The Brotherhood

Blond super-hunk Sam Page (or "Nathan Watkins"/ as Chris Chandler) goes to Drake college, on a swimming scholarship. Stripping down to his gym shorts for a run, Mr. Page catches the eye of blonder super-hunk Bradley Stryker (as Devon Eisley). Mr. Stryker is the leader of Drake's weirdest fraternity; and, he travels around with good-looking men in sunglasses. Stryker decides he wants Page's perfect body. Page tells super-geek (but cute) roommate Josh Hammond (as Dan Myers) he isn't interested in joining a fraternity. Then, Page admires Stryker's big fraternity pin, and gets sucked in…

Director David DeCoteau is definitely going after something. Page and Stryker make an interesting couple, especially when they play a "three way" love scene; note, the female ("Sandy") is incidental. "The Brotherhood" may have worked better if Mr. DeCoteau had either gone all out, or made the "gay subtext" more subtle. The subtle route is often taken by other filmmakers. The "vampire" storyline is more than a little hard to swallow (if the guys in question are supposed to be vampires).

*** The Brotherhood (2/01) David DeCoteau ~ Sam Page, Bradley Stryker, Josh Hammond, Elizabeth Bruderman

This movie fails on all accounts.

The script is pathetic. The story is weak and the characters shallow. You couldn't set out to write a B-movie script this bad. The plot is so weak that the framework seems like it's designed for pornography.

The cinematography is juvenile. The camera angles are contrived, close-ups are used without good purpose and the lighting always seems artificial. It feels like one never leaves the same simple set.

The acting, save Josh Hammond as Dan, is really bad. The actors' deliveries are monotonous. The range of emotions is zero.

The men are all beautiful, each one an Adonis, but to what end? Adolescent girls and adolescent gay boys will surely revel in these images but beyond that, there is no artful purpose served by the physiques.

I hate to pan someone's work so badly but this movies is truly horrible.

Wow, this movie is even gayer than "HellBent"! What are the odds of that ever happening? I don't think David DeCoteau ever had the intention of making a horror movie… He clearly just wanted to surround himself with athletic & handsome twenty-something boys, so he quickly thought up a scenario about a college fraternity of vampires. Instead of action & suspense, we get an whole army of male students parading in their matching tight white boxer shorts and instead of gory massacres we get insecure boys openly talking about their feelings and emotions…for hours! Two young losers meet each other on the first day of college. Chris has the body of a regular jock, but he's the sensitive type, so he doesn't want people to judge him based on his appearance. The other one, Dan, never stops nagging about how unpopular he was in his previous school. They befriend a girl with an incredibly beautiful rack; still all they ever talk about is their mutual friendship. In come the boys of the Domo Tau Omega fraternity; pretentious little pricks with sunglasses that rule over the university. Their leader – super gay dude Devon – wants Chris to join his elite group because he fancies him. Poor Chris doesn't know, however, that they form the gayest coven of vampires horror cinema has ever brought forward. "The Brotherhood" is a terrible film. There's not even an attempt to build up tension or atmosphere and DeCoteau didn't even bother to insert some cheesy horror effects. The vampires suck, all right. But not blood… They suck at making themselves appear menacing and evil. The dialogs are abysmal and the production values are overall poor, barely disguising the fact that our director is more interested in shooting porn movies. Or maybe put together catalogs for men's underwear. He should do so, and quit misleading fans of horror films. The cast members may be yummy eye-candy (at least, for certain target groups), but none of them has the slightest bit of acting talent. One to avoid at all costs.

A bunch of hunky guys with bodies to die for march around - say a few stilted sentences - pull off their shirts, reveal they are vampires and then say a few more stilted words. That pretty much sums up this baaaad film. If you want to look at really hunky guys - go for it. Don't expect much in the way of script or acting though. There is only one actor with anything resembling talent and he's relegated to being the "ugly geek" though he is not. You could drive trains through the gaps in the dialogue - which is too elaborate and wordy for what is being said. Expositional information is related that doesn't fit the characters presenting it. And explain something to me - how does the most popular fraternity manage to have only four members, yet have parties where dozens upon dozens attend - and yet they "rush" only one candidate?

The "best" thing about this film is its blatent homoerotic overtones. There's a particularly cheesy scene in which one vampire helps his novice drink blood from a girl's arm...from the camera angle, for all practical purposes, it looks as if one guy is having oral sex with the other. And the guys seem to hang all over each other and walk around half naked in front of each other for no reason at all. I think this had to have been scripted, shot, directed, or lensed by either a woman or a gay male because it is just "too" much.

I'd like to find out how to become a filmmaker of this caliber because it seems like there is some sort of market for this trash. However, I would imagine that it is probably just as difficult to make a film like this as it would be to make a good one - so why not go the extra mile?

David DeCoteau's film "The brotherhood" has brought the word 'bad' to new levels of badness. Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This bad film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene... simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.

Well maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn't good.