Director: Ted Nicolaou
Year: 1993
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
After escaping from the vampire lair, a woman continues the search for the deadly vampire and his bride in her sister with the help of her friend only to have the local authorities disbelieving in their story which complicates matters until they finally are forced together to stop them.
Review:
This was an enjoyable if somewhat flawed entry. Once again, this one manages to get plenty of mileage out of it's Gothic trappings, which are kept to a high majority of the time throughout here. The opening resurrection ceremony, featuring the demonic hag performing the ritual on the girl by slicing her arm and using the blood to reanimate the other vampire or the discovery of the bloodied and mangled bodies from the previous encounter gives this a great start, and the use of them flying away out from under the investigators eyes is a solid and engaging ploy. Keeping the vampire and his mummified mother on-screen for a large portion of this section as he attempts to teach her the ways of the vampire like she wanted gives this a kind of enjoyable entrance into the whole affair. Those training sessions offer some rather fine moments being held in the candlelit room which adds to the atmosphere of him training her before eventually forcing her to drink from the city girl he captured for her.
That also leads nicely into the final half where it really manages to let loose with some fine action in the assault on the impenetrable lair high inside the castle walls with their initial scaling of the walls and the resultant firefight with the mummy before having the tables turned and leading into the fun of the vampires being awakened which gives way to them being captured and tortured by the two. Even without the frantic actions and confrontations throughout here, which features the fine battle in the castle torture room where everything manages to turn on expectations with her rebellion and the encounters throughout the outer portions of the sanctuary containing everyone running into each other. Even the manner of final defeat is quite exciting, giving this one some solid action and a cool, imaginative death for the main vampire which is wholly unexpected as this gives it a wholly unique take on the death of a vampire that looks exciting and seems logical enough. Alongside the violence and gore, it manages to hold off enough to really work quite a lot to really like here.
The cast here is quite impressive and has a lot to like. Once again, Anders Hove has a lot to love about him in his portrayal of Radu. Carrying the same intensity and fevered love of bloodletting alongside the same chilling features as before, when he's on-screen he has so much to like. As usual, it's just a matter of how much screentime he actually gets here that determines how terrifying he actually is. Denice Duff makes a return appearance as the cursed Michelle and carries over the terrified nature of her role there here. She fits rather nicely with her exotic Eastern European look which makes her seem suited to these Gothic Scream Queen roles and gives another solid turn here longing to become a vampire. Once she starts in on her vampire activity she has more to do here which is appreciated here. Also returning is Melanie Shatner as her sister Rebecca and does the same as before. Basically kindhearted and caring for the safety of her family member, that constitutes the majority of her decision-making and action throughout here which manages to make for quite a strong if somewhat one-note appearance. Doing the same is Kevin Spirtas as Mel. Being more of a researcher this time around, he spends the time with his head in a book looking up the history of it all which means he has a lot of screentime but less action to perform. For the most part, though, they tend to do admirably enough.
It does have a few rather noticeable flaws throughout here though. The main issue holding this one down is the fact that there's not a whole lot of real vampire action in here unlike the others in the series. The middle portion of the film descends into an endless series of either investigation scenes with the two trying to look into the history of the vampires in the area while avoiding the authorities or scenes of him trying to teach her how to be a vampire. While there's some fun to be had with the idea of her out stalking those around the city and upsetting the community which in turn leads into their distrust of the investigation, that this is what the movie descends into leaves it not all that exciting for a large portion of the running time which is somewhat frustrating. As well, the film manages to spend a great deal of time worrying over the grave seriousness of finale but it just drags it all out to endless degrees which severely reduces their impact as it features a ton of elements that pad this one out quite heartily, from their turning on each other to the escape attempt and finally leading into the actual way out of the castle which is far longer than necessary. Otherwise, there's not much to dislike here.
Overview: ***/5
The weakest of the series so far, this one really doesn't have much really wrong with it but does have nothing much to add to the franchise beyond those elements. As a standalone effort there's a lot to like so give it a shot if you've gotten this far into the franchise, but if you haven't enjoyed the others this one isn't the place to start and should be taken with caution.
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