Item #: 28606DV Category: MODERN HORROR Format: DVD MPAA Rating: R

Woolly Rating: 7/10 (61 votes)

MEMBER COMMENTS ON THIS VIDEO

jd	Mar 2, 2006 @ 20:23:13

<[:-} "and though she could make love to herself, she welcomed her long lost brother and loved him too"
if you take a step back and look at it, "bleeders" redlines the dial on the sickometer, but still somehow fails to shock. it is remarkable in how long romantic cliches are faithfully and effectively preserved, even after the most repulsive plot bombs are detonated. in a tunnel system which has its hub under the old van daam graveyard / cafeteria, heroine "kathleen" watches her husband "john" slash the flesh of a small boy and slurp his vital liquids, trying to make do on such disgusting grub because all the tasty corpses have been taken away, and she pleads "come with me, and we'll go home." he just says "i am home." of course, she's pregnant with incestuous, degenerate monster seed. over the disgusting slash & slurp sound fx, music plays that would be a good fit for the final scene in a french movie where the concert pianist heroine leaves her flautist lover to go back to her deaf husband. this isn't the only time the conventional taboo against explicit violence directed toward a small child is violated. at least three are dragged away screaming, to be eaten. its not even the sickest love scene, by a wide margin. earlier, kathleen and the disgraced "doctor marlowe" (rutger hauer) feed john a deformed fetus preserved in formaldehyde, one of john's ancestors, from the private stash of a doctor studying "mutations" caused by incest. not only does it save john's life, its nutritional richness, all that ghouly goodness, inspires john to make hot love to kathleen, without even brushing his teeth first. only someone who has had a really good whiff of formaldehyde will realize just how bad his breath would be. it seems the van daams have a taste for pickled people, a nutritional need for formaldehyde. after, he breathes in the sea air lustily and says "its as if i had a whole new set of senses." nothing like embalmed cousin fetus to make you feel alive. its great that hauer has had such a prolific career, paying the bills, but "bleeders" is a long way from the life-affirming brilliance of "blade runner." i wonder if hauer is ever tempted to run a blade across his wrists. kathleen is played by kristin lehman, who looks like a softer featured uma thurman and gets topless. indeed, "bleeders" bares a bounty of breasts. one nice young woman hangs upside-down in the van daam's makeshift meat locker, with her loose shirt hanging down. gillian ferrabee has a nude sex scene as the matriarch of the american van daams (and, in the same scene, as her twin brother, making love to herself). later, ferrabee plays john's hermaphroditic, horrifically obese twin sister. further blurring the line between romance and horror, the cinematography works well as art, but fails in its mission to scare. too much of the footage that's supposed to be fearsome is too dark or blurry, possibly to hide the cream cheese coating on the fx. i thought it looked like it was shot on digital video, but imdb gives credit for "film lab" and "negative cutting." (and it was released in 1997) art director isabelle guay would go on to more prestigious films like "confessions of a dangerous mind." such things as 22 people listed in the "art department" in the credits indicate a lot of work went into art direction, but the monster makeup (credited to adrien morot) looks funny rather than scary, more suited to a child-friendly comedy like "invaders from mars." as does "invaders from mars," "bleeders" has a screenplay co-credit for the mighty dan o'bannon, in a very unusual format in the title credits: "screenplay by charles adair and dan o'bannon & ronald shusett." shusett worked with o'bannon on at least three other movies, including the immortal "alien." it looks like an o'bannon / shusett somehow fell into the wrong hands and suffered a most humiliating violation at the hands of adair, his "first." the remote sea village / degenerate fishermen setting echoes o'bannon & shusett's "dead and buried." o'bannonoid touches dot the script, such as having "baby laura," the half-pint nursing woman who hasn't spoken since she was six, seeing her sister killed, saying "no f'king way," heaving a heavy hunting knife into a mutant's chest, and having her throat slashed immediately after, never to talkj again. imdb says "bleeders" is based, uncredited, on h.p. lovecraft's story "the lurking fear." in addition to being poorly photographed, the horror foreshadowing images aren't all explained in later detail and they aren't coordinated in a way to make a sense of dread accumulate. the pacing is too slow. the first solid scare is 38 minutes in. the location is great looking and the casting is brilliant in regard to the appearance of the actors. the music is very interesting in places. there are glacial shards of highly treated guitar that sound exactly like some of the work on local boy andrew aebersold's band lunasect's first cd (2000) "long lost," but its credited to michael reese. must have been sampled.

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