Fangs – review

Director: James Ian Mair

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

This was a low budget vampire flick that I found free to view on YouTube. There was an aspect that reminded me of the film the Return of Dracula - although the device used worked in the 1958 film and became a plot hole in this. It is also a monster mash with a Mummy (Benjamin Mair) involved.

It starts with a voice-over telling us about vampires and how really real they are. It also suggests that the most powerful vampires can daywalk (which is fine, and we do see the primary vampire character – Celeste (Tara Bixler) – daywalking). However, it does make me wonder why day for night shooting was used.

bite

The film proper starts with a woman tied against a tree and Celeste appearing. This is one of the day for night scenes and it does suggest we are just before dawn that forgives the day for night a little but not fully. The woman begs for her life but Celeste rationalises that if she lets the victim go then she’d just call the cops and, in turn, they’d raid the castle. She bites the woman. Master Reinhardt (Dennis Crosswhite, My Bloody Wedding) appears and warns Celeste that hunters have found their lair. He tells her to run – he will not, he is tired of his undeath – and suggests she blends in to hide (her subsequent attempt at blending in is half-hearted at best).

slayers

The slayers arrive led by Father Carmichael (James Ian Mair). The other two seem… well let us just say that casting seemed to consist of grabbing a couple of people from the street. Ordinary Jo(e)s, you might say. They didn’t feel like vampire slayers, however that is meant to feel. The dialogue didn’t help – stakes up the ass are mentioned, simply to give Carmichael an excuse to say that it wouldn’t work and must be through the heart. They split up in the castle. In there are monsters that I described in my notes as papier mâché but that’s unfair. Whilst they looked like masks, close up they were actually quite intricately articulated – the creatures did nothing, however, simply lurking. Carmichael stakes Reinhardt.

identity theft

So, a young woman, Amanda (Erinn Swaby) is at a train station and asks a woman for help – I say at a train station but it is a tight focused street shot to hide the lack of train station location. She is travelling to stay with family she has never met (and is overheard by Celeste). Her platform is reached by going down an alley (!) and Celeste gets her. This is our the Return of Dracula aspect, where the vampire takes the place of an unknown family member… However in the 1958 film the family member was travelling from “the Old Country” and I can accept his corpse would be a John Doe. In this the body is found and is breaking news! Why her family at home did not contact those she was staying with when she turned up dead is never addressed and a truck is currently driving through that plot hole.

the mummy

When she gets to the house of cousin Clare (Jessie Reid) and Uncle Richard (Deron Morgan) she is invited in. As in the Return of Dracula her coffin goes elsewhere (into a cave) and she seems rarely around – tweaking Clare’s suspicions. Not Richard’s however. He is too busy being a mad scientist. An Egyptologist, he has ‘procured’ a mummy from the local museum and is trying formulae to bring it to life (like that’s going to end well). Meanwhile Carmichael has heard about Amanda being killed by 'animal attack' and, in the alley, finds the note that Celeste casually through away with the family address on it.

fangs on display

Ok. This isn’t great. Deliberately using part of the Return of Dracula plot as a reimagining is fine but fill your plot holes. Celeste could have easily stowed the body and Carmichael could have found his way to the right town due to subsequent attacks being reported. The day for night shots could have been dispensed with and Celeste use her daywalking. A station location (or even utilising rail lines) would have been useful. The monster mash tag on was amusing, at least. That all said, it did come across as a labour of love, didn’t outstay its welcome and whilst the acting was often amateurish, not all was. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.