I'm not a huge vampire fan, so I might be a little biased, but Pale Blood didn't do much for me. There's a lot of atmospheric late 80's/early 80's shots of L.A. nightlife which do add a lot to the film, but the story itself is uninteresting and it doesn't help that Chakiris is a charisma vacuum as the male lead. Wings Hauser plays his usual sleazoid predator like he did in so many other 80's exploitation movies. The story itself is a bit hard to follow and I'm still not sure I know what it was about.

Here's one of the more stylish and intriguing vampire fright features from the early 90's, a period when these pictures were seriously glutting the direct-to-video market. The chronically maniacal (and always delightful) Wings Hauser, who earned his B-movie cult stripes with his awesomely electrifying portrayal of the sublimely hateful'n'heinous psycho pimp supreme Ramrod in the great'n'gritty knock-out "Vice Squad," does his patented first-rate fruity'n'frenzied freakazoid act as Van Vandameer, a totally crackers psychotic video artist who's brutally butchering attractive young honeys in Los Angeles (the victims are thoroughly drained of their blood, which qualifies as par for the course as far weird s**t in L.A. is concerned). George Chakiris (the suave Latino gang leader in "West Side Story"),looking very pallid, handsome, elegant and uncannily youthful, gives a surprisingly fine, intense and sympathetic performance as Michael Fury, a dour, composed, reticent, decidedly undeadly and semi-heroic aristocratic European bloodsucker who hires diligent, energetic, outgoing private detective Lori (a spirited, beguiling Pamela Ludwig, a lovely lass who previously co-starred with Hauser in the passable post-nuke sci-fi/action item "Dead Man Walking") to help him track down Van Vandameer, who's the kind of contemptible good-for-nothing mortal miscreant who gives respectable real-life vampires a notoriously bad name.

Hong Kong director V.V. Dachin Hsu brings a galvanizing surfeit of smoky, hazy, nightmarishly garish and bravura style to the reasonably artful, intelligent and original script, adding a few nifty, witty wrinkles to standard vampire lore (e.g., Chakiris sleeps in a portable leather suitcase come coffin -- complete with zipper! -- and doesn't like to drink Coke),neatly drawing distinct and engrossing characters, staging the frequent bloody violence with considerable flair (the climactic confrontation between Hauser and Chakiris especially swings),and injecting the funky, gleaming nighttime downtown Los Angeles locations with a finely atmospheric sense of pure skin-crawling dread. Moreover, incomparable trash movie goddess Sybil Danning can be briefly glimpsed walking down a street and the hip'n'ripping punk band Agent Orange perform a few thrashy numbers in a club. Crafty and involving, professionally done all around and a praiseworthy effort overall, this unjustly overlooked horror sleeper comes highly recommended, particularly to admirers of Wings Hauser's always deliciously loony, dynamic and exuberant bug-eyed histrionics.

A direct-to-video film shot in Hong Kong, Pale Blood tells the story of Michael Fury (George Chakiris, West Side Story),who is a vampire out to preserve the honor of being a bloodsucker by stopping whoever is killing people and draining them of their blood. He's helped by occult-obsessed investigator Lori (Pamela Ludwig, City Limits).

This has a cast of people who will delight those of us who rented way too many videos in 1990, including Wings Hauser and Darcy DeMoss (Vice Academy 3, Hardbodies).

It was written and directed by female director V.V. Dachin Hsu, who was also the second unit director of a movie that was often discussed in my home, Phat Beach. Her co-director was Michael W. Leighton, who also made 1989's Rush Week and wrote the Hauser and Sybil Danning-starring L.A. Bounty. He also acted in Carter Stevens' 1979 adult film Punk Rock (which also has Robert Kerman from Cannibal Holocaust).

Speaking of punk rock, Agent Orange appears in this movie. It has plenty of on-location images of the Sunset Strip to make you think that more of this movie was made in the U.S.