52 Weeks: Vampire, Vampire, Oh My!

I, Vampire (2004)
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (4 out of 10 stars)
Director: Danny Draven, Denice Duff, Ted Nicolaou
Producer: Charles Band, Danny Draven
Starring: Ioana Abur, Star Andreef, Denice Duff (archival), and the lingering spirit of Radu Vladislas, played by Anders Hove

“Blood remembers… even when the living forget.” – Narrator

The Review:
Ah, my dear creatures of the midnight matinee, gather close as I speak of a film that shambles into the moonlight like a forgotten revenant. I, Vampire (2004) is less a single motion picture and more a cinematic cadaver—picked over, stitched together, and jolted with the faintest spark of unholy electricity. One can practically see the sutures and exposed seams as it lurches forward, assembled from mismatched footage and disparate intentions.

This film is a picked-over cadaver of stitched-together pieces of other films, but it does give a final chapter in the story of Full Moon’s Radu and the Subspecies series—though the story seems incomplete, like some half-remembered tale recovered from the cutting-room floor. The first segment offers the faintest echo of closure for Radu Vladislas, though even that is presented through fogged glass and missing connective tissue. The second story is simply trimmed-down (through editing) from an entirely different movie, shorn of context and continuity as though shaved with a rusty razor. And the third installment? One raises an eyebrow—arched to an elegant, gothic point—at the questionable provenance of the frames themselves, as though we are witnessing a cinematic séance where the spirits did not fully consent to appear.

And yet… and yet.

There is a kind of late-night-television charm to this curious anthology—a whisper of the bygone era of 2 a.m. horror blocks, where anything flickering on the screen felt like a forbidden discovery. I will not argue that it was good, heavens no, but I did watch it all the way through, even with the obvious shortcuts and flaws. There is something almost hypnotic in its misshapen earnestness, like a creature of the night who knows it is not beautiful but bares its fangs anyway.

For those devoted to Full Moon’s peculiar brand of vampiric melodrama, I, Vampire may serve as a final sip from the goblet—thin, metallic, but familiar. For everyone else, this cinematic patchwork may feel as though it should have remained buried.

But sometimes, my friends… things buried refuse to stay that way.

keep a candle lit, and an eye over your shoulder.

Yes child, there is more…so much more. See what you have missed: T. Glenn Bane’s 52 Weeks of Halloween Index.