Your Daily Dracula – Lorenzo Lamas as Mr Jones, Thralls (2005)

Your Daily Dracula – Lorenzo Lamas as ‘Mr Jones’, Thralls (2005)

aka Blood Angels

An okay Canadian vampire movie, along the lines of DC Comics’ Vamps series.  A group of ‘thralls’, women turned into half-vampires by master fiend Mr Jones (Lorenzo Lamas, enjoying himself as a nasty villain after so many straight action hero roles), escape from the lair where he keeps them chained up in white lingerie and fed on half-dead rats.  The girls set up on their own, running a rave club in preparation for a ritual which requires a lot of psychic energy (generated by the ravers), not to mention clever club lighting effects, and will allow them to ascend, so they think, to their full powers.  The night of the ritual is complicated by the arrival of Siri Baruc, innocent runaway sister of the lead thrall (Leah Cairns), and an act of treachery which reveals Jones has planned this all along and the purpose of the ritual is actually to give him power over the demon Belial.

It has a streak of ‘80s-style humour, with Richard Cox overplaying the role of Jones’s zombie-like gibbering henchman Rennie (who has a stake protruding from his chest) and way too much time spent with the Asian nerd (Kevan Ohtsji) who affects ebonics and constantly has to be reminded that calling women ‘bitches’ is a bad idea, not to mention makeshift CGI bat transformation and demon manifestation effects.  The women are all interesting presences, however, whether striking poses, biting customers’ penises or executing martial arts moves to keep troublemakers in line – and the Lisa Morton-Brett Thompson script comes up with a fairly fresh take on the hierarchy of vampirism.  Directed by Ron Oliver