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| Take heed of that tagline, Newt. |
That's not an alternate title in the parentheses up there. It's something of a confession and an explanation as to why I might have a certain person's blood on my hands when this is all over. Anyway,
Vampegeddon. You're probably looking at that DVD cover and wondering, "What in God's name is this?" This is a film that was made by a college kid named Jeffrey Alan Miller (it's the only film he's ever directed, although he's been involved with some other movies in various other capacities), with no money or real actors, and was released direct-to-DVD in 2010, unbeknownst to many involved until they saw the DVD. It's a poorly-made, terribly-acted, embarrassing shitfest of big-breasted women who are often partially or totally naked, lesbian overtones, heavy metal songs, and lots of amateur makeup and gore effects and, even with a running time of 75 minutes, is hard to sit through. So, why am closing out this year's October marathon with this turd? Well, that's a good question. You can blame it all on a certain Mr. Newt Cox, who has his own blog here on Blogspot, Double T's Blog of Reviews, and who also runs a YouTube Channel called Asshat Podcast (a referral to a podcast that he used to do and still could do, but he's too damn lazy; "I hate editing sound, waa, waa," cry me a damn river). Now, Mr. Cox is someone whom I've known for many years now. We first met on a horror movie forum, started talking, and quickly realized that our personalities very much clicked. When that message board closed down, he and I began talking on the phone on a fairly regular basis, usually about once a week, and we've managed to keep that going. I've come to consider him to be a pretty close friend and someone I can shoot the breeze with, as there aren't many people in my area who are into the same stuff I am. Most of the time, I consider him a good friend, anyway, as he also has some very annoying habits, one of which happens to be this movie. I don't know when he first discovered
Vampegeddon but he's known about it for many years now, ever since he came across it on a pack of horror movies, many of which I'm sure no one else has heard of either. When he saw it, he decided that it deserved to be a cult film rather than just a little seen college movie that somehow ended up on a commercially sold DVD set.
How did he go about doing that, ask you? By aggravating everybody he knows to death until they break down and watch it just to shut him up, that's how. He's done this to every single friend he's ever had in his life and normally, after they've watched it, they've sent him long, detailed death threats for having made them suffer through it. Well, when I became close to Newt, it was my turn. For a good long while there, just about every single time we talked, he would bring up
Vampegeddon in some way. I laughed it off at first but, as time went on, I was about ready to reach through the phone and strangle him when he mentioned it. This is how those conversations evolved. "Blah, blah,
Vampegeddon." "God, that sounds awful." "Blah, blah... like
Vampegeddon." "
Vampegeddon? Oh, yeah. I remember you telling me about that." "Blah, blah, blah,
Vampegeddon." "Ha, ha!" "
Vampegeddon, blah, blah." "Ha. Hmm." "
Vampegeddon." "Okay, enough with
Vampegeddon. I get it. It's a bad movie. I don't care to see it." "
Vampegeddon." "Dude, I'm not watching that. Please, enough." "
Vampegeddon." "I'm not watching
Vampegeddon! Take that piece of shit and shove it up your ass!" "Blah, blah, blah, blah...
Vampegeddon." "SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT
VAMPEGEDDON! I SWEAR I'M GOING TO WALK DOWN TO MISSISSIPPI AND KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!" Finally, I decided to heck with it and put myself through
Vampegeddon, which was easy to find, as it was on this YouTube channel called Kings of Horror (as of this writing, it's still there). After I watched it, I was irritated because, as bad as it was, it wasn't the absolute worst movie ever that I was expecting. Newt hyped it up so much that it had no chance in living up to the badness that he said it exuded, so now I was pissed that he bugged me about it as much as he did and it wasn't the total crap-bomb I was expecting. But, make no mistake, it is really crappy, with a current 2.4 rating on IMDB, so I knew I'd been doing it when I came up with the idea for "Shlocktober." Plus, I'm hoping that this diatribe of hatred will finally silence Newt about it once and for all, but I kind of doubt it. So, if you don't like this review, don't tell me; tell him. I've shown you the ways to contact him.
In the 1890's, the publication of Bram Stoker's
Dracula in London raises the public's awareness of vampires to the point where all of the real vampires lurking in Europe decide to evacuate immediately. One of these vampires is Italy's Count Giovanni, who charters a ship to America. However, Great Britain's premier vampire hunter, Richard Longshank, and his wife, Marissa, are both hot on his trail, tracking him to Arizona. After wading through Giovanni's minions, Longshank confronts both the count and his familiar, Igor, one night. Though he manages to vanquish the vampires, Longshank himself also dies in the process. Over a century later, in modern day, five college students who are looked at as strange outcasts by their peers due to their interests in the occult, attempt rituals to communicate with the forces of darkness. Melissa, a lesbian Goth, is particularly desperate for the rituals to work, as she wishes to escape her horrible home-life and the small town that she lives in. The day after one such ritual is ruined by a couple of obnoxious guys who look at them as freaks, Melissa comes across a garage sale being held by the overweight and very sleazy Mr. Rizzowski. He shows her a book bound in black leather, with a pentagram on the front cover, and allows her to have it, telling her to be careful what she wishes for. Showing the book to her friends, Melissa says she believes this contains the actual ritual for summoning the forces of darkness, though her one friend, Liz, gets a bad vibe from it. Inside the book, they find a map that points them to the spot where the ritual is to be performed: Massacre Lane, where a man once murdered his entire family. Despite their reservations, her friends agree to meet up with Melissa at Massacre Lane that night and, upon performing the ritual, they succeed in drumming up some vampires, namely Count Giovanni and his minions. Giovanni now intends to make Melissa his bride through a blood sacrifice that will unleash legions of the undead upon the world. However, Longshank's soul has also been awakened and has taken possession of Liz's body in order to ensure this doesn't happen.
The film pulls something of a bait-and-switch in terms of who the lead character is going to be. For the first half, you're expecting the lead to be Melissa, or "Mel" (Katherine Von Forelle), as she's the focus. The movie gets into her hatred of being looked at as a freak by her peers, how awful her living situation is, and how she's into the occult and vampirism as a means of escape, hoping that she can become a vampire in order to escape her hideous existence, which is why she has her friends participate in these rituals. The only problem is that, as valid as her dislike for her life is, Melissa herself comes off as very unpleasant. While it is clear that some of the townspeople and fellow college goers do look at her as a freak, she has this air of snobbishness and superiority about her, as she writes off every single person in the town as "backwater jerkoffs" and is all about getting revenge on them all by terrorizing the town as a vampire. Since we only see a few people treating her like crap directly, rather than everybody who's not outside of her clique, it makes her seem like she has a chip on her shoulder the size of Mt. Everest and just wants to take everybody down with her. She's even nasty to her friends, as she's very dismissive of Ted and Kent in general, and when Liz has reservations about messing with the evil-looking book she picks up at a garage sale, Melissa all but mocks her for it. The only one she's never mean to is Mona, and that's because, being a lesbian, she clearly has a thing for her. But, despite how much time is devoted to her, when they perform the ritual, Melissa becomes little more a puppet under Count Giovanni's control, as he often has control of her and plans to use her in his blood sacrifice to bring out the end of mankind.
Because of this, the spotlight switches over to Liz (Jacqueline Smith), the member of the group who, previously, had come off as the most demure and sensible, though still hating how they were looked down upon by everyone else and also not liking her particular lot in life. Again, she's really not sure that messing around with the sinister book that Melissa picks up at the garage sale is such a good idea, especially when they learn that they have to perform the ceremony at Massacre Lane. But, when the others agree to it, Liz also reluctantly says yes. Following a moment where Ted, who's dating Mona, picks her up and attempts to hit on her, much to her displeasure, she and the others go to Massacre Lane that night to perform the ceremony. However, when Melissa and Mona immediately fall under Count Giovanni's influence and start to make out, Liz knows that something's wrong, fights them off when they have a go at her, and runs away. She's then possessed by the soul of Richard Longshank and goes from a shy, demure Goth, to an ass-kicking, red bodice-wearing woman with an English accent. After saving the guys from Melissa and Mona and uses an incantation to bring the two of them back to their senses, Longshank explains to them that the ritual resurrected his soul as well and that Liz's reluctance to join in allowed him to enter her. He takes charge of the group and rushes to stop Giovanni from performing the blood sacrifice on Melissa and making her his bride. Longshank and Giovanni have another confrontation, the latter making references to how Longshank was supposedly "sexually ambiguous," as he's now in a woman's body. He almost manages to kill the reincarnated vampire hunter but Melissa, whom Longshank again snapped out of her trance, saves her and enables her to stake and kill Giovanni once again. But, despite that, Longshank's soul remains inside Liz's body and he decides that, since Melissa is now marked with a tattoo signifying a betrothal to a vampire and others won't stop coming for her until the marriage consummated, he must keep her safe. The movie ends with the two of them hitting the road, with Melissa being interested in her since Liz now technically likes girls, like her. (I think Katherine Von Forelle also plays Marissa, Longshank's wife, in the opening. They seem to be implying some sort of reincarnation angle, especially since it's said that Longshank has always been within Liz anyway and that Melissa becomes interested in him since he's possessed another woman, but it's not developed at all.)
Mona (Sugar Cox), Melissa's best friend, is memorable for several reasons, though none of them have to do with the character herself. One is her hairstyle, with those pigtails on either side of her head done up in nutty, black-and-white ribbons. Another is her massive rack, which you get a good look quite a few times, especially in one scene early on when they're at Liz's house, changing clothes. And finally, she has a wooden tooth. No, seriously, one of her front teeth near the middle is clearly made of wood, and it serves no purpose in the film, I'm going to assume that Sugar Cox really did have a wooden tooth and they decided not to call attention to it. Other than that, Mona is simply the friend who sympathizes the most with Melissa's plight and, when she shows them the book, is the one who's really willing to go through with the ritual using it. Even though she's dating Ted, she makes it clear that she would get it on with Melissa if the chance arose, which it does when the two of them fall under Giovanni's influence when he's resurrected. After the possessed Liz saves Ted and Kent from their wrath and frees them from being the vampire's pawns, Mona appears to be okay and back to normal. But, when Longshank leaves them by the van while he goes to stop Giovanni and save Melissa, Mona suddenly turns into a vampire again (she was bitten during a skirmish with some of Giovanni's cronies) and attacks and kills Ted, spraying the windshield with his blood. And when Longshank and Melissa head off together at the end, Mona is shown to be hiding in the trunk, opening the hood and declaring, "You'll pay for this shit. There's a new bitch in town."
Aside from Longshank, who spends most of his screentime in a female body anyway, all of the male characters in
Vampegeddon are either the villains, scummy assholes, or completely forgettable, as is the case with Ted (Josh Bingenheimer) and Kent (Jimmy Flowers), the two guys of the main group. Between the two of them, Ted has more to him in that, even though he's dating Mona, he's interested in getting it on with Liz as well, explaining to Kent, "I'm pretty sure she's looking for something serious, whereas I kind of just want to fuck around." Kent advises him not to mess around like that, saying it's not cool, but when the two of them see Liz topless through her bedroom window, he has to admit that he would hit it. When Melissa gets her hands on the book and finds that they need to perform the ceremony at Massacre Lane, Kent isn't so sure about it but Ted decides that he's in, saying, "What have we got to lose?", and with that, Kent reluctantly agrees to participate as well, becoming excited about the prospect of finally getting a ritual right, especially after the utter failure they had the night before. Later that day, Ted picks Liz up from her job under the pretense of taking her to her house so she can change but, on the way, he makes the mistake of touching and caressing her leg. With that, Liz forces him to pull over, and he apologizes and pleads with her not to tell Mona, saying he really loves her (given what he said to Kent before, I think he just doesn't want to risk losing the opportunity to bang her). Liz agrees but isn't so sure about whether or not they can still be considered friends after this. In any case, when they perform the ceremony that night, Ted and Kent find themselves at the mercy of the now possessed Melissa and Mona. Fortunately for them, Longshank, now inside Liz, comes in and releases them from the possession. From then on, the boys are totally freaked out and bewildered by what's going on, until Longshank explains the situation to them. When they're confronted by Giovanni and his minions when he arrives to take Melissa away, Ted and Kent manage to fight off some vampires but, when they're walking back to their van, Kent is grabbed from behind by Igor, who kills him by ripping his throat open. With that, Ted just wants to get out as quickly as possible, and when he starts raving when Longshank plans to go save Melissa, saying that she's likely already dead, the vampire hunter puts him in an arm-lock and tells him why he must retrieve Melissa from Giovanni. He then tells Ted and Mona to wait for him at the van and to get out of town if he's not back by dawn. But, while they're waiting, Mona turns vampire again and kills Ted immediately.
Hooter (Danny Marianino) and Scumbag (Michael Alvarez), this pair of douchebags who constantly harass the main group because they think they're freaks, are like a sleazier, more vulgar version of Bulk and Skull from
Power Rangers. Hooter is this heavyset dickhead who really likes to pick on them, even though he admits that he thinks Liz is kind of hot, while Scumbag is constantly messed up drugs and is excitedly laughing and smiling about everything. Hooter tells him, "You should stick to the pot, like me. That other shit leads to a wasted life." He also shows how much of a low-life prick he is by saying, "Remind me to hit my mom up for some gas money. Bitch just got paid today." There's a son any mother could be proud of. That night, when the group tries to summon some vampires, Hooter and Scumbag mess with them by making them think the ritual worked by laughing evilly nearby, only to rush out of the bushes at them while wearing some Nosferatu-like Halloween masks. Scumbag gets his mask ripped off and punched in the face by Melissa, while Hooter just laughs at their anger before yelling, "Oh, boy! Vampire freaks, fuck you!" The next day, the two of them overhear the group's plan to do another ceremony at Massacre Lane and decide to crash that one too. As you can guess, that turns out to be a fatal mistake. When they see the group gathered around a campfire, they put on their masks and plan to mess with them again, only to be confronted by some of Giovanni's cronies. Hooter punches one in the face and he retaliates, literally knocking Hooter's block off. Scumbag is so messed up on drugs that he laughs at the sight of Hooter's stump of a neck spraying blood, yelling, "Yeah!" when it gushes right in his face, before he's killed himself.
One really inexplicably scummy character is Rizzowski (David C. Hayes, who's also the film's writer), this guy who's running a garage sale that Melissa happens upon. He invites Melissa into his garage when he sees her, admonishing her for walking by without coming in to look at his stuff, and introduces himself, saying, "I got anything you want... for a price." He acts as sleazy as he looks, leaning in and telling Melissa, "I think I got what you're looking for... right here," before making gestures as if he's motioning towards his crotch and rubbing it. It's then revealed that he's showing off the book, and when she asks him the title, he says, "Don't know. Little, uh, rubbed out," before rubbing the cover, as I roll my eyes at how unabashedly sleazy this guy is. She tries to take the book to look at it herself but he holds onto it, saying he needs some "information" first, and takes it away from her when she protests. But, when she says she really wants it, Rizzowski inexplicably just gives it to her for nothing, telling her it's the life, and demands that she leave immediately, virtually chasing her out. As she runs away, he melodramatically yells, "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it, you bitchy bitch!" Some naked, Asian-looking vampire women then pop up around him and bite into his arms and shoulders, spilling blood everywhere, as he says, "That's what I'm talking about! Fuck me!" I have no comment.
As a villain, Count Giovanni (Shane Dean) is a complete joke: he looks ridiculous in that makeup (as a reviewer on IMDB mentioned, he looks like Uncle Fester) and dime-store costume and overacts tremendously besides. Every gesture and bit of dialogue from this guy, which often comes with a stereotypical evil laugh, is so exaggerated, sounding like Bela Lugosi with no acting talent at all, that he makes Eric Freeman from
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 look subtle and understated. For that matter, Richard Roxburgh, who played Dracula in
Van Helsing, was better than this guy and he's terrible in that movie. Besides looking and sounding laughable, Giovanni is as generic and clear cut a bad guy as you can get. After having been vanquished by Richard Longshank in the 1890's and now resurrected, Giovanni intends to finish what he intended to do before: make Melissa his vampire bride and enact a blood sacrifice that will unleash every vampire that's ever existed on the world, hence the title,
Vampegeddon. He also seems to really enjoy seducing the women over to his side, visiting Melissa in her dreams before the ceremony and can be seen doing the same to both her and Mona before he's actually resurrected. Even weirder is how he keeps making comments about Longshank having been sexually ambiguous and mentioning that, had he not known his soul was inside Liz, he'd actually go at her. And the movie is so poorly-made that Giovanni never once comes off as a genuine threat. The final fight between him and Longshank is a complete joke and Giovanni is defeated rather easily by both him and Melissa after she's released from his influence.
Speaking of sexually ambiguous, Igor (Rick Dyer), Giovanni's lead crony, seems to really enjoy serving his master. For the most part, he acts like a typical bumbling henchman but, when he and the other vampires are resurrected, Igor can be seen rubbing Giovanni's arm and putting his hand on his torso while rocking back and forth, panting and growling a little too excitedly. Other than that, Igor, who got staked by Longshank back in the 1890's and whined and cried for his master before collapsing, makes the mistake of trying to attack "Liz," only to realize that Longshank's soul has taken possession of her. After he gets a jab to the face, Igor runs off and tells Giovanni about Longshank's resurrection off-screen. He also manages to kill Kent later on by grabbing him from behind and tearing his throat out, but when he tries to attack Longshank again, he gets staked once more, collapsing to the ground and having the stake driven further into him by Longshank's foot.
You only get to see Richard Longshank (Patrick Vaillancourt) himself in action during the prologue, when he takes on Giovanni and his minions in Arizona around the turn of the century. They describe as England's most accomplished vampire hunter and say that he was right behind Giovanni when he fled Europe, following him to the west. After wading through his minions, Longshank prepared to face Giovanni himself one evening and, after telling his wife, Marissa, to wait for him at the hotel they're staying at, headed out to do so. He managed to deal with squaw who turned out to be Giovanni's servant, dispensed with Igor and a number of other vampires, and saved a Native American boy from becoming their next victim, and sacrificed himself in order to kill Giovanni, staking him after the vampire he flown up into the air with him, causing him to fall to his death. Over a century later, when Giovanni is resurrected, so is Longshank, whose soul takes possession of Liz's body, whose subconscious he was resting in, and uses it to do battle with his old foe, all while proving himself to have a rather snarky sense of humor, spouting plenty of one-liners made up of British slang.
Normally, I wouldn't review something like this that was made by a college student with no money or little technical know-how but, because it was put on a commercially-released DVD, I have no choice but to be as harsh as I normally would on a big budget, mainstream piece of crap. And on that note, I have to say that this is another movie where I have nothing positive to say about it. Even with
Werewolf, I could find some minute pros, but
Vampegeddon? Nope. The movie is amateurish to the point of being downright inept, especially given what little I've heard about the production. The acting is terrible all-around, for one thing.
Nobody in this movie, from the college students to the adults, can act to save their lives, as they come off as either lifeless and wooden or embarrassingly over-the-top. There is some enjoyable cheesiness to be found in Longshank's snarky, one-liner-spouting, action hero persona, both as himself and when he possesses Liz, and in Count Giovanni's Saturday morning cartoon villain level of overacting, but it only goes so far. The acting is made even worse by the fact that movie's entire soundtrack (literal soundtrack, that is) had to be recreated in post. When the movie was actually shot, Jeffrey Alan Miller tried to record everything with his camera's microphone but, after the fact, he realized that the sound was unusable, meaning all of the actors had to rerecord their dialogue in ADR. Because of that, the movie has that same odd feel to it as all of those European films made from the 60's on into the 90's, when sound wasn't recorded on set at all, but those movies at least had better luck in getting the newly recorded dialogue to match the lip movements. Here, even though they spoke English both during filming and in re-recording, the ADR is often too early or too late, something that Chinese kung-fu and Japanese kaiju flicks often get derided for, but at least they had something of an excuse. In addition, the filmmakers seemed to have decided to just focus on re-recording the dialogue and paid little attention to the other sounds that were necessary. You'll have stretches of the movie where there's no sound at all, save for maybe the music (and sometimes, that's not even present), only for it to come back in when one of the characters makes a sound or says something. Occasionally, you'll hear stock sound effects, but other times, you won't hear anything, even when you should, such as when Liz kicks a van's tire or when car doors close, adding even more to the movie's feeling of incompetence.
While we're still on the subject of the characters and actors, another thing about this movie that instantly turns me off is the main characters being Goths. I try not to be prejudiced towards anybody or their lifestyle, no matter how strange it may feel to me, but there's something about Goths that I just don't like me. Maybe it's because, when I saw them dressed in all black, wearing weird jewelry, sometimes with a Satanic aesthetic to them, and with their finger and toenails painted black, I can't help but think, "Would you stop with whatever statement you're trying to make? No one cares." I also don't care for the attitudes they tend to have, coming off as so dour and jaded, not caring about anything, and also how they try to say that they're ostracized and others don't understand them, when they tend to make themselves outcasts by acting like they're simply superior and other people can't comprehend them. That may be an unfair generalization, and I could be basing a lot of it off the fact that there's a Goth cousin of mine who's a complete douchebag and thinks he's smarter than everyone else (which he isn't), but I just find Goths to be off-putting, their dour attitudes making me think, "Get over yourselves. Your life does not suck that bad." Like I said earlier, the filmmakers tried to make these characters sympathetic in their being looked at as freaks, especially with Melissa and her awful home life, but I still find myself not really caring about them, as Melissa particularly comes off as just vengeful against the whole world. If any Goths happen to read this, I don't have any disrespect to you personally, it's just that I can't relate to your lifestyle and image at all.
You need only look at the movie to see what an amateur job it truly was. It has that no budget, shot on digital look that has become very common among student and bottom of the barrel, independent filmmakers in recent years. Amazingly, the nighttime scenes are not totally incomprehensible, nor were they done day-for-night, as is often the case when low-rent movies of this nature attempt to shoot at night. It's even more of a miracle that the night scenes look as nice as they do when you know that they couldn't move around the generator they'd bought for the lights they used and they also couldn't get the lights themselves closer to the action due to a lack of cables. However, no amount of decent lighting can change the fact that the movie has no sense of action or scale in the slightest. Due to the lack of much sound because of the necessary ADR work done after the fact, the uninspired, barren landscape where much of the major scenes take place, and the pathetic choreography and blocking of the scenes, you never feel that there's anything at stake or that the confrontations between Longshank and the vampires are at all significant, no matter how much the constant metal soundtrack wants you to think there is. The moment that best sums this up for me is when, after he has the unconscious Melissa in his grasp, Giovanni prepares to summon up what's necessary for the blood sacrifice. He steps out into this clearing to do so and, he's trying to gather up the power, a moth or some sort of bug just flits by him, not reacting to his supposedly malevolent presence at all. It may seem like a minor nitpick but that little thing killed whatever chance this movie had of me taking it seriously, akin to how, in the Channel Awesome movie,
Suburban Knights, you see pedestrians walking casually in the background while an important battle is supposed to be happening nearby. Yes, that movie wasn't meant to be taken 100% seriously, but
Vampegeddon is on that same level.
Vampire movies may often be sensual purely by concept but this film's level of crudeness and forced sexual humor is eye-rolling, to say the least. The fact that the vampire hunter is named Richard Longshank... really? Did that sound funny to David Hayes even before he put it down on paper? I'm not kidding when I said that I could feel a little bit of my soul die every time I wrote that name on here. And then, there's all of these remarks Giovanni makes about Longshank's sexual ambivalence when his soul is inside Liz's body are both weird and uncomfortable. The most egregious part of this is when Longshank knocks Giovanni down to the ground near the end and, as he stands over him, the count remarks, "Well, it looks like you
finally have me where you want me, Longshank, but you don't have the wood." God, did Hayes think that Dracula actually wanted Prof. Van Helsing's wood or something? I wonder whether or not it was a coincidence that Hayes also played the sleazy, perverted Rizzowski, who makes unmistakable sexual gestures and references while talking to Melissa about the book, the front of which he rubs while holding it in front of his crotch when you first see it. And let's not forget how Igor can be a bit touchy-feely towards his master. All of this makes the other erotic aspects of the story, such as the lesbianism with Melissa, the sexual situations involving the vampires and the girls, with the ritual Giovanni plans to enact being of a very sexual nature, and all of the nudity, come off as downright dirty for the sheer sake of it.
Vampegeddon definitely doesn't skimp on the gore, which was a very wise move, considering that the movie has very little else that it can offer. You see vampires getting staked, people getting bitten into and gnawed on in various places, a guy getting his head knocked off in a manner not unlike Julius' death in
Jason Takes Manhattan (though this is much gorier than that) and his buddy getting his blood all over his face, blood spraying all over a windshield when the vampire Mona rips Ted's neck out, and lots of bloodletting during both the summoning rituals and Giovanni's intended blood sacrifice with Melissa, as he spreads his blood all over her bare chest, then fills a bowl up with it and pours it all over her. So, it's got plenty of the red stuff but, the thing is, it's the kind of blood effects that anybody could do with the barest amount of money and resources. It just looks amateurish and not on the level of what you would see in a movie featuring the work of KNB, Tom Savini, and the like (though, in all fairness, the big sprays of blood don't look too shabby). And as I said earlier, the makeup design of the vampires leaves a lot to be desired. With Giovanni and his male cronies, it looks like they were going for a Nosferatu kind of feel, with how they're not depicted as good-looking in the slightest, have pale skin, bald heads, dark circles around the eyes, and fingers with long, claw-like fingernails (as you can see, Giovanni has a strange covering he wears on his right middle finger), but they just come off as a complete joke. Thanks to that one comment I read, I can't help but now see them as looking like Uncle Fester, a feeling that's not helped by the bad acting and the cheap costumes they're wearing. Seriously, Giovanni's costume looks like a bargain bin Dracula suit you could buy for nothing. The female vampires (which are actually billed as "vampire sluts" in the credits) look a little better, as they're just sexy, nude women with gray skin and jet black hair, but there's not much else to say about them.
Sadly, the movie also tries for something that a no budget flick like this should never, ever do, and that's visual effects. They don't try it much, thankfully, but when they do, it looks absolutely horrendous. At the beginning of the movie, when Longshank has his first confrontation with Giovanni, the vampire grabs onto him and soars up into the sky in an attempt to keep him from staking him. The green screen work they did is very obvious in the close-ups and, in the wide shots, you can see strange, flickering effects going on with the images of the actors. Longshank falling to his death after he stakes Giovanni is also bad but, mercifully, they cut it before it goes on too long. Near the end, the possessed Liz suddenly creates a light out of her finger, moves her finger around in the air (makes me think of those old Disney Channel bumpers where an actor from their shows would pretend to draw the Disney with a magic wand), and then forms it into an orb in her hand that she uses to point the way back to their van. When Giovanni begins the ceremony he intends to perform with Melissa, he summons some flames behind him that are nothing more than really cheap computer effects that you could probably do on your own computer at home. And the same goes for another fire effect used when Giovanni is vanquished after being staked. One effect, though, that is fairly decent is a shot of the book Melissa finds opening itself and flipping some pages, before revealing and unfolding a map that was hidden inside it. While it was probably digital, it looks like stop-motion and is akin to similar shots of Necronomicon in the
Evil Dead films. And the effect of Longshank's soul first entering Liz's body is fair enough too, as is the effect of her reflection morphing into his image beforehand.
The movie starts off with a narration detailing how, after the novel
Dracula was published in London (I would complain about how they say it was in 1890, even though it wasn't until 1897 but, it's
Vampegeddon; that's the least of our problems) and raised the awareness of vampires in Europe, Count Giovanni fled to America, with Richard Longshank hot on his heels. As the narrator talks about how Longshank tracked Giovanni to Arizona and managed to kill nearly all of his minions, you see Longshank and his wife, Marissa, arrive at a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere. After walking among the townspeople, one of whom is sporting a very fake rifle, they head to the church, where a priest thanks Longshank for coming and asks Marissa to wait for them at the hotel. Later, as sunset nears, Longshank goes to see Marissa at the hotel, telling her to wait for him, and she says that she'll never leave without him. With that, Longshank heads out into the desert, until he sees the silhouette of a Native American woman waiting for him on a hill, while standing in front of the setting sun (not a bad image, actually). She waves to him, revealing that her arm has a large chunk bitten out of it, and in the next scene, Longshank joins her by a campfire. She gives him a cup of liquor, and when he has his back turned, she grabs a straight razor and is about to attack him with it. However, he turns around, grabs her arm, and punches her away. She then runs and jumps on a blanket on the ground that's actually covering a large panel, before running off into the wilderness. Pulling the blanket off and revealing the large panel, he reveals it to be a vampire's grave and he quickly stakes the bloodsucker. He does the same to a couple of other vampires that are hiding under similar panels and after that, burns their graves. A young boy crawls across the ground towards him and, after checking to make sure he's not a vampire, rubs the image of a cross on his shirtless torso with oil (or maybe it's blood, I don't know) before sending him off.
That done, Longshank goes to face Giovanni, yelling for him to come out and face him. He hears some cackling around him but can't pinpoint where it's coming from, prompting him to fall to his knees and let out an anguished yell. Igor then rushes at him from behind but Longshank swings around and stakes with a wooden cross that has a sharp point, telling him he hopes he never sees him again. Igor collapses to the ground, yelling for his master's help, while Longshank turns upon hearing Giovanni's voice to see him standing there, holding an almost completely naked woman in his arms. He laughs evilly before disappearing into thin air, as Longshank pulls out another stake and yells for Giovanni to face him. Giovanni appears to his right and sets down the woman before preparing to attack Longshank. They circle each other, before Giovanni swipes at Longshank, only to miss. Longshank charges at him with the stake, trying to stab him with it, but Giovanni manages to grab both of his hands and force him back. He then shoots up into the sky with Longshank, thinking that he won't kill him since it would mean falling to his death. But, much to Giovanni's surprise, Longshank declares, "So be it," and jams the stake into his chest. Giovanni lets go and Longshank falls, landing on the edge of a rocky patch of ground, as blood drains from the back of his head down to the rocks below.
The movie then skips ahead to present day, and after Melissa and Mona are introduced, there's a moment where the two of them jumped from behind by a couple of hooded figures dressed totally in black. However, the girls manage to easily overpower them and pin them down to the ground, where it's revealed that it's just Ted and Kent. While Mona is just slightly annoyed, Melissa is not happy at all, angrily shoving Kent off of her and punching him hard in the arm before they head out to their car to go pick up Liz from her job. After doing so, and driving to Liz's house so she can change her clothes, they head out to a spot near an old bridge that night. They sit around a rock and, while the others chug some booze, Melissa lights some candles that she places around the rock. They start their ritual, speaking in a chant that they hope will invoke some vampires and grant them immortality, with Melissa cutting her palm and allowing the blood to drip into a glass, before the others do the same. Once everyone's blood has been combined, Melissa adds some booze to it and they each take a drink from it, before joining hands and repeatedly saying, "We now call upon you." Suddenly, the candles are blown out and they hear cackling nearby. While everyone else is freaked out, especially since Melissa admits that she made up the incantation, Melissa herself is ecstatic that it seems to be working and eagerly invites the vampires to come to them. That's when Hooter and Scumbag come running out of the bushes at them, yelling while wearing some Halloween vampire masks. Enraged at this, Melissa pulls Scumbag's mask off and punches him, while Hooter laughs obnoxiously. She storms off, as Hooter yells, "Oh, boy, vampire freaks. Fuck you!", while flipping them the bird before running off into the dark.
The next day, while walking to school, Melissa passes by a house whose garage door is closed, only for it loudly open and the man inside admonishes her for planning to just go by without looking at what he has on sale in there. After introducing himself as Rizzowski, he allows her to look at his stuff before showing her something he's sure she'd be interested in: an old, black leather book with a pentagram on its cover. He tells her that the title reads
Kindred in Blood, but he refuses to allow her to look at it without divulging some unnamed "information." When she gets frustrated with him, he pulls it away and is about to put it up, when she earnestly tells him that she really wants it. Hearing that, he asks her if she'll take it of her own free will and when she says yes, he lets her have it for nothing, telling her that it's the life. He then chases her out of his garage, telling her to get, and as she runs down the gravel path, he yells, "You can feel it, can't you?!" Laughing maniacally and talking about she should be careful what she wishes for, Rizzowski is then surrounded by some vampire women who rise up around him and start biting into him anywhere they can. He seems to be getting off on this, groaning, "That's what I'm talking about! Oh, ho, fuck me!" The garage door then slams shut by itself. At the college campus, Melissa joins up with her friends and shows them the book, telling them that she thinks this could be the way to summon vampires for real. When Mona suggests they do the ritual that night, Melissa says that the book talks about finding the exact right spot and none of them have the slightest idea what that's referring to. Liz is totally okay with that, as she's completely put off by the book, feeling that there's something not right about it, and the others tease her about it. Melissa is deliberately trying to push the book into her face, when it suddenly flies out of her hand, hits the ground, opens up by itself, flips a bunch of pages, revealing a map hidden within it, which proceeds to unfold itself. Melissa picks the map up and as they look at it, they see that it's pointing them where they need to go, which happens to be a spot called Massacre Lane, named so because a madman killed his entire family there. Despite this, Melissa isn't deterred at all and says that they're going there that night in order to do the ritual. Although some aren't so sure, they all eventually agree to it. Unbeknownst to them, Hooter and Scumbag were eavesdropping on them from above and plan to mess with them yet again that night.
That evening, Melissa has a dream where she's lying on a mattress in nothing but a black bra and pair of panties, rubbing her front erotically, as steam surrounds the mattress, which appears to be in a black void. Giovanni rises up at the head of the mattress and tells her, "Soon, my dear. Soon, you will know the pleasure of necrotic flesh. The truth is in the blood." He lunges down towards her neck and gnaws at it, seeming to enhance her pleasure. But then, Melissa wakes up in her actual bedroom to the sound of her parents having one of their many violent arguments. She gets dressed and, not wanting to get caught up in the chaos, exits the house through her bedroom window, hearing her father slap her mother in the other room. She meets up with her friends outside of Liz's work, pile into their van, and drive to Massacre Lane, where they disembark and walk to the precise spot where they need to be. Elsewhere, Hooter and Scumbag drive off to the same place, ready to cause the group more trouble.
With darkness having fallen, Melissa leads the group to the spot, following the path on the map, as Ted tells them the story of Massacre Lane. Eventually, they reach it, which turns out to be an assuming clearing next to a rocky ridge. They build a campfire and settle around it, Ken taking a swig of gin (which he hates), while Melissa looks through the incantations in the book. She hears a voice call out to her and thinks it was someone in the group. None of them said anything and the boys tease her about now hearing voices. Melissa is ready to get down to business and makes everyone else confirm that they are indeed up for it before proceeding. They form the circle, join hands, and Melissa begins reading the incantation, when the fire suddenly flares up much more than it already was. Reading that it begins with a kiss, the group passes kisses along, with Melissa kissing Kent, who then passes it along to Liz, then to Ted, Mona, and then back to Melissa. After they share a lesbian kiss, the fire flares again, and you're then shown a vision of Melissa on the mattress again, this time wearing a see-through, red-laced nightie over nothing but a pair of red panties. She's on all fours and facing Giovanni, who tells her that she will be the means for his resurrection. He opens a vein beneath his right hand and allows her to suck on it, telling her that she'll feel ecstasy for eternity, as he breathes sharply from the sensation. He then tells her that, in exchange for eternal life, she'll serve him. The longer it goes on, the more Giovanni insists that the time for his resurrection is at hand, as Melissa suddenly hisses, revealing that she now has a pair of fangs, before going back to sucking. In reality, she and Mona start making out, the fire flaring once more, and as a result of this, Mona is shown sucking on Giovanni's other wrist. In reality, the two of them move in on Liz, who's reluctant to join in, and as the fire flares, Giovanni is now watching Melissa and Mona making it out on the mattress, as some other vampire women join in. Liz is there too but, while she's dressed as provocatively as Melissa and Mona, she's struggling and is not enjoying this orgy. In the real world, she pushes Melissa and Mona away and runs off; elsewhere, Giovanni's hand breaks through the ground.
The vampire and his minions have been restored to life, Giovanni exclaiming, "Freedom!", upon being resurrected. He sends Igor away, telling him to go prepare his bride. Elsewhere, Liz tires from running and sits down at the base of a tree, sobbing to herself. She looks at a large shard of glass on the ground near her and sees her reflection turn into the image of Longshank. He tells her, "I'm sorry," and she simply responds, "I understand," before touching the glass. A white mist pours out of it and up into Liz's face, as she recoils and groans. With that, Liz's demeanor changes completely, as she speaks in an English accent, "Bloody fucking vampires,
again." She heads back to the spot of the campfire, where the possessed Melissa and Mona are having their way with Ted and Kent. Liz shows up, yelling at them to stop, and when the girls look up and hiss at her, showing that they have fangs, she walks over and flings them on their backs. She then holds them down by their faces and says an incantation that exorcises them. They pass out for a little bit, as the terrified Ted and Kent tell Liz to kick their asses, but then the girls come to, having no clue what just happened. Liz tells the boys that it's all fine now, that it was a low-grade possession, and that Giovanni is planning something, while the others are confused by her sudden accent and don't know what she's talking about. She's about to lead them out, when Igor shows up. Everyone jumps behind Liz, who just walks over to Igor, who's surprised that she knows his name. When she says, "I never forget a goddamn leech, especially after I put him down a few times," Igor realizes he's talking to Longshank, who punches him in the face and sends him running off, crying. Liz then rejoins the others, who are even more confused as to what is going on and wondering how they get out. As Liz removes her jacket, she and the others hear the sound of vampires hissing nearby, Liz commenting, "Looks like we've been tattled on." She then tells them that they have to prepare and sits down in front of the campfire, beginning to explain what's happening.
Nearby, Hooter and Scumbag, sporting the same masks from before, see the campfire and hunker down to eavesdrop. The possessed Liz lays it all out for them, explaining that Longshank's soul was revived along with Giovanni's and that he'll leave Liz's body when the vampires are defeated. Melissa then hears Giovanni's voice speaking to her, telling her that Longshank's interference will doom her to spend the rest of her life in this town that she hates and that he can make her dreams come true. Liz then tells them that the vampires will be there soon and that they have to ready themselves. Hooter and Scumbag, meanwhile, prepare to harass the group, when they're faced by a trio of Giovanni's minions who come up behind them. Hooter punches one in the face and he recoils with a punch that knocks Hooter's head clean off. Blood spews out of the bloody stump and all over Scumbag, who's so messed up that he enjoys it, yelling, "Yeah!", as the vampires prepare to advance on him. Back at the group, they hear the vampires hiss and Liz tells them that they're coming. Melissa, holding a dagger, rushes at Liz with it, but she clocks her instantly, sending her down to the ground. The vampires emerge from all sides, as Giovanni and Igor approach from the front. Kent tries to charge at Giovanni with the dagger he took from Melissa but is forced back by his power, none of them being able to do anything as he picks Melissa up. Liz rushes at him as he backs away with Melissa, but Igor blocks her way. Liz manages to easily put him down with a headbutt, while the others are jumped from behind by the other vampires. Mona gets cornered against the side of the ridge, while Kent is saved when Ted cracks a bottle over the head of the vampire threatening him. Liz pins Igor down on the ground but, seeing the danger Mona is in, she throws her stake and gets one of the vampires attacking her. When that vampire drops, the others escape, as Liz tells her comrades that they're leaving as well. But, as they walk away from the spot, Igor jumps Kent from behind, wrestles him to the ground, and tears his throat open before the others know what happened. Igor then runs away, while Ted throws up (or poorly pretends to, rather) and Mona futilely shakes his body while calling to him. Liz pushes Mona out of the way and stakes Kent to ensure he doesn't resurrect and come after them. Mona has lost all hope, saying that they might as well resign themselves to death, but Liz tells them they best leave. She then shows them the way out by creating a glowing orb that leads them.
Meanwhile, Giovanni carries Melissa to a clearing and sets her down on the ground. Telling his disciples that it's time to finish what he started, he orders them to prepare his "bride," while he walks over to a nearby spot and uses his power to create a pentagram in the dirt, with small fires by the star's points. His disciples remove Melissa's clothes until she's wearing only her bra and underwear, after which she stands up and walks over to Giovanni to the center of the pentagram, where he's calling her. He has her lay back down in that spot and tells his disciples to bind her. They plant wooden stakes in the dirt by her hands and tie her wrists to them, while also tying her feet together. Once she's completely immobile, Giovanni crouches down beside her and ghosts his hands above her body, panting and inhaling very sharply (which he always does anyway but the circumstances make it even more uncomfortable than usual). Elsewhere, Liz, Mona, and Ted reach their van. Liz tells them to stay there, as she's going to go get Melissa, but Ted thinks they should just get out of dodge. When he makes the mistake of grabbing Liz's arm, she puts him in an arm-lock, slams his face on the van's hood, and tells him what will happen if Giovanni manages to complete the ceremony involving Melissa. With that, she turns Ted loose and tells them to wait, adding that, if she's not back by dawn, they should leave town. Back at the site of the ceremony, Giovanni unhooks Melissa's bra, and when she briefly awakens, he immediately puts her back under hypnosis. He cuts open the palm of his left hand and streaks the blood into the image of a pentagram on Melissa's torso.
Liz heads down a path, announcing to Giovanni that she's coming for him, and like in the prologue, she hears the sound of Igor laughing nearby. She says, "For a glorified valet, you're very, very annoying," but her smugness starts to dissipate when Igor manages to smack her without being seen. He does it a second time, this time hitting her hard enough to give her a bleeding lip, but then, she readies her stake and listens for him. When he comes at her from behind, she swings around and stakes him. He collapses to the ground, saying, "You can't win," to which she responds, "You can't live," forcing the stake deeper into his chest, as blood gurgles out of his mouth until he expires. At the site of the ritual, Giovanni is given a bowl and a knife, which he uses to cut himself and then fill the bowl up with his blood. He raises the bowl up in the air and pours it onto Melissa, who momentarily awakens and screams at the sight before passing out again. After pouring all of the blood out, Giovanni gives yet another over-the-top, villainous laugh. Back at the van, Ted and Mona are waiting for Liz, Ted trying to comfort his girlfriend, who appears distraught and on the brink of hysterics. He assures her that they're alright but she says that they're not (the audio of that line is so muted that I wonder if it's the one piece of onset dialogue that ended up in the final film). He asks why she would say that, seeing as how they can just get in their van and go if the need arises, and she says, "It'll never be alright again." She then turns around and reveals that she has fangs, before grabbing him and shoving him down onto the hood. He tries to fight her off but she digs into his neck and severs his jugular so severely that blood sprays all over the windshield.
Just as Giovanni is about to complete the ritual, he hears Liz yell that his time is up. He tells his disciples to deal with her but they prove to be completely ineffective. They run to one spot, waiting for her to show up, and she jumps them from behind, shoving them both back and beating the crap out of one when he tries to come at her again. The other grabs her from behind but she manages to flip over and free herself. She's faced with both of them again but she kicks them senseless and easily fights them off when they try to disarm. She's able to knock one of them to the ground and drive the stake through his heart. The other pulls the stake out and tries to attack her with it but, again, she easily fights him off, able to kick him away when he grabs her leg and forces her down to the ground at one point, and grabs his hand that's still holding the stake and is able to jam it into his heart. Giovanni is just about to plunge his dagger into Melissa but Liz runs to him and grabs his hand, telling him that his time is now. Giovanni knocks her off of him and flees, Liz taking the opportunity to free Melissa and wake her up with a hard slap to the face. She then faces off with Giovanni, going for a stab with a stake, but he manages to grab her hand and put her in an arm-lock, though she easily breaks free. Melissa tries to run for it but Giovanni uses his influence to make her stop and come back to him. Seeing this, Liz throws the stake but Giovanni catches it in midair and drops it to the ground. He charges at her, getting a punch to the gut, but he's then able to get his arms around Liz and starts to squeeze, a loud cracking sound from her bones filling the night air. But, Melissa stabs Giovanni in the back with the dagger, making him drop Liz, and Melissa awakens her with a slap as well, calling her "Liz Shank." Liz gets to her feet and sees that Giovanni has removed the dagger from his back. The vampire charges at her but she retaliates with some punches and shoves him to the ground. Liz stands over him, Giovanni commenting on how she doesn't have the necessary "wood" to finish him off, when Melissa tosses her one of the stakes she was bound to. Liz promptly plunges the stake into Giovanni's heart and he lets out a bunch of melodramatic moaning, throaty growls, and death rattles, before disintegrating in a quick flash of fire.
After Liz gives Melissa a cloak to cover up with, the two of them walk back to the van, where they find Ted's body (though they don't acknowledge it all). Longshank then realizes that his soul hasn't left Liz's body and notices a pentagram-shaped tattoo on the side of Melissa's neck. He tells her that this means she's betrothed to a vampire and that other vampires will now be after her until the marriage is consummated with her death at the hands of a master. He also says that he has no choice but to protect her from such a thing happening, before trying to start the van up by kicking the tire (with no sound whatsoever). Realizing he has a lot to learn about this day and age, the two of them decide to slip into Hooter and Scumbag's abandoned car, with Melissa driving. After an awkward bit where Melissa asks Longshank if he were gay when he was alive, and commenting about how they both like girls and are free to do so with each other, given the circumstances, Melissa turns the engine over and the two of them drive out of town, since it's not safe for them to be there anymore. As the sun comes up, they drive by a man with an open shirt, revealing that he has an image of a cross on his chest (I'm guessing that's meant to be the spirit of the boy who Longshank gave the image to at the beginning but I'm not sure). While they head down in the road, in a shot that comes close to
Werewolf levels of being longer than it should, Mona opens the trunk and announces that there's a new bitch in town. The movie ends with one last shot of them driving off into the distance, on a note that I'm sure was meant to lead into sequels or what, but thank God in heaven that it didn't, because then I would
really be about ready to murder Newt Cox.
As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate
Vampegeddon, it crosses another line by having nearly the whole music soundtrack be made up of nothing but metal. I cannot stand metal. I don't have anything against people who are into it but, to me, it's nothing but a bunch of guys screaming like complete maniacs rather than actual music. I can barely stand to sit through the ending credits of
Freddy vs. Jason because of the insane metal songs that play over them. But in
Vampegeddon, just about every musical piece you hear is a heavy metal song. Sometimes, they go with other kinds of songs or music (there's one bit that sounds a lot like the music from the
Total Recall game on the NES) but, more often than not, metal. A few of the songs and music choices aren't bad but, on the whole, I hate the soundtrack for this movie about as much as the movie itself. They may have thought it gave the scenes impact and made the confrontations feel epic and badass but it really just makes it all feel stupid and desperate to be cool. Because those scenes have no feeling of energy or high stakes whatsoever, it comes off like the filmmakers are going, "This movie's cool and epic! Trust us, it is!" No, it's not.
Is that good enough for you, Newt?! Huh?! Has my torment satisfied you yet, you freaking sadist?! If not, well too bad, because that's all the time I'm wasting talking about this shit. Seriously, college production or not, this movie is nothing but a massive, stinking turd, one full of bad acting and characters, horrible ADR dialogue and sound effects, ridiculous, forced attempts at crude, sexual humor, amateurish gore, makeup, and visual effects, a lousy metal soundtrack that plays through the whole film, and just very pedestrian movie-making all around. Aside from Liz becoming a badass when Longshank possesses her, some occasional gore effects that aren't that bad, and one or two surprisingly nice shots, there is nothing that makes this movie worth watching, even at just 75 minutes. In fact, saying
anything positive about it, no matter how minute, just about caused my brain to try to crawl out of my head through my ears. And would you believe that Newt actually tried to contact Shout! Factory, Synapse, and other companies about this? He got no response, big surprise, but he is that determined to make this into a cult film. Newt, no one cares about this movie. Not the people you've forced to watch it, as all that did was produce extreme venom towards you on our part, not anybody who worked on it (I've heard that one of them was very vocal on the defunct IMDB message boards about how everybody involved got nothing for it), and not people who have stumbled across it and forgotten about it a second later. I talked about it at length like you wanted but this movie will never, ever have a cult following, so just shut up about it and move on! Everyone else, though, take care. ("Longshank." Ugh, where's the Advil?)
