Teenage Space Vampires/Darkness: The Teen Space Vampire Saga (1999)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment/Moonbeam Entertainment

RUNTIME: 86 mins

FORMAT: Full Moon Streaming

PLOT: Bill, a dorky high school student and avid horror movie fan, witnesses a UFO flying over his town. When the ship lands the next day, Bill and a team from SETI discover that the alien is a strange vampire creature who wants to cast the Earth into darkness so that he and his people can colonize it for themselves.

REVIEW: I got anxious while waiting for Asylum's newest release, Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, the third movie in the infamous Mega Shark series, to arrive in the mail so to help pass the time until then, I signed up for Full Moon Streaming - an online streaming service for the full catalog of Full Moon Entertainment movies, both old classics in addition to brand new stuff, and everything in between.

Now, I do plan to get back to my Puppet Master series rewatch here shortly, but I was really in the mood this evening for something I hadn't ever seen before, so I went to Full Moon's Moonbeam subsection (their side-company for 80's and 90's family friendly-aimed movies such as Prehysteria, Pet Shop, and the Josh Kirby: Time Warrior saga – none of which are actually up on the site yet, but were among my favorites of theirs while growing up) and came across a nifty-sounding little diddy that I had never even heard of before, the awesomely-titled Teenage Space Vampires, or the even cheesier (and obvious Twilight cash-grab) renaming it's been given in recent DVD re-releases, Darkness: The Teen Space Vampire Saga! I figured this would be the perfect kind of movie to watch for the first time and do a review on.

The first thing you have to realize, is that this is indeed a family-friendly 'horror' movie, so there's no swearing or gore of any kind, and there's no other kinds of questionable content in that regard, if you're a parent wondering if this movie is ok for your child to watch. With that said, there are indeed a few scenes that children might find a bit creepy or scary so you may want to watch it with them if they're sensitive to those kinds of things. For example, there's a scene that consist of the Turned football players and cheerleaders (among which are a couple of main characters) vamping out mid-game to cause a feeding frenzy and chow down on the other team and the spectators in the stands, or in one scene in particular that reminded me of The Lost Boys we have a group of teens around a campfire at night that get ambushed by a gang of the vampires. In addition to those, we also have a couple scenes that take place in dark underground mines that deal with a nest of vampires lurking in the shadows and led by the Master Vampire that looks far more monstrous than the rest of his minions, so as I said, if your child is sensitive to that kind of stuff, than maybe this isn't the movie for them after all, at least not without you watching it with them to remind them that it is just a movie.

However, in terms of the horror aspect, that's really all there is. Most of the vampire effects are extremely goofy-looking and made worse by the extremely-bad glowing CGI eyes and overly-large and overly-obvious fake rubber teeth. Honestly, everything from the special effects to some of the acting to the production values are all what you would expect from a mid-90s Direct-to-Video low budget children's movie. Actually, anybody that grew up with the Goosebumps TV show already knows what to expect from this in that regard as it pretty much plays out, complete with the all-around general cheesiness expected of such, of the average 22-minute Goosebumps episode, but spread out for feature-length.

 

Making the acting come across as even worse than it probably initially was, is some distractingly-bad ADR dubbing. It's not present in every scene, but the ones that it is, it really takes you out of the moment as it's delivered in such an incredibly dull and boring way, which is usually in complete contrast with how the character looks as they're saying it. That issue aside though, there is still some decent acting to be found, mostly via Robin Dunn (Species 3, The Skulls 2, Cruel Intentions 2) as the main character of the movie and the always-beautiful Lindy Booth (Wrong Turn, Dawn of the Dead remake, Kick Ass 2) as his older cheerleader sister. The one truly honest-to-god great actor though, that I actually always enjoyed when he was on-screen, was the mostly-unknown James Kee as the leader of the SETI team that comes out to investigate the mysterious going-ons in the town.

I suppose I should step back a bit and explain a little of the plot. The movie starts with a bang (literally) as Robin Dunn's character is woken up in the middle of the night by some mysterious explosion that also set off car alarms in the area and drives the dogs bonkers. Even though his character doesn't look or even really act like it during the movie, we're told he's a dweeb and dork that gets picked on a lot, which only intensifies when he comes across a spaceship in a neighbor's back property – a spaceship that is guarded by several stone gargoyles that seem to be alive (a totally pointless addition as they never even once do anything other than turn their heads to look around). Of course nobody believes him except his goofy best friend, and it isn't long until he starts noticing that his neighbors and classmates are all, one-by-one, starting to act strange and differently. That's when a research team from SETI arrives in town, having noticed the mysterious falling object and wanting to investigate it. They team up with Robin Dunn's character to get to the bottom of things and eventually discover that the town has been invaded and partly-taken over by vampires, which are actually an alien race. They're in this specific town to locate an ancient mystical amulet that when used in the proper ritual can harvest the energy from the sun and moon and plunge the entire Earth into a total never-ending darkness – a vampire's wet dream.

The plot of the movie actually isn't half-bad. At first it seemed a bit sloppily written, seeing as how we see plenty of vampires out during the day thus making the entire evil plan pointless, but they actually explain that away fairly well, as those are only vampire fledglings and aren’t yet full alien vampires, so they don't quite have all their strengths but also don't quite have all their weaknesses yet either. Where the movie kind of comes undone is the above-mentioned bad effects, terrible ADR dubbing, the unbelievability that the main character is a picked-on dweeb (seriously, the guy is taller and more buff than half the 'jocks' in the movie are) and just all around general cheap feel of everything (again, think a feature-length Goosebumps episode on the same budget of the average Goosebumps episode). Luckily the movie is saved a bit by decent to good acting from the core main characters (even if a lot of the dialog they have to work with is pretty terrible), a well-made monster suit for the Master Vampire, and a pretty fun overall plot. It also seems that director/writer Martin Wood has perfected his talents since his time doing this movie, seeing as how he has since gone on to be a main writer and director on such Canadian TV shows as Sanctuary, Andromeda, Primeval: New World, and the various Stargate shows.

Die-hard horror hounds and just adults in general may scoff at this one and roll their eyes during most of it, and I honestly can't blame them because there's not much in this one for that demographic, but for young boys and girls looking to dabble into some family-friendly horror, Teenage Space Vampires, aka Darkness: The Teen Space Vampire Saga is a pretty decent hour and a half, and it's low budget and cheesiness may also help lighten the mood for them a bit when it comes to the few darker, scarier scenes that some kids may find a little troubling.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

V/H/S (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 116 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire a rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they bargained for.

Review: V/H/S is a horror anthology movie made up of 5 short stories and a bookend wrap-around story, all of which was made in the found footage style of film making. Like with all anthology movies, some entries were great while others...well, not so much. I'll start first with the main wrap-around story. It involves a group of trouble-making hooligans that video tape their crimes and potential attempted rapes and all that, and they get hired by a mystery man to break into this old guy's house and steal a VHS tape. While in there they come across a room filled with VHS tapes and start checking them out, which leads to the various short stories this movie is made of. I really hated this wrap-around story, especially since it led to nothing at all and even finished mid-way through the movie, before the movie was even over and while more of the short stories were still to come. There was nothing scary here, and there was no build-up to anything good, just a quick flash of something before the camera shut off and that was it. Out of all the characters in all the stories of this movie, these were the most hateable and the ones you wanted to see get their come-uppance the most, which is why it's even more frustrating that you don't ever see anything all that bad happen to them, and most (if not all) get killed off-screen.

The first two of the actual short stories were great though. The first deals with a group of party-loving college friends that are having a night on the town and trying to get laid, but one of the girls they pick up and bring back to a hotel room isn't exactly what she appears to be. This one was creepy as hell and is easily my favorite of the bunch. Even the questionable CGI moments didn't bother me at all and if anything, added to the creepy factor more often then not.

The second story was classic Ti West movie, but in 20 minutes as opposed to full-length. Ti West is a controversial horror director, where I find people either love him or hate him and there isn't much middle ground. Personally, I love him. In this entry, a honeymooning couple is traveling across the U.S., but an unknown stalker is following them across the country and keeps recording them with their own camera, from inside their hotel rooms while they sleep at night. As is usual with his fare, this entry has a bit of a slow build and not a whole lot really happens until the very end, but it still remains creepy as hell and tension-filled through and through, and it uses that slow build, as Ti West often does, to make you A, care for the characters and B, slowly build the tension to a boiling point that comes to a head at the very end. My only complaint with this one is that the ending was really predictable, as I called it almost right away, however that doesn't make it any less shocking when it hits.

The third story is about a group of four college friends that head up to the family cabin that one of them owns, but their vacation is cut short by a vicious killer made entirely out of static, and seemingly only visible through a camera. No way around it, this entry was total lameballs. Not even remotely scary, just stupid. Not even on the same playing field as the first two stories. The first two felt like they could have easily been theatrical movies if made longer, while this one just comes across like a micro-budget student project, and a bad one at that. This one is the worst that this anthology has to offer, though also luckily the shortest. I can't recommend enough to just skip this one all together.

The fourth story deals with a girl webchatting with her doctor boyfriend, whom she's in a long distance relationship with, as weird paranormal activity seems to be escalating in her new apartment. Over all this entry was a nice step up from the previous one, and was actually pretty intense for the majority of its runtime, and it was kind of a better attempt at a Paranormal Activity movie then a couple of those sequels had been. Unfortunately it all comes completely apart in the final few minutes, once the big shocking twist is revealed, and that made this entry take a very quick nosedive for me, and just ended up leaving me more confused then scared. Also, when you stop to think about it, you can't help but wonder exactly how these webchats are being recorded? Especially when the fact that they're not being recorded is a plot point mentioned several times? While I liked this entry more then the previous one and more then the initial wrap-around story, it's still a far cry from the awesome first two stories, although the potential was totally there had it not been for that dreadful twist ending that just ruined the entire thing.

Luckily the final story is back to being pretty good, however it still doesn't quite reach greatness. It follows a couple of friends as they arrive at a Halloween party they had been invited to, only to find the mansion empty...that is until they find a cult in the attic doing very unspeakable things. This story's biggest fault, to me, is that its too short. Out of all the entries of this anthology, this is the one that could benefit the most from being extended into a full-length movie as I felt not nearly enough time was given for the subject matter, so its just a huge rush job on an otherwise really interesting story. You're not given time to get to know the characters, and thus you don't feel anything for them, and it starts throwing all these good ideas at you such as devil cults, possessed people, and a haunted house that seems to be alive with walls that morph over windows, doors that shrink or disappear entirely, and other creepy as hell things. But you only get to spend a few seconds on any given topic because they have to cram so much into such a short runtime, and you never really get the chance to enjoy any of it because it's instantly moved onto the next wild and crazy thing. With a longer runtime and more room to flesh everything out, this entry could end up being a really creepy and fun horror movie. As it stands as just one more short story in an anthology, it remains not as good as the first two stories, but certainly better then everything else in the movie.

Overall, there's some great stuff in V/H/S, but also some huge crap in there as well, just like with most anthology movies. Luckily, due to the wide range of quality, there's more then likely at least something in there for everyone.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

Read more »