Bloodlust

By any stretch of the imagination 'Bloodlust' is terrible pile of perverted garbage, but in the end I had trouble taking my eyes off this highly entertaining low-cost trash. When I came across it I never even heard of this Australian horror feature. 'Banned in Britain' screams out on the front of the video case and whole bunch of rave comments just suck you in! Think of early Peter Jackson ('Bad Taste') but even more inept and downright crazy. It's cheap… really cheap off-kilter exploitation involving buckets of ultra-violence, soft-core sex and maniac dialogues. The execution is chaotic and dumb (just watch for the over-the-top performances where no one is safe from the onslaught!), but that's its charm. The enthusiasm shows behind the camera, than just in front of it. The style kinda reminds me of a local (Australian viewers would know) TV series which also spawned a movie or two; 'Pizza'. It does feel like a home-made video, which it's obviously shot-on-video and it amateurishly shows. The FX work is crude and outrageous, and this seems to work and add to the fun while we get a blaring heavy metal soundtrack accompanying with hammering beats and rhythms. Or maybe it's just noise for some?

The story follows three modern-day vampires (not your traditional bloodsuckers too) who decide enliven their boring lifestyles (killing, sex and drug taking) to rob the mob and then find themselves being chased by mob hit-man, raving religious fanatics and two redneck cops.

That's pretty much it. The tone of it is a dark, twisted and seedy black comedy that has an audacious streak. Every couple of words is something foul, the pace is non-stop and the performances range from stiff (the three vamps) to bonkers stage-like show acting (religious fanatics take the cake).

For a laugh (unintentional or not) this is a good one to watch with pals. This schlock has cult written all over it.

Three vampires (who can walk in the sunlight and enter a church, no problem, and have no fangs) find themselves pursued by a mobster and his men after they pull a heist; also after the trio of bloodsuckers are a group of religious fanatics and a pair of corrupt cops.

Bloodlust is a low budget Aussie comedy/horror clearly inspired by the success of fellow antipodean, Peter Jackson: it's over the top in terms of violence and delivers plenty of 'bad taste' moments. It doesn't, however, have any of the charm of a Jackson movie. The worst aspect of the whole film is its amateur cast and the thoroughly unappealing characters they play: no-one can act, so everyone overacts - wildly - making an already unlikable bunch all the more irritating. At first I thought the cops were the pits, then the religious folk proved even worse, and then the gangsters took exaggerated mannerisms one step further. Also, the cast start off trying to speak in American accents, but soon admit to themselves that they're not very convincing and revert to their native Aussie twang.

Of course, not very many people will watch this expecting a masterclass in acting: it's the splatter and general deviancy that are the film's main selling points. Unfortunately, the gore isn't very impressive and the movie isn't anywhere near as edgy or as daring as it likes to think it is. The most outrageous moment is a spot of gay necrophilia, but once again, a ridiculous OTT performance makes for a painfully unfunny and not in the least bit shocking scene.

I have to admit to being impressed by the amount of weapons amassed for the movie, which allows for plenty of bloody squib action during the all-guns-blazing finalé; I just wish as much effort had gone into finding proper actors, a decent scriptwriter and better special effects.

I first received an uncut Australian VHS tape of this when it was first released. The movie was really cool but the extras on the tape are what put this movie is the MUST WATCH category. The extras were fantastic. This movie has one of the best trailers you will ever see on a low budget horror film. The film has lots of energy and is nonstop action and horror.

The basic plot has the main 3 actors wreaking havoc on everyone they cross paths with. The 3 main actors are vampires, 1 man & 2 women. The man is pretty cool and the 2 girls are great. One of the girls is a busty sexy blond and very voluptuous. The movie has a little of everything in it, including some crime action scenes inspired from Hong Kong movies. The characters in the movie are fun. It seems that the actors in the movie had fun making the movie. There is lots of gore for the gore fans. I found the soundtrack was excellent for the movie and it had lots of energy to it.

If you are able to track this down, try and find it with the extras. The extras include an awesome trailer, interviews (really funny), and trial footage with the lead voluptuous blonde actress with dark hair. This movie also stars an actor by the name of Crawdaddy playing a bad cop. I would definitely recommend this to fans of low budget horror. The directors went on to make more cult movies.

In Chicago, a VHS tape bootlegger used to sell NTSC copies of this at horror shows in Chicago, right after this came out on tape in PAL. The dealer ran a trailer of this on a TV he had on his table. He sold out a whole box of tapes of this movies within minutes of the show opening, just off the trailer.

I feel no remorse is saying that Bloodlust is quite possibly one of the worst films ever made. Not because of the fact that the budget looks lower than that of the average backyard porn flick, or that the acting sucks or whatever...

It's more about the fact that this is advertised as being a "vampire movie", however, for anybody who's ever seen a vampire film, it's nice when they actually feature some characters that you can say without a doubt, "yep, that person's a vampire" rather than "yep, that person's a wolf-haired gimp in fluoro sweatpants".

Truly bad.

This is an Australian film. The cast go in and out of Australian and phoney American accents for the duration because they are either morons or have absolutely no imagination. Bloodlust is gleefully, purposely and ridiculously bad. I laughed at it because it was bad but never at the 'black humour' It is never frightening, never suspenseful, hardly gory and punishes you throughout it's entire running time with it's mere existence, it took a constant watch checking feat of super human endurance to get through the last 30 minutes. On the positive side, the rich guy with the big mobile phone who gets car jacked close to the beginning delivered the most incredible performance I have ever seen. I would recommend this to crass, stoned and mediocre people.