Somewhere between TV shows like Silk Stalkings and Forever Knight, there’s the direct-to-video horror thriller, Pale Blood (1990). A hang over of Miami Vice aesthetics employed in the service of arty genre trash. And yet, there’s a certain elegance here, thanks to the stoic presence of George Chakiris (from the original West Side Story) as a vampire who arrives in the City of Angels to track down a serial killer who is pretending to be a vampire, draining women of blood.
Pamela Ludwig is a plucky detective hired by Chakiris and she has a thing for vampires, wouldn’t you know, watching Nosferatu at night, lots of Dracula movie posters on her walls. She rents Chakirish an unfurnished apartment that we only see at night, awash with blue tones and sporting a giant window that looks out the lights of a cityscape (possibly a fake backdrop). Repetitive visits to a New Wave band (Agent Orange) playing goth rock in a bar called “Dracs”. And Wings Hauser chewing scenery as a video artist who wants to make it big with a project about this ‘vampire’ killer.
A quarter of the running time is montage footage of LA streets and people with radio DJ blather laid over it. During one scene of LA nightlife, there’s a brief cut to Sybil Danning walking the streets, and I clocked it as an outtake from LA Bounty (the same producer made both), which also has Wings Hauser sweatily riffing through art making scenes in a warehouse set.
Pale Blood appeals to me in the type of video store clutter, like other movies I’ve enjoyed like In The Cold Of The Night, The Banker and Sunset Strip, the b-movie bones of which someone like Nicolas Winding Refn would reshape into neon art noir. Pale Blood loses its way in the goofball final scene which just didn’t make sense to me.
I dug the Agent Orange songs but the constant close ups of the lead singer, made me think of Paul Rudd doing one of those Jimmy Fallon music video skits.
Available on Amazon Prime. Recommended, for video trash enthusiasts.
VHS Tracking 