Trasharella – review

Director: Rena Riffel

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Trasharella is one of those films that leaves me wondering where to begin. A vanity project, essentially, for director/writer/producer/star Rena Riffel, the film is comedic, sleazy, grindhouse-esque musical with a vampire, Count Smokula (Smokey Miles credited under the name Count Smokula, Tales from the Crapper).

The film starts with the radio telling us that starlet Becky Bardot (Jade Paris) is missing. It then centres on Helena Beestrom (Rena Riffel) a starlet wannabe who has moved to Hollywood and is staying in her Aunt’s apartment whilst she holidays overseas. The film starts with her in audition and then she asks the casting director about the Hollywood Vampire.

in a past life

The director goes into a prolonged rant about the vampire, suggesting that he takes the form of a cat and sucks ambition, beauty and talent from wannabe starlets (this being in part reminiscent of Viereck's The House of the Vampire) and the only way to escape it is by being a superstar. Fleeing back to her apartment Helena reveals that a fortune teller told her she would never make it in Hollywood due to a curse emanating from a past life. Apparently trash is the way she can break the curse.

death by Barbie

In a flashback to that past life, in Paris, we see her former self befriend a cat but it becomes jealous, becomes the vampire and curses her. In the modern day we see her struggling with Count Smokula, a Jewish presenting vampire who does, indeed, turn into a cat. Eventually we see her kill the vampire by repeatedly stabbing him with a Barbie doll. However you can’t keep a good vampire down and Helena (or Trasharella after she creates a superhero suit out of bin bags and dons a Betty Page wig) seems to be suffering a breakdown.

Smokula

The story hasn’t much more than that in it, the narrative confused and subsequently confusing. Rena Riffel is very personable on the screen but the filming is (possibly deliberately) poor and most of the performances are amateurish (and there are some amateurs) and the effects virtually non-existent and those there are, are hidden by the poor straight to video quality. This is one that may get cult status but I didn’t get it. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK