Blood Ties *** (1991, Patrick Bauchau, Jason London, Harley Venton) – Classic Movie Review 1826

Producer-director Jim McBride’s impressive, eye-catching 1991 horror thriller revitalises and modernises the vampire legend. In Richard Alan Shapiro’s nifty screenplay, fun-loving modern-day vampires are undead and living in Long Beach in LA, and troubled only by the extreme actions of local Bible-bashers.

These religious bigots murder a peace-loving vampire farming couple, and their nice orphaned son Cody Puckett (Jason London) is sent to meet the vampires with the bigots in pursuit. Reporter Harry Martin, aka Harlevon Martinescu (Harley Venton) is the black sheep of a Carpathian clan who wants his corrupt family to stop their criminal acts.

Shapiro’s screenplay offers more of an intriguing premise than a fully developed story maybe, but it is always interesting, packed with involving ideas, amusing tongue-in-cheek dialogue and dark humour. It is intriguingly offbeat and out-of-the-rut for a TV movie, with lots of unusual concepts – it is witty, for example, to portray vampires as an oppressed minority.

London and Venton lead a series of effective performances from a cast that also includes Patrick Bachau, Bo Hopkins, Kim Johnston-Ulrich, Michelle Johnson and Grace Zabriskie.

The movie looks neat too, even on its obviously low budget, thanks to a good use of location filming, especially in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis Brown house in the Hollywood Hills. Vampire movie fans will have plenty to get their teeth into.

Jim McBride is the director of Breathless (1983), The Big Easy (1986) and  Great Balls of Fire! (1989).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1826

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