The Dark Gift – review

Director: Geoffrey de Valois

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Oh dear, oh dear. It is clear that Geoffrey de Valois believes that vampires and sorority girls go together. After all he was part of the directing team that brought us Sorority House Vampires from Hell.

That this was filmed 10 years later really wouldn’t have been obvious through the awful, VHS quality photography. I might go as far as to suggest that the one saving grace was that the title of this was a tad classier than the earlier film, but that really isn’t much of a commendation.

opening scene

We start of with what might have passed as a tacky music video with a female victim tied as a female vampire gyrates. This involves a car and a monstrous vampire passenger and, of course, both females revealing naked flesh. This moves to a bed – in which Lisa and Tyler sleep – and snippets of her dreams; what appears to be a murderer (it turns out that he is a rapist) and a woman (with a bad wig) losing control of a pram that careens under the wheels of an ambulance. Lisa wakes with a shock and Tyler is unimpressed and devoid of empathy.

Lisa

So, Tyler (a corporate lawyer) is with Lisa (a college girl pledging for sorority). She is at the college in Malibu (and, yes, this is on par with Malibu Beach vampires); she hates the other sorority pledges and thinks of murder. Cripes, she doesn’t even indulge in the softcore level topless beach sports the other pledges giggle through! Yup we’re in that territory. The filmmakers do their best to try and hide the plot but there is one…

fangs out

Evil doctor Keaten (?) is a vampire who has a master plan. He needs 1000s of vampire slaves and so is designing a video that will convert thousands in a stroke. What he wants are breeders who can be artificially inseminated with vampire sperm with enhanced DNA. These babies grow over an eight-hour period in the womb but there is a 43% chance they’ll be mutants (honestly… why would I make this up, I’ll leave that to the filmmakers). In the meantime, they’re enslaving humans the old-fashioned way – with a bite – and they’ve aimed at the sorority.

monstrous

Lisa, of course, is special. She has precognitive dreams (not that such a big word is used in script) and is able to change the outcome of these. How else she is special eluded me, or perhaps I had given up the will at that point… That’s probably it. I very quickly lost patience with this film, though I stepped up and watched it to the end (and I’m not getting that time back).

Badly acted, badly filmed, senseless plot and much gratuitous nudity. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.