Director: Vince D’Amato
Starring: Bonny Giroux, C.S. Munro, Maratama Carlson, Brinke Stevens

As if Travis didn’t already have enough to worry about with zombies roaming the land, he now has to contend with a vampire called Carmilla who has immoral designs on his daughter.

Against a backdrop of a curiously understated zombie plague a father and daughter are on a road trip to liase with “the General”.  En route they are tricked into picking up Carmilla, a mysterious femme-fatale hitch hiker who sets about enchanting the daughter.  Only it turns out that the father and the General are actually trapping Carmilla so they can ritually finish her off and free both their daughters from her spell.  And she’s a vampire, although she doesn’t mind sunlight.  And zombies sometimes wander into the story, but not much.  It’s all a bit confusing.
On the whole Vampires vs Zombies is a pretty poor film; enthusiastic, though amateurish, acting, bad dialogue, senseless script, shabby effects, but most unforgivably – it’s just plain boring.  Despite the film’s title there aren’t really any scenes where Vampires and Zombies fight, let alone any apocalyptical “battle between the living dead and the undead” as the tagline promises. Unbelievable as it sounds, this angle looks like it was simply played up to associate with Freddy vs Jason; the cover art for both films is pretty similar – like that is a such a great film to be associated with?!?

Budget constraints are not dealt with very creatively, zombies are not one of the most difficult film monsters to represent but they are far from convincing (half of them look like refugees from the Blue Man Group).  The dialogue is stilted and full of overlong pauses.  Oh, and take a look out the car window during the many interior car shots, the landscape is hardly moving; they are driving at about 5 miles an hour.  Another “ingenious” cost cutting measure.

As for the film’s narrative, well, you know how in a dream, as you progress through the “plot” of that dream new elements are unexpectedly introduced and unquestioningly incorporated into your story?  Well, V v Z is like this.  First the father and daughter were duped into picking Carmilla up, then it turns out that was their intention all along, then flashbacks (or are they dream sequences?) relate how Carmilla’s mother had already got her teeth into the daughter well beforehand, then the daughter killed a doctor, and it is revealed that the father has had to kill the General’s daughter.  Next they wind up in some mental asylum where Carmilla was the nurse and the daughter an inmate and they run off together.  Finally they get attacked by zombies.  It would be kind to assume this is all a very clever way of conveying that dream like sense but I fear it is more to do with plain bad directing.   It’s all a little too confusing; sometimes it’s not actually clear whether we are facing a zombie or a vampire, and there are a lot of scenes that are apropos absolutely nothing – like the attack of the zombie convent school girls (which sounds a lot better than it is).

I suppose there are some interesting aspects to VvZ, the non-panicky mood of the film quite intriguing in that the zombie menace is not really treated as an apocalyptical catastrophe, more a situation that civilisation has adapted to.  The undead are roaming around (apparently mostly outside the cities) but they seem to be more of an inconvenience than anything else.  There doesn’t seem to be any state of emergency or widespread panic; people are just getting on with their lives – petrol stations continue to operate and take cash, albeit opportunistically putting up the price.  In fact I would say this is more realistic that a total breakdown of society – lets face it, after initially being taken by surprise I’m sure the army really wouldn’t have much trouble suppressing an unorganised attack by mindless, shuffling bodies.  Again, I suspect that this approach was reached by the film makers more by chance than a deliberate decision.  The zombies certainly are more incidental than integral to the plot - indeed the zombie element looks like it was tacked on as an afterthought.  Perhaps the vampire only version was not long enough and adding zombies padded it out.

 

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla

The blurb states that the film is “based on J.Sheridan Le Fanu’s Classic Vampire Tale Carmilla”. The story they are referring to is by an 18^th century gothic horror author and is often cited as being the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is a most interesting read (you can read it online herehttp://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/l/lefanu/carmilla/ ) and also features a father and daughter team contending with a mysterious lesbian vampire type creature.  Incidentally Le Fanu used to have very vivid and lucid dreams that he would often use as the basis to his stories.  Sadly, this turkey of a film is in nowhere the same class.

 

 

Read the short story and the film does make a little more sense, you can see what the film was trying to do.  As the story was written before the original Dracula, it doesn’t share the same vampire lore – hence the fact that “vampires” have no problem with sunlight (though they are still referred to as “vampires”).  There is a lot of dream / vision driven plot and the erotic theme is certainly present.

 

Who would really win in a Vampire vs Zombies fight?

The film poses this question and eventually kind of answers it in the last scene (answer: zombies win), but what would really happen?  In my opinion, in the vast majority of encounters, neither would be interested in the other so they wouldn’t actually bother fighting.   Both creatures are essentially dead, cold meat and both are only interested in live flesh (or blood) so I contend they would ignore each other.
The exceptions to this are:

• If the were fighting over food / prey
• When a vampire has just fed they take on the appearance and warmth of being alive so at this point a zombie may well have its interest piqued and it may attack.
• A vampire – while it prefers blood drawn from a live victim – can take nourishment from other sources; animals for instance, or, in times of need, stored blood.  Zombies are dead but they do appear still to have blood in them (at least the fresher ones do).  When live prey is scarce a vampire could at least take some nourishment from dead blood drawn from a zombie. Note: this wouldn’t then create a zombie / vampire hybrid – it’s just too dead.

So, in the rare situation where the two did actually fight who would win?  It is very unlikely that a zombie could actually kill a vampire given that a zombie is mindless and the procedure for killing a vampire is fairly specific (stake through the heart, crucifix, holy water, daylight, etc).   On the other hand, given the strength, agility and intelligence of vampires they wouldn’t have nearly so much trouble despatching the walking dead. Conclusion: Vampires win (this film gets it wrong again).

 

Film Rating:

1/5

Adherence to THE LORE:

1.5/5