Short Film: The Vampire Project

I don’t know what the goal was from director Michael R. Morris when he created this, I assume direct to video, film in 1995. Whether it was meant to be a feature that just failed to have any length – it comes in around the 3/4rs of an hour mark – or it was always designed to be a short? I found it on Tubi, with the streaming channel picking it up as content, and I hadn’t heard of it before it appeared there.

It starts with a man kneeling over a body, a voiceover speaks to us as the camera swoops round and we see the body has been staked, but the stake is a lashed together cross and has been pushed through the mouth.

Michelle on camera

Michelle (Kathleen Kelly) and Michael (Michael R. Morris) are film students (or journalism students, perhaps) who – with a third friend – are out to create a documentary on out of hour drinking clubs in New York. There has been a murder attached to such establishments – someone who had their throat slit. They manage to get hidden cameras that they place in hats. Let’s just revel in the innocence here. Firstly the cameras seem suspiciously large now but were cutting edge in the 1990s, but the wearing of the hats looks suspicious in and of itself and Michael has a clearly visible wire running from the back of the hat!

Robert Hector as Adrien

On the first night in such a club Michael is chatting to a group of student girls whilst Michelle talks to a guy at the bar, buying him a drink but clear she is there with her boyfriend (indicating Michael, even though they are not an item). However, she is soon inebriated and the guy manages to lure her out into an alley area. Michelle is trapped and punches the guy but he looks set to overpower her when a stranger intervenes – Adrien (Robert Hector). He helps her back in the club and vanishes.

bloodied mouth

Michelle is drawn to the mysterious guy, setting out to track him down, and for his part he seems drawn to her too. But he has a secret (of course, he’s a vampire) and his interest in Michelle might be a little more forever orientated. Michael is a lot more jealous than he should be and the third friend knows more about vampires than you’d imagine…

staked in the mouth

This does show its age, there is no escaping the 90s video in the photography and print but it also feels well placed within the New York vampire sub-genre, carrying the feel of the city that, in some respects, is enhanced by the video nature of the print.

The imdb page is here.