Anjo da Noite

This is something as unusual as a Danish vampire movie. What can I say? It is not the best vampire movie I've ever seen, but absolutely the funniest. The film makers has used some elements from the role-playing game "Vampire: The Masquerade" and the effects of this is quite amusing, if you happen to play it, like I do. Nonetheless, the movie is definitely worth seeing if you're a fan of vampire movies.

I picked this up as a rental one weekend. I didn't have any expectations, as all I knew about it was what the back of the box had to say. Overall, I was somewhat disappointed. Some of the scenes in the movie really worked well. Unfortunately other scenes played more like a music video. The story wasn't new or strong, but other movies have overcome weak plots. The acting was surprisingly good, but most of the story unfolds in flashbacks fed to the viewer in small, disjointed chunks. The English dubbing started off badly but quickly improved. The director drew heavily on John Woo style action, not always a bad thing, but I think the diving across a room firing two handguns at once thing was a little overdone. I also can't help wonder where everyone kept coming up with the sawed-off shotguns. In a nutshell, this probably won't become a classic, but I don't think it's a waste of time either. I think once the director discovers his own style, we will be in for some excellent movies.

Shaky González' "Nattens Engel" aka "Angel Of The Night" of 1998 is a bearable, but disappointing vampire flick, that was obviously intended to be kind of a Danish "From Dusk Till Dawn", but it seems more like a Danish "Texas Blood Money" to me.

When Rebecca (Maria Stokholm), her boyfriend Mads (Tomas Villum Jensen) and her best friend Charlotte (Mette Louise Holland) come to a Gothic mansion, which Rebecca has inherited, they find an old book which tells the tale of a powerful vampire. As they read it, they find out that the vampire described in the book is actually Rebecca's great-grandfather, a priest who was turned into a vampire 100 years ago when fighting a maiden-ripping monster.

Most of the performances in "Nattens Engel" are not even that bad, and the supporting cast contains three well-known Danish actors, Ulrich Thomsen, Mads Michelsen and Thomas Bo Larsen in small roles. But the director Shaky González just seems to try too hard to resemble movies like "From Dusk Till Dawn" and doesn't manage to mix vampire horror, with lots of gun-play and action and some martial-arts-style fighting sequences in an appropriate way. Over all, the script is simply pretty bad and the plot has huge holes. In some parts the movie is shot in fairly cool camera angles, which look OK but in no way original or imaginative.

"Nattens Engel" is a rather disappointing film with a weak plot, but it's not one of those films that have to be avoided at all costs. Some of the women are lovely to look at and there is a fair amount of gore. As a big fan of B-Horror and exploitation, I personally found it bearable, though disappointing. I wouldn't recommend "Angel Of The Night", but if you want to watch it, make sure you have enough beer at home. 3/10

One should never expect too much of a movie directed by a guy called Shaky, but this vampire tale from Denmark is at least only mediocre rather than offensively bad. It's a neotraditionalist affair that would have been very different had it been made before the pop cultural impact of Anne Rice and BUFFY. A girl inherits the classic, dusty old family mansion in the middle of nowhere. She goes there with her boyfriend (a guy with a very short attention span) and a sleazy over-sexed gal-pal. The trio finds an old book about her great-grandfather, a cloaked vampire with the unforgivably silly name of Rico Mortiz. (Feel free to go ahead and take a moment to groan here.) Of course the heroine discovers something rotten in Denmark, namely old Rico's remains (a huge mutant bat skeleton) and manages to spill a few drops of blood thereupon. Rico is up and at 'em again briefly for the climax but most of the movie is devoted to the flashbacks about his original reign of terror. Considering they're supposed to be her great-grandmother's memoirs, it seems odd that some of the vignettes appear to be taking place in the 1980s. The movie's raison d'etre is its special effects, which consist of too much gunplay, several gruesome vampire bites, and a very impressive giant hairy bat monster with huge fangs. The monster FX and the fangs look great but some of the action is a bit much. There's even one of those ridiculous shots of a guy repeatedly firing two guns while jumping sideways and flying across the screen in slow motion. Credibility is further compromised by trendy footage of the vampire's evil minions in their long overcoats walking toward the camera in pretentious backlit slo-mo. Rico's vampire looks older and curiously different from his original "human" self, and when he gets really mad his forehead turns into what looks like one of STAR TREK's Klingon prosthetics. A scene in which a vampire suddenly transforms himself into a rat looks great. ANGEL OF THE NIGHT really has nothing on its mind and brings nothing new to the vampire genre, but I found it consistently watchable and reasonably entertaining. If you like bloodsucker movies then you're probably seen far worse ones.

This debut feature from Shaky Gonzalez is a sort of fill-in-the-blanks John Woo/Robert Rodriguez/Lucio Fulci wannabe that while entertaining enough is still so obviously derivative that there´s a heavy feeling of deja-vu over the entire film. Its impressive cast (which seems to be missing only Kim Bodnia) is mostly wasted, but Erik Holmey easily steals the film with his intimidating vampire leader, Rico Mortiz (great name!). It´s hard to completely dislike an attempt at a full-blooded Danish supernatural horror movie, but the result is a bit too loose and even amateurish at times, but Gonzalez earns an A for effort and is a talent to watch out for. Definite cult possibilities, though.