Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

So I have this obscure, rarely seen television show called Totally Twisted Flix that cost me more money to produce it than money I receive from doing it. Which is zero. Totally Twisted Flix is a show that only focuses on Straight to Video movies and the guy that produces this show that nobody sees, that I get no money for doing, had suggested that I do a special on vampire movies. I had done a few vampire movies on various shows so I run through the review archive to see if had seven left over vampire movies that I could scrape up for a vampire show. Damn, I only had six. Now I need to watch a straight to DVD vampire movie which is how I was led to Brain Damage film’s ‘Fist of the Vampire’. An ultimate fighting vampire movie. Come on now, the show was almost tailor made for nonsense like this.

The year is 1977. Yeah you might find the occasional mini van or Lexus parked on the street of this 1977 but we’re not nitpicking my boys with that. It’s not like stocking your movie with Gremlins, Vegas and Nova’s is cheap, know what I’m saying? Anyway a father coming home from work observes a murder, flees the scene to his house and alerts the authorities. He thinks he saw these murderers drinking this victim’s blood, but that’s just crazy isn’t it? Then these blood drinking killers show up at the crib, kill my man and his family with the lone exception of his little boy who the mother was able to safely hide away.

Jump ahead some thirty years where we meet hard ass cop Lee Southward (Brian Anthony) chasing some crazy kung fu enabled woman with a gun through the city streets. One of the things about this scene was that there was a shootout at a video store and this cat had way more confidence in random DVD racks providing adequate bullet cover than I think I would have. Anyway, Officer Southward handles his business to the tune of a bunch of dead criminals and a laundry list of violated civil rights which probably should’ve gotten him thrown in jail and into an electric chair, but in this alternative world where Lexus existed in 1977 it gets him a promotion.

Now it’s off to somewhere in Pennsylvania where Office Southward goes undercover to expose a ring of gambling, prostituting drug dealing vampires. They don’t know they’re vampires yet, but we do! These thugs, who we saw before thirty years earlier, consist of chief vamp Nicholas (Brian Heffron), D-Movie queen Darian Crain as Jade and all round vampire badass Reno played by Leon South who also did double duty by directing this movie under the name Len Kabasinski. So our undercover cop goes deep, getting completely down with this fight game and impressing these thugs along the way. He also has a little help on the inside in fellow undercover cop and all around feminine badass Officer Davidson (Cheyenne King).

The thing is that Officer Southward never really had any plans of taking these clowns before a judge. That little boy hiding under the sink has been waiting for this day to do his thing on these vampires for a very long time. And I don’t think vampires have any civil rights we need to worry violating. Do your thing my man, do your thing.

So we can’t, with a clear conscious at least, tell you that ‘Fist of the Vampire’ is good movie. Just can’t do that. It’s an ambitious movie, we gotta give it that, especially taking in consideration that it probably cost pocket change to produce… but a good movie… Oh Good Heavens no. The main problem with this particular low budget feature is that almost nobody can act in this movie. From what little I know about folks who show up as characters in movies, it’s one part being able to halfway deliver a line and one part looking like you belong in a movie. The best actor in this movie, by far, was Brian Heffron as head vamp Nicholas but Brian Heffron doesn’t really look like he belongs in a movie. But hey Jack Black made it work somehow so you never know. The rest of the attractive cast sure did look like they belong in movies but damn… I had no idea simply delivering a competent line of dialog was so insanely difficult.

Now as far as the whole low budget look of the movie, I don’t know how it works for you but my psyche tends to adjust to whatever look a movie has and eventually I’m just watching a movie. I still notice the suspect special effects and whatnot but for the most part it doesn’t get in the way of the movie. In that regard there was a lot of decent stuff in this movie as it had plenty of fight sequences, a plethora of gratuitous nudity, shootouts, gore and Kabasinski told a decent story so I was never bored with this movie and I get bored pretty damn easy.

So I told you earlier I have to do this show and needed a seventh vampire themed movie. So establishing the fact that ‘Fist of the Vampire’ isn’t a very good movie in the grand scheme of things, if I read off to you those other six vampire themed movies that are going to be on this show ‘Fist of the Vampire’ will be one of the better movies on this show. Only ‘Wolvesbayne’ is better. Freaking ‘Wolvesbayne’ will be the best movie on that show. Why do I do this to myself?