Here’s a film I’m reviewing by request. I’d never heard of it before, but it was said to be a trilogy of films, so I looked them up. Let’s see how connected they are, starting with the first one.

Written by Rick Bitzelberger and directed by Kelley Cauthen, this film was originally released in 1999.

The movie stars Angelia High and Kevin Spirtas as Miranda and Galen, a couple of vampires. They’re lovers and have been together for about a century, ever since Galen turned Miranda into a vampire (there’s no word on how long Galen was a vampire before that). Miranda embraces her life as a vampire, in particular, she loves seducing new victims and having sex with them before she bites them and drains them of their blood. But Galen is getting tired of this “lifestyle.” He’d rather get blood from a blood bank so they don’t have to kill anyone else. The film opens with them living in New Orleans, but after they kill their latest victim, Galen says it’s time to move to avoid detection. So they move to Los Angeles.

Madison Clark stars as Jennifer, a dancer/performance artist who lives in a loft across the street from where Galen and Miranda have moved to. She and Galen bump into each other on the street one night, and Galen instantly becomes infatuated with her, even using his powers to secretly spy on her. Miranda gets right up to her usual tricks, Galen sends her to a local blood bank to get blood, but she seduces and then kills the man working there (Ted, played by Jason Schnuit), before stealing several pints of blood.

Brad Bartram plays Ryan, Jennifer’s ex-boyfriend, who is also a reporter. He’s investigating Ted’s murder, and since the blood bank is near Jennifer’s place, he looks her up to warn her, and the two of them go out and hook up a couple of times. But although Ryan is eager to restart their relationship, Jennifer finds herself more drawn to Galen. Miranda picks up on this and tries seducing Jennifer herself one night, lying to Jennifer that she’s Galen’s sister.

I’m going to go ahead and venture into spoiler territory here.

After Jennifer is hit by a car and is dying, Galen saves he by turning her into a vampire, although he feels guilty about it. Ryan tries to rescue Jennifer and ends up killing Miranda, Galen then kills him. And then Galen, feeling guilty for what he’s done, kills himself by deliberately walking outside into the sunlight. And the film ends with Jennifer now living as a vampire, out on the hunt for victims.

The film had some good ideas. It also had a great cast and surprisingly decent special effects for a softcore film. We see Miranda and Galen disappearing and levitating, and scenes like Miranda being staked through the heart and Jennifer being hit by the car, which tossed her body several feet on impact, look really well. And we get some decent sex scenes.

There’s an opening scene of Angelia High with an unnamed man. Plus she has scenes with Kevin Spirtas, Jason Schnuit, Brad Bartram, Madison Clark, and a threesome scene with Spirtas and Jennifer Ludlow.
Madison Clark has two scenes with Bartram and one with Spirtas.
She also has a couple of solo scenes where she gets naked while dancing.
Colleen McDermott plays Jennifer’s friend Shelby, and while she doesn’t have a sex scene, she does get topless once.

But the problem is that the story wasn’t very engaging. It was slow in many scenes, Galen’s obsession with Jennifer felt rather random, and so did her sudden interest in him, after having sex with Ryan twice. I just never bought their “romance.” The constant arguing between Miranda and Galen also just seemed boring. I was watching it thinking, fine, why don’t you two just go your separate ways then?

None of this is the fault of the actors, they all did the best they could with the material. But the material was simply average. Chacebook rating: THREE STARS

Jason Majercik is selling the UNRATED DVD for $29.78. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list.