Grave of the Vampire (1975)

 Rapist vampire… let me say that again. Rapist. Vampire. This story is about a vampire who is specifically a rapist who then brutally (yet bloodlessly) kills his victims. And you know what? I’m fine with watching bad movies on a DVD that I bought for five bucks. I really am. But I’m just not sure how I feel about watching a movie about a rapist vampire. Personally I think rape is pretty serious business and if you’re going to do a movie with rape in it than it should damn well be the central theme and not just a plot point to serve as a motivational backdrop for the main character.

 Ok, so a couple is making out at a graveyard, marriage is proposed and it ends with a rapist vampire killing the dude and raping the girl, mercifully off screen. But their union is… ‘blessed’ with a vampire baby. The baby grows up on his mother’s blood and swears vengeance on the rapist vampire father. I’m pretty sure this is the basis for Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’. The plot goes nowhere at first, with most of the people you’d think would be the main character dying off pretty quickly. The full-grown vampire baby isn’t introduced until much later in the film. It’s a mess.

 I could barely finish this film. It starts slow and the main character is just not that interesting. You can’t even like the villain since, well, he’s a rapist and you can’t make rapists likeable. Don’t even bother. It’s not fun. It’s not frightening. Quit frankly you’d be better off watching Twilight. And I don’t say that often. Part of the Dark Moon Thriller Collection

Fangs of the Living Dead

Holy crap this is a confusing one. The plot is all over the place and we’re never really told why things are happening and when we are told nothing makes sense. About the only thing this movie has going for it is the sexiness of its characters. Pretty much every character in this movie looks like an Italian supermodel. And for the ladies out there (and some men), there’s even a scene where this sexy guy gets put in chains with his shirt. If this movie had just made that jump to soft-core porn it might have been more watchable. As it is I’d rather get my sexy Italians from actually competent movies. So this girl finds out she’s a Duchess and that means gets a castle… or something. So leaves her sexy Doctor boyfriend to go see the castle near this town with sexy barmaids. But when she gets to the castle she finds that sexy vampires inhabit it. She’s forced to stay there by the shear sexiness of the head vampire. So her sexy boyfriend and his sexy comic foil sidekick person go to see what’s what. There’s some light bondage, vampirism is involved and there’s a surprise and kind of funny resolution. The plot should be simple but they muck it up with flashbacks and confusing plot cul-de-sacs. It’s boring and just not that interesting except for the pure sexiness involved. Basically it’s pretty skipable. Not bad enough to be good, not good enough to be fun, and even the sexiness of it’s characters aren’t enough to save this wreck of a film. Watch something else. Part of the Vampire Werewolf Dark Moon Collection, bought at Walmart for five bucks.