Addicted to Murder 3: Bloodlust Vampire Killer – review

Directed by: Kevin J Lindenmuth

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

A third outing in the Addicted to Murder series. The first film confounded expectations by being actually rather better than one would have thought it could be. The second film, unfortunately, was not so good. In fact it was downright poor. Alas the third film doesn’t fare much better.

We begin with Joel (Mick McCleery), the character that was in the first two movies, in New York. He tells us that he can sense them and that he hates them for what they made him into – cut to footage of the second film and him telling Angie (Sasha Graham, who only appears in footage from previous films) that he feels nothing – other than the obvious anger he’s displaying! It seems then that Joel is killing them as they have condemned him to a life of not feeling.

Not quite, he goes on to state that they created him and made him what he is… which is a move away from the previous films’ concept that people are born vampires (it strays back there soon) and that he learnt how to kill them (stake through the heart, which may or may not do it but will hold them pending decapitation) through the dark ones who come to him in his dreams and it was *they* who gave him his purpose, preparing the way for their return. Looks like we have a full on Lovecraftian sub-story appearing.

In the credits, which follow this revelation, we discover that Angie had a surname… Karnstein. Certainly I didn’t notice this on the previous two films for if I had I would have been bitterly lamenting the idea that Lindenmuth couldn’t leave the classics alone and had to borrow a name from Carmilla.

Anyway, we then get into a bizarre sequence where two vampires, Tricia (Sarah K Lippmann) and Karen (Cloud Michaels) are being interviewed and being fairly candid about what they are. They give us a background of a vampire society who fear Joel as he is killing his own kind. From Tricia specifically we get the story of a human boyfriend, Dan (Joe Zaso), who wants to be changed but she refuses – he doesn’t have the right aura. This moves back to being born a vampire, almost, but does tie in with the Dark Ones' story.

It seems, on refusal to change him, he went searching and found a vampire hunter (presumably Joel) who got him power from another source. He tries to kill Tricia but a passing vampire recognises him as a reanimate and throws salt on him. This makes a light flash over him as the demon is driven out and leaves him as a skeleton on the floor.

The interview is a trap set by Joel and he kills the vampires. He then turns his attention to another vampire, but he is hidden in a prison, where Joel can’t get to him.

I am sure that he could if he wanted to but we get a long and badly acted story of a prisoner (the sort who wouldn’t survive in jail) being placed in a cell with Santana (Frank Lopez). At first it seems that Lopez – who is anti-religious – has a sweet deal as the head guard lets him out to go robbing folks, and split the loot with him, on a nightly basis.

Then it is revealed that he is a vampire but, my how vampires have changed. He has green glowing eyes for a start off, something that vampires have not had before in the series. More than this he has a maw full of sharp pointy teeth, which begs the question of why did all the others just have side fangs. However it is other lore that really irks.

He has dirt in his bed – no other vampire in the series has slept on grave/native soil. He hates religion and it is implied that holy water would damage him but the series has already established that religious artefacts have no effect upon the vampires. Finally he likes the prison as it is always dark and yet the vampires can go in the light.

It ends up with him being tricked onto a stake, that for all the world seems to kill him – he seems to rapid decay. Not so because we cut forward a year and see Joel stalking him. We have to ask how it was Joel couldn’t hunt him as he left the prison on a nightly basis and have to note that the entire Dark Ones story is lost as soon as the prison story starts.

It is almost as though they had the idea for the prison story and built a loose wrap-around to pad it and fit it in with the series as stood – forgetting that the lore was different.

Sloppy filmmaking and not a good film. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.