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STUDIO: Phase 4 Films
MSRP: $18.90
RATED: Unrated
RUNNING TIME: 79 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:

  • Digital Version
  • The Making of Bloodrayne: The Third Reich
  • Uwe Boll Commentary
  • Trailers
  • Interview with the Writer

The Pitch

I’m pretty sure no pitch went down for this, but if it did it would be something like “Mmmmmm, do you like that? Yeah, I bet you do. I can keep this up all night for the low, low price of $10,000,000. Finance my next movie and I will finance the cleansing of your nutsack with my aggressive German mouth.” Something like that.

The Humans

I’m not sure they want this out there but: Written by Michael Nachoff. Directed by Dr. Uwe Boll. Acted by Natassia Malthe, Michael Paré, Clint Howard, Brendan Fletcher, Steffen Mennekes, William Belli and Annett Culp.

The Nutshell

I feel like this is a trick question but I’ll play along. Natassia Malthe plays Rayne, a half human half vampire dhampir (also known as a Daywalker in other, better vampire stories) who has dedicated not only her life but the last two movies in this franchise to the fight against vampires. This installment of the Bloodrayne series has Rayne fighting Nazi’s in WWII with the help of some randomly motivated freedom fighters. Michael Paré plays a Nazi General who becomes infected with Rayne’s blood and becomes a dhampir his own damn self and wants to capture Rayne to use her to win the war. I’m not sure how. Naturally, Clint Howard plays the Nazi scientist Dr. Mangler, who runs horrible and poorly shot experiments on whomever he can get his tiny, Howardy paws onto. The good guys and the bad guys have a few battles and then there’s some credits.

Does anyone else wish he'd call his movies "joints" or "movements" instead of films? I think "A Uwe Boll Movement" would really get at the heart of it.

The Lowdown

“How many have I cut down? How many of the unholy have I slaughtered? I’ve stained centuries with their blood, now the creatures of the dark have emerged from the shadows. Now they walk among us and take their victims on a whim. My God, the innocent are pulled into the abyss by the wretched and the cycle of bloodshed continues through the ages. When will we finally comprehend our inhumanity? As we gaze across our battlefields flush with corpses and heady with the spoils of war, can we ever hope to realize that which we have lost? The unholy lurch through the countryside in search of their prey. Perhaps our salvation, our peace, lies only in bloodshed, for it is all they have ever known. It is all I have ever known. I am the hunter.”

Voiceover from Bloodrayne: The Third Reich.

I’m not trying to be painfully obvious here, but this one is no good. The problem is that I don’t think anyone expects it to be or rents it hoping that they’re getting another Blade quality vampire actioner. It’s a Uwe Boll film and picking on his movies is like shoving a kid in a wheelchair in front of a bus filled with elderly retarded people: you might feel like a big man for a minute but all you really did was make God cry. It’s not even that the movie is so bad that you can sit there with your friends and laugh at it for awhile. I take that back, it is so bad that you should be able to sit there and MST3K it, but it’s also just self aware enough to ruin all of your good times. It knows the joke you’re about to make and sits there, winking, ready to give you an elbow to the ribs after you make it.

I am tempted to say something like “this movie should have worked,” but that would be disingenuous. Natassia Malthe is easy on the eyes and Rayne isn’t too choosy when it comes to picking the p or the v, so you’ve got two simulated sex scenes with an emphasis on the late. As in late night Showtime, at best. I was unaware that someone that looked like Malthe could take her clothes off and grind on people and I would be tempted to fast forward to the action scenes, which are somehow even worse. It’s like getting Chlamydia and trading it in for Parkinson’s.

To be fair, the actions scenes do one thing right and that’s sticking to squibs and blood launchers and avoiding CG blood altogether. The flip side is that the actors getting shot barely react to the explosion of the squib, so they just sort of look surprised and fall over like Grandma at a Dwarves concert. On top of all that, Boll’s directing and editing rhythms are so off that most of it is incomprehensible anyway. You see Rayne come at someone with a blade and then there’s a quick cut to them landing on their back without much in the way of connective tissue. But, like I said, all of these points are obvious and focusing on them is just forest for the trees bullshit.

"When we were kids, Ronnie used to tell me I was the pretty one. Then he would hurt me. Now you'll hurt like I did"

Thousands of words have been written about Dr. Boll and his lack of skills in his chosen profession and I don’t think we’d have it any other way, no matter what we tell ourselves. He’s our Ed Wood, except he’s more of a showman than Wood ever was. Boll fights film critics and refuses to believe any negative publicity bandied his way. He makes three films at a time and ships them under budget and on time and, most of the time, his films are good for a laugh. At his expense. Except this one somehow tries even less than Far Cry or Alone in the Dark did. It feels like he’s on whatever passes for Uwe Boll’s auto-pilot. He just needs to tap back in to that gleeful insanity that made his earlier attempts at filmmaking something to marvel at and enjoy with your friends, instead of just having on in the background while you search for goat porn.

Bloodrayne: The Third Reich is only 79 minutes long and a full 7 minutes of that are the closing credits, yet it still feels plodding and endless. I miss the Boll that had the Bolls to cast Tara Reid as an archaeologist and museum curator, or the Boll that managed to show Dave Foley’s dick 5 times in Postal.  I checked out Boll’s filmography on IMDB and it looks like he’s got a holocaust drama called Auschwitz coming out this year, which either means that these are the end times or Dr. Boll has a few more cheaply shot and produced tricks up his sleeve. Either way, you’ll find me in a lounge chair, awaiting some kind of bomb.

"I'm not turning back around until you take back what you said about me looking like one of Jackie Earle Haley's balls."

The Package

The “Making Of” Featurette is incredible and was worth watching the movie just to get to. I had always wondered why A and B and C-list actors continued making Uwe Boll movies when they were always universally panned while simultaneously flopping at the box office. The answer appears to be that Uwe (pronounced OOOOOO-Vey, BTW) commands such a relaxed set filled with hot Eastern European women and tiny dogs, that people just enjoy being around the crazy fuck and he talks them into making a movie. Honestly, this featurette (which is almost half the length of the feature) almost made me retroactively give the film a higher rating due to the sheer amount of fun these people are having. But, alas, I do not yield.

Rating:
★☆☆☆☆

Out of a Possible 5 Stars