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 It seems I owe an apology to certain people for my dissing of “Twilight”. I admit it here and now: I was wrong.  As it turns out, there is something worse lurking in the vampire video vicinity than the sparkling, baseball-playing, teen-sniffers of that series. “Kiss of the Vampire” (also titled “Immortally Yours”) has swept in as a late entry to officially become the worst film I saw in 2008. Congratulations, cast and crew! You have most assuredly earned that honor.

This film was so bad that halfway through I decided that I couldn’t finish watching it.  I kept looking at the clock and thinking “It has to end sometime!”, but it occurred to me that I would be doing a disservice to the public by quitting. I couldn’t review a movie I hadn’t finished, therefore leaving me unable to warn away others who might unwittingly purchase the video. If I can prevent even a single person from buying and viewing this movie, then I will not have completely wasted that hour and a half of my life.

The alleged story is supposed to center around a “coven of sexy vampires”. Puh-lease! I suppose if you are attracted by uber-crappy wigs, red-rimmed eyes, layers of bad makeup, and lots of growling and posturing (with heads frequently thrown back and mouths wide-open to show off bloody fangs) then you’ll disagree. By the way, e-Harmony may not have a match for you.

The gist of the plot is that the leader of these vampires, Alex (Daniel Goddard, of “The Young and the Restless”) falls in love with a mortal woman, Estelle, (Katherine Hawkes) and decides he wants to be a real boy again for her. Trés original! Her father happens to be a scientist who can help him. Meanwhile, in a couple of subplots, the rest of the vampires are making very public killings which has brought them to the attention of the police (who actually find and hire a professional stereotypical vampire hunter…must’ve used the Yellow Pages for that one), and there is a group of gangster-style Illuminati (also being sought by the police) who are involved in heinous experiments to become immortal. Maybe they need to capture (wait for it…) duh duh duh duuuuuuuh: A VAMPIRE!

Amazingly enough, every human in this film accepts the existence of vampires as soon as the subject arises.  When Alex tells Estelle, she doesn’t even ask for proof. Ditto when she tells her father. That probably saved a lot of time, so I can’t complain too much about that.  Perhaps the most credible character in the entire movie is Alex’s human friend Michael (Phil Fondacaro). Unfortunately, they didn’t give him as much dialogue or screen time as some of the others.

Goddard tries his best to turn “Kiss of the Vampire” into a soap opera in each of his scenes, but “Dark Shadows” this ain’t. His fellow vampires spend much of their time bobbing up and down, gesturing,  grimacing, and posing to dubbed ‘big cat’ sounds. I think they were attempting to look menacing, but they only achieve bizarre and ridiculous. The special effects were laughably awful…think cartoon smoke rising from a disintegrating vampire.  Another scene of floating heads is so badly done that it would have made Ed Wood cringe.  Even the costumes and the sets of this film were dreadful.

The only people I could see enjoying this movie are die-hard soap fans and real B-movie buffs. I think even those two groups are going to have to do a lot of self-persuading to come up with a positive view of this. “Kiss of the Vampire” will be on the shelves on January 6^th (and will probably be taking up shelf space at Big Lots by February). Kiss this one off if it crosses your path.  Otherwise, don’t say I didn’t warn you.