Last night after other plans fell through, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
spidersweb and I were feeling adventurous ... or masochistic, however you prefer to view it. In short, together we tootled over to the new Rave theater in East Ridge, where we caught a 4:40 showing of BloodRayne. Pity us, for we are morons.
First, the disclaimers: (a). I knew it was a Uwe Boll movie when I went into this, and (b). I'd intended to smuggle a flask of something with an appropriately high proof rating, but I forgot. But we were bored, andspidersweb (who was driving) had never -- in person -- sat through a Uwe Boll movie. Hey, that deranged brain-cell-assassin has caused me hours of aesthetic horror, and misery loves company.
So we went.
[This review is going to be spoiler-laden. Read at your own risk.]
Because there is no greater fun I can poke at this movie than to just tell you what happens in it.
BloodRayne: Fish in a Barrel
In some indiscriminate, pseudo-medieval, hypothetically eastern-European small town ... our story begins. Three traveling heroes -- Vladimir [Michael Madsen], Sebastian [Matt Davis], and Katarin [Michelle Rodriguez] -- stop at an espresso bar for a pick-me-up and a bit of information. There, they spend their very last dime paying for the information, leaving them so little money left over that they cannot even afford contractions1.
According to their sources, there has been an "incident" at a carnival, and it bears investigating on behalf of the world's most ineffective powerful secret organization -- though calling it a "powerful secret organization" is like talking about the "Holy Roman Empire," if you history majors out there get what I'm sayin'.2
At any rate, on the blunted, rusty, back-edge of bad 1980s fashion, our paranormal investigators roam the land in their retro mullets and frilly shirts. They spend a great deal of time on horseback, while a helicopter follows them around -- blaring the goofiest musical score you've ever heard and only intermittently keeping its shadow out of frame.
Cut scene: Elrich, The Aristocratic Nancy-Pants of Exposition [read: Billy Zane, wearing a wig that is easily the scariest thing to appear in this film], serves up a minute and a half of corny exposition as he dictates a letter to his daughter [Katarin]. Immediately before we are returned to our story-in-progress, Elrich gives the camera a flash of his nape -- and we see two neatly healed puncture wounds. Oh well. Still hott.
Back on the pony again -- we see sad circus refugee and half-breed vampire Rayne [Kristanna Loken], who is having a nervous breakdown somewhere in the woods, where her inner turmoil is indicated by oddball flashbacks of blood, gore, and her mother being murdered by her rapist vampire father. She pulls herself together long enough to rescue a wagon-full of remarkably laid-back family of almost-vampire-victims, and in turn is sneaked into the city(?). Somehow or another she is spotted by The Fortune Teller of Exposition, who informs Rayne in no uncertain terms that her murdering rapist vampire father is, in fact, the supernatural head honcho 'round these here parts; and Rayne has no hope whatsoever of exacting any satisfactory vengeance. For that matter, she can probably forget about all that back child support, too. Alas.
However, as a matter of narrative imperative, if Rayne can get her hands on a very special "Eye" -- hidden in a monastery, behind a series of highly unlikely traps and a guarded by a mutant monk with a spiked club -- then she might have a chance to take Daddy down. As an aside: her father -- Kagan -- is played by Ben Kingsley, who must need a new swimming pool at his summer home or something. Seriously: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Maybe he lost a bet, or Uwe got him drunk and slipped him a roofie.
Anyhow. Off to the monastery we go.
Rayne makes puppy-dog eyes at the monks and they offer her shelter for the night. As soon as everyone's gone to bed she sneaks down to the dungeon in herflimsy negligee unnecessarily tight and skimpy battle outfit. There, she fights with the monk mutant, sneaks into the booby-trapped treasure chamber, and "absorbs" the eye -- which turns out to be a real eyeball. It belonged to a vampire so powerful that he had to be dissected and his innards sent in different directions across the land, lest he reassemble and wreak havoc.
We learn this when Rayne gets caught by The Monks of Exposition ... immediately before vampire thralls overwhelm the monastery and kill pretty much everyone ... except Rayne, of course -- and the original Heroes Three, who have caught up to her there, not that it does any of them any good. She gets captured by her father's right hand man, and winds up slung over the back of a horse for a long, bumpy ride. At this point, I am very confused as to whether or not she can be out in sunlight, but it doesn't really matter. Any stabs at mentally constructing continuity for this film are doomed to hideous failure, so you might as well let it go.
So. Enter Meat Loaf. That's right: Meat. Fucking. Loaf. Mr. Loaf will be your hyper-decadent vampire dressed like Amadeus tonight. Please check your reality at the door of his lair, and one of the naked women with blood on her nipples will be with you shortly. A bunch of predictable - yet inexplicably hard to follow - action ensues. The end result: Rayne is "captured" by the Heroes Three, who take her to the headquarters of the Powerful Secret Organization.
The funny thing about this PSO is that it's completely useless. There are half a dozen other branches around the world, and apparently they've all been decimated by vampires. It's presented as a daily occurrence. It's very, "Please pass the butter. And did you hear that the PSO castle in Rome was overrun by vampires last night? Oh yes, everyone's dead. It was gruesome. There was blood everywhere. Hey Fred, stop hogging the salt, would ya? I'm gettin' goiter over here."
Moving right along ...
Rayne ingratiates herself to the PSO, partly by making them feel sorry for her (which works on Vladimir)-- and partly by stripping them down, pinning them against a cast iron prison door, and screwing them silly (which works smashingly well on Sebastian). Alas, Rayne's charm repertoire runs out before she can suck up to Katarin3, who goes on quietly plotting against her.
Oh let's see. What else happens? Oh yes. Billy Zane delivers the only funny and effective lines. Ben Kingsley holds very, very still and wears a leftover Gary Oldman wig from Dracula. Sebastian makes a big show of presenting Rayne with new clothes, and either she (a). never wears them or (b). they look just like her old clothes. I couldn't tell.
And Michael Madsen hangs around with his shirt open and fails to run. A lot. Yes, his fastest pace in this movie is a slow jog -- I mean nothing motivates this man to hoof it. Mass murder? He ambles. Invading vampire thralls? He shuffles. His entire affiliate organization on the cusp of being annihilated? He lopes.
So as more and more PSO members bite the dust in an off-handed fashion, one wonders exactly how the society has managed to last this long with such negligibly hardy members. In fact, eventually our Heroes Three (minus the treacherous Katarin, but plus Rayne) leave the compound and learn -- via dying monk-o-gram -- that they are all that remains of the supa-sekrit society.
How convenient.
Rayne decides to leave the two guys behind because everyone she gets close to winds up getting killed (NOW she notices?), and she takes off in search of the complementary heart to match her vampire eyeball talisman. With the heart and the eyeball, there's an even better chance that she can successfully take on Daddy. And lucky for Rayne, in another coup of narrative convenience the heart is located in a little box down at the bottom of a pond underneath the PSO headquarters (you liking all these prepositions? They're cracking me up) which is freshly devoid of a whole lot of PSO members who have pulses. But then there's Katarin, who has led a tiny contingent of stragglers down to the pond, with intent to recover the heart -- because wouldn't you figure, she's known it was there all along -- so she can bring it to her father (vampire Billy Zane, remember?).
In other news, Rayne also magically knows that the heart is down there too. Go fig.
Rayne gets -- and eats? absorbs? -- the heart, and then goes off to challenge her father. Daddy throws her in the dungeon and swipes her little heart box, and shortly thereafter, Vladimir and Sebastian deliberately get themselves nabbed by the vampire thralls in order to join Rayne inside ... and here, for the umpteenth time in this film, I was reminded that Rayne's abilities are rather inconsistent.
She kicks ass. Takes names. Gets captured repeatedly. Consistently fails to escape. Can't fight her way out of a paper bag at some times, and wipes out legions of vampire thralls at others ... but figures she'll take down the baddest vamp in the land with no problem. Sadly, the baddest vamp in the land has her dragged up into his court-type area and chains her down to a stereotypical sacrifice-looking table. Silly man forgot to look in the heart box, though. Why? Why has no one ever thought to look down into the little heart box? It wasn't locked, for crying out loud.
Meanwhile, back at the dungeon, Vladimir and Sebastian blow approximately seven seconds executing the world's easiest, most obvious escape. It was an exit strategy that consisted of "You distract the guard and I'll bash him on the head." Wow, you boys are sharp. No wonder you're the sole remaining members of the PSO.
And now we have the big final boss fight -- as all movies based upon video games must. Vladimir and Sebastian make their way to the court-type area and commence ass-kicking, while Rayne wiggles and fusses in the stirrups at the sacrificial table. Eventually she's able to bust free and join in the ass-kicking fray, which concludes in the world's most predictable manner. [SPOILER, SPOILER FOR GOD'S SAKE!] Everybody dies except for her.
* * * * *
Wow. Well. What does one say about a movie like this? It was bad, yes -- hideously bad. Noxiously bad. Even, sometimes, entertainingly bad. Bafflingly bad, considering the cast. And even more baffling -- I seem to have left this movie with a fangirlie squee-on for Michael Masden. Huh? How the hell did that happen? He didn't really do anything except mosey around in a mullet! The mind, it boggles.
The mind also boggles at Uwe Boll, who people are still throwing money at in order for him to produce more movies like this. Did we not learn our lesson from House of the Dead? Has Alone in the Dark taught us nothing? Granted, I did shell out matinee money for this travesty, and I even conned a buddy into coming with me ... but I did it for YOU people. That's right. For YOU. I have taken one for the team yet again, and I hope that my suffering was not for naught.
Save yourselves! Stay home.
~w_w~
1 Sample dialogue: "How are you today? Do you have any information for us? We are going into town. If you can not help us, we will just be on our way." "I am sorry. I can not give you what you are looking for." "Then we will be on our way, if you do not mind." "It is no problem. I will catch up to you later."
2 For those of you who regularly draw respectable paychecks because you didn't spend 4 years studying the liberal arts: The Holy Roman Empire is often discussed as being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Thank you. Carry on.
3 Who hands-down earns this year's award for World's Most Unlikely and Unrecognizable Non-English Accent.
spidersweb and I were feeling adventurous ... or masochistic, however you prefer to view it. In short, together we tootled over to the new Rave theater in East Ridge, where we caught a 4:40 showing of BloodRayne. Pity us, for we are morons.First, the disclaimers: (a). I knew it was a Uwe Boll movie when I went into this, and (b). I'd intended to smuggle a flask of something with an appropriately high proof rating, but I forgot. But we were bored, and
spidersweb (who was driving) had never -- in person -- sat through a Uwe Boll movie. Hey, that deranged brain-cell-assassin has caused me hours of aesthetic horror, and misery loves company.So we went.
[This review is going to be spoiler-laden. Read at your own risk.]
Because there is no greater fun I can poke at this movie than to just tell you what happens in it.
BloodRayne: Fish in a Barrel
In some indiscriminate, pseudo-medieval, hypothetically eastern-European small town ... our story begins. Three traveling heroes -- Vladimir [Michael Madsen], Sebastian [Matt Davis], and Katarin [Michelle Rodriguez] -- stop at an espresso bar for a pick-me-up and a bit of information. There, they spend their very last dime paying for the information, leaving them so little money left over that they cannot even afford contractions1.
According to their sources, there has been an "incident" at a carnival, and it bears investigating on behalf of the world's most ineffective powerful secret organization -- though calling it a "powerful secret organization" is like talking about the "Holy Roman Empire," if you history majors out there get what I'm sayin'.2
At any rate, on the blunted, rusty, back-edge of bad 1980s fashion, our paranormal investigators roam the land in their retro mullets and frilly shirts. They spend a great deal of time on horseback, while a helicopter follows them around -- blaring the goofiest musical score you've ever heard and only intermittently keeping its shadow out of frame.
Cut scene: Elrich, The Aristocratic Nancy-Pants of Exposition [read: Billy Zane, wearing a wig that is easily the scariest thing to appear in this film], serves up a minute and a half of corny exposition as he dictates a letter to his daughter [Katarin]. Immediately before we are returned to our story-in-progress, Elrich gives the camera a flash of his nape -- and we see two neatly healed puncture wounds. Oh well. Still hott.
Back on the pony again -- we see sad circus refugee and half-breed vampire Rayne [Kristanna Loken], who is having a nervous breakdown somewhere in the woods, where her inner turmoil is indicated by oddball flashbacks of blood, gore, and her mother being murdered by her rapist vampire father. She pulls herself together long enough to rescue a wagon-full of remarkably laid-back family of almost-vampire-victims, and in turn is sneaked into the city(?). Somehow or another she is spotted by The Fortune Teller of Exposition, who informs Rayne in no uncertain terms that her murdering rapist vampire father is, in fact, the supernatural head honcho 'round these here parts; and Rayne has no hope whatsoever of exacting any satisfactory vengeance. For that matter, she can probably forget about all that back child support, too. Alas.
However, as a matter of narrative imperative, if Rayne can get her hands on a very special "Eye" -- hidden in a monastery, behind a series of highly unlikely traps and a guarded by a mutant monk with a spiked club -- then she might have a chance to take Daddy down. As an aside: her father -- Kagan -- is played by Ben Kingsley, who must need a new swimming pool at his summer home or something. Seriously: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Maybe he lost a bet, or Uwe got him drunk and slipped him a roofie.
Anyhow. Off to the monastery we go.
Rayne makes puppy-dog eyes at the monks and they offer her shelter for the night. As soon as everyone's gone to bed she sneaks down to the dungeon in her
We learn this when Rayne gets caught by The Monks of Exposition ... immediately before vampire thralls overwhelm the monastery and kill pretty much everyone ... except Rayne, of course -- and the original Heroes Three, who have caught up to her there, not that it does any of them any good. She gets captured by her father's right hand man, and winds up slung over the back of a horse for a long, bumpy ride. At this point, I am very confused as to whether or not she can be out in sunlight, but it doesn't really matter. Any stabs at mentally constructing continuity for this film are doomed to hideous failure, so you might as well let it go.
So. Enter Meat Loaf. That's right: Meat. Fucking. Loaf. Mr. Loaf will be your hyper-decadent vampire dressed like Amadeus tonight. Please check your reality at the door of his lair, and one of the naked women with blood on her nipples will be with you shortly. A bunch of predictable - yet inexplicably hard to follow - action ensues. The end result: Rayne is "captured" by the Heroes Three, who take her to the headquarters of the Powerful Secret Organization.
The funny thing about this PSO is that it's completely useless. There are half a dozen other branches around the world, and apparently they've all been decimated by vampires. It's presented as a daily occurrence. It's very, "Please pass the butter. And did you hear that the PSO castle in Rome was overrun by vampires last night? Oh yes, everyone's dead. It was gruesome. There was blood everywhere. Hey Fred, stop hogging the salt, would ya? I'm gettin' goiter over here."
Moving right along ...
Rayne ingratiates herself to the PSO, partly by making them feel sorry for her (which works on Vladimir)-- and partly by stripping them down, pinning them against a cast iron prison door, and screwing them silly (which works smashingly well on Sebastian). Alas, Rayne's charm repertoire runs out before she can suck up to Katarin3, who goes on quietly plotting against her.
Oh let's see. What else happens? Oh yes. Billy Zane delivers the only funny and effective lines. Ben Kingsley holds very, very still and wears a leftover Gary Oldman wig from Dracula. Sebastian makes a big show of presenting Rayne with new clothes, and either she (a). never wears them or (b). they look just like her old clothes. I couldn't tell.
And Michael Madsen hangs around with his shirt open and fails to run. A lot. Yes, his fastest pace in this movie is a slow jog -- I mean nothing motivates this man to hoof it. Mass murder? He ambles. Invading vampire thralls? He shuffles. His entire affiliate organization on the cusp of being annihilated? He lopes.
So as more and more PSO members bite the dust in an off-handed fashion, one wonders exactly how the society has managed to last this long with such negligibly hardy members. In fact, eventually our Heroes Three (minus the treacherous Katarin, but plus Rayne) leave the compound and learn -- via dying monk-o-gram -- that they are all that remains of the supa-sekrit society.
How convenient.
Rayne decides to leave the two guys behind because everyone she gets close to winds up getting killed (NOW she notices?), and she takes off in search of the complementary heart to match her vampire eyeball talisman. With the heart and the eyeball, there's an even better chance that she can successfully take on Daddy. And lucky for Rayne, in another coup of narrative convenience the heart is located in a little box down at the bottom of a pond underneath the PSO headquarters (you liking all these prepositions? They're cracking me up) which is freshly devoid of a whole lot of PSO members who have pulses. But then there's Katarin, who has led a tiny contingent of stragglers down to the pond, with intent to recover the heart -- because wouldn't you figure, she's known it was there all along -- so she can bring it to her father (vampire Billy Zane, remember?).
In other news, Rayne also magically knows that the heart is down there too. Go fig.
Rayne gets -- and eats? absorbs? -- the heart, and then goes off to challenge her father. Daddy throws her in the dungeon and swipes her little heart box, and shortly thereafter, Vladimir and Sebastian deliberately get themselves nabbed by the vampire thralls in order to join Rayne inside ... and here, for the umpteenth time in this film, I was reminded that Rayne's abilities are rather inconsistent.
She kicks ass. Takes names. Gets captured repeatedly. Consistently fails to escape. Can't fight her way out of a paper bag at some times, and wipes out legions of vampire thralls at others ... but figures she'll take down the baddest vamp in the land with no problem. Sadly, the baddest vamp in the land has her dragged up into his court-type area and chains her down to a stereotypical sacrifice-looking table. Silly man forgot to look in the heart box, though. Why? Why has no one ever thought to look down into the little heart box? It wasn't locked, for crying out loud.
Meanwhile, back at the dungeon, Vladimir and Sebastian blow approximately seven seconds executing the world's easiest, most obvious escape. It was an exit strategy that consisted of "You distract the guard and I'll bash him on the head." Wow, you boys are sharp. No wonder you're the sole remaining members of the PSO.
And now we have the big final boss fight -- as all movies based upon video games must. Vladimir and Sebastian make their way to the court-type area and commence ass-kicking, while Rayne wiggles and fusses in the stirrups at the sacrificial table. Eventually she's able to bust free and join in the ass-kicking fray, which concludes in the world's most predictable manner. [SPOILER, SPOILER FOR GOD'S SAKE!] Everybody dies except for her.
* * * * *
Wow. Well. What does one say about a movie like this? It was bad, yes -- hideously bad. Noxiously bad. Even, sometimes, entertainingly bad. Bafflingly bad, considering the cast. And even more baffling -- I seem to have left this movie with a fangirlie squee-on for Michael Masden. Huh? How the hell did that happen? He didn't really do anything except mosey around in a mullet! The mind, it boggles.
The mind also boggles at Uwe Boll, who people are still throwing money at in order for him to produce more movies like this. Did we not learn our lesson from House of the Dead? Has Alone in the Dark taught us nothing? Granted, I did shell out matinee money for this travesty, and I even conned a buddy into coming with me ... but I did it for YOU people. That's right. For YOU. I have taken one for the team yet again, and I hope that my suffering was not for naught.
Save yourselves! Stay home.
~w_w~
1 Sample dialogue: "How are you today? Do you have any information for us? We are going into town. If you can not help us, we will just be on our way." "I am sorry. I can not give you what you are looking for." "Then we will be on our way, if you do not mind." "It is no problem. I will catch up to you later."
2 For those of you who regularly draw respectable paychecks because you didn't spend 4 years studying the liberal arts: The Holy Roman Empire is often discussed as being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Thank you. Carry on.
3 Who hands-down earns this year's award for World's Most Unlikely and Unrecognizable Non-English Accent.
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