Diario de un vampiro

I have seen a lot of vampire flicks in my day. This was on the edge of being a good story. I love the Victorian flair of the inside of the mansion, the four poster beds, etc. That's apparently where the budget ended.

The master vampire, Ash is the only real actor in the film. His lines are delivered believably. The only time our hero, Zachary actually acts is when Sofia catches him drinking blood from the psychofant and screams her name and throws himself at the door.

The one thing that really brought the film down a notch was the deadpan monologue from Zachary. It was clumsily read, with no feeling, no passion. Granted, Zach was a depressed vampire.. but you can be passionately depressed.

I think it would have been better to have had a third party read the monologue. Perhaps someone found the 'Vampire Journal' and was reading it... with a bit more pizzaz than it's writer.

Watch the film, rescue the elements that are good and marvel at them. There is some good camera work, their corpses reconstituting themselves every evening was a nice touch, knowing the master was a once a vampire hunter... nice.

This movie is cool because there are few movies like it now a days. Most movies now portray vampires as gang brutes (Blade). Vampire Journals portrays them as more of a charismatic lords of the night with shadow powers and the such. It has a strong mythos, which it also shares with the Subspecies films, also from Full Moon.

I found Vampire Journals to be the quality of a late 60s early 70s horror film. After watching it for the third or fourth time I discovered that I understood the plot line very well. For those who are into vampire films this is your movie, but if you are just passing by the horror section of your local video store and you think you would like to see this film I suggest watching Dracula first then come back to this movie, only then you would understand this film.

You've got to give credit to Ted Nicolau for creating a somewhat separate vampire world from the Subspecies world he had previously mastered, and still manage to be original and engaging.

Here we have a movie that was actually filmed in Romania (as Subspecies were) and has that gothic renaissance quality about it. A beautiful low-budget film that puts to shame such mainstream atrocities as Interview With A Shampooer.

Jonathon Morris who plays Ash is such a great actor beyond description. He really should be in more films, but i guess he prefers the classical stage acting field of work. We did get to see him again in Subspecies 4 reprising his signature role of Ash, so that was a welcome addition to the franchise. David Gunn also does a marvelous job as Zachery, the vampire (and vampire slayer) torn between the two worlds.

It would have been nice if there would have been a sequel or two to Vampire Journals, i suppose that died in the monetary problems at Full Moon in recent years. Alas, we still have this excellent movie for posterity through the years....in blood.

As a vampire movie fan, I recommend this movie to all of those goth and erotic vampire fans (the movie shows less flesh than "Embrace of the vampire" for example, see my comment about "Embrace of the vampire" and other vampire movies to judge better between this movies).

Quite, it's no vampire action flick and you will see not much nudity in the movie, but the movie has got some story to tell. You will watch a movie with lots of vampire mystery and magic with a good cast and a well chosen soundtrack which will take you on a brilliant 90 minute surreal ride to Prague.

Impressions:

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Overall: surreal, mysterios, erotic, fascinating, romantic

Gore/Splatter: no splatter, nice amount of "violence" and blood.

Nudity: some

Fangs: Jep, look nice (I write this because I hate those vampire movies which show no fangs), some nice blood sucking too

Cast: good actors, all unknown for what I know

Soundtrack: nice one, more the classic music type!

DVD: fullscreen, good picture, good sound, uncut

Who should not watch? I think it's not good for people that poke fun on the action vampire type (like "Blade"). There is no minor action in the movie. If you hate pianos and get the creeps by the words "classic music", "erotic horror" or "dialogue".

To judge better if you are not sure watching the film, I'll give you my favourite vampire flicks:

Action & gory vampire movies:

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Blade

John Carpenter's Vampires

Modern Vampires (tip!)



The more romantic movies:

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Bram Stoker's Dracula

Vampire Journals

Embrace of the vampire

The trash movies (I dig them a lot):

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From dusk til dawn2

From dusk til dawn1

From dusk til dawn3

Blood for Dracula (Andy Warhol movie with a young Udo Kier, very bloody and sarcastic, lots of gore and nudity)

Vampire Happening (my 60ies trash tip)

Don't forget the Hammer films!!!!

Please write me a line if you found my comment useful. Vampire movie fans are welcome =[