Oh dear God my Lord and Savior who art in heaven… please just kill me now. I was actually waiting with some anticipation to see this movie that I knew as ‘Immortally Yours’ because one of my very best friends was involved in the production. This thing was shot somewhere in Podunk Ohio which is a few miles down the road and my buddy would give me updates on the production and who was doing who and who was cool and who were supreme assholes and whatnot. Thus with all of this ‘insider’ information I couldn’t wait to see the fruits of the labor despite the fact my buddy implored me, begged me, fell to his knees and threatened to fall on a sword if I saw this movie because it was that bad. Like Clark Kent in Superman II, I heard the voices but I didn’t listen. Nonetheless I think I’m dissolving my friendship with this dude because though he tried with all of his earthly might to save my eyeballs, I don’t think he tried hard enough. It’s all his fault.

Be forewarned that this film has about as many characters and one of the more overreaching plots that you’ll ever have the displeasure of seeing. Our film opens with some lout embarrassing his fiancée Estelle (Katherine Hawkes) while the pair is chilling at the Opera. Fortunately this dude is quickly dispatched by the pasty white and sickly looking Alex Stone (Daniel Goddard) who looks like this because he's vampire. After a quick dinner, somehow the pair fall in love even though they didn't seem spend enough time together for love to grow, but I guess that's why they call it love. Alex is the head of a group of vampires who do vampirery stuff, though his newfound love for Estelle threatens to derail all of this vampire goodness. Alex’s No. 2 Sebastian (Gary Daniels), in particular is wary of this new love because it threatens to ‘expose’ them. Now one would think that earlier on when our vampire brood was devouring some dude in a crowded nightclub, had a face off with the police with flaring fangs, obnoxious tiger growls and blood dripping from their mouths all culminating with them disappearing like magic in a cloud of pixie dust... maybe this might have actually been the reason they were ‘exposed’, but no, let’s blame Alex and his desire for love.

Now things start getting a little convoluted as Alex wants to cure his curse of vampirism which somehow leads us to this silly mega corporation led by one Victor Price (Eric Etabari), who is funding Estelle’s father (Nick Jameson) to find the secret to immortality. There is also a lame vampire hunter named Marshall Pope (Matthias Hues) who is cruising for Alex and his crew. In addition there are henchman, thugs, dudes who steal vital organs and cops dressed as clowns and so much more. Somehow all these disparate elements and plot variances come together, more or less… and end in outer space... Outer Freaking Space… as Alex strives to become a real live man and at the same time must save his one true love with the help of his dwarf best friend (Phil Fondacaro) from the evil Victor Price or something.

The star of this film, Katherine Hawkes, wrote and produced ‘Kiss of the Vampire’ and it would seem that Ms. Hawkes is a big fan of soap operas. There was a particular scene of inspired melodrama where Ms. Hawkes character commands Alex… ‘Kiss Me!’ and he replies dourly while looking away ‘I can’t’, and then they repeat it like three or four more times and if you can watch that sequence without spitting pop through your nose, you’re a better one than me. Also like a soap opera there were a ton of characters and an equal amount of inane plot points but where a soap opera has like fifteen years while coming on for an hour every single day, ‘Kiss of the Vampire’ tried to cram all this nonsense into a mind numbingly long 100 minutes. Mind Numbing. The director Joe Tornatore is also credited as the ‘Supervising Editor’ and it would be in the best interest of ALL involved not to let my man ‘supervise’ anymore. Scenes went on way too long, actors seemed to be standing around waiting for their cues, the camera lingered far too long on actors doing absolutely nothing and as many plot points that were in the movie, there were more that were introduced that went absolutely nowhere. This is a SPOILER but I did love the scene where the vampire hunter set a trap for the vamps and was yelling to the cops who were ‘helping him’ while he was getting brutalized by another vamp, to ‘HIT THE SWITCH!’ You see this would’ve flooded the room with some of that artificial sunlight and thus saved him from getting impaled with his own stake. Unfortunately no one was standing by the switch or they forgot about the switch, the vampire hunter gets killed but eventually our ‘helpful’ cops remember the whole switch concept but alas… Funniest scene ever.

On the plus side the movie did look very nice and sounded very nice which belies a budget that I’m sure was miniscule at best, but that’s about it for the good stuff. The acting in the flick was a mixed bag of B-movie veterans who knew what they were doing and some locals who really didn’t, and the special effects were fairly poor. Then you have to get past incessant tiger growls and the vampire actors constantly rearing their heads back amidst these awful growls to reveal their fangs which I’m sure is an insult to real vampires the world over.

As one of the first movies I’ve seen in 20-09 I hope to the heavens that I don’t see a worse one this, and I got ties to this flick people so it hurts me to my heart to trash ‘Kiss of the Vampire’, but off into the Garbage Corner you go.