Desert of Blood

In Tecate, Mexico, an American tourist is hunting a treasure buried in the sand of a ghost town with his girlfriend Amy (Annika Svedman). However, he digs the grave of the vampire Luis Diego (Justin Quinn), who was buried thirty-five years ago by his friend Father Hernandez (Flint Esquerra). Luis Diego kills the tourist and leaves Amy contaminated in the desert. Then he meets his former sweetheart Sarita (Yvonne Rawn), who has a stroke after seeing him. In Malibu, California, Sarita's niece Maricela (Brenda Romero) and her best friends Heather (Natalie J. Horton) and Samantha (Tori White) are on vacation and they decide to travel to Mexico to help her family. The local Cris (Naím Thomas) and his family decide to give a party to Maricela and her friends; however, when Luis Diego sees the girl, he recalls Sarita and decides to give a second chance to his love. But he is a vampire and his love is impossible.

"Desert of Blood" is a forgettable but entertaining vampire movie. This is the typical B-movie, with beautiful breasts, hot girls and bad acting and screenplay. The story is a kind of Mexican soap-opera with vampires and the characters are poorly developed; therefore the viewer does not feel empathy for any of them. At least the vampires are classical, fearing the cross and the daylight and the girls are very sexy. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Deserto de Sangue" ("Desert of Blood")

this film is a total waste of time. first of all the story is totally uninspired. it's like put together from a few random vampire books and contains absolutely no surprises or suspense or what you might else expect from a vampire story. well OK there is a simple romance thing but that too is not very well executed imho. the characters are also not even two dimensional, but simple and boring like a line in the dust.

that said, the acting is as bad as the script. it feels like quite bad soap opera style acting. the only excuse for the actors is imho that it might be really hard to deliver a good performance with such a lousy script.

finally there is not even close enough blood and stuff to provide even a little fun in a kind of old school splatter b movie style.

I thought the premise was really neat - being trapped underground for 35 years before waking up to the world that's changed so much, and the whole trying to be good thing and not knowing where to fit in, it seemed reminiscent of souled vampires in the slayer-verse or even some Anne Rice characters. I'm not saying this was Buffy or Vampire Chronicles caliber - it was def b-movie indie, but I liked it. I don't know if it was the setting or the writing/acting, but I got a total telenovela vibe from this, which made the movie really fun to watch. The gore wasn't excessive, and for the guys, there was the obligatory hot-topless-chick. My fave part was Justin Quinn (absolutely yummy!), who could give Stuart Townsend's Lestat a run for his money.

8/10 A fun, kind of camp vamp movie

As a b-movie title, Desert of Blood is not a bad. The title implies both camp and spoof, staples of typical b-movies. But despite the fact that this movie delivers a home-baked hamfest, it misses the camp and spoof grade, because it appears to have taken itself too seriously. There is nothing here to laugh at, except, perhaps, the special effects which includes economy tooth caps ($5.50) and digestible blood capsules (6 for $3)probably from nightmarefactory.com. DesertBloo is more appropriate as a title. The movie appears to be a high school project financed by weekly allowances and staffed by the school photo club. Whoever put this together also coaxed four cheerleaders (and their tios and tias) into the mix.

I'm the first to admit, I like vamp movies, and I've seen a lot of them. Desert of Blood is no Interview with the Vampire, but it was still a good time. I'd give it 7.5 out of 10. For a low budget indie film, it was surprisingly well-done. The writing and acting might not have been Oscar worthy, but in a purposefully campy horror movie, that's not the point. The story was interesting, and even suspenseful or funny at the right times. and yeah, the chicks were hot. Not to mention, the gore was good for the budget, although they didn't go over-the-top with it (good for me, but if you watch these movies for the blood and guts, you might not be so thrilled with the somewhat lack thereof)

If you're into vampires or b-movie horror flicks, check this one out. As far as indie vamp movies go, it's pretty good in my opinion.