Vampires Vs Zombies...??!!

Now I look at this title and envision hordes of both popular undead battling it out for the human tidbits.  A battle royale to the well…death I suppose and frankly that sounded interesting to me.  A sort of Underworld feels with not fur just fangs and claws.  Instead I get this.  Ho boy.   So stock up on ammo, MREs and water from your secured undisclosed bunker.   This is Vampires Vs Zombies.

So let’s start off with the few alternative titles to this flick and you will get an idea how long it took me to find it.  You have Carmilla, Carmilla the Lesbian Vampire and last but certainly not least Vampires Vs Zombies.    Netflix and Blockbuster bother were confused as hell to what I was requesting but finally I got a copy and proceeded to view this blight of Cinema.

Warning! Danger! Danger!  The following will invoke spoilers to the film in question as well as cast and director and writer.

So we open our flick with Jenna (Bonny Giroux not Jenna Jameson you pervs) who is having a disturbing or quite possibly erotic dream of an ample bosomed brunette feeding on her.  Then she blew my frickin eardrums with her Linnea Quigley scream startled from her terrifying dream. Her father Travis (C.S. Munro of Corpse-O-Rama) was also startled via car ride, has about 20 seconds of dialogue with her to establish to the audience that is now deaf that she is having this reoccurring dream.  It is at this point I would also like to point out I recognize one member of the cast (Brink Stevens of Zombiegeddon, Birth Rite and Cheerleader Massacre) and she is hardly even in it so you can just wager how delightful this flick was.   The term shaky cam comes to mind.  Apparently no one bothered to explain weight ratios and balance to this fine film crew.  Sheesh a unipod or tripod would have been nice but no that was not in the budget I gathered.  Better to use the town epileptic, give him a pot of coffee and a camera.  Our fearless director /writer Vince D’Amato is responsible for such flicks as the fore mentioned Corpse-O-Rama, Human Nature and Hell Hath No Fury and we shall not go into those movies for I do not keep a puke bucket by my desk. 

  Getting back to our film; this movie is very loosely based on the talented writer Sheridan Le Fanu that wrote the 1872 classic novel Carmilla and sadly it is about the closest any of the existing film makers have gotten close to.  Well I loved the Hammer films so I cannot discredit the Vampyre Lovers with Ingrid Pitt but that is neither here nor there.   To the best of my understanding of this 70 minute acid trip this is a series of chapters versus being a full film?  While it is an interesting premise it is also utterly confusing to the causal moviegoer.   The deliveries of lines from the actors seem so off base or unnatural.  The inflection of their performance feels forced and completely out of context but hell what do you expect for an under budgeted half-assed indie film with no real direction of a plot but a blatant excuse for a lesbian sex scene that looked so staged it couldn’t stimulate the dead.   I suppose the gore scenes were fairly graphic with the sub-plot of vampires and zombies duking it out but honestly I am left wondering how the title of the movie became the secondary plot.

  This was not titled, ”Carmilla Gets the Girl” so what the hell is going on?   Don’t get me wrong.  This was not Zombi 3 where there was 3 directors throwing their hat in the circle but dear God it needed some cohesive editing man.   I was struggling by the 40 minute mark like Apollo Creed hanging on the ropes in Rocky II.  Bottom line kid; if you are just hoping for some awkward preternatural lesbian sex with a defunct storyline then this is your movie.  If however you wish to hold on to a shred of dignity I have a few vamp films of this particular genre that would at least resemble a storytelling.

Call me Snake..

In the far away timeline of 1997(huh?), crime has risen nearly 400% so prior to that in 1988 New York City has been converted into the world’s maximum security end all prison.  Those that have been convicted of high treasonous crimes are deported to New York and given no chance of parole.  New York is surrounded by a 50-foot high wall of concrete and razor wire, the bridges are mind and waterways are patrolled by regular routine helicopter fly bys.   The United States Police forces are camped around it like an army.  China, The Soviet Union (Communism is the wave of the future!) and America are in negotiations when Air Force One is hijacked by a terrorist liberation front called the National Liberation Front causing the President to use an escape pod and landing in the prison.  A rescue attempt must be made. 

Lotta spoilers in the Hudson.

Hiyas folks today we review the 1981 despotic future storyline Escape from New York.   Brought to us by legendary director/editor/composer John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Remake of the Village of the Damned and Vampires) and writer/director Nick Castle (Major Payne, The Last Starfighter and Taps)   America has become a police state enforcing law with extreme prejudice and vital information needed for the summit, Police Commissioner Robert Hauk (Lee Van Cleef of The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel) must recruit former special forces solider “Snake” Plissken (Kurt Russel of The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from L.A.) to infiltrate the prison, get back the President (Donald Pleasance of You Only Live Twice, Halloween 1,2,4,5,6) and off the island in 24 hours.  A full pardon is offered for this blatant suicide mission and Snake is tagged with a dissolving explosive in his system to keep him in check.    Snake uses a glider to land on the Sears Tower in order to take off at a later date.   Getting to ground; Snake runs into a cornucopia of criminal elements of all types, ranging from cannibals, small time offenders to mass murderers.  Now added by temporary alliances the clock is running out for the President and Plissken must reluctantly save the day.

At this point I would love to point out what it is about this movie that makes it so enjoyable.  Cost effective effects for the glider’s radar was done with a scale model of Manhattan Island with a series of reflective tape to look like a mapping process.  With a 6 million budget in 1981 managed matt based shots, aerial helicopter shots of which was used with the St. Louis National Guard as Blackhawk police copters and furthermore due to the fire in 1973 for two days; this area’s safety was blocks devastation that according to Carpenter it spoke volumes to him and was the ideal set for his steady cams via dolly track.  His minimum lighting techniques always give his films a more eerie feel in the same fashion Hitchcock had.  His love of anamorphic camera lens gives his sets more scope and depth to the film. 

If you enjoy this particular genre of possible futures, Do NOT skip this film.  With memorable lines, excellent character development, this is an overall great experience to be had.