Your Daily Dracula – Gregory Lee Kenyon, Dracula The Impaler (The Impaler) (2013)
A minor horror film with much in common with Jean Brismée’s 1971 La plus longue nuit du diable (Devil’s Nightmare) – which also had seven tourists emblematic of deadly sins stranded in a castle with a witchy female custodian. Here, Veronica (Diana Busuioc) is the caretaker of the castle of Vlad the Impaler and seven American young folks – a greedy one, a lecherous one, an envious one, etc – spend a week in the place to squabble, have sex and get killed so Dominic (Teo Celigo) can be possessed by the spirit of Vlad III (Gregory Lee Kenyon). Though he bites a chunk out of a neck at one point, the demonic Dominic seems not to be a vampire but some other species of supernatural troublemaker.
Director Derek Hockenbrough – who also co-wrote with Busuioc, Daniel Anghelcev and cinematographer Steve Snyder – has a good premise (La plus longue nuit du diable is a gem) but this cramped production keeps stumbling. The kids are supposed to be between high school and college but look much older and are strident boobs fit only to be killed. It’s all well and good making a misanthropic portrait of horrible folks getting their comeuppance, but this means it’s impossible to care about their fates, work up suspense beyond the issue of who dies next or generate any spookiness. It has one unnervingly odd appearance by three hungry, wisp-draped concubines (Vera Nova, Jennifer Starr, Victoria Levine).
Extract from Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon.
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