All Rise...

Judge David Johnson's favorite drink is a Kiss of the Vampire, with extra V-8.

The Charge

D.O.A.

Opening Statement

The latest vampire film is also the most recent! Don't expect any other accolades from this point on.

Facts of the Case

In one of the most needlessly convoluted storylines ever concocted for a movie about weirdoes with fangs, we have a love story between a vampire and a mortal woman, a secret society of powerful businessmen intent on developing a potion for immortality, an incredibly ineffectual vampire hunter and a pack of bloodsuckers who look less like fearsome creatures of the night and more like former band members of a small-venue Black Sabbath cover band from the New York Leatherstocking region.

The Evidence

Ugh. Just in time for Christmas, a giant chunk of coal dipped in poop and jammed in your stocking. Kiss of the Vampire may be one of the most laughably dumb genre pictures I've ever seen. And what's ironic is that the utter dumbness is nearly masked by a sheen of professionalism. The film is staged well and can almost pass a top-tier production—that is until we actually see the vampires running around in their Halloween get-ups, growling like jaguars in heat. Until that point, this movie looks legit.

It's not long before the ridiculous vampires give way to a plot that grows more and more complicated, tossing in legions of side characters and storylines and the whole enterprise just leaps off the rails and barrels headlong into a fuel tanker and explodes. And that's before the idiot vampire hunter that looked like he just fell off of the cover of a Harlequin romance novel and lasts all of four minutes before getting himself killed. And that's before the brutal dialog exchanged between the human girl and her vampire lover and how she can't believe he's willing to exchange mortality for a roll in the hay with her. And that's before the hilarious scene with the disembodied vampire heads cut out using entry-level home video editing software talking to each other in space (really).

All of this is supplemented with an overwrought soundtrack, line-readings straight from the dregs of community theater, dull action scenes and hackneyed editing. Worse, the usual elements one could look forward to seeing in a vampire movie are all MIA: there is nary a droplet of blood to be found, only one fool is melted by sun (and those visual effects make the floating space heads look like they were made by ILM) and the erotic content is limited to a freeze-frame, fade-out almost-kiss at the end.

The disc: 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and 2.0 stereo and nothing else, leaving you, the hapless viewer, with just this moronic movie to watch over and over and over again. Welcome to hell.

Closing Statement

The movie's self-seriousness in spite of its abject awfulness offers the only molecule of entertainment value in this sorry release.

The Verdict

Guilty. Please note the absence of the word "suck." I am too talented a writer to use such obvious puns.

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