Project Vampire – review

Release Date: 1993

Director: Peter Flynn

contains spoilers

When I’ve written my previous reviews I have either just watched the film for the first time, or I’ve decided I wanted to write a review of a particular film, dug out the DVD and re-watched the movie, both out of the enjoyment I gain from watching vampire movies and because I want the film to be fresh in my mind.

Now, I decided to write a review of “Project Vampire”, not because it is a great film but because it is an awful film. Unfortunately, so bad is the film that I couldn’t actually bring myself to re-watch it. Therefore this review is reliant upon memory and a mini customer review I wrote for Amazon.

“Project Vampire” is missing one or two elements from it, such as a script, actors and any form of logic.

The film is concerned with Project Alpha. At the start of the film we have three “escapees” from the project running down the street, being chased by a car, and it was here that I lost the will to live. The men do not do anything that would be logical in the situation. They don’t steal a car, get a bus or flag down a cab. They are wearing lab coats, thus stick out like sore thumbs, but do they take them off? Oh no, that would be too sensible. At one point they have nipped out of sight of their pursuers and go past a hotel, and they don’t think to hide inside. Yet still it takes time to be caught (note to self cars can go very fast, pedestrians can’t, when chased by car be sure to run away…)

Let us look at their pursuers for a second. One is a vampire – he’s the one that looks evil and is bald, ooh and don’t forget that he wears leather. The other is an evil human, of course he is; he has a limp and an eye-patch. The stereotypes aren’t even fun because the film takes it self altogether too seriously.

The car does finally catch them but eventually one of the escapees, Victor Hunter (Brian Knudson) gets away and is found by a nurse, Sandra Jensen (Mary Louise Gemmill). She, of course, gets drawn into the… I was going to say plot but that would be an exaggeration. So what is the… darn, I can’t say plot… flimsy premise of a story? Evil vampire Dr Frederick Klaus (Myron Natwick) is going to put a longevity drug on the market; this is what Project Alpha is producing. The drug is made from Klaus’ vital fluids and rather than give “longevity”, as the consumers would imagine, it will turn everyone in the world into vampires under his control. Serious plot flaw here, everyone is a vampire, so what are you going to feed on Dr. Klaus?

That’s about the top and bottom of it, Hunter has been injected with the drug, as you would have already guessed. Hunter eventually succeeds in defeating Klaus and saving the world… unfortunately, by that point, I had given up the will to live and was only watching the film because I had parted with good money for the DVD.

There was a moment that resonated with me; at one point Nurse Jensen declares “Victor, this is so unbelievable.” With that I agreed. The characters, however, seemed to believe the ridiculous story at the drop of a hat.

The film is poor and, believe me, I genuinely like some really bad vampire movies - at some point I will review “Killer Barbys” (1996) and know I can find lots of things to like, even within that. The problem is that “Killer Barbys” does have a certain something, a charm that is hard to pinpoint, but is there all the same, “Project Vampire” lacks that charm. Other vampire movies might have unbelievable moments but they have already managed to get you to suspend your disbelief, and others still rely on fast action that makes you take your brain out and just enjoy. “Project Vampire” fails to do anything that could make you enjoy it.

I’m giving “Project Vampire” 1 out of 10, it would probably have been zero but something tells me that there is even worse out there. Brutal, perhaps, but I think fair.

The imdb page is here.