Ah that Dracula sure does get around, doesn’t he? He’s met more historical figures than Forrest Gump. In the grand tradition of “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula,” “Emmanuelle vs. Dracula” and “Batman vs. Dracula” comes the lost adventure of two of the world’s most notorious criminals and their confrontation with the lord of darkness. Timothy Friend’s horror crime thriller is in the hokey tradition of absurd battles and there hasn’t been one more absurd since Bonnie and Clyde’s meeting with the undead. Tiffany Shepis stars as Bonnie along Trent Haaga as Clyde in their efforts to thwart off rival criminals and the lawman as they travel across the country. Now down on their luck after a series of unfortunate events leave them penniless and without a car, they meet up with an old friend promising them a big job robbing a local bank.
In the same town an aristocrat named Dr. Loveless is keeping the infamous Dracula as a memento in his basement, luring young women in to prisons where the dark lord feeds on them for sustenance. When the bank heist goes awry, one of their cohorts are shot by a local, and Bonnie seeks refuge at the very mansion Dracula has just been unleashed with his minions. While “Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula” isn’t exactly the throw down and battle of wits I expected, I managed to enjoy Timothy Fields film just as much as anticipated mainly because while the budget didn’t allow for amazing special effects or a rumble in the jungle, it did instead make way for a well paced and finely written bit of examination on a couple who would go through any lengths to help one another.
Fields and co. take their time establishing this version of their relationship, and also offers up some slick exposition on the villains of the piece including Loveless, Dracula, and Loveless’ baby sister Isabel, whose own innocence acts as a deterrent to Dracula and may save her hide by the time the film has ended. That’s if she doesn’t give in to her urges of killing her abusive brother, first. By the time the film has ended, we get a demented and truly disturbing look at the lengths of their love, and Tiffany Shepis holds a very sharp chemistry with Trent Haaga, both of whom are fantastic as the ill fated lovers. Shepis adds a psychotic edge to Bonnie, a woman whose own beauty shields her inherent ability to hold her own and indulge in her psychotic tendencies involving razor blades and shot guns.
Haaga is also strong as the long suffering and slightly unhinged Clyde who enters in to the mansion unaware of what danger lurks, while Bonnie visits evil himself and hopes to make it out with her skin firmly in tact. While the budget doesn’t offer us grue and splatter, there are some truly gross moments to be experienced including a skinless man clinging to life, and a prostitute getting her privates munched on by a hungry Dracula. “Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula” works well as a clashing of genres, and meeting of two forces of evil, both of whom will do whatever it takes to survive, no matter who they have to step over or destroy. It’s a demented and brutally grotesque little gem about two of the world’s most notorious criminals meeting pop culture’s most notorious force of evil, and they’re among familiar company. director Timothy Fields leads a cast of veritable cult heavyweights in to what is easily one of the most pleasing horror hybrids I’ve seen this year.