Vampire Club – review

Director: Dennis Devine

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

Back with the video vampires of Dennis Devine and the director’s efforts haven’t found much favour in my reviews so far. So, let’s see how this fares.

It starts with a woman, Vicky (Veronica Ricci, Arise of the Snake Women & Fangs Out) strutting down the street. She arrives at a house and meets Ali (Tracy Carr). Ali has fangs and soon bites Vicky but not before suggesting she should join “the club” and makes her drink her blood after the bite. She needs a second draught of vampire blood to fully turn (and it is suggested that not drinking vampire blood at all would have resulted in her death), but Ali needs to feed first.

stomach stake

She heads out and spots Amanda (Krystal Ellsworth) and is about to attack when Amanda uses her name. Confused, she asks how she knows her, which is the opportunity Amanda needs to stake her – avenging her brother and sister. Her hunting partner Lance (Dylan Vox, the Lair, Scab, Brides of Sodom & Vampire Boys) arrives and takes her head with a sword. Now, the beheading looked good – even if the head was obviously a prop – as did the staking (at least on the surface). However, the stake was clearly in the stomach. Now, whilst the stomach might be folklorically accurate (to pin the corpse to the grave), this wasn’t what they were going for and was slapdash.

Marlene Mc'Cohen as Dorothy

Vampire Master Dorothy (Marlene Mc'Cohen, Vampire Boys 2: The New Brood, Fangs Out: Blood Apocalypse & also Fangs Out and Vampire Boys), with vampires Piper (Harmony Smith, also Fangs Out: Blood Apocalypse) and Stephanie (Ginny You, also Fangs Out: Blood Apocalypse), finds Ali. Piper decides it is time to move on, but the hunters read newspapers to track their progress. As things develop, the vampires get jobs as dancers (of the go-go variety) but Piper is out of control and her devouring of a stag at the club leads to his sister joining the hunters. Vicky, in the meantime, is drawn to the vampires to get the second draught of vampire blood (the spirit of Ali apparently speaking to her).

double bite

There isn’t much more of a story. The strip club has an outside establishing shot but seems to be just any old office location converted into a makeshift stage and back rooms. The lore is confused in terms of crosses not working (though the hunters seem to think they do) but holy water burning – the film makes no attempt to explain the reasoning. Sunlight is mentioned as the hunters’ friend, but is not utilised in film. The story is simplistic, the characters under-developed. Plot-wise Veronica Ricci is underutilised, she is used for sexploitation reasons (and the only actress who is filmed nude) but for the plot, she is little more than a catalyst and could have been missed altogether. Straight to video, this is a low-end film I’m afraid. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.