Vampirella (1996) Review

Vampirella was a comic book created in 1969 by nerd overlord Forrest J. Ackerman and the title character was designed by feminist artist Trina Robbins. Vampirella was an alien/vampire/femme fatale and became incredibly popular, turning into an icon of horror comics and monstrous females. To this day, Vampirella lives in the form of comics and in pop culture but there was a film adaptation made in 1996 that left people baffled.

Directed by Corman alumnus Jim Wynorski (The Lost Empire, The Wasp Woman, Murderbot, Hard to Die, Dinosaur Island), the film was widely given bad reviews and never managed to achieve any kind of notoriety, most people even forgetting it's existence, or simply labeling it as a disposable piece of camp and a generic pick for a bad movie night. For the creators it was just a chance to make a movie based on a known IP, destined to be dumped into Showtime's Roger Corman presents series. 

Is it fun and cheesy or just badly made? Let's see.

Planet Drakulon is being attacked by vampiric rebels, they are led by the fiendish Vlad, who manages to escape to earth and plans on emptying humanity's blood. Vampirella, previously known as Ella, goes to earth looking to defeat Vlad and his minions. These are elements roughly taken from the comics in a very modified fashion.

Unsurprisingly, while not a major classic, the film manages to be entertaining and digestible enough, especially when compared to a lot of bad movies of its kind. One can see that the people involved were at least aware of what they were making and always intended for it to be as campy and exaggerated (or meager) as it could possibly be.

One thing that it has going for it is how much fanservice it has for the movie nerds out there, it's super referential. Wynorski uses the film more as a way to pay tribute to classic and not so classic horror/sci-fi flicks of the campy and cheap variety, using all of the techniques and implementing the gaffs one might expect from the model. Vampirella even meets and saves her creator, Forrest J. Ackerman, when she first arrives on earth. Another highlight is when director John Landis makes a cameo and drops some titles in one brief scene. It's all just about having fun with the tropes and creating a playful and self-aware game that pays homage to the type of B-movies that originally inspired the Vampirella comic to begin with. It's charming in that way but not everyone can be in on the joke. 

It´s a bit of a deviation from the known Vampirella storyline, more so than one would expect, a lot of the set up entails space politics and long, drawn out dialogue scenes that resemble the typical DTV outing more than the epic fantasy horror film it promises. In that regard, is kind of a let down for a lot of the first act, only really serving the goodies once it gets going about 10 or 20 minutes into the picture. Even then, Vampirella (the best part of the picture) isn't as prominent as she should be, mostly being buried beneath waves of dry dialogue sequences with generic bad guys and such.

I also think that Vampirella's outfit wasn't very well done here. It definitely looks as cheap as it should, but it's so crude and shoddy that it simply comes off as feeble instead of gloriously extravagant, which is what I was expecting.

Wynorski wasn't very happy about Talisa Soto being the titular blood-sucking heroine but he had to use her for contractual reasons. I can see why he wasn't crazy about her, she does sort of look a bit like Vampirella but she doesn't have the screen presence a woman like her should have, she looks more like a normal girl in a cosplay than anything else. Still, she isn't terrible in the picture, but her performance (while not awful) just wasn't up to the task.

At the end of the film we are promised a second film titled Dark Avenger of Death but there were no sequels as Wynorski lost the rights to the character a long time ago. However, in 2021 Dynamite Entertainment announced another picture and maybe a TV series but we still haven't seen any footage, trailer, images or even official material from these projects. While Vampirella is all but forgotten, I still think a more proper and bigger movie should be made about her.

Night Train (2023) Review

Night Train is a 2023 crime action movie directed by Shane Stanley. Stanley is a filmmaker who specializes in mid budget TV and direct to video/streaming products of the action variety, in fact, Night Train and his previous movie titled Double Thread (2022) were both action vehicles for actress Danielle C. Ryan (Fire City: End of Days, Survivor) and both flicks were written by CJ Walley. 

This poster is a total lie by the way.

Holly (Danielle C. Ryan) is a single mother in Hollywood working for the teamsters who finds herself delivering black market medical supplies to meet ends, normally she works in movie productions and barely makes a living to support her sick son. FBI agents soon catch up to her, among them the disheveled and troubled agent Jaylynne Jackson (Diora Baird), so Holly must evade them in order to give her child a brighter future.

The definition of a soporific TV movie of the week destined to become streaming service filler without much interest. I cant says it's a horribly made movie, it's a watchable and slightly more genuine product than average but none of that redeems the overabundance of cliches, idiotic moments, weak comedy, flat direction and lack of a strong central conflict that could bring everything together, at least a functioning one. 

There's nothing truly special about the main character, there's a very light attempt at trying to give her interesting characteristics like a love for speed, but none of that comes handy or goes anywhere other than the fact that she has to drive a lot in the last act. Danielle delivers a good performance and simply does what's needed, nothing particularly notable. 

The rest of the characters are also plain but Jackson is actually the most refreshing out of all of them, simply because instead of just being a tough and harsh FBI agent she is also dealing with an alcohol addiction and a messy personal life, issues that end up affecting her job. It's not an aspect that the film builds substantially upon, aside from the overly dramatic climax, but one can also appreciate it for being a worthwhile addition to the formula.  

It's also better if you don't think of Night Train as an action movie, not even in the early The Fast and the Furious sense, because this is more of a chase movie in the third act with small glimpses of crime movie tropes and scenes here and there. 

Stale and cheap (both narratively and budget wise) this one is really only for completists. While there is potential and talent I believe there needed to be more exciting plot beats and to give into the tropes of the genre instead of trying to ground it into a honestly uneventful plot. Even though I would have wanted a straight action movie, I can still appreciate the feminist attitude, the dimensions added to the female FBI agent, the solution to the conflict without violence and the low key scenes that actually end up working but it's not something I could consider solid enough to recommend.