You know how it is - you find some about-to-expire vouchers at the back of a drawer, they can only be used at an Odeon and the film you want to see is fully booked. What the hell, it’s ages since I’ve seen a vampire film, and the alternative is something that lasts three hours, so I give it a go.

Vampire and Werewolf films have gone right down the nick since ‘Nosferatu’ and ‘A Werewolf in London’. You’d think that with all that digital technology , Kate Beckinsale in a shiny wet-suit with basque plus vampire, werewolves and hybrids in abundance it would be double the excitement. Well it isn’t.

To be fair, this is the second of two, so there is good deal of pre-titles backstory and geneology of the worrying will-I remember- it kind to sit through. Once that is out of the way we are pitched into set-piece action, with men in fancy armour arriving at a village which has recently been raided, judging by the smouldering thatches and scattered bodies. No sooner is the order given to start burning the corpses than very fierce hairy creatures with fangs leap out and start savaging the troops, in a risible scene that’s only slightly better than computer-game visuals. Guys,if your monsters aren’t convincing, speeding them up doesn’t help. With a kind of wet metallic sheen like Ridley Scott Goes Caving, there are some better scenes, with helicopter rides over the Alps and some fancy headquarters, more Goth meets Grimm than DFS.It's presided over by Derek Jacobi looking bored or faintly disgusted, reprising his Francis Bacon with fancy frogging on his coat but sans the Vim on his toothbrush. Bill Nighy, the 'good' patriarch - I think - grimaces through some short scenes.

Kate Beckinsale plays a vampire – we know this because she has the gift of immortality and self-healing but never pauses to so much as snack on a passing neck. When vampires do strike however, the gore spurts aplenty and they are very messy eaters. Len Wiseman is Kate Beckinsale’s husband, a bit like Vadim to the young Brigitte and doing about as much good to her chances of getting taken seriously as an actress. This is just as well, although from the way her bum plumps up the rubber and her eyes keep changing colour, no-one is going to notice. Minor but non-competing titillation is provided by a short scene where a male vampire is kept in a cave with only a scantily-clad pair of females to amuse him.

Conventions are not as I remember from the last time I saw what would have been an‘X’ film, now ‘18’. Garlic and crosses were enough to keep mutant bats at bay then but even the once mandatory scenes with reflectionless mirrors are absent. The traditional passing of daylight in a coffin with some soil from Transylvania has gone too – now any handy bit of tarpaulin and splashing paint on windows will do - and there’s nary a mention of stakes through the heart and silver bullets. Paradoxically,the nastiest of the werewolves has spent some centuries locked in a heavy metal carcophagus so it is no wonder he is mad, and Kate’s squeeze and fellow hybrid is staked – there’s a lot of staking, in fact, but mainly from giant pointed bat wings.

A young man further along the row was busy making a copy with a device not much bigger than one of those old-fashioned cigarette cases, but it was clear even he was wondering if it was worth the bother. He’s lucky he’s too young to remember when films about creatures of the night had a bit of atmosphere and suspense.

Sheila

Nice piece. I didn't need much to persuade me to give this one a miss - but you've nailed it. I've had that full-house-so-while-I'm-here situation. It usually ends in tears.

Mind you, from what you say Kate Beckinsale may be feeling a bit peckish.....so if blood is anything like wine......excuse me my mind wandered there for a moment.

Why is Dracula so impulsive? Cos he never reflects on things.

Cracker jokes? Help I'm cracking up...must be Malik's fault.

Regards

Zettel