Bloodbath

After 40 tries I finally found something worth a 1 star rating, and only that high because the scale does not go any lower. Porn has better acting. This looked like an extra credit project for Walmart training school. The most intelligent line in the entire movie was Guy saying "If it hurts - Scream". My eyes were screaming the entire flick. The whole movie was filmed in somebodies empty apartment and an empty YMCA and the echoes only emphasized the fact that nobody here knew what they were doing. Even the "eye candy" was only lukewarm. Apparently the only actresses they were capable of getting were the ones they were supposed to be offing in the plot. The "expert" swordsmanship of the AAA member was a joke, and the plot... lets just say there is no use even looking for one. The best part of the entire movie was reading the closing credits - unfortunately they came 88 minutes too late to save this stinker. Avoid my mistake and stay away from this - you will be desperately wishing for those lost 88 minutes back.

A couple of cops are called in to investigate some strange goings-on at a local film studio. Apparently, the films they make are just as bad as the film they're in: They feature bad acting, light bondage, and swordplay. (A little something for everyone.) This came in a two-disc, four-movie set called TOO HOT FOR HELL. With a name like BLOODBATH, one might expect a slasher film with a generous helping of gore. Instead, we get something that vaguely resembles a bad marriage of HIGHLANDER and THE X-FILES. (And most of the blood is literally in a bath.) Co-director Dan Speaker adds some badly needed energy when he shows up as special FBI agent Max Zedron--in fact, the action threatens to pick up for a few minutes--but this is a real mishmash of wildly incongruous tones and a skeleton of a plot on which to hang a few well-choreographed sword-fights. There are elements of horror, cop drama, camp, S&M, soft porn, and vampirism, but co-writers Speaker and Dana Fredsti don't really commit to any of them. There is one scene that says it all about this "film" (shot with videotape): In the movie-within-the-movie, two of the actors deliberately act badly; Unfortunately, the rest of the cast must be method actors, because the two seconds of "bad acting" is better than the generally bad acting in the rest of the film. In fact, the movie-within-the-movie would have probably been more interesting to watch.

I think this videotaped movie was made in a community center where they have little kids' acting classes and clown classes and stuff. What a boring set! I was half expecting there to be ballet class in the next room!

Poorly edited and acted, but full of manly renaissance festival mullets and beer gutted heavy handed sword fights! The only semi-decent acting was by the detective lady, and even then, it wasn't very impressive.

So the plot is something like this - a theater group called Countess Productions has been taking in actresses off the streets of Hollywood and using them in their S&M "art" films. Then, they turn the ladies into vampires and have crazy orgy parties and other vampire stuff like that. This werewolf guy (who just says he's a werewolf but never actually turns into one. However, he gets it on with a girl in one scene and we see he is hairy enough as it is and probably wouldn't need a costume anyway!) and some police detectives are investigating unsolved murders and going to these parties and talking to the film directors about what's going on. They drink blood, have sex, sword fight and argue and that's about it. It's kind of amusing to me. I think the cast is full of Dungeons & Dragon guys and strippers.

There is one major goof that I saw, and I'm not good at picking these out, so it was REALLY obvious. At the beginning, the girl going for the audition is aimlessly walking around calling, "hello? anyone here?" over and over. She checks rooms and doors in the hallway and says, "no one's here. where is everybody?" Well, she flings open a door and you can see a mirror in the room that fully shows about 4 guys standing there talking and pointing at stuff. She shuts the door and says, "nobody's here!" It's a hugely obvious mistake and I watched it a few times because I couldn't believe they'd leave it in.

Anyway, I found this movie amusing and you might too.

..thanks for the 'best in show' review. This movie WAS filmed in a local community theater building for 3,000 bucks in 6 days. There WAS a plot, but about a third of it didn't make it on film. Someday I'll write a 'tell all' about the experience...but until then, I'll just enjoy the fact that a movie filmed on video for minimum budget can STILL

be released on DVD. The real scary part was walking into 20/20 Video one day and seeing it on the new releases. The SCARIEST scary part was the the executive producer thought the only REAL way to kill a vampire was if you were a werewolf (who never transformed) and used a magic sword. Someone did WAY too much drugs in his youth...