Vampires of Sorority Row – review

Directors: Dennis Devine & Kathryn Glass

Release date: 1999

Contains spoilers


A low-grade comedy merging vampires and the college/sorority genres this was (I imagine) a straight to video effort that actually spawned a sequel (though, at the time of writing this I haven’t tracked that one down).

There, unfortunately, isn’t much to explore around this film and it fairly much is what you would imagine.

staking described on tape

After a credit sequence in which we see primary character Cindy (Kathryn Glass) sleeping whilst clutching a (sharpened into a stake) cross we cut to a trailer park. Cindy has found a tape from a previous resident that says the trailer park is full of vampires. We see the previous resident fight and kill two vampires and then we cut back to Cindy. Ray Bob (Tony Gessup) asks her what she thinks she is doing and she says that she is going to college. He sprouts fangs and she kills him.

Lori bitten

Cut forward one year and Cindy is at the Alpha Beta Gamma sorority house pledging for the sorority. Also pledging are Miffy (Kathryn Rogers) – whose sister, Muffy, had previously been vice president of the sorority, Ashley (Erika Gardner) and Tamara (Amy Larion). They essentially have to earn pledge points by doing chores and suffering pranks. Get to 100 points and they’re in. Miffy relays a story later on about a previous sorority member, Lori (Xany Rudoff), who had been bitten in the past and was still waiting to bite someone and become a full vampire. When asked what she was waiting for the answer is the full moon.

Kathryn Glass as Cindy

So there is no adequate answer, really, as to why she waited and why, now, she appears and starts biting pledges and sorority sisters alike. Her second bite is of Mary (Rita Fiora) and this proves to be a mistake as Mary refuses to be Lori’s vampire slave and essentially takes over the vampires – aiming to turn all the house into vampires. It is up to the plucky pledges (and a frat boy called John (Christian Catlin) who has snuck in looking for a date) to stop the vampires and gain admission to the sorority.

bite cam

Vampires, in this, tend to have their first bite on someone’s bottom rather than the neck. Drain a victim dry and they won’t turn. They can handle the sun but are warded by crosses and burned by holy water. Garlic is mentioned but not tested. The film throws in a “bite cam” where we see an attack (pre-bite at least) from a pov camera with a fang frame. Reflections fade and and vanish but other than that there is nothing really much else to say about this.

fangs on show

I get the feeling that it wanted to be a titillation but steered a course away from overt sexploitation and so we get little in the way of titillation. The action primarily is in one house and the acting is not brilliant by any stretch – however you got the sense that there was some fun being had on set. That fun does not necessarily translate into comedy gold, unfortunately, but it is what it is… a straight to video B. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.