Shower of Blood - review

Director: Tiffany Kilbourne

Release Date: 2003

Contains spoilers

Shower of Blood opens with a girl running through the woods, an uneven steady cam provides a “Blair Witch” feel until the camera finds the girl on the floor covered in blood. Cut to the opening credits with the naked torso of a woman imposed through the credits, her hand caressing her body, eventually caressing the blood which spills across her flesh. This sets the scene for a film, which feels that replacing script, story and acting ability with T&A makes a movie passable.

A radio news programme informs us that a woman in her early 20s is missing, police refusing to speculate if it is connected with a series of mutilations tied with cannibalism that has plagued Galloway County.

A group of young college kids are parked in a van, lost in the woods. One girl, Megan (Robin Denise Brown), is being sick due, we assume, to too much beer. In the van are Terry (Peter Ranaud) – Mr “I’ve got your {insert noun} right here” as he clutches his groin - , Kurt (Dave Larsen) – Mr I can crush beer cans on my forehead -, Heather (Melissa Mountifield) – Miss, I’m a virgin and don’t know whether to give it away and Lisa (Lia Montelongo). Lisa is the niece of Uncle Marty (Martin Shannon) and it is to his cabin (or mansion) in the woods that the friends are going, hoping to stay the night before going on to a concert.

I hope by the above description I have adequately described the sheer amount of stereotype and cliché going on here. What I haven’t put across yet is the risible quality of the script, the sub-porn acting when delivering the lines and the inexplicable use of belch and fart noises that pepper the film.

The friends reach the cabin, the soundtrack here plays a song which I believe is a track called “In comes the night” by the Bad – this is a band I’d never come across but the song was the shining jewel in this film. Uncle Marty does not appear to be in but Lisa finds a key and lets the friends in. Cue lots of poor bedroom farce, rank acting and gratuitous nudity featuring plenty of silicone; during this Lisa starts experiencing visions often involving roses and blood. Uncle Marty eventually appears, he is, of course, a vampire. He vamps out on Megan – who he eventually cooks and serves up to the friends. Eventually the two guys are turned as he hunts the two remaining girls.

The film seems to be a little confused as to how it wants to go here. At first it is apparent it is all about his niece, but suddenly shifts into making Heather his bride, using a ritual called the shower of blood – this involves Lisa’s blood.

The plot makes very little sense and is so riddled with cliché that it becomes more and more painful the more you watch. There is the use of digital effect, but these seem so out of place that it jars. For example the digital build of fangs as they emerge just looks silly and not impressive.

The film makers obviously had a few ideas, but lacked the ability, the confidence or the budget to pull them off. Oh, I never again want to see a vampire dancing to “Roll out the barrel”, a tune that seems to become his theme tune later. The twist ending is so obvious that it would have been a more impressive twist not to do it! The film is, by dint of some of the content, an exploitation movie – unfortunately it is the audience who are being exploited.

A poor effort, 1 out of 10.

A trailer is available here.

The imdb page is here.