Vampiress TV review: "The Big Easy"

Vamps Like Us

Season 1

Episode 20

The Gist: The detectives receive a case where an author is found dead and drained of all her blood after going to meet the leader of a vampire cult.

Clarification: The Big Easy is a television series that aired in 1996 and 1997 on the USA Network for two seasons.  It was based on a 1986 film of the same name.  It followed a detective named Remy McSwain and his female partner Anne Osborn solving cases around New Orleans. 

Female Vampire Factor:  One of the suspects in this case is a woman name Valeria (Fabiana Udenio).

Valeria believes herself to be a vampire and attacks Remy upon their first meeting seemingly trying to bite him to drink his blood.

Because the victim had two puncture wounds on her neck and was completely drained of her blood this act immediately makes her a suspect.  The finger further gets pointed her way when it comes back that the victim wasn't bitten and that the blood was artificially removed since it's found out she works at a blood bank but like most shows of this type the obvious person is never the culprit so it of course isn't her in the end.  

 I give this episode a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.  While the Vampires here aren't supernatural they believe they are so it's close enough.

Vampiress Review: "Search for Love Lost"

The Gist: Two guys search for a girl who is also being pursued by a vampire.

Clarification:  So the movie starts with you being told a story about a vampire who lost his lover in the most idiotic way possible (accidentally swinging her into a tree) and how that vampire has now found a reincarnated version who he wants introduced to. 

It then switches to two guys who are a parody of Wayne and Garth from the waaaaay dated Waynes World franchise talking about how "Barth's" girlfriend is missing and they need to find her (the woman discussed in both segments being the same female)

From there you just get random scenes of "Dwayne & Barth" talking to random half naked women in long drawn out scenes that really go nowhere about where she might be and one scene were "the count" hits on her in the most awkward way possible (as he had no issue finding her apparently).  

Selling Point: I think they were hoping having attractive women in bikini's or short dresses in most scenes would help make the film watchable.

Female Vampire Factor:  So the main female Heather is both a vampire in the beginning flashback and does get turned in the films finale as she bites Barths brother Art.  No fangs though. 

This movie is awful.  It gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 1 out of 5.  It's about 40 to 45 minutes long with most of it being conversations telling you about things that happened that probably should be played out on screen.  Then you have to tolerate the horrible "Wayne" impression (the Garth one is pretty dead on though but "Dwayne" gets most of the lines in the film.) Fact is the enjoyment factor would go way up if Dwayne was a regular original character who just said stupid things and not a really bad parody.  Then the final 15 minutes of the film is the closing credits which replays literally everyone in the film doing their one line just to give them a visual credit and bloopers to pad the run time to an hour.  It's almost funny level bad......ALMOST.

Vampiress Review: "Hemo"

The Gist: A couple who is addicted to drinking blood struggle with their relationship when they can no longer steel it from blood banks and must depend on murder.

Clarification: It's Troma so it's super low budget (don't expect to see very well in any scene that's dark or be able to hear at all in any scene that's outside).  On top of that it's a very bad attempt at being artistic.  In reality it's about two people who are really bad at being vampires whose issues stem more from just not being very smart. 

You see they aren't supernatural in any way so the idea that they're having a lack of blood seems a bit silly considering there is two of them (why wouldn't they just drink from each other?  The woman lets the guy feed from her once in the film, movie should have ended right there right?)

Then when they do have blood it goes practically everywhere but in their mouths (they literally poor it on themselves) then they have temper tantrums when they've run out.  This repetitive nonsense goes on for the bulk of the movie.   

Selling Point: There's some full frontal nudity in it.  That's the only thing I can think of.

Female Vampire Factor:  The vampiress in this film is Felicia (Pamela Price)

So reading between the lines Felicia was a hot crazy girl who used her hotness to get her easily influenced boyfriend Calvin to join in her crazyness.  In this case drinking blood.

As the movie goes along Calvin seems to have spurts of intelligent thought while Felicia goes further and further into being a loony psycho killer who hears voices and sees people who aren't there who tell her to do bad things. 

I can honestly say if the movie didn't try so hard to fill the hour and a half run time with meaningless plot stopping conversations and at least tried to have some structure instead of just doing stuff just for the sake of shock value and having something happen on screen, it wouldn't be that bad.  Felicias road to insanity is an intriguing story and really should have been the main plot instead of just a few clips in the last 10 minutes.

Because of the lack of structure in where the movie wanted to go, the character development really isn't there for the ending to be as powerful and emotional as they intended it to be.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 1 out of 5.