Blood Relic

Director Ingvordsen's third foray into the horror genre proves to be his best attempt yet. Not a masterpiece by any means, but also devoid of any pretense claiming itself to be... his movies never try to be anything more than they are - a stab (no pun intended) at some good old fashion scary fun. Although the story has a couple of clever gags, beyond the smoke and mirrors the script is rather formulaic, and thus somewhat predictable. The actors are a bit of a mixed lot with Park, Grant, & Steccato a step above the rest. Ironically, the film's only actor of mainstream notoriety, Billy Drago gives a tremendously "over the top" effort and the worst performance in the film. Scream Queen Debbie Rochon does her job well and provides a nice mammary cameo... but other than that she is rather forgettable. The locations used are pretty cool and definitely up the production value. Although Ingvodsen has begun to introduce more flesh and gore with this movie -- he hasn't learned that although Sam Raimi was from the bootleg special effect school, he at least did it well. Note to the director - get a real special effects artist next time, there is only so much disbelief to be suspended. In writing a critique, I am being critical... with my pet peeves aside, the movie was worth a watch. It held a good pacing, was well shot and edited, and has some great moments. If it's a low-budget slasher flick you want, then you've found it.

Blood Relic (2005) is another in a long line of terrible straight-to-video movies. Some are fun but most of them are dreadful and unwatchable. This is one of those that need to be not seen and never heard from. The only reason that I didn't give this movie a straight zero was that low budget movie queen Debbie Rochon was in the picture and she was hot to look at. Other than that I wouldn't give it the time of day. Billy Drago looks like he drank all of his money. He could barely stand up and all he did was mumble his badly written dialog. He tries to come off like Udo Kier. But Udo's cool and he can still deliver a performance. Billy Drago was just too painful to watch. A bad movie all around that doesn't warrant a further look.

Stay away, not recommended.

In 1983, a U. S. Naval pilot shot down in Grenada discovers a human skull on a pole with a small carved talisman on a cord around it. For no good reason, he removes the (not very cool looking) little thingie and puts it around his neck. After he's been rescued, the cursed necklace causes him to go nuts and kill some mechanics. Then he hides the talisman in a storage compartment at the base. He's shipped off to the funny farm for 22 years, and in all that time it never occurs to him to tell anybody about the talisman even though he knows exactly where it's hidden and his story could easily be proved. By the time he's released, it's 2005 and the former Naval station is being converted into a military history tourist attraction. The gang of sarcastic oversexed college twits working on the renovation decide to sneak in after hours to play with a Cryptique spirit board (an unnecessary plot detour). Somebody in a flight suit and helmet starts sneaking around stabbing them to death. As the Navy man, John Christian is excellent in both his "nice" and "evil" scenes, although he doesn't look a day older in the 2005 portion of the film than he did in the 1983 segment. At one point he explains that the only way to destroy the demonic talisman is for the person wearing it to be killed while under its influence. There's no reason why his character would know that. He just does. The main (male) character is such an idiot that he thinks the killer is a character who has been with him throughout the last few murders. He bashes the guy's skull in before he remembers that they'd been together the whole time. Oops. There are some lapses in internal logic, but as teenkill movies go BLOOD RELIC is probably one of the better exercises in stalk-&-slash made around this time. The pacing is perfect, the characters are a little better defined than usual, and the prevailing mood is decently suspenseful. There were even a couple of mild surprise twists that honestly managed to fool me. Scream queen Debbie Rochon comes off a little better than usual as the most cynical member of the group, and she even keeps her clothes on except for quickly flashing one breast. Most of the other actresses play trashy characters who take their shirts off as often as possible, appearing topless so many times in a single night that it borders on the absurd. There are a few brief, gory makeup effects but they're strictly standard stuff. The false scares that turn out to be practical jokes won't fool anyone, but the actual murder scenes are pretty good. It's too bad there isn't an interesting villain or any visual side to the supernatural aspect. Whoever wears the necklace simply freaks out and starts killing people, and that's about all we ever learn about it. The closing credits ruin the scariness by showing unfunny outakes in which the actors crack up laughing. Oh, well.... I guess you can't have everything, huh?

A cast of mostly anonymous teenagers hired to clean a aerospace museum experience bloody mayhem after one of them finds an occult talisman. This film is strongly adequate in most categories. The photography is professional. The direction is reasonably assured. The cast isn't too embarrassing, and generally all of the girls show some flesh. The aerospace museum location adds production value even though most of the mayhem happens in a more generic warehouse. The gore is adequate – though the make-up generally plays out in the aftermath of the attacks rather than in the violence itself. So what's the problem? It's just tired. Young, good-looking people being killed off one-by-one by a masked assailant. Been there, seen that. I needed an extra hook, and there wasn't one. The potential of an interesting "monster" was wasted. The talisman is a wasted device. It seems turns the wearer into a homicidal maniac. The characters are always simply running from the unknown human carrier than battling the demonic entity pulling the strings. It would have been more interesting if the filmmakers had taken the time to develop force behind talisman better, and let the characters try to figure a way to take it on directly. Not terrible, when you consider the low standards of the genre, but there are better films out there.

Working at a local military museum, the workers restoring the exhibits find that a sacred amulet found there releases a murderous spirit on the base and is being forced to kill due to the homicidal influence of the relic, forcing them to find a way out of the museum while stopping the killer's rampage.

This here wasn't that bad of a slasher. One of the things it does right is getting a good setting for this of an airplane museum, which is pretty creative and allows for some great scenes within such a location. The scenes after the party, mainly the ones of the survivors wandering through the darkened hallways, trying logical plan after logical plan to get out, provide some great suspense as they go about their plan of action without alerting the killer, and trying to accomplish all this really great sneaking around in such creepy locations are really good. Due to the blackout in the area bringing up the cramped and confined office spaces and crew quarters within the long hallways while moving out into the main hall of the museum which has them interacting alongside the full-scale plane props during this set-up, the atmosphere here is highly enjoyable while generating plenty of fine suspense along the way. The killer in here has one of the greatest designs ever, as the large jumpsuit, pilot's helmet, and mask make for a great look for a killer, and this one pulls it off nicely which compliments the suspense quite well. There's some great nudity in here, which is greatly appreciated and surprising for this film, not only including a strip-poker sequence that has enough flesh since everyone strips off, but there's a couple of great sex scenes and the fun sequence where one woman is forced to strip for her boyfriend wearing a pilot's outfit until it's revealed that it was a gag, but it's a suspenseful one before that nonetheless and is all a part of the fun had with the nudity. The last big plus here is the fun and ingenious twist provided at the end that turns around the identity of the killer really nicely and comes about as a fun and surprising scene. Along with the blood and gore in here, these here are the film's good points as this here only has a few flaws to it. One of the biggest problems here is the fact that the purpose of the talisman relic indulging in the power to the others is never explained. It's simply told what it is, what it looks like and what happens, but never why and there's a serious void in here due to that, especially since there are two people who had been exposed to the powers who had told of their experiences, yet nothing is said why they were under the influence. Another flaw is that the majority of the film's kills are incredibly lame in execution, either doing it off-screen to be found later or just being the single most bloodless type of kill around which really leaves them pretty lackluster for the most part. The last flaw in here is the lame séance scene, which offers nothing of value, seems stuck in for no reason other than a lame jump-gag or a predictable supernatural twist, and could be done away with easily. These here are the film's flaws that hold it back.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Graphic Language and a couple mild sex scenes.