Robert Rundle is a maniac.

Seriously, who knew that the director of Cybernator and Run Like Hell— as well as scarecrow #1 in Dark Harvest, ninja guard #1 in Big Sister 2000 and Bo Stompkins in Raw Energy — and writers Randall Frakes (Rollerblade, Hell Comes to Frogtown) and Tanya York (Frogtown II) would be able to create such a piece of outright lunacy? I always discuss movies seemingly made by aliens that have no idea what humanity is like and beam us their ideas and as such they’re so strange that nothing seems like anything a human being would do.

This is the movie we send back to them.

The Vampire of Los Angeles (Don Stroud) is the kind of killer that only direct-to-video can give us. He randomly picks up women and does all manner of odd things to them, like keeping their skulls for cereal bowls and injecting their blood into his veins. Oh yeah — one of the skulls talks to him and has gotten inside his head and not in the way that skulls should be in your head. Stroud is absolutely going for it in this movie and seeing as how the last four movies he did before this were Donald Jackson roller blade-related movies, I get the feeling he had the chance to really stretch his wings as an actor. And by stretching his wings, I mean screaming at the top of his lungs and taking Polaroids of himself in the mirror.

In the very same neighborhood is a house of priests: the Monsignor (Erik Estrada, whose first name is misspelled in the credits), Father Thomas (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Father Daniel (Michael M. Foley, Tracer from WMAC Masters). Most of the time, the priests are all sitting at a table eating dinner, reading their lines off of the newspapers in front of them and interacting with their maid Merna. Yes, the priests have Judy Landers as their maid.

Have you started to figure out why I love this movie yet?

As we get into the stories of the Vampire draining women of their blood and Father Michael kicking ass for the Lord as a vigilante priest complete with a cross-decorated gun and throwing stars, we also get nearly an entire song by a lovely young lady named Hiroko. She’s also in Miracle Beach, a beach blanket movie that unites Ami Dolenz, Pat Morita, Alexis Arquette, Allen Garfield, Martin Mull and Vincent Schiavelli.

I have no idea how a Japanese pop idol got to America much less why she’s in this sleazy movie and even less why she got to sing almost all of her song “My Love’s Waiting.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn6K0z28nWs

Otis the vampire has a new target, a girl named Kim (Carrie Chambers, Karate Cop), who is a psychic just like him. Yes, that’s right. He’s not just a vigilante cop who has a gun with a cross on it, he’s also a psychic vigilante cop who has a gun with a cross on it. Kim brings the two stories together, even if I can’t remember how Robert Z’Dar, Jim Brown and Scott Shaw (more Donald Jackson crossover) are part of this.

This is the kind of movie where you watch Don Stroud eat corn flakes out of a human skull and make smoothies with blood and beer, all while the psychic cop also has a crucifix knife ready to hear that killer’s deathbed confession.

Thanks to my weird movie pals across the pond The Schlock Pit, I learned that Stroud was paid $1,000 a day for this movie. He should have made way, way more than that, because he’s giving this movie everything he has left.

This is the kind of movie that people get mad at and I get happy about. It’s just so oddly made, so poorly paced and has the cast equivalent of a horror movie convention, but you know I’d buy every 8×10 Judy Landers has on her table.

You can watch this on YouTube.