Truckstop Bloodsuckers – review

Director: Galen Pendleton

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

For this we are at Little Hope All-Night Diner and, of course, diners that open 24/7 are an ideal location for vampires, especially those with itinerant customers, The film itself is pitched at character driven comedy and at 75 minutes it really doesn’t outstay its welcome.

After rural scenes we start in the diner and the staff consist of owner Roger (Donovan Workun), who works the kitchen and is not a fan of the life he has landed in and two servers, Jeanine (Aimée Beaudoin) and the younger Kolby (Jillean Tucker). There are a few patrons (including a couple of college kids taking in rural life, it seems) and the servers spot something through the window.

Kolby and Jeanine

That something is Wyatt (Gary Cosgrove), an elderly man who enters the diner naked. Apparently this is a thing and they quickly get an apron on him and sat down, for his part he knows what they hide in the basement, he says… insects. Jeanine is due to go on a date with cop Dan (Ryan Parker) and when he arrives they manoeuvre Wyatt into Dan’s car to take him home first.

feeding on Roger

This doesn’t happen as Kolby is in the kitchen with Roger when he cuts his finger. Fangs emerge and she fights it but soon she is on him feeding from his neck. Jeanine gets a flash of this and leaves the car. Yes, the two servers are vampires with Jeanine having turned Kolby and feeling responsible for her, therefore. Later we hear that Jeanine has been two-years off human blood and is described as Vampire Vegan (meaning she has animal blood).

the crooks

If things weren’t bad enough a drug dealer, Cliff (Jesse Lipscombe), and his associates Smokey (Jeff Halaby) and Wheeljack (Randy Brososky), come into the diner. Cliff is into some self-help stuff believing that things will happen if you want it hard enough. When outside for a smoke he sees Jeanine disposing of Roger's bag-wrapped body in the trash and knows what she is – he lived in Detroit, which is full of vampires, he later suggests – and decides he wants that power for himself…

ready to attack

The whole thing is very character driven sit-com and my thought watching was that this could have been the start of a series. The characters are larger than life, but not so much that they become preposterous, undercut with a little bit of stereotyping that helps move them forward for the viewer. We don’t get a huge amount of lore, a wooden stake to the heart kills but to the shoulder seems to immobilise (through the pain of the injury), sunlight destroys, total draining kills the victim where partial draining allows them to turn and the vampires are physically superior.

Ryan Parker as Dan

I rather liked this. The characters held me, the situation was larger than life but worked. It was neatly self-contained with the diner/kitchen, the basement and an exterior round the diner bins and inside Dan’s car. All the actors were offered solid performances and seemed to have a handle on comic beats. A nice little comedy, 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK