What purports to be a cheap B horror flick involving vampirism turns out to be a cheap B skin flick involving vampirism and couples hopping into bed every ten minutes or so to further the plot, as is the norm for the late night Friday slot on Channel 5 in the UK where I caught this one playing. The minute you notice one Andrew Stevens (former boy actor in the likes of THE FURY turned adult actor/director/producer of loads of erotic thrillers in the '90s) in the crew and the backing of one "Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc." you realise that this will be nothing more than late night smut, although Playboy have in the past come through by giving us Roman Polanski's harrowing version of MACBETH back in 1971. Unfortunately, DEAD OF NIGHT is another run-of-the-mill story of romantic youthful vampires with not a lot to distinguish it from the rest.
The vampire folklore that the film employs is traditional stuff, all holy water and stake-through-the-heart routines which have been done to death in recent years. Rather like the vampire Christian in this film, who has tired of his eternal existence, I too have tired of the vampire cinema as of late, films which all tend to be the same in scope and action and offer little in the way of surprises. DEAD OF NIGHT has a group of characters all linked in complex ways (as other Shannon Tweed-starrers tend to have) and takes us through a bizarre, sometimes unconvincing story involving them.
First up is Christian, a lovesick guy whose wife died in childbirth and who now searches for her reincarnation. Luckily he finds it in the form of Katherine, a nurse at a hospital in Los Angeles with whom he falls in love. At the same time he falls foul of Nina, the vampire who 'turned' him back in 1889 and the toy-boy vampire Eric that she has fallen in with and also 'turned'. To make matters more complex, a police investigation into the murders caused by the vampire group, led by detective Woods, is hot on the trail of the vampires with Woods threatening to fall in love with Katherine himself. Confused yet? Seeing as this is the entire story of the film you won't be, but it's all rather bland, typical stuff.
The first half of this movie is rather slow, with character-building interspersed with lots of gratuitous sex scenes in which the attractive female cast members are bound to lose their already-scant clothing. The second half is the more interesting of the two, bringing focus to the plot and introducing some unbelievable character twists (such as two vampires suddenly turning from being pretty indifferent to the villains of the piece to make way for an action ending). The finale itself is the stuff of tragedy and quite a nice way to tie off the proceedings. Budget-wise the film is poor, with mostly unrecognisable actors and hardly any special effects to speak of (aside from some cheap, rather poor glowing contact lenses).
This film's cast is actually one of its strongest points. Despite their unfamiliarity most of the actors possess certain characteristics to make them interesting to watch. Take for example Robert Knepper as the gloomy vampire Christian - here he reminds me of an angsty Tim Roth performance and gives quite an interesting turn. The foreign-accented Diana Frank also excels as the seductive and rather feral vampiress Nina whilst Kathleen Kinmont (BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR) is believable as the object of Christian's love. Ironically, the film's central character - the policeman Woods - is given the most wooden actor in John Enos III, a pretty-boy with little display of talent evident here. Naturally the best performances come from the two veteran 'name' actors in the cast, Alex Rocco (THE GODFATHER) and Paul Winfield (THE TERMINATOR) who both play slightly eccentric characters to the hilt.
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