Shira: The Vampire Samurai (2005)

SHIRA: THE VAMPIRE SAMURAI is a no budget action movie shot in a wooded location. It looks like the director and his mates got hold of some plastic props and a suit of samurai armour and decided to shoot a movie with it, making up the story and dialogue as they went along. The film is chock full of low rent and disappointing action sequences centred around the film's protagonist, a half-vampire woman with cool contact lenses. There's very little to say about this silly production other than that it's an embarrassing bore.

Feisty half-human, half-vampire samurai warrior Shira (woodenly played by tasty brunette knockout Chona Jason) must stop evil vampire warlord Kristof (an outrageously hammy portrayal by Adrian Zmed) from populating the world with a new breed of bloodsuckers who can exist in the daytime. Boy, does this uproariously awful clunker strike out something rotten in every possible way: Jeff Centauri's clumsy (mis)direction, the cruddy CGI effects, William Joseph Hill's shamelessly derivative script (the central premise blatantly copies "Blade"!), the ineptly staged fight scenes, several ham-fisted attempts at pathos (poor Shira can't fully commit herself to her human lover -- boo hoo!), the tacky gore, the crude cinematography, the lousy make-up (the vampires look like they're wearing plastic fangs that were purchased at the local dollar store!), Hal Oppenheimer's overbearing thunderous score, and, most of all, the terrible acting from the lame no-name cast -- Lamar Knight easily cops the top thespic dishonors with his supremely irritating performance as obnoxious wisecracking hipster Fingers ("Believe that!") -- all ensure that this hopelessly horrible stinker delivers a wealth of gut-busting unintentional belly laughs. As a nice added bonus, the buxom Mrs. Jason bares her beautifully bountiful breasts a few times. An absolute schlocky hoot.

Badly edited, badly acted, and a plot that made little sense, and they resurrected Adrian Zmed of TJ Hooker fame as a Vampire. What could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot, actually.Shira is a Samurai babe from 16th century Japan who gets turned into a vampire, but commits seppuku before the transformation is complete. That allows them to train her to be a vampire huntress. The action keeps switching back and forth from 16th century Japan to 21st century LA.Now don't get me wrong, the lead actress, Chona Jason, looks pretty good for a woman in her forties. Except when they do close ups of her face, that is. She gathers a bad of barely competent vampire hunters to do the exposition for her and keep her mangled lines of dialog to a minimum. (Chona, honey, when you make the transition from Playboy Model to actress, it usually helps to take acting lessons).Intersplice some badly choreographed fight scenes, gratuitous nude scenes with a beefcake with even less acting ability. "Why can't we be together?" "I wouldn't want to put you through hell." HEY, try watching this movie, that's hell!) The idea is that Adrien wants to impregnate Shira so he can give birth to a race of "Daywalkers" to help vampires take over the world. This ends in a final scene where the last of the inept vampire hunters and vampires wipe each other out, and Shira survives to fret about the possibility of being the only one stuck in the sequel.

In order to fully appreciate the greatness of a movie like Shira you need a kind of cinematic masochism. The kind of thing where something really really bad somehow becomes something wonderful. Luckily, my friends and I are exactly those types of masochists. If you are also a member of this somewhat dubious breed then you will love Shira. There is just so much to choose from; the (apparently ex-porno) cast, the thoroughly incoherent script, the made up pseudo Japanese words and fight choreography that must have Bruce Lee spinning elegantly in his grave. I would summarise the plot but I am unconvinced that there really is one. Suffice to say that it is a little from column Blade, a little from column Buffy and a little from column Highlander. If you find yourself beginning to prefer $50,000 straight to video shlockfests to $500 million A- list epics then you should run out to your local movie store and get yourself a copy of Shira. Seriously, you will be glad you did.