One thing I like about looking at short films is the idea that I can simply present them to you and lay off the critique. However sometimes I just can’t. Take this 15-minute short film by Joey Harlow from 2011. On the surface this is poor. The dialogue is unnatural, and the timelines quoted don’t seem to hold up.
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| Hugo and Erik |
The film opens with a legend about vampires being revealed and one mortal girl seeking to be turned and becoming the object to fulfil a 600-year void. It then becomes a conversation between Hugo (Ron Baratono) and Erik (Erik Sobczak) (interspersed with images in Black and White – mostly – of Andre (Jacob Godzak) and Adrianna ( Christi Perovski)). Hugo’s boss is Andre and he wants Erik to arrange a meeting with a mortal woman he thinks is the reincarnation of Adrianna. Hugo tells Erik their tale.
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| bad tear makeup |
Nobleman Erik was in love with Adrianna (despite having an arranged marriage on the cards) but got turned into a vampire. She convinced him he wasn’t a monster and got him to turn her and they lived for 600 years not killing, only taking what they needed. After this period of time there was an accident. Essentially, they were spinning hand in hand in woods, she let go and hit a branch. His tears of blood emerged from out his eyelids rather than his tear ducts apparently.
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| accidental staking |
The death (and subsequent tear sfx) are ludicrous and the clue might be in the fact that IMDb lists this as a comedy – but it doesn’t play for laughs and takes itself very seriously. It also just ends there, as though an opening for something larger. Then I realised that this is actually a prologue for 60-minute feature Vampire Chaos (also known as Search For Love Lost). That certainly comes across from trailers as a low budget comedy and I will look at it here sometime in the future.
In the meantime, the short is at Amazon and the imdb page is
here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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