Way of the Vampire

People, that loud whirring and rattling you can hear is the sound of Bram Stoker turning in his grave.

*God* this film is bad. Shoddy camera work, shoddy script, godawful sound which meant that a lot of the time the actors were inaudible (thank god) and the music SOHIGHINTHEMIX it made your ears bleed, and a baddie so lacking in charisma not even tight PVC/rubber trousers could save the day. And the acting - OMG, the acting. The last time I saw acting as shockingly poor and embarrassing as this was Yvette and Derek still trying to pretend they were friends on "Most Haunted Live" this week. Yes, really - as bad as that. I swear to you, the acting in this film is so wooden it's on a par with a Gerry Anderson production - and the way the script was delivered would make even a half-way gifted actor weep. I'd say that words cannot truly describe how awful this film is - though I've had a damn good try - and what's so sad is that the video shop had loads of copies of it. That this mess got made and distributed is even more frightening than the thought of Ricky Tomlinson hang-gliding naked.

Usually I'm lenient towards even bad movies since I respect artists like actors and think that everybody is entitled to a mistake.Sometimes,even a bad movie has some acceptable moments and it even manages to throw the spotlight to a new potentially talented young actor/actress.This ,however,without a doubt is the most superficial and idiotic totally unconvincing horror film I have ever watched and the only horror one gets is out of its abysmally low level.It's a disgrace and a total waste of one's money and time.Companies or artists participating in such crimes against the cinema should be put away.

I wonder how on earth these movie companies come out with decisions to produce such garbage.Don't they realise that it will hit them back big time?And the disrespect to the viewer is infuriating!!! The mark of 1 is very flattering ,it should get something like 0,000001.

Although I'm not sure how. I think the copy I got from the store was burned incorrectly since the sound was all screwed up. Not that it mattered, since the dialog was pretty bad and generally the delivery of those lines was worse. The vampires, when they could be heard, had horrible lisps. You'd think that after an eternity as a creature of the night they'd learn how to speak properly through those big teeth of theirs. Not that this movie didn't have its accidentally funny moments. At one point Van Helsing reassures his lady love that nothing can happen to him since he is surrounded by giants and then the shot cuts right to what looks to be the sorriest looking bunch of "giants" ever to grace the screen. They all look either hung over, half asleep, or just plain annoyed that they have to go around slaying the children of the night in a potato sack. It does have nudity however! But not enough to make up for the fact that the vampires all look like two dollar hookers, the sound sucks, and the overall look is just plain cheap. Did I mention that the sound sucks?

Dr. Van Helsing, vampire hunter, is granted immortality by a religious sect that will only let him die after he kills the last vampire. That's the plot of the film right there. I didn't put it in a nutshell for you, dear reader. THAT'S the whole plot. Now what did I think of the film? Well, between the horrid editing, the putrid acting, the 'anti-action', the sound problems, and the WIDE open ending, this is strictly amateur hour. Vampire flicks have made for some simply dreadful films in the past and this, my friends, is one of them. It's a travesty of the current state of B-movie straight to video horror that I don't even consider this one of the worst vampire flick out there.

My Grade: D-

Where I saw it: Starz on Demand (available till September 15th, 2005)

There are a few good things about this movie, but the negatives are so overwhelming that I could only give it a 1 on the ole 1 to 10 scale. The cinematography is very pretty and the miniature set models are excellent. At least I think they're models. Everything about this movie is so bogus that they may actually be real locations which the directors (yes, it took two directors to cook this turkey) somehow managed to make look like models.

With two directors you'd think that it might only be half-bad. Instead it's doubly pretentious. The lovely Denise Boutte may well be the hammiest actor on planet Earth. Rhett Giles as Van Helsing looks like a reject from the Pet Shop Boys, and his acting is nearly as overblown and stuffy as Ms. Boutte's. Every line by just about every "actor" is recited in emo overdrive.

There were also at least two writers involved. The version I saw had three listed, unless I was hallucinating, but IMDb says two. The third one may have requested anonymity. Or hacked the webpage and erased his or her name. In any case, the dialog is so cheesy you'd think it was written by the teen Gothtards from Saturday Night Live.

If I see one more pseudo-Goth vampire movie with semi-clad model-pretty airheads melting into the arms of Ralph Lauren pretty men in ersatz under-populated nightclubs I'll puke up a kidney. Anne Rice has apparently spawned a sub-race of cretinous filmmakers.

This is the first film I've seen which challenges Uwe Boll's "House of the Dead" as the WORST horror film ever made.