Desert of Blood – review

Directed by: Don Henry

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers


Low budget horror can rise above your expectations sometimes, and straight to DVD films can sometimes be worth a watch – even with a cast of unknowns. That is not to say that this is perfect – far from it, but it is better than I expected and relies on character more than gore in what is a fairly familiar plot.

We begin out in Tecate, Mexico in an abandoned town. The camera pans around the town a little and then settles on… boobs. If I have an overriding impression of this film it is boobs. Not that it is too gratuitous when it comes to naked breasts – there are two gratuitous boob shoots. That said there is an overwhelming need from the director to have cleavage in shot – no bad thing, he knows his target audience well it seems and a little titillation goes a long way.

Anyway the boobs belong to Amy (Annika Svedman), who is sunbathing on a van hood, whilst her boyfriend is metal detecting. He eventually detects a big find, or so he thinks, and starts digging. When Amy comes along, wanting to leave, he is in a large trench that looks suspiciously grave like. He continues digging until he finds a large ornate cross. He moves it and there is a casket beneath. He hears movement and a hand breaks through and grabs him.

The next day, at a nursery, Father Hernandez (Flint Esquetta) is getting flowers for his church from all round nice guy Cris (Naím Thomas) when he gets a psychic vision of the village. We then cut to LA and three girls, Maricela (Brenda Romero), Samantha (Tori White) and Heather (Natalie J Horton), are at a pool and Samantha tells them about her theorem of sensual overdosing. Now, here we see a prime example of cleavage in action. As for the dialogue, it is trite but makes the characters seem pleasant enough.

Back at the abandoned village, at night, and bad boy Carlos (Mike Dusi) has driven Bobby (Andrew Welsh) out there as Bobby has renegade on (presumably drug) money. Carlos kneecaps him. As Carlos drives away, Bobby crawls and finds boots. Carlos sees a hitchhiker and drives past, then he sees the same guy and then, finally, he is there with Bobby who comes crashing down on the windshield. Luis (Justin Quinn), our vampire, is in the truck and Carlos has a new job – looking after the undead.

A woman, Serita (Yvonne Rawn), is putting the orphan kids she looks after to bed when Luis appears. Thirty five years before he and she were in love – until he became a vampire at which point her father and the local priest buried him alive. She never married. He wants revenge, but both her father and the priest are long dead. He states that he doesn’t want to kill her but he does want to hurt her.

Maricela gets a call telling her that her Aunt Serita has had a stroke. She, and her two friends, go to Mexico to see her. Obviously the visitation of her long lost love has caused the stroke. To be honest for a stroke victim, paralysed and without the capacity to speak Serita doesn’t look too ill and I am surprised, given what has meant to have occurred, that she was not in a hospital – but there you go.

As things transpire Luis puts his vendetta on hold when he falls for Maricela. Unfortunately he is a fish out of water (35 years having passed), is not in control of his own baser feelings and has a tendency of letting his victims get up and spook around as blood thirsty vampires. To make matters worse, Father Hernandez was a student of the old priest and was the one who persuaded them not to kill Luis as he was his friend – because we all know being buried alive is more merciful. He tells his story to Cris, who is an old friend of Maricela. Things move to an inevitable conclusion.

Lore wise we know that a bite turns. We know that sunlight is deadly and that beheading – it appears – works as that is the suggestion when Luis cleans up one of his messes with a cleaver. We also get the indication that fire destroys these vampires. Luis seems to have the ability to ghost in and out of rooms.

Crosses not only hold the undead in place but burn them – as we discover when Luis grabs a cross and holds it. They all seem to have funky eyes, but each one has different coloured and styled eyes. Luis, for instance has yellow eyes in vamp out mode, but they are circular. Amy’s eyes are also yellow but with cat like pupils.

I mentioned the girls’ dialogue earlier and most of the characters come across fine. There are no outstanding performances but none that really stink. I should, however, mention Quinn as the main character. Baring in mind this is his only film, he certainly looks the part and does a fair enough job. He just doesn’t have the experience to cover the depths of quite a complex character and, thus, we are sometimes left with a question mark over motivation. As I say, however, it wasn’t a bad performance all in all.

The dialogue is not necessarily anything special but did have its moments. I especially like the line (and delivery thereof) at the climax of the film, “Jinkies… shouldn’t we find Shaggy and Scooby.” Don’t ask me why, it just worked. The FX are limited but do work, it is obvious that Henry was aware of the limitations he faced and worked around them well.

I can safely say that I have seen a lot worse than this, it perhaps needed a little more atmosphere but for what it is, it does work. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.