After the Blood Rush – review

Director: Pete Trudgeon

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers


On a double disc with the Vampire bitches – which was reviewed here as Marty Jenkins and the Vampire Bitches - this is definitely the weaker of the two products. The cut price nature of the DVD (at time of review) and the fact that the companion film has merit may lead you to get this.

It is a shame, as well, as the filmmakers clearly had some ideas but didn’t have the budget, the actors or the technical know-how to pull them off.

a Blood Junky

The film is set in Hamtramck, Michigan and intertitles tell us of a virus being released that has decimated the vampire population, turning most of the survivors into blood junkies and (we discover later) stripping the powers of many of those not so impacted. We also see a conversation between two gentlemen where it is confessed that the virus was man made and a cure does exist.

George Pogacich as jack

Two federally backed vampire hunters, Wally Wood (John Anton) and Jack Cole (George Pogacich), question their blood junky snitch Dwayne (Johnny Gel). He gives them the location of a nest of blood junkies that they raid. Wally uses a sword, whereas Jack uses an assault rifle that is unusually quiet and splatters targets with unfortunately cgi bullet wounds – budget filmmakers take note, it is rare that things like cgi blood or bullet wounds actually work effectively. A cop is the blood junkies’ meal – Wally kills him, presumably because he’d turn otherwise.

victim

Cut in to the scenes of the raid are scenes of two drunk guys wandering down an alleyway. They see three girls who have “missed the bus” … the girls end up doing ring-a-ring-of-roses round them before attacking them – these are vampires as opposed to blood junkies. We also get scenes of a man called Andrew Milligan (Gary Freeman) who blindfolds himself and is met by the three girls. They hand the man a disc and put a phone to his ear to allow a woman called Zandora to speak to him. Milligan is a disgraced journalist.

Michael Clark as Prince Mumawalde 

So, the two hunters are introduced by the mayor (Karen Majewski) to a wealthy businessman, Wilkenson (Billy Whitehouse), whose daughter, Elizabeth (Taylor Ariel), is a blood junky. She has been taken by Zandora and is being held. She wants the hunters and Wilkenson is willing to pay them to get her back (and Milligan wants a scoop). The story is convoluted and not well drawn out. Zandora has a fully powered vampire working with her, Prince Mumawalde (Michael Clark) – a homage, of course, to Blacula. His presence in the film became pointless, unfortunately.

poor framing

So the dialogue was poor, the acting didn’t help and the sound was poor so dialogue became lost (possibly a fault of the DVD, rather than the sound editing). The effects were poor, especially when cgi was used, lighting was too. But the worst thing was the cinematography and direction. There was no proper framing and the film reeked amateur. Now, all that might be forgiven but, whilst earnest, the story was convoluted but buried beneath the dialogue. It was all a shame because of that word – earnest. One really did think the film was the product of an earnest attempt to do something good. It just failed. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.