This evening's terrible Amazon Prime movie is dedicated to the Twitter person who yelled at me for doing these. Last night's BLOODRAYNE was pretty bad, but there's a 2 and a 3 and I'm a completionist PLUS sometimes sequels are better than the first shitty movie. We call this "Dungeons&Dragons sequel syndrome". The entire description is...the shortest description we've done so far. "Blood Rayne is back! This time, the sexy heroine battles a gang of merciless vampire cowboys led by Billy the Kid."
That sounds kinda awful, but on the other hand I liked PRIEST (2011) and that was basically the same thing but with Paul Bettany. Paul is doing god's work by keeping me bi, though, so he can carry a pretty weak premise. We're opening with theme music that makes me want to bust out HE RODE A BLAZING SADDLE!!!! I never played these games; are the movies anything like the game plot?
We open in a Little House cabin and two children asking Da to read them a story. Da cannot, as he is too worried by the unseasonable snow. Little does he suspect they'll all be vampired tonight, probably. You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a SMOOTH VAMPIRE. [Editor's note: This next part is factually wrong.] I'm kinda laughing at the realization that the previous movie, set in Ye Olden Times, was marked by a guy ordering absinthe, which set the time in the 1900s at the EARLIEST, but the Americana cowboy era is usually defined as 1865 to 1895, with maaaaybe some early 190X years included.
Probably the last movie was supposed to be the 1600s, but they didn't bother to Google whether absinthe was an option then. Or they didn't care. This is why it takes me five hours to watch a movie, because I'm over here googling absinthe. But my doctor "doesn't believe in" adult ADHD lol.
It seems really unfair that they can enter homes uninvited . Like, I don't even know how vampires can work in this setting per the rules precisely established?? Because FOR ONE THING, simply crossing water on a boat instantly killed them. No takebacks. But ok, pretend they came over on a land bridge. Then what? How do you survive in the America West when rain dissolves you, you can't cross rivers or water at all, and sunlight is lethal?? But I'm sure Uwe Boll has given us answers and I just need to be patient.
We get not one, but TWO scenes of vampires kidnapping children, which makes one think that perhaps one of these scenes might be superfluous and could've been cut for a tighter narrative. The vampires kill a sheriff and take over the mayor's house. Not really sure what's going on there yet. SMASH CUT to heroic music and Rayne on a horse. I love this concept where she's wearing leather all over but has a bare stomach. In the wild west. My god, the chafing.
I guess she knew the Little House family because she's in their house calling for them. Fun with continuity: here's Rayne riding through generic summer plains, now here she is thirty seconds later in a snowy tundra where Pa had previously been worried about the cold weather delaying planting. Her swords have somehow become LESS practical than the previous movie. Anyway, she finds Ma and Da slain and bled out in the snow.
Oh my god, Billy the Kid is taking kids. Why. Why. Why this pun. *holds head between my knees* An NPC shows up to inform Rayne that the boys are gone, Billy has them, and Billy is a vampire. The NPC wants to help Rayne and casts doubt that a woman alone could take on an entire vampire gang. She tells him his "fly is open" and he looks down at his crotch. The modern zipper wasn't invented until 1913 and patented in 1917. Rayne rides to town, somehow being able to find it despite not knowing where it is.
Three men urge her to take up sex work. The only interesting thing about this scene is that one of them seems to be the sheriff, who was previously killed by Billy. Did he resurrect as a vampire and lose all his morals? It's disorienting how different this is from the first movie, despite having the same director. In the first movie, Rayne saw vampire's real faces (they looked like demons from the BUFFY/ANGEL tv shows) and we saw them with her. Here, instead of getting that, we're getting Rayne looking in mirrors and seeing no reflection where the dude is. It's a jarring shift in presentation.
Rayne knows this guy because she's.... I don't know?? A bounty hunter? Maybe? We still have no idea what she does, why she's in America, or how she knows the family she's determined to avenge. I guess it's more dramatic if the viewer makes up their own backstory and motivation. INTERACTIVE!! They have a poker game, apparently because it's a western, and now they're having a street duel, apparently for the same reason.
Rayne kills a trio of dudes, and then the sheriff harmlessly shoots the gun from her hand with what appears to be a shotgun. Sure ok. I think her gun AND her hand are both fine, I'm not sure how that works. Ok, I guess the sheriff was turned and works for Billy now. It's so weird that this is never explained; it's not MANDATORY that baby vampires suddenly lose all their morals and work for their sire. That's a choice that the author makes or doesn't, but it needs to be established.
They're going to hang Rayne which, again, doesn't make sense except as a checkmark on the Western Movie Tropes checklist. They're a town of lawless bandits, why have any kind of court--kangaroo, or otherwise? Just shoot her. I think you could make this work--spin it as entertainment for a restless banditry force that Billy feels the need to distract with bread and circuses--but here it's like "we now move on from the Street Duel to the Hanging, come on everyone, stay with the tour guide."
Rayne, who previously fought off a room full of vampires in the last film, is instantly knocked cold by a single blow to the head. Guess she's lost some conditioning in the off-season. Rayne meets another Brimstone (the hunter group) in the jail. If this goes like the last one she met, they'll have sex and he'll die. *holds hat to chest, respectful-like* Hunter Boy picks the lock on her cuffs, continuing the theme of Rayne being dead meat were it not for boys unleashing her.
"I don't know how they knew I was a hunter," says the guy who openly wears a hunter symbol around his neck that only hunters wear. I just. I JUST. THEY MUST BE TELEPATHIC OR SOMETHING.
Hunter has a strong Christian Slater vibe. The bartender has brought Rayne her swords on account of she's their last hope. She apparently made an impression by.....playing a single poker game that escalated into a duel. ANYWAY, WHAT ABOUT THE PLOT, ANA? Billy the Kid is waiting for the railroad to come through, at which point he's going to turn incoming people into vampires and seed the nation with them. That almost makes a kind of sense (remember: they can't travel during the day) so he'll be disappointed when most of what comes through is goods rather than millions of passengers.
Oh my god, in the worst possible interpretation of the mirror thing, you can see a vampire's clothes in the mirror, just not his body. It's so incredibly AWKWARD. [TW] A child is killed for shock value, so that's a thing I gotta warn you about. Rayne does fuck all in her jail cell while her new boyfriend gets hanged. Wow, what a compelling protagonist. The turned sheriff seems to have an entirely new personality after being turned. Did they think BUFFY rules were standard and that "vampires" is really a demon possession? That would explain the demon faces. I wonder if the fact that they've stopped doing the demon faces suggests some kind of legal action from the BUFFY/ANGEL people.
"Your Fly Is Open" NPC showed up to save Rayne from hanging but she managed to get out of the noose herself. Don't tell me HE'S going to be our love interest instead of Dollar Tree Christian Slater. Rayne then bravely runs away instead of saving the boy she came to save. The bartender who risked everything to help her, dies. WHAT A GREAT PROTAGONIST.
Randomly, two Indigenous people paddle by in a boat. I...I guess for scene flavor? I don't know. I have NO sense of scene or setting in this movie. The real Billy the Kid died in 1881, but this vampire clearly isn't him; he's an "old" vampire. The transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869. Assuming that's the railroad they mean coming through, which might not be right. WHO KNOWS.
[TW] ANYWAY, Rayne explains to her new boyfriend that she's a half vampire and she needs blood to heal. He immediately starts sawing into his wrists. Jesus. In the previous movie even a drop of blood was enough to send her into a feeding frenzy, but now he effortlessly swats her away like she's a horny bride and he needs a breather and a cigarette. Oh no.
LOL, it's gone from spring rain to winter snow again FUCK YOU FOR WANTING ANY KIND OF CONSISTENCY. Boyfriend wants to get some more guns and I was DEEPLY afraid we were going to get some white actors pretending to be Indigenous, but instead we're at a church and we have a wanted poster of a pretty white boy, so that's.......good?
This white boy is much less pretty than the poster advertised. This sermon was written by someone who has never heard a sermon. Amazing. We're just...we're just going to sit here for five minutes of this, then, are we? He joins them, which doesn't really make sense, but honestly what does? Life is meaningless. Having visited the Wild West Church, we're now visiting the Wild West Brothel. Please stay with the tour guide.
Honestly, I wouldn't recruit a man by Basic Instincting him to the bed and putting a gun in his mouth, but who am I to judge how Rayne builds team morale. I'm sure these two men who have every legitimate reason to fear and resent her will do an amazing job watching her back?? The only other interesting thing about the brothel is that the Fake Grifter Preacher asked a girl to exorcise his demons and the closed captions spelt it "exercise" which is both wrong and right.
It's been pointed out that I did the century backwards on absinthe and that late 18th century is late 1700s, not late 1900s, thank you. I always do century math backwards. So it's juuuuust possible that the first movie could've been in the late 1700s or early 1800s, and Rayne emigrated to America shortly afterwards. I FEEL RELIEF. I know you're all as relieved as I am about the timeline.
You know what would be cool? If we got Fly Open's backstory at some point. He seems to know a lot about vampires, and to sorta-maybe care about the family that Rayne "loved like family" (citation needed) but we still don't know who he is. Or why he's doing this OR why he was willing to give his blood to this random chick he doesn't know even a little-- My god, he's a Female Love Interest.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a male specimen of the Female Love Interest before, but that's what he is. Motivated to help and trust the protagonist entirely, despite having no reason to do so and being far more competent and effective. I'm agog, I have to actually take a moment to absorb this concept. Ok.
The snow is gone again. It just comes and goes.
Ok, now he's wearing a Brimstone necklace. He's a hunter and this is the first time it's come up, I guess. Jesus. Why did we have Dollar Tree Christian Slater. Why does this feel like a writer quit halfway through filming. Now she's just handing out Brimstone necklaces to the other guys and they have a moral mission and I feel like we just shifted tone without a clutch. What's really WEIRD is that Dollar Tree Christian Slater had a missing partner and this guy could easily BE that missing partner, but Christian insisted his partner's head came back in a bag. But if you made this guy the partner who rode off to find help, then it makes all the sense in the world why he's so invested in this mission.
Instead, we have this situation where... A team of two Brimstones were scouting the area... And a third, unrelated and unpartnered Brimstone was also scouting the area... Because WHY?
Why is the town dead quiet at night, that's high noon for vampires. The saloon should be hopping!! They don't sleep! They don't rest! Rayne and her team are walking in slow motion because fuck tactics. This is a WESTERN. So what if they have 40 guys and hostages? Just stand in the center of the street and wait for the honorable duels to begin. "Billy the Kid! The brimstone is calling you out!" Well I'm sure he got to be an old vampire by answering every childish taunt yelled in his direction.
Wow, in a shocking turn of events that nobody could've predicted the bad guys are shooting at the protagonists from behind safe cover. Rayne briefly ignores the gun fight outside to look at some papers on a desk, which is the most player-character thing I've ever seen someone do in a movie. Sure there's bandits outside but I'm looking to complete my collection of journal entries!!!!
[TW] More gratuitous child-killing happens to be shocking. It's shitty.
Billy, who previously had no interest in Rayne and didn't even know who she was, now wants her to Rule By My Side for.....reasons? That must've made sense to someone? He's keeping her alive to make this pitch to her; he could kill her right now. I know when a stranger has failed to kill me three times, I'm like baby you and I are destined for great things together. The good guys die but should've died a LOT faster. The vampires tried to give them a chance to surrender. As ...evil vampire bandits are wont to do.
It's....It's raining. IT'S RAINING ARE VAMPIRES NOT BURNED BY WATER ANYMORE? THAT WAS A BIG FUCKING PLOT POINT IN THE LAST MOVIE!!!!!!
This is one of the worst caption jobs I've ever seen, they didn't even run it through a spell checker. GREAT GODDESS HECATE, THE MALE HUNTER STEAL-KILLED THE BAD GUY FROM THE FEMALE PROTAGONIST. She had ONE JOB as protagonist: kill the bad guy! And the male NPC who I do not think even has a NAME took it from her. My god, she says she's going to Tombstone to get the Clan Gang and he says "Wyatt Earp's after them" and the captions say "White Herb's after them" this should be criminal.
The entire scene was so badly filmed that it looked like a deleted scene from a DVD extras.
I do not know how that managed to be so much worse than the first one.
WHITE HERB.
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BLOOD RAYNE 3
Ok, someone either said BLOOD RAYNE 3 was the good one of the trilogy, or I profoundly misunderstood. Let's find out. The plot is....well, let's just drape a big trigger warning for Nazis all over this live tweet, ok? Some asshole is trying to get Rayne's blood into Hitler, and Rayne is going to solve this by killing all the Nazis, which is right and good.
Two things stand out at me. One: the previous movies were about vampire antagonists, but this one seems to be human. Two: dhampir is not...actually...a good thing to be in this universe? It makes sunlight AND water kill you. The only reason RAYNE is different is because she absorbed some mystical trinkets. But the movie description seems to think that dhampir = daywalker (*Blade voice* "All of their strengths; none of their weaknesses.") and that's...not...true!
Does Uwe Boll even pay attention to his own lore??????????? He's the director for all of these!!
...oof, I'm not going to be able to watch this one, I'm sorry. Like, I do appreciate unambiguous clarity that Nazis were evil and deserved to die, and Rayne as a resistance fighter is a good protagonist angle, but I didn't expect the movie to open in a concentration camp and... yeah, not today. Especially since I fear the movie may not be good (because look at the first two) and I don't want to mock any of this. Sorry. We'll watch something else.
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