| Vampirella Released: 1996 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Vampire Nuts and Bolts: A hot scantly clad vampire babe arrives on Earth from the planet Drakulon in order to hunt down the vampire WHO killed her father. Summary: 30 centuries ago on the planet Drakulon: The planet’s high council of elders decides to pass sentence on a known criminal named Vlad (Roger Daltry). Rather than drink blood from naturally occurring resources, Vlad has taken to culling it from the living vampire community. (A real no-no) Vlad is marched into the council chambers bound in chains. But before sentence can be passed, a group of rebels (Demos, Sallah and Traxx) burst in armed with machine guns. The council members are all killed and Vlad breaks free of his bonds. The four steal a space ship and escape from the planet. Meanwhile, the High elder’s daughter Ella comes upon the dying bodies of the council. Embracing her father, she swears revenge against Vlad and his brood. 3000 years later in Los Angeles: We meet the agents of Operation: Purge. (Ughh.) Purge is led by Lieutenant Owen Walsh and its crack-squad team leader, (Get this) Adam Van Helsing. Purge’s sole mission is to hunt down Vlad and all of his disciples who have been plaguing the planet for many years now. But Vlad has gone into hiding and is under an assumed name. Gosh, how will they EVER find him now Beav? Walsh shows Van Helsing a video of the latest space shuttle landing. During the landing a small black bat exits the cargo hold of the ship. Most people regard it as being a blurry smudge or a trick of the camera, but Walsh and Van Helsing know better. It’s a goddamn bloody space vampire! Downtown, a young man named Forry Ackerman is in the process of getting mugged. Two lowlifes try to work him over for his computer equipment but they are halted when Vampirella appears in the alleyway. Vampi whoops the shit out of the two thugs and saves Ackerman’s life. Ackerman takes Vampirella back to his apartment. Yeah right. Like this little goon has a chance of getting laid. (Oh yeah…Vampirella is Ella from Drakulon in case you haven’t figured it out yet.) Vampi tells Forry that she is looking for the vampires that killed her father. She discovers that one of the assassins; Traxx is living in L.A. as a teacher at Berkeley under the name Arnold Traxx Meanwhile, a covert-black-op-semper-fi-top-secret-special-forces contingent of Operation Purge goes on an op in Sao Paulo Brazil. They bust up into the crib of a lowlife vampire named Carlos. Carlos is already having a bad day however. Before Purge busted everything up, Carlos was in the process of being hung upside down and tortured by Vlad’s right hand man Demos. Purge captures Demos and takes him back to L.A. Back in the city of angels, Vampi breaks into the Berkeley office of Arnold Traxx. But Arnie is a reformed vampire space refugee who wants nothing more out of life than to teach children and raise his family. Vampi doesn’t give a shit though. This mo-mo is going DOWN! After a quick battle that succeeds in doing little more than destroying a bunch of chemistry equipment, Traxx is pitched out the third story window. He lands on some campus monument or something and is impaled through the heart. Back at Operation: Purge HQ: Welsh and Van Helsing torture Demos with injections of holy water. (Blessed by the Pope himself no less!) They want to know where Vlad is and what name he is hiding under. Demos finally caves in (the pussy) and tells them that Vlad is now a rock and roll singer in Vegas under the name Jaimie Blood. Vampi learns where Vlad is performing as well. She goes down to the Hondo Cantina in Vegas and catches Jaimie Blood’s show. After the show, Jaimie (Vlad) tries to get his groove on with Vampi. He doesn’t realize yet that she is a vampire there to kill him. The two go outside where they are attacked by the boys at Purge. Both Vlad and Vampi are captured and taken away in two different vans. Vlad soon escapes from the Magic Bus however leaving Vampi to be taken back to Purge HQ. Vampirella meets Adam Van Helsing and explains to him her mission on Earth. From here we learn that when Vlad and his crew came to Earth 3000 years ago, their ship passed through a nebula with high concentrations of iron. This altered their alien physiology to such an extent that they were now more akin to traditional Earth vampires than space vampires. Vampires from Drakulon aren’t affected by sunlight and holy symbols don’t freak them out. But Vampi has an edge over them since she still maintains her Drakulonian heritage. On top of that, she carries concentrated blood capsules inside of her armband so that she won’t need to feed from human hosts. As things start moving along, Vlad’s crew kidnaps Adam and the saucy vampire offers to make a deal with the guys at Purge. They will return Adam to them in exchange for Demos; but only if Vampirella officiates the deal. Lt. Walsh agrees and Vampi is sent out to try and get Adam back. The deal goes sour and Vampi is captured and taken back to Pinball Wizard’s hideout. She is thrown into a cell with Adam and her blood capsules are taken away. Within 24 hours, she will become so ravenous that she will be forced to feed off of him. Over the next few hours, Adam agrees to let Vampi drink just enough blood from him to keep her hunger at bay. She agrees and the two eventually free themselves from Vlad’s cell. Meanwhile, Vlad goes back to his meeting hall to discuss his plans with his fellow vampires. Over the course of many g-g-g-generations, Vlad has been able to establish a series of satellites in outer space. He plans on using them in some inane attempt to create a nuclear winter on Earth. This will cause the sun to be blocked out allowing the vampires strength enough to rise and take over the Earth. He calls this operation Judgment Night. (Christ that sounds like a Doctor Evil plot doesn’t it? All we need now is mini-Vlad. ) To make a long story short, Vampi and Adam escape from their cells just as the rest of the guys from Operation: Purge raid the Hondo Cantina. Demos, Sallah and all the other vamps are killed by either silver-tipped wooden bullets or by a prototype weapon that fires streams of concentrated sunlight. Vampi chases Vlad to a big ole dam. They get into a fight on top of the dam and Vampirella impales Vlad with a broken metal pipe. A bolt of lighting strikes down hitting the pipe and setting Vlad on fire. His body spins around and ultimately plummets down the side of the dam. Acting/Dialogue: All right, let me start off by saying that any movie where Roger Daltry of the WHO gets second billing promises to be a bad one. Daltry over-acts his way through a protruding set of plastic teeth and continues to grate our nerves with his ultra-forced raspy vampire voice. This is the sort of acting one would expect from a character at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. We also have Talisa Soto playing the part of Vampirella. You all might remember her in the role of Princess Kitana from Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. I haven’t figured out yet whether Soto is really just a shitty actress, or whether it just comes off that way since she’s speaking in a Spaceilvanian accent. Either way, her performance is kind of weak as well. The other cast members are simply not important enough to remember. Gore: There’s not really a lot of gore in this. A couple of vampire bites and a guy catches on fire. That’s about it. Even the vampire elders getting sprayed with machine guns don’t even bleed. Christ, would it really have killed you to spend the extra five bucks to get a bottle of Karo and some red food coloring? Guilty Pleasures: The melon patch is looking pretty sparse this year. For a movie built up as an obvious exploitation film, there really isn’t a whole hell of a lot of nudity in this. Two of the vampire women remove their tops. Sadly, neither of those women is Vampi herself. The Good: This is the type of movie that can be considered a lot of fun. But only after one imbibes about eight or nine Heinekens and partakes of at least one variety of recreational pharmaceuticals of their choice. Vampirella was originally a comic magazine published by Warren Publications during the 1970s. In the mid 1990s it graduated from obscurity and was re-formatted as a mainstream comic book by the publishing house known as Harris. Since then, Vampi-mania had spread throughout the nation and it was no wonder that she would eventually be featured in her own straight-to-video movie. As a horror film, it’s a complete bust (Emphasis on bust), but as a super-hero style sci-fi comic, it succeeds in being at least marginally amusing. All the necessary ingredients are provided here: the scantly clad heroine, the rugged hero, and the cunning villain with his over-the-top plan on how to take over the world. Vampirella brings to us that time honored quality that is often referred to as the ‘So bad that its Good’ syndrome. This is not the type of film that you watch with your parents and it is CERTAINLY not the type of film you pop in the VCR whenever you bring a girl over to your house. There is a character mentioned up above named Forry Ackerman. This character is named after Vampirella creator Forrest J. Ackerman. Ackerman is known as a luminary of the genre and has been a major influence in the field of writing, acting, editing and publishing for many many years. We also have a cameo by horror film actor Angus Scrimm. Scrimm is infamous for his role as the Tall Man in the Phantasm movies and here he plays Vampirella’s father. Kind of cool. If you like B-grade, cheap sleazy Roger Corman inspired schlock films, then you will probably get at least a marginal thrill out of Vampirella. Just kick back, guzzle down a few pints of your favorite micro-brew, watch Vampi then chase it all down with some old Adam West Batman re-runs. If you’re not the type that can harvest a refined appreciation for BAD cinema, well then…what can I say? Don’t watch this movie. The Bad: This flick is good and stupid! Not only that, but its also misleading. The video box cover shows Talisa Soto dressed in the infamous Vampi costume from the comic books. WARNING: She doesn’t actually wear this outfit in the film. The outfit in the movie is a little different and covers her up a bit more. Why they decided to change the costume is beyond me. It’s not as if its expensive to make. You can find models wearing these things at damned near every comic book convention you go to. The worst elements of this flick come from Roger Daltry (Vlad). I’ve already mentioned how he over-acts this role. Here we have a guy who feels that he needs to go into hiding in order to escape the scrutiny of Operation: Purge right? He changes his name and gets a new job. However, he doesn’t really think this through too well. His new name is Jaimie BLOOD and he becomes a SINGER at a Las Vegas nightclub. To top it all off, his great disguise consists of an extremely fake looking hair-weave that hangs off the left side of his head. I’m left wondering how it took Operation: Purge so long to find him. Hell, Sheriff Roscoe and Deputy Enos probably would’ve found this clown before Adam Van Helsing did. The guy advertises his rock show in the newspaper for Christ’s sake! And as a warning to all of you who think that we might be getting treated to some Roger Daltry WHO numbers, think again. He performs half of some grunge song and he does it in the Vlad voice, which is difficult enough to understand because he can’t really enunciate through the plastic fangs. And here I thought Daltry would take this opportunity to remind the video-watching world that he used to be the front man for one of the most prolific rock and roll groups of all time. Well, shame on me. I WON’T be fooled AGAIN! And while I’m on the subject of Vlad, why would a 3,000-year-old vampire need to work in a Vegas stage show? Holy shit, talk about an under-achiever. I would think that by this point, Vlad would have amassed a huge fortune and a swarming network of super vampires. But no, he prefers to live the life of a working class stiff, complete with raspy voice, bad lingo and a mullet that should be outlawed. And to top off Vlad’s Count Chocula motif, he even wears a black cape with a red silk lining. The special effects are really piss poor in this too. Vampi and Vlad have the ability to transform into bats. Not regular bats mind you. Hell, not even cheap plastic bats on strings. But rather, they turn into cartoon silhouette bats that flit around aimlessly. These bats are so bad looking that even Bela Lugosi would be embarrassed to have them in his castle. The fight scenes are also kind of poor. Vampi kicks a little ass, but its obvious that she doesn’t really know the martial arts maneuvers that she’s trying execute here. All of the combat shots are done with extreme close ups and rotating camera angles; just the typical sort of movie trick used in order to make the protagonist seem like a much bigger ass-kicker than they really are. Overall this is just a really dumb dumb movie. The back-story is fucking corny and the motivating plot threads are completely unoriginal. Even as a cheap guilty pleasure, this movie doesn’t deliver all that it promises. Great Lines: None. Overall Rating: 4 out of 10 severed heads. |
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