DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMNAAAAAAAAAATIOOOOOON
- Catchphrase of every vampire ever.
It's not every time an Viner reachs 20.000 posts, so just like I did with my 10K Post Review, I'd like to celebrate this special occasion with a more... unusual subject (for a lack of a better term). But before we dig into our subject, let's talk about Brazilian television for a moment.
Outside of exported movies, shows and animated cartoons that are aired in Brazil, a few years back, native television was pretty dull in my humble opinion; between their sh**ty reality shows, soccer matches, sappy soap-operas among other stuff, compared to other program I grew up with that were foreign in nature, those seem pretty stale. Thankfully in recent years Brazilian TV has being getting a lot more varied, but no matter what I may feel, soap-operas in particular (or as they are called telenovelas) play an important part of not just television networks, but of our culture as well, rivaling the likes of Mexican soap operas. Though they offered different settings and themes for each soap-opera, they are noted had cliched plots and characters to the point they were interchangeable between other series. With that said, some of these were absolute smash hitters, in particular the ones from the 9PM time slot, and audience points go through the roof.
Back in 2002, I was 10 years old, Brazil won the World Cup against Germany (something which would haunt us many years later .___.), Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was elected President and the show Big Brother was at its peak. Despite all that, Globo's telenovelas weren't doing so well for whatever reason. Their most successful ones were starting to lose fuel, while many of their didn't live up to network's expectations. Unfortunately one of them was Beijo do Vampiro, which is Portuguese for "Vampire's Kiss" written by Antonia Calmon which aired in the 7PM time slot and ran from August 2002 to May 2003 - an rather unusual type of soap opera that delved into the supernatural, instead of exploring more common themes like everyday lives or hammy, over-the-top family dramas.
We begin our story in the XII Century, where the beautiful Princess Cecilia is meant to marry Count Rogerio, her one true love. Unfortunately, their union is ruined with the coming of Boris Vladescu, the Supreme Vampire that covets the princess for himself and intends to make her his bride. He desires to generate a son and heir - the most powerful vampire in existence that will carrying on his legacy. After having her family and beloved slaughtered by Boris and refusing to accept her terrible fate of carrying his spawn, Cecilia decides she'd prefer be dead than damned and throws herself from an high tower before his eyes.
Turns out this is was an horror tale narrated by our hero Zeca, an vampire-obsessed teenager that is telling to his little brother and sister during modern times. After scaring the crap out of his sibilings he is scolded by his parents Livia and Roberto who assures their kids that vampires are not real. They are unaware that Boris is actually quite real and has being secretly watching over them for two reasons: 1. Livia is actually Cecilia's reincarnation from the past (as well as Roberto being Rogerio's) and after 800 years, he still desires her 2. And Zeca is not really their son... He is actually Boris'. You see in the past, he married an female vampire called Mina de Montmatre, but she was unable to give any birth to the child he wanted. So he had a fling with an human woman gave birth to their son Atilla (Zeca's original name) but she died during childbirth. To protect his son from Mina's ire, Boris discovered Livia and Roberto had a son of their own, which he switched with his, leaving him to be raised as their child and left their true son in an orphanage.
Boris arranges for Roberto to die during an airplane crash and get rid of the competition for Livia's affection. This very act puts the family in deep sh*t since as they are now severely indebted and forced to move on from their house and live with Livia's mother Zoroastra in the fictional town of Maramores with Boris not too far away, trying to ensure Zeca will embrace his role as his heir, with his vampire nature awakening when he comes of age. Other vampires are also gathering to the town, among them Mina and Boris' lieutenant Victor Vitorio, who have their own secret agendas which will shake Maramores down a lot and change forever Zeca and his family's lives.
If anything else, the colorful cast is what made the show. Let's start with our protagonists; Zeca is an hero in a more traditional sense, he is kind, devoted to his family, willing to protect his loved ones and unlike so many vampire protagonists, he wasn't whiny about his undead condition nor considered himself cursed for most of the time. Quite the contrary, he once used his powers to drive off some bullies that were harassing his younger brother, the only thing he loathed was his father but over the course of the series, he learns to respect and eventually forgive him. On the other hand, he can come across as an Marty Stu in the eyes of some viewers - he is more powerful than vampires older than he is (including his dad, who is pretty much king of all vampires) he can pull some inexplicable powers, such as making Mina grow old, suffers almost none of the typical weaknesses such as sunlight and after getting into Heaven's good graces, is allowed to stay within holy ground.
Boris in the other hand is more a more complex character, serving as both the villain protagonist (he gets a huge amount of POV) and the main antagonist (75% of the terrible things happening in the plot were result of his actions, directly or not). He still displayed some redeeming qualities such as genuine love for his son and wants to ensure he will embrace his legacy because the vampire race is dwindling and he wants to prevent that from happening by any cost.
There were plenty of other fun characters like the clumsy vampire hunter Galileo Van Burger, who belongs to a family who tried to kill Boris in the past, but his ancestor died due to an heart attack, while confronting the Supreme Vampire. He is driven to destroy Boris and Mina, specially the latter after she turned his own son into a vampire (albeit he is still living with his dad and seems fine with his condition). Despite his own incompetence, he is pretty likable and manages to do some outstanding feats by sheer accident such as killing off Count facking Dracula.
Oh yeah, I forgot Dracula makes an very brief appearence being held as king of all vampires, which is confusing since I believed Boris was (consistency was never this show's strength). He is staked by accident by Galileo, who is actually targetting another vampire and his death actually kicks off a major development in the plot, since Boris' vampire enemies seek Dracula's magical ring to use it against him. Ironically, Galileo's original target was an pretty much a grunt in the vampire hierarchy.
And how could I not mention about the ladies. Hot, cute and beautiful ladies everywhere!!! Livia (played by Flavia Alessandra) is pretty smoking hot, no wonder she has so many men flocking . Among the vampires, we have Mina, Lara and even Marta Morta, as well as Pandora, Mina's dhampyr daughter. And those are just the ones that come to mind, there is absolutely no shortage of beautiful ladies in this story.
Probably the most divisive thing in the show was an character introduced near the end, Nosferatu the Terrible, Boris' vampire rival that aimed to take his place as Supreme Vampire and take Dracula's ring for himself. While the performance displayed by his actor Ney Latorraca was hilarious, he was only meant to be an guest appearance/comic relief until the writers decided, he would become an regular character and eventually the main villain through the final weeks. (possibly because Boris was going to soft to be anymore villainous). His new role seemed a bit shoehorned in, since he has no back story, no genuine motivation and he only appears to hijack Boris's position, not helped that he felt more like an buffoon with an overblown sense of himself that never gets to show how much of an legit threat he is.
Oh yeah, we also learn what happened to Livia's true son Renato, is introduced much later as an street urchin and is reunited with his family. Yeah, whatever...
These vampires are classical as you can possibly get: they have sharp fangs, red/green/golden eyes (t varies from vampire to vampire), can turn into bats, hypnotize people, are vulnerable to crosses, garlic, stakes, holy artifacts, sleep in coffins and etc. As a plus, they were also able to perform magic powers such as teleportation, telekinisis, pyrokinisis and among others. But make no mistake, these are family-friendly vampires so don't expect too much blood from their feedings or anything like that. In fact, they don't need blood to survive, they can drink if they feel like it and can eat normal food. These vampires are also capable of having children themselves (though its noted that their birth rates are extremely low and they will soon die out). Curiously, if you manage to kill an vampire sire, all of the vampires they turned (as well as their subsequent progeny) will go back to normal... This raises so many questions about incosistency, but I am afraid won't go too deep into them out to not derail my own review.
Vampires were not the only supernatural creatures to be featured; Zoroastra was an witch, Princess Cecilia appears as some sort of ghost advisor to Livia and saving her at some points, Angels and God's presence feature heavily and Archangel Ezequiel serves more or less the same role as Castiel in Supernatural. He is the overall leader of the good guys and looking after the heroes' safety, helping them out in their moment of need and unlike most angels in fiction portrayed as self-righteous douches, he is actually nice and protective of Zeca despite his nature as an vampire, going as far as to allow him to pass through holy places. Puzzlingly, despite posed as Boris' opposite and being, you know a f*cking angel, Ezequiel gets his ass kicked by Boris whenever he tries to confront him in combat.
As far as acting goes... What did you expect about an soap-opera, specially one about vampires? Though to its credit, there were some really great actors like Tarcisio Meira (who is pretty much legendary) and Claudia Raia as Boris and Mina de Montmartre and whenever the situation needed, they could play characters seriously. Yet, they know what kind of show this is and they will ham it up to the hundreth degree, shouting "MALDIÇÃO" (DAMNATION in English) and chewing the scenery as much as they drink blood. Special effects are, well, they look really sh*t just like PS1 graphics, but I am willing to cut it some slack since for an Brazilian telenovela, the production value looked great. The soundtrack was pretty great with some expertly selected songs such as the opening theme and Vater User from E Nomine.
Though the series turned out to be pretty popular among the younger crowd, it didn't do so well with adult audiences and was absolutely blasted by professional critics. Still, it won some awards, made some actors themselves stars and it has an cult following to this day. I may had loved the hell out of it as a kid and nowadays I do find it so silly and campy to be enjoyed on a serious level... On the other hand, I do appreciate they were trying to do things differently, instead of the same things over and over, and lament that it didn't do quite well enough for them to further innovate and do more supernatural-based stuff which would definitely pleased me. I would probably recommend, it just to see what its like, but I afraid this telenovela was never released outside of Brazil and to this day, it was never reprised as far as I am concerned. There are some episodes uploaded to YT as well as many clips, but unless if speak Portuguese, you probably won't be more invested than just seeing a few videos.
I'd like to thank all of you reading it. I appreciate all types of feedback and hope to have incited your attention about the show. It has being a great time being part of this site and meeting so many amazing people. Its due to you I keep writing these reviews in hopes to entertain your day a bit more.
An toast to your awesomeness from your vampire prince ;)
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