top of page

MODERN VAMPIRES

VAN HELSING TEAMS UP WITH CRIPS MEMBERS TO KILL COUNT DRACULA



★★★☆☆ (Good for One Viewing)

Director: Richard Elfman

1998



You may wonder how it’s possible you haven’t heard of a low-budget vampire movie starring Caspar Van Dien, Kim Cattrall, Natasha Lyonne, Rod Steiger, and Udo Kier—with music by Danny Elfman. That’s because it’s so awful, so outrageously offensive at times, that I’m sure the actors involved wish time travel were possible. But Modern Vampires (also called, Revenant) exists for our benefit, especially if you’re someone like me who enjoys good-bad movie watching. Whether it’s a bacchanal vampire club that includes pole-dancing nuns, or a john sizing up a prostitute vampire and deciding that a condom would be prudent, this has everything for anyone with bad taste. Surprisingly, there’s a decent plot in this mess, but no mystery unless you count The Case of the Actors Who Didn’t Read the Script, First. I’m going to list the best parts of the film, below, but be warned. There are major SPOILERS.



#1 The Hillbilly Vampire and Caspar Van Dien

Cigar-loving vampire Dallas (Van Dien) returns to L.A. to hang out with his three high-class vampire friends and meet the new girl on the block, a trashy prostitute named Nico who is killing so many people the newspapers are calling her the “Hollywood Slasher.” Our hero should hurry because creating new vampires has been forbidden by Count Dracula, so the count’s people are hunting the girl down. Against all odds, classy Dallas and country bumpkin Nico hit it off and have funny, sexy vampire sex in the junkyard she calls home. Nico is covered in filth and says stupid things that put her friends’ lives in danger and is the sort of person who would give the middle finger in her wedding photos, so why Dallas sets her apart from all women is one of life’s great puzzles.


Nico’s poignant thoughts in the afterglow of their lovemaking: “I didn’t know vampires could do sex.”

 

#2 Van Helsing Gets Help from the Crips

Though this storyline makes up half the film, it’s definitely the better half. After losing his son to Dallas’ bad behavior, Van Helsing puts an ad in the paper for a brave (“B-R-A-V-E”), strong man who can kill all the vampires in L.A. with him. The only person who shows up is gang member Time Bomb (Gabriel Casseus), an easygoing guy who doesn’t believe in vampires and pulls a Winston Zeddemore—he’ll do anything for a paycheck. Time Bomb is my favorite character because every time a head rolls or blood spurts, I can see the word, “zoinks!” pop up in Casseus’ eyes. Once it becomes apparent there are too many fanged adversaries, he introduces his fellow Crips members to Van Helsing, and this group of vampire killers is a delight. The oddball pairing of doobie-smoking, rap-listening young men and the persnickety old German couldn’t be better.


#3 Vampires Play “Pretty Woman”

Of course, Dallas doesn’t make love to Nico right after he takes her off the street. His friends that include snobby Ulrike (Cattrell), snobby Vincent (Kier), and a female vampire who’s been pregnant 115 years, decide she can’t hang with them if she smells like garbage, so they Pretty Woman the prostitute, and the results are so anti-climactic you’ll chuckle. They think putting her in a clean robe and washing the gunk out of her nasty wig hair with Comet counts as a big reveal. Again, why Dallas sticks his nether regions into a woman who just created a dark brown ring in a bathtub is beyond human rationalization.



#4 Nico’s Confrontation at the Trailer Park

God bless Natasha Gregson Wagner. As Nico, she speaks every line as if someone is holding up a card behind the camera and she’s seeing it for the first time. Her wild emotions fluctuate like the seismometer in Tremors, and she shines brightest during her big confrontation with her mother and step-father, when Nico flails and gnashes her teeth with all the abandon of a blind Chihuahua at a dog park. Dallas is there to back up his new girlfriend, but you don’t even notice him because the former prostitute is busy taking her stepfather to task for assaulting her, and berating her mother for doing nothing to protect her. After such intentional and unintentional comedy, this heavy moment is more than just a little off.

 

#5 Count Dracula’s Dance Club

In this world, vampires roar like lions and snuggle in bed together. And for fun, they head to Count Dracula’s special club to jam to some cool vampire sounds and drag naked humans around before eating them. There are nuns on poles and full frontal nudity and a special table reserved for the count. One victim yells, “No! I’m an attorney! I’ll sue every last one of you!” before getting shackled to a table to become the main course.


When Dracula is bored with these losers, he heads to a coffeehouse to search for food among annoying movie buffs, and it’s there that he confronts dimwit Nico who promptly tries to get in a cat fight with the father of all vampires. That takes us to…


#6 Pyrotechnics!

There are sweet action sequences in Modern Vampires, none as amusing as Nico and Dallas battling the count’s henchmen, resulting in a small inferno. I have to give props to the battle scenes with Van Helsing and the Crips (great band name), but I’m sorry to inform you, they end in a literal gang bang, the most batshit thing in a movie filled with questionable decisions and dialogue. I can say nothing more about it. Nope. Nothing to see here.


 

The surprises in Modern Vampires aren’t earth-shattering, but they’re enough to keep you watching. I find it fitting the movie takes place in L.A. because it feels like a project made by struggling actors. Indeed, many of the cast was on the brink of major stardom; Natasha Lyonne starred in the upcoming American Pie, Van Dien was about to become Star Wars famous, and Cattrell would shortly jump into Sex and the City. Besides reminding us we should never choose our erratic new love interest over our buddies, Modern Vampires teaches us a lesson: Always read a script before you sign on.






GENRES: Diverse Characters, Funny, Monster/Creature, What the Fuck Was That


NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this website's (nicolinatorres.com) blog posts or publications to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Recent Posts

See All

NICOLE

bottom of page