Vampire Journals (1997)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

In the 90's a small movie company called Full Moon mostly produced horror films. One of their most popular was the Subspecies movies which was about vampires. Ted Nicolaou was the force behind the series who you could tell had a real eye for the vampires and their Gothic nature. So after the third Subspecies movie, he killed off the main vampire, Radu and intended to make more vampire movies that would be a bit different with similar characters that we had seen before. The Vampire Journals came in and with the same low budget, we got a pretty weak spin off sadly. Given that Ted did his best that he could, this was just a weak script with some very clichéd characters.Zachary, a vampire with a conscience, who hunts the vampire bloodline that sired him. After witnessing the love of his life get turned into a vampire, Zachary destroys both her, and his master, and former protégé of Ash, Serena. Zachary, armed with the enchanted sword of a great vampire slayer called Laertes, seeks out the rest of Serena's bloodline to eradicate them. Zachary travels to Bucharest to find Ash. Zachary uses Ash's penchant for music and women to bait him out into the open for attack. Ash sets his sights on pianist Sofia, but is stopped by Zachary during his first attempt to take Sofia. Ash does not give up on acquiring Sofia, and hires her for his nightclub. Over the next few nights he drains her of blood, so that he may turn her into a new apprentice. He also makes a deal with Zachary: he will give Zachary a consort, protection from the Sun, and allow Zachary to see Sophia if he leaves the city the following night.The weak points of the film was the characters like Sophia and Zachary. It was copy and paste with Sophia's scenes with Ash, he has her trapped in his bedroom and he would say "Join me!" and she would say "No! Let me go!" and he would bite her and leave. Next time he would say "Join me!" and she would say "No! Let me go!" and he would bite her and leave. Then the next time he would say "Join me!" and she would say "No! Let me go!" and then he would bite her and leave. And again the next time he would say "Join me!" and she finally says "Ok", which I had to have a good laugh with…what was his selling point this time?! It reminded me of the scene in the comedy of Bowfinger where Steve Martin is having an affair with Heather Grahm and finds out that she slept with someone else and he says "That's it, we're finished, you slept with Jiff" and she says "So?" and he said "Well, I never thought of it that way" and they go back to normal. That's exactly what those scenes reminded me of. Zachary is your typical brooding vampire who hates being the undead despite the fact that he's pretty, can control anyone he wants and can see things that no human could ever see in a lifetime. He narrates going on and on about how he's in pain and how much it sucks being a vampire with no real reason, oh, get over it already! I love the scene where he goes to bite a girl to survive; he goes into her bedroom, takes her arm and somehow she's still sleeping and bites it, she then wakes up of course and he covers her mouth and says "I won't harm you child"…LOL, you just bit her arm and took some of her blood! I think that's in the "harm zone".Despite the flaws, I give Ted credit on the Gothic look of the film and the story isn't by any means terrible. It had some really great ideas, especially with Ash's club. Ash can control both mortals and immortals so he knows how to survive very well. But as the people around him start to betray him or feel threatened, he realizes that he's being ganged up on and that's a great story, I wished they stuck to that story more so. Jonathon Morris who plays Ash does a very good job and you can tell he enjoyed getting into the character. Also the look of the film is terrific and very Gothic, given the old spooky feeling from the old horror movies. You can tell Ted really did love the silent film Nosferatu with the shadows and angles. The Vampire Journals is over all a decent enough vampire movie, it just needed a major face lift with the characters or at least concentrate more so on the interesting one's.5/10

I have seen a lot of vampire flicks in my day. This was on the edge of being a good story. I love the Victorian flair of the inside of the mansion, the four poster beds, etc. That's apparently where the budget ended.The master vampire, Ash is the only real actor in the film. His lines are delivered believably. The only time our hero, Zachary actually acts is when Sofia catches him drinking blood from the psychofant and screams her name and throws himself at the door. The one thing that really brought the film down a notch was the deadpan monologue from Zachary. It was clumsily read, with no feeling, no passion. Granted, Zach was a depressed vampire.. but you can be passionately depressed.I think it would have been better to have had a third party read the monologue. Perhaps someone found the 'Vampire Journal' and was reading it... with a bit more pizzaz than it's writer.Watch the film, rescue the elements that are good and marvel at them. There is some good camera work, their corpses reconstituting themselves every evening was a nice touch, knowing the master was a once a vampire hunter... nice.

...and I've seen some pretty bad ones ! Bad acting, annoying music, ridiculous dialogues, boring plot, awfully slow, really laughable when it's supposed to be scary and the list could go on and on. I don't know which character I disliked the most: Zachary is so whiny he makes "Interview With The Vampire"'s Louis look like a happy-go-lucky guy and Ash must be the cheesiest movie vampire ever.I'm a big fan of vampire movies and this is the only one I truly disliked from beginning to end. I kept watching it just to see how bad it could get.

A rather lower-budget film, shot in eastern europe. Clothing, sets, makeup etc were very good. Beautiful and appropriately vampiric. Some of the best visualization of an elegant vampire world I've ever seen. Acting was hit or miss, none of it amazing, but most of it decent. The music was a bit repetitive and over-dramatic...almost comical at times because it was so foreboding. Frankly, I feel the storyline and plot were the worst aspects of this film, in addition to some cheesy lines (too cheesy for these actors, at least). The film didn't reach any resolution and the plot conflict was weak to begin with. I'd love to see this director shoot a film with good actors and a good screenplay. He has nice vision but he can't write for *$#@ (he also wrote the screenplay). 9/10 for visuals/cinematography, 3.5/10 for plot/screenplay. Overall 6/10.