A small group of aspiring actors auditions for a new horror film being shot in Tuscany, Italy, answering a trade ad. There’s the easily aggravated goofball Johnny Rush (Riccardo Rossi), singer Rita Searle (Final Justice’s Patricia Pellegrino), dancer Monica Morgan (Yvonne Sciò), and actress Sasha Stevenson (Valeria Milillo) who all win their roles through the cattle call and are driven up to the gothic castle of horror film icon Carl Jurek (George Hilton of The Case of the Bloody Iris) for the weekend to discuss the film.
The lavish property is filled with horror décor and various props from previous films and even comes with its own wisecracking hunchback servant named Gilles (Daniele Aldrovandi doing a fairly decent Marty Feldman bit). They spend the evening watching Jurek’s old vampire films before he arrives to greet them in a suitably Dracula-style tuxedo and a cryptic toast at dinner to his guest’s immortality…and his “eternal rest”.
The “theatrics” are convincing – he somehow doesn’t cast reflections in mirrors and can make sharp fangs drop in his wicked smile. Claiming to have been turned in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago when he was just a child, Jurek’s human side has grown tired and desperate to die, but his vampire side remains bloodthirsty, and despite wishing death, it will instinctively defend itself and attack. It’s during this dinner that the quartet of aspiring thespians realize this wasn’t a business meeting, and these aren’t theatrics – they’ve been chosen, like so many before them, to try and kill Jurek, or die trying.
Dinner with a Vampire (1989)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The fourth and final film in Italy’s Brivido Giallo series finds co-writer/director Lamberto Bava returning to his familiar trope of gathering a young group into a singular setting with no way of leaving and fighting for survival against a violent, paranormal onslaught. Like Demons, Demons 2, The Mask of Satan, and Graveyard Disturbance, Bava traps them in the snare and lets the mayhem ensue. And much like those films, the setting (and production design by Massimo Antonello Geleng) is wonderfully macabre, transitioning from the castle’s lavish, brightly lit living quarters to subterranean crypts, caves and dungeons, complete with secret passages and monsters lurking in the shadows.
But Bava’s Dinner with a Vampire is a sneaky little flick, injected with an unexpected dose of joviality that gives the film a welcome sense of humor. Hilton plays Jurek along the lines of Vincent Price, finding a way to be both menacing and with a wry “wink” at the audience to let you know this is all in good fun. But there’s an air of sympathy to his vampire too. Like any classical vampire who mourns his loss of humanity, Jurek is indeed desperate to die, and admits to one of his concubines late in the film that he admires the fight in these kids, and “hasn’t had so much fun his whole life”. He’s the real gem of the film, never playing it too broadly to the point of parody, but finding a good balance performing the duality of his role. It’s also clever in that Jurek is a “modern” vampire – having grown a “tolerance” to things like crucifixes, garlic, and (surprisingly) even a stake through the heart! Bava has fun with these elements and creates a scenario where vanquishing this bloodsucker is going to take some ingenuity…and maybe a casual familiarity with the works of Oscar Wilde.
Granted, the rest of the cast, fun as they may be, are simply attractive fodder for the vampire, and while they’re given a few funny quips, are mostly relegated to running around the castle in fear like the gang from Scooby-Doo. It’s of little consequence, as Dinner with a Vampire is just too much innocent fun to take jabs at while it plays within familiar territory. It’s bloody, it’s funny, it’s a dinner worth eating. Just don’t ask for an interview.
Home Video
Up until 2009, Dinner with a Vampire never made it to our shores from Italy. There was a limited number of VHS in Europe, but even there, you either watched it when it was televised, or you just missed it. Mya Communication released a relatively bare-bones DVD in 2009; its sole bonus feature a trailer.
Thankfully, in 2005 a relatively new boutique label named Cauldron Films (established by Jesse Nelson and Brian Izzi) released a wonderfully lavish 5-Disc Blu-Ray boxed set of the entire Brivido Giallo run of Bava films, which included Until Death, Graveyard Disturbance, Dinner with a Vampire, and The Ogre (released in many circles as Demons 3). This boxed set, limited to only 2,500 copies is positively LOADED with bonus material, including reversible covers, posters for each film, and a CD Soundtrack of the film scores by Simon Boswell – all exclusive ONLY to this release.
It fetches for about $100.00 or so, but for the amount of care and the limited number manufactured, it’s a hell of a good deal, and even though standard, non-boxed releases of the films have been released for cheaper through Cauldron Films since, the hardcore collectors out there may want to jump on what few there are of the boxed set left if they want the complete Brivido Giallo experience.
Since we’re only talking about Dinner with a Vampire this weekend, I’ll only focus on that disc’s bonus features for this review, and what you’ll get with this release is:
- Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 HD Widescreen, restored in 4K
- Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio English Mono 2.0, DTS-HD Master Audio Italian Mono 2.0
- Subtitles: English, English SDH
- ALL NEW Audio Commentary with Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth
- ALL NEW A Vampire Called Television: Interview with Lamberto Bava
- ALL NEW The Career of a Uruguayan Vampire: Audio Interview with George Hilton
- ALL NEW Brivido Giallo: Interview with Composer Simon Boswell
- ALL NEW Dracula’s Decorator: Interview with Massimo Antonello Geleng
- (Archival) Trailer
- Reversible cover insert featuring newly commissioned artwork by Eric Adrian Lee on one side, and the original theatrical one-sheet on the other.
- 12” x 16.5” fold-out poster with newly commissioned artwork by Eric Adrian Lee
Bits ‘N’ Pieces
Traum-A-Meter:
2 out of 4
Aside from the occasional vampire bite, a heart is ripped from a chest, and a dungeon of creatures are fed dripping, gory handfuls of innards and flesh from a chum bucket at one point, but the film’s gore is pretty minimal, as Bava was focusing more on atmosphere and comedy this time out.
Today’s Jam: “Don’t Wanna Lose You” by Gloria Estefan was the hit on the airwaves the weekend that Dinner with a Vampire aired.
This Episode’s Moral:
If a reclusive horror icon invites you to his remote castle for dinner, but won’t show up until midnight…maybe pass on the audition?