Project Vampire (1993)

We're living in a second golden age for B-Movies - with the maturation of the video market, we once again approach the point where anyone with minimal resources can make a movie; just get an SP BetaCam or a digital videocamera and pay for the FilmLook process afterwards. This is the good news, but it's also the bad news: any schmoe with a half-baked idea can make a movie (movie review from "write my essay for me" service).

 

 

Consider this, Project Vampire. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time:

 

The evil Dr. Klaus, a vampire, has perfected a chemical injection to turn people into vampires. He has begun marketing it to exclusive circles in several countries, promising it as a life-extending treatment, but before distributing it he psychicly charges it so that those who, after two or three injections, become full vampires will obey his will. He also creates a temporary antidote which allows vampires to go out in the sunlight. But one of his assistants/research subjects manages to maintain his own conscience and escape, runs into a friendly nurse, and works to Dr. Klaus' downfall.

 

 

Hey, it ain't Dances With Wolves, but it's a passable plot for a micro-budget b-flick, right? That's what I thought, too, but somehow it fails to deliver, even though all the technical aspects are adequate: Lighting is adequate, sound is adequate, editing is adequate, acting is (more or less) adequate, makeup work is adequate (though too skimpy).

 

 

So what blows? The script, naturally. The storyline remains formless and uncompelling. Far be it from me to blow the horn of Syd Field-style cookie-cutter scripts, but I think audiences have come to expect a three-act structure: twenty minutes of intro at the start, twenty-minutes of wrap-up at the end, and something else meaningful to fill the middle, all moving toward the conclusion. With Project Vampire, I kept waiting for it to get good, and I was still waiting when the closing credits rolled.

 

 

 

It's specifically the UV light which burns the vampires. I guess they also can't stand hospitals, libraries, government buildings, or any other building lit primarily with ultraviolet tubes.

 

 

Car chases aren't exciting when nothing actually happens. The car speeds down the street, the pursung car follows; the car rounds a corner, the pursuing car follows; the car speeds down the next street, the pursuing car follows; the car cuts through a parking lot, the pursuing car follows... Isn't there a fruit stand somewhere around here?

 

 

Everyone's connected to the same (unnamed) university. Dr. Klaus lectures there, the nurse is attending classes there, the Chinese computer genius the good guys recruit has access to the mainframe... Talk about a microcosm!

 

 

 

I think anyone who can get a PhD from MIT would know English well enough to use particles and prepositions. This guy sounded like one of the villagers from Karate Kid 2.