Vampire Geoff Klein

Anyone of a certain age (forty plus) will have lived through the early days of home video. We remember the thrill of having home cinema for the first time. The problem was in the early days is that there really wasn't much out there to play in our bright, shiny, new entertainment machines.

So up sprung a number of dubious straight-to-video titles. And I'm not talking about video-nasties. I mean low budget, poorly made films released purely to cash in on our desire for the medium. Now, if you are like me then your memories of these films are rose tinted, enriched by the joy of having a VCR.

Vampire feels like it should have come out in those early days. It has the same kind of direction, plot, effects, setting and acting you got in those films. And I loved it just as much.

Once you get past the rather lame beginning, the vampire (Jason Carter from Babylon 5) being caught in a police sting, the plot is very deliberate and claustrophobic. It centres on a series of experiments being conducted on behalf of the US government to discover the facts about vampirism - presumably for the purpose of countering the threat. And as expected the scientists form an attachment to the bloodthirsty killing machine.

The pace is quite slow, most films with this amount of story would have taken a mere 80 minutes or so, not 110. And the action is rather missing to be honest. It's a vampire film with no real vampire action. But it is endearing - well at least to those of us who recognise it as an early 80s film out of time.

Page updated 18 July, 2010