• Produced and directed by Charles Band
• Written by “August White” (Brian Muir)
• Starring
  • Phil Fondacaro
  • Debra Mayer
  • Daniel Lennox
  • Raelyn Hennessee
  • Jill Michelle

When I first saw the trailer for Decadent Evil at fullmoondirect.com, I despaired. This was supposed to be the icebreaker for Charles Band’s latest company, Wizard Entertainment, and the kickoff to an ambitious new schedule of six films a year, all directed by Band himself. And what was the high concept driving this first film, this first impression of the entire new video line?

Vampire strippers.

Oh, and an ugly little rod-puppet creature ready-made to be reproduced as a limited-edition collectible doll.

My heart sank.

Now, having seen it, I can tell you that it’s not the worst vampire stripper/hooker movie I’ve ever seen. (#162 in the “Sentences That Would Make My Mother Weep” Series – collect ‘em all!) It’s better, for instance, than Vampire Sisters (2003). But it’s not exactly a movie that makes me say, “Yippee! Charlie Band’s back in the saddle again!”

We start with an intro cobbled together from footage first seen in Full Moon’s Vampire Journals (1997), tell the story of that particular clan of vampires in Bucharest. Why? Mostly to add production value and running time, although there is some slight connection to the plot to come, in the idea that one of the disciple vampires to the master vampire in that film split off from him and came to America to seek her own empire.

Never underestimate the importance of stretching out before a steamy three-way.

After the intro and the opening credits (all totaling six minutes), we get to our story proper, which of course takes place in a strip club. We are here witness to what may be the stupidest man in the world, Bruce (Roger Toussaint), as he drags his ladyfriend Tami (April Gilbert) in to watch. Because I guess he couldn’t think of any place he could take her that would make her feel even less uncomfortable. After watching several minutes of acrobatic pole-dancing (as well as a lapdance going on in the corner), with Tami whining about wanting to leave, their personal space is invaded by Spyce (Raelyn Hennessee), a very forward employee of the club, who proceeds to give Tami a free lapdance. Despite her protests, Tami ends up, y’know, getting into it, because we all know via such educational exploitation flicks as this that every woman in the world is only a hairs’ breadth from surrendering to sapphic desires, provided there’s a driving electronic beat playing in the background. (It is also taught by these same media that every dedicated lesbian in the world needs only the proper application of a good-sized phallus to change teams again. But I digress.)

After the lapdance, Spyce offers them something even better, and takes them back to a palatial stone mansion which must be at least forty minutes away from the downtown strip club, but I guess we’re not supposed to think about that. Bruce, being stupid, doesn’t even wonder why a professional has offered them all of this for free; instead, he just gets into the bedroom and starts stripping, again trying to persuade Tami that, really, it’ll be fun and cool. Then he and Spyce start stripping Tami. I tell you, with all of the general tawdriness up to now, it’s almost a relief when Morella (Debra Mayer), mistress of the house, shows up, slits Bruce’s throat, and drinks his blood, with Spyce waiting her turn. So much of a relief that I almost didn’t say, “Where the hell is that blood spraying from that’s getting all over Bruce’s face?”

By the way, I pity anyone who tries to watch this movie without easy access to the DVD cover, since Morella’s name doesn’t get mentioned for at least another ten minutes. And that’s scarcely unique to her.

It’s not a good sign when a twelve-inch piece of molded rubber is likely the most interesting character.

Anyway. Tami runs off in her underwear and ends up in Morella’s bedroom, where she discovers Marvin the horny homunculus, rod-puppet extraordinaire, who mostly sits in a little cage in the corner, shaking the bars with his slimy hands and making whimpering noises. And blinking. Because the puppet can blink. Doesn’t look at all realistic otherwise, can’t turn his eyes or open his mouth, but he can blink!

Oh, and then Morella catches Tami and sucks her blood. So we’re going to have to look elsewhere for protagonists, kiddies.

Fortunately, for us, Morella provides a segue to such protagonists by asking Spyce, “Where’s your sister?” We then cut to a room above the strip club, where said “sister,” Sugar (Jill Michelle), the lapdancer we saw earlier, is getting her groove on atop Dex (Daniel Lennox), the DJ we saw earlier at the club. (That’s right. This is one of those movies in which the good girl is the one we meet jumping her beau’s bones on the second floor of a strip club. I feel like I need to shower.) Sugar’s been a vampire less than a year, and hasn’t told Dex why she only comes around at night and doesn’t like garlic and has pointy retractable canines. Morella doesn’t approve of Sugar boinking mortals, but hey – the girl’s in love. And Morella’s really not objective on the subject, as she’s still got issues over an old mortal lover who wasn’t faithful to her decades ago.

There’s some… um… you’ve got a string of… never mind.

Well, sooner or later something’s got to happen to upset their delicate little world, and that something soon presents itself in the form of Phil Fondacaro! Fondacaro is Ivan Burroughs (a name you’re learning much earlier than I did), pint-sized vampire hunter, who’s tracked the naughty-and-nice duo here from Arizona. He imposes on Dex after Sugar’s gone and lays a bunch of persuasive exposition on him: The girls’ mistress is Morella, she’s from a European bloodline, and Burroughs wants revenge for what she did to his daddy. Oh, and her bloodline believes that the first spray of arterial blood from a victim contains that victim’s soul, and if a single vampire reaps 10,000 souls, he/she will be the master of the bloodline, and Morella’s really close to having her bloodometer roll over.

So Dex and Ivan team up to storm the castle — Dex to rescue Sugar before Ivan feels he has to dispose of her, and Ivan to put a stake in Morella.

You’ll notice that Marvin hasn’t really done much, and that’s pretty much the way it will stay. As more backstory is revealed (backstory is cheap filler for a movie like this, because it means people stand around and talk instead of doing anything expensive), it turns out that Marvin is both the fickle mortal lover Morella mentioned earlier (this was her revenge), and… Ivan’s dad. Which would be kind of funny, what with Fondacaro being so small, except that it looks like Marvin got turned into a homunculus sometime after Ivan was born, so there’s really no point to the relationship in sizes.

“Stake ‘em in the heart? Nah — I usually just go for the kneecaps.”

So. The rest of the movie is pretty much confined to the mansion, with Dex and Sugar getting caught and dragged in front of Morella, and Morella chowing down on an unlucky hooker to up her body count, and Marvin getting free of his cage and really doing nothing except licking the nipple of said hooker (I could have lived a long, long time without seeing his little rubber tongue, thanks), and every scene containing more dialogue than it really needs (another form of cheap filler). Not great dialogue, either – not horrendous, but certainly nothing that we haven’t heard before in plenty of gothic vampire flicks. And it’s not terribly well-suited to the cast; Debra Mayer has previously proven that she can play “whiny bitch” and “snotty bitch” well, but “ostentatious bitch” doesn’t fit as nicely. (And the fact that the script calls to our attention words like “behoove” in her dialogue doesn’t help things.)

As a whole, the movie simply doesn’t follow through on promises; it doesn’t exploit its novel features. Thanks to technical limitations, Marvin remains sidelined through much of the plot; his major role is to stand in his cage and making whiny grunting sounds. Having Fondacaro as a vampire hunter could be pure magic if there were a stunt double to allow him to pull off moves that belie his stature; as it is, he’s not really that impressive a vampire hunter, simply walking around with a couple of stakes. Not even lathe-turned stakes, either; just cheap picket-cut wooden slats that would probably leave a bruise instead of puncturing an undead heart.

“Ooh! Agh! Blood in the eye! You’d think after a hundred years, I’d learn…”

What’s missing most, though, is the sense of fun that permeated the old-time Full Moon flicks. Sure, they were cheap and derivative, but they were also unabashed, colorful and energetic. Decadent Evil pales beside the canon of a decade ago.

Nevertheless, the production looks very polished for a six-day shoot (Band is, of course, the consummate professional in that regard), and the main location at a former funeral home lends some proper ambiance. If his future productions can find high-concept ideas which capture the imagination while being rendered on these low budgets (maybe even stretching past the 59-minute pre-credits running time here), he might be able to capture the same lightning in a bottle which created an honest-to-goodness fan following for his older productions.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6
• breasts: 4
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Phil Fondacaro (Ivan Burroughs) played “Bell Ringer” in the TNG pilot “Encounter at Farpoint”