The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II

The vampire from the original film returns. The disappearance of the leading man from a low budget vampire flick forces the makers to recast. They ending up casting the fiend from part one, never realizing he is a vampire until it is too late and has transformed the leading lady into a vamp. Good premise, poor execution. Nowhere near as original or smart as the first film, but still a nice try. Rated R; Violence, Nudity, and Sexual Situations.

My review was written in July 1989 after watching the film on Virgin Vision video cassette.

This sequel to the 1987 vampire pic dwells on the behind-the-scenes aspects of horror filmmaking. Direct-to-video release should scare up some genre fan interest.

Silvio Oliviero encores as the real-life vampire who appears on a movie set and replaces the missing leading man (who's actually been killed by one of Oliviero's minions). He causes no end of trouble until the director (Mark Soper) finally figures out he's the real thing. Rather silly plot twist lets Sop4er and Oliviero shooting a game ol 9-ball to determine the heroine's fate.

Canadian helmer Gerard Ciccoritti generally eschews humor here, going for a fragmented structure as well as a dark and dour mood. Cast is effective, especially sexy heroine Wendy Gazelle.

In my previous IMDb review, for To Die For (1988), I declared my hatred for romantic vampire films. So what do I watch next? Only another goddamn romantic vampire film: The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II, which features another love-struck bloodsucker.

Despite also being directed by Jerry Ciccoritti, and once again starring Silvio Oliviero as a vampire, Graveyard Shift II is a sequel in name only, but it is every bit as pretentious and dull as the first film, if not more so, with horrible characters spouting turgid, often incomprehensible dialogue ("I'm your desire... that makes me real for you", "A star doesn't need flesh, because a star is just a light in the sky").

The film takes place during the shooting of a horror movie about a pool shark vampire, and sees actress Camilla (Wendy Gazelle) falling under the spell of Baisez (Oliviero), the mysterious man who takes over the role of the hustling bloodsucker. What follows is virtually unwatchable nonsense, characters talking utter gibberish and occasionally engaging in artfully lit bouts of soft-core sex (accompanied by nasty wailing saxophone music), with very little in the way of horror. It's self-indulgent dreck from a director with delusions of grandeur (Ciccoritti would soon find his place directing for TV).

I believe this is the first review I've done of a movie I couldn't stand. This seems appropriate since this is the only vampire movie I can EVER remember seeing that I didn't at least remotely enjoy. (Heck, I even rented "A Polish Vampire in Burbank" more than once!)

"The Understudy" had to be the most boring horror film I've ever seen. In fact, I honestly can't recall now, whether I made it all the way to the end or not. I hate movies in which you cannot ever really tell whether you are seeing fantasy or reality. That's fine for a short dream sequence -- but not the bulk of a movie!

The one and only highlight for me was the film editor (or whoever he was) looking at a strip of film & inexplicably getting the willies -- then seeing one frame on which the vampire had revealed its fangs. Quite a highlight for a full-length film, no?

This film might be useful for breaking a child of his/her fear of vampires. The only thing scary about this one was the fear of going to sleep and falling off the sofa. The only "Children of the Night" you hear in the background are the turkeys gobbling over this clucker!

The first Graveyard Shift film was a bit more erotic than this one. And this one is tame. The same actor who played a vampire, gets to play one again, but he's a different character. He is like Dracula in a sense, but as a modern day version of him. He gets be an actor of a vampire movie being made. He kills the actor in the movie being made, and the people are unaware that the actor is a real vampire. He has set his sights on the leading lady. The actor he killed was difficult to work with. So when he replaced him, the others fall prey. When some of the actors and crew members become victims of the vampire, they would take action. The pool table scenes are amazing. That's where all bets are off.

Not as gruesome as the first, but just as horror as usual. It was also not as erotic as the first one.

This one went to the jugular.

2 out of 5 stars.