Slayer

Slayer is a mindless vampire movie with a few twists on an ancient plot. Special ops team is sent into south America to hunt down blood sucking natives. Their leader is a real old man who has aged well. There's an environmental twist as the vampires are attacking villages because their rain forest and old diet of wild animals is disappearing because of the greedy corporations and farmers. Lost of fighting and so much blood they just never bothered to wash off the cast for the whole film. It looks like they slept in the bloody clothes and caked on blood. While each member of the cast brought their own talents, it really didn't all click as a film. The effects were OK, except for the vampires dangling from the buildings on wires. If you're looking for lots of blood and violence, this is for you.

Kevin Van Hook has been pretty busy lately, with several titles released this year. Generally although he has yet to direct a great film, at the very least his films have had interesting casts', and solid effects work. Slayer has a lot of silly macho military type dialog, and humor that drew some groans from me, but overall I enjoyed it. The action was well choreographed, the characters' likable and easy to root for, and it had some bloody scenes, even though it was more of an action film. If your looking for something more serious, don't look here, everything has a kind of kiddie comic book style feel, is never actually scary, and if it weren't for a few bloody bits, this could really be a pg-13 movie. All in all the cast seemed to be having fun making Slayer, and the action never let up. If your a Lynda Carter fan, you'll get a nice feeling of nostalgia watching this clever new spin on Vampire lore.

An interesting outing in the genre but for me Slayer felt a bit too long. If the movie lasted just one hour, the whole thing would have come out as a more satisfactory viewing experience in my opinion. The plot plods along in order to take the film to the required standard running time of 85-90 min. I understand this, but I had to fast forward some scenes in the end just to be able to finish the film in one sitting.

Ever since Starship Troopers was released I have been rather partial to Casper Van Dien. Here he is kind of 'reprising' his role of captain Johnny Rico but in the jungle and with vampires. Nice.

The fight scenes are ok. Vampires get to kill enough soldiers and everything looks decently enough choreographed. I guess the vampires could have fared better with some weapons but... The spin on the origin and motivations of these vampires are a nice addition to the plot and Danny Trejo, Ray Park (Star Wars' Darth Maul) and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman in the original TV series) are great additions in supporting roles. If only Trejo would have been given more screen time and a greater role in the story.

By the way, if you ever buy the dvd just go quickly for the 'Play' icon. The dvd main menu sequences might give you away some major plot points!!

This movie is a complete mess. Beginning to end there are little or no breaks in the "action". But if CVD is in it it has to be watchable.... Nope. They skimped on everything and I know where the entire budget went for the movie, the final villain costume. Which admittedly for the budget this film likely had was "sort of" impressive. The vampires in this movie aren't vampires so much as blood sucking monsters. They follow no conventional lore of what a vampire is. Aside from drinking blood. The worst part of the movie is the fact that there are no breaks to tell a real story. In reality it's much like most cheap martial arts movies. Fighting and bloodshed tell the story or pad the runtime. Makeup is horrible for the run of the mill vampires. Most of the vamps wear masks or other face coverings. Most likely to hide the fact they use the same stunt actors over and over again. It's boring and a hard pass as far as me recommending it for someone to watch.

I like vampire movies, I like B-movies, I love B vampire movies. But this one has nearly nothing going for it. Some of the acting is horrible, especially by 3 of the male leads. The story is not particular interesting. At a relative short 88 minutes it still seems too long and you'll find yourself fast-forwarding quite a bit. There are an awful lot of kung-fu vampire attacks. Sound cool? It isn't when it's done on a low budget. It gets repetitive very quickly. There is some minor blood and gore, nothing to get excited about. There some good wire work where you can see the wires. It has some good landscapes being filmed in Puerto Rico.

Not worth the rental