‘Round about Christmas time, a group of Santa (and one elf) suited criminal-types rob a bank and take refuge in a motor lodge in the middle of nowhere.
They soon jettison their get-ups, but keep the Christmas themed code-names, while one of their crew creates a diversion back in town to get the heat of our “heroes”.
While seemingly deserted, the gang’s new digs are actually home to a coven of female vampires that love feeding on male guests and recruiting females into their fang bang gang.
Will the criminals make it out with their bounty and blood intact?!
Directed by Taylor Martin with a script by holiday horror lovin’ screenwriter Simon Phillips (Once Upon A Time At Christmas and The Nights Before Christmas… additionally he acts here as well as one of the gang, Father Christmas), Silent Bite may sound like a From Dusk Till Dawn clone, and the inspiration is definitely there, but does the film do enough to make it’s own mark?
So let’s get the Tarantino shit out of the way; there’s bickering criminals known only by codenames (with one exception), and this is a crime picture that turns into a vampire-centric horror flick. The whole vampire/something preternaturally evil is afoot biz is revealed earlier here than in Rodriguez’s pic, and while their actual heist occurs off screen à la Reservoir Dogs, we do get glimpses of the even via some rather awesome comic book-style panels (with limited animation).
Overall the narrative does a solid job of building mounting tension, and while the payoff isn’t quite the explosive action you may anticipate (and takes just a hair too long to arrive), I can assure you there are at least explosions. And speaking of those, your mileage may vary if you dig on more traditional methods of bloodsucker elimination.
As for the real reason any one of us monster-kids will watch this picture; the vampires present are suitably Gothic, with unique eye-make-up… and Sayla de Goede as their leader, Mother, is over-the-top in the best comic book villain sort of way!
As for special features present on this Blu-ray release from Cleopatra we get the film’s trailer, and an image slideshow.
With a flashier third act Silent Bite would have stuck the landing… but as is it’s a well-made, at times funny, vampire Christmas pic that almost completely succeeds.
