Can you remember back when vampires were simple, bloodsucking creatures? Before they counted teen heartthrobs among their number and shared the stage with a plucky blond waitress? Back when all you needed was a pretty face and a vaguely European sensibility?

Kiss of the Damned can. It aims to be the archetypal vampire movie, one that turns its back on sophisticated subtext in favor a pulpy sensibility where nothing really matters except for the angle of the arterial spray. In a day and age where vampires have achieved a hitherto unknown sophistication, Kiss of the Damned—and its unfortunately generic title—is almost comfortingly traditional.

A screenwriter, Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia, scruffy and pretty) falls for a vampire and within a few minutes has rather casually decided to go over to the dark side for all eternity. The object of his affection, the redheaded Djuna (Joséphine de la Baume, bosomy and pretty), teaches Paolo the ways of his new, alternative lifestyle. All is well until Djuna’s sister, Mimi (Roxane Mesquida, dark and pretty), a sullen temptress with a flair for the macabre, shows up from Europe and sends everything to hell.

Less concerned with tightness of plot than with sense and sensation, the movie trundles along with a pleasingly gothic sensibility, but without ever adding up to much. Writer/director Xan Cassavetes (daughter of John) has a nice way with staging and props, whether it’s placing Paolo’s first romantic interaction with Djuna through a half-opened door, or putting Djuna in chains on a silk-sheeted bed for the big reveal.

But the best special effect by far is Anna Mouglalis’s voice, which purrs through phone lines and parties like velvet and honey. She plays Xenia, a ringleader of the vampire community, presiding over cocktail gatherings full of almost-elegant guests exchanging not-quite witticisms. These parties even attract the likes of Jay Brannan, who suddenly shows up as a vampire who’s gotten lost on the way to a John Cameron Mitchell movie.

Each scene is enjoyable enough to watch without ever really propelling you to the next. This territory has been thoroughly trod, and Kiss of the Damned occasionally seems content to coast along on stock dialogue and intimations of sensations that are never quite felt. When Paolo achieves success with his agent by writing an action-oriented script, one imagines that Cassavetes is voicing a few thoughts of her own. But even the meta-commentary feels a touch dated.

There’s a looseness to the filmmaking—split-second flashbacks, sudden changes in (well-chosen) music—that alternates between pleasantly idiosyncratic and distractingly sloppy, in the style of low-budget giallos of the 1970s. The plot isn’t much to speak of, and the characters, despite the game efforts of an offbeat cast, are never really more than stick figures. The film’s cleverest conceit is to play up the divide between the two primary locations, Djuna’s grandly suburban mansion and Xenia’s chic Manhattan digs.

But mostly, there are vampires in cars, vampires having sex, vampires doing their thing. And if that’s all you need to make you happy, you will be more than satisfied.