Shira: The Vampire Samurai (2005)

Why so much hype?

Such a frustrating disappointment

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

SHIRA: THE VAMPIRE SAMURAI is a no budget action movie shot in a wooded location. It looks like the director and his mates got hold of some plastic props and a suit of samurai armour and decided to shoot a movie with it, making up the story and dialogue as they went along. The film is chock full of low rent and disappointing action sequences centred around the film's protagonist, a half-vampire woman with cool contact lenses. There's very little to say about this silly production other than that it's an embarrassing bore.

Feisty half-human, half-vampire samurai warrior Shira (woodenly played by tasty brunette knockout Chona Jason) must stop evil vampire warlord Kristof (an outrageously hammy portrayal by Adrian Zmed) from populating the world with a new breed of bloodsuckers who can exist in the daytime. Boy, does this uproariously awful clunker strike out something rotten in every possible way: Jeff Centauri's clumsy (mis)direction, the cruddy CGI effects, William Joseph Hill's shamelessly derivative script (the central premise blatantly copies "Blade"!), the ineptly staged fight scenes, several ham-fisted attempts at pathos (poor Shira can't fully commit herself to her human lover -- boo hoo!), the tacky gore, the crude cinematography, the lousy make-up (the vampires look like they're wearing plastic fangs that were purchased at the local dollar store!), Hal Oppenheimer's overbearing thunderous score, and, most of all, the terrible acting from the lame no-name cast -- Lamar Knight easily cops the top thespic dishonors with his supremely irritating performance as obnoxious wisecracking hipster Fingers ("Believe that!") -- all ensure that this hopelessly horrible stinker delivers a wealth of gut-busting unintentional belly laughs. As a nice added bonus, the buxom Mrs. Jason bares her beautifully bountiful breasts a few times. An absolute schlocky hoot.

Unbelievably bad acting almost makes this abysmal film amusing. However the pathetic storyline,cretinous direction, horrible amateur cinematography and a female lead that needs to go back to working in a call centre manage to stifle the laughs in favour of groans. Why is there some idiot from TJ HOOKER in this? Surely he cant be that broke. Even a deranged dwarf wearing flip-flops who gropes everything he can get his hands on cannot save this. The fangs are joke-shop hilarious. Plastic swords, fake sneers and ridiculously moody glares abound. The dreadful soundtrack compounds the misery of watching this. If it's tits and raspberry sauce you want, this is the film for you. Dire, droll and dismal. "Shira, we need you to serve humanity one last time " - indeed we do, kill the director for us. THIS IS AWFUL - DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WATCHING IT.

I love bad movies. You know the phrase "so bad it's good", well in this case it isn't. It is just plain bad.I couldn't finish watching it bad.I didn't have any clue that the Japanese scenes were supposed to be 16th century until I read it elsewhere. The casting is terrible. The costumes suck. The "effects" are horrid, worst fake blood I've seen in quite some time. The acting is bad, but not bad enough to have camp value. Worst fight choreography I've seen anywhere. No continuity between many of the scenes, they just jump to what they want to show next without any tie-in to plot or previous action. Even the T&A, which would have been this flicks only redeeming virtue, was done poorly.Worst. Movie. Ever.I think this would be a fine candidate for the 100 worst movies, except it will probably never get enough votes to make the list - which is a good thing, because it will mean many folks never saw it and were spared intense suffering.the loco