faisal_khan

Lesbian vampires are not entirely high-concept as later Hammer flicks will testify but Claydon's limp offering pales in comparison to the outstandingly bad 'Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter' which has the Saviour tag-teaming with masked Mexican wrestling legend El Santo. There's some loosely woven plot threads about vampire women who can fight in broad daylight and harvest lesbian skin but it falls apart after the opening shot of the Messiah shrugging off a blow to the chest and yelling 'Body of Christ!'. None of which has anything to do with the wasteful ninety minutes I'm supposed to be reviewing but let's be honest, LVK has nothing going for it. Low budget British film-making is consistently a bad joke but a good director and cast can work wonders even on zero budget – take a look at Brad Watson's 'Asylum Night' which is everything LVKs makers were probably hoping it would be.

I'm trying to pinpoint which element is missing from this film and why it falls flat on almost every level. The sorriest part is that the cast, while exceptional actors in their own right are given a lumbering, dull script that feels the need to show and tell the audience in no uncertain terms that the creepy little kid is the Antichrist. Moore believes that filming everything in grey, lightless atmosphere will generate tension (as well as disguise the fact it's almost entirely shot in the Czech Republic no matter how many London taxis you add) and relies purely on cheap tricks to generate any tension, the cinematic equivalent of the web pages where you turn the volume high and stare at a web page for ten minutes before Linda Blair pops up.

The film is worthy but dull; I don't dare compare it to the original which still terrifies even today. At one point I even found myself feeling sorry for this kid, seeing him as a misunderstood Harry Potter. Having two of the best cast members from that series doesn't serve to dispel the image either. As usual the British contingent is excellent, and Beltrami's score helps the otherwise lifeless film move along. While no Goldsmith, he's quite adept at stealing bits from other good films; the drive to the cemetery is almost identical to the opening score of Batman Begins and had me sorely wishing for an appearance of the Batmobile to take on the servitors of evil. Which in Donner's film could have been hidden anywhere but in this film amount to a pair of hungry dogs and a scrawny housekeeper with bad teeth.

Mercifully the cinema I saw this in sells DVDs in the lobby so I bagged the original and settled in for a night of true horror. Personally I would have paid the same money for a sharpened re-release of the original and judging by frequent glances at watches during the film, the majority of the audience would agree with me.

For some reason cartoons made by Ruby Spears haven't done well outside of the 80s, mainly because they were truly a product of their time: fast and disposable fun for kids and young teenagers. Look at the line-up: Mr.T, Heathcliff, Rambo and Thundarr the Barbarian to name a few. None of these have survived outside the 80s and with good reason – they're not much better than the 15 second cartoons used to sell toys that were so popular back then. Centurions is basically that – a glorified ad for the toy line aimed squarely at boys under 16. Given to Sunbow or Lou Scheimer this would have done well but in the hands of Ruby Spears it's become something embarrassing after all these years.

Take He-Man, Transformers or G.I.Joe: what makes those cartoons so enjoyable after all these years is the time they took to distinguish the characters. Despite some huge casts they all managed to find a distinct, recognisable trait and voice for every star of the show. The late great Christopher Latta is instantly recognisable as Cobra Commander or Starscream and Alan Oppenheimer's Skeletor has the most marvellous villain's voice in cartoon history.

No-one ever took that kind of care with the Centurions. You'd imagine it would be easy to give the 3 leads some personality but they remain bland and lifeless, distinguished only by the colour of their suits. Every week their ineffective nemesis Doc Terror would hijack/brainwash/terrorise some research facility or city for some rare metal or source of energy and the Centurions would beam in, select an outfit and blast him back to Dominion. What made me laugh was that there was always a river or lake nearby for Max Ray to use his 'sea-weapons'. If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Bart dismisses 'Kinght Boat' you'll get the joke.

Time hasn't been kind to this show. I loved it as a kid because it worked as an ad for toys I wanted. I watch it now (I have all 65 episodes on VHS) after 20 years and I wind up fast-forwarding most of the episodes. For the sake of your childhood memories, don't try to watch this now as you'll find yourself floundering badly, wondering what on earth you saw in this show. Remember it as it was, part of that wild, glorious decade and leave it there.