Jugular Wine: A Vampire Odyssey

Confusing, badly plotted mishmash of vampire clichés, shot with a home video camera for about $1.99. Very gory in parts. Lot of bad acting. I only watched it because I felt like I ought to get my money's worth for renting it. Skip it, really.

I saw Jugular Wine back when it was relatively new in the 90s. It was always on the shelf at Blockbuster or my local video store, but only 1 copy, and it was always out.

When I did see it, it felt more like a documentary than a fiction. The weird mix of outdoor cinematography on 35mm and what felt like 70mm film, and then close and personal scenes shot on vhs that looked like the old soap operas that were like you were there, looking in a window.

The plot is someone that gets involved with a real vampire, and is drawn into their secret world. And it kind of puts you in the main characters seat.

It really dragged me in.

But it's not a good movie by modern standards.

It's almost a Vampire Art film.

It had no chance of being accepted or full appreciated when it came out.

This is probably as obscure and hard to come by as London After Midnight.

I tried to find a copy of it...and by luck, found a new sealed copy for $50 on ebay.

I think you can rent it on Amazon...not sure. But if you can find it, grab some friends, cook up some bloody rare steaks, and of course...pair it with a nice red wine...the Vampire wine label still exists...try the Romanian Red if you can find it.

I don't know who the reviewers are on the DVD box or what movie they saw but I have seen high school videos better than this. There was not one good things to say about this movie. The sound was bad, with loud obnoxious music drowning out the dialogue...but maybe that was a good thing. The acting was worse than I have seen in elementary school productions. How the heck did anyone spend the time and money to distribute this?!

Jugular Wine, despite the incoherent plot, actually could have been a good movie. "One man's quest into the madness and interplay of reality/fantasy that is the world of the vampire"

unfortunately, the movie moves along like a drunken sailor, making very little sense and with very heavy "documentary" overtones that make it seem even more ludicrous than if it had just been a schlock film with no pretensions. This is film that redefined "painful to watch"

I can't recommend it except to students of the vampire genre and film in general, and only then as a lesson on how not to do a vampire movie.

I really wish the makers of this film well..I am not saying I could make a better film. But I hope I could!

I'll be as generous as possible by saying that I can at least tell what this movie is trying to do: show the disorientation and weirdness of a living man's slow descent into undeath. However, in my opinion, it doesn't even come close to working as designed. The artsy visual effects, constant flashbacks, bizarre peripheral characters and other efforts at a "dream logic" feel only result in an exasperating incoherence. Totally unappealing characters, gratuitous gore (why would vampires be so wasteful of blood?) and too many different locations (should have stayed in Philadelphia with only flashbacks to Alaska - California and Louisiana sequences are completely unnecessary) add to a general feeling of wasted energy. (--and that...outfit...on Legion nearly made me lose my pizza.) Badly wants to be "Carnival of Souls" or even "Jacob's Ladder" but accomplishes only "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies".