Midnight Vampire is a Stop Motion short film made by the animator Takena Nagao. It was released in 2024 and is available to watch on YouTube here
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A vampire rises from her coffin one night and hits up a bar in search of a potential meal. Her choice of victim brings her into conflict with a different sort of human predator.
Midnight Vampire contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: At the climax of the short, the girl cuts off the cameraman's limbs one at a time with the same axe that his men were going to use to dismember her.
- Asshole Victim: The vampire's "date" is posthumously established as this once the vampire discovers the elaborate Torture Cellar and Snuff Film set just off his living room.
- Blood from the Mouth: The cameraman spits up a mouthful of blood after taking an axe to the chest.
- Bookends: The short begins with the vampire waking up in her coffin and ends with her laying down in it to go back to sleep.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Apart from her "date", the vampire kills all her victims in brutal and gory ways, such as punching a man in the face so hard that his skull caves in or cutting the front half of a man's head off with an axe. The cameraman gets the most drawn-out and horrid death: he gets all his limbs hacked off one by one, then takes an axe straight to the chest, and finally has his head split in two. And he deserved every second of it.
- Eye Scream: The vampire takes a crossbow bolt to the eye at one point, though this seems to annoy her more than anything else.
- Gorn: The vampire kills people in gruesomely gory ways that aren't censored in the slightest, with the cameraman getting a particularly drawn-out and graphic demise.
- High-Pressure Blood: When the girl hacks off the cameraman's arms, blood gushes from the stumps like water from a hose.
- Human Pincushion: One of the henchmen shoots the vampire with a crossbow several times, leaving large bolts sticking out of her shoulder, collarbones and right eye. They don't slow her down at all.
- Karmic Death: The cameraman, who intended to film an innocent woman getting hacked to pieces with an axe, is himself hacked to pieces with that same axe by his intended victim.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When the crossbowman sees that turning the vampire into a Human Pincushion isn't slowing her down, he promptly stabs her in the gut with a pitchfork and then flings her onto a bed of nails that punch clean through her in dozens of places. It proves just as ineffective as shooting her with the crossbow did.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: The vampire may be a Literal Maneater who kills without a shred of remorse, but she's practically a saint compared to the men shooting the snuff film.
- Literal Maneater: The vampire flirts with a man she meets at the bar and convinces him to invite her back to his home. Once they get there, he barely has time to shut the front door before she sucks out all his blood and kills him.
- Lodged-Blade Recycling: The vampire gets shot in the eye with a crossbow bolt, which she later pulls out and uses to kill the man who shot her.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: The short has sound effects, ambience and a bit of music, but no spoken dialogue whatsoever. The one time that anyone says anythingnote , the dialogue is conveyed through title cards like in a Silent Movie.
- Mook Horror Show: The snuff film crew are completely powerless to stop the vampire from killing them all.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: The vampire is a petite woman far shorter than the men she's up against, yet her Super-Strength lets her overpower and kill them with ease.
- Mugging the Monster: It's all but stated that the vampire's "date" was luring her back to his home with the intention of making her the next victim of a Snuff Film, unaware that she's a dangerous predator with her own dark intentions for him.
- Must Be Invited: Implied. The vampire doesn't enter her "date's" home until he motions for her to come inside.
- Non-Action Big Bad: The snuff film's director makes no attempt to fight the vampire himself. He prefers to hang back and let his minions take her on while he records the carnage from a safe distance.
- Ominous Walk: The vampire pursues the fleeing cameraman at a calm, unhurried walk.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: All the people involved in the snuff film meet truly horrifying ends at the vampire's hands. Given that these people are murderers who were planning to record their killing of an innocent girl, it's hard to feel sorry for them.
- Pet the Dog: The vampire has no real reason to free the killers' would-be victim, but she does it anyway.
- Skewed Priorities: When the vampire caves in one goon’s face with a single punch, the cameraman's first thought is to film the twitching corpse. He continues filming the carnage as the vampire slaughters her way through all his minions, and even when he's the last member of the crew left, he keeps the camera trained on her while cautiously shuffling toward the exit.
- Snuff Film: The villains of the short are preparing to film their murder of a helpless girl when the vampire walks onto their set. Once she starts killing them all, the cameraman switches to filming her instead.
- Stop Motion: The short is done in a Claymation style.
- Super-Strength: The vampire is strong enough to cave a man's skull in with one punch, killing him instantly.
- Torture Cellar: The vampire checks out her victim’s apartment after killing him and discovers that the backrooms contain a dungeon where criminals are shooting a Snuff Film.
- Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: When the axeman takes a swing at the vampire, she effortlessly disarms him, takes the axe, and uses it to chop his face off. Later, she kills the crossbowman by pulling out one of the arrows he’d shot her with and throwing it hard enough to punch through his head.
- Vampire Bites Suck: The vampire sucks all the blood out of her "date", reducing him to a withered husk, and his horrified expression makes it clear that he didn’t enjoy the experience at all.
