Blood Shot (2013)

Folks, this is one for the books. Ever wish there was a film made about a badass, gun slinging vampire who is secretly contracted by the President of the United States (Highlander himself, Christopher Lambert) to carry out dangerous missions and thwart evil Islamic terrorists? Well your very specific and demented wish just came true. Imagine for a moment that John Carpenter, Joe Dante and Michael Bay got hammered one night and wrote the most ridiculous script for a horror action comedy this century has seen. The resulting treatise would be Blood Shot, an absolute hoot of a flick that combines elements that wouldn't be caught dead (or undead) together in any other setting but that of the gloriously unrestricted world of the B movie. The President uses a craggy operative named Sam (ever brilliant Lance Henriksen) to brief the Vampire in question (Michael Bailey Smith) on his missions. He is to hunt down violent Islamic rebels, led by a dude called Bob. Bob is Arabic. Bob is played by Brad Dourif, who is white as a sheet, but here shows up caked in brown makeup and hollering away in the most idiotic accent I've ever heard. His casting alone is just hysterical, and should drive the social activists up the wall screaming, while the rest of us howl in with laughter. His character is called Bob because of everyone's inability to pronounce his real arabic name which is a mile long and completely nonsensical. His crew are terrorists straight from a Mel Brooks film, complete with a midget amongst them. There's also a lone hero cop (Brennan Eliott channels the hotshot, reckless law enforcers of 80's movies) hunting both the terrorists and the Vampire, getting in everyone's way and capping anything that moves. The fact that Highlander plays the President in a film about a Vampire who hunts down terrorists named Bob should be more than enough for any self respecting film fan to drop whatever they're doing and go bask in this baby's glow. Despite being a direct to video flick, it contains not a trace of the trademark ineptitude and shoddiness that you're always likely to find when exploring the genre. Campiness and lunacy, oh yes. But never mediocrity or laziness. But that's what your friendly neighborhood Nate is here for, to wade through the unwatchable sludge and mine out the priceless gems for you all to see. This one's funny, imaginative, off the wall and a pint of B positive fun.

Some of my guiltiest pleasures come in the form of horror comedies from the 1980's. Waxwork, Dead Heat, House, are just three of the many titles that I would step on and over young children just to get in front of the screen to which they were projecting. Generally, the films are not very good. But they had a playfulness to them and I will give the benefit of the doubt to the producers that they knew exactly what they intending and to what audience it was intended.The new millennium has tried to produce some of the magic of the horror/comedy peers of yesteryear, but have been largely unsuccessful. With exceptions handed out to a small few (including the best example of late: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) the studios try too hard to mix the different genres without just letting it flow and develop into what it might become.The latest horror/comedy to cross our desk was Blood Shot – a film that has brought 80's horror actors Brad Dourif, Lance Henriksen and Christopher Lambert together (even if none of the three share a scene). Blood Spot is a typical buddy cop film that is not your typical buddy cop film. Brennan Elliott plays Rip, a rogue cop who fights both terrorists and vampires. Bailey Smith plays a vampire – a vampire that works for the CIA (Vampire Division) under the direction of Sam (Henricksen). Rip and the Vampire are constantly at odds with each other with Rip trying everything from garlic to holy water to bring down the undead bloodsucker. But both are crusaders for good. And both find themselves having to team together to fight an evil Middle Eastern terrorist (Dourif) who is planning a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. That's the story. Long and short.Blood Shot is based on the short film of the same name by writer/director Dietrich Johnston. Johnston gets a bigger budget (estimated at $3.5 million) for this full length feature and does the best with opportunity spinning an enjoyable tale that has a handful of good one-liners and a whole lot of fun as the story plays out.The film never takes itself too seriously and comes very close at times to resembling a deleted scene from The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! But it manages to consistently pull itself back in from the brink of absurdity to get back to what it does best – entertain.The story in itself is not ground breaking and painting white actors brown to look like Middle Eastern terrorists will either be offensive or hilarious depending on one's sense of humor. But the action and the relationship between the two reluctant partners is enough to keep this film afloat and amass enough appreciation to present a recommendation.More interestingly still is where the premise can go from here. The idea of a vigilante vampire has been done before with Blade, but Blood Shot doesn't attempt for spectacular stunts and action sequences. It instead spends time on character and that makes the idea of continuing the series an interesting premise we would like to see exploited.www.killerreviews.com

OK, here's the low down: There's a cop who's personal mission is to kill/capture vampires - cos they kill humans, of course - and there's this vampire hit-man he's desperate to defeat.There's a vampire hit-man, who works for the government as a black ops specialist.And there's an Arabian desperate to blow up an American city with a nuke.Of course the film turns into a buddy film of cop and vampire against the terrorists, but that misses the point of the film.How do you kill a vampire? Bullets turn to dust, garlic just makes his clothes smell, holy water is wet, silver bullets sting - and then he beats the s*** out of you.The humour in this film may be too dark for Americans as the some of the jokes are so dark, but if you can key into the vibe there are so many sly jokes that you'll need to watch this film twice just to catch most of them. My favourite is the running joke that every time the vampire captures a terrorist they turn to the vampire and beg, "Bite Me!" - although the scene with the body bags is a close second.The cop isn't a good enough actor to carry the film, but thankfully the vampire steals every scene he's in. Brad Dourif as Bob the head terrorist stops just short of chewing the scenery, and is borderline racist, but that's probably better than having an Arabian actor caricature himself. (Was Alexander Siddig unavailable?) The plot is simple, linear and predictable, but that leaves you free to relish the sly humour and the great performance of Michael Bailey Smith as the vampire.With a better actor as the cop, this film could have been another Lethal Weapon. Sadly, it never quite takes off into that league, but it's great fun to watch the vampire hold up his end of the conversation.

When i first saw the cover, or the french title in the video store(yes some people still rent from video stores) "Vampire Assassin" i knew i was in for something pretty lame and dumb. Oh well i have not rent one of those in ages, and i had a coupon for 2 at the price of 1...The movie start right away and this is my major complain, its never explained why the cop is after the vampire. We are supposed to believe the cop only want to bring the vampire to justice because he kill people... which is extremely lame. Eventually they will have to team up as the synopsis mention to take down a terrorist who want to blow out a Nuke in L.A. OK this part is from the start extremely hard to believe, terrorist running freely in the US in full "arabian look" and all. But on top of that the leader is so caricatured you can't take him seriously at all.When it comes to other characters, the vampire is OK, he is imposing, look strong, outside the fact that he only use double pistol, you could think he is what you have in mind when you think "vampire". The cop ain't bad, but his character is so badly introduced you have trouble caring for him.But the bad guys are just a total mess, they can't be believe in at all, and the whole concept of the president talking from his limo to a vampire division administrator is so whatever.After that, i would say the way the movie is filmed is pretty decent, camera work is fine, blood is fine, but i am not sure if this is part of the vampire "powers" but when he sponge bullets, they just disappear in a little smoke explosion, not even damaging his suit, which i tough was extremely silly and just poor special effects.In the end i would say the movie is hard to like, even if you see it as a total "nanar" as we call them in french, which could be translated to "a silly but fun movie" in English. The pacing ain't very good, the story is, even tough not really complicated" hard to follow because its simply badly written, and the characters outside the vampire himself, seem way too caricatured and dumb.In the end really not a must, whatever you are a fan of vampire movies or action movies. And i saw it witch a bunch of beers... so i gave him a big chance.