Alien Blood (1999)

Must See Movie...

Great Film overall

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's hard to believe any film that blends aliens and vampires together could turn out to be such a stinker, but alas writer/director Jon Sorensen manages to fumble the ball something terrible in every possible way. For starters, the pace crawls at a painfully sluggish rate while the sloppy narrative meanders all over the place without ever acquiring any focus, tension, or momentum. Worse yet, Sorensen brings a heavy-handed pretentious artsy-fartsy sensibility to the movie that sucks all the fun out of it. The poorly staged action scenes consist mostly of clumsy martial arts that are done in groan-inducing strenuous slow motion. The cruddy (far from) special effects (the CGI alien is simply pathetic), underwhelming acting from an insipid cast, cheesy gore, and ugly cinematography add further abject insult to already appalling injury. Only some tasty gratuitous female nudity -- plus one guy who goes full monty for the ladies -- and Glyn Whiteside's lively portrayal of the ruthless Jouvet provide some slight relief from the overall tedium. A dismal dud.

There's no way that this could be considered a good movie. The storyline is paper thin, and seems to be simply an excuse for random violence and nudity. Unfortunately for this film, neither the violence nor the nudity is particularly interesting. The fight sequences look terrible, and most of the time, you don't even see the kicks or punches hit. The actors who get hit look more like they're throwing themselves back rather than being thrown back by the force of the hit. The acting is atrocious; the dialog is sparse and poorly-delivered. Every character is two-dimensional, and you can forget about character development. In terms of special effects, this isn't just low-budget, this is almost cartoonish. Bullet holes apparently generate small squirts of stage blood, for example. The CGI is pretty bad, and consists mostly of a low-quality loop of some alien screaming every once and a while. All I can say is, don't watch this movie. There isn't a single redeeming quality about it.

This is a film that requires some patience, and for that reason may not be compatible with the regular Multiplex-movie-goer. But for those who watch movies for their content instead of only for fast moving ridiculousness, this is a very interesting one, because it is a little of a lot of things and a lot of never seen before. Apparently the producer/writer/director Jon Sorensen (responsible for the special effects of Alien, The Dark Crystal, Moonraker and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, to name a few) had trouble finding funds to finance the film, because in Britain it was the first independent film with a science fiction theme in at least ten years. Producing it himself he eventually managed to go on with the project, and that is a very good thing, because he made certainly the first British independent film of any kind that is remotely like ALIEN BLOOD. The film evolves around a hunted mother and her child, which is the target of the incredibly unrelenting mostly masked persons, the leader of which mentions to be responsible for "this project". A family having a dress-party for the millennium gets involved and without us learning the exact truth about the mother and the child, the film is keeping the viewer constantly involved with them, concerned for them. Without much plot this is a very poetic film, of which each and every frame could be framed and hanged on the wall for it's sheer beauty. The atmosphere reminds a little of some of the best Jean Rollin pictures, especially Requiem For A Vampire, as it shares a very long beginning without any dialog, and a sneaked in vampire theme combined with some implied lesbianism plus the fact that people who come "from another world" speak French lead to believe that the director indeed wanted to include some nods to the French auteur filmmaker. With it's visual poetry, stunningly thrilling atmosphere, wonderfully worked out story and questions that still remain after the closing titles have ended, this is a very special film. Some people complain about the acting in many films that are made with a comparatively small budget, but even the most cynical of those could complain here. The acting has to be done without a lot of lines, so facial expressions are very important, and the cast deliver a great performance. The DVD has an interesting monologue by Sorensen, in which he shares a good deal of information about the production of the film and beautiful shots of the location (just as beautiful) where Alien Blood was shot.

This movie simply should not have been made. Honestly. I cannot think of a single reason this movie should have been made. I feel sorry for the children involved in this movie as they are not old enough to be made fun of for being in it. This movie is one huge plot hole. It's simply bad. Not even the kind of bad you can make fun of. Jon Sorenson, I hate you for making this film. I cannot believe you went from working on Alien and The Dark Crystal to make this load of tripe. You must have hated working on movies and this was your way of making sure that you didn't ever get any work in the movies again. Honestly, you don't deserve to be allowed to work in a video store, or even to rent movies in a video store. You shouldn't be allowed to watch movies anymore. This doesn't deserve my writing so much about it, but IMDb requires a minimum of ten lines.