Hémoglobine

Bleeders is, in a single word, baffling. It features a competent cast, including the always fantastic Rutger Hauer, and a bunch of unknowns who provide us with far better performances than we generally have inflicted upon us in low-budget straight-to-video horror. The location is gorgeous - a foggy fishing island somewhere off the eastern coast of Canada. The gore and monster makeup are extremely good, too. Even the script is adequate, containing no really awful dialogue or bizarre character motivations.

Add all these elements together, and you should end up with a solid little low budget horror film. Instead... well, you get Bleeders.

Its main fault is a serious cinematic crime: it is boring. I lay the blame for this unforgiveable flaw at the feet of the director and, to a lesser extent, the composer. The whole film is terribly paced. There is never any sense of urgency or danger throughout. It seems that the director has never seen a horror or thriller film before, as he certainly has no idea how to built suspense or deliver a shock. Scenes dealing with life and death feel identical to those featuring leisurely chats about genealogy. The whole film just feels terribly flat.

The score really doesn't help. It is simply the most boring and pointless movie score I have heard in years. In the first few minutes, I was thinking it was pretty. An hour and a half later, after listening to what seemed to be the same five minutes of music on a loop, I hated it. The music, like the direction, is utterly flat. Character scenes and supposedly scary scenes are all scored the same. Like the director, the composer seemed to have no idea what a horror film score is there for. It certainly isn't supposed to be something pretty to listen to when there's no dialogue.

These two problems are bad enough, but they are compounded by the fact that Bleeders is shot on video. This constant visual reminder of the movie's cheap nature, as well as its inept direction and bland score, make the whole film feel like an episode of some dodgy TV show, destined to be axed after a single season. Only the occasional splashes of gore and explicit sex scenes mark it as being something not made for TV.

It's a terrible waste of talent and potential. Okay, the best bits of the story are stolen from Lovecraft, but it could have been a fun Lovecraft ripoff, as opposed to yet another bad one. What a pity... it really could have been good.

This is a nasty, nasty horror film. It is visually so repulsive that it is at the same time repellent and attractive. There is no plot to speak of and nothing really surprising happens, but the fascination of the grotesque kept me watching long past the point at which I would have turned off many other films of this caliber.

Now, it isn't for everybody mind you, not even every die hard horror fans; but if you like freaky monsters under the ground from origins to awful to speak aloud, then not only are you a Lovecraft fan (see Shadow Over Innsmouth), but you'll probably enjoy this movie. Not fully incorporating the Cthulhu Mythos, huge parallels are seen in the backwoods MA people, the fish like monsters and something that came from a long time ago. Surprisingly, unlike the vicious scheiBfare Lovecraft renditions that came out of the eighties, this is surprisingly well done. It has actors and actresses that don't foul up the Lovecraftian nightmare that the director has in store for the audience, and a good plot. My only question was, so what happens next.

I caught this flick on TV as "The Descendant". It's so horrible it should be a prime candidate for the old "MST3K" show. The special effects (creatures) are a joke and the acting is pure B-movie. Somehow, though, I kept watching this debacle of film making (and I hardly think it was for the plot). I can't tell if it was the lighting or the morbid fascination in seeing where something so bad could go.

Make no mistake, it's a bad, bad movie. Even for a horror flick. But if you like watching cheesy films - for kicks - this one takes the cake.

One last note: Poor Rutger Hauer. How far from 'Blade Runner' have we lost ye.

'Bleeders' is known as 'Hemoglobin' in the UK which I will proceed to refer to this films as.

At the beginning of a film a young couple, Kathleen (played by the gorgeous Kristin Lehmann) and John Strauss (Roy Dupuis) arrive by boat on an island. Shortly after docking John has a kind of seizure and is quickly taken across the island to Dr. Marlowe (the legendary Rutger Hauer). It is here that we learn that John is suffering from some sort of blood disorder and has come to this island in hope of tracing his family and finding a possible cure.

At the same time, while excavating a graveyard to move the bodies due to the highly annoying local business woman using poor quality wood in her coffins it starts to become apparent that there are a number of bodies missing from the coffins.

'Hemoglobin' deals with themes rarely tackled by films in any genre. We have genetic mutations caused by incestuous relationships and also hermaphrodites. Despite only having occasional nudity, there is a strong sexual context to the film, though that seems there more to shock than to titillate.

People tend to slate the acting from this film, but I personally see no problem with it. The problem with the film in my opinion is to do with the extreme lack of useful dialogue and the overall execution of the idea. 'Hemoglobin' is a slow movie, therefore it's quite easy to lose interest, but at the same time when an event happens in the film that is of importance it is quick and often dealt with in a short amount of time. So to fully understand some of what is going on in the movie you really need to pay attention.

The ending was also somewhat of a disappointment and also feeled tacked on. There are so many questions left by the ending that one begins to wonder whether it was worth watching to begin with. Unless perhaps a sequel was planned but due to the negative reactions to the film was scrapped I can't actually see how the ending could have happened the way it did. But despite this there are some rather dramatic parts in the ending, you just need to sift through the rubbish.

The monster costumes are also a bad-point. Some of them look like they were made out of plasticine, and while they are fairly original looking it doesn't detract from the stupidity of how they look and move. But at least they didn't go for CGI, and other than the costumes there are some good make-up effects in 'Hemoglobin' that are actually quite praise worthy.

It's a slow moving movie that many people will find too dull to watch. I personally give it 4/10 and I'd say this film is for serious horror fans who are looking for something different.