Now before I start, I’m
one of those people that has no problem shutting my brain off and enjoying crap. And even seeing a higher form of art in said crap. People seem to get a serious bug up their asses when it comes to movies like these. It’s like appreciating a good fart joke: The only people who don’t find a good fart joke funny, is people who’s never farted, or people who don’t want to admit they’ve farted. (Which really explains a lot, if you stop and think about it.)
When I saw last year that they were making a Blood: The Last Vampire movie, I thought “This looks like it’d be a really interesting way to waste a couple of hours.” I mean, did I expect good? Hell no, it’s a live action remake of an 50 minute long anime from ten years ago, which I thought was just “okay.” Unfortunately, it had a very limited release, as in no theater in Michigan was even showing the damn thing. So I had to wait until it’s release on DVD. By no means did I expect this movie to be all that great. I figured there’d be a ton of bad acting, a some head kicking, bad special effects and no script. I was right on all accounts. It’s not like I was expecting brilliance. Yet, despite the film’s flaws… And there were a bunch of them… It was rather awesome. In a nutshell, the movie takes place at Yokota Air Base in Japan around the early 70’s, during the closing days of the Vietnam War. (I find this time period interesting choice, as really, you don’t see a lot of modern movies picking this time period, much less this time period in Japan. Kinda interesting and allowed for a cool soundtrack.) Saya is a 400 year old half human/half vampire teenage girl who’s hunts other vampires, looking for the master vampire, Onigen. She has the help of an organization called the Council, which helps cover her tracks as she does cause a bit of a mess wherever she goes. During the course of the movie, she befriends a token white girl, who’s a rebellious General’s daughter which leads into a cover up mess involving the military and this fore mentioned Council. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound brilliant. But let me get the bad out of the way first and then I’ll get into the awesome.
The film has a very claustrophobic feel, which I THINK is intentional. I do not know. The acting is about what you’d expect from a movie like this. It’s not Iron Man but it’s also not exactly Dino Croc vs. Supergator either. It’s serviceable, which is really all that you can hope to expect. The special effects are none too special, and in some places are outright bad. There’s a lot of beheading and CG blood, and there’s a moment in the movie where a monster turns into his bestial form, and it looks about as convincing as a Ray Harryhausen’s Dynamation. (But not as cool.) The plot doesn’t really have any major holes in it, but it’s not exactly deep either. It’s not like The Dark Knight, where there’s multiple layers heaped upon more layers of complexity. It’s pretty straight forward and about as intricate as some of the more complex episodes of Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue. However, despite it’s flaws, the movie is well aware of it’s weaknesses and doesn’t try to be more than what it is.
This is where the movie shines. It compensates for it’s shoestring budget by being very artistically funky with it. Outside of that ‘monster form” I mentioned, it works well within it’s boundaries. If you’re wanting a movie about the human spirit overcoming personal odds, look elsewhere. This is a fight movie, through and through with some im
pressive battles, spreading across various sceneries, from flickering subways, to rooftops in the down pouring rain to an ash covered netherworld that’s somewhat psychedelic in it’s execution. While a few anachronisms are afoot, the costuming and sets are pretty accurate for it’s time period. There’s this fight scene in the second third of the film where Saya’s uncle (or whatever the hell he is) who’s like this old man, takes on a horde of vampire ninjas (seriously!) and a severe amount of ass is kicked. Limbs are chopped off, fingers are sliced, heads are decapitated, and through it all, it doesn’t slow down once. In fact, the whole film is like that. A nonstop action film, which is something that is exceedingly rare these days. Also, the film clocks in at about 90 minutes making it another rarity… A movie that’s not too long or too short.
Blood: The Last Vampire is a silly but awesome movie. It’s not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination, but damn, was it a lot of fun. There should be more movies like this honestly. If you’re in the mood for a fun hack and slasher film, then I’d say give this a shot.
Join me again next Thursday when I talk about another vampire movie (it’s the last one for now) that features about every single Italian mafia stereotype and the cute chick from La Femme Nikita.
