Vampiress Review: "Renfield the Un-dead"

The Gist: Renfield of the Dracula novel who is now a vampire himself sets out to stop Mina Harker and her son Quincys attempt to resurrect Dracula in modern times USA.

Female Vampire Factor: First thing to mention is the film attempts to retell the Dracula story midway through so every vampire in that is revisited in a way.  As it's explained Renfield is fed on by Dracula's Brides before he's sent back to England.

Then through a quick montage flashback you're shown Lucy Westenra's affair with Mina followed by her vampire transformation.

As far as the films main plot goes one of the films main antagonists is a turned Mina Harker

Her along with her son Quincy are going around an American town biting and turning people.  Renfield is then going behind them, staking the victims and chopping their heads off to prevent them from turning.  This leads to the local police believing Renfield is a serial killer and calling him "The Butcher".  One of Quincy Harkers victims who does get to turn before she's quickly offed via decapitation is a female police officer.

In the film the main female protagonist is a coroner named Dr Bonnie Johnson.  Basically it's explained that all the main male characters in the film (Quincy Harker, the main police officer on the vampire case Detective Paul Cranston and Renfield) have a thing for her.  Pretty much every vampire including Mina gets to bite her at least once. 

So it's pretty much obvious early on that she does become a vampire herself by the end of the movie

After attempting to seduce Detective Cranston "Lucy" style he stakes her as she goes in for the bite.

There are also a few others that Quincy turns that get their heart ripped out about 30 seconds after they're introduced heading into the films big ending fight scene between the vampires.

and the final female vamp is shown in the movies end when a now insane Detective Cranston is broken out of an asylum by what seems to be a vampire Lucy Westenra.  The film prior to the end credits then announces a future film called "Renfield II: Lucy the Un-dead" which since this film was made in 2010 I'm pretty confident isn't happening.

Final Opinion:  I give this a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5.  Yes there seems to be a lot of female vampirism in the movie from this review and if this was a standard length film this would be a lot but the run time of this film is nearly 2 hours.

This is one of those films that would go from nearly unwatchable to somewhat enjoyable if only someone would have gone through and edited out the vast amounts of pointless scenes that do nothing to forward the plot or make characters you're supposed to be sympathizing with seem annoying. For example the whole movie is supposed to be a story from a comic book being read by a woman that Quincy picked up from a bar so you have to wait a good 5 minutes before the actual movie starts.  On top of that it's a good 20 minutes before we're even told who Mina and Quincy are even though they're introduced in the first 5 and they're the films main villains.  Instead its a lot of random dialogue between the cops on the case that don't connect the vampires to the Butcher case because Renfield himself isn't introduced until afterword and his initial introduction has no connection at the time to Mina and Quincy.  Because of that the films plot isn't truly explained until 25 minutes in then the film takes roughly a thirty minute break to tell you the story of Dracula before finally restarting at around the 1 hour and ten minute mark.

Another fault with the film is that it's a definite "yell at the screen" movie as the writing makes pretty much every human character a complete idiot.  From a photographer that has no baring on the plot yet for unexplained reasons is always at the scene of the vampire murders and is standing in plain view taking flash pictures with nothing bad happening to him as a result to the coroner who explains "dead guy with machete stuck in chest and clearly looks like a monster getting up when large knife is pulled from chest and walking away as "he must be on some type of drugs". You do get that feeling of the person who wrote it never really had a conversation with a real person so this is how they think human interaction would go.

In the end if a directors cut would be made this film could work.  Otherwise sitting through the full two hours was a definite chore.

Vampiress Review: "Mostly Dead: They Walk Among Us"

The Gist: Humans are hold up in a church while vampires are hunting them.

Female Vampire Factors:  Well... they exist

The problem as it were is not very good direction in the film so even though they are prevalent in the film don't expect to see much as you have situations like someone is revealed to be a vampire but they aren't looking at the camera to actually see the reveal.

or the scene is cut away so quickly that you see everything but that actual vampire attack.

The femme vamps that get the most screen time is a woman and a young girl who spend the entire movie hunting together.

but as mentioned the actual vamp scenes are so quick if I didn't freeze frame you'd not be able to see they actually do have fangs in this film.  On top of that, in spite of how much screen time they get, they have no real importants to the film.

The rest of the vampires in the film are revealed as if they're important but are limited to one or two scenes of just kind of talking about stuff that are spread so far apart you forget they exist.

Final Opinion:  This is one of those films where you can pretty much tell someone got a camcorder, got a bunch of people together and said "let's make a movie".  Then just wrote scenes for all the people to get some camera time but never thought to actually have a real plot to tie the scenes together.

That's right, this is a movie without an actual plot.  Stuff just kind of happens to people and then it ends with an ex machina where it's explained in dialogue that the vampires just disappeared.  If you watch the film twice you can kind of get where they attempted to have a story but important characters and plot points for the story to work are thrown in so matter of factly there's no way you'd realize any of it is important. Especially being that so many characters that have no bearing on the plot they eventually tried to have get way more screen time than those who ended up being important who got the background character treatment until it was decided they're important.  Thankfully instead of giving us a backstory on what started the vampire apocalypse or the priest helping people they did have a scene that acknowledges that some scenes it's spring time and some have snow (I'm not kidding).   

Basically here's what the film should have been based on the ending that was presented...

"A woman who was left a widow during a vampire apocalypse finds purpose via protecting a mentally challenged man.  They eventually seek refuge in a church full of other human survivors.  The woman then struggles with maintaining her faith as the vampires test her through manipulating her mind to put the other survivors in danger though through shear coincidence the mentally challenged man prevents her from succumbing to their attempts every time.  It's eventually revealed the mentally challenged man is really an angel sent down from God to protect her and the coincidences were not coincidences as the girl is the key to ending the vampire apocalypse and he was sent as her guardian angel to protect her"

Instead we got a cluster of scenes full of people introduced 5 minutes before they're killed off or introduced to never be seen again after their only scene breaking up the stories of characters who will eventually just get written off.  It could have been great but can't give it any more of a Vampire Beauty Rating than 2 out of 5.

Vampiress Review: "Vampires"

The Gist:  A teenage girl struggles with life when a dormant gene in her DNA activates and slowly turns her into a vampire.

Female Vampire Factor:  Pretty much everyone on the show is a vampire minus a couple exceptions.  The main character on the show is a girl named Doina played by Oulaya Amamra

Her whole family minus her and her brother Ladislas already had the vampire gene so they can't come out during daylight and must live on blood.

This made life hard for Doina since that means her mother who raised the family alone after their fathers disappearance can't come out during daytime hours when things start to go bad at school. One day Doina started getting urges.  Eventually resulting in her having incidents of biting her boyfriend as the urge to drink his blood was becoming irresistible. This resulted in her beginning to realize the gene had not skipped her and she was turning.

The thing most confusing for her though is that unlike the rest of the vampires in her family she can still walk in the sunlight without burning.

After the first couple of episodes the series goes into Doina being introduced to the other members of the vampire community. This leads to her unraveling the mystery of her families estranged relationship with them that started with a feud between her mother and one of the female elders (below) and exposing a power struggle within that community.   On top of that the elders of that community try to take advantage of Doina's magic DNA that allows her to be both a vampire but still able to walk in daylight like a human.  She becomes even more valuable when they learn that her blood heals vampires who are wounded.

Final Opinion:  This series is a lot of things but a vampire show it honestly isn't other than the first two episodes which seems to be a running theme with these Netflix vampire series.  After that it becomes a heavy drama about feuding families and a secret society.  No fangs, the occasional eye color change but otherwise biting is just normal biting.

 I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 1 out of 5.