Director: Gabriel Pelletier
Release date: 2001
Contains spoilers
If Karmina was a romantic comedy then this, which was the sequel, was more a straight comedy. It also only featured the character Karmina (Isabelle Cyr) lightly.
A few years have passed since the last film but Linda (Diane Lavallée), the wife of custom officer and turned vampire Ghislain (Gildor Roy) is still having therapy over the death of their son, Patrick, at the hands (or should I say, fangs) of Vlad (Yves Pelletier). The shrink clearly is bemused by her story of vampires.
As it is Ghislain has bought a rather nice castle in the suburbs for them (later we hear he took out a 93 year mortgage, the advantage of eternal life) where he brews the potion that allows vampires to live as human beings and then uses his job as custom official to send it overseas to the other vampires. Like Ghislain, Vlad has chosen to remain in Canada. Karmina and Philippe (Robert Brouillette) have moved to Transylvania, with Karmina’s parents the Baron (Pierre Collin) and Baronne (Sylvie Potvin), where along with Esmeralda (France Castel) they put on vampire shows for tourists. Karmina and Philippe now have a baby who has never actually been in vampire mode because of bottles of potion.
Linda wants Ghislain to turn her but he won’t, he believes her too unstable and, anyway, Esmeralda has forbidden the making of new vampires. Linda, however, is determined and steals the book of spells that has the recipe and magic formula for the potion. She threatens to burn it and, when Ghislain prevents that, boots him out and tells him it is over.
Heartbroken Ghislain goes to see Vlad – in order to get a place to stay. Vlad is being somewhat of a scamp, and that’s putting it lightly. He has discovered that a little potion mixed with vodka allows him to use eye mojo and mesmerise women. He takes Ghislain out for the night and then we discover he is up to his neck with a local mobster called Proulx (Julien Poulin) – as the film goes on they end up owing Proulx a considerable sum of money. Worse still the tanning shop that Vlad runs is dodgy and he has been using Ghislain’s name rather than his own. Indeed our soviet vampire from the first film has adopted the worst excesses of Western consumerism in this film.
The Transylvanian vampires are running out of potion and cannot contact Ghislain, so Philippe volunteers to go back to Canada. Karmina is worried that he might run out of potion or forget to take it – he has never actually spent any time as a vampire – but he is confident that won’t happen. He gets to Linda and Ghislain’s home and Linda spins him a tale about Ghislain running off with a younger woman. She goes about hiding his potion and trying to seduce him as the effects wear off.
He bites Linda, who bites him back. The exchange of blood turns her and unleashes two monsters. She wanted to be turned for one reason only, to gut Vlad. Philippe becomes drunk on blood and power (and later turns a floozy, much to Karmina’s disgust when she arrives towards the end of the film). When Linda and Philippe slaughter the patrons of a swingers' club the police believe that it was the work of Vlad and Ghislain and are after them, plus a news reporter is after them due to Vlad’s dodgy business practices and their troubles increase when Philippe and Linda turn the gangsters into vampires…
This was good fun, perhaps not as fun as the original but pretty darn close. We have a definitive ‘crucifix answer’ when Proulx holds Philippe and Linda back with a pin badge crucifix. In the last film there was a mention of vampires not being photographed and in this we discover that video tape cannot capture them either. Through the turning of Linda we see that swapping blood is necessary to create a vampire.
The vampires are actually able to survive a full on explosion and, when shot by a silenced pistol, don’t even seem to notice. However sunlight is deadly, indeed even a sunlamp is deadly when in vampire form. That said Vlad’s wondrous perma-tan when in human form (as the potion makes them fully human bar a few side powers) is great.
Later in the film we get a vampire baby, when the supply of potion runs out in Transylvania – a sight that is always creepy no matter how much the filmmakers might aim for cute! The comedy works really well – bar some cultural references that a Montreal resident would get but went over my head – that said it didn’t curb my enjoyment of the film. 6.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
;)Q
Release date: 2001
Contains spoilers
If Karmina was a romantic comedy then this, which was the sequel, was more a straight comedy. It also only featured the character Karmina (Isabelle Cyr) lightly.
A few years have passed since the last film but Linda (Diane Lavallée), the wife of custom officer and turned vampire Ghislain (Gildor Roy) is still having therapy over the death of their son, Patrick, at the hands (or should I say, fangs) of Vlad (Yves Pelletier). The shrink clearly is bemused by her story of vampires.
As it is Ghislain has bought a rather nice castle in the suburbs for them (later we hear he took out a 93 year mortgage, the advantage of eternal life) where he brews the potion that allows vampires to live as human beings and then uses his job as custom official to send it overseas to the other vampires. Like Ghislain, Vlad has chosen to remain in Canada. Karmina and Philippe (Robert Brouillette) have moved to Transylvania, with Karmina’s parents the Baron (Pierre Collin) and Baronne (Sylvie Potvin), where along with Esmeralda (France Castel) they put on vampire shows for tourists. Karmina and Philippe now have a baby who has never actually been in vampire mode because of bottles of potion.Linda wants Ghislain to turn her but he won’t, he believes her too unstable and, anyway, Esmeralda has forbidden the making of new vampires. Linda, however, is determined and steals the book of spells that has the recipe and magic formula for the potion. She threatens to burn it and, when Ghislain prevents that, boots him out and tells him it is over.
Heartbroken Ghislain goes to see Vlad – in order to get a place to stay. Vlad is being somewhat of a scamp, and that’s putting it lightly. He has discovered that a little potion mixed with vodka allows him to use eye mojo and mesmerise women. He takes Ghislain out for the night and then we discover he is up to his neck with a local mobster called Proulx (Julien Poulin) – as the film goes on they end up owing Proulx a considerable sum of money. Worse still the tanning shop that Vlad runs is dodgy and he has been using Ghislain’s name rather than his own. Indeed our soviet vampire from the first film has adopted the worst excesses of Western consumerism in this film.
The Transylvanian vampires are running out of potion and cannot contact Ghislain, so Philippe volunteers to go back to Canada. Karmina is worried that he might run out of potion or forget to take it – he has never actually spent any time as a vampire – but he is confident that won’t happen. He gets to Linda and Ghislain’s home and Linda spins him a tale about Ghislain running off with a younger woman. She goes about hiding his potion and trying to seduce him as the effects wear off.
He bites Linda, who bites him back. The exchange of blood turns her and unleashes two monsters. She wanted to be turned for one reason only, to gut Vlad. Philippe becomes drunk on blood and power (and later turns a floozy, much to Karmina’s disgust when she arrives towards the end of the film). When Linda and Philippe slaughter the patrons of a swingers' club the police believe that it was the work of Vlad and Ghislain and are after them, plus a news reporter is after them due to Vlad’s dodgy business practices and their troubles increase when Philippe and Linda turn the gangsters into vampires…
This was good fun, perhaps not as fun as the original but pretty darn close. We have a definitive ‘crucifix answer’ when Proulx holds Philippe and Linda back with a pin badge crucifix. In the last film there was a mention of vampires not being photographed and in this we discover that video tape cannot capture them either. Through the turning of Linda we see that swapping blood is necessary to create a vampire.
The vampires are actually able to survive a full on explosion and, when shot by a silenced pistol, don’t even seem to notice. However sunlight is deadly, indeed even a sunlamp is deadly when in vampire form. That said Vlad’s wondrous perma-tan when in human form (as the potion makes them fully human bar a few side powers) is great.
Later in the film we get a vampire baby, when the supply of potion runs out in Transylvania – a sight that is always creepy no matter how much the filmmakers might aim for cute! The comedy works really well – bar some cultural references that a Montreal resident would get but went over my head – that said it didn’t curb my enjoyment of the film. 6.5 out of 10.The imdb page is here.
;)Q
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