I'm not a huge fan of Casper Van Dien. While his square-jawed good looks and smug overacting were right at home in STARSHIP TROOPERS, I've never found him more than, well, tolerable in anything else that I've seen. But with direction from cult fave Richard Elfman (brother of Danny and director of cult flicks like FORBIDDEN ZONE and SHRUNKEN HEADS), script by FREEWAY writer Matthew Bright, and special effects "consultation" by Rick Baker, I wondered how bad it could possibly be.

Oh boy. All I know is that when the flick opened with Van Dien cruising down the highway in a cool car, listening to rockabilly and poking holes in his cigar ends with his fangs I had a feeling I was in for a long, long 90 minutes.

Van Dien – also an executive producer – is Dallas, a vampire who has returned home despite having been banished by The Count (Robert Pastorelli). Once back he hooks up with his old crew, a gaggle of shameless overactors featuring Kim Cattrall (sporting an accent worthy of Sigfried from GET SMART), Udo Kier, and Craig Ferguson, the British guy from 'The Drew Carey Show.' He also gets mixed up with Natasha Gregson Wagner (VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS), a rogue vampire causing problems because she's been slashing and mutilating victims.

At first I gave the flick the benefit of the doubt and thought that the filmmakers were creating some sort of alternate reality in which humans and vampires coexist. Fair enough, right? Especially since the creatures of the night have very, very obvious fangs. (Ill-fitting ones apparently since everybody has some sort of speech impediment caused by the prosthetics.) It wasn't long before I realized that, no, the humans are supposed to be shocked when the woman with giant fangs decides to rip into their neck.

It's all downhill from there as Rod Steiger bites whatever scenery he can find as Von Helsing, who recruits inner city gang members in one of the flick's few interesting twists. Frankly, it's hard to believe that this dreadful mess was written by somebody who had even seen the entertaining FREEWAY, let alone authored it!

I'm not even sure what the appeal was for either the actors involved or the intended viewers. There's little original thought at work, it's not gory enough to appeal to horror fans, and the way it plays fast and loose with vampiric qualities (Wagner has tan lines, the superhuman vampires don't fight back against the mortal vampire killers) left me scratching my head while I was begging for this mess of a flick to be over.

I've seen a lot of bad stuff in my day. MODERN VAMPIRES joins THE CREEPS as one of the all-time worst, but at least that had lots of midgets in the cast! Frankly, I'll take the low-budget vampire stripper flick VAMPS: DEADLY DREAMGIRLS over this any day.