Honourable mention: Third Shift

I came across this 15 minute short, from 2009 and directed by Bruce Guido, quite some time ago when Everlost featured it over at Vampire News. It was described as a combination of Clerks, Woody Allen and vampires. To be honest, I find that anything featuring a convenience store gets described as Clerks. What set Clerks aside was killer dialogue… actually this had killer dialogue so, for once, the simile is good.

eye mojo moment

The film concentrates on Larry (Dalton Leeb). Larry works the third shift in a convenience store, he is also a vampire. A very dour vampire. Not due to hating his condition, as such, but due to the fact that he and his condition do not seem simpatico. His friend Steve… sorry, Raven (David Lehre) is his vampire name... is trying to bring Larry out of himself and into his vampire-ness but Larry can’t even glamour – that’s eye mojo to you and I.

Larry vamps out

As such Larry is subsisting on bum – in the film a particular bum (Michael J Elwell) bites the dust. This is not the most healthy thing he can do as a vampire, which is the unusual lore in this. After he feeds on the bum, Larry looks for all the world like he has heart-burn. Later he is asked if he has eaten bum recently, and then informed, “that sh*t’ll kill you.”

An embarrasing mistake

Probably the most embarrassing thing to happen to Larry is him believing he has managed to glamour a girl, Dominia (Cooper Harris), only for it to turn out that she thought he was human – after all he works in a convenience store – thought he was glamoured and tries to bite him. Vampire blood, evidently, doesn’t taste good to other vampires. A disappointed Dominia throws down the gauntlet – glamour someone or she will put him out of his misery.

This was a great little short. The acting was top notch through out, it was well filmed and the dialogue worked. The vampire faces were well done. This did more in 15 minutes than many straight to DVD films do in their full length. Part of me wants to see the life of Larry in a full length feature, whilst part of me is convinced this is perfect as it is. The imdb page is here.