Bloodlust

Three vampires (who can walk in the sunlight and enter a church, no problem, and have no fangs) find themselves pursued by a mobster and his men after they pull a heist; also after the trio of bloodsuckers are a group of religious fanatics and a pair of corrupt cops.

Bloodlust is a low budget Aussie comedy/horror clearly inspired by the success of fellow antipodean, Peter Jackson: it's over the top in terms of violence and delivers plenty of 'bad taste' moments. It doesn't, however, have any of the charm of a Jackson movie. The worst aspect of the whole film is its amateur cast and the thoroughly unappealing characters they play: no-one can act, so everyone overacts - wildly - making an already unlikable bunch all the more irritating. At first I thought the cops were the pits, then the religious folk proved even worse, and then the gangsters took exaggerated mannerisms one step further. Also, the cast start off trying to speak in American accents, but soon admit to themselves that they're not very convincing and revert to their native Aussie twang.

Of course, not very many people will watch this expecting a masterclass in acting: it's the splatter and general deviancy that are the film's main selling points. Unfortunately, the gore isn't very impressive and the movie isn't anywhere near as edgy or as daring as it likes to think it is. The most outrageous moment is a spot of gay necrophilia, but once again, a ridiculous OTT performance makes for a painfully unfunny and not in the least bit shocking scene.

I have to admit to being impressed by the amount of weapons amassed for the movie, which allows for plenty of bloody squib action during the all-guns-blazing finalé; I just wish as much effort had gone into finding proper actors, a decent scriptwriter and better special effects.

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.

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?

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.