At a museum in Mexico City arrives a perfectly preserved mummy. It is a vampire that died years ago and who returns to life in search of his lost love Angelique. Unfortunately for him, the young woman has met and fallen in love with a doctor who supplies her with the blood she needs to resist the vampire attacks.—Volker Boehm
Angelique [Maryam D'Abo] hates her vampire boyfriend Vlad [Ben Cross] and his lifestyle so much that she buries herself under Mexico City for 100 years to get away from him and hopes that he'll take the hint. When she is inadvertently awakened in the 1980s by an archeologist and desperately in need of a drink, Angelique wanders Mexico City until she discovers the Banco de Sangre. She faints when she learns that they TAKE blood instead of giving it, and awakens 13 hours later in a hospital bed with a blood bag attached to her arm. "Your hematocrit was incredibly low (9) so I started a transfusion. You've received four pints of blood." Dr. Zuckerman [Keith Szarabejka] thinks that Angelique has a virus, and a virus has no morals. This is the 20C, and vampires are no longer considered monsters--just diseased, an anemia, a simple break in the homeogene, a sensitivity to the daylight caused by a sensitivity to UV light that blows up cells. Zuckerman intends to work with Angelique until he finds a cure. Plus, he is falling in love with her.
Angelique takes an apartment and hires a maid. It's no problem to Rosa Mercedes [Camille Saviola] that Angelique is on a liquid diet of blood, that she keeps strange hours or that she sleeps in a coffin. In fact, when Vlad finds out that Angelique has awakened and comes ringing her doorbell, Rosa tells him to 'drop dead'. Vlad catches up with Angelique. He warns her that blood transfusions won't sustain her indefinitely. Eventually, she will hunger for living blood because it contains the one ingredient she craves--fear...adrenalin (a drink of blood without adrenalin is like a Bloody Mary without vodka). When the hunger for living blood overcomes her, she will kill anyone--even Dr. Zuckerman--and when that happens, Vlad intends to be there. He sends one of his assistants to inform Zuckerman that he will soon be the main course at dinner, but the assistant uses Zuckerman as an hors d'oevres.
Eventually, everyone winds up at Vlad's castle. Angelique refuses to drink off Rosa or Zuckerman, Vlad becomes impaled ("You've broken my heart"), and Zuckerman becomes the vampire. Indeed, there are many warm Mexico City nights ahead. [Original synopsis by bj_kuehl.]
