Pale Blood

PALE BLOOD

A decent little vampire flick from 1990, Pale Blood follows an undead bloodsucker named Michael Fury who arrives in Los Angeles from Europe to search for a serial killer whose victims are drained of blood via two puncture wounds on the neck.  A young woman named Lori (who works for a detective agency) assists Fury in his hunt. 

Pale Blood stars Pamela Ludwig (who plays the love interest in the exceptional 1979 coming-of-age teen rebellion film Over the Edge) as Lori, and her presence is the reason I sought out this vampire film on VHS (it unfortunately has not yet been issued on DVD).  The plot of Pale Blood suffers from what a screenwriter named Blake Snyder refers to in a book called Save the Cat as “double mumbo-jumbo.” Snyder posits that “audiences will only accept one piece of magic per movie.”  In Pale Blood, vampires are real.  The second “piece of magic” that is shoehorned into the story is that Lori attempts to contact the spirits of the victims for information about the killer, but for some reason the visions from the spirits go to Fury instead of Lori. 

Pale Blood’s core concept of a real vampire investigating vampire-like murders is intriguing, but the tale doesn’t unfold in a very engaging way.  I would have liked Fury and Lori to piece together clues and ultimately track down the murderer, but instead the killer actually seeks out and sets a trap for Fury.  The film’s saving grace is a wicked twist ending that blindsided me. 

Pale Blood runs about ninety minutes long and is worth checking out (despite its narrative flaws) for fans of vampire pictures.  The three main characters (Fury, Lori, and the killer) are distinctive and memorable.  It’s not a brilliant film, but it is singular.