Kindred: The Embraced - The Complete Vampire Collection

Any White Wolf fan out there should cringe in horror that this was ever aired. DO NOT BUY IT, it is a waste of money. The Buffy series stayed closer to the Masqurade than this ever did.

I am serious, I had to drink heavily with other WW players just to make it through..........that way I could attribute the memories to druken hallucinations and a really bad hangover.


X-Files meets Melrose Place   June 16, 2004
What happens when you combine the X-Files and Melrose Place? And add in some of the Sopranos for good measure? You get this wonderful TV series, Kindred the Embraced.

I enjoyed this show very much when it aired on Fox in 1996. I had forgotten nearly all of the plots from the episodes, so watching it again DVD was almost like watching it for the first time. Well worth the money considering all eight episodes sell for the price that you'd usually pay for just one two hour movie.

I thought that the series was canceled because there was a vast conspiracy to remove from the airwaves only the shows that I liked. But it turns out the real reason is that an actor who played one of the main characters died.

I think some of the less than stellar reviews come from people who just don't appreciate all of the genres this series mixes together. I enjoyed watching Melrose Place, but I suspect that Melrose Place type shows aren't that interesting to a lot of the people who were into the book and the role playing game that this show was based on (I never even knew there was a role playing game until reading these reviews).

On the other hand, if you liked Melrose Place, but don't like seeing lot of corpses and other X-Files type stuff, you probably also won't enjoy this series very much.

The very beautiful Kelly Rutherford who is one of the main characters in this series (but who doesn't show up until the second episosde) appeared on Melrose Place the next season, as the hooker who then became Michael Mancini's wife who then became his divorced wife who looked down upon Michael because of his loose morals.

The only downside of this series is that it just leaves you hanging without any sort of resolution. As one would expect from a TV series that was suddenly canceled. Also, the penultimate episode, "Bad Moon Rising," was pretty weak in my opinion.

Otherwise, highly recommended for a very enjoyable six and a half hour viewing marathon.


Middling Camp + Vampires = Forgettable Fun   May 11, 2004
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

A middle-of-the-road boddice-ripper soap opera, "Kindred: the Embraced" is very loosely based on the roleplaying game "Vampire: the Masquerade." Take a moody horror setting, mix in the supernatural and have Aaron Spelling bake it in his blondes-and-California oven, and this is what you get. While fun for RPG fans to make fun of, and of mild interest to soap aficionados, the show manages neither the horror nor melodrama particularly well. There are some good performances by a stable of "Hey It's That Guy/Gal" actors you'll recognize from a dozen other supernatural melodramas, but the writing is ham-fisted and the camp isn't high enough to pull the rest of this show behind it.

This is no "Ultraviolet," which is simply the best vampire fiction put to film. I own "Kindred: the Embraced," and love it, but it's only seriously recommended for the vampire or RPG completist.


are you all nuts?   May 6, 2004
 0 out of 2 found this review helpful

i couldn't believe it.

for about six years now, i have been a huge fan of the game. i own most of the books and novels associated with every white wolf game.

i came upon this dvd set having neverh heard of it before, and read every one of these reviews which all rave at the wonderful adaptation from book to screen.

and now i have to ask what you all were thinking. this is the worst screen adaptation of ANY vampire story i have ever seen, leaving white wolf completely out of the picture. other than using common clan names (and only 5 of the clans to begin with), the entire series is one large joke. completely changing around the basic 'rules' that govern the world of darkness, making the head of each clan young enough to still have living mortal GRANDCHILDREN (placing them at less that 150 years old, not old enough to be an elder in the game), changing clan personas and general attitudes, and having vampires walk around in daylight? what happened to the world?

leaving aside everything to do with what i associate with the game, the acting was atrocious. and because i have seen most of these actors in other films and endeavours, i know that most of them are not as bad as they were in this series, which leads me to believe they were simply written to be that bad in this series. it's pathetic. "Death to all who oppose the brujah"?? what the heck is that? and that's in the first five minutes of the show?

lest you think i never watched the entire series, i did. the entire, grueling, painful series. and rest assured that i will never watch it again, despite all of you that say that it gets better each time. i won't risk the brain damage. and it amazes me that with all of the good reviews, i can't get a single vampire playing friend of mine to buy the series off of me, most especially after they watch an episode or two.

don't waste your money. buy something else. ANYTHING else.