42k – review

Directors: Ken Daurio & Darren Doane

Release date: 2001

Contains spoilers

This film features, “Four Guys, Four Girls, Three Ninjas, Two Christians, One Gangsta Rapper, and Twelve Machete Wielding Vampires or simply... 42K” and Michael Madsen (The Bleeding, Bloodrayne and Vampires Anonymous) narrating through the film.

Given the quoted tagline you might be surprised that I nearly went ‘Vamp or Not?’ on the film but the vampires really weren’t too vampiric.

do you want to party?

Essentially a comic look through the world of urban mythology it follows the four guys as they try to entertain four girls for the night. Prior to the girls unexpected arrival – asking if they may come round and party – we have seen a man throw a cursed necklace away and it land in the soda of one of the guys, Drew (Drew Stewart). He, of course, puts it on.

massage

The girls arrive, explain that they are massage therapy students and offer free massages, go swimming and Drew, it seems, is getting lucky when three mask wearing, machete wielding maniacs pull up, kill (it appears) a fifth (excluded) friend called Jarod (Jarod Legsdin). Drew sees this, gets Jarod’s shotgun, kills the maniacs but their bodies vanish and reform in their car as smoke pours out the windows.

funny kind of vampire

Yes, these are the vampires but we don’t get told that until much later when they use yellow pages to find the three ninjas. The lead ninja knows that these are cainaphites – children of the biblical Cain cursed to live forever, searching for the necklace and addicted to killing. Yes they are vampires, no they don’t drink blood and they are immortal. They send in the four seductresses to distract their victims – its a pity the four guys are so inept with girls as their attack would have gone so much smoother.

blessing the pool

They can be trapped and the guys and ninjas call in the two Christians, and the Christians' theological sparring partner who follows the word of gangsta rapper Willie D, to the house so that they can bless the pool and lure said vampires in. That is a rough, quick and dirty plot summary and that leaves us with lore (all mentioned) and the actual quality of the film.

Michael Madsen as himself

Honestly, it wasn’t brilliant. You can tell there was a budget and the budget was low. There are some bizarre moments – spontaneous boyband-ish songs, internal monologue that silently fights with a drunken father and other such moments. Some of it works to a degree and some falls flat on its face. To me the most intriguing moments involved Madsen’s interludes. I can’t really score this high – 3.5 out of 10 is about fair – but I can say it is like nothing you’ve seen before.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q