I speak, of course, of "Addicted to Murder 2," better known as "Tainted Blood," in which 800-year-old Angie returns to wreak havoc in the Times Square area, this time through the corruption of a mousy nerd-girl named Tricia who is desperate for dates. What better way to train a new generation than to vampirize her, then show her how to place personal ads?

For those who missed "Addicted to Murder Uno," you might want to review the original, just to keep your place in this Kevin Lindemuth sleazefest. Kevin is the one-man film industry of Brighton, Michigan, where he churns out stylish little shockers, and "Addicted to Murder" is his most famous one, the story of a confused young boy who finds a sexy vampiress in his backyard chewing on an extra and ends up as a confused man living in a tacky walkup apartment in New York City, where he tries to figure out What Women Want. (Some want his blood, some want his body, and some just want him to fix their light switches.) Meanwhile, he's going through these, uh, changes that make it impossible for him to be a serial killer anymore. He's started to actually think about his victims. Bummer.

Does it possibly have something to do with the ravishingly beautiful brunette vampire who taught him how to plunge cleavers into her stomach? Was it the alcoholic mother who made him wear a dress? Was it the babysitter who liked to molest him in front of her boyfriends? Is it the bitchy receptionist who treats him like dogmeat at work? Or maybe, just maybe, it's those hotties he brings home from the vampire disco.

Obviously there are way too many females crowding into this loner's cranium, and some of them have fangs. Mick McCleery plays the beefy handyman in a checked shirt who likes to troll the streets like a brooding process server, scoping the bars, looking for the mysterious "Rachel," obsessing over his failed marriage to the only woman he didn't want to kill.

And now Mick is back in the sequel, still searching for Rachel, only this time he's willing to settle for another vampiress who can solve his problem--namely that, once you've had undead, you can't go back. The way he does that is he packs his dead momma into the passenger seat of his pickup--or is that some kind of hallucination flashback? it's hard to tell in these movies--and he heads back to New York, picking up a gratuitous female hitchhiker on the way whose main purpose seems to be to talk too much so we can find out what Mick is doing.

Once again we're in the land of the flashback, the dream vision, and the talking-head TV interview (featuring the great exploitation filmmaker Ted V. Mikels as a vampire expert), but all we really have to know is that all roads lead to the creepy Angie, played by Sasha Graham, who is the anti-Rachel, the woman who is polluting the world with cut-rate wannabe vampires and riding herd over the junior vampires who fail to measure up.

The main dramatic line in this version is the transformation of Tricia from frustrated wallflower to powerful bloodlusty vampiress predator. The part is played by Sarah Lippmann with both humor and pathos, and it keeps us distracted from the shaggy dog story of Joel (the Mick McCleery character) driving aimlessly around the countryside while Rachel turns up in secret subway hideouts. The ending, especially, seems abrupt and unclear, so I'm not sure what they were going for here, other than a sort of "Vampires--what can you do?" message.

Still has a few good shocking moments, especially the one where the vampire underboss Jonathan gets his fang ripped out with pliers as punishment for being vampirically lazy.

In other words, it doesn't make a lick of sense. I kinda liked it.

Okay, let's look at those drive-in totals:

Eleven dead bodies. Neck-chawing. Neck-biting. Neck-ripping. Multiple date-bite. Girlfriend-chomping. Cannibalism. Medieval spear impalement. Dinner captive writhing on the rack. Fang- ripping. Throat-slitting. Poignant vampire end-of-the- relationship scene. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Bobbi Ashton, as the gratuitous hitchhiker; Cloud Michaels, as the vampiress trying to live a normal life in Queens but besieged by serial killers who want to become immortal, for saying "All of this is such a drag sometimes"; Ted V. Mikels, as vampire expert Jonas Collins who talks about "parasites to the human race"; Sarah Lippmann, as the homely girl turned babe who learns to get werewolfy with her blind dates, for saying "I feel really sure of myself, focused"; Sasha Graham, as the diabolical Angie, who gives out relationship advice like "You need to drink my blood"; Ted Grayson, as the tortured vampire who is ordered to protect the apprentice vampire Tricia, for saying "There are leftovers in the fridge"; Mick McCleery, as the itinerant loner searching for the perfect vampire lover; and Kevin Lindenmuth, the writer/director, for doing things the drive-in way.

Two stars. Joe Bob says check it out.