Movie: Bloodsuckers

Bloodsuckers a.k.a. Vampire-Wars_Battle-for-the-Universe is a low budget 2005 TV movie.  It starts of just plain bad and manages to finish with a certain (small) amount of kitchy charm. 

Basically, in a future where humans have gone into space and found it full of vampires, an earnest hero joins a team of semi-official vampire killers.  The team is, like the hero, pretty much a collection of cliches from central casting--reckless captain, vampire ninja babe, cowboy grunt and sassy sarcasticc chick.

The acting is not great, the sets are not great, the action sequences are not great and the special effects are terrible--but the plot gets a little more sophisticated as it goes on, from 'kill the vampires!' to 'be loyal to your friends and kill the vampires!' 

This would have been a semi-promising TV series pilot, but as a movie it is pretty lacklustre.  But if it is on sale or on TV, Bloodsuckler is and okay movie for someone who has some free time and is prepared to kick back and descend to its level.

• IMDb

DVD: Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet is a 1998 British series of six one-hour television episodes focused on a small paramilitary unit that deals with a vampire threat (Not to be mistaken for the 2006 movie of the same name). A police Sergeant, Michael Colefield, is the main protagonist, recruited by this unit after his best friend becomes a vampire (referred to in this mythos a 'leeches').  The team is rounded out by their leader, an ex-Catholic priest, a female doctor who lost her husband and daughter to the disease, and a ruthless ex-army operative.

The show and is characters had considerable potential, but this rather low key show never really hit its stride.  Often it seemed to me, that the acting and cinematography didn't really match the quality of the writing.  The stories raised great issues of what to do in situation of moral ambiguity, and in the absence of truly scary monsters (the vampires seemed rather under-powered) the sub-plot of a hero trying to balance his secret life with real world concerns had great potential. Ultraviolet is worth watching more as an exercise in what might have been, rather than what is actually achieved in six scant episodes.

3/5

Other reviews:
ULTRAVIOLET - 1999: [3/5] "This is a cool show and it's done in a fairly "realistic", police procedural way. There's a lot of interesting conflict as the brooding Michael tries to balance his life and his relationship with his friends...."

Links: Official website,  Wikipedia

[DVD] NICK NIGHT

NICK NIGHT (1989; IMDb) is a movie pilot that predates the long running television series FOREVER KNIGHT.  It is not a prequel because the first episodes of the TV series reprise all of the events of this movie.  However it is interesting to see a slightly different and early take on the same story.

Rick Springfield is a more conventional attractive lead, but lack some of the edge that Geraint Wyn Davies later bought to the part.  The filming of this fail pilot was also looser and sometimes introduced serious flaws. 

For example there a pivotal scene where Knight must choose whether to save the girl or save the ancient cup that might allow him mortal again.  In both version the villain holds the cup and the girl on a high walkway.  In this version the cup is dropped and hits the ground before Knight acts, essentially making nonsense of the dilemma.  In the Forever Knight version the villain drops the cup and Knight saves the girl before it hits the ground and shatters--making it clear that he had time to rescue one or the other.

There were really only two elements that I feel are more successful in NICK KNIGHT than in FOREVER KNIGHT.  One is the gimmick of Knight rigging up camera so her could watch the sun rise on dozens of televisions.  This seemed to sum up Knight's obsession with regaining mortality, on which the series hangs.  The pother is that the sidekick Det. Don Schanke (played by John Kapelos in both versions) has more of a threatening side to him that is lost in the buffoonish character he became in the series (perhaps necessary to have a long running character who never works out that his partner is a vampire).

On the whole this is a movie for FOREVER KNIGHT enthusiasts only, it completes the collection but adds relatively little to it.