The Ketchup Vampires 2 – review

Directed by: Alexander Zapletal

Release date: 1992

Contains spoilers

Once again we brave the badly dubbed world of the Ketchup Vampires, the vegetarian vampires who only drink tomato juice. This time the story feels more together, rather than feeling like sewed together episodes, and goes back in time from the first film - though it actually seems to fly in the face of some of the established facts from film #1. It has music by Bullet again and the occasional songs don’t seem as bad as the first film – though that isn’t to say they are any good.

The film chronicles the events that occurred when the family of vegetarian vampires arrived at Castle Ravenstein. They were, prior to arriving there, working in a circus as a trapeze act, but Maurice and Margaret decided to leave that life behind as they wanted to ensure that Vampino would meet a nice vampire girl. It’s kind of funny that something as poor as this would make Hammer’s classic Vampire Circus spring to mind. But there you go.

They get to Ravenstein, discover that the castle is famous for its tomato sauce and Pino manages to talk the Professor into letting the vampire family stay and run the tomato factory for him. There is a condition, however, it seems that granddaughter Bella is obsessed with vampires and so she must never meet Pino and his family. Of course, Pino sees her and falls in love.

We get a flashback to what occurred when Margaret stole Maurice from her cousin Hilga – though there is strangely no mention of them stealing the book of Dracula, which occurred at this time. Maurice, being a French vampire, was no blood drinker – which is where the vegetarian vampire side of the family came from. Margaret wants Pino to meet some vampire children and so writes to Hilga, sure that bygones will be bygones.

It seems strange that Hilga, who in this is married to Ricardo – who himself seemed to be nothing more than an agent before – doesn’t think that Margaret might still have the book, nor does she recall any of these events in the first film when she attempts to retrieve the book… all that seems forgotten. Instead she wants revenge, plain and simple, and so she sends cousin Siegfried and Huberta to visit. Huberta is under orders to break Pino’s heart.

This, then, is how Siegfried arrived with the family, though this film does not explore how he came to be a vegetarian vampire and live with the family – indeed he is simply a villain in this. Pino has gone against his word and met Bella, they are in love but Huberta falls for him as well.

The story has no real bite other than that, but we wouldn’t expect it to. What it does have is Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) narrating the episode again, being a little more sassy than the first time and, it seemed to me, getting a little bit more to do. This actually raised the film up from the first one a little.

Nothing can change the fact, however, that this is – like the first movie – a bit of a stinker. It’s a shame but that’s the bottom line. 2 out of 10.

At the time of review there was no imdb page for this.

;) Q