Sanguine Teeth on a Driftless Road – review

Director: Austin Galante

Release date: Unknown*

Contains spoilers

*The film is not dated on IMDb and does not have a copyright date on the actual film that I spotted, but went onto Fawesome TV streaming in 2025.

With a title length that matched its running time, coming in at over two hours as it does, there was a chance that this low budget indie feature might outstay its welcome and yet it never did. Managing to match wit with some laddish humour, it managed to build genuine characters and an off-kilter world.

robbers

The film starts with a woman in a bikini walking along the side of a country road, a car slows down and we hear a lift being offered and rebuffed. It starts us with a little slice of mild oddness and the woman is not seen again until the very end of the film, playing no part that we see in the events. The film cuts to two men in a car chatting – the snappy dialogue felt as though it was trying to emulate Tarantino’s signature style and doing a fairly darn good job of it. One man pulls down a mask, the other puts on a bunny-eared balaclava as they enter a gas station.

Juan Hooks as Alamo

The clerk (Alok Kumar) really doesn’t seem to care about being robbed and there is offence taken by the robber interfacing with him (robber #1) as he believes the South Asian clerk has assumed robbery due to him being African American (the clerk points out the balaclava and he cannot see his face). The proffered bag gets filled with cash from the register (and packs of smokes) but there happens to be two customers in the place, one hiding named Sticks (Austin Galante), the other, Alamo (Juan Hooks), unphased by events. However, Alamo ends up having a run-in with Robber #2 and planting him into the floor with unnatural strength. Robber #1 leaves his erstwhile compatriot and drives off. The clerk reveals, as he does, that the silent alarm has been pressed, Alamo declines waiting for the police, so as to give a statement, and we see the police capture robber #1 as he runs out of gas (despite having robbed a gas station).

Matthew Kenner as Damascus

This scene underlines much about the film. The robbers are incidental to the film and yet writer/director Galante gives them dialogue, character and shows us the fate of both of them (the capture by the cops is almost an irrelevance and could have been cut for running time purposes and yet somehow fits the pace and rhythm). The Sticks character is barely seen and yet the viewer, unbeknown at this point, has met the vampire hunter (who, I assume, is pursuing Alamo specifically). Alamo we quickly find out, in subsequent scenes, is a vampire.

Monty Kane as Cano

Before we discover that, however, we meet Damascus Elfman (Matthew Kenner). Rich, apparently, with a cavernous cave below his home, we will soon discover he is two and a half millennia old. He has hired a luxury RV – and there is a scene with the odd and intrusive (to Damascus) character Barron Snatchblown (Aaron Rathbone) who an irritated Damascus eventually invites into the RV and then seems to vanish from the film. I mention this because much later he emerges, having been glamoured and left under the bed! The incidental characters are not forgotten. Damascus picks up vampire friends Mayuum Cano (Monty Kane) and Ricky Pete (Charlie Mac) for a road trip. Both vampires have familiars with them and Ricky brings Alamo, who we find out is a newly turned vampire.

the humans

The film is the road trip on which they pick up homeless Dongle Man (Douglas Montoya), after Cano drains his annoying familiar, and then later pick up raver Visit-Tor (Jason Rouse) because Cano believes any man hitchhiking in a thong must have a funny story. The plot is less important than the characters, the situations and the dialogue dominates over narrative in this, so lets move to lore. As a young vampire, Alamo has yet to face his first (and last) ablution – it’s a noisy affair when it happens. The vampirism is a virus which regenerates the cells and thus keeps their dead bodies moving but there are also supernatural powers, some of which come with age, such as flight and glamouring humans. Damascus can scramble a video recording device with his powers.

Charlie Mac as Ricky

Wood kills the virus and thus stops it repairing cells – hence the stake in the heart working – sunlight is an issue but vampire scientists have developed a sunscreen they’ve all used. Vampires can catch vampire specific disease and Ricky has diabetes – so his familiar Sandy (Tiffany Saggio) is sugar free. Incidentally Sandy has an Only Fangs page – indicating, along with the vampire scientists, a much larger society we don’t see. The vampires can get stoned and drunk. As for the film itself, it is a comedy and uses laddish humour, as mentioned, but also some quite surrealist humour (the vampire hunter weapon salesman with a budgie for sale, which is meant to carry a wood-shrapnel grenade, and party poppers that fire sawdust being a prime example). Equally surreal was the drug-fuelled extended dance sequence that just seemed to fit.

Visit-Tor and Ricky

The film, on paper, probably shouldn’t work nearly as well as it did. It should be too long; extraneous scenes should slow the pace and yet it does work – or it certainly did for me. The dialogue felt natural but had a well-written snappiness to it. The characters were developed through said dialogue, the talent of the actors and their interactions, and it was these developed characters that, I think, take the viewer along with the film. I really got on with this one and thoroughly enjoyed watching it. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.