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For the years I have been writing this blog, one thing I have come to learn is that there is always something to look out for. Blood Shot has been in my sight for some time now but its limited release (as of this write up) was only set in Thailand. I almost missed it. The beauty of e-bay, however, knows no cultural boundaries.
Now, I didn’t know what to expect from a film in which the lead vampire, who remains unnamed throughout the entire film, is played by Michael Bailey Smith. A drab balding greyish creature with bat ears that could only belong in a Nosferatu film. Still, he is a hired US Government assassin. This was all I knew before watching the film. And the production had some interesting names attached to it.
A cop, Rip (Brennan Elliott), feels sorry for himself as he looks at a girl’s picture and says to himself that the evil he imagines really exists. Somewhere else, a terrorist cell is preparing its equipment for operations. The cell commander was viewing a TV program and later, without real gory details showing, the channel switched to an Arabic segment. There’s always this humour in a film about his name’s length as it gets cut down to Bob (Brad Dourif, I, Desire & Vlad), who is a terrorist network leader. Now, hold on a minute, you might say Brad Dourif an Arab why not? He is brownface, chewing the set as he does it in a professional way and it’s all rather un-PC but it precisely works and the irreverence in the film is something that goes a long way to helping its case.
Instead of exploring the details of the film’s plot, let’s view it from the perspective of America’s involvement in the affairs of Mexico and Juarez in particular. In pointing this out, it is time to have a look back just like Master Lee. What preoccupied me was the drug deal between the terrorist and the drug dealer. Here, there are no terrorists on the Mexican-American border, but there is a well-defined area controlled by vicious leaders…The sadistic government plans and sends a government killer (Vampire) to Mexico to deal with the threat once and for all. At some point, we cavalierly discover that the murderous vampire is actually endorsed by the sitting President.
Everything seems in place for the vampire to finish off the terrorists and then deal with Rip. The commander of the terrorists is told to bite him before being slain. (They are instructed to make these requests of the killer because they have some sort of a clue of what he might be). It is strange how Rip fights with the vampire since the latter is not so keen on dispatching him but is more than willing to engage in fisticuffs. As the story goes, Rip tries many methods of killing the vampire, none of them very successful, which is how we learn that silver bullets hurt, but holy water doesn’t do much except wet the vampire. This is odd because Rip’s cross seems to make the vampire’s eyes smoke as soon as he sets sight on it, which means he is in a great deal of pain. They attribute the ability of the cross to make his eyes smoke to his body being possessed by a few thousand demons, which he battles every day. Then we find out that the vampire has some sort of a change of heart and dispatches his nemesis to quench his thirst.
There is a djinn presence in the movie that I have to highlight first, which is captured in the ram’s skull and freed by the blood of a virgin. The manner in which this djinn interacts with the vampire is curious, to say the least, but is a bit too much of a spoiler for my liking. The plot of the film revolves around a terrorist plan to detonate an uncontrolled nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, the inadequate approach of the vampire to avert the catastrophe, and of course Rip becomes involved and is forced to cooperate with the vampire. After identifying the characters, we have a buddy cop film yet rather than two cops, we have a vampire hunter/cop and a vampire/CIA assassin. Their interaction is incredibly delightful from their combat to their bonding, and this, as well as the irreverence I mentioned earlier, makes the film enjoyable.
The movie remains lighthearted throughout its duration. A coffin serves as a travel chute down to the CIA meeting spot, which, in my opinion, is rather comical. They appear to be of poor workmanship, but I perceive a deliberate intention behind them. This is just another demonstration of the film’s lack of seriousness. The added comedy made it entertaining to watch and this comedy horror was clever enough to add something new to the genre. I will give it a score of 7 out of 10.
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