Budget films about the undead. Vol. 4: Dye drinkers.
The epidemic of vampirism will sooner or later destroy all mankind. The world under the wing of a voracious bat that brought the virus, or sitting in a Gothic castle over a glass of blood. The demand for movies about bloodsucking was, is and will be. Tenth showed that it is possible to skillfully exploit the image of confrontation - "bloodsuckers-people" very successfully for commercial purposes. Take the Warriors of Light, or the Shepherd, but there is one catch, it is that while successful creators will roam the earth, in parallel with filming, a gang of leikas will vegetate on the mountain - creators. Kevin Van Hook is just one of these characters, for more than twenty years, Kevin has been actively churning out poor quality films, with the naive teenage semantic component, I must say behind all the ineptitude of Kevin to more competently distribute the plot time there is one small but weighty plus - kosher visual scenery, that do not say but the detailed bloodletting, torn limbs, and other gore-attributics of maestro Kevin, will not sting more than ever. All very naive, but the main problem, in this case with the "Vampires of the ancient family." Thanks to our CIS-shoe distributors, in the original picture is never fang name SLAYER.
But the reality is that if in the previous picture I saw, mm... the craft of Van Hook, called Voodoo Moon, if the plot was lame, then in terms of rubber corpses and curvatures with fake blood was complete order, and as if to strongly oppress the unfortunate director, it seems unnecessary.
So Van Hook took over the vampire case, and went, Warriors' Waveway with the Undead. It begins with a march of experienced warriors under the leadership of Kasper Van Dean, who had slipped into despondency at the beginning of the zeros, along with him the better known from the clip of the Underworld franchise - a healthy African-American with an inexhaustible pressure of jokes, on racist, by the way, topics. Our brave squad will roll around, either Vietnam, or a third world country, or Mexico, and make epic jokes about his life. The specific purpose of their original mission is not explained by Van Hook. Obviously looking for a place to borrow twenty liters of red paint for action scenes. Suddenly materialized from the bushes of a gang of impregnated Mexicans smeared with scarlet gouache paint, and their mouths protruded painted in yellow false nails. So everything was, in the first minutes the impression finally spoiled, completely poor makeup of the undead. And it is very, very difficult to rank Van Hook antagonists as orthodox vampires. We are essentially watching a herd of sweaty Mexicans in gouache paint attack the hand-to-hand dumb American soldiers of good luck. But all is well.. and no does not end, because the epidemic in the jungle flares up again, and it should be led by the brave blonde, and then at the peak of the epic glory of Van Ding.
It is even amusing to watch Van Hook try to unobtrusively mix in his broth such a thing as the philosophy of the peoples of the world. You'll see non-pre-actors wiggle their lips and talk about the curses of the Maya, but wonder. All this begins to look more like a very funny cabbage, where Kevin mowed his own action movie without straining, at point-blank range shot ready-made locations near the Mexican backyards and in his mustache did not blow. The plot is not in fact, so sketches from the life of Vand Dean, he is suddenly a cardboard hero, completely missing his signature game of the same star paratroopers. But the Afro-poverted well, only because of his jokes and real acting you can not get bored here to death, it is clear that the guy is the only one on the set who tries and enjoys participating in such a hopeless film. And of course, in the film there is a constant lover of selling his burned-out life face of the indigenous inhabitant of Mexican prisons. Danny Trejo, he is like an ornament and a stamp of any low-budget film, his name is more likely out of habit, because they know there are a lot of fans and can swallow a fan base more than enough, digest and ask for more. Trejo in a vampire movie that goes straight to the DVD? Maybe anything and Danny does not try to play off the usual wise life experience, and counting half-time money, brother Rodriguez, flashes for a short period of time and disappears in order to materialize on the site of another similar film. And all more nothing happens, pompous dialogues, characters of warriors wandering through the conditional sultry jungle filmed on a construction wasteland, the agony of victims and extras smeared with paint. This was the journey through Van Hook’s vampire universe. By the way, Kevin has another movie about werewolves.
The subject of vampires, I think, is already ingrained not only in films of category B, but also in mass cinema. It's hard to do anything new about bloodthirsty creatures. This time I looked at a movie like this that I didn’t expect anything from. It's just that I haven't watched any of the original Starz TV movies, so I was interested in comparing it to some extent with SyFy. What happened is described below:
So, we have a vampire thriller / horror Kevin Van Hook "Vampires: The Rebirth of an Ancient Kind". I never tire of saying that the company Lizard loves to invent long and beautiful names and back them with stylish covers. But we understand that we have stumbled upon another TV movie with Kasper Van Ding, where he will again act as a hero of the whole planet.
The plot of the film is as simple as two fingers. We see soldiers who encounter so-called vampires. After some time, a group led by Kasper Van Ding goes to the same place as reinforcements, but he has a slightly different goal - to find his ex-wife, who also does business somewhere on the ground. The wife is in danger, vampires recruit some military, suddenly for a few minutes comes out Danny Trejo - in general, we get a typical such film, woven on long-tested stamps of cheap thrillers.
The location looks like a hot rainforest, which is already a little unusual. Vampires usually walk in the dark, but no, they walk in the sun. What do vampires look like? Minimum makeup, false fangs - in principle, here's the vampire and ready. No special effects were noticed. It's all boring and dull, I want to yawn. Let me remind you that we are watching a movie about vampires in the rainforest, and you want to yawn. This is a paradox.
In fact, the film is quite template and drab. Watching it without distracting yourself is almost impossible. The worst part is that it doesn’t hold anything while watching. What can you do in such a cheap movie? Stupid dialogue, bad special effects, just nonsense. In this film, all this is absent, as the dialogue is written on the knee by muzzling the most famous templates, bad special effects appear at the end of the film for 30 seconds, there is no delirium in the film either. No, well, I like the guns loaded with aspen stakes, but it won't be enough, to be honest. As a result, we have a slick b-movie TV movie, which I can not even recommend to fans like me. There's really nothing to catch here. The plot is a template, there are no special effects, the excitement too.
Crimson rivers — view on the adventure horror "Vampires: Revival of the ancient family
A group of special forces, led by Captain Hawk, goes into the wild jungle to not only save a group of their comrades from vampires, but also to help Dr. Laurie – Hawke’s wife.
Dynamic action horror from the TV company Starz Entertainment, part of the holding of the popular cable channel Starz (series: Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Da Vinci Demons, Camelot, Black Sails, Pillars of the Earth, etc.) In fact, the original name of the film "Fighter", which is most reflected in what we saw, but our licensees for that and ours, they were born in the country of Pushkin, Bryullov, Yesenin and Polonsky, to more poetically and epically approach the translation. The film was shot entirely in Puerto Rico for $2 million. Kevin Van Hook acted here as a director, writer and editor, and the result was quite decent. The charismatic Casper Van Dien looks good as Officer Hawk, and the charming Jennifer O’Dell, who does not undress here, normally played the role of Dr. Lori Williams. There is no nudity, except for the dream of one of the soldiers, where there will be a sparing second mini-scene. And about Danny Trejo, I can say one thing: where the vampires are, there he is.
The blood is whipped with a waterfall, chest cells are torn, throats are chewed, limbs are torn off (not in terms of parties). All this is diluted with beautiful views of nature, unobtrusive humor and scenes of hand-to-hand and "noise" fights, which will be a lot, which, however, does not spoil the impression of what you see. In the course of the action, it may even create the illusion that now Chuck Norris and Michael Dudikoff will jump out of the bushes. There is also a light atmosphere here. At the end, there will be a good makeup of the main ghoul, a happy ending in the final is attached, since these are not gloomy films of early Cronenberg. Watch all those who want to carefree spend time at this TV show, which, however, there is something to see.
Definitely the best horror film in the career of Van Hook, who stuffed his hand exclusively on horror for the channel “Sci Fi Channel”, by the way, engaged in the distribution of this low-budget.
6 out of 10
Such products, at this time, will be collected a huge number. In general, films about bloodsucking and greedy to human flesh unclean freaks, made decently. What we have, this time.
As they say, fashioned, from what was at hand, uncomplicated, sometimes funny low-budget on the vampire theme. Dialogues in it, very harmoniously, are combined with sluggish (but not always) fights and shootouts. On the screen, in sufficient quantity, blood splashes, dismemberments and long teeth are presented. True, this time, the evil spirit, quietly walks around during the day, along the way ravaging the villages, and feeding the peasants. To confront the dark forces, there will be a handful of special forces, armed with sharpened stakes and knives. These fighters, frankly, look more like tourists dressed in military uniforms. Here's the deal. For the main role, Casper Van Dean was invited. I must say that the guy, here, plays better than in the third part of “Star landing”. Although, it goes without saying, by play, I mean some -- some attempts to be persuasive. Perhaps, of the actors, you can also note the attractive person Jennifer O’Dell. And also, big Kevin Grevier. They stood out at least a little from the crowd. The cameraman jokes with the camera, showing very mediocre action scenes. Music is not remembered. At all. And yet, time passes. It goes pretty fast. Nothing more to write about.
As a result, we have an average lousy movie, which, all the same, you can watch to pass an hour and a half of boring leisure. When you see it, you will forget it immediately. So you can take a chance. It is possible (and it would be better) not to take risks. Ball for Van Dean. Ball for Jennifer O'Dell. A point for trying to direct. It's a point for not being bored.