Patriarch Don Enrique Escudero hides a secret in his crypt: his vampire wife. With such a terrible curse on his family, he forbids his beautiful daughter Leonore (Amalia Fuentes) from marrying her beau, Daniel Castillo (Romeo Vasquez). Soon after, Leonore's brother Eduardo discovers his undead mother in the basement and is bitten (the idiot having thrown away his crucifix). Pretty soon there are vampires everywhere!
After Daniel dies in a coach crash (the brakes sabotaged by Eduardo), he returns as a ghost to strike fear into his killer (who knew that vamps were scared of ghosts?). Daniel's spirit is unable to prevent Leonore from being bitten by her brother, but she is saved from eternal damnation by a stake through the heart. As the Escudero mansion and its undead occupants are engulfed in flames, set alight by torch-bearing locals, Leonore's spirit joins Daniel in the afterlife.
Heavy on the familial melodrama, Curse of the Vampires is more cheesy Filipino soap opera than it is horror; even when the fangs are out, the film delivers little in the way of scares, the lack of chills not helped by a cheap, garish aesthetic achieved in no small part by the terrible use of primary coloured lighting, with the actors followed by spotlights being particularly distracting. Brunette babe Fuentes is very easy on the eye, all heaving bosom and big brown eyes, and makes the going a little less painful, and the ghostly shenanigans are fun. Just try to ignore all of those Filipino extras in blackface playing the Escuderos' servants #awkward.
