Drawing Blood

The Movie

Edmond, a struggling artist, finds himself slaving away as an apprentice for Diana, an artist who happens to be a vampire. After she kills her victims, she uses their blood to paint their portrait and Edmond has to find the victims, then clean up after Diana. But when he falls in love with a prostitute who was to be the next victim, he sets out to stop Diana once and for all.

Written by Noel Anderson
Directed by Sergio Lapel

Amie Childers as Homeless victim
Dawn Spinella as Diana
Kirk Wilson as Edmond
Leo Otero as Conner
Erin Smith as Dee
Rodney Raab as Art critic
Larry Palatta as Marvin (Edmond's father)
Arona Sterling as Conner's victim

Review

Another Tromatic event, I fear. The movie starts with a bit of altogether nudity. Nothing erotic; any artist will tell you there's nothing quite so unexciting as a 'life' model finding her pose. It's clearly there to lock the male teen audience into their seats for the duration, in the futile hope of more to come. Ninety minutes of frustration, lads!

And our painter / vampire really is not much more exciting. She doesn't come over as having power and charisma - she starts out as a bully, and carries on the same way. As usual, 200 years years of vampire tradition is not enough for Troma, who invent pointless new rules of their own - "A vampire can only be killed by another vampire". Well, duh! I'm surprised we aren't thigh deep in vampires by now.

Most of the other characters are pretty unsympathetic, too. the damsel in distress is thick, foul mouthed, and by the end, you almost wish the vampire would shut her up. Our hero is worthy but dull, punctuated by massive hissy fits with his friend, who wants to be a vampire and has been practising brutalizing women in his spare time.

All in all, the whole sorry lot could fall in the harbour, and who'd care? And just when you thought it could get no worse, along comes Dad - a hat-wearing, all singing, all dancing, meatball cooking idiot. You can picture the scene at Troma:
"We made another bomb"
"So what's new?"
"We got bills to pay - put some jokes in already"
"What kinda jokes"
"hat-wearing, all singing, all dancing, meatball cooking idiot jokes"
"You got it ."

All in all, disappointing (which means acres better than most troma movies), but I do give them credit for the basic plotline - the servant who does the dirty work, and how he fights back. And he's not even a renfield!