DRACULA'S ORGY OF THE DAMNED

An earnest narrator addresses the screen under cover of dimly lit candlelight and introduces himself as Lord Vincent Fleming (Tim Pollard). He is a collector of macabre stories, we hear, and - in booming authorative voice - he proceeds to lead us in to the yarn he particularly wants to spin to us this evening.

And so, we meet Patricia (Claire Llewellyn). She's consulting a psychiatrist after being traumatised during a party she'd held in honour of her husband's birthday. Per her claims, the shindig was interrupted by the unwanted appearance of Dracula (Ron Fitzgerald), who proceeded to kill everyone Patricia cared for before biting her leg and leaving her as a half-vampire.

Now Patricia can't sleep at night and suffers from recurring visions of Dracula's grinning visage. Can the female psychiatrist help? Well, her answer is to refer Patricia to an exorcist - Daniel (Ron Feyereisen). He meets with the poor girl in an attempt to purge her of any beliefs she has of being possessed by Dracula. Alas, all his biblical spoutings achieve are the summoning of Dracula and his minion...

Then we're back, abruptly, to Fleming who informs us of a sexy tryst Dracula needs to keep with a couple of his sluts. Cue some iffy female nudity and even less satisfactory bloodletting.

This bizarre interlude, which looks like a zero budget music video for Type O Negative, leads us to another clunky edit, this time introducing us to American professor Greg (writer-director James Baack) and a couple of female students who enjoy being regaled by his spooky tales of Dracula.

What have they got to do with anything? And what about the fat guy in his horror poster-adorned bedroom who turns into a werewolf - how does he fit into all of this?

Keep watching, if you must, to find out. Keep watching also to witness a bizarre spectacle where women are pitted against each other at night, while groups of men cheer them on as they fight outdoors. This strange sequence at least brings Patricia back into play when she turns up with a machine gun and starts blowing everyone away in a bid to get closer to getting her revenge on Dracula...

Well, at least the art of showmanship hasn't died: DRACULA'S ORGY OF THE DAMNED opens to a text warning, advising viewers that they may be emotionally or psychologically scarred upon watching the proceeding film.

Hmm. Perhaps they should've warned their audience that there is no way, ever, of getting back the 89 minutes this film will rob from you.

I'm not being cruel. The film was shot in and around Nottingham and boasts an even balance of both English and American accents. Knowing nothing about the production, I can't tell whether the American accents are genuine or not. The acting, though, is universally atrocious.

So, too, is Baack's script. It doesn't know what it wants to be. A comedy? A horror? A rip-off of THE EXORCIST? An anthology? Lord knows. I don't think Baack knows either, such is the choppiness of the editing. Some scenes, I swear, end mid-sentence, throwing us into new scenes that rarely bear any relation to what's gone before.

Disjointed, clumsy and often looking like a bunch of regulars from Whitby Goth festival have got together with a camcorder one afternoon to film some improvised nonsense, the mind boggles that this film has found distribution.

However, I'm glad it has. Yes, it's shit. It really is. In every way. But I was enthralled by it, and desperate to see what it threw at me next. I was underwhelmed at every fresh turn, granted, but in-between laughing at the bargain basement production values and cheap PVC-clad vampires, I actually had an unholy amount of fun.

Falling somewhere between Alex Chandon's BAD KARMA and the French oddity LES SEX DROIDES, DAMNED however lacks to the righteous gore of either: it's just bad, very bad. So bad, in fact, that I'm already feeling compelled to watch it again. This time, I need to invite a few mates round for the screening, and make sure copious amounts of alcohol are on the menu...

DRACULA'S ORGY OF THE DAMNED wins an uncut DVD release from - who else? - Cheezy Flicks.

The film comes presented in its original 16x9 ratio. That's possibly the only positive comment I have to make upon how it looks here. Shot on video, the picture is often overly dark and suffering from motion blur. Even worse are the jagged edges around most moving images. Colours bleed on occasion too; the picture quality is little short of horrid.

English mono audio fares little better. Perhaps it's inherent of how the film was shot, but the audio wavers inconsistently throughout, with occasional background noise and/or muffling, and even the odd drop-out here and there.

The disc opens with a static main menu page. From there, a static scene-selection menu offers access to the film via 6 chapters.

There are no bonus features - a small mercy!

Honestly, it is my duty to warn potential viewers of the incompetent nature of this film. I'm not steering you away from it - in fact, I say: get drunk and enjoy! - but it's only fair that you know we have stumbled upon a truly BAD film here.

Review by Stuart Willis