well as mentioned there are 3 and there is a lot of biting scenes though they tend to resort to "B" movie gore more times than not.
The blonde "Serena" (Monika Wild) is the biggest monster of the crew often being the one doing the killing.
"Treasure" (Elina Madison) is the leader. There is a sub plot of her falling for one of the lead guys but the whole "your friends are killing my friends in my apartment" thing gets in the way of any relationship between the two.
The third girl "Monique" (Allison Beal) is just kind of there to growl a lot.
So in the end you have an over thought, poorly acted film about strippers who don't strip that has hot women with fangs but also logicless sub plots. I give the film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5. For a better attempt I would recommend pretty much any Fred Olen Ray film (yep this is that bad) but especially "Twilight Vamps".
