Money, Vampires & Weed – review

Director: Richard Poche

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

We’ve seen a couple of films by Richard Poche before. Previously we have looked at A Candle in the Dark and Crimson. Neither were brilliant films by a long stretch but Poche clearly loves his filmmaking and that has to count for a lot.

This film is a short and is on a couple of video sites for free viewing. As such I would possibly have just given it an Honourable Mention but it is also commercially available on Amazon, and when hard earned cash is involved then it’s got to be a review.

Selfie

This film, unlike the previous two, was played as an off-kilter comedy. It features three girls, Kirsten (by process of elimination, as she isn’t on the IMDb credits, Mary Black), Heather (Kate Hamilton) and Jade (Nikki BreAnne Wells). They’ve just finished work – they all have dead end jobs – and are going home in Kirsten’s car (where pothead Jade has hidden some weed) when they are carjacked at gunpoint by a woman, Vivian (Christina Johnson). She makes them take her home – to Kirsten’s house to be precise.

Vivian is not well

The woman is desperate, she has a bag of money and the girls can’t seem to take the situation seriously – Jade skins up and Kirsten suggests that Vivian call 911 because she seems ill. Vivian, for her part, starts raving about vampires – indeed one particular vampire called Victor (Cliff Poche, who was in both the mentioned Richard Poche films and reprises Victor in a short film, Blood Money, that sounds to be rather similar to this film but with different actresses). It is his money she has stolen. Vivian drops dead.

getting tooled up

The girls realise that there is someone outside, and he may have got in the house (especially as a stoned Jade has offered an invitation) but then again, there is also $200,000 dollars in a bag and a question over whether their friendship can survive greed… As to whether it does or not, well you’ll have to watch the film. I can tell you that the bag of money also has a stake, holy water and garlic in it. The gun has silver bullets (though how they can tell just by looking at it is any one’s guess). The vampires prefer the dark and seem to be able to appear and disappear at will.

blood at mouth

The film was better than the previous two by Mr Poche but it had issues, not least of which were unrealistic reactions by the girls. That said, it was a comedy and done in an off-kilter sort of way, and so that might be ok. The comedy, however, was not laugh out loud funny – more mildly amusing. The acting wasn’t mind blowing but it wasn’t too bad either – taking the fact that the reactions seemed off as an issue with the script rather than the actresses.

All in all it probably deserves 4 out of 10. The score for Richard Poche’s films is slowly going up and that is no bad thing.

The imdb page is here.