Read interview with screenwriter- producer Anton Ernst
SYNOPSIS
Billy (Andre Frauenstein) is a sensitive, handsome young vampire who spends his nights prowling the city haunts with his friends. They appear to lead a charmed life, owning the night and partaking in the rich social life that the city offers. However, Billy is lonely and yearns for the one true love who will give meaning to his solitary life.
When he meets Jenny (Rikki Brest), a beautiful and charming human girl at a nightclub, he is immediately smitten. His easy charm and gentlemanly manner draw Jenny to him and, despite all attempts by Billy's ex-girlfriend Lisa (Christina Storm), to scupper the budding relationship,
Jenny falls for him. It seems that destiny has favoured both of them.
But all is not what is appears in the twilight world of the vampires. Jenny's father, Tevis Shapiro (Ian Roberts), a human scientist researching a cure for the human HIV/Aids virus accidently produces a serum that will enable vampires to survive the sun's rays and share the daylight with humans.
This leads to a clash between the vampire clan leaders - Constantine (Gys de Villiers), a traditionalist who is against the serum and Borlak (David James) a power-hungry upstart who is determined to lead the vampires out of the shadows and into the light so that they can walk with the humans.
All-out war ensues between Billy and Borlak when Jenny's mother, Lilian Shapiro (Brumilda van Rensburg), is murdered and her father Tevis is abducted by Borlak's henchmen.
In a race against time, Billy teams up with vampire hunter, Detective Joe Kau (Hlomla Dandala), to defeat Borlak, free Tevis and claim the hand of the girl he loves.
GENRE: THE VAMPIRE FILM
The vampire is a harbinger of everlasting life and eternal damnation. These mythological, undead beings subsist by feeding on the blood of living creatures.
Vampires have formed the basis for more literary and cinematic horror than any other fictional creature. The most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction, with over 170 versions to date, has been the cloaked, gothic majesty of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
While regarded as part of the horror genre, vampire films do have their own characteristic style. Movie buffs will recall Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu, one of the best early horror films which lay the foundation for German expressionist cinema.
Hollywood's Universal produced a series of films that made Bela Lugosi famous as the refined but diabolical Count Dracula. British company Hammer Film Productions brought its own interpretation of the vampire to the big screen in a series of films that turned Christopher Lee into the iconic Dracula of the 60s. By the 1970s, the modern vampire began to emerge. These creatures shed their gothic roots and male-centric personae.
Kathryn Bigelow re-imagined vampire traditions by presenting them as outlaws in the guise of the classic western in Near Dark, while Joel Schumacher saw his vampires through the conventions of an eighties teen-movie in The Lost Boys.
It wasn't long before filmmakers post-modernised the genre with Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn and E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of a Vampire. Roman Polanski created one of the first instances of vampire parody with The Fearless Vampire Killers, John Carpenter used a humorous turn from James Woods to entertain his audience in Vampires, and John Landis had vampires as mobsters in Innocent Blood. Today's modern vampire films seek to contemporise the gothic bloodsuckers.
A new generation of vampire heroes has stepped out of the moonlight and into the cultural spotlight - dominating best-seller lists, movies and TV with their dangerous mystique.
The modern-day vampire gentleman is eerily alluring in all the old-fashioned ways, but now he reins in his baser instincts in an impressive display of control. In HBO's True Blood series, vampires prowl openly through small-town America and even campaign for their civil rights. Edward, the hero of Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series, has stolen the hearts of "tween" girls everywhere.
Fans of this conscientious young vampire live vicariously through his romance with Bella, his high school sweetheart.
Nina Auerbach, author of Our Vampires, Ourselves, believes every age gets the vampire it wants. "Vampires aren't supposed to be restrained," Auerbach says. "They're all our hungers. That's why they're vampires." Whether they terrify, entrance or court their victims, vampires are always on the prowl.
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