Bloodlines

Read the screenplay (PDF) — Original screenplay.

A vampire. A slayer. A doomed romance.

Kendra stands outside a church holding an empty bottle. She goes inside and fills it with holy water.

At home she is breaking up with her boyfriend Dustin and wants to know when he can have his things out. Dustin is slow to answer, and when she says he is taking a century, he tells her she does not know what a century feels like. He wants to know why she is ending it. He never hurt her, lied to her or cheated on her. Kendra says he did not tell her the full truth. She tells him he has to leave, because if he does not, she will have to kill him. Dustin says she sounds crazy. Kendra says it is breaking her heart, but with the evidence she has against him, it is the only choice she has. He refuses to accept a breakup without a reason. She agrees he deserves to know why she has to kill him, and Dustin blurts out an apology for never telling her he is a vampire.

Kendra says that is okay, because she has a secret too. There is a reason she never introduced him to her mother. Her mother is dead. She was a vampire slayer, her name was Buffy, and Dustin killed her. Kendra tells him she does not want to hurt him, but she will.

The fight is on. Dustin shows his vampire face and the two of them tear through the apartment and down the building's stairwell. Kendra throws the holy water in his face and it burns him. She sends him crashing through the coffee table. He says he will squash her pretty face, and he moves the way the vampires on Buffy do, suddenly showing up on the other side of her. He takes a fall down the stairs and she slams him into the floor. He tells her maybe he will spare her this time, and she tells him it is not over yet. When he gets the upper hand, he mocks her. Some vampire slayer, he says. Look who is getting slain now.

Kendra tells him she cannot believe she ever loved him. Dustin says he thought he loved her for a while too, but it was probably just her blood, because a slayer's blood is so coveted. He says he probably never loved her anyway. Kendra thanks him for making it easy and stakes him. Dustin crumbles to dust, his skeleton showing for a moment before he is gone. Kendra says that one was for her mom.

Release & Reception

• Studio: JDuDs Productions (per IMDb) for StabMovies.com
• Distributor: YouTube (worldwide, 2012), on the StabMovies.com channel

Released free on YouTube on October 31, 2012 as part of the Trifecta of Terror with Stabbed and The Gates. IMDb lists the release date as October 31, 2012 in the United States, the distributor as YouTube worldwide and the genre as horror short.

The full short had 7,925 views when checked in September 2026. The commentary version had 354 and the making-of had 400. IMDb has no user reviews for it.

Cast

Crew

Production

Joshua Patrick Dudley has loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer since he was a kid and always wanted to do a tribute. He wrote Bloodlines for the Trifecta of Terror, the Halloween 2012 release of three shorts. It is about a vampire and a slayer who are in love and have kept their secrets from each other. He added the twist that Dustin killed Kendra's mother and that Kendra is Buffy's daughter.

Dudley said he always wanted to be a vampire, since he could not be a slayer. Playing a straight man in a relationship, let alone a vampire, was a big change for him, and he said the part was too good to pass up. He cast Cara Shields as the slayer.

Bloodlines was an experiment more than a story. It was made for fun and so the team could practice new techniques. It was their first try at special effects makeup, CG animation, stunt fighting and an extended fight scene. They also played a lot with sound and made most of the short with no music, as an experiment in realism. For a while they had a running theory that music was the only thing making their movies watchable. Going without it also meant no composer and no copyright worries.

It was Rachel Alexandria Arnold's first time directing and her first time running the camera on her own. It was also the first time she directed something she had not helped write. Dudley stayed hands off. Every shot was chosen and designed by Arnold, with very little input from him. Arnold said she kept waiting for him to tell her what to film next, the way she was used to, and he never did. She said the experience made her respect him more.

The team had never really choreographed a fight before. The choreography was worked out as they went. They picked two or three moves, called cut and decided what came next. Cara Shields had no stunt training but was very strong, almost like a gymnast, and threw herself into it. Both actors got hurt a couple of times. Dudley's fall down the stairs came from fake fighting with his twin sister when they were kids. One fall is really three shots cut together.

Filming took about two or three hours in one night, not counting the time spent on makeup. It was shot in Dudley's old apartment and apartment building. He said they got lucky that nobody walked through while he was in vampire makeup and Shields was carrying her weapons. Dudley said he wished they had rehearsed more and planned the camera angles. Too many shots came from the same or similar angles, which made the fight hard to edit.

In the making-of Dudley called it probably the shortest film StabMovies.com has ever made. They talked about a sequel for a while but never made one. In his commentary he said he would still like to do another Buffy short or continue the story.

Music

Most of Bloodlines has no music on purpose. It was an experiment in realism, so the soundtrack is mostly audio recorded on set with sound effects added in editing.

Filming locations

• A church: Opening scene of Kendra collecting holy water
• Joshua Patrick Dudley's former apartment and apartment building: The breakup, the fight and the stairwell falls

Effects and makeup

Dudley wore a prosthetic vampire face modeled on the snarling vampires of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He did much of the makeup himself with Arnold's help, using liquid latex and glue.

To finish the look he wore yellow contact lenses so his eyes would change like the Buffy vampires' eyes. Getting them in took about two hours, plus another 30 minutes before he felt okay leaving the apartment. Glue or makeup got on the lenses and burned his eyes. He could only film a few minutes at a time before taking them out and rinsing his eyes, which made his makeup run and meant reapplying it. He said that through most of the short he could not see what he was doing. Arnold called the pain she watched him go through incredible.

The fangs took three tries. A custom full set of pointed teeth was made to match the Buffy look, but it did not fit. He ended up wearing two individual stick-on fangs.

Following a tutorial, they used a red base under the makeup to blend the prosthetic with his skin. Dudley said it came out too red, so he looks sunburned in some shots and more normal in others.

The dusting death was made by a friend who does 3D work and titles for StabMovies.com, and who also made this short's titles. Dudley wanted his skin to turn to dust first, then show his skeleton, then vanish, as close to the Buffy effect as possible.

The vampire growls and the effects on Dudley's voice were added in editing as throwbacks to Buffy.

Dudley said the makeup was the most painful part of the whole production.

Props and costumes

A breakaway coffee table built out of foam. It was the first time the team made prop furniture. Dudley wished the foam had been brown so the break looked more like wood, and Arnold admits it is a little noticeable now.

Kendra's holy water bottle, her stake and an arsenal of slayer weapons.

Prosthetic vampire face, yellow contact lenses and stick-on fangs.

One stunt copies a Buffy move where a weapon is tossed and caught.

The killers

Deaths

STABFLIX

Bonus features and videos

▶

StabMovies.com: Behind the Mask - Part 10: Bloodlines

StabMovies.com

The vampire short, and the stunts it was built around.

Gallery

Poster & Key Art