The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Blistering performances.

Not bad for a film, which invited such scathing opinions; "Kiss" is a tense film with 440 pounds of excess emotional baggage. The build up to mischief at Hotel Transylvania takes its sweet time in coming to play and terms with Nikolai's accent and horrendous dialogue delivery. The kills are subtle and effective, things go nuts and all woozy in the third act when one of the guests is administered a certain paralyzing agent through tea, a hot cup of tea. "Kiss" also goes the extra mile and explains to us that the immortality is the only trait the hotel management and staff share with vampires, that and the blood I assume, since there was loads of it in this slasher, haunted hotel flick. The rest are mere "fairy tales", says the butler to the victim,With its enticing, "true story" history from 1914 to present-day and a jumbled, nonsensical plot, "Bela Kiss" entertains some with its 'no-show' kills, mediocre to laughable acting, the back-story. Vision of the Avengers fame as a serial killer, the home-coming of a twist, no-clue-title, and blood, gallons of blood, bath tubs full of blood.

The film starts out promising enough. The first 7 minutes are good. There's an old footage thing, then there's a group driving through some woods in a VW camper van, then 'typical' kicks in - the noise of a hunting rifle, Boom! a stranger looks into groups vehicle window (yes, there's a boom sound effect). One of cast says 'i have a bad feeling about this..' (isn't that a typical line from Star Wars?) The stranger wants a jump-start, and over act's the part, by acting over strange. Credit where credit is due, just as things started to look predictable, there's an unexpected twist.Positives: The film looks good. Those behind the camera, the editors, have done a good job.Kristina Klebe caught my eye. She's has a lot going for her. Without doubt, the strongest cast member. Negatives: Sound is a mixed bag. Some of it fitting, while some of it sounds all too familiar. At times there's a lack of balance, and over-use of jingles.The story tends to drift, my attention span was being tested. There's a real sense The Kiss of a Killer brought together a mix of talent, and lesser talented individuals.Weak moments: Two of the group spot some metal barrels in the woods. The barrels look in good shape. The male attempts to open the lid on one of the barrels. He fails. So the female has a go, and guess what? she fails also. If the male couldn't manage it, how was the female expected to do better? If you're staying at a hotel, and looking around the place outside, why would anyone who discovered barrels, attempt to open them? During another scene, a male and female are waiting outside the Hotel in the camper van. It's daytime. There is a don-king noise, no big deal really. They overreact, and lock themselves inside the camper? The engine cuts out, and the female goes mental. It's absurd. The male gets out to look at the engine, and they completely forget their fear of the don-king noise, once the engine starts. The bald killer shows up, and stabs the male before the female's eyes. She runs for her life, the bald killer keeps up with her by walking slowly (running is apparently not the killers style). In a completely unoriginal move, the female runs into a building, and to the safety of a smartly dressed type who is involved with the hotel. He is obviously a bad egg. To jump on the phone to the police might be top of the list, but no, the female sits down and has a cup of tea to clam down? FFS, SHE HAS JUST WITNESSED SOMEONE BEING STABBED AND BEEN CHASED BY A BLOOD SPLATTERED KILLER AND SHE SITS DOWN FOR A CUPPER?Closing comment: Good effort, but ultimately, the story isn't all that.

Bela Kiss - Prologue is a very atmospheric low budget horror-thing from Germany. It is a strange movie, but worth a look. It's got great atmosphere, a bizarre story line, excellent editing and cinematography plus some decent horror and suspense. The serial killer Bela Kiss is very charismatic (Rudolf Martin fits great). At times I wondered exactly what kind of movie I was watching - it has a sort of art house feel to it in places, and at other times devolves to an all-out slasher. It's an odd style, but captivating for an hour and a half. The movies sums up the plot somewhat, but opens new doorways at the end. I'll probably watch the sequel, whenever it comes out. Looks like a decent story in the making. 6 points from me.

Bela Kiss is theoretically based on a true story about a notorious serial killer whose crimes were discovered as WW1 was gearing up when the military attempted to confiscate barrels of gasoline and discovered mutilated bodies inside.The soldiers that made the discovery are supposed to be so horrified that they immediately run off vomiting (apparently they weren't familiar with the horrors of trench warfare yet). Flash forward to the present and we have a van with five young people that just pulled a robbery and go to hide out in a no-tell motel for a while to avoid the cops. The place is elegant but very creepy, run by a crew of weirdos and filled with secret passages.Once inside, we are told the not so interesting story of Bela Kiss, played Rudolf Martin, an actor perhaps best known for having played Dracula twice in both an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a TV movie called Prince of Darkness. Bela's back-story is dull, and perhaps in an attempt to make it seem more interesting, it is filmed in a visually lush, audacious style that reminded me of the film adaptation of Perfume A Love Story.The move plods along bouncing from the uninteresting story of Bela Kiss to the uninteresting story of the young thieves, who pulled the robbery for some mysterious "boss" and are now turning on each other because of some soap opera style bickering between the leader and another guy over one of the girls (Kristina Klebe of Chillerama and Zombie's Halloween remake).Basically, the only reasons I watched this movie were vague comparisons to Hostel and the presence of actress Kristina Klebe. Neither justified sitting through this dull, self serious mess. It's neither entertaining nor scary, there's a lot of blood but most violence occurs just barely off screen, and the plot contortions in the third act are just stupid.Put simply, Bela Kiss is the prologue to a story that I have absolutely no interest in seeing completed.