Loved Ones – review

Director: Shawn Cain

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

Never judge a book by its cover… perhaps wise words but the entire point of cover art, for books and DVDs, is to sell them as a product. In this Loved Ones is successful as I was very taken by the cover. It had a classy air that promised much of the indie film within. The failure to deliver on that promise was spectacular.

As you know, I like to go through the plot (or at least the first part of the plot) of a film. It is difficult, however, when a film meanders away with little meaning and less direction. Instead we will play spot the camera-person as we drag ourselves through a mire of poor acting and worse dialogue. Indeed things go wrong early on, as the opening credits role. Nothing wrong with the graphics used for the credits and the music is suitably dramatic and then we get the interference, some sort of sound glitch that makes you think someone has stuck nails into your speakers and is ripping their electronic heart out. Thankfully this is only over the credits.

We begin with an art gallery and none of the work created by the artist Tim Garner (Mike Ricker) has sold. He goes on about how he painted one piece blindfolded. Elsewhere there is a negotiation over wine distribution for wine (which generously might have been a cover for getting produce to the vampire community, but this is not actually explained) produced by Serbia (Larry Laverty). Serbia, we later discover is a doctor, runs a nursing home that may, or may not, be sinister and is leader of the vampires.

A man walks into a bar (and yes I wish it was the start of a joke). He is Taw Jones (Stefano Capone). Two robbers come and try to hold the place up and he takes the shotgun from one whilst another man, Tony (Neil D’Monte), takes down the other. They clearly have no luck except bad luck, as they are trying to rob a place full of off-duty cops celebrating Taw’s retirement. Tony wears a t-shirt with Vlad Tepes on it; I don’t think it meant anything in the greater scheme of the ‘plot’.

Garner is also in the bar and, following some of the worst acted pick-up lines in some time, is off with a vampire woman who bites him. When he awakens in the morning he will have been turned. Meanwhile Taw doesn’t know what to do with himself. His wife, Beth (Kellee Brandise), still works and retirement (and daytime TV) are not sitting well. He phones the precinct – they had a sweepstake on that.

As it is he sees a man going over to a neighbour’s for some extra-marital fun. Then a vampire heavy, called Mr Tingle (Shawn Cain), comes along and attacks him. Taw intervenes and the resultant fight has some really odd moments as there is lined interference over the video that makes this almost unwatchable – as well as rain splatter on some of the camera angles. Seriously, in respect of the interference, I don’t know why it went wrong or why they left it in. Anyway, Serbia comes along and offers Taw a job as head of security. Taw goes to see him the next day, for some reason doesn’t like what he sees – perhaps his cop senses are tingling – and turns the job down. He is attacked and turned.

This gets Tony and fellow officer Gus (Chuck Williams) on the case looking for their erstwhile colleague, who then turns up and, following a vision sequence about Tony and Gus fighting vampires, bites and turns his wife and, in case you're wondering, this is what I can gather is going on…. Serbia is mainstreaming the vampires and (according to the DVD case, because it wasn’t at all explained in exposition) has found a way to curb bloodlust. Taw has been turned as Serbia has decided he will be the next great vampire leader. Garner is going to rebel against Serbia as he won’t live without being free, but the rebellion will be half-assed and pointless. By the way, it turns out that Gus is really a secret vampire hunter and has been for years. Then throw in a vampire ritual with some robes and some naked boobs added into film for no adequately explored reason.

You see there is a lot, poorly scripted, going on to little purpose – we’ll get to some of the more amusing dialogue lines later. I could have handled the amateur level acting, had there been a worthwhile point but this drags its self slowly forward whilst having no real point whatsoever. Worse is that it is clear that, beyond poor lighting and unfortunate framing, the director couldn’t have cared about quality. The video interference in the fight is not the only quality glitch. Boom mikes are often in shot and the appearance of camera crew happens more than once – one in the screenshot with this paragraph and look closely at the screenshot of the vampire ritual again. The dialogue often fades into the background and perhaps that is as well.

I mentioned some of the lines. Garner attacks a random girl as he is hungry, she is on the floor, he is over her and the interchange goes like this. Girl: “Please don’t kill me.” Garner: “I have to.” Girl: “Look at me…” Garner: “No.” Girl: “If you spare my life I’ll be forever devoted to you.” Now bear in mind he might just be a mugger, a rapist or a murder, she doesn’t know at that point that he is a vampire (not that such a revelation should matter, she is still being attacked). Be that as it may, as an outcome to the scene he bites, feeds her his blood and then runs off; for her part she stands and then looks around as though waiting for instruction to exit stage left. Another cracking line, later in the film, is, “The time has come to become what we are capable of becoming.”

If it sounds like I am being cruel… I’m sorry, but I am just being honest; technical glitches, bad shot framing and equally bad lighting, amateur acting and poor dialogue with no real story direction does not equal me spending hard earned money on a DVD. There really wasn’t a saving grace (except the DVD cover).

Lore wise, again we have little. These vampires can go out in daylight and a blood exchange is needed to turn another. A stake through the heart will kill a vampire and bullets will not. That said, having emptied nine bullets into a vampire to no effect, using handcuffs as a set of brass knuckles (and somehow not breaking your own knuckles) will cause said vampire to run away promising that you’ll be got next time.

All in all I am struggling to score this at all, but as there are things out there genuinely worse and more offensive… I’ll give this 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

First Impressions: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

So, as those on Facebook with me will have realised, I went to see New Moon last night and let us get this out of the way… the likelihood is that this is going to be the biggest vampire flick (in terms of monies earned) of all time. I arrived just before one screening, which was full but not the one I – with David, my son – were going to see anyway. I decided, after queuing for some considerable time, to get tickets for two screenings on… it was already sold out… however the next screening still had tickets. By the time we got in the theatre that had sold out too.

This is a rare phenomenon for me. Probably the fullest a cinema has been in my recent viewings was Star Trek and even then the cinema wasn’t filled to capacity. There was a difference between the two screenings (Star Trek and New Moon). Whilst the cross section of audience was more varied for Star Trek, New Moon mainly being teen girls and emo boys, Star Trek got applause and cheers at its conclusion. There might have been one or two uninitiated gasps at the cliff-hanger that ended New Moon – we’ll get to that eventually – but mainly the audience was subdued and filed out almost in silence… probably because, whether they wanted to admit it or not, they had just been witness to a rather boring 2+ hours of cinema.

We are, of course, in the world of Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart), which in a cinema sense began with the movie Twilight. Edward is a vampire, and if you don’t know that he is a defanged vampire who sparkles like teeny lip-gloss in the sun, then you have probably been living under a rock. However, this is not my complaint with the movie (to a degree, at least, as you’ll see). This is clearly a teen romance and should be viewed as such.

It is Bella’s birthday and she is having anxiety dreams about aging, mainly because Edward will not age. Okay, I can live with that but what is with the prophetic nature of her dreams… Bella does have a passive super power, as such, in that she is unaffected by most of the vampire’s powers – the invasive ones. She is not immune to Alice (Ashley Greene) reading her future or Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) effecting her moods positively but Edward is unable to read her mind, for instance. Yet suddenly her dreams foreshadow what will happen later in the film.

The thing is Kristen Stewart is not a good actress. In this entire section (before she gets unceremoniously dumped) she only projects whinging and annoying. When she gets dumped she projects… yup, you’ve guessed it… whinging and annoying. Later, when they get back together she projects… answers on a postcard to the “Kristen portrays Bella as Whinging and Annoying Competition”. As for Robert Pattinson, well he doesn’t get to do much in this episode (indeed he’s barely in it) but his performance has gone downhill – he spent the entire time looking as though he was ten seconds away from vomiting but that might have been a reaction to either 1) the script or 2) Stewart’s performance.

So, after a moment of domestic violence… To explain; Bella, at a party Alice tricks her into, gets a paper cut and Jasper goes all ‘wanting to suck her blood’. Despite a room full of vampires to stop him, Edward feels the need to bodily fling her (for her own safety) across the room and thus cut her arm so badly she needs stitches. I can’t actually recall an apology for doing this …Edward feels the need to dump Bella. The trouble was that the script is so superficial that the reason why is not adequately revealed. Those who read the books will understand but, much like the first film failing to make us believe that they would fall in love, this film fails to make us believe in the relationship.

We don’t believe in Bella and Edward’s endless love, thus we don’t buy into why he might dump her (for her own good). It fails to show how he utterly eradicated (in his creepy, stalker style) any trace of himself from her life. We don’t understand, when they get back together, why the Cullen’s all seem to love her so much, as they all buggered off too. This is all scripting problems.

Bella ends up a screaming moron, literally. Months go by when she just stares out of windows, she ignore her friends (on a positive note this means her friends’ screen time is limited) and she has night terrors. Get a grip, I don’t buy it, because I don’t buy the love in the first instance. The entire parenting input seems to be one line of, go back to your mother, after which a promise to go shopping with a girlfriend ends the concern (indeed, Billy Burke's screen time as Bella's father is severely curtailed. Punishment for actually acting in the first film and thus upstaging the leads?). Said shopping trip morphs into a cinema trip and, after a brush with some bad boys that causes Bella to see Edward warning her from danger like a sparkly Jiminy Cricket, Bella becomes an adrenaline junky.

To get her kicks (and thus make Edward appear ghost like before her) she gets Jacob (Taylor Lautner) to fix up some motorbikes for her. Of course he has the hots for her and there is the danger of a love triangle that fails to materialise because, again, the script and the performances fail to build a believable relationship. They seem a bit like friends, not even best friends.

Next problem. Jacob is bulking out and his erstwhile friends are behaving oddly and superior. He is becoming a werewolf (or not, they are wolf based shapeshifters and not werewolves, the book series does make that distinction). None of the big shapes in the woods, killed hikers (killed by vampires, not wolves) or the paranoia of his friends drifting to (actually the pack alpha) Sam (Chaske Spenser) is explored properly. The fact that bad vampire Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre) is trying to get to Bella is not exploited. There is an entire level of supernatural peril that was in the book but may as well have not been in the film for all the good it did. This was bad direction on Chris Weitz part, whilst the integration of effects into the movie worked better – and his work on the Golden Compass stood him in good stead for the wolves – he makes a film that is boring and superficial.

Alice turns up because Bella jumped from a cliff (and she didn’t see her survive). Why she was so close and why she had failed to make contact with someone she must have cared about is not explored. Edward gets the impression that Bella is dead and goes to the Volturi – vampire royalty – to beg to die. They refuse because of his mind reading gift and so he decides to try and kill himself by making a public spectacle and forcing them to kill him. Again we have a ready made scene for supernatural peril and against the clock thrills… again the script and direction fails to take advantage of the opportunity.

As for the Volturi, well let us concentrate on leader Aro (Michael Sheen). Mr Sheen, you were fantastic in Underworld, why you would offer such a camp, almost pantomime, performance in this… The entire chance to have something sinister was lost. Even the hinted mass feeding on tourists failed to impress, what with it being only a comment heard, a group walked to the Volturi and the sounds of a few screams. Perhaps a full on blood bath might have been going too far for this film but more of a glimpse could have been offered.

As for the cliff-hanger I mentioned. Edward asks Bella to marry him and the film ends, without an answer… oh gosh, like 90% of the film’s audience will not already know the answer and how the relationship pans out. It was cheap script chicanery that most of the audience could see through.

Getting to David and his insightful reactions – he is more the age the film is set for, though clearly of the opposite gender – he said it was ‘a bit alright’ there were ‘some funny bits’ and ‘some action bits’ but mainly ‘it was boring… but better than Twilight’ (I should say, when he says it was boring, he was audibly yawning towards the end!).

I disagree that this was better than Twilight. David, I believe, liked the wolves being there but I think they played the entire movie safer than Twilight (if you can believe that) and so ratcheted it down a notch whilst turning the boredom factor up. When it came to the supernatural, they needed to put fear in the woods and they needed to put sinister into the vampire coven. We perhaps needed some blood on display and victims, we had victims in the first film. When it came to the romance it needed leads that could/wanted to act, could display a range of emotions and a script that made the relationship believable. This was no Scarlet and Rhett, this was damp squib. After saying all that, clearly no one will listen to me and (as I said at the beginning) we will find this topping the charts as the most profitable vampire movie of all time (until the next installment).

The imdb page is here.

Child of a Dead God – review

Authors: Barb and JC Hendee

First published: 2008

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Blood flows where destiny calls.

For years, Magiere and Leesil have sought a long-forgotten artefact, even though its purpose has been shrouded in mystery. All Magiere knows is that she must keep the orb from her murderous half-brother Welstiel, one of the lethal so-called Noble Dead. And now, dreams of a castle locked in ice leads her south – on a journey that has become nothing less than an obsession.

Among Magiere’s protectors are two elven assassins-turned-guardians who must fight their mistrust of this sister of the dead. Forces more powerful than they are also rallying around Magiere, arming her for conflict. And finding the orb may be just the start of the dangers that await.

The review: This is the last book of the Noble Dead series, ish… This is, according to the official website, the final book of Series 1. Series 2 begins with the book “In Shade and Shadow” and, whilst still part of the greater storyline, is set on another continent, with a different set of protagonists and antagonists. This is, of course, the problem/joy with/of so called “High Fantasy” – the series go on and on and on…

Not an issue, of course, when you are committed to the series – so long as the quality remains consistent – and in this latest volume not only is the quality consistent but the book also closes off the primary on-running saga (with enough mystery remaining to allow re-visitation of the primary themes in Series 2). However, when it comes to the microcosmic conflict – that between Magiere and Welsteil, things are closed off nicely.

The vampires are less sidelined in this volume than they were in the previous book, Rebel Fey, and we get some nice undead moments. For instance; the creation of feral vampires to be used as shock troops by their more rational creators and also the idea of the vampires’ dead flesh freezing when in the mountains, but their undead nature not offering them pain to warn them of the cold’s effect. We also meet a millennia old vampire whose age, and the years spent alone, have caused her to forget the sound and form of words.

It all adds to a nice conclusion to the saga – though, as suggested, the saga has not ended but shifted. This is not particularly accessible to those who have not read the previous 5 books, unfortunately, but I would suggest – if you are looking for a mix of vampires and fantasy – searching out book 1, Dhampir, and giving the series a go. 7 out of 10.

Commercial Vampire – Delissio Pizza

It’s been a little while since we had a vampire commercial break and so, for those who don’t know, these adverts just prove my point that vampires get everywhere. We are avoiding the Volvo/Twilight ads – just because it is hardly surprising that there is a commercial aspect in respect of Twilight.

That said, using a vampire in an ad for pizza with garlic crust would seem to be a no brainer as well. This has a nice bit of Crap Bat Syndrome to make us feel good about life!

Scarlet Moon – review

Director: Warren F Disbrow

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers

Just because a film is released on the Troma label does not mean to say it will be dreadful. It’s likely but not a guarantee. For instance, take South African movie Pure Blood – it is far from perfect and yet it is interesting and not the bottom of the cinematic pile. This preamble makes little difference to Scarlet Moon, however, which bucks no label trend and is dreadful.

Something, however, strikes me. I have read descriptions of Warren F Disbrow as being an auteur (also, in the introduction Lloyd Kaufman describes him as the “Fellini of Tromaville” – an insult to Fellini, one feels). Let me say this, being an auteur is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is. If a director is an auteur and their vision is artistically myopic then the resultant film is still going to be a blurred mess.

The film starts with a naked woman playing with glowing orbs in an occult orientated room – we know it is occult orientated because someone has reproduced Eliphas Lévi’s Baphomet on the wall. She gets naked and sweats. Some credits come on that are interspersed with images of the main vampire character, Andreas (Dominic Gregoria), hitting kids with baseball bats and some nude shots of plot unconnected women and then we get the backstory delivered via voiceover.

Said voiceover tells us about Satan sending three glowing orbs to earth, and the fact that they landed in ancient Egypt where Queen Tara (Denis Marie Kubis) got hold of them. Before I go on, can I just mention that, the unlikely named, Tara is possibly the only ancient Egyptian to have nipple bars and a Brazilian. Anyway the orbs conferred immortality and mystical powers, but their primary function was to give sexual stimulation – think the orgazmatron in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Eventually, however, she killed herself for no adequately explored reason. That was 3000 BC, it is now 2030 (though if that hadn't been mentioned we would have assumed that the film was contemporary).

A Satanist group led by Edward Crowley (Guy Camilleri) have recreated Tara’s temple (the room with Lévi’s Baphomet, published 1855, is an exact replica of a temple from 3000 BC…) but are missing one element that will give them the power they seek. A giant red diamond called Scarlet Moon.

Now the Satanists have a couple of vampire henchmen, the aforementioned Andreas and the drug addled Smoke (Colin Reynolds). Andreas is not exactly loyal to the Satanists. He wants Crowley’s woman, Muldavia (Francesca Chirelli), who cannot stand him, and wants the power of Scarlet Moon for himself. He also has a vampire friend called Satanya (Annie Donato), a flower child who was turned and has remained an artist.

Now, at first I wondered at the white powder that adorned the faces of Andreas and Smoke – was this really bad makeup effects for the undead. It seems not, it is just an affectation of the characters as the other vampires in film do not have the same makeup. We see no fangs, and whilst we see a turning – which I’ll get to – the point of them being vampires is minimal.

Anyway, Andreas goes to the prostitutes Slash (Jennifer Wilder), Slice (Amy Buzin) and Dice (Maggie Willard) to find where the diamond is. The Satanists obviously haven’t looked too hard as they are able to tell him, so long as he turns them – Satanya has it. He slits their throats with a knife. Later he goes to a morgue and revives them as vampires and the mildly interesting point is they can be turned posthumously. He can’t attack Satanya, she’s family, and so starts a convoluted and very boring attempt to gain the diamond that culminates in him going in her house, when she’s out, finding it and stealing it.

Meanwhile the Government, represented by the General (Forrest J Ackerman), pull one Professor Herz (Warren Disbrow Sr) out of retirement to take on the vampires. Through him we discover they fear crosses, allegedly – and this introduces us to one of the more original ideas. A vampire named Keiler (Robert Uhrman) actually met Christ (John Furey) and has a house adorned with crucifixes, only drinks animal blood and goes to church. As I say original but actually fairly throwaway. We also disover that Satanya paints in blood, not the newest idea, and literally taps into a live victim for it - an idea (in respect of the tap) already seen in the portmanteau movie Vault of Horror.

This looks dreadful – for a disc that purports to be an “unrated director’s cut special collectors edition”, and Kaufman claims is digitally re-mastered, we grasp at the poor transfer. The filming quality was low; Disbrow’s auteur vision didn’t include good lighting it seems and, for a film shot when it was, the film seems to have been recorded to tape, rather than digitally. A glitch within film seems to say that to me, at least. I guess I could watch the feature length ‘making of’ to find out for definite, but the film was painful enough.

There is more use of stock footage than the average Edward D Wood Jr film – though in main it is in context, which is a bonus. When Satanya gets jetted around the world stock footage is used to indicate where they might be before cutting to pokey 3 foot by three ‘stages’ for the ‘acting’. Acting is in inverted commas because there really isn’t a good performance in the film. Plot holes, when you can spot the plot, and anachronisms litter the film, but ultimately it is so poor, who cares? The director/writer apparently didn’t.

I can’t really think of a good thing to say about this – other than the Christian vampire was interesting – and so I’ll shut up now. Avoid. 0.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.