Review of Vampires: Out for Blood (2004) by Ida B — 09 Sep 2012

Out for Blood (Richard Brandes, 2004).

The best thing I can say about Out for Blood, also released under the variant title Vampires: out for Blood, is that it's betterâ"slightlyâ"than the other Richard Brandes movie I've seen, 2006's Penny Dreadful (which should have simply dropped the âPennyâ? from its name for purposes of accuracy). However, Penny Dreadful sets the bar so low that this isn't saying much. When your top-billed stars are Kevin Dillon (the 1988 The Blob remake) and Vanessa Angel (Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2), this is a movie that pretty much screams âSci-Fi Channel Original.â? Add in a small role for perennial SFC favorite Lance Henriksen, and this movie's fate was guaranteed.

Plot: Hank (Dillon) is an alcoholic cop who's dangerously close to getting thrown off the force for using his official connections to help him stalk his ex-wife (Angel), a writer of lurid pulp vampire novels. As a last-ditch effort to give him something to do that will get his mind off his ex, Hank's captain (Henriksen) assigns him to track down a missing girl, Layla Simmons (Prison Break's Jodi Lynn O'Keefe). He finds her relatively quickly...and discovers she's the newest recruit in a band of vampires who travels around the city looking for prey. Needless to say, no one believes him...

If you were to slap together every clichà (C) you can find in any vampire film made in the past, oh, thirty years, you might come up with the script for Out for Blood. Brandes manages a couple of amusing twists (there's a great sequence that involves baiting the Renfields, who are capably, and amusingly, played by character actors Adrian Roberts and Nick Stellateâ"they're the best thing about the movie), but by five minutes into this, you will be able to map out the entire film's trajectory withou expending any brainpower at all. And when your end credits include such deep, meaningful roles as âHot Girlâ? and âWild Girl #2â?, well, you know why you're watching this. **.