Saturday, April 9, 2011

Moon Over Miami: Decadent Evil

Vampires vs. Phil Fondacaro.  That's pretty much the gimmick here, although there is a little more on display. Yes, we also get a cliche love-story and some bizarre comedy involving a puppet.  A puppet in a Full Moon film?  Shocking- I know.  If you're looking for a normal vampire film, look elsewhere.  Actually, to be fair, you do get a pretty familiar vampire film in the beginning...but I'll get into that later.  On the plus side, Phil Fondacaro is in this movie and he's always awesome.  Can he raise this movie above the rest by the sheer power of his awesomeness?  Get out your recipe for chocolate evil as we prepare to make...
The film begins...with stock footage of Vampire Diaries.  No, really.  They waste ten minutes on this crap.  Why?  Well, it helps pad out the run-time for one.  For another, the villain is supposed to be one of the random vampire ladies from that film.  Is it the same actress?  Not as far as I could tell.  No, this is the slutty, Tina Fey lady from Blood Dolls.  Oh good, you're back.
The plot proper breaks down like this.  A lady is in love with a guy, but she's a vampire.  He doesn't know that until Phil Fondacaro shows up and tells him that.  He also tosses out some random dialog explaining that vampires come from different Clans and that vampire rules vary from group to group.  Case in point: these vampires aren't hurt by garlic, but they also can't smell it.  No, really.  The guy eventually discovers that his lady friend is a vampire and she agrees to leave with him.  However, the girl's 'sister' wants to use her leaving as leverage to make herself look good.  Oh yeah, the 'sister' also brings home a hooker, who appears to be played by a porn star.  Let's do an IMDB search and see, shall we?  Well, unless Big Tits in Sport 6 and Suck It Dry 7 (how can I watch them without seeing the rest of the story?!?) are something other than porn, I would say that I'm right.  There's also a puppet called Marvin the Homonculus.  Lame.
Finally, we get to see Phil in action as he takes on the vampire horde.  Actually, it's just the 'sister' at this point.  He seemingly puts up no fight, only to stab her with a tiny stake that he hides under his hat.  Yeah, how would that pierce her heart?  She dies, which is something that our lead heroine takes fairly-well.  Got over it, huh?  The evil lady vampire shows up and gloats about what she has done.  The Homunculus, you see, is the father of Phil, whom the woman transformed because she didn't like him anymore.  Phil tries to take her out with the same trick, but it doesn't work.  Wow- shocking.  Phil just kind of gives up until his father whispers a plan to him.  The dad puts some of his essence in Phil (no, it's not like that) and the guy gets bitten, which causes the vampire lady to turn into a female version of a cheap puppet.  The day is saved, thanks to happenstance and a half-hearted attempt at being clever.  Oh yeah, the couple is happy and together...until the sequel.  The End.
Wow, you barely tried here, huh?  The plot of this movie is alright, but really stretched thin.  I mean, the movie is 80 minutes long and they have to seriously try to make this work.  Yes, they do spend about 1/8th of the film just showing you stock footage from a film that barely fits into a different series (Subspecies).  On top of that, they follow this up by spending five minutes showing you this couple in a strip club.  The whole point- they eventually go to the vampire's house and get killed.  That's 1/4 of the run-time gone now.  Way to make this look hard!  Phil Fondacaro is good here, but supremely-wasted.  I was wondering why Phil didn't make an appearance in the sequel.  Now I know.  Thank you, Phil.  Your awesomeness is too good for this series.  When you're an off-shoot of the Subspecies series over seven years after the last one- which itself had a five-year gap between films, you're off to a bad start.  Good news- you didn't get any worse.  Of course, you also didn't get any better.  Mind you, I'm still going to see the sequel...
Next up, Random Forgotten Sequel Week begins with the second Species sequel.  Oh good, another film made for the Syfy Channel.  Stay tuned...
  

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