Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

August 11, 2007
Adventures in Bad Sci-Fi – Bloodsuckers
Filed under: Movies, SciFi/Fantasy, bad scifi — duane @ 5:44 pm

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the SciFi Channel. For a sf/fantasy fan like myself, the concept is awesome. Unfortunately, throughout the years the execution has often left a lot to be desired. While one would think I would watch the channel a lot, the truth is I don’t. I haven’t cared for most of their original series, and even those with a premise I liked (such as Eureka) I just haven’t been that compelled to watch. And for every step they take forward, they always take at least one back. For example, it’s cool that they’re showing the new Doctor Who, but then they also show ECW wrestling, which has, as far as I can tell, no connection to scifi, fantasy, or horror.

With that said, one of the things I love about the SciFi Channel is one that I should probably hate: original SciFi Channel movies. These come in two types: mediocre movies that are neither good nor bad, and therefore are incredibly boring (such as Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, which I was going to review after this one, but just wasn’t interesting enough), or they are so incredibly bad that, as the cliché goes, they circle back around to good again. Thus, every Saturday and Sunday (when I remember), I check out the program guide for potentially bad scifi, fantasy, or horror movies.

Bloodsuckers, also known as Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe, is one of these movies. It was written and directed by Matthew Hastings, who, it turns out, also wrote and directed another gem of the scifi trash heap, Decoys (about a sorority of aliens that kill the frat boys they mate with). This movie has all the familiar trappings of a made-for-SciFi-channel movie: relatively unknown cast, cliché-ridden dialogue and story, mostly crappy CGI effects, and TV-style cinematography (ie. lots of closeups, very few long establishing shots) shot onto video. Because these are intended as DVD releases, they are often shot in standard widescreen format (1.85:1), as opposed to TV (1.33:1); of course, this is mostly wasted because so many of the shots are close-ups or two/three shots.

The concept of the movie could have been pretty cool. I love vampires, and I love outer space; putting the two together could have been a chocolate-in-my-peanut-putter moment. Of course, this is a SciFi Channel original, so it isn’t. The basic premise of the film, established through a voice-over narration by main character Damian (not a vampire, btw, despite the name) is that as humans expanded out into space, they discovered that most intelligent life in the universe is vampiric in nature. Like a lot of modern vampire movies, they make a big deal of the fact that these aren’t supernatural vampires, and all the garlic/holy water stuff is useless. When humans came into contact with these vampires, the Vampire Wars began. For the most part, these wars are over, but the vampires are still a menace. This is where Damian and his fellow crew members come in: they are part of Vampire Sanitation, or VSan, paramilitary vampire hunters under the control of the Company, which contracts with the government to provide this service.
Damian is new to this VSan crew, and as can be expected, has many cliche-ridden moments with his commanding office, Captain Churchill, and the other members of the crew:
·    Rosa – stereotypical tough lesbian chick
·    Roman – stereotypical tough redneck dude, friends with Rosa
·    Quintana – stereotypical good vampire chick, loves goth/dominatrix wear, antagonistic relationship to Rosa and Roman
That’s it. Five people on a spaceship with no back up are supposed to clean out vampires from various planets. I know that the Vampire Wars (despite the DVD box title) are supposed to be over, but you’d think they might at least hire a few more people to round out the crew, but that would have required a bigger budget (both in the movie and in real life).
Damian’s first mission with the VSan crew provides even more exposition about the vampires. Apparently there are many different types of vampires. This an interesting, if not entirely original idea. Despite the fact that there are supposed to be all these different types, we only ever see three of them: the Vorhees, the Leatherfaces, and some worm-type vampire that infects a host. You may notice the names of those first two vampire types: they’re allusions to Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Other film allusions include a “final frontier” (Star Trek) reference in the opening narration, the Kenobi System (which contains a Tatooine-like planet), and a line from The Princess Bride.

The cliches continue throughout the first mission. As the crew search for the Vorhees, Churchill tells Damian never to hesitate when attacking vampires. In the ensuing battle, what does Damian do? He hesitates to stab a Vorhee through the heart and has to be saved by Churchill.

After the defeat of the Vorhees, the crew then gets a distress call from Fiona, a cute blonde trapped in a mining colony that has been attacked by another group of vampires. They easily rescue Fiona (wearing the Cardigan-of-the-Future!), but then encounter the Leatherfaces. Although dumber and more primitive than the Vorhees, they travel in very large packs. Churchill and Damian end up over their heads, and in one of the more confusingly inept and uninteresting scenes, Churchill ends up “killed” by the Leatherfaces. Predictably, Rosa and Roman blame Damian for Churchill’s loss, and give him a lot of attitude back on the ship, while Quintana sides with Damian. They escape from the planet with Fiona, and head off to another planet while they wait for orders.
This would be a good time to discuss one of the annoying little quirks of this film: the music. While I’m sure there must have been actual incidental music (although there may not have been; I can’t remember any), much of the music is generic radio stuff, bland pop and rock type stuff. The thing about it is that they all have lyrics to them. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but I’m usually against music in movies having lyrics. On the one had, they tend to distract from the action going on, as I find myself trying to understand the lyrics. On the other hand, if they actually have anything to do with the film, they usually come off extremely cheesy or cliche. Two examples of this are, funnily enough, both by Queen: Flash Gordon and Highlander. Now, in Flash Gordon, Queen’s music is effective because it adds to the cheesiness of what is supposed to be an over-the-top cheese-fest. In Highlander, I find it less effective, although since it’s Queen, I tend to have a fondness for it; it works well for the opening, but I’m not as big a fan of it during the romantic scenes, when the music will swell toward a lyric.

In Bloodsuckers, however, the music seems to have been picked just for the general sound of it, not the lyrics; they’re usually not very understandable, and the music tends to just stop without warning, as if it wasn’t really written for this movie. Furthermore, it doesn’t ever add anything to the movie. Maybe if they had just gone for some pounding, instrumental rock for the action scenes, it would have been cool, although admittedly it wouldn’t have made the film any better overall.

Anyways, I bring the music up because while on the ship, Damian has what seems to have been intended to be a slightly romantic moment with Fiona while they’re on-route to the next planet. Sappy pop comes on as she climbs up a ladder, having shed her Cardigan-of-the-Future, revealing that she’s basically just a Space-College-Chick in a strappy midrift-bearing tank and very low-rise do-you-like-my-pelvis-bones cargo pants. This scene is very short, and despite the attempt of the music, fails to produce any romantic spark between the characters. She basically just thanks him for saving her, he asks her a few questions about the incident, in which you can tell he’s a little suspicious of our Space-College-Chick, but that’s it.

Once on the planet, they ditch Fiona, and Rosa and Roman attempt to enter a Company bar, only to find out that their ID cards don’t work. This part was a little confusing, because it appears that Damian essentially fired them to get them to continue to work for him. I didn’t really get this part. It’s slightly plausible; I guess the point is that without their Company standing, Rosa and Roman would have nowhere else to go, but I still think it’s a little convoluted. After convincing them to come back to work, the crew leave the planet, but almost immediately after another vampire attack forces them to return.
This attack introduces us to another species of vampire, and I’m guessing Hastings had seen or heard about Slither, because these vampires are not human-based, but worms that infect a host and spit venom. This reveals the worst CG in the film, as the worms are animated when they attack the crew. After most of the worms are destroyed, Quintana is able to get one to talk to her in what sounds like a mixture of French and Huttese (from Star Wars). This reveals part the big conspiracy of the film: there was a saboteur who lowered the planet’s defenses, in the same way that the defenses were lowered on the mining planet.

The saboteur should be obvious by now, if it wasn’t obvious before hand: it turns out that Cardigan-wearing Space-College-Girl is a terrorist. Just in case we missed the connection, the movie changes view-points for the first time, where it is reveals that Fiona is part of Cosmosis, a terrorist organization that believes that humans don’t have the right to drive the vampires from existence, that humans have exploited the planets they’ve colonized, and that we should try and work together with the vampires to learn more from one another; all your basic, generic liberal-environmentalist crap. In another “twist”, it turns out that Cosmosis is working with the Vorhees, led by (cue music): Michael Ironside – Vampire! Cosmosis has allied with them in order to show humans the error of their ways and blah-di-blah-di-blah.

The Vorhees plan is to lure Damian to a planet in the Kenobi System (the aforementioned Tatooine-like planet), to capture him, turn him into a vampire, and therefore learn human creativity and ingenuity, which is what defeated them in the Vampire Wars. Damian and crew totally fall for the bait, and on their way to the Kenobi System the crew has several bonding moments. Quintana takes it upon herself to get “Captain” Damian to “relax”; she enters his room all goth-dominatrix to the tune of more bad music. Now, when I saw this scene, I figured it could go two ways. Either Damian would suggest that she means sex, when she really doesn’t, or she really means sex; Hastings avoids the potentially comical-though-cliche misunderstanding, and just goes for the sex. After all, what is a direct-to-tv/DVD movie without a little sex? Actual sex between them is out of the question, however, because at climax Quintana would go into a bloodlust and kill Damian. Fortunately for Damian, Quintana is suggesting “tantric” (read “telepathic”) sex, and we’re “treated” to a pretty dumb scene in which Damian imagines himself having sex with his wife. This leads to a misunderstanding with Rosa, however, who hears this and thinks Quintana and Damian are getting it on; this is all patched up, however, once Damian explains.

Once at their destination, the Damian, Rosa, and Quintana head out, leaving Roman with the ship; as they leave, he quips, “Have fun storming the castle!” (ala The Princess Bride). Soon after, however, their ship is destroyed by a drone, and once again the music cues in. This time, the music is sad, and my wife Jen (who was only kinda paying attention) asked if someone died. When I said, “No,” she replied, “They should only play sad music if someone dies.”

Anyways, the whole crew ends up in the vampire lair, where they meet not only the vampires, but also the Cosmosis humans led by Fiona. The plan is revealed, Damian is separated from the group, and in one of the most anti-dramatic scenes, it is revealed that Churchill was not dead after all, but, “Dum dum dum!” – turned to a vampire, and the plan to lure Damian was all his idea. As the cliche’s continue, Damian and Churchill have to fight (but not before Fiona is killed by Michael Ironside – Vampire!), they fight, Fiona’s Cosmosis friends figure out that they really need to side with the good guys, and they lead the crew to rescue Damian. Of course the good guys when, but not before Michael Ironside – Vampire! is killed in another extremely anticlimatic moment. The crew, plus the only surviving member of Cosmosis, take one of the other ships, and we have the feel good speech by Damian that should end the movie.

However, the movie doesn’t quite end there. For some reason, Hastings thought, rather than end the movie here, we need to get Rosa into the whole “vampire telepathic sex” thing, and so we actually end the movie with the ship flying away, and Rosa going, “Oh, Quintana!” and role credits.

There were so many things wrong with Bloodsuckers, but as I mentioned before, this movie ended up being somewhat entertaining in how bad it was. It really could have been an okay movie. The basic idea of vampires-in-space was pretty cool, and although the CG effects on the worm vampires were pretty bad, the space ships looked alright (except for one brief scene). A movie like this has a couple of places it could go. It could have been a cool action flick, but there’s not that much fighting, and it’s all pretty bland. It could have been really campy and silly, but the actors are too wooden to pull that off. Even Michael Ironside – Vampire! couldn’t pull of the stilted dialogue. The movie just failed on so many levels.

I definitely can’t recommend ever putting more than $1 down on this movie. If you catch for free on SciFi and you’ve got the two hours to kill, then it’s okay. If it makes it to the dollar bin at Wal-Mart or a dollar store, then maybe go ahead. But definitely don’t rent it, and most definitely don’t buy it; I didn’t even waste harddrive space on it after I watched it.