(1992)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

One day, after getting evidence from Edgar (Kenneth Cranham) that Alex (Julian Sands) is a vampire and that she bears an uncanny resemblance to his long-lost love Virginia (Suzanna Hamilton), Anne (also Suzanna Hamilton) figures out where Alex’s lair is and enters it. She finds him asleep, so she picks up a metal rod and tries to stake him, but he wakes up before she can. He soon asks her to go ahead and stake him anyway, even though he doubts it will kill him, but in the end she can’t bring herself to do it. She then begs him to make her a vampire so she can be with him, but he refuses, telling her that he cannot make the same mistake with her that he made with Virginia.

Anne returns home, and some time later, Edgar shows up and kidnaps her. He then heads to Alex’s lair and leaves out the precious stone he had earlier given Anne for him to find, and when Alex does find it, he goes out to look for her. Unsuccessful in his search, he returns to his lair to find her lying dead on his bed. He is then ambushed by Edgar, who runs him through the gut with a sword and pins him against a wall. Edgar reveals that he was Virginia’s husband when Alex had turned her, and that he is a vampire himself, and had been waiting for years to get revenge on him for what he did to Virginia. He has killed Anne (among others) as a result, and he also tells Alex that he had punished Virginia for her betrayal by locking her in a lead coffin and sending her to the bottom of the North Sea, so she will suffer with her immortality until the end of time.

As Edgar distracts himself with kissing Anne’s lifeless body, Alex gets free of the sword and viciously stabs him with a large broken pipe, sending him out of the window into the Thames River below. Alex then desperately tries to feed Anne his blood to make her a vampire, hoping that Edgar had just simply bitten her, but it’s no use. As he heartbrokenly lies down with her body, the voice of Edgar recites the poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe, which explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman.