Journal d'un Vampire

I have seen a lot of vampire flicks in my day. This was on the edge of being a good story. I love the Victorian flair of the inside of the mansion, the four poster beds, etc. That's apparently where the budget ended.

The master vampire, Ash is the only real actor in the film. His lines are delivered believably. The only time our hero, Zachary actually acts is when Sofia catches him drinking blood from the psychofant and screams her name and throws himself at the door.

The one thing that really brought the film down a notch was the deadpan monologue from Zachary. It was clumsily read, with no feeling, no passion. Granted, Zach was a depressed vampire.. but you can be passionately depressed.

I think it would have been better to have had a third party read the monologue. Perhaps someone found the 'Vampire Journal' and was reading it... with a bit more pizzaz than it's writer.

Watch the film, rescue the elements that are good and marvel at them. There is some good camera work, their corpses reconstituting themselves every evening was a nice touch, knowing the master was a once a vampire hunter... nice.

You've got to give credit to Ted Nicolau for creating a somewhat separate vampire world from the Subspecies world he had previously mastered, and still manage to be original and engaging.

Here we have a movie that was actually filmed in Romania (as Subspecies were) and has that gothic renaissance quality about it. A beautiful low-budget film that puts to shame such mainstream atrocities as Interview With A Shampooer.

Jonathon Morris who plays Ash is such a great actor beyond description. He really should be in more films, but i guess he prefers the classical stage acting field of work. We did get to see him again in Subspecies 4 reprising his signature role of Ash, so that was a welcome addition to the franchise. David Gunn also does a marvelous job as Zachery, the vampire (and vampire slayer) torn between the two worlds.

It would have been nice if there would have been a sequel or two to Vampire Journals, i suppose that died in the monetary problems at Full Moon in recent years. Alas, we still have this excellent movie for posterity through the years....in blood.

A very slow movie in some respects, but the shadow work, that I so loved in his Subspecies series, were even heavier in this movie!:) The scenes and buildings were very gothic,complete with fog-enshrouded nights and cemetaries. The feel of this movie was also very 'dark' and satisfyingly gothic for the goth/vampire movie lover:) Also check out all the Subspecies movies...my faves being 1,2, and 3.

This movie is cool because there are few movies like it now a days. Most movies now portray vampires as gang brutes (Blade). Vampire Journals portrays them as more of a charismatic lords of the night with shadow powers and the such. It has a strong mythos, which it also shares with the Subspecies films, also from Full Moon.

Well, I am a big fan of Full Moon Videos..after all, that's where some of the Lovecraft films came from, and I'm a big fan of them. Alright then. This is a somewhat artsy-fartsy vampire movie, kind of continuing the line of the subspecies films. Unlike the Subspecies films, there were no cheesy clay-mation gargoyles, and the budget seemed to be relatively decent. Thank God for Romania, eh? At any rate, the plot was pretty good, the cast not bad. The atmosphere great, and the whole movie flowed pretty well.

This would make a nice addition to any vampire fan's movie collection.

Also, if you like it and want to get more depth into the story, get the rest of the Subspecies movies. They're more cult-classic, like the rest of the Full Moon horror movies, but worth a watch.

Believe me. I've seen thousands of horror movies, and would make the best horror critic in the world, if it paid........and I got to use my usual potty-mouth to get my point across.