Bloodrayne: Deliverance (2007) Directed by Uwe Boll
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Vampires Really Chap her Hide! By Fearless Young Orphan Bloodrayne: Deliverance (2007) Directed by Uwe Boll When we last saw the half-human, half- vampire Rayne, she was played by a different actress, had a different accent, and was working in a different country. Now some unspecified number of years later, she’s fetched up in the Wild West town of Deliverance, which has been overtaken by Billy the Kid and his gang. Billy the Kid is a vampire in this retelling, and his own strong accent implies that he’s from somewhere north of Transylvania. Not sure why the decision was made to have Billy the Kid be a prissy foreign-count type, but then again, we could ask that question about many of the decisions made in this story. I think it’s better not to question. In theory I like the idea. Billy the Kid and gang (vampires all) have come to Deliverance and kidnapped all the children to ensure the cooperation of the adults living there. Life will appear normal until the railroad shows up and a train station is established, at which point Billy will start in on the tourism business by turning everyone who rides through into one of his army. Rayne shows up in town for one of two or three reasons, each given equal attention, so really who knows what she’s doing? She has friends in town (who are murdered by vampires) but she’s also a bounty hunter who has been chasing a notorious vampire who is in Deliverance (but seems unaffiliated with Billy the Kid’s matter) and also she might have shown up just to chase Billy the Kid, because later they act like they kind of know each other. Don’t worry about it. Characters change their reasons for doing or not doing things from scene to scene. Of course we recall that Rayne was a member of the Brotherhood, a society of vampire hunters. Back in Transy-Roma-Bulgar-krainia or wherever she used to live, most of the Brotherhood got their asses handed to them by Rayne’s evil vampire father. Still, it seems the U.S. chapter of the society has a healthy membership because she bumps into two different guys who are in the club and hadn’t even come to town together. After making her presence known in Deliverance (by killing vampires), Rayne is sentenced to hang and makes a showy escape. Then she teams up with Brotherhood member Pat Garrett and they recruit a couple of wanted men to be on their team too. One of them is a preacher who bilks his congregations out of excessive donations. Why this is considered a crime I’m not sure, as that’s rather the standard practice for most church operations, isn’t it? I would say that he’s “wanted” because he’s not a real preacher, but later Rayne asks him to bless some things and his blessing is effective, so maybe his crime is that he doesn’t wash his hair and he’s a terrible public speaker. Haha, no, actually I guess he must have killed some people, though that doesn’t seem to hurt his ability to bless things, either. The other recruit is a horny guy whom Rayne abducts from a bordello. No idea who he’s supposed to be or why she and Pat would want him on the team, but I guess he must have killed some people too. Despite my sarcasm, I was still more or less on board with the theory, if not with the execution. The movie as a whole is quite sloppy, but you know, I was trying to be open-minded. As fun times go, I could do worse than vampires in the Wild West. But I have to say that the conclusion of the film, which is a damn half hour long, is really dreadful. As scatterbrained as it was, we at least had a story arc up to that point, but when Rayne and her gang go to face off against Billy the Kid and his, the entire venture dissolves into one Western shootout cliché after another, and that in itself wouldn’t be a problem except that it’s all poorly edited and incredibly dull. I might be a lot kinder to Bloodrayne: Deliverance if Boll had managed to tighten up the finale to half the length and half the plot threads, and tone it way down on the blaring Wild-West soundtrack vainly striving for Sergio Leona drama. The actress portraying Rayne is something of a disappointment. Her name is Natassia Malthe. She’s very beautiful and looks really good in Rayne’s leather wardrobe when she’s standing still, though she doesn’t seem to know how to walk in it because as soon as she moves she gets really clumsy. Her “fight” scenes are every bit as hilarious as those in the last Bloodrayne film. I infer that Ms. Malthe had the total of a half-hour tutorial in how to wield those dual swords. You’ll note sometimes she has trouble getting them out of their sheaths. This was a problem that Kristanna Loken had too, but Ms. Loken’s Rayne had a clinical coolness about her that somehow rose above the shoddy material. She was the most likable thing in the film. Ms. Malthe, on the other hand, plays Rayne with unconvincing badassery and an annoying habit of chewing on matches that I suppose is meant to be titillating but actually just makes it harder to understand her few words. It’s difficult to see her as a serious vampire slayer. She seems like an angry model for a new spring line of leather fetish-wear. As for the rest of the performances? I have to grant that some of these folks seem to be trying. It’s not their fault that the dialog is amateurish, or that their characters are lifted from Unforgiven, or that their motivations change from scene to scene. Altogether Bloodrayne: Deliverance is a pretty bad movie, but I’ve seen worse. Hey, I’m willing to write about it, which is more than I can say for this one movie I tried to watch: Vampires: Out for Blood (2004). Man, that was so bad I didn’t make it through half an hour before I thought, “Simcity needs me,” and clawed my way off the couch. So the fact that I lasted all the way to the end of Uwe Boll’s second Bloodrayne adventure is saying something in itself. This is a genre I enjoy for its silliness as much as anything else, so I can forgive a lot. I’d even be freakishly nice about it, if there were any interesting or original ideas with any follow-up at all, but even when Boll introduces a plot point that might qualify, he quickly stomps on it. Case in point? The most interesting character, the gunfighting preacher/con artist, is introduced in the second half, brought into the gang, and dispensed with quickly, but given a death scene more worthy of someone we’ve come to know well and over much time and a moving character arc. It is truly a strange thing to watch. It’s like they forgot to include several scenes. Maybe Boll left them on the wrong hard drive or something? So the point has come when we must decide how many fangs this is worth on the vampire scale. If I had to rate it on merits of filmmaking alone, I’d give it a 2/10, but there remains the fact that underneath the ineptitude is a serviceable vampire tale. Therefore, I’m going to give it a very generous 3/10 fangs. .