The Witches Hammer

Not really all that an original story line .. if you've seen La Femme Nikita that is .. along with an idea of Three Days of the Condor. Oh .. can't forget Blade .. now can we?

All that aside .. everything just misses the mark. The camera work .. acting .. the lines .. the narration .. all sub-par. Obviously the movie was made on a shoestring budget. The fight scenes are reasonably well done though .. that is if you over look the camera work.

So sadly .. it's almost a good movie .. and could have been .. IF .. such a big word .. IF. But it's not a total waste of time to watch either. It does have it's "moments". If you want some light entertainment or an excuse to eat some popcorn .. go for it.

I may have a bit of a different standard than some others who reviewed this movie. I have seen a lot of B movie and as, as those go, this one is not bad. It's not great but it's decently entertaining. It has some decent action scenes. It's not badly shot. The acting isn't the best but it's not bad for an indie movie. The effects are on the cheap side but I have seen far worse. The story moves along at a decent pace. There's always something happening. It's coherent enough that I know what is going on. The cast is decent. Stephanie Beacham even shows up to do her best Sir Integra impression.

The movie's flaw is that it is a bit all over the place. There are a lot of characters and some are only tangentially related to the main story. It makes the whole thing a bit unfocused.

B movies are supposed to be a thing of the past. Cheap graphics, half-formed stories, and bad acting was supposed to have stopped around the same time as black and white. Not so with this movie. It's got everything you expect from a B movie, and much much more.

However, as B movies go, it's actually a fairly decent flick. The actors are clearly taking themselves very seriously, and the fact that they can do so is almost humorous. If you're into B movies like I am, this is actually one worth seeing just for kicks. If not, let me explain why the movie is horrible by modern standards:

The fight scenes are preformed in the rigid choreography associated with such films, and the fact that no more than two moves are ever seen together in the same shot leads one to believe that they never actually fought, but instead filmed move-by-move, and then ineptly mashed together.

The storyline is clunky at best. It's fairly clear that the author never actually planned out the story, but instead put a bunch of ideas that he/she thought was awesome into a semi- understandable order, and ran with it. The odd stale joke is thrown in for good measure, though I have to admit that I found myself legitimately chuckling at some lines. If you've seen Black Sheep, it's sorta like that, but unintentional.

I'm not going to comment on the graphics. It's a B movie. You can probably guess for yourself.

Overall, I'm gonna give this a 5/10. It deserves less, but the ridiculousness of the movie is almost a bonus in a strange way.

This is really terrible.

The only redeeming feature about this movie is that the next time people ask me what is the worst vampire movie I have ever watched, I would have a suitable reply.

I think it is filmed on 35 mm so it is already tacky like hell. I wouldn't have bothered commenting but I noticed some fanboys (probably connected to the movie) had claimed that this was the best movie since the Matrix. Let me debunk the myths and lies.

There is nothing good in the movie. Everything yells tacky. The actress is ugly. The fight choreography is the worst I have ever seen. The fight scenes are unbelievably amateurish. Imagine a girl flailing her arms around in a circle helplessly and delivering weak kicks which wouldn't hurt a kitten. Obviously, the director just pulled people off the street to give them roles in the movie.

I know the director did not have much budget for the movie but still better movies have been made on smaller budget before. Unforgivable.

I, like many horror fans, have been force fed the same banal big budget Hollywood remakes and MTV high school slasher tripe for the last 20 years. Here, at last, is an original horror genre movie that ticks all the right boxes.

You want a hot lead actress, you want vampires, you want cool weapons, you want cool vehicles and you want blood, lots of it, by the bucket load - you got it.

With excellent fight choreography and a supporting role from the Hammer Horror scream queen herself Stephanie Beacham, this really is fantastic stuff.

Despite it's low budget, by opting to use 35 mm stock and adding quality CG effects to the mix, director James Eaves has created something that feels much bigger.

A must for old school horror fans.