Director: Rene Perez
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
This is a fairly short feature coming in at 75 minutes and, whilst it doesn’t outstay its welcome, it is in many respects too short. There are two primary stories that overlap and then converge. For a budget piece they do pretty well with effects, but veer off in places and the aesthetic choices sometimes seem odd.
It starts, however, in the middle ages, one guesses. A woman (Emily Grace Turner) narrates as we see her by a castle. She seems carefree and as a warrior enters she beckons him and moves ahead of him, just out of reach luring him towards her. Her narration suggests that her role is to lure men for her Master (Tony Jackson); she rings a bell as she lures him and then gets to a place where the Master grabs him from the shadows. The set up reminded me, as I watched, of the luring the girls were forced to do in Requiem for a Vampire. She says she is a part of a sisterhood able to flame desire in men – not totally stated but suggested later they are sirens – the film then cuts to the present and another member of the Sisterhood, Tori (Samantha Kruse), in the woods.
A man, Gabriel (Michael Paré, Sicilian Vampire, Blubberella, BloodRayne 3: The Third Reich, BloodRayne & BloodRayne II: deliverance), has met a female cop and is asking for a file on a murderer and rapist whose case was recently dismissed in court. She resists at first, more to protect Gabriel, who is not getting any younger. It is clear that he is a vigilante and eventually she concedes and gives him the file. We cut to a bar and he is having a drink, the camera searches out the patrons and one is a man playing pool on his own. Gabriel sees a woman come in and offers to buy her a drink (her reaction is an aggressive no rather than assertive, veering on slanderous despite his polite demeanour and language, and begged the question of what they were trying to communicate with the scene). The pool player leaves and he follows, cocking his gun when he gets outside…
Out in the woods a painter, Percival (Joseph Camilleri), is sketching a model when he hears a gunshot. Duty calls he says to the unseen model. He tracks through the woods, finding Tori and asks if she heard the shot, which she didn’t. He then directs her towards the (assumed) hunter. She puts a tape, labelled Siren Songs (which is an AOR track, in reality), in a ghetto blaster, puts on a dress and goes lure him. The hunter doesn’t seem that interested, at first, until she gets her boobs out. He then follows and is lured down a hidden mine shaft. Percival, in the meantime, has got the Master from nearby caves. Getting to the victim means going outside and so he wears gear against the sun – though the German war rig, with back mounted respirator, was a strange aesthetic choice in costume design.
We then meet Natalie (Emily Whitcomb), on the phone with her grandpa, who has sent her grandma’s cross for her birthday. She has to pay for his medication that day and gets an envelope from under her mattress but it is empty. She goes through to her roommate and accuses the roomies’ boyfriend of stealing the money – he has form, he once stole her debit card and she had to close her current account as a result, hence the cash stash. The boyfriend comes back, has a go at Natalie (as a sidebar, the roomie is black and he talks about Natalie’s privilege as an excuse for stealing from her, but he presents white and I was a tad unsure as to what they were trying to do with the dialogue; whether satirical, comedic or something else) and then clocks her on the head, knocking her out.
She comes round to a knock on the door. It is Tori – she and Percival have been sent to find a corrupt and female victim and one assumes they came there looking for roomie, who is a sex worker to feed her and boyfriend’s drug habits. Desperate for money, and told that she will only have to strip, Natalie reluctantly agrees to go with her and, as soon as she is in the car, is knocked out with gas. I don’t really want to say much more but she ends up being given to the Master, turning and crossing paths with Gabriel…
The lore is pretty simple: consecrated religious icons hurt, sunlight is an issue and a bite turns. The Master apparently has some level of telepathy and is a monstrous looking vampire. I mentioned the aesthetics and the effects. The most jarring aesthetic was seeing the Master’s House (why he has both a house and lives in a cave system is unanswered). It is clearly opulent from the exterior (and an establishing shot). Inside it is like an industrial version of H R Geiger with a touch of boneyard, and looks like the inside of a Haunt. It jarred. As for the effects, the Master looks quite good but, for instance, his ears look overtly rubbery and this is simply down to doing effects on budget. I was also struck that one blood spurt, from a gunshot, looked great and seemed to be practical, where for another they used cgi and it looked as awful as cgi blood spurts tend to.
Michael Paré is great as the aging vigilante, managing to add to the character with little more than some stereotyped character background but some of the performances were stagey. The film seemed well photographed and digitally crisp, thus the grindhouse film damage effects seemed somewhat out of place – I understand the point, but less defined photography would have worked better with the aesthetic. The film, as mentioned, didn’t outstay its welcome but the story felt short and, whilst it reached a conclusion for the immediate story, it felt like it was missing a chunk off the end – that being said I do also recognise it gave a 'to be continued' and would like to see part 2. 6 out of 10 is a generous score for a brave effort with heart, where the heart draws it above the flaws.
The imdb page is here.
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
This is a fairly short feature coming in at 75 minutes and, whilst it doesn’t outstay its welcome, it is in many respects too short. There are two primary stories that overlap and then converge. For a budget piece they do pretty well with effects, but veer off in places and the aesthetic choices sometimes seem odd.
 |
| Siren's lure |
It starts, however, in the middle ages, one guesses. A woman (Emily Grace Turner) narrates as we see her by a castle. She seems carefree and as a warrior enters she beckons him and moves ahead of him, just out of reach luring him towards her. Her narration suggests that her role is to lure men for her Master (Tony Jackson); she rings a bell as she lures him and then gets to a place where the Master grabs him from the shadows. The set up reminded me, as I watched, of the luring the girls were forced to do in Requiem for a Vampire. She says she is a part of a sisterhood able to flame desire in men – not totally stated but suggested later they are sirens – the film then cuts to the present and another member of the Sisterhood, Tori (Samantha Kruse), in the woods.
 |
| Michael Paré as Gabriel |
A man, Gabriel (Michael Paré, Sicilian Vampire, Blubberella, BloodRayne 3: The Third Reich, BloodRayne & BloodRayne II: deliverance), has met a female cop and is asking for a file on a murderer and rapist whose case was recently dismissed in court. She resists at first, more to protect Gabriel, who is not getting any younger. It is clear that he is a vigilante and eventually she concedes and gives him the file. We cut to a bar and he is having a drink, the camera searches out the patrons and one is a man playing pool on his own. Gabriel sees a woman come in and offers to buy her a drink (her reaction is an aggressive no rather than assertive, veering on slanderous despite his polite demeanour and language, and begged the question of what they were trying to communicate with the scene). The pool player leaves and he follows, cocking his gun when he gets outside…
 |
| sunlight gear |
Out in the woods a painter, Percival (Joseph Camilleri), is sketching a model when he hears a gunshot. Duty calls he says to the unseen model. He tracks through the woods, finding Tori and asks if she heard the shot, which she didn’t. He then directs her towards the (assumed) hunter. She puts a tape, labelled Siren Songs (which is an AOR track, in reality), in a ghetto blaster, puts on a dress and goes lure him. The hunter doesn’t seem that interested, at first, until she gets her boobs out. He then follows and is lured down a hidden mine shaft. Percival, in the meantime, has got the Master from nearby caves. Getting to the victim means going outside and so he wears gear against the sun – though the German war rig, with back mounted respirator, was a strange aesthetic choice in costume design.
 |
| Emily Whitcomb as Natalie |
We then meet Natalie (Emily Whitcomb), on the phone with her grandpa, who has sent her grandma’s cross for her birthday. She has to pay for his medication that day and gets an envelope from under her mattress but it is empty. She goes through to her roommate and accuses the roomies’ boyfriend of stealing the money – he has form, he once stole her debit card and she had to close her current account as a result, hence the cash stash. The boyfriend comes back, has a go at Natalie (as a sidebar, the roomie is black and he talks about Natalie’s privilege as an excuse for stealing from her, but he presents white and I was a tad unsure as to what they were trying to do with the dialogue; whether satirical, comedic or something else) and then clocks her on the head, knocking her out.
 |
| Percival and Tori |
She comes round to a knock on the door. It is Tori – she and Percival have been sent to find a corrupt and female victim and one assumes they came there looking for roomie, who is a sex worker to feed her and boyfriend’s drug habits. Desperate for money, and told that she will only have to strip, Natalie reluctantly agrees to go with her and, as soon as she is in the car, is knocked out with gas. I don’t really want to say much more but she ends up being given to the Master, turning and crossing paths with Gabriel…
 |
| industrial Geiger |
The lore is pretty simple: consecrated religious icons hurt, sunlight is an issue and a bite turns. The Master apparently has some level of telepathy and is a monstrous looking vampire. I mentioned the aesthetics and the effects. The most jarring aesthetic was seeing the Master’s House (why he has both a house and lives in a cave system is unanswered). It is clearly opulent from the exterior (and an establishing shot). Inside it is like an industrial version of H R Geiger with a touch of boneyard, and looks like the inside of a Haunt. It jarred. As for the effects, the Master looks quite good but, for instance, his ears look overtly rubbery and this is simply down to doing effects on budget. I was also struck that one blood spurt, from a gunshot, looked great and seemed to be practical, where for another they used cgi and it looked as awful as cgi blood spurts tend to.
 |
| Tony Jackson as the Master |
Michael Paré is great as the aging vigilante, managing to add to the character with little more than some stereotyped character background but some of the performances were stagey. The film seemed well photographed and digitally crisp, thus the grindhouse film damage effects seemed somewhat out of place – I understand the point, but less defined photography would have worked better with the aesthetic. The film, as mentioned, didn’t outstay its welcome but the story felt short and, whilst it reached a conclusion for the immediate story, it felt like it was missing a chunk off the end – that being said I do also recognise it gave a 'to be continued' and would like to see part 2. 6 out of 10 is a generous score for a brave effort with heart, where the heart draws it above the flaws.
The imdb page is here.
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US
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