Bloodlust

The Details:
Directed by Michael Kazlo II
Runtime: 84 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Company: Archangel Productions

The Review:
Thank the b-movie gods for friendship and patience, for without these I would have never made it through Michael Kazlo II's Bloodlust.

Maria Hunter's parents were murdered by a vampire. After being adopted by the church, the same vampire kills her brother. Now, Maria Hunter doesn't like vampires very much. So she picks up an UZI, reads the manual and gets to business.

Sounds simple enough, right? If only it were. Bloodlust wants to be far more expansive and dramatic than necessary for a good b-movie time. Characters are continually thrown into the mix and uninteresting dialog segments drag on in sleep-inducing excess. None of the personalities are interesting enough to maintain viewer interest. Along with the poor acting and sluggish pacing, Bloodlust features some of the cheapest special effects and unexciting fight choreography in history. There are quite a few substantial fight scenes in the movie that are about as graceful as a couple seven year olds going at it on the playground.

Thankfully, there are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments spread throughout that can be enjoyable with the right group of friends. Examples include vampires that make cat sounds, a character taking cover behind some cardboard boxes to avoid shotgun blasts, and "gunfire" that consists of bad sound effects and a few white flashes added in post production. The most confusing thing in the whole film is that the main character is actually replaced with some other random girl towards the end! Whenever her face must be shown, the original actor is green screened into the environment. I'm not sure what the story is here but it is quite befuddling. It is just unfortunate that the laughs don't make up for the overall experience.

The best thing to come out of Bloodlust is without a doubt the short film sequel The Vampire Assassin. This minimovie is infinitely more entertaining, exciting and enjoyable than the full-length flop it spawned from. It is nice to see that Michael Kazlo II is improving and learning from his mistakes, and if he keeps improving at this rate I'm sure he will be doing some great work in the future. Thing is, I can't really justify giving The Vampire Assassin its own separate review. Just take my word and watch it instead of Bloodlust.

But back to the film at hand: Bloodlust takes a series of rough detours and encounters some heavy road construction on its way to a successful b-movie. It is possible to stick out the ride, but even the most patient drivers will be itching to pull on the shoulder and speed away as quickly as possible.


READING THE UZI MANUAL: What a responsible gun owner.
PENIS BEER: Not just a worm in some tequila...
A FEW LAUGHS: Only because it's so bad.