Vampire Journals (1997)

Touches You

Excellent but underrated film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

In the 90's a small movie company called Full Moon mostly produced horror films. One of their most popular was the Subspecies movies which was about vampires. Ted Nicolaou was the force behind the series who you could tell had a real eye for the vampires and their Gothic nature. So after the third Subspecies movie, he killed off the main vampire, Radu and intended to make more vampire movies that would be a bit different with similar characters that we had seen before. The Vampire Journals came in and with the same low budget, we got a pretty weak spin off sadly. Given that Ted did his best that he could, this was just a weak script with some very clichéd characters.Zachary, a vampire with a conscience, who hunts the vampire bloodline that sired him. After witnessing the love of his life get turned into a vampire, Zachary destroys both her, and his master, and former protégé of Ash, Serena. Zachary, armed with the enchanted sword of a great vampire slayer called Laertes, seeks out the rest of Serena's bloodline to eradicate them. Zachary travels to Bucharest to find Ash. Zachary uses Ash's penchant for music and women to bait him out into the open for attack. Ash sets his sights on pianist Sofia, but is stopped by Zachary during his first attempt to take Sofia. Ash does not give up on acquiring Sofia, and hires her for his nightclub. Over the next few nights he drains her of blood, so that he may turn her into a new apprentice. He also makes a deal with Zachary: he will give Zachary a consort, protection from the Sun, and allow Zachary to see Sophia if he leaves the city the following night.The weak points of the film was the characters like Sophia and Zachary. It was copy and paste with Sophia's scenes with Ash, he has her trapped in his bedroom and he would say "Join me!" and she would say "No! Let me go!" and he would bite her and leave. Next time he would say "Join me!" and she would say "No! Let me go!" and he would bite her and leave. Then the next time he would say "Join me!" and she would say "No! Let me go!" and then he would bite her and leave. And again the next time he would say "Join me!" and she finally says "Ok", which I had to have a good laugh with…what was his selling point this time?! It reminded me of the scene in the comedy of Bowfinger where Steve Martin is having an affair with Heather Grahm and finds out that she slept with someone else and he says "That's it, we're finished, you slept with Jiff" and she says "So?" and he said "Well, I never thought of it that way" and they go back to normal. That's exactly what those scenes reminded me of. Zachary is your typical brooding vampire who hates being the undead despite the fact that he's pretty, can control anyone he wants and can see things that no human could ever see in a lifetime. He narrates going on and on about how he's in pain and how much it sucks being a vampire with no real reason, oh, get over it already! I love the scene where he goes to bite a girl to survive; he goes into her bedroom, takes her arm and somehow she's still sleeping and bites it, she then wakes up of course and he covers her mouth and says "I won't harm you child"…LOL, you just bit her arm and took some of her blood! I think that's in the "harm zone".Despite the flaws, I give Ted credit on the Gothic look of the film and the story isn't by any means terrible. It had some really great ideas, especially with Ash's club. Ash can control both mortals and immortals so he knows how to survive very well. But as the people around him start to betray him or feel threatened, he realizes that he's being ganged up on and that's a great story, I wished they stuck to that story more so. Jonathon Morris who plays Ash does a very good job and you can tell he enjoyed getting into the character. Also the look of the film is terrific and very Gothic, given the old spooky feeling from the old horror movies. You can tell Ted really did love the silent film Nosferatu with the shadows and angles. The Vampire Journals is over all a decent enough vampire movie, it just needed a major face lift with the characters or at least concentrate more so on the interesting one's.5/10

This is my most favorite movie! I am in love with David Gunn as well. He is an exceptional actor. I only wish that he would do more movies. Plus, Ted Nicolaou is a genius. His writing is profound. You must overlook the fact that this movie was made by a low budget company. It is filmed in Romania and provides great visuals of their architecture and landscape. Plus, a lot of the people in it are from Romania, which gives this film a tremendous amount of credit. Zachary is perhaps the best vampire character ever written. His humanity and unending torture draw you in and make you love him. This story is classic and beautiful. It had me fascinated from beginning to end. It is a must see for any vampire fan.

I have seen a lot of vampire flicks in my day. This was on the edge of being a good story. I love the Victorian flair of the inside of the mansion, the four poster beds, etc. That's apparently where the budget ended.The master vampire, Ash is the only real actor in the film. His lines are delivered believably. The only time our hero, Zachary actually acts is when Sofia catches him drinking blood from the psychofant and screams her name and throws himself at the door. The one thing that really brought the film down a notch was the deadpan monologue from Zachary. It was clumsily read, with no feeling, no passion. Granted, Zach was a depressed vampire.. but you can be passionately depressed.I think it would have been better to have had a third party read the monologue. Perhaps someone found the 'Vampire Journal' and was reading it... with a bit more pizzaz than it's writer.Watch the film, rescue the elements that are good and marvel at them. There is some good camera work, their corpses reconstituting themselves every evening was a nice touch, knowing the master was a once a vampire hunter... nice.

I am a huge fan of the Subspecies films, and so it was with much eagerness that I sat down to watch this offshoot of the series. I have never been so thoroughly disappointed in all my life.The opening credits are great, set in a snowy, eastern European cemetery with moody shots of beautiful headstones. Sadly however, the credits come to an end and the movie begins.Whiny, self-pitying vampire Zachary is determined to rid the world of his own kind, especially powerful vampire Ash, who has set his sights on Zachary's would be girlfriend, Sofia. Sofia, a mortal pianist, has no idea what is going on until Ash imprisons her in his mansion. It is then up to Zachary to save her...because she obviously can't save herself. If you thought Brad Pitt as Louis in "Interview With the Vampire" was bad, he's got nothing on Zachary, let me tell you. Zachary slogs through the entire film, sulking and frowning and delivering such poor-me lines as: "I am Gods most forsaken creature." Yeah, well, we all have our problems. Go sit in the sunlight if you're so miserable, but please spare the rest of us your tragic whining. Sofia fares no better, klutzily stumbling through her performance and giving us a stiff, weak heroine. And Master Vampire Ash is ridiculous. The guy looks like Michael Bolton, which is really the only scary thing about him. The film moves slower than a three legged constipated turtle, and although the sets are beautiful, they are filled with lifeless (no pun intended) characters that I could not believe in, much less care about. I kept hoping that Radu would show up and give them all a good smacking-about-the-face, but sadly this was not to be. The Subspecies films work for the exact reason that this one does not: Subspecies gives us a strong, unrepentant vampire who never apologizes for what he is and enjoys what he does. It's easier to hate Radu than it is to like Zachary. This film gets a 1 on a scale of 10, and the 1 is for the scenery.