Review of Kiss of the Damned (2012) by Dillinger P — 10 Jun 2014

Do you remember back to a time when vampire movies were slick and sexy? Full of romance and gorgeous imagery? Kiss of the Damned harks back to that kind of vampire film, taking huge inspiration from the whole horror movement of the 60's and 70's and bundling it into a modern day beauty.

Djuno is a gorgeous vampire, living in a stunning mansion outside of town, one night she encounters a screenwriter Paolo and love soon blossoms. Djuno can barely keep her secret from him for very long and in time she transforms him in order to gain ever lasting love.

However when Djuno's sister Mimi comes to stay, her dangerous and sadistic ways put the trios situation up in the air. This is without a doubt the most visually stunning and sexy vampire film I have seen in a long time, in fact were it not for Let The Right One In, this would be without a doubt the best effort since Thirst.

The Cinematography is beyond glorious, this film is full of well placed out tracking shots, gloriously lit locations, dirty shots that will blow your mind and in a nutshell a good collection of dynamic and haunting visuals.

The locations themselves are perfect, ranging from gorgeous hillside views to warmly lit apartments. Its a modern day vampire flick dealt with in all the right ways. The music works extremely well with the picture, having a half a modern day theme and half harking back to the age I spoke of earlier.

The make up and vampire effects are stunning, subtle and sexy, yet full of threat and obscurity. I also cant possibly tell you how good it is to see real gore in a movie like this as well, so often now a days that CGI blood has ruined films for me, its amazing to finally witness the old school way, in an up to day fashion.

The story is brilliant as well, with tones of varying themes from vampires who refuse to feed on humans to relationships, obsession, power and lust. The film even finds a glorious spot between erotic and romantic which not only pays homage to the erotic horror movies of the 70's but keeps it tasteful and actually sexy.

Its welcome, vampire films these days are to often about glitz and glamour and our romantic predators have been turned into a shadow of their former self. There are however a few minor set backs, which stop this from being an outright master piece.

The actors, although well cast and actually pretty decent struggle with some of the dialogue. This is the films biggest flaw, sometimes it knows that its best moments are when very little is said and minimal dialogue is exchanged, however too often do scenes occur where you can tell the script writer and actors seem forced into the english language other than their native tongue.

Michael Rapaport does well as a cocaine guzzling agent but has very little screen time that were left missing him. Despite the vocabular hiccups the three leads Josephine, Milo and Roxanne all do decent jobs with their characters and move the piece along nicely.

However its over just a bit too early. It spends a lot of time building the events of this movie up, only to fire through its thirds act in fifteen to twenty minutes, including credits. Its a shame because at the start of the last act, the character of Mimi really starts to become more sadistic and I almost wish I could have witnessed more damage done by here.

All in all, this is a glorious shock of a film, it has everything that fans of the old school vampire movie will enjoy and its a cinematic joy to watch. Let down only by some ropey dialogue and an uneasy ending.