TV REVIEW : ‘Blood Ties’: Time to Take a Vampire to Lunch

The vampire genre has just about been sucked dry with a ream of ‘80s films and novels reimagining the erstwhile monsters in tragic terms as a doomed, desperate breed. The Jim McBride-directed TV movie “Blood Ties” (at 8 tonight on Channels 11 and 6) makes a case for bloodsucker sympathy, too, but with a lighter, less fatalistic take on things: Intended as a sort of liberal anti-racist fable, it’s a vampires-are-people-too picture.

This carnivorous extended family--which includes a nice-guy reporter (Harley Venton), a greedy developer (Patrick Bauchau), a temptress (Michelle Johnson) and a motorcycle gang--doesn’t recoil from crosses, stay out of daylight, live forever, grow sharp incisors, or even forage for blood for sustenance. They do like to give each other severe hickeys in the heat of passion, but that’s about the extent of the blood lust left over from their barbarian days back in the homeland of Carpathia (a fictional neighbor to Transylvania).

The reporter, who’s falling in love with a lithesome D.A. unaware of his unusual ethnic background, wants to leave vampirism behind. “We’re Carpathian-Americans!” he protests. “I think it’s time we came out of the coffin!” The retort: “You are a damned assimilationist!” The knottiness in “Blood Ties” stems from writer Richard Shapiro’s inability to milk his metaphors, once established, to flesh out his villains, or to settle on a tone. Director McBride, slumming a bit, shows little of the stylishness he brought to “Breathless” and “The Big Easy,” though the steaminess in the sex scenes is recognizable.

But if its ideas wash out in pure silliness, who can resist the dumb fun of a tied-up Michelle Johnson literally popping the buttons on her blouse to torment one of her fearless-vampire-killer kidnapers? Bela Lugosi’s seductive malevolence meets Madonna’s politics.