Vampirella

Vampires from outer space that are honourable citizens and no longer kill to feed themselves! Vlad (Roger Daltrey) - a renegade vampire, kills Vampirella's father and flees to Earth and joins nasty vamps as we better know them. Vampirella pursues him in seek of revenge. Sounds trashy? Yes it does! However, while this film will never rank amongst one of the great classics, it does provide 80 minutes worth of mindless viewing that is not entirely unsatisfying. Talisa Soto (Vampirella), apart from being a stunning beauty, carries this film quite well often with a semblance of some good acting skills. Roger Daltrey is Roger Daltrey. Some of the support acting is scarily awful at times but, as B Movies go, this is not the worst I have seen by far.

I have to say this is one of the worst movies ive seen in my life. This is just a bad bad bad bad b-movie.The lines were horrible with lines such as "Holy Crap" and "You're too sexy!" you just had to cringe as these things came out of their lives. the Acting was also bad, over enthusiasm and coldness was just the tip of the ice berg. The story was just crummy why couldn't they have based it more on the current storyline of the comic? nope they chose the crummy 60's story about vampires from outer space? Not to mention the costume she wore HELLO?! this is not the same costume from the cover. The stunts were just horrid and fake, plus who did the editing on this crummy movie? Please do yourself a favor save your money and use the two hours on something worthwhile like reading a book.

I've been an avid Vampirella fan since she first appeared in comics, so when I saw the video, I wondered why I had never heard of it before or saw it on DVD. I finally knew why: the movie is a totally disappointing experience. The costume of the main character isn't nearly close to the original (as portrayed in the comic books), and Talisa Soto (no matter how truly beautiful she is) is not the most appropriate leading lady for this particular role. From the look of the comics, we can figure out that Vampirella is a mixture of Slavic and middle east ethnic features (not a bad thing for any girl, because it's truly exotic in nature), and Soto is a Latin beauty. Not quite a match in casting, at all. For those viewers who aren't familiar with the characters from the comics, the movie is boring and slow paced, with loose references to the comic and really cheap costumes (the experience is even worst for those who knew the characters before hand). Also the visual effects are quite poor, to say the least. However, Joel Goldsmith's score is excellent, and it's really about the only production value on the film. I'll give this movie a 5, just on the basis of the music track alone, and I wouldn't mind at all to have it on CD, because it's truly enjoyable.

This had all the elements of a cult classic but was ruined by the makers of this film. Film starts off with a rogue vampire named Vlad (Roger Daltrey) who is about to be sentenced by the high council but his cohorts bust him out and kill all the high elders. They jump on a ship and head to Earth. The stepdaughter of one of the elders seeks revenge and makes her way to Earth also. Vampirella is played by Talisa Soto and she runs around in a fairly skimpy red outfit and tracks down Vlad and the other vampires that were involved. She meets Adam Van Helsing (Richard Joseph Paul) who works for PURGE that is an outfit that combats vampires and at first he is not sure if Vampirella is working with Vlad to infiltrate their unit. This film just doesn't capture what the comic book had done successfully. First, the outfit that Soto wears in the film is not as skimpy or revealing as the one in the comics. So they have her wear more clothing! Secondly, there is very little blood shown which is surprising since more than 50% of the characters are vampires. The sets are cheap and they just don't have any scenarios that make the film stand out. Its so run of the mill! Their is only two quick scenes where two female vampires get topless so cult status is pretty much out the window. Here's a film made by the Roger Corman group and directed by Jim Wynorski so you would think that some sort of bloody and sexy exploitation film would have been made. But no! For you trivia nuts out there, a young man is named Forry Ackerman and of course he is named for the creator of the comic book and also "Famous Monsters of Filmland". The real Forrest J. Ackerman makes a cameo in a bar. Director John Landis plays an astronaut and actor Angus Scrimm (Phantasm) plays Vampirella's stepfather and high elder. Film had real potential for cult status but for some strange reason the makers decided to ignore that and go the extremely safe route. What a shame!

OK, to get this part out of the way, I don't read comic books, and had never heard of the title character. So, unlike some of the previous geek commentators, I have no disappointment about the adaptation of the material. Now, I find it fairly hard to rate some aspects of movies, (e.g. acting) when the actors are portraying cartoon characters. I would normally say that Roger Daltrey was exceedingly bad in this, playing it way over the top, etc. but is that really true when he's playing a comic book figure? I'm not sure. Richard Joseph Paul (three first names?) as Van Helsing was bad any way you look at it. Talisa Soto seemed pretty good given the limitations of the material. Corinna Harney was good in a small part. There could have been a bit more T&A. It's a Roger Corman production, for crying out loud! I'd say missing this one would be a good choice.