Modern Vampires (1998)

The subversive, super-hip television show Buffy, the Vampire Slayer has changed the bloodsucking genre forever. Hilariously campy and self-aware, the show cleverly sends up every exhausted convention the vampire genre has to offer. It was only a matter of time before someone tried translating the same tone to the big screen (the Buffy film failed miserably before becoming a show). As written by Matthew Bright (Freeway) and directed by Richard Elfman (Forbidden Zone), the silly and seditious Modern Vampires tries a similar tongue-in-cheek approach, flipping the focus instead to the vampires. Sure, it's shameless, it's cheesy, but it's also much more entertaining than, say, the heavy-handed Blade. The filmmakers set the genre piece in Los Angeles, a city cynical and violent enough to allow vampires to roam without much notice. The Hollywood lifestyle has influenced these vampires, though, as they stage elaborate parties where nude humans are kept in cages and carted out for main courses ("Is he Italian? I was wanting Italian tonight!"), as well as feast on the likes of screenwriters, producers, and entertainment lawyers (talk about bloodsuckers). In terms of plot, not much is going on here. A very serious and driven Dr. Frederick Van Helsing (Rod Steiger) arrives in L.A., from Germany, in search of Dallas (Casper Van Dien of Starship Troopers), a vampire who turned his son 20 years ago. Needing a partner, Van Helsing puts out an ad and picks up a Crips gangster member named Time Bomb (Gabriel Casseus), creating perhaps the goofiest vampire-hunting tag team in film history. "Do you believe in vampires?" Van Helsing first asks his young partner. "As long as you're writing the checks, I'll take out anyone," he replies. Steiger is wonderfully over the top (think Donald Pleasance in any of the Halloween sequels), and Elfman fills his vampire cast with other notable charismatic character actors, including Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City), Natasha Gregson Wagner (humorous as a trailer-trash vamp), and Udo Kier. Straight to video doesn't get much better than this. --Dave McCoy Amazon.com

if you like trash, you gotta love it...

Well, now... this movie is not what you'd call a masterpiece. I once saw it some years ago in german language. As the tape was from our local video rental station, the quality was not exactly great. I enjoyed the movie immensly - it IS trash (despite some realy great actors), but I do like trash.
When I noticed there was a DVD available I couldn't resist in buying. It had something about a "Special Director's Cut" ananounced, but I hat to realise there was nothing new in this version. Maybe the german tape was from the directors cut, too.
The Quality is allrigth - some classes better than the old rental tape. the picture is clear, the sound is well. There are some nice features - the trailer, biographies to the main actors (you get a lot informations about them with this DVD), a commentary (which I haven't tried yet) and a interesting, partly funny Behind-The-Scenes-Featurette. The sound on the last mentioned is not so great, but as it is only a feature I think it's OK.
If you like trashy vampire-movies with real modern vampires you should definitivly check this DVD out - it's not exactly expensive, and you got a very nice version of the movie! August 10, 2008

Campy fun

Dracula is in modern day Los Angeles and is trying to control all the vampires living in the city. Campy fun with not much of a plot. It's funny to listen to the actors try to talk with their fake vampire fangs on. They all come across as lispy and ridiculous, although I'm not sure that was the intention. Good for a laugh. July 8, 2007

Awesome!

This movie is absolutely hilarious! It's fun the whole way through! I make all my friends watch it. It's just a lot of fun. March 9, 2007

Warhol-esque - - Not for the tasteful, but has some good comedy

The first half was hilarious, and then went downhill. It is sort of a vampire soap opera, with shezbot for action and plenty of totally tasteless humor that I hated, strangely interspersed with some droll humor, which I REALLY enjoyed. Tell you what. If you like bad horror, you may well enjoy this. I did. If you enjoyed playing VTMB or Bloodrayne (games) you may enjoy this flick. I laughed my tookus off for the first half or so. If you are hoping for a good serious vampire movie, forget it. But I enjoyed this more than most serious vampire movies. I recommend Sean of The Dead over this as a similar parody of the genre, but as a foray into "bad," this flick has its moments. Actually, playing VTMB is much better, and a more immersive experience of vampirism as a "life" style.

As a minor note, this film displays the beauty of Kim Cattrall only too well, and she is clearly as beautiful as her mother ever was. I hope she finds a few films to show her good looks a little more tastefully, but there it is, she is absolutely stunning in this shaggy dog of a movie. October 22, 2006

What were they thinking?

What the heck were they thinking when they made this movie? Were they trying to make a horror movie, a comedy movie, or an action movie? I couldn't tell, because it failed in every single one of those categories, and more. Even worse was the casting...I mean, sweet, lovely Eldin from 'Murphy Brown' as Count Dracula? And Mr Wick from 'Drew Carey' as an evil vampire? And Kim Catrall as a...actually, I don't know what she was, or where her accent was supposed to be from. Every accent in this was laughably bad, as bad as the acting, if you could call it acting. And the plotline was so illogical...I mean, allegedly the Count wanted to kill off a vampire girl because her killing spree was drawing attention to the existence of the other vampires. But then, the other vampires went around biting and abducting and killing people whenever they went, so how were they any better?

This movie was awful. I think it was made simply for the sake of getting to see lots of people with their clothes off and women kissing one another. I don't usually have a problem with seeing either of those things in a movie, but in this instance I feel that there should have been more to the movie than just that...like a believable plot, for instance, or acting, or suspense, or something, anything, your average moviegoer would find interesting.

The worst thing about this movie (and boy was it hard, in a movie this bad, to find a thing I hated more than everything else) was that many of the vampires had tans. And not only did they have tans, but they had tan lines where they'd obviously been wearing swimsuits while tanning out in THE SUN. Five bucks worth of fake tan probably could have fixed that little glitch and hid the tan lines. But no one involved this movie was cluey enough to think of it. That, or they realised the movie was crud and just didn't care. I got the feeling everyone involved in this was just there to get their paycheck.

By the way, don't be fooled by the credit at the beginning of the movie that reads: 'music by Danny Elfman'. I think he does about one song in the whole movie, tops, and that was probably only because this movie was Richard Elfman's project (my guess is that they're related, and Danny did it as a favour, probably because he felt sorry for poor untalented Richard.)

My advice is to avoid this movie. There are better skinflicks than this that you could be watching.

If you want to see a GOOD, funny movie with the talented Natasha Lyonne kissing a girl in it, get hold of 'But I'm A Cheerleader'. October 15, 2006

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