Bloodsuckers (2005)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I must confess I was expecting something terrible. Honestly, do you believe that a movie called "Bloodsuckers" aka "Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe" can actually be good? And in general I'm not into vampires, but the sci-fi element here made me give it a try. I intended to fast forward it and just go through the scenes with the special effects. But after a couple of minutes I found myself actually enjoying it! It's a B-movie, no doubt about it, but it's quite above the average and I think it's worth watching if you have the chance (and if you're into such genres). The good things about it: - First of all, it has a script. It's not brilliant, but it's good enough, and it has a couple of one-liners, some really good character relationship moments, homage to classic horrors (like Leatherface and Voorhees vampires), and a fun ending. - Neat atmosphere. Feels like half-budget "Firefly" meets "Blade". - The cast is quite good and they're doing great with what they have - it's not heavy drama with great character depth, but they manage to give certain individuality to their characters. Having Michael Ironside as the villain was a surprise and a treat. - The CGI is low budget, but decent. The costumes and the sets as well. I think the art department did their best with what they had. - The soundtrack is quite good, there are nice rock tracks in it and the songs fit to the scenes. - This movie looks good! Good camera-work, which I think is rare these days in B-movies, they all tend to shake and zoom, trying to give some "reality" feel to it.If you'd watch every once in a while something different than Oscar winners and summer blockbusters, and if you like sci-fi flicks, I encourage you to see this one.I'm giving it 10/10 cause I think it deserves more than 4-something, which is it's current IMDb Rating. Otherwise, I think it's 6/10.

Second movie in the boxset. Originally titled Bloodsuckers, This movie was pretty average. It is kinda boring in some parts but there is some good gore effects, but they're not great though. The movie takes place in the year 2210. Vampires have pretty much taken over the whole world. The V-SAN (Vampire Sanitation) Squad, which also has their own spaceship and is lead by Churchill, who is captured by the vampires, receives a message from an Earth and the team, formed by Quintana (Played by the very hot Natassia Malthe), the rookie officer Damian and the rebels Rosa and Roman (Roman being played by Aaron Pearl from Wrongfully Accused.) V-SAN later meets up with the leader of the vampires Muco, played by Michael Ironside from Total Recall. He has no plans of living peacefully with humans, as he is bent on world domination. While this movie was not a waste of time, I doubt I'll be putting back in the DVD player anytime soon.

Bloodsuckers is set in the year 2210 where mankind has spread out into space, unfortunately most of space is occupied by various different breeds of blood sucking Vampires. That's where the likes of Captain Churchill (Joe Lando) & his crew come in, you see he leads a team of soldiers killing Vampires wherever they find them. A sort of intergalactic Vampire sanitation service if you can imagine such a thing. They relentlessly fight the good fight against alien Vampires for a crappy wage but at least they get job satisfaction...Retitled to Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe when released on DVD this made-for-TV Canadian production was executive produced, written & directed by Matthew Hastings & I have to say I didn't think it was too bad, it certainly passed an hour & a half harmlessly enough if nothing else. The script mixes a bit of Aliens (1986), a touch of Starship Troopers (1997) with a smidgen of John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) & adds a dash of Blade (1998) & starts of very brightly with a surprisingly gory & fast moving opening twenty odd minutes, unfortunately the film can't really sustain this & never recaptures the heights of this opening sequence. My overwhelming problem with Bloodsuckers is that there is a definite lack of story here, the film just goes from one sub plot to another & never really settles down into one consistent story. For instance it starts out with the Vampire hunters hunting down some Vampires & you think this will be the common theme throughout the film but no, then there's a rescue mission on a planet where they are almost overrun by Vampires but nothing long lasting becomes of it, the film then introduces a new kind of parasitic worm like Vampire & again I thought this is what the film is going to be about but again it quickly forgets about it & shifts onto yet another different race of Vampires & yet another different planet. The whole film feels very fragmented & disjointed as a result. The character's are awful clichés & a few of them are very annoying especially the ugly Chinese girl Rosa who thinks she's 'hard' & is basically a Vasquez from Aliens rip-off only not as good.Director Hastings does alright, despite what people on the IMDb say I thought the special effects are surprisingly good with reasonably good looking CGI computer effects which aren't overused & I was pleased to see all the blood & gore effects were actually physical on set make-up effects. This has a pleasing amount of blood & gore, from bodies with legs ripped off, stakings, blood spurts, gory gunshot wounds, Vampire worms bursting out of people's chests & severed limbs Bloodsuckers is a pretty gory film & that's a good thing in my book. There are a few homages in here as well, in particular one set of Vampires are called Leatherfaces as in Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films while another race are know as the Voorhees which is obviously a nod to Jason Voorhees the zombie killer from the Friday the 13th films, or then again maybe it's just a coincidence?With a modest budget of about $1,700,000 Bloodsuckers is well made, the futuristic sets are pretty good & as already mentioned the effects are more than satisfactory. Shot in British Colombia in Canada. The acting isn't good, the usually brilliant Michael Ironside is only in for about 10 minutes & he gives a terrible performance but he's no worse than anyone else & he's got every right to be p*ssed off if this is the sort of crap he's been reduced to. A special mention for Leanne Adachi as Rosa who not only gives an awful performance but makes her character so irritating & unlikable you want her to die, horribly (the character that is, not the actress!).Bloodsuckers is a better film than I had any right to expect, it's not perfect but as a one off watch to pass the time it's reasonably good, gory fast moving fun. It 'borrows' heavily from other films but that gives it a certain familiarity.

It's interesting to note, in the light recent movies,that the fight to save humanity is led by a male. This said, I particularly enjoyed the character of the vampire fighting on the side of humans-One of thr problems for this movie is the plethora of high budget films with all the effects money can buy. Having said all of this I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Part of it is the "absence" of over-whelming special effects and part it is the memories of my own days of hunting vampires. (Grew upon a farm with lots of bats.) I would certainly recommmend this movie to anyone who enjoys this genre and can accept it for what it is-low budget and all.