Night Junkies

It is very disappointing that the IMDb reviews are ruined by people involved with a film posting 10/10 ratings and reviews that are so obviously false. Just about all the reviews/ratings for this film appear to be of that type.

My review is independent and unbiased. My son asked me what the film was like after I had watched it and I replied "mediocre", which is exactly what it is. The actor playing the lead character (Vincent) was miscast - he looked the part, but his delivery was far too wooden. The other actors were okay I guess, but none of the characters made me care about what happened. The basic plot outline - modern day Jack the Ripper meets Vampires/Junkies - had promise, but it was not developed well enough. In the end it was one of those films that you watch and forget about. I have seen much worse, but I cannot recommend it to anyone.

I will say there there were aspects of the film that suggest Lawrence Pearce has potential. However, he has a lot of learning to do, and would probably benefit from a screenwriter. With help, experience and a suitable leading actor, he may yet make a film that earns good reviews from more than just his family and friends.

Set in the winding streets and dark alleyways of riverside London, the story centers on Ruby and Vincent. Ruby works as a lap dancer whose "pimp" is intent on promoting her as a call girl. In a dark alleyway Vincent was 'turned' by a prostitute, and after weeks of battling with his condition, he has finally give in to his addiction: blood.

Vincent and Ruby meet through a chance encounter in a London café and fall in love during one special night. Vincent tries to feed on Ruby to satisfy his addiction which goes against his heart. Ruby escapes, but has now been 'turned' and has also become a vampire. Ruby has come from a very dark past, and has always had to be a fighter. Her father was a heroin addict who killed himself in the next room when she was a little girl. After she has turned into a vampire, she keeps getting creepy flashbacks about him. Unsure of what is happening to her, she returns to a remorseful Vincent who convinces her to stay and work things out. Together hey try to go 'cold turkey' on their blood addiction. Ruby's previous 'owners' want their star girl back and Matt, a man from her recent past, seeks her out.

Made for under $100,000, the production value is exceptionally good. Since the movie was low budget, you might expect acting typical for alow budget movie, but surprisingly the actors did a really good job. I especially liked Giles Alderson as Vincent. Lawrence Pearce also found some beautiful women to play the strippers. They are some of the hottest women I've seen in a vampire flick, and yes, there's plenty of nudity. This movie has an addicting sexiness that grabs you from the start. In fact, this movie has a sexiness that most vampire movies forget to include.

The writing is very Tarantino-esquire and his influence is obvious as well. Not that this is a bad thing, some of the conversations are fantastic and this movie offers some decent quote-ables. We also get some really great scenes, for instance, after Ruby turns, she is involved in a dominatrix fantasy with a John. He's bound, naked and bending over. She then grabs a strap-on dildo and is about to apply it when she faints from the changes that she's going through.

This movie seems very misogynistic at times. There are several scenes where women are beaten. One woman is beaten to death by a man who then proceeds to lick the blood off of her face.

The action scenes were decent, but there could have been more of them and there wasn't too much gore, but vampire movies shouldn't have all that much. There is, however, an ample amount of blood that is used very nicely. The way this movie was made, it's almost hard to tell that it's low budget.

What sets this movie apart from other vampire movies is the vampires themselves. They are portrayed as real people, but just have been dealt a "bad hand." They have no supernatural powers except for some enhanced senses and there was no evidence of them being stronger than an ordinary human. The vampires in this movie are junkies. Their addiction is blood, and when Ruby is sitting in a hotel room trying to quit "cold turkey" she was going through withdrawal. This reminded me a bit of "Trainspotting".

The bites are also different from typical vampires. Instead of the two marks on the neck, we are shown a full human bite mark. The standard weaknesses aren't in play either. They are not immortal. Holy water and garlic don't work, although sunlight causes their skin to crisp up. It seems the best way to kill them is by a stake through the heart, a bullet in the head, or by draining all of their blood. Of course any ordinary human would die with these methods as well.

While this was very good, there is some bad but not much. The only bad I can think of is that it's not as graphic as I would have liked and the story moves very slowly and plays out as a horror/drama.

This is Lawrence Pearce's first film and it's done very well. Like I said, it runs a bit slow and it's more dramatic than action-packed, but if you like vampire movies that are out of the norm, you may enjoy this movie.

Even though the movie moved really slow and more action would have been very welcome, I'm going to recommend this.

I'm not saying this is a bad flick, but if you miss this you haven't missed a thing. Jude Law's "Immortal" is far better and far more interesting to look at. Abel Ferrara made "The Addiction" in 1995, which seems to have "inspired" this one. So non Bram Stoker - Hammer Horror vampires are hardly an original concept. It is a brutal, ugly movie made up with stock characters: the hooker with a heart of gold, the unwilling blood addict, the psycho, punk kids, and totally non present police. I mean there is a crime wave of hookers being brutally murdered ala Jack the Ripper, yet not even a stock bobby trying to restore order.

Mining the seedy underworld of strip joints and prostitution in Dickens like modern London, which seems to be old dark alleys, is nothing we haven't seen before. Mining drug addiction with intelligent but routine observation about addiction that one can find at any 12 Step meeting or a hundred horrors of drug movie is hardly inspiring. Ditto for non traditional vampires. So there is nothing groundbreaking or original in this movie. I saw bits and pieces of previous films spliced into this one. So it is hard to pretend this is something brave and new that is going to knock your socks off. It is full off some really brutal violence, though nothing exceptional by today's standards and the sexuality is there and is probably the only redeeming feature of the flick, Tarantino like dialog is routine too these days. Just cut and paste some lines in MS Word and viola! This is an indy movie as far as improvisation, location shots and low budgets go, but at heart it is a cheap exploitation flick with plenty of brutal violence, psycho behavior and some soft core sex thrown in to pander to sophistos by glossing it over with a patina of some intelligent dialog. In my book, if you shoot for some intelligent and arty effect but end up being mainly ugly, common, derivative and brutal, then you are better off just watching some mindless Alien tear them apart type flick or some cheesy Hammer high Goth vampire flick cause at least you be getting an honest product.

Gets so many points across metaphorically without shouting them out, for 70% of the time its a vampire revenge movie, for the rest its a love story and all the time it's a story about addiction of any kind. To my mind it's pure genius. I haven't heard of this director before, but I will be looking for anything in the future and anything including shorts in the past. I cannot believe this movie is not being hyped by the studio, other than the sex/stripper scenes it's not too strong. The cinematography while stealing from other directors, is timed well, placed well and gives the movie the look it is aiming for. If you see a film about vampires and you smoke, drink too much or do too much Peruvian Marching powder, then this is a movie that shows you what you are.

Ahh, yes! -Another take on the vampire lore! I like the fact that the writer of this thing is trying to do something different with the vampire idea (as others have tried to do). The basic change always seems to involve removing some of the traditional qualities of the vampire that most of us are familiar with. In this instance, the writer went for broke and removed almost everything but the need for blood.

I'm none too happy with that.

The vampires in Night Junkies seem like ordinary junkies or ordinary people with a chemical addiction. There is nothing eerie or supernatural in their appearance. FOR GODSAKE, THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE FANGS! IMAGINE THAT! Practically speaking, having extended incisors makes taking blood more efficient; "neater" in fact, since you need only make 2 puncture holes in the right place. However, with regular "human" teeth it becomes a messier affair as it requires some tearing of flesh to get what you want. We could therefore say that these particular vampires are not as evolved as traditional vampires with there long sharp "practical" fangs.

I think the main reason for these untraditional vampires is that the writer (and most of the IMDb commentators) wants a fresh perspective and to "update" the vampire idea. I'm all for a fresh look at the vampire idea but I really believe you do a disservice to it when you take away the eeriness and creepiness of it; the "supernatural" or "otherworldly" flavor of it, if you will. This is a big part of what scares you. So why take it out by stripping the vampire of so much of their power? The vampires in this movie are horrific only in the sense that serial killers are. Nothing preternatural about them, just psycho. This is one reason I did not like the movie that much. But also, with these human-like vampires, the movie seemed more like a depressing slice of life of those who live on the fringes of society due to mental disorders, drug addiction, and prostitution. Everybody in this movie seemed depressingly dysfunctional. In fact this "vampire" movie comes off as a METAPHOR for drug addiction and the sad lives of those so addicted. So if you want to see this movie -BE WARNED! It is a drug addiction-type movie more than a "vampire" one.

I guess some writers feel that the vampire idea is more believable (and more interesting) if they are more human than they traditionally are. There may be some truth to this. But I say there has to be a way that the traditional vampire who is able to become a bat, a wolf, smoke, and able to climb sheer walls and hypnotize the hell out of you could still be interesting to today's more sophisticated audience. Love, Boloxxxi.