Vamp or Not? The Kiss

This was a 1988 movie directed by Pen Densham and I was told about it by Leila who said “unearthed this in my vamp or not pile - see what you think. It's demon possession but there are some tropes here”. Intrigued I sought out the film, which some kind soul had uploaded to YouTube – though the quality was a bit low.

The film is certainly an oddity, which unfortunately fails to pump up the tension as central character Amy (Meredith Salenger) has her life torn apart by an evil relative. However, this is not where the story begins, rather it starts in the Congo in 1963.

Felice and her Aunt

At a train station where piles of ivory are being shipped out, a father (Philip Pretten) is saying farewell to one of his daughters, Felice (played young by Priscilla Mouzakiotis and adult by Joanna Pacula), who is leaving with her Aunt (Céline Lomez) to go to a sanatorium. His other daughter, Hilary (played young by Talya Rubin and adult by Pamela Collyer), is staying with him. Their mother is dead and Felice has her cross, which the father suggests she give to Hilary for safe keeping.

the statue

On the train Felice sees a strange statuette that her Aunt has, she is told that it is 100 years old and we see what looks like a patch of discoloured skin on her arm. That night the aunt wakes, clearly influenced by the talisman, and we see blood at the corner of her mouth. She grabs and strangles Felice and then kisses her hard. The train stops at a station and we see a composed looking Felice disembark. A guard finds the Aunt’s body that is already in a state of advanced decomposition.

hit by a vehicle

Moving forward to the eighties and Hilary is married to Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus) and they are have a teenage daughter called Amy. They are having a barbeque to celebrate Amy’s confirmation – it appears that Hilary is a very devout Christian. Amy takes a phone call and shouts for her mother as Aunt Felice has phoned – Amy was unaware she had an Aunt. Hilary makes an excuse to go on a supply run but is looking at guns when a truck spins out of control and knocks her through the shop window before landing on her. She survives but leaves her leg behind as she is pulled from under the vehicle – she dies being operated on.

monstrous cat

At the funeral Amy spots a figure lurking in the distance (Felice) but it is several months later when Felice invites herself into their lives. So, without going into the story too much, Felice starts stripping everything away from Amy – friends mostly. This is done through sympathetic magic, and she uses the statue as a totem within her magic. She feeds it her own blood as part of the ritual. This is definitely supernatural. She also has a monstrous cat, which seems supernatural in nature, which the film’s Wikipedia page suggests is “a therianthropic manifestation of Felice”. Therianthropy is the ability to shapeshift and so I am not so sure, as we see them together. It might be a manifestation of part of herself or it might be more like a familiar.

beginning to rot

In fact, Felice is described, at one point, as being a witch and there is the sorcery aspect. However, when a friend of the family (Mimi Kuzyk, the Strain) has her blood examined it is shown to be the blood from a corpse. Whether she dies when her aunt ‘turned’ her, due to being strangled, which would beg the question of how she then grew, or her body died in adulthood (after being used up) and thus she called Hilary to get access to her niece, the film is not telling us explicitly. However, as she seems to have started to rot (in patches) and given the rapid decomposition of the Aunt I would suggest the latter.

emerging parasite

But how was she ‘turned’. We see this at the end of the film as a serpent like creature emerges from her mouth and tries to enter Amy. This parasite would seem to be a controlling intelligence – there is a recollection that Hilary felt she had lost her sister as she changed (there is also a suggestion that the possession was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia). It can certainly keep a corpse walking and talking, in order that it might find a new host. It is suggested that the family have been hosts for the entity for some time – this might suggest a genetic compatibility passed through the generations.

Amy and Felice

There is a poorly explored religious aspect – from the cross at the start of the film being removed from Felice (begging the question as to whether the father was in on it), to Felice removing a cross from the wall of the guest bedroom to a confrontation with a priest (Peter Dvorsky) who is accused of not really believing as, otherwise, Felice wouldn’t be able to enter the church. A religious item does burn her and the belief line is reminiscent of the faith needed in films such as Fright Night. There is a deliberate connection to that film as Felice is described as going all Fright Night at one point. The reference to Fright Night aside, is this Vamp?

rapid decomposition

I would have to say no. Whilst Felice is a member of the restless dead (or, at least, she is whilst her parasite still controls her body) there is no evidence of a need to drink blood, eat flesh or consume energy. However, Leila was absolutely spot on when she suggested that the film plays with tropes. It does and the Fright Night reference suggests to us that this is deliberate. So, it uses tropes (such as the reaction to religious artefacts – that have belief behind them) and the use of imagery such as the trickle of blood from the mouth and the kiss itself.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK