Set in the winding streets and dark alleyways of riverside London, the story centers on Ruby and Vincent. Ruby works as a lap dancer whose "pimp" is intent on promoting her as a call girl. In a dark alleyway Vincent was 'turned' by a prostitute, and after weeks of battling with his condition, he has finally give in to his addiction: blood.
Vincent and Ruby meet through a chance encounter in a London café and fall in love during one special night. Vincent tries to feed on Ruby to satisfy his addiction which goes against his heart. Ruby escapes, but has now been 'turned' and has also become a vampire. Ruby has come from a very dark past, and has always had to be a fighter. Her father was a heroin addict who killed himself in the next room when she was a little girl. After she has turned into a vampire, she keeps getting creepy flashbacks about him. Unsure of what is happening to her, she returns to a remorseful Vincent who convinces her to stay and work things out. Together hey try to go 'cold turkey' on their blood addiction. Ruby's previous 'owners' want their star girl back and Matt, a man from her recent past, seeks her out.
Made for under $100,000, the production value is exceptionally good. Since the movie was low budget, you might expect acting typical for alow budget movie, but surprisingly the actors did a really good job. I especially liked Giles Alderson as Vincent. Lawrence Pearce also found some beautiful women to play the strippers. They are some of the hottest women I've seen in a vampire flick, and yes, there's plenty of nudity. This movie has an addicting sexiness that grabs you from the start. In fact, this movie has a sexiness that most vampire movies forget to include.
The writing is very Tarantino-esquire and his influence is obvious as well. Not that this is a bad thing, some of the conversations are fantastic and this movie offers some decent quote-ables. We also get some really great scenes, for instance, after Ruby turns, she is involved in a dominatrix fantasy with a John. He's bound, naked and bending over. She then grabs a strap-on dildo and is about to apply it when she faints from the changes that she's going through.
This movie seems very misogynistic at times. There are several scenes where women are beaten. One woman is beaten to death by a man who then proceeds to lick the blood off of her face.
The action scenes were decent, but there could have been more of them and there wasn't too much gore, but vampire movies shouldn't have all that much. There is, however, an ample amount of blood that is used very nicely. The way this movie was made, it's almost hard to tell that it's low budget.
What sets this movie apart from other vampire movies is the vampires themselves. They are portrayed as real people, but just have been dealt a "bad hand." They have no supernatural powers except for some enhanced senses and there was no evidence of them being stronger than an ordinary human. The vampires in this movie are junkies. Their addiction is blood, and when Ruby is sitting in a hotel room trying to quit "cold turkey" she was going through withdrawal. This reminded me a bit of "Trainspotting".
The bites are also different from typical vampires. Instead of the two marks on the neck, we are shown a full human bite mark. The standard weaknesses aren't in play either. They are not immortal. Holy water and garlic don't work, although sunlight causes their skin to crisp up. It seems the best way to kill them is by a stake through the heart, a bullet in the head, or by draining all of their blood. Of course any ordinary human would die with these methods as well.
While this was very good, there is some bad but not much. The only bad I can think of is that it's not as graphic as I would have liked and the story moves very slowly and plays out as a horror/drama.
This is Lawrence Pearce's first film and it's done very well. Like I said, it runs a bit slow and it's more dramatic than action-packed, but if you like vampire movies that are out of the norm, you may enjoy this movie.
Even though the movie moved really slow and more action would have been very welcome, I'm going to recommend this.
