After watching this awe inspiringly wretched thing, I am convinced that if I asked filmmaker Ron Carlson to write "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", what he'd produce would be "The quick brown fox, the quick brown fox, the quick brown fox, apple 37 Zanzibar". That's how poorly written Life Blood is, it makes me suspect Carlson either has some sort of learning disability or suffered a kind of brain damage, either through an industrial accident or spending a little too much time in auto-erotic asphyxiation. From concept to plot to dialog, your average six year old could come up with a more logical and entertaining story that this. It's so bad that it's one of those films where you literally don't understand how anyone read the script and then agreed to be in it. I mean, how to you get past the part about lesbian vampires gestating for 40 years under the desert, only to emerge in their underwear and start walking down the highway without going "Wait
what?"
Brooke and Rhea (Sophie Monk and Anya Lahiri) are two lovers fleeing a party where Brooke killed a guy, only for God (Angela Lindvall) to strike down Brooke and offer to turn Rhea into a vampire. Brooke agrees, but only if God also turns Brooke into a bloodsucker. 4 decades later, they emerge from their cocoons and while Rhea thinks of themselves as avenging angels who are only supposed to go after evil people, Brooke just wants to take a bite out of anyone who gets in her way. After Brooke chomps a good samaritan and a hitchhiker, the pair flee the rising sun and take refuge in a roadside convenience store. Brooke hassles the hapless clerk until she and Rhea get into a fight and Brooke kills her. Brooke then goes on a killing spree that involves a vacationing family and the local sheriff's office before God in a see-thru top returns and brings Rhea back to life for a final showdown.
Let me get the one good thing about Life Blood out of the way. Patrick Renna as the hapless convenience store clerk is friggin' amazing. His character is smarter and more believable, his dialog is genuinely funny and everything about his performance is 100 times better than anything else in the film. Renna has got to be ad libbing at least 98% of his role and doing a great job of it. Compared to the rest of the cast, it's like Renna's doing Hamlet to put Laurence Olivier to shame. If the other actors were given the same freedom as Renna, their work here means they should never, ever be allowed to ad lib again. There's no other explanation for how this one actor and one supporting character could be light years beyond everything else in the production.
This is a very low budget flick, the kind when there's a scene on a supposedly deserted stretch of highway, you can clearly see traffic moving through the background of the shot. For cheap cinema, however, this looks perfectly fine. The problem here isn't a lack of money. It's a total lack of intelligence and aptitude.
I could criticize practically every single second of Life Blood that doesn't involve Patrick Renna, but I'll limit myself to two examples in the interest of brevity. After Sophie's first two kills, the girls drive off in the pickup truck of one of her victims. The truck is hauling one of those rounded silver campers, the kind that used to be popular before RVs became more common. When dawn comes, the vampires fear the sun and stop at the convenience store, run in and try and block out the light. Why didn't they just go in the camper? It has smaller, easier to cover windows. It's right there behind the truck. If the camper is not there for them to hide in what is it there for?!?! It doesn't serve any other purpose and isn't even mentioned by any of the characters. It may seem like a niggling little detail, but any viewer with an IQ above 50 is going to get to this section of the film and ask "Why aren't they going in the camper?"
The other example is that a sheriff's deputy is played by Danny Woodburn. You may not recognize the name, but he's the little person who played Mickey on Seinfeld. Now, even though we live in a politically correct world, little people do not get to be sheriff's deputies just like 7 foot tall guys do no get to serve on submarines. There are physical limitations that prevent it. If you're going to cast a little person as a member of law enforcement, there needs to be a reason for it, even if it's just as a joke, and there is no joke or any other reason for it here. Woodburn could have switched roles with any other member of the cast, male or female, and it would have made more sense.
Life Blood is horrendous storytelling. The fact that neither Sophie Monk nor Anya Lahiri get naked, even though they're playing lesbian vampires in an R rated horror movie, defies rationalization. Anyone who watches this and claims to enjoy it should be held 24 hours for psychiatric evaluation.
Brooke and Rhea (Sophie Monk and Anya Lahiri) are two lovers fleeing a party where Brooke killed a guy, only for God (Angela Lindvall) to strike down Brooke and offer to turn Rhea into a vampire. Brooke agrees, but only if God also turns Brooke into a bloodsucker. 4 decades later, they emerge from their cocoons and while Rhea thinks of themselves as avenging angels who are only supposed to go after evil people, Brooke just wants to take a bite out of anyone who gets in her way. After Brooke chomps a good samaritan and a hitchhiker, the pair flee the rising sun and take refuge in a roadside convenience store. Brooke hassles the hapless clerk until she and Rhea get into a fight and Brooke kills her. Brooke then goes on a killing spree that involves a vacationing family and the local sheriff's office before God in a see-thru top returns and brings Rhea back to life for a final showdown.
Let me get the one good thing about Life Blood out of the way. Patrick Renna as the hapless convenience store clerk is friggin' amazing. His character is smarter and more believable, his dialog is genuinely funny and everything about his performance is 100 times better than anything else in the film. Renna has got to be ad libbing at least 98% of his role and doing a great job of it. Compared to the rest of the cast, it's like Renna's doing Hamlet to put Laurence Olivier to shame. If the other actors were given the same freedom as Renna, their work here means they should never, ever be allowed to ad lib again. There's no other explanation for how this one actor and one supporting character could be light years beyond everything else in the production.
This is a very low budget flick, the kind when there's a scene on a supposedly deserted stretch of highway, you can clearly see traffic moving through the background of the shot. For cheap cinema, however, this looks perfectly fine. The problem here isn't a lack of money. It's a total lack of intelligence and aptitude.
I could criticize practically every single second of Life Blood that doesn't involve Patrick Renna, but I'll limit myself to two examples in the interest of brevity. After Sophie's first two kills, the girls drive off in the pickup truck of one of her victims. The truck is hauling one of those rounded silver campers, the kind that used to be popular before RVs became more common. When dawn comes, the vampires fear the sun and stop at the convenience store, run in and try and block out the light. Why didn't they just go in the camper? It has smaller, easier to cover windows. It's right there behind the truck. If the camper is not there for them to hide in what is it there for?!?! It doesn't serve any other purpose and isn't even mentioned by any of the characters. It may seem like a niggling little detail, but any viewer with an IQ above 50 is going to get to this section of the film and ask "Why aren't they going in the camper?"
The other example is that a sheriff's deputy is played by Danny Woodburn. You may not recognize the name, but he's the little person who played Mickey on Seinfeld. Now, even though we live in a politically correct world, little people do not get to be sheriff's deputies just like 7 foot tall guys do no get to serve on submarines. There are physical limitations that prevent it. If you're going to cast a little person as a member of law enforcement, there needs to be a reason for it, even if it's just as a joke, and there is no joke or any other reason for it here. Woodburn could have switched roles with any other member of the cast, male or female, and it would have made more sense.
Life Blood is horrendous storytelling. The fact that neither Sophie Monk nor Anya Lahiri get naked, even though they're playing lesbian vampires in an R rated horror movie, defies rationalization. Anyone who watches this and claims to enjoy it should be held 24 hours for psychiatric evaluation.