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Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Vampires (1988)

... aka: Abadon
... aka: Vampiros

Directed by:
Len Anthony

At a prestigious New York art college called the Abadon School, construction workers using a jackhammer unleash some kind of deep-voiced spirit that promptly goes upstairs to the dorms and sucks a topless girl and her boyfriend down the toilet. Don't worry, it remembers to flush afterward. However, it won't be for another fifteen painfully disjointed minutes, which includes an art show, a tarot card reading, a woman wandering around foggy corridors, a narrated prologue (“Wouldn't you like to live forever?”) and some guy attacked by the spirit, that an actual plot starts to take shape. The pretty Orly Benyair, a real-life artist from Israel who has a beautiful smile but issues stumbling her way through her awkward lines, stars as foreign student Ione. Ione's just arrived at Abadon to study photography and film and already has one acquaintance there; a music major named Gary (Thomas Ostuni), who she was once romantically involved with. Because she's a scholarship student, Ione gets to stay on the third floor of the main building on campus. As she's getting settled in, she's befriended by a kooky but friendly girl named Helen (Vicki Richardson), whose room is right across the hall from hers.






It doesn't take Ione long to discover the staff is as strange as they are unfriendly, the students are a little more immature than she'd hoped and her former flame has a reputation for being king man-whore on campus. What else could possibly go wrong? Wellll... For starters, Gary was the guy who already got sucked down the toilet along with fellow student Tracy (Karen Nielsen). Then, during orientation, Ione feels dizzy at the mere presence of stern headmistress Madeline Abadon Avernus (Jackie James), who gathers the new students together to explain not only the school's history but also the school rules. Built in the 17th Century, the Abadon estate has been in Madeline's family nearly as long, was once used as a mental asylum where unorthodox experiments took place and was almost destroyed in a fire several decades earlier that claimed the life of Madeline's father. As for the rules, they're simple: The fourth floor and the basement are both off limits. Break those rules and you'll be “punished."






Ione starts hearing voices, including those of her dead former boyfriend, and feels general unease being at the school so she seeks help from tarot card reader / psychic Dr. Charles Harmon (Duane Jones). Another scared student named Deborah (Robin Michaels), who was also involved with Gary (damn, he really got around) also goes to Charles for help. Deborah begins snooping and finds a few books authored by Madeline's late scientist husband with titles like “Making the Fountain of Youth” and “Experimentation in Energy.” Prior to dying, Dr. Abadon had created some kind of machine that can be used to extract positive energy from victims that can then be transferred to someone else to keep them from aging. Two guesses as to who's been using it.






As much as I love when some unknown 80s title like this suddenly pops up, some things were buried for a reason the first time around. Vampires is most definitely one of those instances. From what I can gather, this was never even finished and what's been cobbled together for this release is a dull, confusing and completely incoherent mess from start to finish. Supposedly some of the footage seen here came from another unfinished film called Negatives, which had also starred Jones and featured future Scream Queen Debbie Rochon in an early role. About half of that film was shot before production closed down due to the producer passing bad checks.






We never once get to see the machine (a major part of the premise) at work, never learn how it works nor do we really get to see Madeline even using it. Characters also come and go without rhyme or reason and keep saying they're going to do something or go somewhere and it never seems to happen. One actress is our heroine one minute and a voice-over is describing her mysterious death the next. A groundskeeper character (John Bly), who's been promised sanctuary and safety by Madeline's late husband, is introduced and given a revenge motive and then vanishes. The evil Madeline also is gone for long stretches of time and isn't even present at the big finale! There's talk of positive and negative energy, fields of energy and threats of people being “neutralized” and none of it really makes a lick of sense.






If this is remembered for anything, it will be for containing one of the final film appearances of Duane Jones. Jones, who broke barriers in the horror classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), worked as an acting teacher, an English professor and a stage director after appearing in Romero's landmark film. A theatrical association with Bill Gunn also landed him the lead role in the black-cast vampire film Ganja & Hess in 1973. After that, he wasn't seen onscreen for around a decade. Perhaps finally being recognized as a horror icon and star of a horror classic in the video era, Jones was in the middle of staging a film comeback when he appeared in this and a few other films before unexpectedly passing away in 1988 at the age of just 52. What makes his appearance in this film extra sad is that his talent still manages to shine through something that's otherwise incompetent. The only other known name in the credits is Ernest R. Dickerson, who shares cinematography credit with Larry Revene.


IMDb and many other websites currently list this movie as having been released in 1986. That's incorrect. Though parts of it may have been shot as early as 1986, it has a 1988 copyright date and was screened at the Cannes Film Market that same year. Instead of receiving a traditional home video release, Vampires was shortened considerably in length, re-edited (again!) and paired up with another shortened horror feature (which also supposedly contains additional footage from Negatives) to make up Fright House, which was released to home video in 1989. To my knowledge, Vampires was not widely available in its current 80-minute form until it finally popped up on DVD in May 2016 on the Film Chest Media Group label, which uses a strictly VHS quality print. Seeing how the cast list in the end credits lists characters who aren't even in this “full” version, clearly not all of the footage from the original shoot made it into this cut either.

10 comments:

spookyx3 said...

didn't know this one had come out. i like jones in NOTLD, and GANJA & HESS is a real favorite, so even though VAMPIRES sounds like a mess, i've ordered a copy. was always curious about it.

jones talked about the film in FANGO #80:

"...jones returned to the genre fold in 1986 with the still unreleased TAROT. shot under the title NEGATIVES and reviewed in VARIETY as VAMPIRES, the film halted production and awaited further financing until its completion in early 1988. 'a former student of mine at the american academy of dramatic arts was involved with this film ... he put me in touch with the people who were casting. because of my fondness for this student, i honored the request to audition. i was deeply not interested in making another film of this sort and was strongly advised against it by my agent, but i kept talking with the people and they were amiable to some of the input i wanted in terms of the script and the character i played. the story involves energy and its reversals. the premise is that each one of us records, somewhere on the great big computer of the universe, a negative and a positive image. there's a machine that a mad scientist uses to reverse people's fields of energy, turn them into negatives and suck up their energy. it has a vampire-like ingredient as well.'
TAROT director len anthony comments fondly on his star. 'duane was the actor's actor ... he was invaluable to me. he put himself out in terms of making himself available to try things. this being a low-budget production, he did a tremendous amount of work teaching the other actors. we sat down together for hours fleshing out the script, even during meal breaks. he was a very nurturing person, and this is one of the strongest memories i'll have of him.'"

The Bloody Pit of Horror said...

How Jones describes the film sounds promising but doesn't come across at all (at least not coherently) in 'Vampires.' Some of the footage from the 1986 shoot must have been scrapped when they shot the 1988 footage because some of the characters in the cast list are not in this version. The credits list characters in France and aboard a train and there are no scenes in France nor aboard a train. Also Debbie Rochon is nowhere to be seen in 'Vampires.' I have a copy of 'Fright House' I haven't watched yet so I'll see if it just uses footage from this or has some other footage.

Interested in hearing what you think once you watch this one.

spookyx3 said...

should be able to make time for it this week...

spookyx3 said...

SPOILERS ahead!

disjointed jumble of nonsense, with all the usual problems common to unfinished films. duane jones is the sole reason to bother. a surprisingly good score helps with atmosphere. for what it's worth, i was really hyped to see this and coasted through, where ordinarily it'd have been interminable.

did a quick A-B. FRIGHT HOUSE clarifies a couple of points and has what feels like a more logical scene order; little tweaks help sell the finale, too. unfortunately, much of jones' work ends up on the cutting room floor: no opening tarot-cards/narration; he doesn't arrive with ione at the school; nixes both the "life after death" discussion at dr. harmon's house and telling debbie he's her father. elsewhere, it's missing some of helen's introduction, the occasional line of dialogue ("would you like a butterscotch to suck on, while you're stalking your prey?"), one of the class registration bits, & ione moving in/calling gary's dorm. didn't notice any additional footage, but there are a few instances of harmon's inner monologue, as well as new off-screen conversations with debbie, all voiced by a different actor. an inter-title specifies "paris, 75 years ago" while young madeline sketches the portrait. this version is a little easier to follow, but not made better; in fact, since FRIGHT HOUSE pairs it with another incomplete mess by the same director, it's actually a worse time overall.

The Bloody Pit of Horror said...

Gah! Such a mess. I have attempted to watch Fright House several times now and have yet to make it out of the first segment before falling asleep. My original plan was to watch these two back-to-back but unfortunately that never happened. Glad you were able to endure them to provide some specifics!

spookyx3 said...

i'm glad i came to it fresh, having forgotten that a large chunk had already been released. if the differences in source quality weren't so jarring, i'd take a crack at reinstating certain scenes into the cut-down later version's slightly smarter framework, just to see what that'd look like.

spookyx3 said...

> I have attempted to watch Fright House several times

full moon is streaming the first segment (in HD!) as FRAT HOUSE OF HORRORS, without the FRIGHT HOUSE additions: no repeated footage, lisa gaye/rick collins VO, or freeze-frame ending. still soporific, but better looking than the murky old video tape.

The Bloody Pit of Horror said...

Here it is years later andddd... I'm still not yet in the mood to finish Fright House! The HD treatment may make it go down a little easier than the awful copy I have though.

spookyx3 said...

> still not yet in the mood to finish Fright House!

completely understandable. what isn't, is why i sat through VAMPIRES & FRIGHT HOUSE twice, DANGEROUS INTENT and now FRAT HOUSE. will also no doubt watch PHANTASY when someone digs that up . . .

spookyx3 said...

MURDEROUS INTENT, even.

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