1991 Kingdom Of The Vampire Movie: Sent To Drain – Comic Years

Long before movies like Twilight were showing us vampires in suburbia, there were films like the 1991 Kingdom of the Vampire movie. Whats a vampire gotta do when his kingdom is a nice neighborhood? Lets find out.

When we meet Jeff (Matthew Jason Walsh), he seems like a nice enough young man. He lives at home with his mom (Cherie Patry) and holds down a steady job at the neighborhood liquor store. But theres more to Jeff than meets the tooth. Our first clue is that he only works the night shift. Now thats not always an indicator of something amiss, I say, as I type this in the middle of the night. But in his case, it is. Jeff is a nonagenarian vampire. And his little old lady mom relies on neighborhood children for sustenance. Surely, this is a delicate situation, vulnerable to any upsets.

However, Jeff, the near-century-old vamp, starts feeling the first stirrings of love. Hes got a thing for a young lass named Nina (Shannon Doyle). Better yet, shes got a thing for him, too. Unfortunately for both of them, Mom also has designs on Nina, but of a far different sort. Can Jeff, who looks amazing for his age, figure out how to live a normal-ish life without Moms interference?

J.R. Bookwalter directed the movie, while Matthew Jason Walsh wrote the script, basing it on a story by Bookwalter and Walsh. While Bookwalter has gotten more into movie production, including literally so with the manufactured-on-demand company MakeFlix, he made a number of low budget horror classics. Known for making bleeding lemonade out of lemons, Bookwalter could take a teensy budget and turn it into something special.

And while Matthew Jason Walsh basically stopped acting around the turn of the millennium, he continued writing both music and scripts. He seems to have moved into the cottage industry of producing scripts for Lifetime and Hallmark, both of which are prolific TV-movie makers. Among his recent works are UpTVs holiday romance A Christmas Cruise and the Wrong series for lifetime (The Wrong Roommate, The Wrong Child, etc.). He has worked frequently with director David DeCoteau and actress Vivica A. Fox. He also directed the 1993 movie The Witching, considered a cult classic by many.

Unsurprisingly for a movie with this low of a budgetestimated around $2500reactions have been very polarized. People seem either to love or really dislike this movie. The people who disliked it mentioned things like the acting, which is to be expected with low budget films. Others said it was cheaply made, which seems redundant.

However, then there are the people who loved this movie. Some of them are Bookwalter fans who appreciate what he can do with a camera and a shoestring budget. Some are them are just low-budget horror movie fans in general. And others, including Scared Stiff Reviews, found it genuinely moving. Maybe you will, too.

The movie Kingdom of the Vampire is available on demand on Roku sign up and watch it onHorrorMax TV!

featured image via Tempe Digital

Salom Gonstad is a freelance writer who grew up in the swampy wilds of south Alabama. She now splits her time between the Appalachian wilds (of Alabama) and the considerably more refined streets of New York City. When she's not yelling about pop culture on the internet, she's working on a supernatural thriller about her hometown. Also, we're pretty sure she's a werewolf.

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1991 Kingdom Of The Vampire Movie: Sent To Drain - Comic Years