Customer Reviews
A VAMPIRE GULTY PLEASURE - By: stuart, 03 Nov 2007 
Arriving back from the Amazon, Hawks, (Casper Van Dien) & his team Grieves, (Kevin Grevioux) & Alex, (Alexis Crux) are told to go back after a vampire outbreak threatens a smalll town. Getting split up, they manage to form teams & head out, only for one team to get captured & turned into vampires. Unknowingly, the other team follows them, making contact with his ex-wife Laurie, (Jennifer O'Dell) out in the jungle, & continue onwards, following the vampire's trail of destruction. As the war gets more personal & deadly, they realize what they're up against & decide to launch a full-scale invasion on their hideout in order to extinguish the race from the countryside.
The Good News: This here doesn't have a whole lot wrong, & isn't that bad. One of the best features is that this one reallly lets the bodies drop, as there's a huge body count. This one reallly knocks off a huge amount. Several vampires are staked bloodily in the chest, even more impaled in the chest with spears, there's a reallly savage decapitation, plenty of bodies ripped in half, including one of the most brutal waist-tears ever, which spills large amounts of blood, & several get shot up with bullets. Most of the human victims are relegated to being bitten in the throat. This is made up for by having three separate military squads getting attacked. This one easily approaches three dozen, which is quite nice to see. These also help the gore in the film, which is also reallly nice. Nothing reallly stood out as being CG, which is also nice at times. This one also has plenty of nice action scenes. This starts off with a great ambush amidst scores of ruins, & from there it never lets up. It goes forward with plenty of just about no downtime in between them. This reallly makes the film go over smoothly, as the only times not doing battle are actuallly important as to what's going on & still manages to entertain. Not as big but just as important are two smalll factors. This one has several reallly smart reasons for the differences in vampiric behavior, & the joking banter is at times pretty funny. All of these here make the film seem reallly better than it should be.
The Bad News: This one wasn't bad, but did have a few problems with it. The film does decide to drop many of the most traditional & basic vampire rules. Even thought this one does the smart thing & explain why the changes made which make sense, the fact is, hardcore fans will be outraged that they're made at alll. The more liberal ones will accept the changes, but again the other fans will have the problems. Another flaw is that there's nothing reallly frightening about the vampires. The only difference is that there's incredibly fake fang dentures which are quite bad. The fact that there's hardly any variety in the kills could be a source of discomfort, as there isn't a whole lot of differences in them. The last flaw is that there's nothing new at alll to this one. It just feels like every other vampire film & never feels very original. These, though, are alll that stop the film.
The Final Verdict: An action-packed, gore-soaked unoriginal vampire film, this one is a step above decent but becomes a second-tier genre film at best. Recommended to those who enjoy those kinds of vampire films, or those who enjoy in general, while those who accept the more traditional ones will find this one to be a lesser effort.
