Life Blood (2009) Reviews

• Five stars just for an original plot.

  winchester6662009-11-08

  This film is an example of how independent film is unafraid to take an original and interesting plot and put it to use. Notice, I never said, good use? Well that's because here it wasn't put to good use. Rhea and Brooke are two lesbians on their way, somewhere which is never explained, after an incident at a swinging sixties new years eve party. The incident is committed by Brooke and is something that leaves Rhea on a heightened edge of panic. The lord comes down to Rhea and informs her she is a chosen one, an angel, sent to protect the world from true evil, by killing to survive. There is the original plot. And the film gets dumber and dumber after that. The plot is weakened to the point of nonexistance as the film progresses with the murders on screen unimpressive and bland. There is nothing to keep the viewer guessing or on the edge of their seat as the ending is so obvious from the second they transform that you could beat someone over the head with it. The worst part is you couldn't care less what happens to either character. Despite Anya and Sophie's mediocre performances the film still stalls at boring and a snoozefest to those watching. I would not recommend watching this film unless you are a fan of any of the actor's involved as it is a very horrible film. I also know fans of actors are willing to sit through much worse to see their favorite stars on screen. This is one of those films! Very disappointing film.

• Lesbian couple turn angels. One good one bad. Lord help us!

  heartspill2009-11-07

  What a waste of time.I watched about 30 min of this poor film before I had to turn it off. Even the two hot leads did not make me linger on.. The script is so poor and contains so much repetition that I'm wondering if the writer just made use of the copy/paste function a bit too often while he was watching lesbian soft porn on the internet instead of coming up with a better story line. Lines like "What is happening?" or "I don't know what is happening" occur numerous times during the first 30 min of the movie, mostly uttered in blocks of 4 to 5 in a row. I wished somebody would throw her the script (at her head), that might have given her an insight. But then again.. Not only do the two lead characters make out frequently but also does god, appearing as a female, kiss one of the girls. I mean, WTF? Just don't bother watching it. It really, really isn't worth it.

• This movie is rated "R". It's about lesbian vampires. And they don't get naked?

  MBunge2011-11-24

  After watching this awe inspiringly wretched thing, I am convinced that if I asked filmmaker Ron Carlson to write "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", what he'd produce would be "The quick brown fox, the quick brown fox, the quick brown fox, apple 37 Zanzibar". That's how poorly written Life Blood is, it makes me suspect Carlson either has some sort of learning disability or suffered a kind of brain damage, either through an industrial accident or spending a little too much time in auto-erotic asphyxiation. From concept to plot to dialog, your average six year old could come up with a more logical and entertaining story that this. It's so bad that it's one of those films where you literally don't understand how anyone read the script and then agreed to be in it. I mean, how to you get past the part about lesbian vampires gestating for 40 years under the desert, only to emerge in their underwear and start walking down the highway without going "Wait…what?" Brooke and Rhea (Sophie Monk and Anya Lahiri) are two lovers fleeing a party where Brooke killed a guy, only for God (Angela Lindvall) to strike down Brooke and offer to turn Rhea into a vampire. Brooke agrees, but only if God also turns Brooke into a bloodsucker. 4 decades later, they emerge from their cocoons and while Rhea thinks of themselves as avenging angels who are only supposed to go after evil people, Brooke just wants to take a bite out of anyone who gets in her way. After Brooke chomps a good samaritan and a hitchhiker, the pair flee the rising sun and take refuge in a roadside convenience store. Brooke hassles the hapless clerk until she and Rhea get into a fight and Brooke kills her. Brooke then goes on a killing spree that involves a vacationing family and the local sheriff's office before God in a see-thru top returns and brings Rhea back to life for a final showdown. Let me get the one good thing about Life Blood out of the way. Patrick Renna as the hapless convenience store clerk is friggin' amazing. His character is smarter and more believable, his dialog is genuinely funny and everything about his performance is 100 times better than anything else in the film. Renna has got to be ad libbing at least 98% of his role and doing a great job of it. Compared to the rest of the cast, it's like Renna's doing Hamlet to put Laurence Olivier to shame. If the other actors were given the same freedom as Renna, their work here means they should never, ever be allowed to ad lib again. There's no other explanation for how this one actor and one supporting character could be light years beyond everything else in the production. This is a very low budget flick, the kind when there's a scene on a supposedly deserted stretch of highway, you can clearly see traffic moving through the background of the shot. For cheap cinema, however, this looks perfectly fine. The problem here isn't a lack of money. It's a total lack of intelligence and aptitude. I could criticize practically every single second of Life Blood that doesn't involve Patrick Renna, but I'll limit myself to two examples in the interest of brevity. After Sophie's first two kills, the girls drive off in the pickup truck of one of her victims. The truck is hauling one of those rounded silver campers, the kind that used to be popular before RVs became more common. When dawn comes, the vampires fear the sun and stop at the convenience store, run in and try and block out the light. Why didn't they just go in the camper? It has smaller, easier to cover windows. It's right there behind the truck. If the camper is not there for them to hide in…what is it there for?!?! It doesn't serve any other purpose and isn't even mentioned by any of the characters. It may seem like a niggling little detail, but any viewer with an IQ above 50 is going to get to this section of the film and ask "Why aren't they going in the camper?" The other example is that a sheriff's deputy is played by Danny Woodburn. You may not recognize the name, but he's the little person who played Mickey on Seinfeld. Now, even though we live in a politically correct world, little people do not get to be sheriff's deputies just like 7 foot tall guys do no get to serve on submarines. There are physical limitations that prevent it. If you're going to cast a little person as a member of law enforcement, there needs to be a reason for it, even if it's just as a joke, and there is no joke or any other reason for it here. Woodburn could have switched roles with any other member of the cast, male or female, and it would have made more sense. Life Blood is horrendous storytelling. The fact that neither Sophie Monk nor Anya Lahiri get naked, even though they're playing lesbian vampires in an R rated horror movie, defies rationalization. Anyone who watches this and claims to enjoy it should be held 24 hours for psychiatric evaluation.

• Buffy the Holy Vampire Avenger

  alansmithee042010-03-26

  This "film" was made for people who were severely, nay - obsessively, disappointed that there wasn't more lesbianism on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I mean, why else would anyone make this half-hearted attempt at a movie? The plot, as divined from the back of the Burger King bag upon which it was scrawled, involves God (!) coming down to earth to select an earthly avenger. (Seems people didn't learn from that whole 40 day flood thing and she's cheesed off again.) God's plan for the chastisement of humanity? Simple - make a randomly selected lesbian into an unstoppable vampire killing machine and send her out to smite the wicked. Seriously. Yes, that's the best plan an omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent Deity could come up with - a plot that would have been rejected by the pea-brained corporate cretins who run cable TV. And SHE created US? And the world and everything in it? AND She screws even *that* up, if you can believe it. When her chosen earthly avatar pleads for the life of her lover, who also happens to be a psychopathic killer, God takes pity and turns her, too, into an unstoppable vampire. Did I say 'omniscient?' Sorry. I meant 'dumb as a bag of hammers.' All that is just the set up for the ultimate battle between the scantily clad lesbians of good and evil. That makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is, since there wasn't nearly enough budget for an apocalyptic showdown. In fact, there was barely enough for a minor skirmish between the forces of nice and mean. The only upside to this apocalyptic train wreck is that the evil vampire lesbian gets to kill as annoying a bunch of bit players, extras and has-beens as has ever been assembled. Certainly not enough to build a movie around, nu? But that's the real secret of "Murder World." It isn't really a movie. "Murder World" is poorly made masturbation material for lonely vampire-obsessed comic book collecting fan-boys. Everyone else - feel free to avoid this sticky mess like you would one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt.

• This is different

  TdSmth52011-09-18

  A blonde model, Brooke, and her good-natured brunette English girlfriend, Rhea, are at a New Years party in 1969. When an arrogant actor at the party apparently abuses a young fan, Brooke kills him brutally. As the two girls escape in a car on a desert road, Brooke runs over a rat or some creature. Now both girls flip out. She stops the car and Rhea has a breakdown. A small sandstorm appears and wipes out Brooke leaving only her clothes behind. Out of the sandstorm walks a masculine looking woman. It's god. God has a mission for Rhea- to fight evil. As a result she will gain immortality. But Brooke will be her challenge, she doesn't have a good heart. 40 years later they are resurrected at the same spot. A driver stops for a hitchhiker nearby and the two girls catch up. Brooke has an insatiable hunger for blood and devours the two much to the protests of Rhea. They escape in the car to a gas station where they try to hide from the rising sun. There, a poor attendant has to witness these two girls arguing. Brooke can't control her hunger and wants the attendant. Rhea wants to fulfill her mission since she is god's warrior. Somehow Brooke manages to kill Rhea. Other patrons show up, the police show up, but they are no match for Brooke. Until god reappears. Life Blood sure has an interesting premise- vampires as avenging angels for god. However in this movie we don't get to see a lot of that. It's just about the two girls. And Rhea's challenge of dealing with Brooke. The cops and the store patrons are a Hollywood-correct diverse bunch of very silly people. Despite the low budget, strange story, this movie is very watchable thanks to some nudity at the beginning, lots of making-out between the girls, and the excellent acting of the two leads. It could have been a disaster of a movie but the entire cast takes it seriously and they make it work. The script has some signs of intelligence. The arrogant actor gives an appropriate speech about society letting him get away with anything because he is a star, and he sure is going to test the limits of that submission by society. God also gives an interesting speech but it's as if a limited budget forced the filmmakers to go off course and tell a very limited story.