Welcome, one and all, to "Tales of the Longbox" here on Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a film from 1996. That movie is "Vampirella".
Now, I don't know a whole lot about the character of Vampirella. Like, I don't know her origin story, I don't know what her powers are, I don't know the basic stuff about the character. What I can tell you about the character is that she started off way back in 1969 under Warren Publishing. And when that publishing company went bankrupt in 1983, she then moved over to Harris Publications. Although they didn't do any comics of her up until 1991. And the character stayed with that publication right up until around 2010 before Dynamite Entertainment acquired the rights to make Vampirella comics. And to this day, she has remained with that publication company. So, out of all the independent characters that hasn't been tied down to Marvel or DC, Vampirella has mostly had a healthy career throughout her existence.
Now, while I haven't read any Vampirella comics, I still wanted to give this character some limelight. And I wanted to see if there were any movies that featured this character that were worth checking out. And the first thing I found was this movie on YouTube. So, I'm gonna be watching that tonight. Now, much like the character herself, I don't know very much about this movie. And upon doing the scant bit of research on this thing, I did find out one thing about it, which was the person who directed it. The director goes by the name of Jim Wynorski. Some of you may happen to recall, a little while back, I did review another movie of his that he wrote and directed, which was "Chopping Mall". And I really enjoyed "Chopping Mall" for all of it's cheesy B movie gloriness.
So, I have pretty high hopes that he'll be able to pull off something good here, too. But I could also see this movie being a massive disappointment. However, I'm still gonna hold out hopes that this movie will be pretty good. So the only way I'm gonna find out how good or bad this movie could possibly be, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Vampirella".
10 minutes later
You know, guys...the acting in this movie started off kinda shit. But already, it's beginning to get painful to listen to. And if this is the kind of acting that I have to get use to for the next hour and 10 minutes, then it's going be a torturous hour and 10 minutes to get through. I fear I may be in for a painful experience...
4 minutes later
OK, I need to ask this. Why does Vampirella's costume in this movie look so cheap? It seriously looks like somebody took a two piece swimsuit and tried to stitch it together to make the costume look genuine. But it doesn't. It honestly looks terrible, and I gotta look at this shitty costume for the next hour or so.
13 minutes later
You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but this rock music that's playing right now is shit. Also doesn't help that Vlad's singing is even worse. I'm genuinely hoping that this movie's going to get better soon, but I fear that I may be asking for too much.
9 minutes later
Wait, so even though Adam put on some special-looking cuffs on Vlad that's able to keep him in human form, he was still able to use his powers by making the driver fall asleep, and has now broken free from his cuffs. So what the fuck was the purpose of keeping Vlad cuffed if he was going to break out anyways? Guys, this movie's writing is becoming stupider with each passing minute, and I fear it's not going to get any better from here.
14 minutes later
So...this highly advanced sun gun that's able to pierce through a vampire's skin...is just a huge flashlight? Seriously?! I was expecting something better, not a fucking flashlight! I understand's that it's a prototype weapon, but if that's all it is, then that is a huge letdown in and of itself, guys.
19 minutes later
You know, guys, I really wish I had more to say about this movie, but I don't. It's so fucking boring that I am almost struggling to stay the fuck awake. Thankfully, there's a little more than 15 minutes left in this movie. I kinda hope something interesting will happen during those 15 minutes, but, at this point, I strongly doubt it.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Vampirella". Thank Christ, this thing is fucking over. Let me shut this garbage off...OK. Well...I was expecting something better from this movie, but I ended up getting a boring pile of shit.
Let's just get into the writing, shall we? As I stated at the start of this, I didn't really know a whole lot about the character of Vampirella. And I wanted to avoid looking into her powers from online sources, because I wanted to see if this movie was gonna be a good introduction to the character. I went into it blind, like I do with every other movie I cover for this series. Now, I don't know how much of this movie changed her backstory, but I will say that what does here kinda works. At least, I'm going to assume it's sticking true to who the character is, in terms of her backstory. However, I'm also going to assume that she was written far better in the comics than she was in this movie, because her character in this movie feels completely lifeless. It's not just her, either. Just about every other character in this movie is written to be completely bland and one dimensional. Part of that has to go to the acting, which I'll get to in a bit. But anyway, every character in this movie is written to have one type of personality, and that's it. You are either Vlad or any of the vampires that went with him to Earth, you are Adam Van Helsing (and no, I'm not kidding about that name either) who has almost no personality to speak of. And then you have Vampirella, who's character could've been interesting, if she was written better and didn't have the personality of dried paint. And that's really the biggest problem with this film is that every character feels so bland and generic that you are not going to care about ANY of them. OK yes, we do have a decent backstory on Vampirella in this movie. I just wish her character had more to work with. Her motivation throughout the entire movie is to find Vlad and his vampires and kill them because Vlad killed her stepfather on the planet Drakulon. And that's all fine and dandy, but I really did not care about this character, because she just feels like a bland vampiress, which is not surprising considering that, as I just stated, every other vampire has no personality to them. The closest to personality would have to be Vlad, but even he sorta falls into this category of bland, one dimensional character development. And as for Adam, the only thing we learn about him is that his father was turned into a vampire by Vlad when he and his other vampires came to Earth, and that Adam had no choice but to kill his father, which was something that his father wanted to do, because he didn't want to join up with Vlad's group when they decided to takeover Earth by turning everyone into vampires. So, Adam does end up killing him. And I probably would care about him, if again, his character was actually somewhat interesting. Which it wasn't. And I totally understand that I'm beating a dead horse by talking about how bland the characters are, but guys, I'm gonna keep beating this horse until filmmakers actually start giving a shit about writing good characters. And I mentioned earlier that this was written by Jim Wynorski, who also wrote and directed "Chopping Mall". And while the characters in that movie were mostly stereotypes, it actually worked because you were there to see the characters get killed off by the Killbots. Here though, that's not the case. There is almost no value or interest in these characters, and you're not going to care about any of them by the time that this movie is over.
I did learn one thing from this movie, though. And that is that putting shackles or handcuffs on vampires is fucking worthless. Which might not sound like a surprise, but let me explain further, because there are several examples I'm gonna be bringing up. We get about a 5 or 6 minute prologue in the beginning of the movie, where it takes place on the planet Drakulon. So we see Vlad in handcuffs as he's being escorted to the main chamber where Vamirella's stepfather and his council were going to pass judgement on him. And when Vlad is given a chance to speak, he suddenly breaks his handcuffs and let's his vampires come in the room and kill them all with their guns. My question is that if Vlad can easily break these handcuffs, why didn't he do this beforehand when the guards came into his cell? Because if he did that, then Vlad's vampires would've disguised themselves as the guards and they would've been the ones escorting him to the chambers. I think it would've made more sense than just being escorted by regular guards into the chambers before Vlad broke free from his shackles. But that's just a minor thing. Another example I want to bring up is when after Adam and Operation PURGE capture Vlad and Vampirella. They are both put into different prison vans as they are being escorted to headquarters. Now, I should mention that the cuffs that are put onto Vlad, by Adam, are to keep Vlad in his human form. OK. So...why exactly does Vlad still have his powers? I say this, because Vlad was still able to hypnotize the driver to make him fall asleep and thus cause a car crash, killing two police motorcyclists, and everyone else in the van, save for Adam. Did Adam, or anyone else in Operation PURGE even think that far ahead to go "You know, maybe we should keep the lights on him, so that way he doesn't do any weird shit?" Because it would've been much easier to keep Vlad at bay, so that way he wouldn't be able to pull off some weird shit, such as hypnotizing the driver to make him fall asleep. But no, Vlad ends up getting away anyways. So, the whole idea of putting handcuffs on Vlad to keep him in his human form was a fucking stupid idea in the first place. One other example I want to bring up comes in way late towards the end of the film. So, Vampirella ends up getting captured and is thrown into a cell with Adam. She has her wristband getting taken away, because it's filled with small bottles of blood serum that's suppose to keep her in control from becoming a full-on vampire. But because she doesn't have her blood serum, she's on the verge of becoming a full-on vampire. And because of this predicament, she decides to let Adam shackle her arms, so that way it can give Adam some time to get away. And she also states that these shackles are strong enough to hold her. First of all, and this is just a minor thing, the shackles look really fake. But that's just more of a prop issue than anything else. But anyways, those shackles that were suppose to be strong enough to hold her? Guess what? Big spoiler here: She actually ends up breaking the shackles before she fully goes full-on vampire mode to attack Adam! So...yeah, that's the one thing I learned from this movie. Shackling a vampire is fucking worthless, because they'll just end up breaking it anyways.
Beyond that issue, our story here could've been great, if we actually had better written characters that we could care about. But this movie ended up failing to do that. So, what about the acting? Well, I commented at the start of this thing that the acting was a little bit painful. And guess what? It did not end up getting any better. The acting from, almost, the entire cast was complete shit. The only actor who seemed to be trying was Roger Daltrey as our main villain, Vlad. He was trying desperately to make his character work, and he ALMOST succeeds. I say 'almost', because he even sorta phones it in at times. Especially his god-awful singing, but that's just more attributed to the one song in this entire soundtrack, which I'll talk about in a bit. But sticking to the acting for a moment, everyone else just phoned it in. Nobody else turned in a showing that I would say is halfway decent. And that includes our actress playing Vampirella. She sounds so wooden, that it actually makes the character so boring to watch in this movie. But then again, as I've stated before in the past, you can only do so much with a script that's written kinda like shit. So you shouldn't expect the actors to perform miracles with it. And this movie is no exception. So, the acting is mostly terrible, save for maybe Roger Daltrey's performance as Vlad.
I want to talk about costuming. Specifically, I want to talk about Vampirella's costume in this movie. If you ever get a chance to look up images of Vampirella on the internet, you'll probably notice that her costume is a bit more...revealing, shall we say. Well, they obviously changed that costume to something different in this movie. Now, I am not going to entirely blame the filmmakers on this change, because I can kinda see why they needed to do that. Mainly because, I can kinda see that it would be difficult for any actress to put on that original costume and not risk having any of their nipples popping out of it during filming. So that much I can understand. However...why exactly does the costume in this movie look like it was bought out from a really cheap clothing store? Because that's honestly what I see when I see this costume. It looks like somebody in the costuming department bought a $25 dollar two piece leather swimsuit and decided to stitch it together so that you can have something that looks kinda like a Vampirella costume. Actually no, this thing looks more like a reverse Wonder Woman costume, because the costuming on her lower area has a symbol that looks very similar to Wonder Woman's. At least, to me, it does. Now, while I don't have any figures for this movie's budget, I'm going to assume that this movie was filmed on a low budget. So you might be thinking that they didn't have the resources to find a decent-looking costume for Vampirella because of it's supposed low budget. Well, I call bullshit on that. Because I remember watching another superhero film such as "Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.", and the costuming on Kabukiman looked great, even with that film's low budget. But, then again, Troma is known for making low budget films, and even they can get pretty good-looking costumes for their films. In this movie, not so much. The costume looks like cheap-looking shit, and it stands out in a rather bad way. I can also say that the sun blocking costumes that a pair of our vampires wear in this movie also look like shit. So yeah, costuming here leaves a lot to be desired.
As for special effects, well...it varies quite a bit. In terms of the makeup effects, they're OK. Nothing about that looks overly bad. When they they start to become vampires, such as the case with Vampirella and Vlad, they look pretty good. Blood effects, however, are rather questionable. Because on a couple of occasions, after a vampire bites it's victim, you don't always get to see the blood pouring out of the victim's bite mark. Now when you do get to see a lot of practical blood, it looks really good. But on those occasions when you don't, all you see on the vampires after they bite their victims are just dried paint around their lips, and that looks kinda like shit. Speaking of looking like shit, the bat transformations also look really bad. And those bat transformations only occur whenever you see either Vlad or Vampirella turn into a bat when they are leaving a scene. And it looks so bad, to a point where it can almost be seen as just laughably bad. I can also say that some of the props in this movie, such as the pair of shackles Vampirella wears towards the end of the film look rather fake, and the prototype sun gun looks fucking chunky as hell. But otherwise, special effects in this movie are very questionable at best.
Camerawork here is pretty good. Lighting is lit pretty well, even in areas that are filmed in the dark. Sound-mix here is OK. Our score here is decent. There is one song, however, that I need to comment on. I pointed this out earlier, and it's the song that played whenever Vlad was singing at Las Vegas. At two points, you get to hear this really shitty mid-90's rock music play as Vlad was singing this song. Now, while I can say that Roger Daltrey turned in an OK showing in this movie, he probably shouldn't have been asked to sing, because his singing was just terrible. Now, I don't know if it was because the lyrics were shit, or the band that was playing this song was just a really shitty rock band. But either way, it was just terrible to listen to. If you ever want to watch this movie for whatever reason, listen to the song yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Unless if you're really into god awful mid-90's rock music, then you're probably going to despise this song.
So overall, guys, am I able to recommend "Vampirella"? No. I really can't, unless if you have a morbid curiosity. Otherwise, your best bet, if you want to get into the Vampirella universe, is to go read any of the books. Again, while I haven't read any of the comics involving this character, I'm going to take a bet here and say that they're a hell of a lot better than what was in this movie. This movie is boring as shit, and I really can't recommend it unless if you either have a morbid curiosity like I did, or if you are already a fan of the character and you want to see what a live-action movie can do with her, then you can go right ahead and check it out. It's on YouTube, at least at the time that I'm writing this review. Also, I should mention that the version I watched automatically comes with Spanish subtitles. Which didn't really bother me, personally, because the movie's audio was the English version. So as long as you're able to look past that, you can also watch the movie with no problems. But for everyone else, there is no reason for you to watch this thing. As I stated a moment ago, your best bet is to read any of the comics. They're probably a lot better than what was in this movie. Now...seeing as how Jim Wynorski's name was attached to this stupid thing, and how I referenced "Chopping Mall" earlier, I'm gonna go see if "Chopping Mall" is still up on YouTube. Because that is a better movie that Jim Wynorski made, especially when compared to this thing. So, I'm gonna go watch that after I'm done putting this review together.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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