July 14, 1997

SECTION: FEATURES; ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 3

Clans embrace in blood

BLOODSUCKER vampire heroes masquerade as drop-dead-gorgeous humans in The Kindred.

Five vampire clans live in San Francisco, locked in a Godfather-style turf war.

The most powerful clan is led by handsome, shadowy businessman Julian Luna (Mark Frankel), the character most in debt to Count Dracula. He has a widow’s peak in his slicked-back hair and lives in a mansion with gold tasselled drapes.

Another clan is led by a mini-skirted night club owner named Lily Langtry. The thuggish Brujah clan is led by the muscle-bound Eddie Fiori, who is determined to wrest power from Luna.

In vampire-speak, to be “embraced” is to be turned into a vampire, one of the kindred.

This week, a newly “embraced” former psychiatric patient, Starkweather, is coming to terms with his new-found life as one of the kindred.

Not knowing how to cope with his desire for taking blood, Cash takes him under his wing and teaches him the ethics of blood sucking – such as how he must never take more blood than he needs to survive and that if the blood is taken carefully, the victim will have no memory of the incident.

But, Starkweather’s psychiatric history causes him to violate the laws of the kindred, for which the punishment is death eternal.