VEGAS VAMPIRES (also marketed as VEGAS VAMPS) has all the markings of a "project"; that some veteran (i.e., over the hill) Afro-American movie stars got together to give their own careers one last battery charge and, while they were at it, give some young Afro-American film and acting students a chance to do their thing. Evidently everything was spent on this film - except (1) time and (2) money.
Although this film is supposed to attract us by being located in Las Vegas, a city of glamour and round-the-clock action, we see none of that, apart from about 30 seconds of stock footage of the casino strip. No scenes inside casinos or nightclubs or fabulous mansions. One scene that's supposed to be in a swank neighborhood is actually in an alleyway behind the backyard walls. A scene that supposed to take place in a classy restaurant looks more like the corner of a utility room with a movable bar and a shower curtain hung from the ceiling. There are some stock glimpses of ambulances running in the light of day, but when we have a close-up scene (as we do with supposedly different ambulances on 3 different occasions) suddenly it's nighttime and then we see the ambulances drive off, again in daylight.
Young women in Las Vegas are being killed, and their bodies are found drained of blood, and the LV Police Dept officially suspects that a vampire is really on the loose. Well that's a change of pace! Another change of pace is that a majority of the LV PD, including its upper command, is black; if you lived in LV you'd realize that would be a change like the sun rising in the west. Daniel Baldwin, who may have owed someone a favor, does a one-minute walk-on as a stubborn white cop who doesn't believe in vampires. Thrown into this mix two Afro-American former LV PD cops who are now private eyes in Los Angeles who just happen to drive up to Las Vegas on a lark and take an interest in this string of killings. At the same time, for no particular reason, there's a hip-hop singing contest among Afro-American 20-somethings in Southern California and a couple of fellows win it singing as badly as I do, and immediately decide to take their girlfriends along for a celebratory trip in an RV to LV.
For reasons unknown, this RV has some sort of temporary engine trouble in the middle of the desert, and looking at it from the outside, they're in a sandy wilderness. Then they're filmed from inside the RV and we can see through the windshield that they're parked on grass alongside an active highway. The wardrobe department also went cheap and told these fellows to wear their own clothes - and then the producers got antsy about something printed on their t-shirts because the images were processed to blur the image on the shirts, giving them a shimmer as if you had walked into a 3-D movie without the special glasses.
The vampires in this movie are very selectively sensitive to sunlight. One of them manages, for no particular reason, to stumble out into the middle of what appears to be an open air farmers market at high noon before settling down and bursting into flame. Others, inside the living room of the house used by the king vampire, are disco-ing in mid-day with just flimsy lace curtains on the windows to protect them from the noonday sunlight. The king vampire, as you might have guessed, is a white dude and you don't need me to tell you he's no actor; in fact, he is a very accomplished musical director for movies and he may have been recruited for this role because they had embarrassing photos of him or were keeping his kid hostage or some motivation like that. Anyway, we never actually see him kill a victim because first he has to do this very prolonged arthritic dancing around her unconscious body; no explanation for why he plays with his food.
In the end the vampire is not done in by the police, nor the private eyes, nor the hip-hip singers, but by a nun (also of African descent but since she's sent by the Vatican I don't know if I can call her American) who first appears in the full veil and wimple penguin outfit we haven't seen since Loretta Young, and then she slips into a leather bustier which I suppose is now standard Vatican issue for nun downtime.
This movie is 89 minutes of your life that you will never get back. I consider it one of the worst movies ever made ... and that's against very strong competition.
Although this film is supposed to attract us by being located in Las Vegas, a city of glamour and round-the-clock action, we see none of that, apart from about 30 seconds of stock footage of the casino strip. No scenes inside casinos or nightclubs or fabulous mansions. One scene that's supposed to be in a swank neighborhood is actually in an alleyway behind the backyard walls. A scene that supposed to take place in a classy restaurant looks more like the corner of a utility room with a movable bar and a shower curtain hung from the ceiling. There are some stock glimpses of ambulances running in the light of day, but when we have a close-up scene (as we do with supposedly different ambulances on 3 different occasions) suddenly it's nighttime and then we see the ambulances drive off, again in daylight.
Young women in Las Vegas are being killed, and their bodies are found drained of blood, and the LV Police Dept officially suspects that a vampire is really on the loose. Well that's a change of pace! Another change of pace is that a majority of the LV PD, including its upper command, is black; if you lived in LV you'd realize that would be a change like the sun rising in the west. Daniel Baldwin, who may have owed someone a favor, does a one-minute walk-on as a stubborn white cop who doesn't believe in vampires. Thrown into this mix two Afro-American former LV PD cops who are now private eyes in Los Angeles who just happen to drive up to Las Vegas on a lark and take an interest in this string of killings. At the same time, for no particular reason, there's a hip-hop singing contest among Afro-American 20-somethings in Southern California and a couple of fellows win it singing as badly as I do, and immediately decide to take their girlfriends along for a celebratory trip in an RV to LV.
For reasons unknown, this RV has some sort of temporary engine trouble in the middle of the desert, and looking at it from the outside, they're in a sandy wilderness. Then they're filmed from inside the RV and we can see through the windshield that they're parked on grass alongside an active highway. The wardrobe department also went cheap and told these fellows to wear their own clothes - and then the producers got antsy about something printed on their t-shirts because the images were processed to blur the image on the shirts, giving them a shimmer as if you had walked into a 3-D movie without the special glasses.
The vampires in this movie are very selectively sensitive to sunlight. One of them manages, for no particular reason, to stumble out into the middle of what appears to be an open air farmers market at high noon before settling down and bursting into flame. Others, inside the living room of the house used by the king vampire, are disco-ing in mid-day with just flimsy lace curtains on the windows to protect them from the noonday sunlight. The king vampire, as you might have guessed, is a white dude and you don't need me to tell you he's no actor; in fact, he is a very accomplished musical director for movies and he may have been recruited for this role because they had embarrassing photos of him or were keeping his kid hostage or some motivation like that. Anyway, we never actually see him kill a victim because first he has to do this very prolonged arthritic dancing around her unconscious body; no explanation for why he plays with his food.
In the end the vampire is not done in by the police, nor the private eyes, nor the hip-hip singers, but by a nun (also of African descent but since she's sent by the Vatican I don't know if I can call her American) who first appears in the full veil and wimple penguin outfit we haven't seen since Loretta Young, and then she slips into a leather bustier which I suppose is now standard Vatican issue for nun downtime.
This movie is 89 minutes of your life that you will never get back. I consider it one of the worst movies ever made ... and that's against very strong competition.