BloodRayne I and II: Deliverance (2005/2007)

 

Director: Uwe Boll

Screenplay: Guinevere Turner (BloodRayne); Christopher Donaldson and Neil Every (BloodRayne II)

Cast:

BloodRayne: Kristanna Loken as Rayne; Michael Madsen as Vladimir; Ben Kingsley as Kagan; Michelle Rodriguez as Katarin; Matthew Davis as Sebastian; Meat Loaf as Leonid; Billy Zane as Elrich

BloodRayne II: Natassia Malthe as Rayne; Zack Ward as Billy "The Kid"; Michael Paré as Pat Garrett; Chris Coppola as Newton Pyles; Chris Spencer as Bob, The Bartender; Brendan Fletcher as Muller; Sarah-Jane Redmond as Martha; Michael Teigen as "Slime Bag" Franson; Michael Eklund as The Preacher

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

People reading this will immediately think, if this is first review of mine they have read, that this will be a burial. With hindsight, I held these two as among two of the worst films I had ever seen once, so I was in that camp, but alongside the fact I liked the second film Deliverance, the tale I want to write specifically with BloodRayne is what happens when you can have all the resources at your hands but, if rushed, leads to something that gained the notoriety it did rather than present the entertaining film we would have all rather had. I would want to know what happened with the first BloodRayne specifically, and how it came as it did considering its resources include its cast - Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Sir Ben Kinsley, Kristanna Loken, even a cameo by Meatloaf - in its writer Guinevere Turner, who will stand out for many as the one who adapted Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho to the screen, and enough of the budget here to have gotten something as a video game film. Especially as I would be one of the first to defend the Street Fighter (1994) film with Raul Julia, and even find Super Mario Bros. (1993) a compellingly weird adaptation, videogame adaptations even if they are ridiculous are not something I will dismiss. Even in terms of hardcore, cult cinema niche, among the multiple roles he had in the production including the special effects team is Olaf Ittenbach, a German splatter film director I am aware of, as others may be, for the truly twisted pieced of no-budget gore cinema known as The Burning Moon (1992), and even if he barely contributed onscreen you can even see in BloodRayne splatter film influences in some of the gnarlier moments. There was enough here to adapt this videogame into something distinct.

BloodRayne was originally developed by Terminal Reality, who started in 1994 and worked through the computer era of the nineties videogames until the point the original 2002 game allowed them to spread their wings onto multiple consoles, and the game was clearly made under the shadow of Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series of the attractive female lead who could actually be a pinup in magazines with real models. This comes to mind that, yes, Rayne appeared in a Playboy magazine as a fictional character, the first videogame character in October 2004, and that, published by Majesco Entertainment, they focused grouped the character to explicitly attract a young male audience at the time. Liz Buckley, product manager for Majesco from this time, had her designers learning what boys and young men in focus groups prefered¹, which drastically revised how the character originally was from initial design², all in mind to a time now washing away in the past as we have had sexually appealing female videogame characters become more of a contentious concept, even to the point Mortal Kombat, which was sexualising its characters in the 2000s games, have back peddled from this, and even Dead or Alive, a beat-em-up franchise infamous for this, had to include measures least in the costume choices suitable for videogame fighting tournaments.

After BloodRayne 2 (2004) however, the games also leaning on Terminal Reality having worked on horror games beforehand among other genres, there was a huge period of silence for this franchise, lost to the original Xbox/Playstation 2 era of games as a franchise. Alongside the original games being having remasters in the 2020s, there was then BloodRayne: Betrayal (2011), which showed how much changed in trends including with its 2021 enhanced version BloodRayne: Betrayal - Fresh Bites. Gone were the three dimensional levels, now a 2D side-scrolling platform game befitting the growing interesting in two dimensional and "retro" games of the past, and even a significant change in Rayne the dhampir. Whilst still the attractive vampire, gone is the voluptuous pin-up of Playboy, evoked in the two film adaptations by Uwe Boll too, but a version influenced by comic books and even Japanese animation and manga in appearance who is less explicitly sexualised.

This is worth bringing up as, with how Uwe Boll was making these films, he picked up upon not the biggest licenses but ones even from Sega (House of the Dead) which were cult hits, this review finding itself in his most controversial era between 2003 to 2008 when he was making these videogame adaptations, where Far Cry (2008) was adapting a game from its origins and not when it became the ultra-expensive Triple A franchise that would have been out of Boll's franchise nowadays to adapt. His infamous run, which barely covers a long career, is of this era, and taking an immediate change of pace from the first game, where Rayne is hunting Nazis, and starting in 18th-century Romania, he came to this clearly without heart for the material, not even the dangerous (but inventive) spinning camera scenes or Clint Howard from House of the Dead, and made a film which was not carefully through in its creation.

Immediately problems arise with the film in how there is no stop to the exposition and events, charging along without pace. There is the anecdote Guinevere Turner has talked of that, with her script late by two weeks, Uwe Boll had been angered by this and that, even when she still sent him a first draft after this moment, he worked from that version and even let the story deviate entirely from her work³. Honestly, so much more feels amiss with the film, even when one realises that most b-movies have little time to be produced and are rushed. The plot can be written on a napkin - evil vampire lord (Kingsley) clashes with the dhampir he sired (as played here by Kristanna Loken) over ancient artefacts which would allow him greater power, whilst vampire hunters led by Michael Madsen take her in as a potential ally - but it is amazing to feel and heard this film not take time to breath and coordinate itself.

It feels like a production which suffers at the hands of juggling all its variables, not just in terms of the screenplay anecdote, but also with the cast a great example of seeing this in a variety of ways. Billy Zane, who is on screen in only a few moments and has no ties to the end despite being a vampire, feels at ease, one of the more rewarding figures whilst others are hustled through scenes awkwardly, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriquez and Kristanna Loken among the noticeable examples. Geraldine Chaplin, daughter of that Charlie Chaplin, is a tarot reader for one scene, all her lines exposition, but feels at ease too, as does Udo Kier, who is also comfortable onscreen, whilst it feels like there is both the script and the lack of pause which forces the acting along with many of the bigger stars, who feel the most struggling with the scenario. With no time to step back and see how the mood is, as it hurtles along, and you cannot really gather yourself in both the content and the performances.

Which sucks as you can see the production design was trying. This is a rich world even on a budget where there is enough to stand out. Even in mind to its practical effects team, there is grotesqueness too, such as the monstrous helper of a monastery's secret, mallet in hand, or when we get to the Meatloaf scene and the best moment of the entire prequel. Meatloaf's hall of orgies and splatter film approved horrors, prosthetic effects and nudity crossing in ways normally not found in a more mainstream film, sticks out alongside the fact that Meatloaf, surrounded by naked actresses when introduced, came correct for the role and steals the entire production eating the scenery. Even this is rushed however, and there is a sense that Boll was forced to churn out a film against the right intentions he should have done. Some of this could not be helped, as it is clear they only had Ben Kinsley for a day or so, filming all his scenes in the same two rooms, but you see so much more to the production not being appreciated as a film has to be quickly put together within it. You can see this is in how the film skips past its plot points, skips through fight scenes, even when they have hired actors who have martial arts skills too, or the sex scene. Sold entirely on Kristanna Loken herself, after her role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and sold off titillation, it does make little sense, beginning a romance with a male vampire hunter which is abrupt, and feels so cynically shoved in whether it made to or not, both in Loken's comfortableness to do the scene, and Rayne being sold as a sexual videogame hero back in that era.

In vast contrast, made after the BloodRayne games would go on their hiatus, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance is a film with none of the recognisable names, barring Michael Paré as Pat Garrett, but is actually an entertaining movie with a pace and reward. Set later in history in the Wild West, westerns are a genre cheap to make but that is not an insult in the slightest, as whilst they no longer exist as a mainstream genre, they are still being made straight to DVD and other mediums from this period on when this one was produced. Following the idea of what outlaw Billy the Kid would be like as a vampire, this with Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe now Rayne has also recast the pace with one which allows this film to breathe, with care to take in its plot.

It is a b-movie horror western, which not everyone will enjoy, but in contrast to the first film, I enjoyed a film immensely which was not heavily compromised, even if I miss the practical effects team from the first production. I can be happy to see Uwe Boll here make a genre film which is entertaining like this, which no expectations but the execution accomplished, working around its limited production and retelling western clichés only with significantly cruder dialogue at points. Even the slow-mo he uses was not that bad to experience, and the aspects which could have been fleshed out, such as a band of vampire hunters consisting of Pat Garret and a corrupt preacher conman, still crackle with personality. Even how Rayne herself is no longer the figure of the first film, but just a strong female lead, feels like a considerable change in pace, and whilst there is a third film, BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), that feels its own review to consider, particularly as that is also in a different time period for Boll as a filmmaker to these two. Set in World War II, made in mind to the original game having its lead fighting Nazis, that film deserves its own focus as three films came from one production - The Third Reich itself, Blubberella (2011), which is a terrible parody film I will say Boll should not have made, and Auschwitz (2011), which was a serious and grim depiction of the Nazis, all based around the locations built for the time period.

The only thing more interesting than this director making a watchable genre film was whenever Uwe Boll made "serious" films, the heavy handedness of a film like Hearts of America (2002), tackling school shootings, yet contrasting with material which do have interesting things to examine within them. By the point of the first BllodRayne, a German tax law, where the German Tax Fund makes film production costs immediately tax-deductible, was dashed from existence in 2006^4&5, and whilst it did not end his productivity, it was something he had clearly used and it makes for the unfortunate argument that, as with the first BloodRayne, he focused on a string of films, videogame adaptations, which were not made with as much interest from him as a creative figure. This was the  time when he was notorious as a bad filmmaker for many, not as a filmmaker to dissect, and in 2006 came the "Raging Boll" publicity stunt, competing with critics of his films in boxing matches which would be compiled into a 2010 documentary of the same name. It became less the Boll behind films like Seed (2007), which at least presented things of interest even if the viewer hated them, but this period would make his infamy rather than these more interesting films, entirely focused on video game adaptations in the mid-2000s which feels like a compromise. The irony is that his notoriety is based really on 2003 to 2005 films, not the video game films from the years after - House of the Dead (2003), Alone in the Dark (2005) and BloodRayne - whilst by the time of BloodRayne II, I am watching a film that, regardless of its video game license, is more a working director juggling genre films and dramas in the straight-to-video era. The worst part is that the later is far more interesting and arguably more focused, but not what we talk about with this German filmmaker. What made Boll's infamy, stepping away from filmmaking by the mid-2010s as things changed, with the streaming industry coming into being, is frankly the less rewarding side to him if the first BloodRayne is to be considered.  

 

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1) Fighting Women Enter the Arena, No Holds Barred, written by Michel Marriott and published for the New York Times on May 15th 2003.

2) Getting the Girl: The myths, misconceptions, and misdemeanors of females in games, written by Zoe Flower and published for 1UP.com on 18th December 2007. Retrieved 12th July 2009 by Web Archive.

3) Bloodrayne screenwriter explains the perils of working with Uwe Boll, written by Ben Gilbert for Engadget and published October 26th 2011.

4) Uwe Boll and the German Tax Code, written by Allen Varney and published by The Escapist on January 23rd 2007.

5) Tax changes threaten German film, written for the Guardian on November 9th 2005.

Blubberella (2011)

Director: Uwe Boll

Screenplay: Willam Belli, Uwe Boll, Michael Christopher and Lindsay Hollister

Cast: Lindsay Hollister as Blubberella; Brendan Fletcher as Nathaniel Gregor; Michael Paré as the Commandant; Willam Belli as Vadge; Annett Culp as Magda Markovic; Clint Howard as Doctor Mangler; Uwe Boll as Hitler

Ephemeral Waves

Smells like pubes and cheese here.

Well, inevitably the conversation would move to Uwe Boll. He would have to be talked about in terms of unconventional filmmakers, or those will outsider reputations, and fully forming my interest in cinema during the mid-to-late 2000s, Boll was a notorious cult of personality at the time. He has vanished, making an official retirement in 2016 due to difficulties to fund his films. He is evidence of cinema's curious nature that, for every auteur who struggled to get films made of their ambitions, figures as long as they worked in the medium as a business (or just made them off their own backs, medium to micro budget) could have long filmographies.

Blubberella (sic) and its production narrative could have been something legendary producer/director Roger Corman might have done himself to cut costs, namely that Uwe Boll whilst he was making BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), the third in a series based on a videogame franchise he made the trilogy of, decided to make a shot-by-shot parody with almost the same actors and the same resources. Considering that the film was set in World War II, with period accurate designs and sets, Corman might have been proud of someone else not letting the production go to waste.

Like the original, this follows a half human half vampire, only know she is Blubberella (sic), switching original actress Natassia Malthe for Lindsay Hollister, who in the middle of ninety forties Europe is found in a modern colourful bedroom with an internet connection, angry her dating life on "HebrewHookup.net" is being undermined by the Nazis. As much as the film is made on ingenuity, it was for me also a terrible viewing experience. It seems pat to have a review of a film by a director who kept having to fight off negative reviews become a negative review, but we are stuck in position especially with how he treats the material, and how sadly this is, rather than an excuse to mock his work, this is a film that clearly came in with an idea, only to stumble immediately into an ill coordinated mess.

Humour is subjective, which proves an issue whenever one is attempting to critique of at any level of scholarship on the subject. Uwe Boll's attempt at a parody, which was co written with cast members like Lindsay Hollister herself, can be split into three divisive categories - 1) that it has a lot of pop culture references from this time period including an extended parody of Lee Daniel's Precious (2009), a film I wonder if it still has any cultural memory of after the acclaim it had back then; 2) some absurdist humour, mainly a lot of anachronistic details or details like placing Hollister's face on old vampire film posters in her bedroom; and 3) and the most divisive content, a lot of deliberately offensive humour for bad taste. The last can be described in how, in a scene where Blubberella (sic) and a group of resistance fighters find a Nazi train, only to find onboard who are explicitly Jews are being shipped off rather than the weapons they were expecting. They all at first consider helping them, reconsider it as the stereotypical gay character in the resistance argues their fashion sense is dreadful, then reclose and lock the train cart door.

Yeah, Uwe Boll is playing a deadly game of irony throughout Blubberella (sic) that has not aged well. His comedy here is as deliberately broad as possible and very much signposted all the way through, takes Bloodrayne 3 and very much leaves the barest of structures to throw jokes at, that when the heroine accidentally leaves a Nazi victim alive, the Commandant (Michael Paré), with vampire abilities he hopes to exploit this with the help of mad scientist Dr Mangler (Clint Howard), but never progresses this beyond the jokes.

The resistance is only presented by two figures - their leader Nathaniel Gregor (Brendan Fletcher), who starts to fall in love with Blubberella (sic) only to have the sexual performance of an awkward teenager, and Vadge (Willam Belli), who minces, is explicitly gay, and whose entire stereotyping is softened when I learnt Willam Belli is a drag performer, brought in by Lindsay Hollister when Boll wanted her to come up with jokes for this parody². This does however leave me in a worst, more conflicted pace as the humour in the film did not work for me and strays into some eye brow raising territory. It is not even out of political correctness - but instead rolling my eyes at this all.

Here is the thing with Uwe Boll: I never considered him "the worst director ever", as subjectively that is a nonsensical title to bestow on anyone, as it takes one person to admit they liked House of the Dead (2003), his first notorious film, even as a guilty pleasure to undermine his candidacy. Even by this time, with Blubberella (sic), the likes of Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) were lowering the bar further in technical and production quality beyond him. Boll reminds me instead of his fellow countryman Roland Emmerich. Two German filmmakers who clearly wanted to make Hollywood films, Emmerich getting the blockbuster budgets whilst Boll had to be resourceful, both wanting to do spectacle, both wanting to innovate¹, both wanting to also make serious films, Emmerich among his even tackling the Stonewall riots to divisive attitudes as Boll among his did a film inspired by the Columbine High School shootings. Both have been dogged by negative critical opinion. Emmerich however has never challenged film critics to boxing fights as Boll did, with some accepting and footage recorded in a documentary.

Boll for me also, and I am fully aware of the dangers of armchair psychology especially when it will anger the creators of a film, has also been someone clearly rattled by those film critics, hence he buries them in dialogue here by a comparison to a vampire. Boll has by this point juggled between anger at his critics, making a film like Seed (2007) meant to unsettle, and playing up to his reputation with deliberate bad taste and irony, be it the comical reinterpretation of House of the Dead for DVD release, or Postal (2007), where adapting a notorious PC game franchise³, he also played himself as a bastard who funded films with Nazi gold. Blubberella (sic) is neither as subtle, clearly with the attempt at not necessarily provocative, but the same attitude of eating with one's mouth open to deliberately put someone off. He also continues this self mocking nature, or is willing to be a sport, but playing Adolf Hitler. Blubberella (sic) tries to convince him to not be evil, becoming friends, only for him to still show himself as a little dictator when he is losing at the board game Risk. It would be a funny scene, baring the fact he also has actor Brendan Fletcher in full blackface, to the point it could have been applied with burnt cork as minstrels used to use for the makeup, playing the stereotype in "urban" speak, which as a phrase to have to use to describe this already makes me uncomfortable to use.  

Boll will shoot himself in the foot for a film like this, his reputation to be effects by the fact that, in a time irony was considered a free pass, he has not one but two blackface performances alongside various other deliberately offensive jokes which are exceptionally broad and, in those two cases, never making any sense anyway to why they are there. The first makes even less sense, closer to the school of parody filmmaking of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, behind films like Disaster Movie (2008) which were critically drubbed and they themselves falling out of the limelight as Boll did by the late 2010s, a parody of the Oscar nominee film Precious. Change the lead character for Blubberella (sic), and her abusive mother Willam Belli in blackface playing to a stereotyped voice whilst hurling abuse at the protagonist, and you get...well, something that recounting in memory a part of me thinks of wanting to sink my head into my hands, wondering why no one reconsidered this before putting it to film . Even as part of dream sequences, alongside the Adolf Hitler one, they do not really stand out aside from two really poorly considered attempts at humour.

Aside from this, which has never been flagged up since the film's release in 2011, also likely to haunt the production is the gay humour, which even in context of them likely to have been penned by Willam Belli, come off as a subtle blow with a sledgehammer to the back of the head, the jokes about the lead being fat and eating, Hollister which are worse knowing Hollister, trying her best, took this role because of the stigma against larger women, and the issue that, even beyond this, that Blubberella (sic) feels lacksidasical, as the umpteenth pop culture reference appears and hits like a snowball with a rock inside.

The production is striking for a comedy as, borrowing sets from another production, it was a very realistically depicted form of World War II Europe, probably one of Uwe Boll's highest budgeted films in terms of appearance. With the accurate costumes and props, the one joke I had initially rolled my eyes at but, in hindsight, I find funny shows what the film should have been. It is when, with the resistance fighters are introduced, walking through snow covered countryside as a unit, you notice that one of the grunts is an actor in a cumbersome yellow-orange fish costume. Maybe the soldier wanted to stand out, or there is a bipedal walking fish fighting Nazis, but they are encumbered on land as they flop over in the snow and are ignored as they lay there on manoeuvres. That - contrasting a serious war film with this surreal farce - was what Boll could do and clearly could. Instead, he is not subtle and more interested in provocation to a detriment.

Or give Clint Howard more scenes. Most of his lines are terrible, but the other Howard brother, even over director Ron Howard, is practically bullet proof when it comes to all the good will he gets as a figure. Whilst Boll himself awkwardly, and uncomfortably, adapts himself to this comedy and creates something miserable, Clint Howard as a mad German scientist can overcome even an onscreen caption, which everyone gets and are usually terrible alongside the chapter cards, that he was Michael Jackson's doctor by being so gleefully evil as he dissects a vampire whilst he is still alive. Whilst Michael Paré, as the main Nazi villain, is maniac and even turn to Marlon Brando mushmouth levels of acting, probably on purpose, Clint Howard has always been providing this type of role and becoming beloved regardless of the quality of the films he has been in. Everything in the film is, personally, terrible, with actors like Lindsay Hollister sadly left hanging, and myself being left with a bad taste so bad that, when the film ends earlier than I presumed and that the last fifteen to ten minutes are outtakes, I had to abandon it and run even as someone who has been a mad completist of endurance cinema.

It may seem an odd way to end this review, but aptly Clint Howard himself has the right way to describe Uwe Boll and the entire problem with this production. ”[I’ve] said, ‘Uwe, spend more time on the material...Certainly I wish he was a little better filmmaker. I wish I could hit a ball a little straighter. Life’s not perfect, but I like Uwe.”² I do not mind Uwe either, having even found in the past that when he made a film like Rampage (2009) he suddenly surprised people with a film many actually liked including me. Unfortunately, when there was such an apt opportunity for a funny World War II parody, and a way to have a very positive role for an actress of a larger weight, that faltered because Boll did not think through the material, made some egregious and offensive choices, and lost a good opportunity when it was for the taking.

In fact, reading upon the way the film was being made, as well as the fact Boll was planning a third film with the same sets, the completely serious and dark drama Auschwitz (2011) which dealt with a study of the concentration camp, there is a wonder if a lot of the film's haphazard and ill thought-out pacing was due to the ambition hitting a roadblock that shock it from being properly produced. The result instead proved, tragically, unbearable for me.

 

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1) House of the Dead, for its notoriety, had Boll use a turn-table rig that spun a camera around his cast as if they were rotating characters in a video game select screen. It was never seen after as, spinning at a high speed, such a rig would be too dangerous.

2) A fascinating article on the production here.

3) Specifically Postal 2 (2003) - where you had the ability to urinate on people, fight the former child actor Gary Coleman, and could place cats anus first onto one's guns as improvised silencers.