Vampiros Assassinos

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?

I like vampire movies, I like B-movies, I love B vampire movies. But this one has nearly nothing going for it. Some of the acting is horrible, especially by 3 of the male leads. The story is not particular interesting. At a relative short 88 minutes it still seems too long and you'll find yourself fast-forwarding quite a bit. There are an awful lot of kung-fu vampire attacks. Sound cool? It isn't when it's done on a low budget. It gets repetitive very quickly. There is some minor blood and gore, nothing to get excited about. There some good wire work where you can see the wires. It has some good landscapes being filmed in Puerto Rico.

Not worth the rental

It would be easy to list those ways in which we are warned, well before watching, that this is surely going to be a lackluster mess. It would be easy because there are a great many of them. Instead of focusing on that, let's just cut to the chase, and talk about things like the glaring CGI of muzzle flashes from the soldiers' firearms, or the script that quickly comes off as dubious, halfhearted, and no more than perfunctory. There's Kevin VanHook's middling direction, and action sequences that are, shall we say, variable in their strength (though some aren't half bad!). There are some recognizable names and faces appearing in this TV movie, but neither they nor any others on hand are specifically being required to act - though at least they're having a good time? Ludek Drizhal's music is the most purposefully bland pablum I've heard in a film in quite a while, and that some cues play to the light humor that's peppered throughout is A Choice. Practical effects and special makeup look great; on a reported total production budget of $2 million, the same won't necessarily be said of instances of digital effects. But we knew all this before we ever pressed play on 'Slayer,' so if we don't like the viewing experience, we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Dialogue is generally painfully blunt and exact, and often simply bad; with exceptions in both directions, the scene writing is mostly only rudimentarily serviceable. We do at least have a complete, cohesive story on our hands; how compelling it is constitutes another matter. In fairness, there are actually some genuinely good ideas scattered around; then again, some ideas are not so great. But hey, it's not like anyone involved had any illusions about what they were making - schlock this mediocre doesn't happen by accident. That does beg the question of who might actually enjoy this, what merit this held in the eyes of those who participated, and how the Sci Fi Channel could have ever seen fit to greenlight it in the first place. It's not significantly fun or thrilling; what gap could a consciously low-grade production possibly fill? I don't have the answers to these questions. I just know that the picture offers little more than the most baseline level of diversion that any conglomeration of light and sound does. VanHook and his cast and crew succeeded in making an almost perfectly tiresome, dull, unexciting feature. But to what end? If someone does manage to extract meaningful entertainment here then I'm glad for them; I just don't know how they do it. Watch 'Slayer' if you want, but I just can't offer a major reason why you should.

Kevin Van Hook has been pretty busy lately, with several titles released this year. Generally although he has yet to direct a great film, at the very least his films have had interesting casts', and solid effects work. Slayer has a lot of silly macho military type dialog, and humor that drew some groans from me, but overall I enjoyed it. The action was well choreographed, the characters' likable and easy to root for, and it had some bloody scenes, even though it was more of an action film. If your looking for something more serious, don't look here, everything has a kind of kiddie comic book style feel, is never actually scary, and if it weren't for a few bloody bits, this could really be a pg-13 movie. All in all the cast seemed to be having fun making Slayer, and the action never let up. If your a Lynda Carter fan, you'll get a nice feeling of nostalgia watching this clever new spin on Vampire lore.

A film that deserves to be thrown into the bowls of hell, Slayer takes what we know about vampires and turns it upside down into the crap stain of cinema. How can this thing even exist? I swear, just watching a few minutes of this...film... is enough to put you in a diabetic coma.

Okay, so the basic plot to Slayer is that a bunch of soldiers encounter vampires in the tropics and naturally battle them to the death. It's kinda like "Dog Soldiers" except far more stupid. At least "Dog Soldiers" was pretty cool for a low-budget film but this looks like it has been done with much less money and effort. On top of that, it breaks so many traditional rules to vampires that it insults the blood-sucking genre. The vampires are ridiculous and a select few are incredibly annoying. The terrible acting doesn't help that much either, even coming from the likes of Casper Van Dien.

This movie makes "Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus" look like a masterpiece (a more interesting one at that) and "Dracula 3000" more dignified. I'll add insult to injury by not giving Slayer any remote bit of credit or rating. Yeah, that's how bad it really is. Every copy of this must be destroyed, erased from existence. By NOT watching this, you'll save yourself a few hours of your precious life. Slayer, the parasite of the world of cinema. Thank you and good night!