One of the great aspects of the hugely successful Texas Frightmare Weekend conference in Dallas, Texas is the slew of movie screenings that happen throughout the weekend. Or at least, attempt to happen. After a lengthy two-hour delay today due to a cancellation of one of the scheduled films, sending hundreds of black-clad, zombie makeup covered horror fans milling around looking confused and lost and scaring the conservative looking attendees of the coinciding accounting conference, the ballroom for screenings finally opened its doors. There was a collective sigh of relief at this point. One thing you do not want to happen at a horror convention is to allow your attendees to become bored and restless. Especially when the "bartender" downstairs was so flustered by people attempting to order beers that she nearly broke down into tears and eventually just disappeared. Perhaps it was all of the fake blood and black t-shirts that threw her off guard and caused her to shout, "I'm a barista, not a bartender! I don't know no beer!" at the patrons over and over again. Either way, maybe she would be better suited to a desk job, preferably away from any contact with the public.

But I digress...Back to the important topic of horror movies!

The first film up to bat (no pun intended) was the 2006 vampire film SOUL'S MIDNIGHT by director Harry Basil and writers Jason Cleveland and Brian Cleveland. This campy undead movie stars Armand Assante and Lucila Sol? as the lead vampires, Simon and Iris, and Robert Floyd and Elizabeth Ann Bennett, as Charles and Alicia Milford, the naive young couple unwittingly summoned to the vampires' lair. Set in a small Texas town, the coven of vampires is attempting to resurrect their ancient father in a ritual performed on the Eve of St. George's Day. They must combine the ashes of the ancient creature, which was the "dragon" St. George originally slew, using the blood of the newborn descendant of St. George, which Alicia Milford is unknowingly carrying in her womb. Charles and Alicia are unable to flee the town in time and are forced to vampires or else lose their son to the "dragon" and their lives to the vampires.

The idea itself is original, the usage of the obscure religious legend of St. George and his dragon to develop the concept for a modern day vampire film. It is definitely not a storyline I have heard before. However, this movie is not exactly cutting-edge. It is campy, as I have mentioned, and incorporates quite a few stereotypical elements of B-horror such as the daytime TV-esque innocent young couple, the haunted old hotel, the bizarre old grounds keeper, the long-haired (actually it was more of a mullet) elder vampire and his young, sexy, raven-haired vampire lover, etc. SOUL'S MIDNIGHT is definitely drawing on quite few of the preceding horror themes to build flesh out its structure. There are elements of ROSEMARY'S BABY and other films throughout which allows a little insight into the background influences of its creators. However, with a definite 1980's B feel to it, SOUL'S MIDNIGHT harkens back to the good old days of FRIGHT NIGHT with memorable one-liners that make the audience chuckle and well-staged humorous fight scenes designed specifically, or at least it felt this way, to make the viewer laugh. It was because of this that I really enjoyed the film. It was refreshing to view a film that did not take itself so intensely seriously as the majority of the slice and dice creations invading theaters these days, and yet managed to still keep it from toppling over the edge into roll-your-eyes ridiculous. Even at the very end, when the "dragon" is flailing around in its pit and I was asking myself "Why can't he get out of the 4 foot hole in the ground if he's this big bad monster? Oh, wait...maybe they couldn't afford the lower half of the costume!" I was still grinning and wanting to see how it would end.

Harry Basil's latest creation FINGERPRINTS, a story based on the legend of the haunted San Antonio train tracks where a school bus full of children were killed, is screening tonight. I am not sure exactly what to expect, whether it will be a campy laugh-fest like SOUL'S MIDNIGHT or a more serious ghost story. Either way, I am looking forward to checking it out!