Blood Donors – review

Director: Kenny Carpenter

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

It is difficult when a film is just so bad and yet you know that the director/producers know this… indeed it is questionable as to whether they intentionally pushed a film so far into the realms of bad movie making intentionally. Even the trailer of Blood Donors has a confession that they were stoned when they produced the flick.

There is a tagline that states that ‘comedy shouldn’t be this horror-ible’ – though the comedy fell a little flat watching it on my own. Perhaps it would work sat in a group, having imbibed enough alcohol. Blood Donors, therefore, is a bad flick that knows what it is and revels in it.

in the diner

It begins with a legend that suggests that vampires and hunters (who work with sorcerors) have been at war for some time and then – after an establishing shot of a tavern (that comes into the flick later) – we find ourselves in a diner, where Dana (Dana Aritonovich) and Boris (Boris) eat some food and discuss vampire flicks. The camera occasionally cuts from the shot of the two talking to gratuitous down top or ass shots of Dana. In a corner is Kalib (Robert G Jones) watching with disgust – he loves Dana and doesn’t know how Boris got with her – later we hear that she has a restraining order against him.

scorpion

After visualising Boris dead and bloody, he leaves the diner – without paying, the subsequent chasing after him by the waitress comes to nothing. He goes to the bar and is getting drunk. The barmaid (Dina M Patel) tells him that he must change if he wants things to change and gives him a shot of a drink she calls blood donor – which he dislikes. She then calls him a whiny bitch and bites him. As he turns he sees a scorpion on his hand – a moment of inane symbolism that brought the works of Jess Franco to mind.

showing fang

He leaves the bar a vampire, mojo’s his clothes and at once ends up face to face with a clown (Jon Schmiege), who seems to be able to pull balloons out of his butt, balloons that explode as the vampire slaps them away. The high-pitch voiced clown soon meets his end and Kalib then spends an inordinate amount of time wandering through the town – including a street fair – killing indiscriminately. If this devolves into a fight (as it does with a sword swallower) the fight scenes are more wooden than some of the acting, deliberately missed contact and hesitation are the name of the game. Any deathblow has the effects put on in post-production and they look bad. Meanwhile we cut occasionally to Boris and Dana getting it on, and indulging in some light S&M.

just so you know...

Eventually he will head to Dana, but turns Boris first and sleeps with her roommate. The furore he has caused makes a hunter (William Walton) aware of his presence – as the news shows images of the police fighting a horde of vampires. The hunter cannot walk due to an accident on his first slay and so sends his assistant Jason (Jason Sobol) out on his first mission. A flashback is shown of the hunt that injured the hunter. We know it is a flashback (in the same way that we knew we were seeing Dana’s roommate in the shower); because the film flashes up handy-titles on these occasions.

virtual cbs

Lore wise the vampires die through beheading and exposure to sunlight. Holy water will kill them as well, and a vampire death is accompanied by a green lighted explosion. They are able to turn into crap bats and, also, Kalib goes into a virtual reality set up and becomes a deadly virtual crap bat. In reality, however, any lore would seem to be little more than an incidental accident!

Yes folks, this is bad. Its 72 minutes drag and drag but, as I say, it actually knows it is bad. It doesn’t deserve more than 1.5 out of 10 but the guys behind the film knew they were making a turkey, revelled in it and, apparently, succeeded in their aim.

The IMDb page is here.

;)Q