The Last Sect

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched The Last Sect a vampire movie. Looks like it was shot on video, unfortunately. In Hamilton Canada on a sound-stage.

The story has ‘Van Helsing’ played by David Carradine, on the hunt for a vampire sect. It seems that every thousand years (so this was conceived around 2000 I guess) the sect is at its most powerful, drinking lots of blood, storing up energy; then it finds a woman to watch over them while they sleep for 25 years to regain their powers.

Meanwhile a young woman, Sydney, is doing a magazine article on ‘Artemis’ an online dating service run by a mysterious, beautiful woman named ‘Ana.’ This organization also, as it happens, net-casts ‘The Vampire Web’ live videos in which a group of girl-vampires tie a nearly naked man down in a dungeon and drink his blood from cuts all over his body. (It is never explained why they would want to do this; the only possible explanation I can guess is that they have grown so arrogant that they want to boast how easily they do this and get away with it?) Sydney sees the net-cast as Sam, her chauvinistic hunky photographer is a fan, fascinated by it. But Sydney finds it disgusting.

She does not find ‘Ana’ disgusting at all, indeed as is usual in these movies featuring femme vampires, there is strong bisexual/lesbian leanings among the vampiresses and any attractive babe who falls into their orbit. Ana is convinced that Sydney is the perfect candidate for their ‘repository’ girl. But while vampires in this version of the legend can simply take blood from victims by force, the ‘repository’ must willingly, freely, agree to fill her role. Thus Ana must come to Sydney in her dreams as well as in person in attempts to seduce her.

Sydney consults a tarot-reader who gets so upset when she reads the cards that she can’t even tell Sydney what’s in store for her. Sydney also starts watching the Vampire Web net-casts, and in an odd turnaround (and a nice semi-creepy, seductive moment) the vampiresses can see Sydney through her computer web-cam; the lead vampiress unmasks, looking straight into the camera, and it’s Ana; Sydney is sure that Ana can see her.

Sydney is afraid, but drawn to Ana as well.

Meanwhile, Van Helsing sits in his study, discussing these matters with his pupil, a young, rather gay guy who is hip to ‘the internet’ whereas Van Helsing has never heard of an online dating service and has to have it explained to him. But he does have an ace in the hole, an associate rather like the Harvey Keitel character ‘Wolf’ in Pulp Fiction – an almost elderly, frail looking man, who very elegantly dispatches the vampiresses while on the hunt for Ana. By now Van Helsing has identified ‘Ana’ as ‘Anastasia’ a vampiress his grandfather tracked from Konigsberg to St Petersburg in 1906. But what Van Helsing doesn’t yet know is who the ‘repository’ might be, and how to find her and prevent her from succumbing to the persuasions of the vampiress before it’s too late.

There is a final confrontation in the dungeon, as the hapless male victims of the vampiresses, now become bloodthirsty ghouls, battle with the elegant guy – he manages to destroy all of them, and the vampiresses also, until Ana catches him and kills him. Ana then has Van Helsing in her power, and is about to crush him as well, while the two have the traditional discussion of whether vampires are part of the natural order, as Ana insists, or whether they are a violation of the laws of Nature and God, which is Van Helsing’s opinion. Just as Ana is about to twist off Van Helsing’s head, Sydney whimpers (why I don’t know, she’s seen plenty of violence in this scene already) and Ana turns to her, distracted just long enough for Van Helsing to stab Ana in the heart with a crucifix-dagger, his choicest weapon.

Ana falls back and dies, and Van Helsing leaves Sydney to grieve for her. But Sydney kisses Ana just before the last emanation of life-force leaves her, and so receives the essence of the sect, becoming the repository. Van Helsing doesn’t realize this, though, and now Sydney is primed to be a sort of super-vampire, Ana reborn. This sort of final-frame renewal, the last innocent victim turning vampire herself, is the traditional end to the sex-vampire film; the earliest example I know of is Roman Polansky’s parody, The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Fangs are in My Neck from 1967 (starring his wife Sharon Tate as the victim turned vampiress, and Polansky himself as the vampire-hunter’s assistant who gets bitten in the final frame).

The cast is quite good-looking for their parts. Sydney and Ana are both impressive, both beautiful in just the right way. The elegant killer is a real treat, funny at first, convincingly deadly later on. David Carradine is his usual self, a rather mediocre actor, but it’s great to see him, still around, and he has an impressive screen presence. I don’t really buy him as Van Helsing, and he never convinces me that he’s an expert scholar on anything. But he is a name, and I can see why he has fans.

It’s a shame it was shot on video, stage-bound as it is; with film, and a budget that would’ve allowed for exterior shooting and more expansive scenes, the cast really could have shone.

One interesting twist on the vampire scenes between Ana and Sydney is that they are all in Sydney’s dreams. This leaves a slight ambiguity, or rather it lets the filmmakers have it both ways: Ana gets to kiss Sydney, even to the extent of biting her lip and licking the blood off; and yet since this is in a dream, Sydney is not really ‘bitten.’ The bit about the ‘repository’ is a new twist on the legend to me, and I don’t know whether Sydney must be a vampiress herself to do this, or whether she must be a virgin (the role is compared to the Virgin Mary in Christian myth) or what.

As a sex-vampire video, it’s a bit disappointing, it doesn’t go very far; there are some quick cuts of the girls licking strawberry syrup off the male victims in the dungeon on the net-casts, and Ana and Sydney have some close-up kisses. Ana never, as I recall, gets to don the fake fangs. This is unfortunate, or maybe not: in the couple of shots of the other girls with fake fangs, the prosthetics are not too well done, leaving them with the look of massive, goofy overbites.

As a movie in general, it has a static feeling, mostly because there are only 7 sets, and we just cut from one to another. There is a little camera movement, but it’s typical modern movement, with the actors mostly static. Nothing like Buñuel did in even his cheap Mexican productions. But then, I can’t expect Buñuel here, can I? Ah, what old Luis could have done with something like this – a surreal masterpiece, quite subversive and funny.

The music is good – a few tracks of songs from local bands, maybe, and cut to almost-music-video montages. Editing is the chief tool of the filmmaking here, as they try to cut their way around the limitations of the cheap sets and lack of overall movement. Some cuts are quite clever. The editor did a good job, and the director provided enough coverage to let it happen. I imagine the screenplay was constructed with this in mind, as well.

Did I like it? Hmm, that’s hard to say. I would say that I was saddened to see the first scene, the video, the TV soap-opera level of acting and dialogue. But there were not obvious flubs, nothing to embarrass, and the whole cast looked right. The action was poor, the sex-bites I guess were the most disappointing, these are the scenes that a production like this are built on. But I’ve been writing a lot of words on this, so I can’t say I hated it. Thumbs up – considering what it is – I guess.

(5 April 2009)