Review: BloodRayne: The Third Reich

The Nazis have started researching all kinds of theories for making the Fuhrer immortal, and scientist Dr. Mangler (Clint Howard!) has stumbled upon the idea of vampirism. Commandant Brand (Michael Paré) thinks half-human half-vampire Rayne (Natassia Malthe) would be the perfect source of blood. Rayne, for her part, has hooked up with The Résistance, led by Nathaniel (Brendan Fletcher), who is just as keen on killing Nazis as Rayne. Obviously, if Hitler gets injected with Rayne’s blood, things could really get out of hand.

 

Maybe I should stop watching Uwe Boll (“House of the Dead”, “Far Cry”) movies, because this is getting scary. The “BloodRayne” series has gotten better with each new entry, and this 2011 film is the best yet. At this rate, the fifth or sixth one will be a five-star classic, and I’m not sure I’m ready to face that. But I will say that it is wrong to call Uwe Boll the worst filmmaker of all-time, and not just because he likes to beat up his critics in the boxing ring and I’m scared of him. He’s occasionally competent, there’s plenty worse out there than Boll, believe me.

 

I like that these films essentially take the same idea and basically the same character and transplant them onto different settings. The first one had a medieval/fantasy vibe, the second was a vampire western, and now, perhaps inevitably, we’re in Nazi-era surroundings. I’m normally wary of Nazi or Holocaust themes being used for schlocky entertainments, especially when it’s done in somewhat serious fashion, ala the “X Men” movies. So long as it’s played completely ridiculously so that I’m not even thinking about it, then it’s OK. That’s certainly the case here, I mean, you’ve got Clint Freakin’ Howard and Michael Paré (who has aged rather well I must say) playing Nazis for cryin’ out loud in a movie about a butt-kicking human-vampire hybrid. “Schindler’s List” it ain’t! The lack of German accents did bother me a bit, especially the typically lazy Paré, though whatever accent Brendan Fletcher is attempting to affect, he’s failing pretty badly. Howard, by the way, gives the best performance in the entire film, he has a whiny, snivelling, Peter Lorre/Dwight Frye quality to him here and is quite entertaining. He certainly seems to be having more fun than anyone else in the film. Paré is a bit better than he has been in other recent films (including “BloodRayne: Deliverance”), but his tendency to be lazy just pisses me off. Meanwhile, I don’t think the series has lost much in the acting department through the switch from Kristanna Loken (in the first “BloodRayne”) to Natassia Malthe in these last two films. She’s also a beautiful woman with great cleavage, who also finally shows her breasts in a couple of scenes (there’s plenty of nudity throughout, actually), including one memorable rubdown turned lesbian sex scene. It’s pretty hot, but the problem with that scene is that it is broken up and intercut with other goings on, which is always a pet peeve (pet perve?) of mine. Also, she’s flat on her back in the scene for the most part, and thus her ‘assets’ aren’t exactly seen in the best light possible. Yes, this is important stuff.

The film is also nice and bloody at times, if perhaps not often enough. The appropriately shitty-looking locales are nice and the cinematography is mostly attractive, though the “Saving Private Ryan”-style camerawork in some action scenes was not very much to my liking. Malthe delivers one of the funniest final lines in cinematic history: ‘Guten Tag, motherfuckers!’. Oh that’s one for the ages right there, screenwriter Michael C. Nachoff (who went on to write the second “In the Name of the King” film for Boll) deserves praise for that one if he’s responsible for writing that.

A perfectly watchable, silly offering from a perfectly average filmmaker whose reputation is a lot worse and a lot more infamous than he really deserves. 

 

Rating: C+