My name is Rayne. You killed my mother. Prepare to die. [Bloodrayne]
I remember when Bloodrayne the video game out, I was so excited for it because the main character was a hot female vampire who had machetes attached to her arms; machetes that she used to completely dismember and decapitate anyone who got in her way. The game was lackluster at best, but it had its moments, so when Bloodrayne the movie came out, I almost went to go see it. But something must have stopped me, and I wish I could hop in the Delorian, go back in time, and thank whatever that something was.
First off, I nearly fell out of my chair when the music started playing for the title menu. The typeface for the title is lovely-so sternly Gothic-but the faux frescos are just a bit really dumb. I mean, really: Kristanna Loken as part of a fresco? Really? I mean-
Wait. Holy shit. Did that just say…MEAT LOAF? Oh, God. This movie is going to be incredible. And also: Special Appearances by Billy Zane, Michelle Rodriguez, and Ben Kingsley, aka Kate Winslet, Kristanna Loken, and the Academy Award’s sloppy seconds, respectively.
Ooo, medieval! You know it’s medieval because it’s dark, dank, someone just cut a chicken’s head off, and Michael Madsen has ridiculously long hair. I thought boys cut their hair off when they were seven? Oh, wait, maybe that’s just a Polish medieval thing. And you know how I know this movie is going to be awful? The title card “Directed by Uwe Boll” is directly preceded by “Written by Guinevere Turner.” Sigh.
Everyone is drinking, and there’s some talk of carnival freaks, and then: absinthe! Except the dude who orders it is a vampire, and hero-dude kills him, and I’m sad because a vampire who drinks absinthe is definitely the type of guy I always wanted to get when I played Dream Date. But no. I always got the high school quarterback or the drama lead. As if I have any use for those. By the way, the vampire was killed with as much nonchalance as humanly imaginable, as if it's a daily occurrence. But what do I know? Maybe it used to be.
There’s some drunk telling of the “she-demon,” which is obvs going to be Kristanna Loken, because no normal woman can be that tall. It all takes place at a carnival, where we get the first glimpse of where the arm-machetes come from. And here comes Rayne, who is tied up (mmm) but is being abused by a bunch of men and then is forced to drink goat’s blood to heal. It’s macabre, sure, but even more macabre is the obvious lack of a costume budget; I’m pretty sure they got Rayne’s vest from the Medieval Times gift shop.
Michael Madsen wants to go see Rayne, who gets a nighttime visitor: Amanda, who totes has the hots for Rayne and wants to set her free. Rayne is so totally over it though and is playing hard to get, but she shows interest when Amanda gives her a cross. I guess Rayne is immune to crosses? And they turn her on? Sure. Why not.
In a CGI sequence that also has the same production values as the costumer budget, we find ourselves in a big dark castle, where Ben Kingsley, dressed like a neo-Gothic drag queen in a studded gold vest and baby blue overshirt with a ruffly purple undershirt, wants Rayne found.
His acting is so completely bad that it’s a wonder this is the same man who played Gandhi, for fuck’s sake.
Rayne stumbles through some grass, crying like a fat kid whose ice cream fell on the ground, and through flashbacks we see that while she was sleeping, her keeper tried to rape her. Um, really? Of all the women working a medieval carnival, you pick the one who might as well be called Rayne Bloodlust? Ok, whatever floats your boat. And of course Rayne smashes the guy’s alcohol bottle on his head, and his bleeding sends her into the aforementioned bloodlust, which showcases the incorporation of the video game’s Blood Rage mode that slowed everything down and sent Rayne into a feeding frenzy. You know something’s wrong with a movie when it has to take its special effects cue from a four-year-old (at the time) video game.
Continuing the flashback, Rayne keeps going after people, who JUST KEEP COMING AT HER. Just…never mind. The carnies obviously have no common sense whatsoever.
Michael Madsen & co. ride their horses towards the carnival, but his cohorts, one of whom is Michelle Rodriquez as the one person in this movie who doesn’t even remotely look like she could have come from a European country but nonetheless plays the role of “Katherine the Mexican,” are all, “Daaaaaad, we’re too ooooooold for the carnival! Stop embarrassing us! GOD!” And then they get there and almost everyone is dead. Fun time is no more. Happy now kids? In a great sequence of shots, we see a bearded lady, conjoined twins, some little boy dressed up as a prince, and a really tall guy in a weird costumer, but I can’t enjoy it too much because I honestly doubt that in medieval times these people would be in a carnival; most likely, they’d be the ones walking the streets. Just sayin’.
The dead people get beheaded and burned, but then they find Amanda, who was bitten but lives. Wow, talk about a dealbreaker, eh? Here I thought bad table manners were awful enough, but if someone bit me on the neck, stole my sword, then ran away to be all emo in a field, I’m pretty sure I’d call the relationship off. Well, unless the sex was good. Amanda stands up for Rayne, but then Katherine kills her because she’s all, “It’s slim pickins, bitch, and I ain’t gotten laid in a decade. I call, mine!”
Billy Zane in a wig descends a staircase, and I feel like he’s just reprising his Titanic role because he’s all suppressed anger and British uptightness. It turns out Katherine is his daughter, which makes no damn sense at all, but I don’t give a shit because I’m so blinded by Billy Zane’s luscious bangs and the ten-second close-up of his vampire bites.
That Uwe Boll: so subtle.
As some vampires attack a wagon, Rayne comes out of nowhere and attacks them, using the swords from Amanda-which turns out to be the arm-machetes-to kill them…well, the guy anyway. The woman she grabs, makes as if she’s about to kiss her, then bites her neck. Kristanna Loken, you tease! The people don’t trust her at first, but her heartfelt, “I will not harm you. I only wish to harm vampires,” wins them over, fake British accent and all. Oh, are we in Britain? I have no clue. It’s like an amalgamation of every medieval culture ever.
At whatever new town they are in, Rayne beckons seductively to a woman-ignoring the male vampire, btw--who she then AGAIN pretends to make out with before biting her neck. Christ! This movie is such a cocktease!
Some gypsy explains to Rayne that she is half-vampire, half-human-a Dhamfir, whatever-and the woman keeps explaining stuff about Kagan and how he raped and killed Rayne’s mother and so on and so forth until Rayne is pissed the fuck off. Then the gypsy backtracks and is all, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t go, you’ll die,” but Rayne wants to go anyway, so the gypsy tells her to get some talisman to get into Kagan’s castle. The best part of this scene is when Kristanna Loken tries to sit down and actually has to plop onto the stool because she’s coming from so high up.
Back at the castle, Drag Queen Kagan gets the news about Rayne and orders her death. Then the vampire army is riding across the countryside, and everyone joins in-Michael Madsen & co. ride their horses, and Rayne rides her stolen horse. And this is all done in daylight, because apparently Guinevere Turner has no regard for vampire lore. She and Stephenie Meyer should be best friends.
Rayne arrives at some big wooden door with a giant Roman Catholic-style cross on it (why, yes, I do like to qualify my crosses, thank you very much), and after the door is opened, she lies to the monks-irony!-and is taken inside. The monk seems to be like me, trying his hardest not to stare at Kristanna Loken’s boobs. The boobs-I mean, Rayne takes a midnight stroll to some underground lair where a deformed monk is sleeping. She tries the old “get the necklace off while he’s sleeping” trick, but the deformed monk wakes up and swings a sledgehammer at her. A sledgehammer. Because not only is this Medievaleverycountry, but it’s also apparently Stereotypicaljerseymafiacountry. The fight sequence involves a lot of swinging and acrobatics, and Rayne uses a conveniently-left-behind spiked mallet to kill the deformed monk. Solving yet another easy puzzle, she uses the deformed monk’s cross in the huge cross-shaped hole to open the door. And yes, the game WAS this easy.
In the next room, however, there are huge blades rolling about, using a technology that I seriously doubt was available back in those times. And by “those” I mean “medieval,” just in case you didn’t get by now that these are Medieval Times. Rayne is understandably freaked out, but she somehow manages to somersault through the entire room and grabs the talisman. Unfortunately, the room starts flooding, and I think she might have finally found her match. Oh, but wait! The arm-machetes that she threw into the walls and ceiling earlier just happen to be in the right spots for her to climb up! Apparently, not only is Rayne immune to crosses and sunlight, but she can predict the future. Imagine that! And imagine the talisman burrowing into Rayne’s eye, ridding her of her pesky allergy to water. Spiffy things, talismans.
The monk who followed her before takes her to another room, where he asks if she is “one of Kagan’s.” I think what he should have said was, “three of Kagan’s,” because holy shit are Kristanna Loken’s boobs ginormous in this shot. I’m sorry, I can’t help it if they’re just heaving all over the damn place. And it’s not like the Medieval Times gift shop vest is doing much to cover them up either.
By the way, the monk has an Italian accent; this is seriously the most multicultural movie I’ve ever seen.
The monk talks about the eye and how it goes with two other parts that, when united, could create a super powerful vampire, then he admits to knowing that Rayne is Kagan’s daughter. Shit, dude likes to brag about his conquests, doesn’t he? What a man. Meanwhile, the monastery is attacked by the vampires, which was exactly what the monk was worried about, and I worry but then the monks pulls out some mad bow-and-arrow and bowstaff skillz. There’s some stabbing through foreheads and lots of fake blood, but Rayne doesn’t go into her Blood Rage because…I don’t even know. I’ve stopped trying to understand this movie. Michael Madsen & co. are also there killing people, but I have to stop right now to just highlight how ridiculous this entire scene is:
People, they show decapitations, swords through eyes, swords through mouths, stomachs ripped off, bodies cut in two, backs sliced open, etc. And it is so incredibly fake that I can’t even fathom how this movie could have been considered a box office bomb since anything it made over $100 must have turned a profit. Like, come on. You can be a bad movie, but at least have some dignity and spring for the slightly pricier stuff. Especially if you have motherfuckin’ Ben Kingsley in your movie.
Kagan’s right hand man punches out Rayne and kidnaps her, and Michael Madsen states the obvious: hey! He’s taking her to Kagan! Who, right now, is wearing lipstick and munching on a nubile young thing. He totes would have fit in at Limelight. RHM takes Rayne to a church, thereby throwing out every last vampire convention ever.
And-OH MY GOD IT IS MEATLOAF AND HE IS LOUNGING ON A BED FILLED WITH NAKED WOMEN OMG YAY
It’s all going to be downhill from here, because nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can top Meatloaf hanging out with naked chicks in a church. Except then Meatloaf makes it even better by making fun of Kagan and keeping Rayne. What follows is an orgy of sex and blood-sucking that Michael Madsen and his dude walk through undettered because, unbeknownst to even themselves, they are eunuchs. Right before they barge in and kill a bunch of vampires, Rayne bites off a part of Meat Loaf’s head, and the great part is over. It was good while it lasted, though. RHM runs away, and Michael Madsen fights Meat Loaf and kills him with sunlight, which apparently the vampires ARE weak against? Like I said, I don’t know.
Michael Madsen and hero-dude take Rayne away on horseback-yes, again-and then, in a new twist, travel by boat. RHM tells Kagan that the eye is now part of Rayne, and Kagan gets all misty-eyed after hearing that his bastard daughter is named Rayne. I bet his son would have been called Flud.
They take Rayne to Brimstone, where Katherine finally gets to check out Rayne, all while Kagan gets one of the talismans. Rayne tells her life story to Michael Madsen & co., as if they really care, but there’s a prolonged flashback to when Kagan killed Rayne’s mother. So, Rayne saw it happen, but didn’t remember it? Oh, ok. It works on Michael Madsen, who lets Rayne out of the cell she had been sitting in and offers to let her work with them. I’m assuming there’s going to be some team bonding work coming up: maybe an obstacle course, some “fall back into my arms” trust development? Now that there are four of them, they can totes pair up.
And, right on cue, a training montage! Katherine watches from afar, transfixed by the fact that Kristanna Loken is taller than all the men. At some point, one of the arm-machetes breaks, and Rayne gets all depressed, which gets the hero-dude to open up about his parents being killed by vampires. Oh, so that’s why he joined Brimstone? And here I thought it was for the punch and pie.
Suddenly, and I seriously mean suddenly, Rayne is having sex with the hero-dude. It might have been hot, since Kristanna Loken’s boobs are all everywhere (then again, she showed them a lot more on the L Word, so, you know), but it quite literally came out of nowhere. Then again, she was dreaming of Amanda, so maybe that was why she was horny? There’s enough subtext in this movie to make my head explode. Also making my head explode is Michelle Rodriguez’s attempt at a British accent. It is made of epic fail.
While Kagan’s army is horseback riding towards Brimstone, Rayne and Katherine sword-fight. It’s…well, it’s kind of hot. And I’m going to go against the tide and say that Michelle Rodriguez was the bottom in this relationship.
And in a moment of pure self-awareness, Billy Zane, after having a head and parchment thrown at him, says in the feyest voice ever, “Please stop throwing things at me,” before turning back to his book. That, friends, is what we like to call, “tongue-in-cheek.” RHM asks where Brimstone is, but Billy Zane refuses to tell him because his he doesn’t want to betray the daughter that he apparently fathered when he was nine years old.
While Michael Madsen, hero-dude, and Rayne are getting supplies, including the fixed arm-machetes, the vampires show up at Brimstone. Some random dude manages to escape to Michael Madsen, hero-dude, and Rayne, whom he tells about Katherine’s betrayal (obvs) before hero-dude, just by staring at Rayne, pronounces him dead. I don’t know what the hell kind of vampire Rayne is supposed to be, but if she can do all that, I kind of want to be one.
Rayne then wanders off in the middle of the night, as she’s prone to do, because she has finally figured out that she’s the one who is causing everyone’s deaths because, oh, I don’t know, she’s a VAMPIRE? She resolves to find another talisman, the heart, and Rayne gets yet another necklace as a going-away present, this time from hero-dude. And let’s hope this one protects her more than the other one did, because she went back to Brimstone, where everyone is lying in a pool of fake blood and guts.
The voices Rayne claims to hear lead her to a pool where Katherine is already looking for the heart talisman because she wants to give it to her father and assist in some great vampiric coup d’etat. I’d be more impressed if I wasn’t sure Stalin had probably tried something similar to this in the early 1950s. Katherine dives into the water and is soon followed by Rayne-well, that eye talisman sure did come in handy, eh! They fight in the water, and Katherine stabs Rayne, who just keeps on truckin’. And bitin’. And that concludes Michelle Rodriguez’s contractual obligations to this movie. Now fire your agent, hun. Please.
Rayne takes the heart talisman to Kagan and is thrown in the brig-oops, this isn’t BSG. She’s thrown in a cell, and RHM takes the heart to Kagan, who is now wearing some sort of S&M black leather get-up.
When we cut back to the exterior of Kagan’s castle, I realize that it looks a lot like Hogwarts, if Hogwarts was inhabited exclusively by men who had a thing for sucking on necks (which I’m sure a lot of shippers out there wouldn’t be adverse to). Michael Madsen and hero-dude blow up the door to get inside but are captured anyway, which maybe was their plan all along. There’s talk of a ceremony, during which Rayne will have her soul ripped out (totes another Harry Potter rip-off), but in a swelling crescendo of music, she exclaims that she will continue to fight! She is not foolish! But she will continue to fight! Oh, youth.
Kagan’s own monks come to take Rayne away, and as she walks off, I see that she is wearing a scrunchie. A motherfucking scrunchie. In the medieval period. I give up.
And though the necklace trick didn’t work before, the “hide up top and then kick the guard after he comes into the cell” trick does for Michael Madsen and hero-dude. Vampires: they’re just like monks, except stupider and less deformed.
Michael Madsen and hero-dude jump down into the ceremony just as the vampire monk is ever-so-slowly getting closer to cutting Rayne’s eye out, and there’s even more fighting and fake blood and bowstaffs. Kagan finally opens the box to see that the heart is gone (PLOT TWIST!), and right after hero-dude lets Rayne go, they finally incorporate one of the video game’s coolest offensive moves: the double-decapitation.
Except it gets sad because two dudes grab onto Michael Madsen so Kagan can stab through his heart. Wow, what a pussy.
After hero-dude kills RHM, Rayne and Kagan start fighting, the greatest part of which is Ben Kingsley deadpanning, “Ungrateful bitch,” after his waist is sliced. But Ben! How else will you achieve that perfect figure? You were always so weak against those cream puffs! Kagan then almost has Rayne beat, but Rayne and hero-dude activate their Wonder Twin powers: he takes form of holy water! She takes form of Blood Rage! And Kagan gets a wooden arrow through the heart. Ding dong, the drag queen is dead.
Rayne tries to bite hero-dude to save him (apparently, she just couldn’t live without awkward and completely incomprehensible sex), but he refuses and dies. Again, there’s a huge massacre to consider. But who has time for that when there’s a throne to sit on? Oh, Rayne. Was that what you were after all along? And then there’s a flashback of all the fight scenes-in slow motion, no less, which only heightens the fakeness of pretty much the entire movie. And then there are scenes of Rayne drinking blood, with an adorable blood moustache in the one scene.
Rayne smirks at the memories, so in short: Rayne killed her father to grab power and be evil. The end.
Click to viewFirst off, I nearly fell out of my chair when the music started playing for the title menu. The typeface for the title is lovely-so sternly Gothic-but the faux frescos are just a bit really dumb. I mean, really: Kristanna Loken as part of a fresco? Really? I mean-
Wait. Holy shit. Did that just say…MEAT LOAF? Oh, God. This movie is going to be incredible. And also: Special Appearances by Billy Zane, Michelle Rodriguez, and Ben Kingsley, aka Kate Winslet, Kristanna Loken, and the Academy Award’s sloppy seconds, respectively.
Ooo, medieval! You know it’s medieval because it’s dark, dank, someone just cut a chicken’s head off, and Michael Madsen has ridiculously long hair. I thought boys cut their hair off when they were seven? Oh, wait, maybe that’s just a Polish medieval thing. And you know how I know this movie is going to be awful? The title card “Directed by Uwe Boll” is directly preceded by “Written by Guinevere Turner.” Sigh.
Everyone is drinking, and there’s some talk of carnival freaks, and then: absinthe! Except the dude who orders it is a vampire, and hero-dude kills him, and I’m sad because a vampire who drinks absinthe is definitely the type of guy I always wanted to get when I played Dream Date. But no. I always got the high school quarterback or the drama lead. As if I have any use for those. By the way, the vampire was killed with as much nonchalance as humanly imaginable, as if it's a daily occurrence. But what do I know? Maybe it used to be.
There’s some drunk telling of the “she-demon,” which is obvs going to be Kristanna Loken, because no normal woman can be that tall. It all takes place at a carnival, where we get the first glimpse of where the arm-machetes come from. And here comes Rayne, who is tied up (mmm) but is being abused by a bunch of men and then is forced to drink goat’s blood to heal. It’s macabre, sure, but even more macabre is the obvious lack of a costume budget; I’m pretty sure they got Rayne’s vest from the Medieval Times gift shop.
Michael Madsen wants to go see Rayne, who gets a nighttime visitor: Amanda, who totes has the hots for Rayne and wants to set her free. Rayne is so totally over it though and is playing hard to get, but she shows interest when Amanda gives her a cross. I guess Rayne is immune to crosses? And they turn her on? Sure. Why not.
In a CGI sequence that also has the same production values as the costumer budget, we find ourselves in a big dark castle, where Ben Kingsley, dressed like a neo-Gothic drag queen in a studded gold vest and baby blue overshirt with a ruffly purple undershirt, wants Rayne found.
His acting is so completely bad that it’s a wonder this is the same man who played Gandhi, for fuck’s sake.
Rayne stumbles through some grass, crying like a fat kid whose ice cream fell on the ground, and through flashbacks we see that while she was sleeping, her keeper tried to rape her. Um, really? Of all the women working a medieval carnival, you pick the one who might as well be called Rayne Bloodlust? Ok, whatever floats your boat. And of course Rayne smashes the guy’s alcohol bottle on his head, and his bleeding sends her into the aforementioned bloodlust, which showcases the incorporation of the video game’s Blood Rage mode that slowed everything down and sent Rayne into a feeding frenzy. You know something’s wrong with a movie when it has to take its special effects cue from a four-year-old (at the time) video game.
Continuing the flashback, Rayne keeps going after people, who JUST KEEP COMING AT HER. Just…never mind. The carnies obviously have no common sense whatsoever.
Michael Madsen & co. ride their horses towards the carnival, but his cohorts, one of whom is Michelle Rodriquez as the one person in this movie who doesn’t even remotely look like she could have come from a European country but nonetheless plays the role of “Katherine the Mexican,” are all, “Daaaaaad, we’re too ooooooold for the carnival! Stop embarrassing us! GOD!” And then they get there and almost everyone is dead. Fun time is no more. Happy now kids? In a great sequence of shots, we see a bearded lady, conjoined twins, some little boy dressed up as a prince, and a really tall guy in a weird costumer, but I can’t enjoy it too much because I honestly doubt that in medieval times these people would be in a carnival; most likely, they’d be the ones walking the streets. Just sayin’.
The dead people get beheaded and burned, but then they find Amanda, who was bitten but lives. Wow, talk about a dealbreaker, eh? Here I thought bad table manners were awful enough, but if someone bit me on the neck, stole my sword, then ran away to be all emo in a field, I’m pretty sure I’d call the relationship off. Well, unless the sex was good. Amanda stands up for Rayne, but then Katherine kills her because she’s all, “It’s slim pickins, bitch, and I ain’t gotten laid in a decade. I call, mine!”
Billy Zane in a wig descends a staircase, and I feel like he’s just reprising his Titanic role because he’s all suppressed anger and British uptightness. It turns out Katherine is his daughter, which makes no damn sense at all, but I don’t give a shit because I’m so blinded by Billy Zane’s luscious bangs and the ten-second close-up of his vampire bites.
That Uwe Boll: so subtle.
As some vampires attack a wagon, Rayne comes out of nowhere and attacks them, using the swords from Amanda-which turns out to be the arm-machetes-to kill them…well, the guy anyway. The woman she grabs, makes as if she’s about to kiss her, then bites her neck. Kristanna Loken, you tease! The people don’t trust her at first, but her heartfelt, “I will not harm you. I only wish to harm vampires,” wins them over, fake British accent and all. Oh, are we in Britain? I have no clue. It’s like an amalgamation of every medieval culture ever.
At whatever new town they are in, Rayne beckons seductively to a woman-ignoring the male vampire, btw--who she then AGAIN pretends to make out with before biting her neck. Christ! This movie is such a cocktease!
Some gypsy explains to Rayne that she is half-vampire, half-human-a Dhamfir, whatever-and the woman keeps explaining stuff about Kagan and how he raped and killed Rayne’s mother and so on and so forth until Rayne is pissed the fuck off. Then the gypsy backtracks and is all, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t go, you’ll die,” but Rayne wants to go anyway, so the gypsy tells her to get some talisman to get into Kagan’s castle. The best part of this scene is when Kristanna Loken tries to sit down and actually has to plop onto the stool because she’s coming from so high up.
Back at the castle, Drag Queen Kagan gets the news about Rayne and orders her death. Then the vampire army is riding across the countryside, and everyone joins in-Michael Madsen & co. ride their horses, and Rayne rides her stolen horse. And this is all done in daylight, because apparently Guinevere Turner has no regard for vampire lore. She and Stephenie Meyer should be best friends.
Rayne arrives at some big wooden door with a giant Roman Catholic-style cross on it (why, yes, I do like to qualify my crosses, thank you very much), and after the door is opened, she lies to the monks-irony!-and is taken inside. The monk seems to be like me, trying his hardest not to stare at Kristanna Loken’s boobs. The boobs-I mean, Rayne takes a midnight stroll to some underground lair where a deformed monk is sleeping. She tries the old “get the necklace off while he’s sleeping” trick, but the deformed monk wakes up and swings a sledgehammer at her. A sledgehammer. Because not only is this Medievaleverycountry, but it’s also apparently Stereotypicaljerseymafiacountry. The fight sequence involves a lot of swinging and acrobatics, and Rayne uses a conveniently-left-behind spiked mallet to kill the deformed monk. Solving yet another easy puzzle, she uses the deformed monk’s cross in the huge cross-shaped hole to open the door. And yes, the game WAS this easy.
In the next room, however, there are huge blades rolling about, using a technology that I seriously doubt was available back in those times. And by “those” I mean “medieval,” just in case you didn’t get by now that these are Medieval Times. Rayne is understandably freaked out, but she somehow manages to somersault through the entire room and grabs the talisman. Unfortunately, the room starts flooding, and I think she might have finally found her match. Oh, but wait! The arm-machetes that she threw into the walls and ceiling earlier just happen to be in the right spots for her to climb up! Apparently, not only is Rayne immune to crosses and sunlight, but she can predict the future. Imagine that! And imagine the talisman burrowing into Rayne’s eye, ridding her of her pesky allergy to water. Spiffy things, talismans.
The monk who followed her before takes her to another room, where he asks if she is “one of Kagan’s.” I think what he should have said was, “three of Kagan’s,” because holy shit are Kristanna Loken’s boobs ginormous in this shot. I’m sorry, I can’t help it if they’re just heaving all over the damn place. And it’s not like the Medieval Times gift shop vest is doing much to cover them up either.
By the way, the monk has an Italian accent; this is seriously the most multicultural movie I’ve ever seen.
The monk talks about the eye and how it goes with two other parts that, when united, could create a super powerful vampire, then he admits to knowing that Rayne is Kagan’s daughter. Shit, dude likes to brag about his conquests, doesn’t he? What a man. Meanwhile, the monastery is attacked by the vampires, which was exactly what the monk was worried about, and I worry but then the monks pulls out some mad bow-and-arrow and bowstaff skillz. There’s some stabbing through foreheads and lots of fake blood, but Rayne doesn’t go into her Blood Rage because…I don’t even know. I’ve stopped trying to understand this movie. Michael Madsen & co. are also there killing people, but I have to stop right now to just highlight how ridiculous this entire scene is:
People, they show decapitations, swords through eyes, swords through mouths, stomachs ripped off, bodies cut in two, backs sliced open, etc. And it is so incredibly fake that I can’t even fathom how this movie could have been considered a box office bomb since anything it made over $100 must have turned a profit. Like, come on. You can be a bad movie, but at least have some dignity and spring for the slightly pricier stuff. Especially if you have motherfuckin’ Ben Kingsley in your movie.
Kagan’s right hand man punches out Rayne and kidnaps her, and Michael Madsen states the obvious: hey! He’s taking her to Kagan! Who, right now, is wearing lipstick and munching on a nubile young thing. He totes would have fit in at Limelight. RHM takes Rayne to a church, thereby throwing out every last vampire convention ever.
And-OH MY GOD IT IS MEATLOAF AND HE IS LOUNGING ON A BED FILLED WITH NAKED WOMEN OMG YAY
It’s all going to be downhill from here, because nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can top Meatloaf hanging out with naked chicks in a church. Except then Meatloaf makes it even better by making fun of Kagan and keeping Rayne. What follows is an orgy of sex and blood-sucking that Michael Madsen and his dude walk through undettered because, unbeknownst to even themselves, they are eunuchs. Right before they barge in and kill a bunch of vampires, Rayne bites off a part of Meat Loaf’s head, and the great part is over. It was good while it lasted, though. RHM runs away, and Michael Madsen fights Meat Loaf and kills him with sunlight, which apparently the vampires ARE weak against? Like I said, I don’t know.
Michael Madsen and hero-dude take Rayne away on horseback-yes, again-and then, in a new twist, travel by boat. RHM tells Kagan that the eye is now part of Rayne, and Kagan gets all misty-eyed after hearing that his bastard daughter is named Rayne. I bet his son would have been called Flud.
They take Rayne to Brimstone, where Katherine finally gets to check out Rayne, all while Kagan gets one of the talismans. Rayne tells her life story to Michael Madsen & co., as if they really care, but there’s a prolonged flashback to when Kagan killed Rayne’s mother. So, Rayne saw it happen, but didn’t remember it? Oh, ok. It works on Michael Madsen, who lets Rayne out of the cell she had been sitting in and offers to let her work with them. I’m assuming there’s going to be some team bonding work coming up: maybe an obstacle course, some “fall back into my arms” trust development? Now that there are four of them, they can totes pair up.
And, right on cue, a training montage! Katherine watches from afar, transfixed by the fact that Kristanna Loken is taller than all the men. At some point, one of the arm-machetes breaks, and Rayne gets all depressed, which gets the hero-dude to open up about his parents being killed by vampires. Oh, so that’s why he joined Brimstone? And here I thought it was for the punch and pie.
Suddenly, and I seriously mean suddenly, Rayne is having sex with the hero-dude. It might have been hot, since Kristanna Loken’s boobs are all everywhere (then again, she showed them a lot more on the L Word, so, you know), but it quite literally came out of nowhere. Then again, she was dreaming of Amanda, so maybe that was why she was horny? There’s enough subtext in this movie to make my head explode. Also making my head explode is Michelle Rodriguez’s attempt at a British accent. It is made of epic fail.
While Kagan’s army is horseback riding towards Brimstone, Rayne and Katherine sword-fight. It’s…well, it’s kind of hot. And I’m going to go against the tide and say that Michelle Rodriguez was the bottom in this relationship.
And in a moment of pure self-awareness, Billy Zane, after having a head and parchment thrown at him, says in the feyest voice ever, “Please stop throwing things at me,” before turning back to his book. That, friends, is what we like to call, “tongue-in-cheek.” RHM asks where Brimstone is, but Billy Zane refuses to tell him because his he doesn’t want to betray the daughter that he apparently fathered when he was nine years old.
While Michael Madsen, hero-dude, and Rayne are getting supplies, including the fixed arm-machetes, the vampires show up at Brimstone. Some random dude manages to escape to Michael Madsen, hero-dude, and Rayne, whom he tells about Katherine’s betrayal (obvs) before hero-dude, just by staring at Rayne, pronounces him dead. I don’t know what the hell kind of vampire Rayne is supposed to be, but if she can do all that, I kind of want to be one.
Rayne then wanders off in the middle of the night, as she’s prone to do, because she has finally figured out that she’s the one who is causing everyone’s deaths because, oh, I don’t know, she’s a VAMPIRE? She resolves to find another talisman, the heart, and Rayne gets yet another necklace as a going-away present, this time from hero-dude. And let’s hope this one protects her more than the other one did, because she went back to Brimstone, where everyone is lying in a pool of fake blood and guts.
The voices Rayne claims to hear lead her to a pool where Katherine is already looking for the heart talisman because she wants to give it to her father and assist in some great vampiric coup d’etat. I’d be more impressed if I wasn’t sure Stalin had probably tried something similar to this in the early 1950s. Katherine dives into the water and is soon followed by Rayne-well, that eye talisman sure did come in handy, eh! They fight in the water, and Katherine stabs Rayne, who just keeps on truckin’. And bitin’. And that concludes Michelle Rodriguez’s contractual obligations to this movie. Now fire your agent, hun. Please.
Rayne takes the heart talisman to Kagan and is thrown in the brig-oops, this isn’t BSG. She’s thrown in a cell, and RHM takes the heart to Kagan, who is now wearing some sort of S&M black leather get-up.
When we cut back to the exterior of Kagan’s castle, I realize that it looks a lot like Hogwarts, if Hogwarts was inhabited exclusively by men who had a thing for sucking on necks (which I’m sure a lot of shippers out there wouldn’t be adverse to). Michael Madsen and hero-dude blow up the door to get inside but are captured anyway, which maybe was their plan all along. There’s talk of a ceremony, during which Rayne will have her soul ripped out (totes another Harry Potter rip-off), but in a swelling crescendo of music, she exclaims that she will continue to fight! She is not foolish! But she will continue to fight! Oh, youth.
Kagan’s own monks come to take Rayne away, and as she walks off, I see that she is wearing a scrunchie. A motherfucking scrunchie. In the medieval period. I give up.
And though the necklace trick didn’t work before, the “hide up top and then kick the guard after he comes into the cell” trick does for Michael Madsen and hero-dude. Vampires: they’re just like monks, except stupider and less deformed.
Michael Madsen and hero-dude jump down into the ceremony just as the vampire monk is ever-so-slowly getting closer to cutting Rayne’s eye out, and there’s even more fighting and fake blood and bowstaffs. Kagan finally opens the box to see that the heart is gone (PLOT TWIST!), and right after hero-dude lets Rayne go, they finally incorporate one of the video game’s coolest offensive moves: the double-decapitation.
Except it gets sad because two dudes grab onto Michael Madsen so Kagan can stab through his heart. Wow, what a pussy.
After hero-dude kills RHM, Rayne and Kagan start fighting, the greatest part of which is Ben Kingsley deadpanning, “Ungrateful bitch,” after his waist is sliced. But Ben! How else will you achieve that perfect figure? You were always so weak against those cream puffs! Kagan then almost has Rayne beat, but Rayne and hero-dude activate their Wonder Twin powers: he takes form of holy water! She takes form of Blood Rage! And Kagan gets a wooden arrow through the heart. Ding dong, the drag queen is dead.
Rayne tries to bite hero-dude to save him (apparently, she just couldn’t live without awkward and completely incomprehensible sex), but he refuses and dies. Again, there’s a huge massacre to consider. But who has time for that when there’s a throne to sit on? Oh, Rayne. Was that what you were after all along? And then there’s a flashback of all the fight scenes-in slow motion, no less, which only heightens the fakeness of pretty much the entire movie. And then there are scenes of Rayne drinking blood, with an adorable blood moustache in the one scene.
Rayne smirks at the memories, so in short: Rayne killed her father to grab power and be evil. The end.