Director: Ted Nicolaou
Year: 1997
Country: Romania/USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Still pining for the love of his life, a vampire tries to protect her from the evil vampire king holding her captive amongst his usual flock of vampires to try to ensure she remains his next bride, forcing him into a battle against the powerful vampire and his coven to free her.
Review:
This was a decent enough if an overall flawed effort in the franchise. The biggest factor with this one is the main setup that brings together the various participants in the story. Utilizing their romantic encounters as a basis for trying to hang around her to catch the main vampire that he’s looking to stop, the society that we see at play with the evil vampires once they hold it captive under his whims and the sidestories involving the other relationships at play as a setup for the competition to play out between the two of them. While lacking in traditional combat sequences or full-on battles, there are still enough scenes of them hunting their victims or snapping and unleashing plenty of bloodshed along the way that keeps this one interesting enough.
This one does have several detrimental factors to it. The main issue that manages to cause it to come undone is the wholly lacking pace on display that makes everything feel like a melodramatic Gothic romance rather than a flat-out genre effort. With the only genre qualities coming from the concept of vampirism that everyone seems to be, there’s not much here that makes it feel like a genre effort with the constant lustful notions toward the performer as well as the duplicitous means through which they keep trying to woo her. The back-and-forth banter amounts more to intense brooding, which plays into the Gothic overtones of the whole thing. At the same time, the incessant narration that tries to impart a sense of understanding into the mission ends up aggravating the audience since it adds nothing new, all of which lowers this one.
Overview: **/5
Far more disappointing than expected, this one tends to come off far more depressing and dull than what the outcome was set up for resulting in a watchable if generally unremarkable franchise entry. Fans of the franchise, the studio, or the creative crew might have the most to like here but most others out there won't have a lot to like with this one.
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