Honourable Mentions: The Transient

This short film is a low budget independent movie. Whilst they are taking pre-orders to buy the film (either in DVD format, if they get enough orders, or in DVD-r otherwise) the fact that this is available to view free made me run towards the concept of honourable mention rather than full on review.

What we have is indie filmmaking with some interesting ideas and some horribly bad moments. However, one almost gets the feeling that director Chris Lukeman was aware of the limitations and that those bad moments have been stretched into a parody of themselves. As such these moments that, if serious, would have damaged the viewing experience actually seek to enhance it.

The film becomes one of the most bizarre superhero narratives I have seen for some time. We have the Transient (Dave Ruthenburg), almost like the anti-Bruce Wayne in that he is a hobo rather than a billionaire but his masked persona is reliant on toys and gadgets – in this case made from rubbish. Like Batman, the Transient is morally grey in his actions. He also has a side kick.

Steve (Blake Stubbs) is a do-gooder and, it appeared, the Transient’s caseworker. He is not in favour of the methodology used by the Transient, threatening to report him to the police and yet is drawn into the Transient’s world – a world filled with the supernatural. It is Steve who comes up with the superhero name the Transient.

Local girls are going missing, kidnapped by a group of punks – to take to vampire Lincoln (Michael Krebs). The former president always was a vampire and had to go into hiding after the ‘assassination’. The reason for getting the girls appears in the sparse lore (which includes the fact that vampires have no reflections). It appears that should he bleed 87 women in a fortnight he will be freed from his curse. He also wishes to be president again – having not finished his second term.

The film contains zombie lore also and Timmy (Michael Bach) the zombie is dug up as they are like a divining rod when it comes to finding vampires. When Timmy bites a vampiress (Vanessa Prokuski) – who was one of the kidnapped girls and turned as part of a trap for the heroes – she immediately becomes a zombie and her fangs drop out.

This is silly, but being free it is watchable silliness. The film can be found here and has an imdb page here.

Thanks to Everlost who put me on to this.