Though the video distributor sold MIDNIGHT KISS as an erotic horror film, there's nothing especially arousing about it--unless you find naked, bluish, vampiric corpses sexy.
The city of Los Angeles is being stalked by a vicious vampire who sexually assaults his female victims. The case attracts the interest of Carrie Blass (Michelle Owens), a former homicide detective who was busted down to sex crimes counseling after blowing a case she was sharing with her husband
Dennis (Michael McMillen), from whom she is now estranged. Carrie wants onto the case, but when she gets there she's teamed with Dennis, who's none too happy about the situation.
Acting as a decoy, Carrie is attacked by the vampire (Gregory A. Greer) and escapes, but not before he bites her. She soon begins to take on strange habits, dressing provocatively at work and literally beating a punk to death when he takes a cop hostage. At home, she demonstrates an aversion to
sunlight and an appetite for raw meat, and when she comes across a trio of toughs beating up a homeless man, she brutally kills them. Despite all this, Dennis and her boss remain unconvinced by her claims that the killer is a genuine vampire and that she's inherited his condition. Dennis comes
around when he accompanies her to the morgue and two of the bloodsucker's victims return to life and attack her, prompting her to dispatch them with wooden stakes.
Carrie must eventually confront the vampire, and she's no match for his supernatural strength. Dennis arrives to join the fight, but discovers to his dismay that crosses don't work on this vampire. While the killer is distracted, Carrie fashions a stake from a broken broomstick and plunges it
fatally into the bloodsucker's neck. As the sun rises outside, Carrie has Dennis pull down the drapes she's placed over the windows--and the sunlight that streams in has no effect on her. She's been freed of the curse.
Working against the romantic hero image of the vampire, MIDNIGHT KISS presents its bloodsucker as a true monster, a vicious fiend who--in the very first scene--rips the face off a potential rapist, blows off another man's head with a shotgun and then brutalizes the woman who thought she was
being rescued from the assault. Despite the heavy gore (as seen in the unrated edition; the movie was also released to tape in an R-rated cut) attendant to his attacks, however, the vampire is not especially menacing. This is partly because he's not given much in the way of character, apart from
such quirks as sleeping in a body bag and drinking blood from bottles in his fridge, and partly because, with his long blond tresses and mild, slightly Southern-accented voice, he more resembles a disgruntled rock star than a ravenous creature of the night.
As the woman who devotes herself to tracking him down and nearly joins his undead fold in the process, Owens gives the only performance with any depth, eliciting what sympathy and involvement in the story she can. The deck is stacked high against her, however; all of the movie's male characters
are sexist, boorish jerks, and McMillen overacts in the one-note role of her husband. Director Joel Bender and his fellow filmmakers probably thought they were making some kind of feminist statement by presenting a strong woman taking on all this male chauvinism, but the frequent explicit nudity
betrays their true intentions. And what message did Bender think he was sending by filming Carrie, in the midst of accusing her boss of sexual harassment, against a background of undulating, topless strippers? (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, adult situations, extensive profanity.) leave a comment
