The Lair - The complete first season DVD

One would think there would be a diverse history of manly gay vampire films, after enjoying numerous lesbian classics like Vampyros Lesbos and Daughters of Darkness, but surprisingly, The Lair fills a void in this campy realm. Riffing on Dante's Cove, The Lair is a series in which vampires run an underground sex club employed by hunky, S/M vampires that like to engage in deadly, lascivious orgies. Not since Udo Kier as the Count in Andy Warhol's Dracula has the leader of a vampire cult, in this case Damian (Peter Stickles), been so horny. However, The Lair diverges from Dracula's story quickly, allying plot-wise more with The Lost Boys, in which a posse of hot men must secretly kill in order to keep the family alive. Over the course of the six half-hour episodes in The Lair: The Complete First Season, journalist Thom (David Moretti) and his boyfriend, Jonathan (Jesse Cutlip), get a little too close to discovering the vampires behind a series of anonymous John Doe murders, whose case is officially spearheaded by Sheriff Trout (Colton Ford). Sex scenes are as steamy as they can get for television, and The Lair, as melodrama, delivers wherever one would expect people to get naked and crawl into bed. As one would imagine, and hope, everyone involved in the series, save a couple surprises, ends up dead or a vampire. Not until episode three, after Jonathan has been bitten and Thom tries to hang himself under hypnosis, does the series begin to take more mystical turns, cluing Thom and his friends, like Laura Rivers (Beverly Lynne), into the fact that a coven exists on the island they live on. As Thom sleuths away to discover Jonathan's attempted killer, side plots evolve. Laura's boyfriend, Jimmy (Evan Stone), beats her up, and another vampire victim, Eric (Michael Von Steele), is recruited to The Lair's S/M late-night crew. During episodes four, five, and six, a mutiny forms amongst the vampires, masterminded by Kiefer Sutherland look-a-like, Colin (Brad Benton), and his lackey Frankie (Brian Nolan), who turn against Damian because he believes Thom is his old lover, Richard Devere, reincarnated 200 years later. The scene depicting Damian and Richard back in pre-colonial Boston, dressed in powdered wigs while Richard paints Damian, is hilarious. The dialogue is a schlocky mixture of Shakespearean posturing and gossipy club boy, such as when Colin brattily tells Thom, "Truth is, we're a coven of vampires, and when the sun sets again, you're going to die." The Lair is trashy, ridiculous, and lots of fun.