Dracula in Vegas

"Dracula In Vegas" is the closest Nick Millard is ever going to come to family-friendly entertainment. Granted, the movie has some profanity and Millard somehow uses the HIV virus as a running gag, but apart from that the movie is quite tame. There's barely any gore, lots of cheesy humor and the whole thing just has a very happy-go-lucky tone. And then suddenly there's a completely unrelated soft-core porn scene from a different movie, because that's just how Millard rolls.

Millard really seems to have fun with this light-hearted movie/home video, and the awful production values aren't really a problem this time around. In Millard's other vampire epic "Satan's Black Wedding", the plastic Halloween store fangs were a huge letdown because that movie had a genuinely creepy atmosphere for a while. Here it doesn't matter at all. Millard is clearly going for something more quirky here.

The fun thing about Millard movies is that the man is just in a completely different universe altogether. He writes dialogues like he's never actually had a conversation in his entire life. People leave long, awkward pauses all the time, because Millard doesn't bother to do proper sound editing. And if he did, nobody would like it. He's been using the same librairy music for decades, but just throws it in randomly without caring what the scene is about. Is our main character arriving at an airport creepy and dreadful? I don't really think so, but the soundtrack knows better. There's even some music from "Criminally Insane" thrown in, but sadly Ethel herself doesn't make an appearence this time around. Hell, he doesn't even reuse the credits from that movie. Traditions mean nothing to him!

With that said, this movie isn't quite as entertaining as his 'serious' horror/action projects. When bad film-makers are in on the joke, it sucks out (no pun intended) some of the fun. That's why people adore "Birdemic" and hate "Birdemic 2". Millard isn't trying to scare or shock us this time around, and you do miss that. It's an interesting project, but it doesn't have enough weird content to keep you entertained for a whopping 62 minutes.

Slasher Video managed to give this movie a DVD Release with all the trimmings. They've also done some great work with "Cemetery Sisters" and the "Death Nurse" movies. I'm wondering what other Millard movies they could dig up in the future, because I'll never get tired of his mystique and there's still way too much I haven't seen. "Gunblast" for example sounds amazing, and it's also nearly impossible to trace. It's all part of the experience, I guess!