Blood Hunter – review

Directors: Chuck Ellis & Jack Shrum

Release date: 1996

Contains spoilers

I was at a Blu-Ray/DVD stall at Grimmfest 2023 and I managed to spot this – honestly I’d not even heard of the film (which, as you can imagine, adds up to an exciting find for me). Of course, the film isn’t great, so how it managed to get a Blu-ray release that is jam-packed with extras and Easter Eggs is anyone’s guess. That said, whilst poor it is also a film that you can tell was filmed was a degree of seriousness and a lot of heart (that doesn’t save it, but ne’er mind).

Jack Shrum as Viktor

The film starts with a narration and three screens full of the text being narrated - it’s kind of death by PowerPoint, if you know what I mean? This tells us that a vampire named Viktor (Jack Shrum) emigrated to Kentucky from Russia some 400 years before. He spent his time, apparently, watching the native people but the 20th-Century and its pollution forced him into the world but by now he was so powerful he could daywalk (by sticking to shadows).

the fisherman

It starts with a guy fishing and Viktor attacking him… this is down to the fact that the fisherman had killed his wife and dropped her body into his cave. You see Viktor has a code and, when he isn’t working as a night mechanic at a junkyard, he kills ne'er-do-wells. They might be people who hunt at night (against State code), refuse to pay for work done by him as a mechanic or the local child molester. In that regard he seems to have a moral code that vacillates between feeding from the monstrously criminal to those involved in petty crime.

Nikki and Viktor

Equally he kidnaps a woman, Nikki (Delia Nasu Brown), tells her he won’t kill her and wants companionship, chains her, hypnotises her and feeds from, her wrist (so he is hypocritical also). She goes from begging for rescue to falling in love quicker than you can say Stockholm Syndrome. Less impressed with her (and certainly against him turning her) is a woman who claims to be his mother (physically and/or the one who turned him, we don’t know). She also says that *they* will be against him building an empire. That thread goes nowhere.

feeding

Meanwhile the Sheriff, Ben Taylor (Chuck Ellis), is trying to track him down, tussling with reporters talking about vampires and trying to develop a blossoming relationship. At one point Viktor leaves him a cryptic message in blood on a wall that he sprays out of his mouth. If it all sounds odd… well, it is. The plot really doesn’t go anywhere and the characters are all pretty one-dimensional.

Viktor's mom

This is a video transfer dropped to Blu-ray so it looks pretty darn awful, with massive grain apparent in dark shots and sound issues aplenty. It is, however, a vampire film collector’s dream if you are a completist and the number of extras for such an obscure film (including 2 hours of raw footage and a making of documentary, amongst others) puts many a mainstream film to shame. The acting is pants, but there is something endearing about Jack Shrum’s portrayal of Viktor. That, and the heart I mentioned, means I’ll be generous with 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Blu-ray @ Amazon UK