VAMPIRELLA (1996)

July 09, 2024

VAMPIRELLA (1996)

Before I crack on with this review, I just thought I'd better address the question some of you may now be asking I.e. "If this is supposed to be the Summer of Sci-fi then why the hell is he reviewing a vampire film ?" The answer, of course, is that Vampirella is an ALIEN VAMPIRE FROM OUTER SPACE....What's more she comes from a planet called Drakulon !

You don't really get more sci-fi than that. Anyway, on with the review...

DIRECTED by Jim Wynorski

SCREENPLAY by Gary Gerani based on the comic Vampirella by Forrest J. Ackerman, Trina Robins, Frank Frazetta & Tom Sutton

STARRING - Talisa Soto as Vampirella/Ella, Roger Daltry as Vlad Tepish, Richard Joeseph Paul as Adam Van Helsing, Lee De Broux as Luitenant Walsh, Brian Bloom as Demos, Corinna Harney as Sallah, Tom Deters as Traxx, Angus Scrimm as High Elder.

PLOT - Across the gulf of space lies the peaceful world of Drakulon. A beautiful world which produces natural rivers of blood that sustain the planet's indigenous population of vampires. Sustained by thier own eco-system, the vampires have no need to pray on other living beings and live in peace and harmony.

But every paradise has its Serpent - in the planet Drakulon's case its a man known as Vlad.

Vlad believes vampires are superior to other lifeforms and should pray on them for food. Vlad accompanied by his followers tries to stage a coup and overthrow the ruling council. His efforts fail, but Vlad escapes and kills the high council. Vlad and his followers steal a ship and head for a primitive planet known as Earth.

They are pursued by Ella - daughter of the murdured High Elder - who has sworn to avenge her father and bring Vlad to justice. However Ella's ship malfunctions and she crashes on the planet Mars.

Thirty centuries pass and Ella is awoken by Earth astronauts who find her escape pod. Bringing her to Earth, Ella (now taking on the name Vampirella) finds that Vlad and his cult have spread thier contagion to Earth. Vlad has sired many vampires and these creatures of the night have absolutely no problem with drinking human blood.

Aided by Adam Van Helsing (a member of an anti-vampire paramilitary strike force known as PURGE), Vampirella must track down and take out Vlad and his depraved band of bloodsucking psychopaths...

DIALOUGE - VLAD - ''This is rather sad in a way. In another reality I could have called you friend..."

ADAM VAN HELSING - "In any reality, I call you SCUM !!!!"

PERFORMANCES - Vampirella is a film with a troubled genesis. Originally intended to be filmed in the 70's by Hammer and due to star Peter Cushing and Caroline Munroe as the titular heroine, the film fell into "development hell" with the collapse of Hammer Studios.

For several years the rights to the Vampirella comic book where passed from company to company, the intended budget lessening as time went on and interest in the property waned, until eventually in the early 90's the project was picked up by Roger Corman who assigned Jim Wynorski to direct.

Wynorski has gone on record as saying he hated working on the film. There are many reasons for this (too complicated to go into here) but one of the main bugbears seems to be the casting of the central role itself - namely ex-Bond girl Talisa Soto.

Wynorski's main bone of contention was that Soto didn't physically resemble the comic book character enough. Vampirella's comic strip incarnation has always been drawn as being somewhat...well...voluptuous shall we say...

Wynorski was concerned that Soto didn't quite "fill out the costume" adequately...

Which seems a little unfair really, I mean she still looks good to me but I can see that she does have a different build to the comic character certainly. Wynorski was not the only person to express this disappointment, as hard-core Vampirella comic fans also complained about Soto's casting.

Like I say - unfair, afterall no-one complains about the fact that Hugh Jackman is a totally different physical build to Wolverine when he plays the character in the X-Men movies, so why should Soto take so much flack ?

The sad truth is that despite the physical merits (or lack of depending on your viewpoint) Soto just doesn't give a very good performance. She's stilted, she doesn't emote much and she seems stiff and wooden. Vampirella in the comics has bags of charisma, where Soto has none. Never once do you buy the character's need for vengence. If I'm being honest she seems more bored than wrathful. A pity.

Richard Joeseph Paul as Adam Van Helsing is pretty ropey too, he's supposed to be Vampirella's love interest but has absolutely zero chemistry with Soto, at least he gets some decent cheesy lines of dialogue to chew on, so thats something I suppose.

Far better is ex-Who frontman Roger Daltry in the role of arch villian Vlad. Daltry actually manages to single handedly save the entire film. He's clearly having an absolute ball camping it up to the nines playing the flamboyant, arrogant, sneering vampire lord who becomes the "father" of every vampire on Earth.

Daltry drinks blood, hits on women young enough to be his daughters, bares his fangs and hisses with rage with the best of them, all whilst wearing a wardrobe of clothes that would be so flambouyantly ostentatious that even Bela Lugosi and Liberace would balk at the prospect of having to wear them. Not forgetting Daltry's musical roots, he also gets to perform a rock song about blood drinking (Vlad is poseing as a rock star going by the stage name of "Jamie Blood"), its as batshit insane as you'd expect it to be and is massively entertaining to watch.

SFX - Basic stuff for a vampire B-movie, lots of plastic fangs (Daltry seems to have a bit of trouble speaking in his at times) and gouts of fake blood.

The height of special effects shitness comes in the "vampires transforming into bats" scenes...

Even the old 30's and 40's Universal films managed to look a hundred times more convincing than that and this was in 1996 for crying out loud !!!!

Needless to say the bat effects where another aspect of the film that Wynorski was pissed off about.

We also get a pretty lousy looking "planet Mars" which in the best low budget sci-fi tradition looks like its been filmed in a quarry.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Theres some topless female vampires (played by porn actresses) at one point.

The violence is weird and unconventional for a vampire film in that we get to see very little in the way of traditional vampire deaths. One vampire gets thrown out of a window and impaled on a gate post but that's about it as far as the old "stake through the heart" routine is concerned.

The members of the PURGE strike force have guns that fire "stake bullets" that actually just seem to be normal bullets that have a "cross shape" filed onto the tips. Conveniently for the low budget, this means that vampires can be killed by being shot, so it all looks like a standard "cops and robbers" action movie rather than the sci-fi vampire film its supposed be.

Vampires are shot, they fall down dead...that's it.

The end scene and the death of Vlad is noteable for completely ripping off Hammer's Scars Of Dracula (1970). Like that film - Vlad picks up a metal rod to attack our heroine and is struck by a random bolt of lightning. Like that film - Vlad sets on fire, burns, screams and falls off the side of a high building to his death. Like that film - the end credits roll. Loving homage to past glorys and a nod to the studio that originally intended to make this film or a cheap imitation with no imagination ? I'll leave that one up to you to decide...

RATING - Despite its many flaws I did actually quite enjoy this film. It's a tacky, schlocky, cheesy mess but its at least fast moving and entertaining. If nothing else its worth watching if you want to see Roger Daltry chewing the scenery whilst he's perving on Talisa Soto in a PVC fetish bra.

3 and a half rubbish bat transformations out of 5. Go in with low expectations and you'll probably enjoy this.

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