Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Animation Featurette-Making Of Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2009
Running Time	87:07 (Case: 91)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (38:52)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Chris Nahon
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Gianna Jun Allison Miller Liam Cunningham JJ Feild Koyuki Yasuaki Kurata Larry Lamb Andrew Pleavin Michael Byrne
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Clint Mansell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	English English Alternate Subtitles	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    It is rare that a film comes along that manages to fail on every level. Blood: The Last Vampire is one such rarity screaming out for the attention of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

    Very loosely based on the 2000 experimental anime of the same name, by critical darlings Project I.G., Blood: The Last Vampire tells the story of half-vampire Saya (Korean starlet Jun Ji-hyun, going by the name Gianna) as she hunts down an evil vampire named Onegin (Koyuki) in 1970s Japan (a setting with no real relevance to the film save for justifying why the American military seem to be operating in Japan), who has something to do with Saya's origin. Saya works for/with a shadowy bunch of yanks who work for "the council", whose sole purpose seems to be to kill demony folks. In all honesty, the plot is clumsily explained at best and that is the least of this film's woes. Suffice to say the film is about a vampire-ish lass who chops up evil people who turn into beasty looking folks, whilst a bunch of blokes in suits clean up after her.

    The biggest problem of the lot? The film looks incomplete, particularly the special effects. The CGI looks incredibly artificial. The difference between live action and CGI'd bits is like night and day. In fact, for anyone who has ever watched "making of" featurettes about CGI, it almost looks as though the effects guys simply never added that last layer of lighting and texture that blends it all into the original image - it looks like a work in progress pre-visualisation. The worst of the lot is the repeatedly used CGI blood effect, which looks like a random stream of bubbles shooting from a wound, rather than a splash of fluid. Perhaps they neglected to tell us this was set in a world where everyone has dark red washing up liquid for blood...

    The only recognisable actor, other than the lead, is Colin Salmon, who gets maybe five minutes of screen time before his character gets the chop - literally. This lack of familiar faces is not not really the issue to complain about, however, the real problem is that his character is treated as though we should recognise him as someone of great importance, despite the film giving us no reason to. Ultimately he is just another inconsequential hack and slash before the anti-climactic face off with the big boss.

    The action is relatively well choreographed, but quickly becomes monotonous. The action scenes are devoid of variety and quickly become a bore. Worse yet, many of them are drawn out to unnecessary lengths as wave after wave of non-descript baddies pour over Saya.

    How a film that has ties to major studios (it is partly credited to Universal Studios offshoot Focus Features) could be released in this state (albeit ultimately by distributors other than the credited major studio) is a bit of a mystery, although one could cynically guess why. 90% of the film is filmed in English and both Jun Ji-hyun and Koyuki speak with near-incomprehensible accents. Had this been the only issue it probably could/should have been fixed with some post-production dubbing, but neither actress seems capable of acting when they are delivering lines in English. Each stands lifeless and mumbles their line in monotone whenever they speak, the implausibility of which was evidently lost on the crew shooting the film, but possibly not lost on any English-speaking backers of the film - who would likely have realised that the acting was so bad as to make the film unreleasable to an English-speaking audience.

    Blood: The Last Vampire is truly a film that can only be recommended to fans of abominably bad movies and those who want to conspire as to how it could possibly have ended up the way it did.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect and is 16x9 enhanced.

    As bad as the film itself looks thanks to its choppy editing and abominable CGI, the transfer is rock solid. The image is clear and sharp. The colours are heavily stylised and reasonably even throughout. Occasional stylised grain is present, which suits the look of the film. There is an excellent level of shadow detail in the image, and the many dark scenes feature plenty of fine detail.

    There is no sign of compression artefacts in the video and no sign of film artefacts at any point.

    The film features two English subtitle tracks, one for just the non-English parts and the other for the whole film. Both seem well timed and accurate.

    This is a RSDL disc with a layer break occurring at 38:52

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The film features English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kbps) and DTS 5.1 (768 Kbps) tracks. The default is the Dolby Digital track, which sounds horribly flat and lifeless, however the DTS is an excellent track.

    The audio is placed at a good level in the mix in both tracks, and is as easy to understand aside from the overly thick accents. The audio is well synchronised to the video, save for some obvious ADR.

    The film features a frenetic score from Clint Mansell, which is sadly wasted on the material.

    The Dolby Digital track uses the surrounds poorly. Whilst the speakers are used, the effects sound flattened together, almost like a mono from all speakers. The DTS track, on the other hand, makes vibrant use of the surrounds and does all it can to hype up the blasé action. The same goes for the subwoofer usage in each track. Plenty of deep bass in the DTS, a few bland thumps in the Dolby.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Making Of Featurette

    A bland advertorial "Making Of" featurette. Plenty of interviews and on-set footage is featured, all seemingly oblivious to awfulness of the film. The video quality on this one is quite poor, perhaps a result of dedicating the lion's share of the space on the disc for the main feature (as it should be).

Theatrical Trailer

    Always funny to get a theatrical trailer for a film that hasn't come out theatrically in the local market. Funnier still when the trailer is indicative of the mess the film is.

    The Region 1 edition splits the "making of" featurette found on the Region 4 release into two separate featurettes, one general "making of" and one containing the stunts related parts, but the content is the same. The Region 1 edition also includes storyboard galleries, but misses the DTS track. Personally I'd go for the version with the better soundtrack.

    A truly awful live-action remake of a minor anime classic. The action is bland. The effects look unfinished. Bring on the MST3K dub.

    Video quality is excellent, shame about what it happens to be presenting, as is the DTS audio (though the Dolby Digital audio is bland). A lengthy but dull "making of" is included.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall