Vampire Strippers – review

Director: Royce Davis

Release date: 2021*

Contains spoilers

*date according to Amazon, the film credits weren’t forthcoming and at the time of writing there was no IMDb page

Oh my word but some films are just bad. I must admit that just the utilitarian poster for this one had my spidey senses tingling (also the lack of an IMDb page) when it showed up on Amazon Prime Video as a purchase (or rent) to view. I was sceptical but, nevertheless, it went on my watchlist and then, one day, it turned into a free to view with Prime and I immediately gave it a whirl and, very quickly, was glad I hadn’t parted with money.

Julion escapes from something

Now, I don’t actually want to speak ill of films (and I will praise one moment shortly), but this commits some cardinal sins. It begins in the 16th Century and the Romanian Vampire King Julion (Aaron L. Toland II) is conducting the blood moon ritual (for which he will need the blood of two women of the right type. He has 4 women bound and the ritual will extend his life cycle and allow him to daywalk (which is odd as he daywalks into a shop later just fine). He is interrupted (we don’t see by what), escapes to the US and sleeps for 400 years.

drinking blood

So we go to a strip club – though can I say there is very little stripping occurring in the film, despite the title. One moment of naked breasts, far into the film, seems more a production error as mostly the strippers keep their clothes on. Nevertheless, we see some girls with patrons, a pole dancer and then the pole dancer approaches a guy on his own, offers him a dance and then bites him. Cardinal mistake #1 – the music was loud in the mix and distorted, overwhelming the dialogue to the point of putting subtitles on (which I maintained through the film as the dialogue was intermittently inaudible). We then see three of the strippers drinking blood (or red liquid) from glasses and talking about disposing of the body – which a pair of cops find the next day, the cops' scene is almost blink and miss it.

flimsy coffin

The film goes back three months. Three burglars are robbing a place that is meant to have valuables in a coffin. They ransack draws to no avail but then find a coffin (read cheap Halloween prop made of flimsy material) with loads of money in it. This wakes Julion, who is in his equally cheap Halloween coffin… If he has been sleeping for 400 years, how’d he get in a modern house replete with stash of modern cash?! Anyway he grabs (and kills we assume) two and then gets Thomas (Eli El Shabazz), a large chap, and makes him his servant.

captured

He goes to a store (during the day) and overhears the owner, Havana (Foresteen Hood), talking about her credit woes. He suggests he is a tailor, looking for a partner and can get her credit extended – he does this. He takes her to dinner, gives her 2000-year-old wine (apparently), which is clearly drugged as she falls asleep and awakens wearing a corset, leggings and chained to a flimsy looking rack. He then kidnaps several more women. The last is an ex-model who has a facial scar he promises to fix. We see him bite her and she does heal but then she’s put with the others. One, however, gets loose, frees the rest and they escape with his book of rituals. They become strippers (as you do) and, apparently, he had turned them all.

plug socket

I say 'as you do' – but as the punters all seem to throw wads of $100 dollar bills around it is likely a good career move. So other cardinal movie sins? Well, when talking to the model, despite being in the foreground, they appear slightly out of focus – but this is not a soft-focus moment… oh no… the plug socket in the background is in sharp focus. There is a scene of the strippers (not actually) stripping, which goes on and on for 8 minutes (including a fire eater at the end). It then cuts to one of the cops, with a cop we’ve not seen before, for long enough to say 'let’s go to a strip club' (with new cop suggesting wife and kids will be ok for a couple of hours) and then we get their cavorting with lap dancing vampires for another 7 or 8 minutes, until new cop is bitten. These two stripper scenes form a dialogue free montage that amounts to 17 minutes (including the moment with the cops speaking) out of an 80-minute run-time. It is mindless filler and the second part looks like it was filmed in a living room not a club!

armpit staking

At one point the women go to see a preacher (Damon Gary) for help but he won’t hold no truck with vampires and ushers them out. We see the last women and the preacher start laughing as they go off screen, presumably thinking themselves out of shot. When he does help them he gets them to fill bottles with holy water that works on Julion but somehow doesn’t burn them as they put their hands in the font! When Julion is killed (oh, come on, there’s hardly a story to spoil) he does the infamous hold the stake up when killed routine that spoils many a cheap end film... but most have the actor hold it to the chest at least, as though clutching the implement of their death – his is held in his armpit! (In the screenshot you can just see his hand holding it in the lower screen).

cool bite marks

Now I said about one good thing, a moment I would praise... Julion and Thomas go and pick up a couple of prostitutes and, when we see them dumped after feeding on them, the makeup for the bites looked pretty cool. That, and that alone, has got this turkey 1 out of 10 – beyond that the acting is amateur and it felt like some of the dialogue was badly adlibbed, it was poorly filmed (there are some night shots – including a chase where the ratio changes completely I guess due to the camera used – and then the world’s worse day as night shot as they go to the chapel at night, the effects were special but not in a good way (bar those bite marks) and the story flimsier than the cheap Halloween coffins.

At the time of writing there is no IMDB page.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK