Vampires (1986) – review

Director: Len Anthony

Release date: 1986

Contains spoilers

This film will feel awfully familiar to those who know the portmanteau flick Fright House. That film was made up of two primary stories and this was the second one, but now it is expanded to eighty minutes. Indeed, when I reviewed Fright House I said, “Director Len Anthony released a film entitled Vampires three years earlier and, given the same cast involvement, it appears this was the same film renamed” and it was.

Let us make something clear from the get go. Having the extra twenty one minutes in (and the fact that the scene ordering was originally different than that we saw in Fright House) does not make this any better. It is still a mess with the same basic story (and that is a confused mess).

Jackie James as Abadon

In short we have energy vampires made so through a machine (so science based) and some pseudo-mumbo jumbo about the soul being a balance of positive and negative energy and the machine siphoning away one charge to make the soul in the vampire keep the body alive. Beyond this, if you wish to get a flavour of the story read the previous review.

Duane Jones as Harmon

In said review I stated that “If I had seen the second segment on its own the score might have been even lower than that I have given but the presence of Al Lewis in the first part does elevate it ever so slightly”. Well this has no Al Lewis. It does have Duane Jones (Ganja and Hess) being magnificent despite the film and the rest of the cast but that score has sunk – albeit just a little. 1.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.