The story of Bite Marks doggedly follows the uneven, yet hopeful relationship of Cary (Windham Beacham) and Vogel (David Alanson), a gay couple who are backpacking across the country in hopes of deepening and further exploring their relationship.
The two men eventually tire of their walk and decide to hitchhike for a ways in order to cool their heels. Brewster (Benjamin Lutz) just happens to be filling in for his missing brother as a truck driver when he runs across Cary and Vogel with their thumbs raised. He picks the pair up and entrusts them with keeping him awake on the long remaining drive.
Brewster’s truck is loaded down with fairly unusual cargo; five coffins, and noisy ones at that. In fact, they make so much noise that they manage to draw the attention of several people during the early portions of the film. Some of them come out of the encounter alive. Some don’t.
But once Brewster and his two hitchhikers reach their destination, things really start to get interesting. Because instead of the funeral home they were expecting to make a delivery to, the find themselves in the middle of nowhere at a nearly deserted junkyard.
From here on out is where the blood really starts to fly. The back of the truck gets opened up, the coffins end up containing extremely hungry vampires, and Carey, Brewster and Vogel -- along with several others -- end up on the intended menu.
Bite Marks has a truly endearing sense of humor throughout. Numerous horror movie references are tossed back and forth, vampire conventions are challenged, explored and even insightfully exploited, and a general sense of fun is maintained without ever straying too far into silliness.
There’s a decent amount of blood on display, although I would have loved to see more, and a smidge of male and female nudity. But for the most part, Bite Marks is pretty tame in these areas when compared to some of its competition. However, the tight pacing, solid production values and memorable acting performances are more than enough to make up for any perceived deficiencies in the gore department.
Of special note is an awesome cameo appearance by none other than Stephen Geoffreys (Evil Ed from Fright Night), who played as Brewster’s missing brother in Bite Marks. Brewster himself (Benjamin Lutz) also put in a stand-out performance, and really brought a tremendous amount of personality to his role.
All in all, I’d have to say that Bite Marks is a truly interesting movie that manages to capture all the fun and frenzy of the horror genre, while daring to push boundaries by featuring a gay couple as leads. Check this one out, gang.
This film receives a score of:
8 out of 10
