Blood Angels

Alternate Title: Thralls (in fact this is the title that runs in the opening credits)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404496/

Starring: Lorenzo Lamas (I know, I didn’t believe it, either), Leah Cairns, Siri Baruc

Review: Lorenzo Lamas is a Full Vampire named Mr. Jones who has a bevy of beauties trapped in the White Room style attic of his ginormous house in Somewheresville USA. They’re all “Half Vampires,” or “Thralls,” and are kept fed on roadkill by his henchman, “Rennie.” One day, they chew through one of their own ankles, impale Rennie, and escape. Then they open a nightclub and try to gather enough spiritual energy to turn them all into Full Vampires. Younger, mortal sister of one of them arrives. Hijinks (and some pretty dated, could-have-done-better-with-that-budget CGI effects) ensue.

So here’s the thing about Blood Angels/Thralls. This is a movie made of tropes. Literally, every bad Modern Vampire trope they could stuff in here, they did.

It’s… The movie… I mean… Okay.

It’s like Charlie’s Angels met Lost Boys and then had a love child with Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Literally. If Richard Ian Cox’s “Rennie” wasn’t a direct homage to Paul Reubens’ “Amilyn,” I’d be really, really surprised.

Blood Angels wants to be a lot of films. It wants to be a teen romance film, in that the character of Ashley falls for the character of Jim. It wants to be a horror film, in that it’s got blood and eviscerations and Lorenzo Lamas turning a drag queen into a pop-top. It wants to be an action kung-fu fighter, in that all the Thralls wear tight leather and pose a lot and do a lot of high kicking and fast-on-their-feet Girl Power To The Rescue moves. And it really, really wants to be a serious demon-summoning-end-of-the-world type film, which is really about the only place it actually falls down in its attempts to be all these movies at once, because the Big Reveal is pretty heavily telegraphed.

Honestly, I enjoyed a lot of Blood Angels, inasmuch as I could see that it wasn’t taking itself too seriously, and that it was basically playing for light-hearted adventure-type romping (hell, it starts off with an Evil Dead style introduction, complete with magical book writing in itself). Lorenzo Lamas gets to deliver some great one-liners (“That’s Mister Vampire Asshole to you!”), and even the ridiculous “Little Sister becomes a vampire, shrugs off her cardigan, and has apparently been wearing tight leather the whole time” sequences were easily forgiven, overall.

I will say, though, I was pretty pleased with the fact that the characters of Jim and his cousin Jeff (“Doughboy”) are of clearly different ethnic origins, but behave exactly as cousins do in reality – that subtle mix of love, concern, and contempt that only family members can get was pulled off well with these two. And I’m happy to see that the casting director didn’t insist on them being of identical ethnicity. Two points there.

Where I found it: Netflix. I… I think I may have a problem.

How much I paid for it: 95 Minutes. Honest. I swear, this was not any longer than that. No matter what the clock on the wall said.

Points of interest: The end-of-movie-credits-bonus-thing for this movie is a fairly well done duo-rap, set in the typical rap-video-nightclub scene, but with lots of references to mythology (such as Cerberus) and visuals of ghouls and vampires abounding. Pretty nice!

The Money Shot: Blood sucking monster nipples. Someone liked “Species,” methinks.

Related Links:
Lorenzo Lamas
Tropes
Charlie’s Angels
The Lost Boys
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Evil Dead
Species