Abbreviated Entry...
So most of June has been pretty brutal for me schedule-wise. Big Time Life Events™ of close family members (weddings/funerals/reunions) have conspired to make the movie-every-day thing rather difficult. I've still managed to watch one every day, but the end result of everything life has thrown my way is that I'm as exhausted as I've ever been. So to keep my sanity (and this blog going), I'm going to do things a bit differently for a little while - I watched the movies, but rather than the standard entry, I'll just do a little synopsis, a little imdb research, quote some of the reviews (can you do that?) and bounce off of them. Followed up by my general impressions.
Okay, thanks!
Bloodbeat
It's hard to really even know what to say about this one. It's a really cheap feeling/cheap looking "slasher" (I guess), about a samurai ghost. But it's just confusing. My best synopsis? A woman in rural Wisconsin has some weird psychic connection to the past. When her daughter, son, and her son's new girlfriend return home for the holidays, she has an instant dislike for the girlfriend. A samurai ghost comes to life and starts killing people. I purposely left in some long quotes from imdb here to hopefully pass on a better understanding of what this movie is about, because I just don't even know.
Special thanks to my favorite podcast, That's Cool That's Trash, for bringing this one to my attention. Even if the movie wasn't worth watching, it was still a good podcast.
"Bloodbeat" is one of the more bizarre films you could ever see. What we have here is a slasher shot in Wisconsin by a French director with a ghostly samurai as the killer. It's actually pretty effective for the first two thirds of the running time, particularly a creepy home invasion and ensuing chase. Through some splendid editing, this sequence is interspersed with the girlfriend's writhing and upward-thrusting in bed. It's also undeniably cool seeing a samurai as the villain in a slasher. During the final third, however, the film veers off in an unsatisfying direction with over-the-top antics and ridiculous special effects. Disappointing, but not enough to ruin the film for me. Oh yeah, excessive overuse of violin chords too.
-Thanks "Justin Stokes" via imdb
I didn't really think that Bloodbeat was effective at all. It was really more just confusing. It had a kind of occasionally enjoyable/bizarro vibe to it, but ultimately felt too plodding and confusing to really make any lasting impression. I guess there was a part where a hunter guy skinned an actual deer carcass for real. I remember that. And the afore mentioned "chase/masturbating" girlfriend sequence is interesting, to say the least. But still, the film was just a little too cheap looking, too poorly acted, to meandering, and just too plotless to capture my attention.
Obviously it was made with no money at all, but acting, photography, editing and story are well done. Proves once more you can do an entertaining movie with very little. "Blood Beat" owes a bit to "Poltergeist", "Witchboard" and "The Shining" maybe, but has a good storyline of its own about the ghost of evil (dressed up as a samurai warrior, also incarnated in one young lady) against a family whose members seem to have a certain talent for (good) magic.
-Thanks "unbrokenmetal" via imdb
Well, that's not what I got out of it. Except for the "obviously made with no money part." But the story is just incoherent. I've liked movies with incoherent stories before, but usually there is at least something extra to sink you're teeth into - either well-done or hilariously bad. Unfortunately, the non-story parts Bloodbeat are neither good nor so-bad-it's good.
One criticism that can be levelled at Zaphiratos is that he throws a little too much of everything into the blender and what we're left with is a lump sum that's a little too uneven to digest. We're never really given a straight resolution to exactly what a ghostly samurai warrior is doing terrorising an American woodland retreat and a little more clarification would have been greatly appreciated. Why he decided to break the slasher mould and opt for a climax owing more to the likes of Poltergeist is a mystery in itself. Yes you can laugh at the Commodore 64-esque special effects and the strained faces of the ESP confrontation, but all in all this is a mildly diverting slasher journey that's perhaps a little unlucky to be so overlooked. At times taut and suspenseful, almost always intriguing and bizarrely bemusing to boot, Bloodbeat isn't that bad if you can find yourself a copy. It's strange but bizarrely alluring
-Thanks "Luisito Joaquin Gonzalez" via imdb
"Bizarrely alluring" is what I was hoping for, but Bloodbeat just didn't work for me. As Luisito refers to, there is no real resolution to the story, and the entire film just sort of sits there... there are time where it flirts with becoming weird enough to be worth watching, but overall it kind of felt like a slog. And again, I think most of this is because I was never sure of just what was happening or why. That's kind of important stuff, I guess.
Taste in bizzare/cult movies can obviously vary from person to person. While this sounded like it could have been right up my alley (cheap looking samurai ghost film shot in rural Wisconsin!), it was a big time miss for me. It certainly won't work for the average viewer (I feel pretty comfortable saying it is objectively a very bad movie), but it might work for some cult film fans. I just wasn't one of them.
I would not recommend this film.
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