Russell Friend, Bonnie and Clyde vs Dracula (2009)
A low-budget genre mash-up, more indebted to Billy the Kid vs Dracula than Seth Grahame-Smith. This Bonnie (Tiffany Shepis) is the dominant partner, dragging Clyde (Trent Haaga) on a crime spree which brings them into conflict with folks even worse than they are – serial killers, vampires, a pulp mad scientist.
The film cuts between plodding crime hijinx – not on a level with the low-budget Roger Corman vintage car gangster films of the ‘70s – and the house of hooded, disfigured Dr Loveless (Allen Lowman). In partnership with a currently-enfeebled Dracula (Russell Friend), Loveless performs arcane experiments while terrorising his gamine-like oddball sister Annabel (Jennifer Friend, by a long stretch the best thing here).
After an hour of this, Bonnie goes to the house looking for a doctor to treat gutshot Jake (T. Max Graham) and gets bitten by Dracula, who grows young again and turns a houseful of guests into vampires.
Given the title, there’s disappointingly little gangsters-on-ghoul action … Dracula is throttling Clyde when Annabel accidentally opens a curtain and the archfiend tamely dissolves. At the end, human Clyde and vampire Bonnie are still on the road and Annabel goes off to become a hobo. Performances are all over the place, with Russell Friend especially ordinary as a longhaired, growly cowled vampire. Writer-director Timothy Friend hits on a unique mix but this really ought to have delivered more.
Extract from Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon.
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