Hood Vamps – review

Director: Gregory Tucker

Release date: 2003

Contains spoilers

By the credits a 2003 release film, and lacking an IMDb page that I could find, this relatively short feature (it comes in at 72 minutes) appeared on Amazon VOD and only came in SD format. Now, having watched it I can’t really say that HD would have done it any favours unfortunately.

The film follows quite a well-to-do set of people but never seems to manage to pull off the setting, for instance graphic created contents of a cabinet will be mentioned later but underline how the film tried to work around the lack of budget but failed.

a victim

The film begins with a set of TV broadcasts culminating in a news report regarding a serial killer who is attacking single middle-aged men and who has police baffled. We see a man, dead in a chair, blood at the throat and a figure in a hoody. We then cut away to a gallery and the owner (with an accent that was layered with affectation) is speaking to a client on the phone, discussing Egyptian artefacts. He gets off the phone and tells Michael (Antoine Jones) that he must visit the client that very day.

Dominique and the sleaze

Michael isn’t happy as he is meant to be taking his girlfriend Dominique (Tracy Weaver) to an exclusive restaurant that he has waited two years to get a booking with. He has to go to the client, however. We then cut to Dominique, who is a successful business woman (its never clear in what, but I suspect as an advertising executive), batting off a sleazy client with poise and skill. Before cutting back to Michael arriving at his clients’ home.

a vampire's red eyes

The door is answered by Rochelle (Leslie Ballard), assistant to Jamari Jefferson (Earlisa Joiner). She speaks to Michael and the scene underlines just about everything wrong with the film. Firstly, it is here where we get Michael looking at a cupboard with some “interesting pieces”, the camera pans up a (obviously, low-res, computer generated) view of the cupboard, which in reality contains none of the pieces as the budget hasn’t covered such props – indeed later we get a full discussion of a scarab that isn’t there.

bad framing

Then, the dialogue, throughout, feels weirdly unnatural (not even stagey just wrong). For instance, in this scene, a woman who has never met the man before asks “So, are you married or committed to anyone at this time?” The words feel odd, the delivery isn’t great either to be fair, and we know it is just a clumsy tie in with the killer mentioned at the head attacking single men. As Rochelle is speaking to Michael the camera seems incapable of keeping her framed in shot – at times her head is cut from shot. We get inconsistent lighting and focus as camera angels change and the obligatory sound issues that one would unfortunately expect (noise on the soundtrack in one of the scenes being the main one).

weird dreams

Jamari then comes into the room (kind of just appearing) and within moments Michael is dismissed and will be contacted the next day. There is no appraisal of the artefacts for sale (difficult as they aren’t physically represented in the scene, of course). It just feels really clumsy. Jamari is the vampire and she has a kind of impact that Michael (who misses his dinner reservation window but is forgiven because he brought home a fruit salad in a plastic tub and some sparkling red grape juice) then has a nightmare about Jamari that night – though the film hinted later that these were dream invasions.

doing a Palpatine

There is a vampire hunting Jamari through the centuries and a cop, Stone (Gregory Tucker), hunting down the killer (who is Jamari, of course). The lore seems to be made up as it goes along. We do get a victim turning, who becomes a ravening white-faced ghoul and is then killed by the other ancient vampire vanishing in a bad sfx on death. We also get Jamari able to shoot lightning out of her hands in a Palpatine kind of way.

dying vampire

But over all this is just poor amateur filmmaking. Everyone has to start somewhere, of course, and issues like the props/cgi were a brave attempt to fulfil a vision that the budget conspired to thwart. However, the bad framing of actors in shot was very amateurish and damaged the finished output, as did the poor dialogue and delivery thereof. There was some fun imagery occasionally around the vampires, but not so fun that it saves the film. 2 out of 10.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK