The Witches Hammer

I may have a bit of a different standard than some others who reviewed this movie. I have seen a lot of B movie and as, as those go, this one is not bad. It's not great but it's decently entertaining. It has some decent action scenes. It's not badly shot. The acting isn't the best but it's not bad for an indie movie. The effects are on the cheap side but I have seen far worse. The story moves along at a decent pace. There's always something happening. It's coherent enough that I know what is going on. The cast is decent. Stephanie Beacham even shows up to do her best Sir Integra impression.

The movie's flaw is that it is a bit all over the place. There are a lot of characters and some are only tangentially related to the main story. It makes the whole thing a bit unfocused.

I'm in Iraq right now doing a job that gives plenty of time for watching movies. We also have access to plenty of pirated movies, this gem came along with 11 other movies, and this is easily the worst I've seen in a long time. I've seen a few other reviews that claim this movie doesn't take itself too seriously, but really, I think that's a cover up for the fact that its horrible. It's not tongue in cheek, the writers really thought they were improving on the movie Blade. This movie is just one notch above Vampire Assassin, which if you haven't seen, i recommend. At least that movie is so unbelievably bad that you'll laugh harder than you thought possible. This is right at that cusp of no redeeming qualities what so ever. from the bad acting, to cliché visual (ie opening credits), to the adobe premier special effects. they couldn't even get blanks for the guns, which may have to do with where the movie was filmed, but if you're going to use effects, make them close to accurate. as for the cast, it seems like they just went to a tae bo class and picked up the first not to ugly chick that walked out. Once again, like Ron Hall in Vampire Assassin, don't let stunt folk act, they can't. Also, the comment about this being a "return of old vampire movies"...no, it's not. This is exactly what all new vampire movies are about. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade, Underworld, they're all about some super star fighting the vampires. This is the newest vampire genre, with bad blood, fake screams, and cheesy over acting. obviously anyone who wrote a good review about this is somehow connected to the movie, or friends of the cast. But what do I care, I paid 33 cents for it. Anyway, to wrap this up, someone in their first semester of film school decided to make a movie, I give them credit because it's better than I could do. Of course I also know I can't make movies so I don't try. I do know how to watch movies though. I work 12 hour nights, 6 days a week, I've seen several thousand in the year I've been out here and this was so bad that half way through i was hoping for a mortar attack.

Technically pretty good, except for the audio, which made it a bit difficult to pick the dialog out of the background noise. The acting was also not bad, considering that Everything Else about the movie, the script, the plot, the directing and the very structure of the movie, practically screams amateur.

Disjointed, too many cutesy (or maybe they were supposed to be artsy) sequences. Juvenile script, as someone else mentioned, much of it looks like a project from a first-year student. The camera crew and the actors show promise, but this isn't the movie for anybody to shine in.

The action sequences seemed okay, if sometimes a bit choppy.

Frankly, it's difficult to find 10 lines of anything to say about this movie. The movie's not bad enough to be campy, but not good enough to recommend.

I, like many horror fans, have been force fed the same banal big budget Hollywood remakes and MTV high school slasher tripe for the last 20 years. Here, at last, is an original horror genre movie that ticks all the right boxes.

You want a hot lead actress, you want vampires, you want cool weapons, you want cool vehicles and you want blood, lots of it, by the bucket load - you got it.

With excellent fight choreography and a supporting role from the Hammer Horror scream queen herself Stephanie Beacham, this really is fantastic stuff.

Despite it's low budget, by opting to use 35 mm stock and adding quality CG effects to the mix, director James Eaves has created something that feels much bigger.

A must for old school horror fans.

...you wouldn't get this, because those two movies were actually good. However, if you also added Plan 9 or something of that quality, you'd get The Witches Hammer. Basically, it's an extremely low budget (around the quality of a good YouTube video) action comedy with vampires, so if you're looking for horror or good special effects, you won't find it here. There's a lot of filler between the action sequences, and the plot is rather thin, but it's still watchable. Some of the scenes worked rather well, I thought, even if the movie as a whole didn't. Hopefully, the director will have more money to work with, next time. It's obvious that there were some issues in that department.