Song of the Vampire

I love vampire films, but this one had nothing new to add to the genre. On top of being painfully low budget, the boom mic dips into every other scene. Why wasn't this caught in editing? The story is predictable and awkwardly slow paced. The vampire, who is supposed to be a good guy, takes some peoples lives without a second thought. It doesn't really make any sense.

To be honest, I got this movie on DVD because I am a huge fan of Denice Duff's work on the Subspecies series. In Subspecies, she's hauntingly beautiful, and was the perfect vampire. I was hungry to see more of her. In this film however, she is not a vampire, and her character is pretty weak. She does have one love scene which is unfortunately PG-13.

Pretty lame overall. I'd recommend skipping this movie and picking up Subspecies instead.

" Atmosphere,Real Romance,and a Likable/Familiar cast.Whatever Denice Duff,James Horan and Ron Ford do next-Count me in the audience.Please make a sequel,and Denise become a creature of the night IN IT !!!"

Anyone who's read my Subspecies reviews knows I'm a big fan of those films and of the work of Denise Duff, so I was really looking forward to the arrival of this project. Well, I have to say it's not great, but I'm willing to cut Duff some slack; it shows a lot of style for a first project, she's clearly been a careful student during her projects with Full Moon, and I'll definitely be interested in any further directing work by her.

Though at FM she only worked on the Subspecies series, this movie seems more influenced by FM's other, more Gothic vampire epic "Vampire Journals", with James Horan as Jonathan almost a dead-ringer (sorry) for that film's Jonathan Morris as Ash (hmm, name coincidence?). Good-guy vampire Jonathan, whose lover Caroline died in his arms at the hand of a jealous husband, seeks her reincarnation and finds her as modern-day Victoria Thorn (Duff). No doubt Victoria is the one: she's not only been having nightmares of Caroline's death using the exact same footage we see in Jonathan's flashbacks, but she also has a jealous husband, this one a murderous psycho who's just gotten out of jail and serves gruesome notice that he has no plans to respect the judge's restraining order. --You can see exactly where this is going to go, but it's fun to watch it get there. Duff knows how to sell a vampire film: she wants to make a Gothic romance, but also knows you have to toss in some gore and nudity to keep the stake-and-slash crowd happy, and manages a fair (though not ideal) balance of the two elements. It's also a kick to spot the little Subspecies homages tossed in here and there, like the documentary on "Prince Vladislas of Romania" and the Nicolaou's Used & Antique Books shop. --The pacing's slow, some of the acting is dire (especially: Duff really should have reined in Mr. Thorn's teeth-gnashing psychotics), there are some awful lighting/scene matching glitches, and the token attempt at historical backstory is so lame it made me cringe (excuse me? crossbows and voodoo priestesses only 100 years ago? That's 1903!) But overall I enjoyed it; Horan and Duff are likeable and convincing in the leads, there are some nice visuals, and I'd call it well worth the time of any fan of Full Moon's vampire tales. I congratulate Duff on getting this project on the shelves and hope she will direct again in this vein (--sorry, couldn't resist).

(p.s.--I *loved* the careful note in the end-credits assuring the viewer that the role of "dead cat" was played by a slipper.)

Overall I thought this was pretty good movie. I'll admit, I like Denice Duff, but her contributions to the cinematography on this were outstanding.

As far as being a bit of a "Chick Flick", I agree that it had its moments, but it had some good violence and humor too. Enough of a mix that I was able to watch it with my wife. Usually when I watch indie horror she curls up with a book or just takes a nap.

The acting was solid and for the most part the production values are good. I suspect a larger budget would have allowed for dailies that would have caught that mic, but alas, catching it in post makes it near impossible to re-shoot on a low budget, especially once they realized how difficult cutting in the video footage would have been. (I think 24p HD would be a great choice for the sequel and solve a lot of problems) A movie worth a watch for vampire fans or fans of Denice Duff (she's easy on the eyes). Love the credit about the slipper as well.

The story was a little bit different(ish) to your normal Vamp stuff, and while I generally like amusing cheapy horror movies, sometimes you find yourself focusing in on one or two weird things and just unable to ignore them. Had that problem with this one, sadly. Two things I couldn't get past were the ghastly love song (please, either cast people who can sing or dub it in) and the s l o o o w way most of the characters spoke. They kind of sound like they'd all been sedated... it was so odd! The only one that didn't sound like was the abusive husband (well, and the parole officer).

Oh - and people seemed excessively stupid... the dialogue felt as though half the time people were working off different pages in the script (which is entirely possible if you've been sedated, I guess. hehe).

So, yeah. If those things don't bother you, give it a watch I suppose? There are definitely worse things out there.