Rated 3 out of 5
Sex, Blood, and Rock ’’n’’ Roll
About a week ago I was sitting in the Washington, DC bar Asylum in the checkered Adams Morgan neighborhood. Sitting there with a glass of water, watching my friends get drunk, I noticed an unusual movie playing on one of the televisions. The sound wasn’’t on, but the imagery presented, backed with the bar’’s heavy metal and gothic music pounding in the background captivated me.The movie was Razor Blade Smile (1998), independent fare from England. OK, it looked bad, but I had to see this thing in full. The DVD arrived today.
Having just watched the closing credits (and a little surprise when they’’re done) I realize this is a mish mosh of atrocious acting, bad editing, horrible effects and abundant slickness that comes together and works much better than it should.
The tale is of a 150 year old vampire "Lilith Silver" who is bored to tears and fills her time by knocking off people for money. Yes, she is a hit-vamp. Her current boy-toy employer has her knocking off people who wear rings with eyeballs in them. When she finally gets curious and asks a contact of hers about them, she learns they belong to a group called The Illuminati, a mysterious cabal that has inundated itself into the world’’s power structures.
It turns out that Sethane Blake, the ancient vamp who turned our murderous vixen into a blood sucking (and other sucking) fiend heads this group and has also contracted out Lilith’’s boss to rub out the lower members of his frat house. If this sounds at all interesting, see it. It’’s quite entertaining if you don’’t take it too seriously.
The stars are basically no one. Eileen Daly (Lillith) did a few minor roles and is known as the "Redemption Girl". Christopher Adamson (Sethane) is trying to be the next Christopher Lee. He doesn’’t have suave good looks, incredibly sexy voice, and his skin is bad. David Warbeck (The Horror Movie Man) appears to have had something of a career, but died before the film was released. He doesn’’t have to worry about appearing in a sequel.
There are lots of effects. None of them are memorable. Someone on some said it looked as if director Jake West got his hands on some video editing software and went nuts. There’’s black and white, kooky color with lots of blue and red contrasting, grainy picutre, bad focus, slow motion, fast motion, jerky fast motion, lots of fire, blood, a few stakes, computers, guns, rubber, mylar, sunglasses, a lesbian scene in catsuits (OK, that’’s not an effect, but it was pretty damn hot and coming from me, that’’s saying something), a few decapitations and a guy blowing his brains out.
And in the end, all is not what it seems. In fact nothing is as it seems. It’’s like a bad car wreck. You just can’’t look away. Oh, and don’’t leave before the credits end.
