Gypsy Vampire 3: Freaky Vampire – review

Director: Conrad Brooks

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

If there is anything worse than a poor film it is a poor film that is self-contradictory to the previous films in its series. This is the third in Conrad Brooks' Gypsy Vampire series (the first two films are here and here) and whilst it does answer one question left over from the second film it is also contradictory to that film and its predecessor.

The question it answers from the second film was, how could a vampire be killed by being stabbed? Answer, it was in the heart by a silver knife. I’m glad we got that one established – I’ll sleep easier at night now! The film is subtitled ‘Freaky Vampire’ and that is due to the fact that the start of this film concerns a freak show on a boardwalk. Like the pervious film, at time of review there is no imdb page or actor to character list in the credits.

The landlord of the boardwalk is owed money by Professor Knish, who runs the show – 6 months rent in fact. Knish isn’t there and so he is shown round the (rather tatty) show. At one point they get to an electric chair with a skeleton in it. His guide says it is Brook Conrad, a notorious bad film director who was executed (presumably for his bad films) – at least there is a knowledge of the cheapness and craptitude of these films! After being briefly accosted by a two headed monster man the landlord gives Knish his marching orders.

Knish goes to visit his old friend Dr Kielbasa (John Durham). Why the spelling of the name changed on the blurb of this DVD, and turned him into a sausage, I don’t know. Knish wants to find Count Lugo (Bruce ‘Porkchop’ Lindsay) and Kielbasa confirms his remains did vanish and so he might just be undead again (they say alive, but surely it would be undead again). They go to meet the castle owners. Marvin is out of town but Joe is around, Joe is played by Joe Tilton, the original Joe and not the replacement one from the second film. He suggests that Davida (Gail Maureen Hansen, I think) could lure the Count out.

Who? This is one of the changes. Remember Sandy from the second film, whom Lugo was going to make his bride? Well not only has the actress changed but the character has changed her name completely. So Knish and Kielbasa go to the castle, with Davida and a couple of servants. Knish intends to make him an offer of being a freak in his show in return for blood and shelter (actually he says that, as no one believes in vampires he could get victims as they travel) but Lugo has his own agenda – including revenge and matrimony.

The lore in this changes slightly, from being generally unbothered by crosses in the first film they now hold him back! We also discover that wolfsbane acts as a vampire deterrent, being poisonous to them. Other than that it is fairly much business as usual with Lucy still ghosting around and (I suspect) played by yet another actress.

Lugo is killed in this one by having gasoline thrown in his face. Now you’d think that they might set him alight but such stunt work costs money. Rather he is blinded in his one good eye and stumbles out of the castle catacombs into the daylight. Out there he stumbles around for an inordinate amount of time until he smokes a little and ends up a skeleton, with bandana but no other clothes.

Brooks’ cameos again, this time as a character called digger whose presence has more plot functionality than the character he played in the first two films. At one point we go into a movie within the movie (actually lifted from the Brooks’ 1999 film Jan-Gel, the Beast from the East, it would seem), which consists of some sort of very fat caveman fighting a rubber snake for what is three minutes of the screen time but feels like hours! Actually, one of the saving graces of this film is that we are still easily under an hour when the credits roll and that is after a blooper reel at the end of the flick!

All the same problems that the first films had with the added annoyance of characters just changing name and lore changing for no good reason. 0.5 out of 10.