The Asylum is quickly becoming this decades Full Moon Entertainment by distributing genre pictures almost exclusively and now starting to produce them in house. Way Of The Vampire is their third effort and while it does have some flaws it certainly turns out much better than most of the modern Full Moon movies did before they went bankrupt.

They've decided to plunk the Bram Stoker name above the title to give the movie some recognition among genre fans, but apart from using a few basic characters from his work this isn't (like most with the author's name attached) a direct adaptation.

The film opens nicely with a great looking black and white sequence that introduces us to Van Helsing (Rhett Giles) as he takes a crew to hunt down Dracula and his vampire minions. It's a great way to start it off, but unfortunately it's confusingly shot at times with too much camera movement. Soon enough we've jumped ahead to modern day Los Angeles where Van Helsing now works as a doctor and is continuing his hunt of vampires since he needs to kill off the last vampire Prince before he can rest eternally.

Luckily for him, the vampire leader (Andreas Beckett) has decided to start the human hunting anew (since the vampires have been laying low as to not awake suspicion) which leads to a final confrontation between hunter and bloodsucker.

I have to give this credit for attempting to be more than the normal B-movie; but unfortunately it's also not as good as it could've been due to a fairly listless plot, the fact most people around the action seem oblivious to what's going on, and it tries too hard to be arty (both in filming and dialogue) only for it to come across as overly stale at times. Plus the low-budget is obvious at times during the low-scale action sequences, lack of vampire battles (and when they do come there's some weak second rate kung-fu), and the fact that for a "vampire empire" there only seems to be under ten vampires in total.

Way Of The Vampire is a mostly passable time that's best feature is unfortunately it's pretty cool DVD box art.

Visit The Asylum for more information. (Chris Hartley, 2/8/05)

Directed By: Sarah Nean Bruce, Eduardo Durao.
Written By: Karrie Melendrez, Michael David Stewart, Sherri Strain.

Starring: Rhett Giles, Andreas Beckett, Denise Boutte, Brent Falco.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: For the most part this is a decent transfer with fine clarity, but I did notice a few mild dirt specks scattered here and there.

Extras: There's a trailer (plus trailers for other Asylum releases Evil Eyes, Ghost Of The Needle, and Rachel's Attic), a brief "making of" featurette (that offers little of interest), and a commentary track that's listenable despite the fact it sounds pretty hollow.