Search - Angel of Night on DVD

Something different

Alien Warrior Woman | 08/25/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'm always on the lookout for new and different vampire tales. I had first rented this at Blockbuster a few years back and kept meaning to buy it and finally did. I had liked the atypical genre ending and there are some interesting supporting characters.

After seeing it again I still liked it, but became aware of a section of the story that was a bit confusing. A young woman has inherited a creepy old house,in Denmark, from her grandmother and discovers a dark family secret--an ancestor was turned into a vampire. His bones are in the basement of the house.

As the girl, her boyfiriend, and female best friend read the history of how the man became a vampire they discover the grandmother had help, at one point, from a young man and his friends. This is where the story gets a bit foggy becuase it's not explained how the guy and the grandmother met or who the various strangely dressed vamps are that the young man goes up against--outside of the fact that they're followers of the girl's vampire ancestor.

However, in the special features section there's an article from "Fangoria" magazine which explained that the film had originally been a short and was expanded to feature length. The short is the center section involving the young man who helps the grandmother. But that still didn't explain the vamps and their clothes until I remembered a section in the film where the young woman, induced by her vampire ancestor's spirit to resurrect him uses the names, Gangarel, Ventrue, etc. These are the names of vampire clans from a game called Vampire the Masquerade. At one point it was made into a tv miniseries titled "Kindred the Embraced" (BUY IT!!!--it was never made into a regular series because the lead character Mark Frankel who starred as the vampire Prince of San Francisco was killed in a motorcycle accident in his home country of England.) Each of the clans had a distinctive look and clan behavior. The Ventrue are business people, the Toreador (the fancy dressed ones in the film) are artistic types and then there are the Gangarel (the punk looking ones) who are gypsy types. This was obviously and homage to the game and the show (there are also novels and a book or two of short stories based on the game).

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