“The Kiss of A Vampire” is being sold as a horror film

 

“The Kiss of A Vampire” is being sold as a horror film, but there is nothing remotely frightening about it. What’s on screen is a limp, muddled stab at gothic romance that never works as horror, romance, or even basic genre camp.

The premise has potential on paper: a fragile, schizophrenic young woman, Carol, rushes into marriage with a handsome doctor, only to discover he is a 1,400-year-old vampire. The film flirts with the idea that she cannot trust her own perception as she falls under his supposedly hypnotic, sensual spell, torn between reality, delusion, and the lure of “eternal love” and late-breaking sexual awakening. In execution, none of this is convincing, and the script spells out every emotion so crudely that the psychological angle becomes laughable rather than disturbing.

Richard Douglas Jensen, who both writes and directs, calls “The Kiss of A Vampire” a meditation on seduction and love so powerful you’d die for it. At 96 minutes, it still feels overlong because the film keeps repeating the same hollow declarations about love, illness, and eternity in dialogue so clunky it actually grates. The screenplay doesn’t just miss nuance; it seems allergic to it.

The acting only makes things worse. Philip Hulford, as the vampire Wessex, shows he can act and occasionally suggests the movie this could have been. Saporah Bonnette, as Carol, simply cannot carry the role; her performance veers from stiff to shrill with no control, and there is zero believable chemistry between the two leads. Scene after scene that should crackle with danger or illicit desire just sits there, flat and awkward.

The film is never scary and barely coherent as a romance. It wants to be swooning and sensual, but it is dull from start to finish. Instead of tension or atmosphere, the audience is buried under purple monologues and pseudo-philosophical pronouncements that sound like bad diary entries about life, madness, and forever.

Visually and tonally, it gestures toward old Universal and Hammer horror, and the director name-checks Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Lionel Atwill, and Maria Ouspenskaya as inspirations. It also nods toward the lurid sensuality of Italian giallo and the pulp energy of Roger Corman. The problem is that it copies the references without capturing any of the mood, wit, or style that made those films endure. It is cheesy, but not in a self-aware or pleasurable way; it takes itself just seriously enough to drain out any fun.

There is a small niche audience for this kind of ultra-low-budget, talky vampire melodrama, and that’s likely where the film will live, at best. For everyone else, this is a slog: poorly written, poorly acted, dramatically inert, and utterly devoid of the horror it promises.

CAST & CREDITS

Genre: Horror

Runtime: 96 minutes

Writer/Director: Richard Douglas Jensen

Saporah Bonnette as Carol

Philip Hulford as Wessex

Richard Douglas Jensen as Petrov

Bambi Everson as The Witch

Emma Hayley Jensen as Hera

Michael V. Jordan as Father Mauricio

Mary Sening as The Madam

Jeff Lapidus as The Priest

An ITN Distribution.