Slayer

This movie is a complete mess. Beginning to end there are little or no breaks in the "action". But if CVD is in it it has to be watchable.... Nope. They skimped on everything and I know where the entire budget went for the movie, the final villain costume. Which admittedly for the budget this film likely had was "sort of" impressive. The vampires in this movie aren't vampires so much as blood sucking monsters. They follow no conventional lore of what a vampire is. Aside from drinking blood. The worst part of the movie is the fact that there are no breaks to tell a real story. In reality it's much like most cheap martial arts movies. Fighting and bloodshed tell the story or pad the runtime. Makeup is horrible for the run of the mill vampires. Most of the vamps wear masks or other face coverings. Most likely to hide the fact they use the same stunt actors over and over again. It's boring and a hard pass as far as me recommending it for someone to watch.

I was searching for the elusive video nastie "The Slayer," when I came across this.

You have to suspend you knowledge of vampires, because these act more like zombies, except they just bite like vampires, but they are out during the day. Confused? Well, let that go and enjoy the fun.

Don't look for great dialog - they're soldiers and dialog is that of a typical war movie. Funny dialog it has, especially from Jennifer O'Dell. Lots of fighting and killing and blood - and a great monster!

There are some interesting things in this movie. Wooden stakes instead of bayonets on the rifles, decapitations, a really hot vampire (Joyce Giraud - Miss Puerto Rico Universe 1998), Lynda Carter ("Wonder Woman") as a Colonel, Danny Trejo (Halloween, Planet terror, The Devil's Rejects), Tony Plana ("Ugly Betty")

And, of course, the whole problem came about because of corporate greed. The destruction of the rain forest disturbed their habit. Isn't capitalism great? Great scenery in Puerto Rico.

Kevin Van Hook has been pretty busy lately, with several titles released this year. Generally although he has yet to direct a great film, at the very least his films have had interesting casts', and solid effects work. Slayer has a lot of silly macho military type dialog, and humor that drew some groans from me, but overall I enjoyed it. The action was well choreographed, the characters' likable and easy to root for, and it had some bloody scenes, even though it was more of an action film. If your looking for something more serious, don't look here, everything has a kind of kiddie comic book style feel, is never actually scary, and if it weren't for a few bloody bits, this could really be a pg-13 movie. All in all the cast seemed to be having fun making Slayer, and the action never let up. If your a Lynda Carter fan, you'll get a nice feeling of nostalgia watching this clever new spin on Vampire lore.

I like vampire movies, I like B-movies, I love B vampire movies. But this one has nearly nothing going for it. Some of the acting is horrible, especially by 3 of the male leads. The story is not particular interesting. At a relative short 88 minutes it still seems too long and you'll find yourself fast-forwarding quite a bit. There are an awful lot of kung-fu vampire attacks. Sound cool? It isn't when it's done on a low budget. It gets repetitive very quickly. There is some minor blood and gore, nothing to get excited about. There some good wire work where you can see the wires. It has some good landscapes being filmed in Puerto Rico.

Not worth the rental

There's a limit to what you expect from a Sci-Fi channel film given the budgets they have to work with. That said, this film kept me happily entertained from start to finish. The casting for the most part was excellent as was the locales where this was shot. Kevin Grevioux (Grieves) deserves special mention for an outstanding performance. His low pitched voice, size, and natural acting ability were well suited to this role. Ditto for Joyce Giraud (Estrella) although she had a much smaller / limiting part. Look, it's a vampire film. You've got to suspend your sense of disbelief a bit even to want to watch the thing. Once you've done that however, this film rocks!