Mexferatu

I was searching for the elusive video nastie "The Slayer," when I came across this.

You have to suspend you knowledge of vampires, because these act more like zombies, except they just bite like vampires, but they are out during the day. Confused? Well, let that go and enjoy the fun.

Don't look for great dialog - they're soldiers and dialog is that of a typical war movie. Funny dialog it has, especially from Jennifer O'Dell. Lots of fighting and killing and blood - and a great monster!

There are some interesting things in this movie. Wooden stakes instead of bayonets on the rifles, decapitations, a really hot vampire (Joyce Giraud - Miss Puerto Rico Universe 1998), Lynda Carter ("Wonder Woman") as a Colonel, Danny Trejo (Halloween, Planet terror, The Devil's Rejects), Tony Plana ("Ugly Betty")

And, of course, the whole problem came about because of corporate greed. The destruction of the rain forest disturbed their habit. Isn't capitalism great? Great scenery in Puerto Rico.

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.

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!!

There's a limit to what you expect from a Sci-Fi channel film given the budgets they have to work with. That said, this film kept me happily entertained from start to finish. The casting for the most part was excellent as was the locales where this was shot. Kevin Grevioux (Grieves) deserves special mention for an outstanding performance. His low pitched voice, size, and natural acting ability were well suited to this role. Ditto for Joyce Giraud (Estrella) although she had a much smaller / limiting part. Look, it's a vampire film. You've got to suspend your sense of disbelief a bit even to want to watch the thing. Once you've done that however, this film rocks!

I suggest that in the future, any movie made by the Sci fi channel and subsequently released on DVD must say that it was indeed made by such channel as I would not buy this stuff if I had known this fact. Not that this was all bad, but when you have fade out for commercials in the middle of your movie it just ruins the flow of said film. This in turn makes the movie rather more boring. This one had an interesting story however the light hearted and extremely generic soundtrack distracted one from the film as did most of the bad actors with the exception of Dien and Linda Carter. The story, vampires are on the attack in South America, of course the rules of vampire movies are not in effect, which the usually aren't in any of the movies about vampires I have seen lately with the exception of the Blade trilogy. Group of soldiers are sent down to battle said squad another team is sent to meet up with the team and to track down the ex wife of one of the soldiers...why she is not just his wife, who knows as this part of the plot really goes no where. Still we get an interesting boat ride some nice jungle scenery and a lot of blood. This fact, however, does not save the film from being way to jerky in its presentation and really dull seeming at times. I don't know maybe it was the cgi blood, and smoke and whatever they have to make cgi now even though old effects look better and don't cost that much more. I mean cheap Italian zombie movies could do a bullet hole without cgi why can't we now?