Victime du vampire

To Sleep with a Vampire is an early 90's vampire movie (Of which there were many around that time) that honestly looks dated and within quarter of an hour I already had concerns.

It tells the story of a deeply confused vampire who kidnaps a young stripper. He intends to kill her by morning but before that wants her to explain to him about life and all the things he's missing due to being a member of the undead.

Labelled a romantic horror I can confidently say the romance is very poorly handled and honestly should be dismissed altogether. This is to romance what John Wick (2014) is to intelligent cinema.

It does have it's moments to it's credit and though our lead male is as intimidating as Pee Wee Herman our lead female is fantastic and I'm shocked she didn't have a considerably better career.

A passable affair for lovers of vampire cinema and cheesy 90's b-movies.

The Good:

Interesting premise for the most part

Charlie Spradling

The Bad:

Feels dated

Plot ultimately is pretty dumb

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I have never introduced myself to a milkshake

Vampires cannot transform into bats, wolves or mist they can however turn into badly cgi made lightbulbs

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.

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.

This film provides an intelligent and entertaining twist to the vampire genre. Even the low-budget constraints (e.g., the strip club scenes) seem fresh. They serve the story without losing their intrinsic prurient interest. There are, to quote my buddy Carl, some "way cool action scenes where the vampire dude beats the crap outta these other dudes." Combined with the scenes in the vampire's lair, the power of the vampire is revealed with a verisimilitude that makes it easy to suspend disbelief. From start to finish, this vampire film sucks you in.