To Sleep with a Vampire

This movie is a remake of the movie "Dance of the Damned," which came out a mere 5 years prior, only this one is available on DVD. Both movies are about a vampire who is hiding his desire (not very well, mind you) to be human (to feel the sun, to be close to others, to end his hunger for blood), who must feed tonight. He chooses an at-the-end-of-her-rope stripper as his teacher/meal, due to a dark, suicidal quality he senses in her soul. She thus is able to act as a "bridge" between his world and that of a normal human, while discovering she has a lot more to live for than she thought. Overall, this is a good movie. One can tell the acting is quite scripted at times, but the overall theme doesn't suffer for it. *** out of ****

Almost a two-person play, and as such the dialog and the performances of the leads will be important. Neither are particularly good. This might have been stronger, in fact, if it had first been crafted as a two-person play, and then worked into a film.

Anyway, a twitchy vampire who seems slightly autistic becomes infatuated with a stripper (as a result of watching too much porn in his crappy home). He wants to have her tell him about the daylight. He would have been better off finding someone with a day job, or someone who excels at painting a picture with words like a poet, but then they might not have a hot bod.

After he gets her to do whatever he wants (and he's not terribly good at it), he intends to feed on her at 6 AM, at which point the sun rises. Much is made of that deadline, despite the fact that he also says that he can go without feeding, it will just make him hungrier. Additionally, he claims he can't let the stripper go, since she knows about him, but he lets a number of other people go who learn what he is. There are a lot of inconsistencies.

Why this vampire chooses to live in a house so poorly boarded up that light from streetlamps and neighboring buildings pours in as if it were daytime, I'm not sure. With all the time in the world, you'd think he'd have done a better job, or fixed the place up a bit. He's clearly not a wealthy vampire.

This is supposedly a remake, and I'm curious to see the original version of this, Dance of the Damned. Although, that was directed by Katt Shea, and the other films she directed for Corman (Stripped to Kill, StK II) were pretty bad.

This film has been remade three times, and original is still the best. I think it was called "Night Dance", but by far "To Sleep with a Vampire" is the worst of the three. Scott Valentine is decent, but other than his mediocre performance this Film has no redeeming qualities. What do you expect FROM A REMAKE OF A FILM THAT DIDN'T MAKE ANY MONEY FROM THE BEGINNING.

ERIC-

Much of the dialogue is horribly clichéd in this film, which is a shame, but the atmosphere set up from the beginning is well worth sitting through it - reminiscent of the Blade Runner city, I would say. Also, the character of Jacob, while playing the stereotypical, lonely vampire, is refreshing in that he portrays an impoverished psychopath (and not the European nobleman done to death in everything from Dracula to Anne Rice), mad from loneliness but still homicidal; we really experience his inability to endure, but unlike Louis of Interview with a Vampire, his mystically demonic nature does not permit him to develop a conscience. It does pale a bit as it progresses, and this film could not be enjoyed in the daytime, but seen in the early hours perhaps, or the very late, its atmosphere is well worthy of the 7 stars I've given it.

Tape this one late at night from Showtime or Cinemax and then fast forward to the Charlie Spradling Dance\lovemaking scene towards the end. Charlie is the only redeeming quality of this flix. I wish the scene at the beach had Charlie laid out in the tiger thong instead of that lame crybaby vampire, played by that guy who played Nick, idiot boyfriend of Mallory from Family Ties. Charlie rules though, I wish she made more films.