Bloodlust

I have seen way too many bad movies in my life. And by "bad" I don't mean "hilariously inept" or "funny cheesy b-grade trash". I'm talking about BAD - so bad you wonder why you bother continuing to watch until the end. 'Bloodlust' is as bad as any movie I have ever seen. There is absolutely no reason to endure this movie, except just to say you have seen one of the worst movies ever made in Australia.

Now look, I'm all for the idea of saying "major studios be damned, I'll just do it MY WAY". It certainly worked for Roger Corman, Russ Meyer, Andy Warhol and John Waters. More recently, Jorge Buttgereit's astounding 'Nekromantik' has shown what can be achieved with little or no budget, no apparent outside censorship or compromise, and an original vision. That movie is genuinely exciting and disturbing. 'Bloodlust', despite the publicity screaming it is the first Australian movie banned in Britain, isn't. Buttgereit has talent and chutzpah in spades. 'Bloodlust' director Jon Hewitt, and co-writer Richard Wolstencroft don't.

This is an amateurish mess, with absolutely nothing original to say, with an abysmal script (? I'm assuming their really WAS a script) badly acted by a bunch of low lifes, druggies, and non-actors. The latter inexplicably includes respected underground musicians Ian Rilen (of legendary punk band X) and Frank Brunetti (former member of 80s indie faves Died Pretty). The involvement of those two is really the only interesting thing about this whole fiasco. Maybe 'Bloodlust' was a lot of fun to make, but watching it is a chore. If you want to see some genuinely entertaining b-grade Aussie trash check out 'Body Melt'. It's everything 'Bloodlust' would love to be.

I first received an uncut Australian VHS tape of this when it was first released. The movie was really cool but the extras on the tape are what put this movie is the MUST WATCH category. The extras were fantastic. This movie has one of the best trailers you will ever see on a low budget horror film. The film has lots of energy and is nonstop action and horror.

The basic plot has the main 3 actors wreaking havoc on everyone they cross paths with. The 3 main actors are vampires, 1 man & 2 women. The man is pretty cool and the 2 girls are great. One of the girls is a busty sexy blond and very voluptuous. The movie has a little of everything in it, including some crime action scenes inspired from Hong Kong movies. The characters in the movie are fun. It seems that the actors in the movie had fun making the movie. There is lots of gore for the gore fans. I found the soundtrack was excellent for the movie and it had lots of energy to it.

If you are able to track this down, try and find it with the extras. The extras include an awesome trailer, interviews (really funny), and trial footage with the lead voluptuous blonde actress with dark hair. This movie also stars an actor by the name of Crawdaddy playing a bad cop. I would definitely recommend this to fans of low budget horror. The directors went on to make more cult movies.

In Chicago, a VHS tape bootlegger used to sell NTSC copies of this at horror shows in Chicago, right after this came out on tape in PAL. The dealer ran a trailer of this on a TV he had on his table. He sold out a whole box of tapes of this movies within minutes of the show opening, just off the trailer.

By any stretch of the imagination 'Bloodlust' is terrible pile of perverted garbage, but in the end I had trouble taking my eyes off this highly entertaining low-cost trash. When I came across it I never even heard of this Australian horror feature. 'Banned in Britain' screams out on the front of the video case and whole bunch of rave comments just suck you in! Think of early Peter Jackson ('Bad Taste') but even more inept and downright crazy. It's cheap… really cheap off-kilter exploitation involving buckets of ultra-violence, soft-core sex and maniac dialogues. The execution is chaotic and dumb (just watch for the over-the-top performances where no one is safe from the onslaught!), but that's its charm. The enthusiasm shows behind the camera, than just in front of it. The style kinda reminds me of a local (Australian viewers would know) TV series which also spawned a movie or two; 'Pizza'. It does feel like a home-made video, which it's obviously shot-on-video and it amateurishly shows. The FX work is crude and outrageous, and this seems to work and add to the fun while we get a blaring heavy metal soundtrack accompanying with hammering beats and rhythms. Or maybe it's just noise for some?

The story follows three modern-day vampires (not your traditional bloodsuckers too) who decide enliven their boring lifestyles (killing, sex and drug taking) to rob the mob and then find themselves being chased by mob hit-man, raving religious fanatics and two redneck cops.

That's pretty much it. The tone of it is a dark, twisted and seedy black comedy that has an audacious streak. Every couple of words is something foul, the pace is non-stop and the performances range from stiff (the three vamps) to bonkers stage-like show acting (religious fanatics take the cake).

For a laugh (unintentional or not) this is a good one to watch with pals. This schlock has cult written all over it.

I feel no remorse is saying that Bloodlust is quite possibly one of the worst films ever made. Not because of the fact that the budget looks lower than that of the average backyard porn flick, or that the acting sucks or whatever...

It's more about the fact that this is advertised as being a "vampire movie", however, for anybody who's ever seen a vampire film, it's nice when they actually feature some characters that you can say without a doubt, "yep, that person's a vampire" rather than "yep, that person's a wolf-haired gimp in fluoro sweatpants".

Truly bad.

Some people are born clueless I guess. The movie is AUSTRALIAN - the "fake" English accents are in fact Australian accents! The actors who are speaking in this dialect happen to be real junkies, prostitutes and pimps which certainly adds a bit of authenticity if not an interestingly perverse element to the movie. Also, the music is by The Buzzcocks, a well thought of Industrial/Punk band that sure ain't "80's hard rock" and is totally appropriate to the approach of this revisionist vampire outing. Yeah, sure they can walk around in sunlight, so what? If no filmmaker could diverge from the exact formula in popular mythology things would get pretty boring and predictable and we would be missing out on a lot of classic cinema. Though admittedly the drooling masses like their mindless entertainment to adhere to predictable rules. Actually I'm amazed that there was only one entry here for this movie. It's been banned in the UK due to the copious amounts of sex and gore, but still there are other places where this has been seen, where are the real trash movie fans when ya need 'em?