Vampire review (DVD) ★★★

Undead eight years after its original release, Demon Under Glass, now opportunistically renamed Vampire, rises again on DVD, lured out of its coffin, no doubt, by the success of Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, et al. Cynicism aside, though, this no-budget re-entry into the now thriving vampire sub-genre has a number of things going for it. These do not include high, or even moderate, production values. But what Vampire lacks in beauty, it makes up for in brains. Almost.

Opening scenes featuring a police sting to trap a serial killer that look and sound like a cheap porn movie – albeit without any actual sex – do not bode well. However, things improve when the target - a man dubbed Vlad (Carter) by the media due to his vampiric m.o. - is beaten by a pack of sinister-looking soldiers bearing crucifixes on their body armour, and then wheeled into a high-security unit in a hospital for veterans in a sealed metal casket.

There afer, Vlad, real name Simon Molinar, becomes the subject of a long series of scientific tests to discover what makes vampires tick. In between him and the project's driven leader, Dr Bassett (Donner), is a compassionate young doctor (Maggart) whose up-close-and-personal relationship with Molinar forces him to see the creature as more than just a lab rat, and, because of the painful scientific methods being used on him, to question who the real monsters are.

The result is a movie that is driven more by dialogue than action, so steer well clear if you're looking for another Daybreakers or Blade, to which others could find Vampire a compelling, thought-provoking, and refreshingly different alternative.