Bloodsuckers (2005)

I got this movie on a 4-film "Vampire Collector's Set" DVD under the title "Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe," though the opening credits of the actual film identify it as "Bloodsuckers," which quite frankly is a cooler (and less wordy) title. The movie itself was pretty much what I expected: a low budget B-film. Fortunately, I love stuff like this and "Vampire Wars"/"Bloodsuckers" turned out to be a surprisingly cool mish-mash of the horror, sci-fi and action genres, bolted together from parts of the "Blade" series, a little bit of "Firefly," and some "Aliens" as well.The good news: it's the 23rd century and mankind has at last discovered humanoid life on other planets. The bad news: all of the humanoid life on those other planets is vampiric in nature and wants to eat us, prompting the creation of the "V-SAN" corporation (for "Vampire SANitation"), which sends out teams of bad-asses (think the Colonial Marines from "Aliens") from planet to planet weeding out vampire nests wherever they threaten humanity's interests. Damien Underwood is a newbie on a V-SAN crew who inherits the captain's chair after his commander becomes Vampire Chow early in the movie. He struggles to gain respect in his new role, despite his lack of command experience and the fact that most of his crew (including a redneck in a cowboy hat who predates Woody Harrelson's look in "Zombieland" by a few years, and a butch lesbo who recalls Cpl. Vazquez of "Aliens") blames him for the captain's demise. Fortunately, Underwood does have the support of one crew member -- Quintana, an amazingly hot vampire/human hybrid who reads minds, looks great in an "Underworld" style leather cat suit, and who can kick massive amounts of alien-vampire ass. This fearsome foursome travels to a space station in response to a distress signal, only to find the human population destroyed when they arrive. Turns out they've been lured there by a group of humans who have taken the vampires' side in the war, claiming that Earthlings are the real predatory creatures in the universe. Genre legend Michael Ironside makes a brief cameo, hamming it up in a quick-paycheck role as some sort of vampire overlord in cahoots with the turncoat humans, and eventually lots of big guns go off, and we get severed limbs and gore galore.True "vampire" movie fans will probably hate this movie as this so-called "vamps" act more like zombies (i.e. they eat the flesh of their victims rather than drink their blood). They also tend to dress like biker-gang rejects from a "Mad Max" movie. It is interesting that there appear to be numerous types of vampire races in the Universe (one in-joke refers to two different races as "the Voorhees" and "the Leatherfaces") depending on what planet the V-SANS agents visit, causing me to wonder if this film was intended as the first in a series (or perhaps a TV series pilot -- I did notice that even though the film is quite violent and bloody, language is toned down and though I really hoped to see Quintana strip off that leather bodysuit, no such luck).As with most of the movies on these "4 Film Collections" that I've seen, "Bloodsuckers/Vampire Wars" is worth viewing if you've got a taste for goofy, low-budget fare; those who prefer their horror on the more serious side can safely skip it.

Second movie in the boxset. Originally titled Bloodsuckers, This movie was pretty average. It is kinda boring in some parts but there is some good gore effects, but they're not great though. The movie takes place in the year 2210. Vampires have pretty much taken over the whole world. The V-SAN (Vampire Sanitation) Squad, which also has their own spaceship and is lead by Churchill, who is captured by the vampires, receives a message from an Earth and the team, formed by Quintana (Played by the very hot Natassia Malthe), the rookie officer Damian and the rebels Rosa and Roman (Roman being played by Aaron Pearl from Wrongfully Accused.) V-SAN later meets up with the leader of the vampires Muco, played by Michael Ironside from Total Recall. He has no plans of living peacefully with humans, as he is bent on world domination. While this movie was not a waste of time, I doubt I'll be putting back in the DVD player anytime soon.

Bloodsuckers has the potential to be a somewhat decent movie, the concept of military types tracking down and battling vampires in space is one with some potential in the cheesier realm of things. Even the idea of the universe being full of various different breeds of vampire, all with different attributes, many of which the characters have yet to find out about, is kind of cool as well. As to how most of the life in the galaxy outside of earth is vampire, I'm not sure how the makers meant for that to work, given the nature of vampires. Who the hell they are meant to be feeding on if almost everyone is a vampire I don't know. As it is the movie comes across a low budget mix of Firefly/Serenity and vampires movies with a dash of Aliens.The action parts of the movie are pretty average and derivative (Particularly of Serenity) but passable- they are reasonably well executed and there is enough gore for a vampire flick, including some of the comical blood-spurting variety. There is a lot of character stuff, most of which is tedious, coming from conflicts between characters who mostly seem like whiny, immature arseholes- primarily cowboy dude and Asian woman. There are a few character scenes that actually kind of work and the actors don't play it too badly but it mostly slows things down. A nice try at fleshing the characters out but people don't watch a movie called Bloodsuckers for character development and drama. The acting is actually okay. Michael Ironside hams it up and is as fun to watch as ever and at least of a couple of the women are hot. The space SFX aren't too bad for what is clearly a low budget work. The story is again pretty average and derivative but as I said the world created has a little bit of potential. The way things are set up Bloodsuckers really does seem like the pilot for a TV series- character dynamics introduced, the world introduced but not explored, etc. The film does have a some highlights and head scratching moments- the kind of stuff that actually makes these dodgy productions watchable. -The scene where our heroes interrogate a talking sock puppet chestburster type creature. Hilarious. - The "sex scene." WTF indeed. -The credit "And Michael Ironside as Muco." The most annoying aspect of it all though is the really awful and usually inappropriate pop music they have playing very loud over half the scenes of the movie. It is painful to listen to and only detracts from what is only average at best.Basically an okay watch is you're up for something cheesy, even if it is just for the "chestburster" scene.

Man I must say when I saw the trailer I was excited. Futuristic soldiers, taking on bad ass Vampires led by genre vet Michael Ironside....In Space. I mean I wasn't expecting high art, but It looked like a potential B movie classic. This was no doubt a TV pilot, reedited some time later into a feature film, after it wasn't picked up. Alright I'll start with the films few good points, the action was competent for a lower budgeted film, and the CGI and locations used were passable. Now onto the bad, first off Michael Ironside was barley in this, and his performance here....well it was cheesy not in a good way. But as I said he wasn't in it much anyways, so I can't blame him. One thing that was really stupid, was the PETA type group for Vampires', no I'm not joking, it's the dumbest most unbelievable thing I've seen in along time, and it's taken seriously. Also this film commits one of the major B movie sins, it teases a lesbian scene, and doesn't deliver. Most of all what sinks this film is nothing really happens. Since it was meant to be a pilot the script is almost nonexistent and it doesn't have a regular ending. Even the main villains, only come in towards the end. If ever a movie needed to up the Sleaze and gore factor, it's Vampire Wars. In closing I will say the main crew on the spaceship, were all very capable actors and could very well put this mess behind them, and go on to bigger and better things. They just had nothing to work with here.