Vegas Vampires

Well, I would've given this a half-point, if I'd been able; one is being generous. This makes John Carpenter's 'Vampires' look like fine film, and 'From Dusk Till Dawn' look like an academy award winner. Barely a plot, dialogue, uh... did anyone go to school?, special effects imported from a bad video game, vampire teeth that were 100 for 99 cents, characters that were such low-life losers that I was hoping the vamps would get them, just to put me out of my misery.

Someone should keep Daniel Baldwin away from the buffets, and let's hope the producers of this mess never get it into their heads again that they should make a movie. It wasn't even bad enough to be funny. Best line in the film? "Don't let him bite you!"

Tommy Lister is on hand as a police detective looking for the missing daughter of an affluent man, and runs into the vampire clan that have kidnapped her. A second plot has the detective's step-son going to Vegas to get hitched and running afoul of the same vampire clan. Yet a third plot has blacksploitation greats Richard Roundtree and Fred Williamson as ex-cops who go to Vegas for the hell of it and run afoul of, yup you guessed it. Other the vampire connection none of those three plots feel connected to one another in the least until the end when they had to be tied together somehow. It's done in a pretty convoluted way sadly. And it still felt like the writers had no clue what each other were doing. Plots are dismissed, and new ones take their place willy nilly. It definitely didn't help having 5 writers pen it. (too many cooks and all that). The thing that got me to rent this is the fact that Williamson (who also directed) and Roundtree were starring, both of which I respect and enjoy seeing a lot. But they have basically the shortest screen time of all the major characters and are a bit insubstantial. Still when they DO have scenes they're OK. Tommy Lister is the real star of the movie and he does the best job that he could have done with such ridiculousness. The one thing that REALLY got on my nerves bad (I mean besides the vampires dancing like zombies half the time), was the fact that logos on shirts were blurred out, and since a good deal of the cast wears a jersey during the first half of the film, this became extremely distracting and almost made the film unwatchable. The ending leaves room for a sequel, but I can quickly exclaim 'fangs, but no fangs' to that prospect. Oh and you might have noticed I didn't mention Baldwin in my review, this is simply because he's only on-screen a whopping two minutes or so of the film and is a glorified cameo. On a side note, the DVD is as bare-bones as can be with absolute zilch for extras. The movie and chapter stops is all you get.

Eye Candy: there's a gratuitous 5 girl topless dancing scene in the middle

My Grade: D

Officer Johnson (Tommy "Tiny"Lister) is tracking down a string of murders in Las Vegas and his son-in-law just happens to attract the attention of the local vampire ring. When his partner is murdered and a vampire is caught, Will he finally believe? Or does it take a super sexy nun to show him the vampire fighting way? Well, it is obviously the second option.

To start off, this is a great cast featuring "Tiny" (Friday), Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Daniel Baldwin (Vampires), Glenn Plummer (Saw II), and Kurupt (rap group, Tha Dogg Pound). There is also an appearance by K-ci & Jojo. And I did a bit of snooping around here and noticed an A. Demetrius Brown listed as Writer/ Executive Producer. Now that means he is either the guy serving time in prison or the kid from the band B2K that broke up.

Combining hip hop, vampires, Las Vegas, cop melodrama, and blaxploitation, this could have easily have been a failure. But it wasn't. Surprising, the production values were very high with great locations, fantastic musical backdrops, and an amusing cast.

There are some scenes and dialogue that are obviously corny. For instance, why would the vampires feed in public where they can, and do, get caught? And they break a rule that vampires cannot enter a residence unless invited. And that Black nun sure was sassy for a follower of the lord. But the silly scenes are overshadowed by some funny moments, like when a girl is running to her truck to get away and drops her keys right as she gets in. But before I could roll my eyes, she swung the door knocking the vampire over and took the keys from him. There is also a scene where Roundtree karate kicks a vampires head right off! There is a brief topless vampire orgy scene for anyone interested in that. Gore includes a decapitation, vampires burning in the sun, neck suckage, and bullet wounds. I just wished there was more of it and they focused less on the young kids. The "flying vampire" effects were simple, but effective too. Instead of hooking someone up on a wire and swinging them around, they added some effect afterwards to blur out the image and make it appear as though he is moving extremely fast.

IMDb will have this listed as Vegas Vamps (2003), but the actual DVD release is Feb. 27th 2007 under Vegas Vampires by Code Black Entertainment and runs at 89 minutes. The film quality is good and if it was shot on video, I couldn't tell. The SFX was good when it occurred, which wasn't enough.

DVD Extras: N/A. It was a screener and I cannot find any info from other sites.

Favorite Quote: Girl accidentally runs over her boyfriend in truck and asks him, "Oh my god! Are you okay?" Boyfriend replies, "No, you just hit me with a truck dumbass." Bottom Line: Pretty tame blaxploitation vampire flick with some fun to be had though.

Rating: 7/10

by Molly Celaschi

Overall, a rather bad movie with a few redeeming qualities. Vampires in Las Vegas run amok and are hunted by a variety of police officers, who eventually defeat the vampires with the help of a sexy nun. Naturally. There are a number of flaws in the movies: day turns to night and night to day in the middle of scenes; characters' appearances change between cut away scenes, only two vampires combusted when exposed to daylight while many others walked around during the day without problems. The number of gaffes in the film provide the viewer ample opportunity to play "find the error." The main premise of the movie seems adequate (hunting down a 300 year old vampire who has returned to seek a new wife), but there are too many sub-plots floating around that provide tenuous links to the main premise.

Three characters stand out for their contributions to this film. Eric Etenari does an excellent job as the main vampire's henchman, a smooth talking, lady's man who provides the boss with his victims. Comic relief is provided by two legendary stars of the 1970s, Fred Williamson (who also directed the movie) and Richard Roundtree (best known for his role as Shaft). In some sense, Vegas Vampires seemed to be an effort, though largely deficient, to remember the days of the blaxploitation films in which Roundtree and Williamson starred in the 1970s.

The hands down worst movie I have ever had the misfortune of watching. I can't believe I actually watched the whole movie and feel dumber as a result. This is truly a case of the train wreck syndrome and I simply could not stop watching because it was so awful. I kept thinking that it had to get better and was always amazed at how it progressively got worse. From the acting to the script to the editing to the photography, absolutely terrible. I can't believe that somebody actually made this movie and thought "wow, this is great piece of cinema!" If I could give it a lower rating than 1 star I would. I highly recommend this movie for all film students as an excellent example of what should never be done in cinema.