Your Daily Dracula – Mike Burke as Vladimir Dracula III, Nosferatu’s Crush (2004)
A home-made horror comedy from Connecticut, written by, starring, directed by, edited by and produced by Mike Burke, who also wrote some of the songs. It’s rambling and amiable but obviously rough technically – with a couple of scenes which just trundle on after lines have been repeated and points made – but there’s a certain amount of heart and the odd bit of goofy fun … plus one odd, actually creepy moment as someone is shown sleeping under a table on which main characters have been lying and chatting (could Burke really not stretch to a bed?).
An evil vampire woman (Angalisha Marie) is biting and killing folk in some woods and FBI agent Green (Lady Altovise) is certain the culprit is Vladimir Dracula III (Burke), descendant of Vlad the Impaler, who is short, plump, stuck with an ill-fitting bald cap and has a pasty gray make-up look plus fangs which inhibit speaking so he has almost no dialogue. Green’s sidekick Kelly (Kristy White, who is dryly hilarious) isn’t so sure a name is enough to base a case on, though we note other significant facts – Dracula lives in the Three Brides funeral parlour and has three vampire women (Angalisha Marie in a second role, Xaviera Desgrottes, Sylvia Kovacs) as minions.
Dracula calls in lawyer Rebekah Smart (Malissa Longo) to represent him against the bullying feds, and falls for the kindly, if naïve attourney – who has an obnoxious boyfriend called Tony Dick (John Gaydon) whose brutal sexism and casual rudeness serve to make even a bloodsucking creep look like the better option. Once it’s established its characters and premise, it goes round in circles a little too often until a scrappy finale which pokes fun at its own production circumstances – including having two characters played by the same actress in a fight – and winds down with something of a shrug. Performances are variable and filmmaking is rudimentary.
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