Alita - Battle Angel

Alita Shade Of Pale

Alita - Battle Angel
2018 Canada/Argentina/USA
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
UK cinema release print.

So the latest film by director Robert Rodriguez and producer James Cameron is a live action adaptation of a manga (and, later, an anime) called Gunnm (and also known as Battle Angel Alita). Now I’ll do my usual disclaimer here and state up front that I have neither read any of the volumes of the manga nor seen any of the adapted anime episodes of this so, the one thing I can’t do here is tell you how this is as an actual adaptation of the source material.

I can tell you some other stuff though including the fact that I was kinda conflicted about going to see this one because... well I’m not the biggest fan of James Cameron, although I quite liked his first film in The Terminator series, ALIENS and The Abyss. When you get to stuff like Avatar though... count me out. Rodriguez, however, is a director I’ve always quite liked.... especially his Sin City films, his Planet Terror contribution to the Grindhouse movie (especially the extended, stand alone version) and his Machete movies. However, when I saw the trailer, it didn’t really look like a Rodriguez movie... but it did look spectacular. I also found the enlarged eyes of the main Alita character kinda interesting.

The film tells the story of Alita, played by Rosa Salazar as a full CGI version (so I guess she does the voice and possibly motion capture), who is a cyborg found by Dr. Dyson (played by Christoph Waltz) on a garbage heap dumped from the last surviving sky city and left unwanted in Iron City (which is presumably on Earth). She has a human brain inside her head and when the doctor revives her, no memory of her former life although, as the movie throws her character into violent conflicts, she tends to have flashes of memory as to what she really was in her former life 300 years before.

And that’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot because, contrary to my worries that this film would be a special effects laden spectacular with no story... it does actually have a good tale to tell with the central mystery of the past held in Alita’s head and, frankly, a lot more heart than I was expecting from a film like this.

Yep... I really loved this movie and that kinda took me by surprise.

In addition to Salazar and Waltz... who are both utterly brilliant in their roles... we have Jennifer Connelly playing a sinister character and, also, Ed Skrein, who also plays a good villain (such as in Deadpool, reviewed by me here) but who also deserves to be given more heroic roles such as the surprisingly decent job he did jumping into Jason Statham’s shoes for The Transporter Refuelled (which I reviewed here). However, here he’s back to being a villain again and, as you would expect, he does a good job of it.

The set designs and art direction are first class and you can see how you would never have got to movies like this without a direct legacy back to the 1982 movie Blade Runner (reviewed here) and some of the other films influenced by it over the years such as The Fifth Element and Ghost In The Shell (reviewed here). But more than that, the title character has such charm and a kind of essential innocence to her character (in spite of some of the things she has obviously been trained to do in her former life) that you never lose sight of the story and it’s warm, beating human heart as we watch her eat chocolate for the first time, fall in love and learn how to play a violent roller skate sport which is obviously based on Rollerball and which takes up a lot of the screen time here in terms of the action sequences.

Now, I know there are some people out there who may find the story structure a bit disappointing. I think it was about half way through the movie when I realised there were going to be no main story resolutions here and you can kind of see where the potential sequels are going to pick up the ball. In fact, the director and producer (and writers, I guess) have been criticised with spending too long setting up the sequels but, frankly, I thought it was more a natural ebb and flow of the dramatic narrative and I think this is one of the few movies I’ve seen of recent years which manages to completely pull this off and still leave a certain amount of dramatic closure for the viewer.

Talking about narrative structure... there are a few scenes where things are implied rather than directly spelled out but that’s cool, I’m always down with not spoon feeding the audience too much on these things. I was also happy that the big eyes of Alita were not nearly as distracting as I thought they would be. You kind of get used to them really quickly and I found myself wondering, at one point, were they actually any bigger than a normal person’s eyes or was I imagining it? It really doesn’t take long for your brain to adapt.

So... shorter review I guess because I didn’t really have any grumbles with Alita - Battle Angel and was both thoroughly entertained and, surprisingly, quite moved by it in some places. Adding to the whole ambience of the movie was some nice action scoring by Junkie XL which really held things together and once more confirmed my suspicions that he’s one of the more promising composers working in film scoring these days. But there you have it... once again, sorry for the shorter review for this one but when you get a film as pitch perfect as Alita - Battle Angel then there’s not too much else to say until you’ve studied it on multiple viewings. Other than I’m hoping that this does really well at the box office so we can see the next installments sooner rather than later (or not at all, in the worst case scenario). My one bit of advice would be to make the journey to your local cinema to see this one because... yes it’s got heart and soul but, as you might suspect from the trailer, it also looks pretty darn spectacular. So don’t miss it in the venue it was designed for. After all, Alita bit of what you fancy does you good.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Shell Be Back

Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Japan/UK 1995
Directed by Mamoru Oshii
Manga Entertainment Blu Ray Zone B

So here we go again. I loved the live action US ‘adaptation’ of Ghost In The Shell, from last year (and reviewed by me here) so much that I wanted to give the original anime adaptation a go. Luckily for me, the Blu Ray has been released and it’s fairly cheap at the moment although, if I’d have known it contains absolutely no extras on it at all, then I would probably have waited a while longer for the price to drop even more. I’m going to be comparing this one to the live action version quite a bit here because, in all honesty, I was a little disappointed with this movie when the two are looked at in close proximity to each other. It just proved to me that I find most of the few anime I have watched vaguely unsatisfying, for the most part.

The film starts off with a title sequence of ‘computer code’ from which the voice cast and crew emerge and it’s very much a product of the period in which this cartoon was made or, in all honesty, a decade or two before it was made... which seems a little strange for a movie set in the year 2029. Intercut with this, we follow the process of the shell with the title ‘ghost’ in it being manufactured... or at least re-shelled, maybe... and it’s at this point I noticed the first big difference between the movie and  the anime/manga (presumably it’s based on one) which came before it. That difference being that the shell actually has nipples on it and the body is airbrushed in all the right colours (nipples included) to make it less easier to identify it as a shell. So, really, I am now extremely annoyed that the Scarlett Johansson version didn’t have her going through the film naked and executing all those killer combat moves... it makes me very angry that the new version didn’t even try to get this right (just as it made me angry when the characters in the John Carter movie from a few years ago were all wearing clothes, for some reason... that’s not how things were in the books).

However, on the whole, there’s not a lot of things that the anime does better than the live action version, I reckon. For instance, the opening sequence where Major drops from the top of the building etc is still more or less, there as it was in the recent movie but... it’s not the prelude to a long and drawn out action sequence like the new version and neither does it include those amazingly scary geisha killbots that were so brilliantly unsettling in that last one.

And that seems to be the modus operandi for a lot of the film, to be honest... the latest one seems to do so much more than this original. Now one of the reasons for that, I am told, is that the new movie takes stuff from later Ghost In The Shell productions and uses those too... like those geisha killbots, for example. That means the whole quest for Major to find out about her previous identity and those moving scenes of her meeting her mother are themes not present in this version of the story and certain other elements are missing here too. There’s also, amazingly, less action in this version... which was a surprise considering that it doesn’t cost any extra for a cartoon. There is some gory violence and it’s way more over-the-top than the recent version but, that being said, there’s hardly any of it in it.

The story line is a slow build and it does have a certain atmosphere to it. I can see why this must have been popular in its day. That being said, many of the scenes that do originate here... like the fight in the water, the diving into another shell scene, the boat scene and so on... seem to be a lot less emotional or lack the gravitas of the live action edition and I was truly stunned to find this to be the case. Even the external architecture of Tokyo here misses the exquisite detail and chaotic hustle bustle of the lived in, “Blade Runner on steroids” sensibility which seems to have informed the later work.

I have to admit here, my reaction to this ‘template’ is very much tainted by my seeing the new version first and I wonder how much of the stylistic look of this anime evolved into something more graceful for later anime movies and TV shows in the Ghost In The Shell franchise... which may, in turn, have informed the latest incarnation more than this particular version, at least stylistically. I’m usually very good at distancing myself from other versions of a work and judging something within the confines of its historical context but, in the case of this series, I’m having a lot of trouble doing that, it has to be said.

It’s not a complete write off as an anime, though, and it’s better than what I remember of, say, Akira, for example. It’s also nice to see the vision of ‘the net’ that this film projects and the way that our interpretation of cyberspace has not really altered over the years as we, presumably, have begun to understand that it’s a slightly less baffling beast. However, for me, this was a bit of a dull movie in comparison to last year’s release.

Certainly a good movie to watch if you’re into animation and anime in general, though, I would have thought. The cartoon seems to be made of much stronger stuff, like the violence and sexual content but, because there’s so little of it in comparison to the new film, it just doesn’t seem to be able to match the perceived excesses of the newest beast on the block and... well... that’s all there is to it.

I don’t know the history of this original film in terms of how the project got started but something which did seem a little strange was the fact that, after I’d watched the first ten minutes or so in Japanese with English subtitles, as I had imagined the best case scenario to be, I realised that the lip movements in the film in no way match up to the Japanese vocal track. So I started the film off again, this time with the English dub and... well the result was certainly interesting because the English vocal track perfectly lip synched to the cartoon. So I wonder if this movie was maybe made for an English speaking audience first and foremost, perhaps?

Either way, Ghost In The Shell, or at least this 1995 version, didn’t really do all that much for me, I’m afraid. However, it is one of the better anime that I’ve seen over the years so I suspect this one must be fairly well loved by those fans around the world and, as such, would recommend this to anyone who is into this kind of animated style. Other than that, though, I’d still heavily recommend the new Hollywood version of Ghost In The Shell over this one... even if Scarlett’s nipples aren’t properly visible like the original character’s.

Blade Of The Immortal

Chanbara Sauce

Blade Of The Immortal
2017 Japan/UK Directed by Takashi Miike
London Film Festival - Sunday 8th October 2017

Okay, so quickly onto the second of the films I’m seeing in this years festival. I always find Takashi Miike one of those directors who makes movies that you will either love or hate but, whichever polar opposite of that kind of Marmite spectrum you are sitting on with one of his movies, they are always, at the very least, extremely interesting. And, it has to be said, almost always interestingly extreme too.

At the grand old age of 57, Takashi seems to be somehow directing and financing between 2 - 6 films a year and this one, Blade Of The Immortal, based on the series of Manga strips by Hiroaki Samura, is his 100th movie. Does this guy ever sleep? Miike was actually at the festival for this premiere and, although I couldn’t stay to see his Q&A after the movie (alas, I was suffering from ‘last train home syndrome’), I was at least able to see his introduction where he told us that the series of manga this is based on spans a 15 year, serialised period and that this movie, although clocking in at an impressive 2 hours and 20 mins, was his attempt to encapsulate and compress the themes and ideas of the entire ‘decade and half story arc’ into one feature film. Well that’s a pretty tall order but I have to say that, for me at least, the film didn’t jump around or seem too episodic in light of this revelation and it never once seemed to me to be anything other than a coherent whole (albeit with a lot of new characters being introduced at various points in the story).

The film starts off in the way in which a typical chanbara (which, to be fair, this is) might finish.

 Opening in black and white, which reminded me a lot of those old Kurosawa samurai films of the 1950s and 1960s, we meet the main protagonist, Manji (played by Takuya Kimura) and his sister (played by Hana Sugisaki). They are on the run due to  a misdeed of Manji’s recent past but, rather than commit ritual suicide over his indiscretions, he has to stay alive to look after his kid sister. And then we get that typical 1970s chanbara ending where he alone has to fight a group of 50 - 70 men, the leader of whom gives him some motivation by cruelly slaying Manji's sister. So it's ‘Crazy 88 massacre time’ for this lot and Manji does the usual lone wolf samurai act of cutting down every opponent and leaving nobody else standing. However, unlike a lot of the classic chanbara I've seen, Manji actually gets quite badly damaged during the melee and is about to die of his wounds (which includes his right eye being stabbed out and his left hand parting company with his arm). However, a mysterious and unexplained sorceress woman drops blood worms into Manji’s wounds and he becomes immortal. His nearby hand is, kind of, organically knitted back on by the blood worms although, for some reason, his eye isn’t ever regenerated (yeah... it’s okay to have a scientific system for your film which regenerates your life etc but... oh no... don’t let it mess with the look of the character, right?). Finally, the title of the movie comes up and we jump into colour for the remaining running time.

Jump fifty years later and the rest of the plot is then set up as a young girl sees her father killed by a bunch of villains and her mother taken to suffer a fate worse than death. In the best traditions of movies like True Grit, she goes to find someone who can revenge her father as a salve for her grief and the wandering sorceress (for want of a better term) tells her about Manji... so off she goes. Of course, we have the usual, stand offish reluctance of the hero to take up the quest but the young girl, called Rin, reminds Manji of his long dead sister... which would make sense since she’s played by the same actress.

Once he’s got over his ‘it’s not my fight’ problems, the rest of the film involves, strangely, very little travelling (the two seemed to be based in the same place with the villains often just happening to be in the vicinity, for some strange reason... or at least within walking distance) but lots of swordplay and also, I’m glad to say, some time spent on giving little character sketches of other important characters (many of them villainous) and working them and their background into the plot. It’s refreshing that Miike takes time to do this when a lot of modern directors might not have approached the material in this way and the pay off is that certain characters have an emotional resonance on the story at key times during the course of the film (often when they die, as it happens).

The swordplay is ferocious and lively and is very much the kind of ‘one against many’ that you see in some of the later Zatoichi films, not to mention the fairly typical exploits of both Lone Wolf and Cub and Sleepy Eyes Of Death. Indeed, the first pre-credits fight I mentioned earlier is more or less a template for the various skirmishes throughout the movie but, of course, as the story builds to a climax, so does the number of opponents increase so you eventually have one man against whole armies, etc. There are two things which made these kinds of scenes a little different. Other than being shot by Miike with a nice attention to the way elements of the battles are framed and the incredible sense of the way the various shots are edited together, so you don’t lose your place in the combat scenes...

The first of these is that the fights seem a whole lot less bloody than I am used to seeing in a Japanese film and, of course, this goes doubly so considering that it’s Miike, the man behind such extremely, violently ostentatious movies such as Ichi The Killer (if you’re going to see that one, get a Dutch copy as they’re definitely uncut). Sure, there are lots of body parts flying and there is literally a small, almost river of blood formed in the middle of the battleground at one point... but you don’t get the huge gouts of blood and arterial spray that I tend to typically associate with any Japanese movies since Kurosawa first started that trend in the very last scene of his excellent Yojimbo follow up, Sanjuro. Instead, the brutality of the violence is somehow less comic book in its depiction here... although I’m really not sure whether I preferred this choice from the director or not.

The other thing about the various fights involving Manji is that he does tend to get cut up quite a lot in each and every fight he’s in and, too be honest. I was getting kinda tired of watching him being sliced n’ diced and then, slowly and painfully, regenerating each and every time he gets in trouble. I kind of felt like yelling... “He’s immortal, we get it!”... at various points because, it struck me that compared to many of the great swordsmen in Japanese cinema, he’s wasn’t that skillful that he couldn’t come away unscathed on occasion.

However, that’s a minor grumble and, in all honesty, I really enjoyed Blade Of The Immortal and it’s reminded me that, in terms of Takashi Miike, I’ve barely scratched the surface of his work and I need to see more of it. This is a nice slice of chanbara goodness which, perhaps, isn’t as unique or unusual as you might at first think but certainly pays homage to the genre and it should satisfy fans of this type of cinema. I’ll certainly be picking this one up on Blu Ray if this gets a UK release and look forward to seeing it again. A solid swordplay movie from one of Japan’s modern, master directors. Not to be missed.

Yo Yo Girl Cop

Why Oh Why Oh...?

Yo Yo Girl Cop
2006 Japan
Directed by Kenta Fukasaku
Toei DVD Region 2

When I saw this DVD going for just a few quid at a film fair last year, there was no way I was not going to buy it. It has a cover with a teenage girl wielding a yo-yo in support of the quite unbelievably awesome title, promising a film which would hopefully make good on its conceptual proposition of a pretty girl doing violent things with the aforementioned, weaponised toy. I also made an assumption that it would be in the same kind of vein of the kinds of over-the-top concept films Japan has been pumping out lately which have a certain sense of self awareness and over-the-top irony on their delivery. Films such as The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, Robo Geisha (reviewed here), Big Tits Zombie 3D (reviewed here), Chanbara Beauty (reviewed here), Chanbara Striptease (reviewed here), Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl (reviewed here)... and various others of that ilk.

However, I have to say that this film is a million miles away from those kind of, mostly, good time movies and, it has to be said, is curiously devoid of very much fun altogether.

Yo Yo Girl Cop is actually inspired by a successful Japanese manga called Sukeban Deka, from 1976, which was adapted into a TV show in the mid 1980s, followed by two late 1980s movies and some animated TV shows in the early 1990s. The title translates as Delinquent Girl Detective and, as far as I can make out, this is kind of a reboot sequel which works in a similar fashion as the Samuel L. Jackson Shaft sequel, in that the original actress playing the title character in the TV show plays the mother of the main protagonist here... who I think, and I may be losing something in translation, is the daughter of that original character, inadvertently inheriting the mantle of the former.

Either way, for a character with such an amazing legacy and with such a cool concept as special police agents who are armed with deadly yo-yos, I found the film curiously dull and, in a few places, fairly hard to follow.

The film starts off with an okay opening which, unfortunately, shows right away that the CGI effects are of the particularly low budget variety but it’s followed by an animated opening credit sequence that really kicks ass, as a silhouette of the title character performs cool moves with her yo-yo to a rock oriented score. Alas, when the credits sequence is over, so is the best part of the film. Instead of playing to the utter ridiculousness of the nonsensical concept, which maybe would have been preferable, the film instead tries to approach the subject matter with a grittier, realistic attitude. And that’s fine... it’s as valid an option as any to make a drama come to life. Except that, in this case, the story and the way it’s delivered in a disjointed and, frankly, uninteresting manner makes for a very dull affair.

The one thing which was keeping me watching was the obvious hope that, at some point, Yo-Yo Girl Cop was going to get her “special equipment” out and make good on the promise of the title of the film but, alas, the spinning toy only comes out for a few seconds at a time until the final showdown sequence of the film, where she “tools up” and you start to think to yourself... finally.

Instead, the few bits of yo-yo oriented action in this last sequence are fragmentary, uninspiring and , for the most part, badly lit. It really does nothing much to make up for the seam of teenage angst the film is trying so desperately to mine throughout the running time, which seems to emphasis the negative traits of “grown ups” and the hipness of being a teenager. Played by “J-pop sensation” Aya Matsura, or so the DVD cover tells me, the title character is tolerable and, despite her constant negative attitude to the world of adulthood, may have been an interesting protagonist to journey with. However, the people and situations she finds herself with or in are basically either dull or clichéd and the bits which don’t quite make sense and have a go at whetting your appetite to find the answer to their set up, are lamely tied up and ultimately lead to a villain who, despite the perpetual build up throughout the movie, is much less of a personality than you might reasonably be lead to suspect would turn up and... well... lets just say I had absolutely no interest, by the films eventual denouement, in who lived and died in this affair... and on which side of the law they found themselves, for that matter.

I don’t quite know the audience this movie is aimed at but, I’m pretty certain it’s not me. The terrific idea of an undercover cop who settles her arguments with the help of her lethally dangerous yo-yo is a great starting point for a fun filled, action packed, adrenalin pumped movie... unfortunately, this particular film isn’t that at all and I suspect it would be better received, perhaps, by an audience who is more familiar with the original material and adaptations. And that’s certainly not me, or anybody I know, for that matter. I’m not sure how well Yo Yo Girl Cop did when it got released on DVD over here and in the USA but I’m guessing the cheap price I got it for is reflective of its performance in English speaking countries. Certainly, I wouldn’t inflict this film on people, even if they had an interest in yo-yos or teenage schoolgirls... it’s just too dull. Not one I could, in all conscience, recommend to anyone.

Higanjima - Escape From Vampire Island

As you can see from the Blogger notification pictured above... this review has been up before (hence why I’m not promoting this post on Twitter in the usual way.. it’s had it’s day in the spotlight). As you can see from the notification, I was told I’d had a DMCA complaint against this review (a review which had already been up on this blog for almost four years) and been sent an email detailing the things I’d need to do before putting it back up. However... I never actually received that email. So I had no idea what the complaint was.

So, of course, I tried to contact Blogger to find out what the problem seemed to be.

Ever tried to contact Blogger or any of the services offered by Google? It’s impossible. There is no way to do it... which I find really bizarre and faceless of them but, hey, that’s another story. So I went on the forum to find out what the hell was going on and it was confirmed there that Blogger/Google don’t talk to their customers as policy. So I was advised to file a counter complaint against the company who filed it in the first place (which I’m assuming is probably the label who put this movie out).

However, I’m not in the habit of causing trouble and I genuinely wanted to find out what the problem was. Now, looking at what a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint actually is, I can actually figure out that it must be something to do with the pictures I’d used (and it looked like I wasn’t the only person using pictures from this film who was hit with that complaint). This is pretty much the only thing it could be, in fact, since I am absolutely certain the written content of my reviews have never infringed anybody’s copyright. It's all my own words, people!

Now normally I might be inspired to kick up a fuss about such a thing and challenge this under 'fair usage' but, in all honesty and especially with a small film like this, it’s really not worth it. My friend advised me to put it straight back up with all the pictures and cry foul play at the censorship issue involved but... ahh... maybe if I was younger and, like I said, this particular movie really isn’t worth that.

So I’ve now removed the pictures from this review and am reposting it here and trusting that Blogger, or the complaining company in question, won’t have any further issues with it. So please, if you are so inclined, enjoy my four year old review of this movie again, if you like. It’s been off of the site for nearly four months while I tried to get a civil response so... like an old and weary friend, it’s back. 

The Bite Club

Higanjima - Escape From Vampire Island
2009 South Korea/Japan
Directed by Tae-gyun Kim
Manga Films Blu Ray B 

Warning: Slight spoilers in a jugular vein!

Okay. So this is something I found in the HMV closing down sale. It’s not a film I’d heard of but it had vampires in the title and it was only £3... so I figured I’d take the risk, expecting it to be rather silly but, hopefully, a lot of fun... and by that I mean, less plausible than a vampire flick usually gets these days, especially when it’s been based on a manga as this one was... they all seem to get pretty silly via modern directors.

Well, I have to say that, rather than another variant of Tokyo Gore Police or RoboGeisha (reviewed here) or Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl (reviewed here), what I got instead was a film that did not seem to have its tongue firmly wedged in its cheek, or given the subject mater, firmly through its cheek and penetrating someone else’s carotid artery. Instead we have here a film which, although dealing with a fantastic subject - that of a group of teenagers going to an island that doesn’t appear on any maps to find a missing brother who is busy fighting vampires and such like on said island - is actually happy to take itself seriously enough to be able to get some actual drama on screen, in between the fight-chase-fight scenes.

That being said, though, while the acting is all pretty sound, I did find one of the main leads (who plays Akira) to be a bit hopeless and prone to histrionics about various elements of his life when, in truth, he should have already developed that warriors bloodlust that some of the other characters had easily acquired and maybe have been a bit less irritating in places. Having said that, though, most of the bunch of main protagonists who go to the island with rescue on their minds are fairly likeable, or at least more than tolerable and the film certainly makes up for things like this in other areas.

The design and colouring of some of the shots is absolutely exquisite, working extremely well when there are any reds to be highlighted (usually red flowers or blood, to be honest) but the way in which certain scenes are shot and the way the acting styles follow through is a bit off kilter. There are a few scenes in the first half an hour, for example, which are more or less static camera or steady fluid shots and show the characters in a very relaxed and naturalistic mode with an acting style that very much reminded me of early seventies Hollywood. However, the director seems to be keeping you guessing as to the mood of the piece because these kinds of little interludes are scattered in between more kinetic chase or action scenes and, in the case of the lead character Akira, will sometimes switch to an unnecessarily jerky, hand held style of shot even if it’s just the reverse of a conversation scene with the other person being shot with a static shot. I’m not sure what kind of intent the director was trying to tag the lead character with by doing this but it just came out as confusing to me. But that did certainly make it interesting in places too.

The second two thirds of the film were, for me, a little less enjoyable because there are less and less moments of calm between storms. When the kids get to the island, it more or less becomes vampire mayhem all the way. The film is, fortunately, not afraid to step up on the goriness front but, while many of the scenes of bloody carnage hold a quiet beauty all their own, other sequences are less effective, especially when the blood and explosions are so obviously CGI in a lot of the set pieces. I think, with a film which runs just a couple of minutes shy of two hours, it could have done with cutting back quite a bit, although, I have to say that I suspect there was a longer cut in there trying to get out at some point.

One character, Yuki, for instance, is shown during the opening sequence to be an expert archer, casually hitting a bulls eye with seemingly no effort. The film then takes pains, when this character joins our little gang to get onto the boat ready to take them to the island, to show that she has got her trusty bow and arrows with her on the journey. However, when the small group of friends are captured by vampires almost as soon as they arrive on the titular island, she hasn’t even got her arrows out and let loose with them yet and, as far as I can remember, never regains possession of her weapons of choice at any time throughout the rest of the film. This seems to me to be a little sloppy but, what do I know?

What is really good is the chief vampire villain, whose name escapes me and, frankly, the IMDB seems to be absolutely rubbish at highlighting too. But, either way, they’ve gone for one of these laid back and charmingly eloquent villains who is happy to slouch around quoting half relevant philosophical poetry and the like before finally going up against someone with his teeth or his sword and showing how much of a threat he really is. This guy is pretty much a white haired pseudo-albino with blood red eyes and it has to be said he’s a bit of a scene stealer, although his monologues do wear a little thin after a while.

One missed opportunity was with one of his main henchmen, who can slide his half a severed arm off the front and make use of a retractable/telescopic sword implant. This character seems tragically underused and, since there were no other real gimmicks scattered throughout the movie in the way usually associated with the less serious kinds of films in this vein (saw one where a woman had a flame thrower vagina last year, for example) it does kind of stick out like a sore thumb against the general tone of the movie. Since you never really see it used, it felt unnecessary and gave the film a sense of being uneven. It also lends credibility that there was a longer story to be told here... possibly by a longer cut or, just as likely, because the original manga source may have been a lot richer than can be accommodated into the alloted running time.

On a happier note, though, the movie did have flying vampire women in it and, more awesomely, what was referred to as a “gargoyle” in the final battle. This gargoyle was a big CGI beastie which resembled nothing less than a cross between the rancor that Luke Skywalker battles in Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi and the alien queen from James Cameron’s ALIENS. It was, kinda alright and, to be truthful, did break up the monotony a little.

This gargoyle creature, a gazillion decapitations and a few impressive “head squished by small, hand held tree trunk” moments are enough to keep the entertainment level at a certain pitch and although I’ve seen a lot better out there, this was certainly a pleasing diversion and not something I regret buying for the price (if it had been into double figures I would have been less than happy). Not the worst film you could pick up if swordplay and gory vampirism are you’re thing but, similarly, not necessarily worth going out of your way for. All in all I’m glad I saw it though.