"One thing's for sure, you don't leave this baby looking for some hidden meaning!" - The Mattchity, after the movie.
Last night I visited the Bordello of Blood. And I survived, which is more than I can say for almost every other character in the film.
This is the second Major Motion Picture from the campy horror gurus at Tales From the Crypt, and they've pulled all the campy horror stunts they could possibly think of. Then they asked Dennis Miller to add some of his own.
Dennis Miller. The Far-Too-Political, always talking over your head, intellectual, ranting Talk Show Host is in a horror movie with a couple of Supermodels.
OK......
He actually fits right in, when he barges into a room with a Televagenlist, armed with some kick-ass water guns, you just gotta cheer. And when he's creeping though a scary-like place and you know something's bad about to happen and he says "Man, I feel like I'm in a bad Tales From the Crypt episode." You gotta laugh.
The cinematic quality of this film is... ah hell. It's Tales From the Crypt. You got the funky lookin' Cryptkeeper cackling at you and saying the worst horror puns imaginable. In a situation such as this, you just gotta sit back, laugh, and count the boobies.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of boobies here.
See basically, as if you couldn't figure out from the title, this is about a Bordello or Whorehouse. As Dennis says, it's a house of whores. They Whore a lot. Except all the Whores are also Vampires, and they like to eat people. Hence the Blood portion of the title. So much of your movie-going experience is made up of watching naked women eat people.
And aside from the eating people part, I've got no problems with that.
Aside from Dennis, the cast includes a couple of Supermodels, a midget, Chris Sarandon as a sleazy Televangelist, and Cory Feldman as an annoying, menace-to-society, white trash little punk. Yup, he's playing himself. Whoopie Goldberg also has a tiny cameo that, while quite funny, makes no sense whatsoever.
Actually, the characters don't matter. This is a movie which you can walk out of and have no idea what the character's names were. I still don't know. They don't call each other by name much, they simply yell "Look out!" or "I'll kill you!" or "Whoa! Babes!"
Basically, as far as I'm concerned, this movie was about Dennis Miller, two chicks, a good blond and an evil brunette (isn't that always the case?), a midget, a Televangelist, and a bunch of naked blood-sucking whores.
Which sounds a lot like last year's Self-Made Christmas Party.
If you like shlock horror, you'll love Bordello of Blood. If you like Dennis Miller, you'll probably like it as well. If you think naked boobies are the root of all evil, you're probably right, but you might want to step next door into a showing of Alaska.
It's not that scary. I mean come on, I saw it. I don't see horror movies. The scariest part, and the only part that made everyone in the theater jump, is the old cheap-shot black cat in a graveyard gag. Don't worry, I haven't given anything away, by the time you see the cat, you've already jumped, and are currently laughing at yourself, hoping no one else noticed you wet your pants.
There's a lot of cringing gore. That's where you see the guy with the scalpel, you see that he's going to cut into the dead body, and you cringe. He cuts. You don't quite see it due to a safe camera angle, but you cringe anyway.
So in all, this baby doesn't take itself seriously, and you shouldn't either. I got from it what expected, and maybe a few more laughs at the expense of a few headless bodies. Give this baby 2 1/2 Babylons. If for nothing else than Dennis and the Hooters.
My advice? Sit down for a two-hour episode of Tales From the Crypt. Just fill the bowl with popcorn, get comfy, and enjoy the pretty severed body parts.
Or wait till video, it ought to be here by Halloween. If you live for this stuff, then go treat yourself, if you don't, don't bother. You're not missing any cultural event.
I mean it ain't Kingpin or anything.
Editor's Note:
It has come to our attention that some members of our viewing audience have reported getting trouble from sending these reviews on to their superiors before reading them. To that we have one, and only one, answer.
Serves you right.
Hell, I don't care if it's a letter from your mother, you should read anything before recommending it to others. I mean, come on! What if it sucked? Or, as was the case this time, what if the people you're sending it on to are actually members of a Satanic Cult, and they don't take kindly to independent thought? You'd be in big trouble, wouldn't you? Of course you would!!!!
Even a letter from Mom could have a harmless recipe for a non-kosher food, and if your boss was Jewish, that might just piss him or her off.
Be safe, read all of our reviews.
Then pass them on regardless of content.
If they don't like it, you'll know they are actually agents of evil sent to earth to stamp out fun and puppies.
And you'll be warned.