TV Reviews : CBS Vampire Movie Squeezed by the Small Screen

Horror works well on television. There are the nightly newses. There are the tire commercials that threaten terrifying things. Or take “Hard Copy” or “A Current Affair.”

An exception is vampires.

They don’t seem to work well on the little screen, even on CBS, which has such a scarifying schedule of programs. (Sorry, cheap shot.)

The proof of this matter is tonight’s “Daughter of Darkness” movie at 9 p.m. on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).

Cathy, a winsome Chicago girl (played winsomely by Mia Sara), decides after her mother’s death to seek out her father in their native Romania. He had abandoned them 20 years ago. So, in the production by Harry Chandler and Gerald W. Abrams, as directed by Stuart Gordon from the script by Andrew Laskos, she sets out for Bucharest on this nightmarish mission.

Well, Father is deader than his official death report--and he turns out to be a vampire, as played by Tony Perkins with a thick-tongued and decidely gruesome accent.

But he is a kindly vampire who tries to save her from a surly band of lively deadlies who swill plasma but prefer fresh blood. In that way they much resemble the Detroit Pistons.

There are some tricky twists and turns in the plot but it is seriously too silly. Vampires belong on the big screen, or behind the screen in our major Hollywood agencies; they don’t work well on television, with its constant interruptions by commercials on the perils of buying the wrong tires. About as visceral a response as you can get is a yawn.