V is for Vampire – review

Director: Paul Knop

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

A straight to VHS film, this is a washed-out looking affair but, despite amateur acting and a simple storyline, there is something amusing to this and a good nugget of an idea. It had a very short run on Blu-Ray but don’t expect any remastering, if you can track it down.

It starts in Eastern Europe in 1599 and Mi Lady (Michele Mattert) is taking a bubble bath as the, maid, Greta (Lori Boyd), comes upstairs carrying a lamp. She brings a towel and Mi Lady gets out to be dried but Greta slits her throat and allows the blood to pour into the bath. The real mistress of the house is the Countess and her bath has been prepared.

photoshoot

In the modern-day Marty Larson (Amy Luciano) is an agent and one of her clients is portrait artist turned photographer (and whinger) Carlo (Greg Dukes). She has an idea for him – world famous vampire novelist Laura Manning (Vicki DiSalvo) is running a photography competition and the winner will get to photograph the cover of her new novel – V is for Vampire. Carlo is enthused and talks model (and girlfriend, it seems) Stacy (Josalyn Steele) into posing.

bubble bath shoot

We get quite a long sequence of his photoshoots and, unusually, there is no nudity thrown in this flick. Unfortunately, Marty doesn’t think the shots are good enough. Even worse, her boyfriend is Zach (Tony McDowel) and he is also a photographer and, having seen what Carlo produced, he decides to enter the competition also. He asks model Kristy (Jenny Tarnowski) to pose but she refuses due to the place she is in her career. He gets her into a bubble bath, shoots her with a crossbow (the shaft looking like a stake), Marty adds fangs and this becomes his entry.

Vicki DiSalvo as Laura

So, the photo wins the competition and they get to meet the reclusive Laura Manning, who confides that her Countess Karnstein character was based on a real aristocrat who bathed in blood to stay young and also drank it. So, we have a conflation of Carmilla (through name) and Bathory through action. Funnily enough, Marty suggests that the novel ‘the Countess’ reads almost as though it was actual memoirs… Could Laura be a vampire? What will happen to Marty and Zach if she is?

fangs

We don’t get much in the way of lore – simply that a vampire cannot be photographed. The film is very short (less than an hour) and looks dreadful in its washed out, VHS print way – in fact the poster for the film is probably the best looking part of it. But I liked the (very basic) story and despite the amateur acting (or over-acting) I was kind of taken by the characters. Not that the film is brilliant, it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination, but it amused me whilst on. 4 out of 10 is probably overly generous but less feels churlish.

The imdb page is here.