Blood Sisters: Vamps 2 – review

Director: Mark Burchett

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers

The sequel to the movie Vamps, this seems to be set some six months after the events in that film and has a couple of familiar faces, a couple of not too familiar faces and a bizarre twist to vampire lore.

Now, as a direct sequel I am really going to have to spoil the first film totally so if you have a burning desire to not know what happens at the end of Vamps turn away now.

Still with me? Good, I’m guessing therefore that you have seen Vamps (if so, take this as a recap) or really couldn’t care less if the first film is spoilt. At the end of Vamps Heather (in this replaced by Glori-Anne Gilbert) was turned into a vampire. Her forbidden love Seamus (Paul Morris, returning in this) killed the vampire Randi and Heather, to save his life, killed the vampire Tasha. Tasha warned her killer, in her dying breath, that the queen of the vampires would come for them. Not in this sequel she doesn’t!! We begin with a victim and a vampire in the bath, who looks suspiciously like Randi but it isn’t, it is Elizabeth (Amber Newman) – Randi’s twin sister.

So, how come Heather has suddenly got a new face? Well Tabitha (in this replaced by Sydney Shannon) has taught her how to shapeshift and they have both hidden behind new faces. How is that working out for her? Well (as a character) Seamus seems to like the new her. He has left the priesthood and is working at the strip joint Vamps with the girls. From a viewer’s point of view, Glori-Anne Gilbert can offer a smile that sings of innocence corrupted, but I preferred the pure innocence that Jennifer Huss brought to the role and Huss was a better actress. Be that as it may, at least there was a reason for the change in appearance.

Seamus’ best friend Larry (Rob Calvert, returning in this) is also working the bar, as MC for the dancers, and is aware of the vampire nature of the two women. As with the earlier film we are treated to many a dancer dancing. Meanwhile Elizabeth despatches her human servant Vlad (Randy Rupp) and two sociopathic vampire wannabes, Opal (Shelby Taylor) and Sapphire (Zoe Ciel) to cause a bit of trouble whilst awaiting her arrival. She intends to kill Heather and Tabitha, but not before she checks out whether Heather is the vampire spoken of in the prophecy of the redeemer.

Is she? The 1000 year old vampire Jacob (Ernie Rowland) seems to think so and, whilst Seamus has doubts about Heather’s ability to stay off the live feeds and Heather begins to get hungrier and hungrier for human blood straight from the vein, Jacob appears to protect her. So what is this prophecy, you ask? Well this is our bizarre twist to vampire lore. The redeemer is a child born of a vampire mother to a father both human and pure of heart. Vampires can’t conceive so it is a miracle child and, unlike the idea of a dhampier, the redeemer is not a slayer of vampires. Rather the redeemer can turn them back to human with a touch.

Other than that we discover for certain that in the Vamps-world the vampires burn if caught in the sun, leading to the amusing sight of Vlad toasting marshmallows in the burning flames of a chained up vampire. Other than that the lore is standard and as described in the Vamps review. So, is the film any good?

Frankly, no. Vamps was a poor film but it at least had an interesting idea of the priest and (vampire) stripper falling in love. It was a nice story premise, handled poorly. The entire redeemer malarkey here is a silly idea too far (so powerful is the redeemer that she is able to remove the curse of vampirism whilst still in the womb). One would have thought every vampire – not just one out for revenge and brownie points of destroying the redeemer and one who wanted to be human – would have descended on Cincinnati and I can’t help but think the filmmakers would have been much better off just following the vampire queen route set up in the first film.

Having a couple of minor characters called Faith (Trena Rayne) and Drusilla (Boo Friedmann) was quite obviously referential to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, other than that, there is little more to say. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.