• Directed by Brett Kelly
• Written by Janet S. Waltham
• Starring
  • Brett Kelly
  • Anastasia Kimmett
  • Karin Landstad
  • Chip Hair
  • Paige Coulombe
• Produced by Anne-Marie Frigon
• Executive produced by J.R. Bookwalter

Here’s a sign that the shot-on-video microbudget cinema revolution has reached maturity: We’re now seeing remakes of some of the earlier entries in the field. But SOV/DIY filmmaking being what it is, this is one genre in which the urge to remake earlier features might actually do some good.

Because this is a for-real remake — not a fully revisionist “reimagination” which takes the title and not much else — of J.R. Bookwalter’s 1991 movie, you would be well served by refreshing yourelf on my review of the earlier version here. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

Done yet?

…

How about now?

…

Jeez, hurry up, will ya? Either your dial-up connection is pokier than normal, or somebody needs to ask for Hooked On Phonics for Christmas.

All caught up? Okay.

Everyone’s mom goes through that embarrassing “harem girl” stage, right? Right?

It goes almost without saying that the remake is far more technically proficient than the original. Video technology and computer editing had obviously progressed by several orders of magnitude in fifteen years; on top of that, while the original was J.R. Bookwalter’s first feature shot on video after several shot on Super-8 and 16mm, Brett Kelly had already completed more than ten video features before this. (Kelly’s last appearance here was for his anthology Night Songs (2000). He’s gotten better since.) The creative side shows more polish as well; the original script was written on an abbreviated schedule by inexperienced screenwriter Matthew Walsh, and seems more like a promising first draft than a shooting script. The remake’s screenplay shows the effect of several years of mulling, bringing together several disparate plotlines and themes of the original that never quite gelled and making more of a cohesive whole of them.

In this iteration, Jeff (director Brett Kelly) is a shlub working in a videostore, interacting fairly poorly with the customers. After he finishes the midnight lockup, he walks through the night to his home, where his mother (Karin Landstad) sits up waiting for him. She’s eating Girl Scout cookies. She’s already finished the Girl Scout.

“I’d kill for a spoon.”

On paper, this scene runs almost exactly as it did in the original, but as shot it’s a entirely different scene. Watthew Walsh, who played Jeff in the original, was a skinny nineteen-year-old, and thus the character came across as a post-high school introvert, the kind who doesn’t cut the apron strings because at least that influence rescues him from having to decide on a life’s path. That vibe changes considerably when Jeff is played by a man in his late thirties; the late bloomer is transformed into someone emotionally and socially stunted by his mother’s influence.

And what a mother! In the original, she was almost a parody of the suburban housewife, deliberately nondescript in her housecoat and sensible haircut. But Landstad plays a vampire who is wholly invested in the vampire mystique; the house is decorated from Victoriana’R'Us, and she cultivates the appearance of an over-the-hill Vampira. Oddly enough, these overwrought affectations actually heighten the central ambiguity of the movie: Are she and Jeff actually vampires? Or is it simply a bloodthirsty fantasy into which she’s indoctrinated her son? Bookwalter apparently wanted to portray that kind of ambiguity in the original, but it was almost completely short-circuited in the Girl Scout scene, when her open mouth reveals a pair of fangs. In the remake, there are no fangs in evidence except in the later Halloween scene, where such appearances are less than wholly trustworthy.

No, I don’t intend to spend that many words on every single scene. Given how closely this remake follows the original, I can safely concentrate on pointing out where the new version diverges from the old, for good or ill. Mostly for good, although there are some disappointing flaws, both inherited and innovated.

“Can Frodo come out and play?”

This time around, law enforcement enters the picture earlier, at least as a separate plot thread. Right after the Girl Scout’s disappearance, the small station of Sheriff Blake (Chip Hair) turns into a call center for community volunteers. Which is good, because aside from the Sheriff and a single deputy who is mentioned but never scene, the only other employee is dispatcher/secretary Madge (Ellen Manchee). Chip Hair’s an impressively it silver-headed gentleman who does without the good-ol-boy intonations of the sheriff in the original, and instead simply behaves like a quiet man who wants what’s best for his town, and is disturbed by two disappearances in the last two months. It certainly makes him more sympathetic that he starts doing his job at the first sign of trouble, rather than waiting until it’s his own kin that have gone missing. (While we’re discussing it, could we please stop pretending that this isn’t a Canadian-shot feature? Half of the signage we see is bilingual, and the sign in the repeated establishing shot of the sheriff’s station says “www.ottawapolice.ca” right on it; so why do we have dialogue about the advisability of calling in “the state police” on this one?)

The biggest single change, one which is entirely an improvement, the treatment of the love interest, who finally starts to shake Jeff loose of his mother’s control. Jeff steps in (clumsily) on an altercation in the video story between the world’s ugliest skinhead — and yes, that’s saying a lot — and his girlfriend Nina (Anastasia Kimmett), whom he accuses of shorting him on pharmaceuticals. That hesitant moment of gallantry on his part catches her eye, and later, when he locks up the store, she’s waiting outside — partly because she’s been stranded without money, but partly because there’s something cute about Jeff, “like a little mouse or something.” She starts to draw him out of his shell, and find seven his innocent social ineptitude endearing.

I know, we’re trading out a ill-developed plot device (the beatific girl who gets close to Jeff for absolutely no reason) for a pure geek fantasy: the hot bad girl who’s looking for redemption and solace and may be able to find it in the quiet, dependable nebbish. But it certainly gives more depth and character contrast to their interactions, and even geek-fantast cliches are a better justification for her interest in Jeff than “because I couldn’t think of anything else, and the script needs to be done real soon.” And whatever complaints there may be about character machinations, they’re almost entirely overshadowed by the terrific performance of Anastasia Kimmett, who brings to life a soul as lost in her own way as Jeff is.

“Hold on. I haven’t measured you for a while.”

In fact, there’s some spot-on casting here. Karin Landstad as Jeff’s mother strikes the perfect balance of sincerity and theatricality of someone who self-identifies as a deposed vampire queen, whether real or imagined. Chip Hair as as Sheriff Blake isn’t quite as solid, but he’s got good presence, and he’s a visually striking performer. Of all the leads, Brett Kelly as Jeff comes across the weakest, though I don’t want to conclude that it’s because he’s the worst actor; playing an antisocial introvert sympathetically is a lot harder than it sounds.

Having pointed out the improvements, I simply gotta give some time to the missteps:

As I remarked offhand in my review of the original, Jeff’s penchant for horror movie posters and T-shirts seems counterintuitive; why would someone with a markedly ambivalent attitude toward his own vampire existence surround himself with pop culture with which he seems not to interact at all? My assumption at the time, of course, is that horror movie posters and tees were the easiest choices for set dressing and wardrobe when a bunch of horrormovie fans got together to make a horror movie for pocket change. In the remake, the idea threatens to become a subplot, though it never does; Jeff’s mother berates him for reading “those magazines,” saying that the supernatural beasties they portray simply aren’t real — not like they are. And yet, horror fandom simply isn’t congruous with the rest of Jeff’s personality. He doesn’t dwell on blood and guts, either real or cinematic; he doesn’t seem even to gravitate toward that rack in the videostore. He spends every day in uneasy toleration of his mother’s vampiric flamboyance while resisting her demands that he join her in his destiny; why would he occupy his spare moments with images of the very thing he’s trying to avoid?

There’s also a single scene which is not just bad, it’s so bad. In the original, a kitten wanders up to the back door of the house, whereupon the mother lifts it and dot dot dot. This time around, in the same scene, the dot dot dot is spelled out for us — mother lifts the cat and rips it apart with her teeth, in a display of bad taste that seems very much at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.

There is also an important scene missing, one which was the emotional core of the first movie: Jeff bringing a mallet and stake into his mother’s bedroom, intending finally to free himself from her, but unable to accomplish it. I waited all through the remake for that scene, and felt gypped that it was dropped. (Sure, keep the kitten scene…)

“I’m more than just a lawman. I’m a lawman with a pointy stick.”

The biggest casualty, though, is the meticulously set-up ambiguity: Are Jeff and his mother really vampires? The movie takes great pains not to commit, which means that one of the deep realization for Jeff because of his relationship with Nina is that maybe he ISN’T a vampire — maybe it’s all just his mother’s warped fantasy that she’s been forcing him to live since infancy. That ambiguity is so much more pronounced in the remake that it’s startling when it’s resolved too early (no, I’m not going to say which way), just before the end of the movie — and then, in the final scene, the script still tries to play off the ambiguity, even though it already spent that nickel. There’s a five-second cut that needs to be made in the last two minutes of the film, so that the set-up of the previous seventy-nine aren’t wasted.

Of the early Tempe features, especially the infamous “six-pack” of quickie shot-on-video work-for-hire product, Kingdom of the Vampire is probably the one which had the most potential for a quality remake. This new version confirms that, although it still feels like the second draft of a screenplay that needed one more pass through the word processor before making the “real” movie.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8 (plus 1 cat)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0