Audience Member
I've certainly seen worse entries in the genre.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/17/23
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Audience Member
The low-budget vampire film Out for Blood is fairly generic and doesn't have much ambition. While investigating a missing persons case Det. Hank Holten ends up discovering a coven of vampires, and seeks the help of his estranged wife after he gets bitten. Kevin Dillon, Vanessa Angel, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, and Lance Henriksen lead the cast and give typical B-grade performances. And, the sets and makeup effects are rather cheesy. However, there are a few interesting plot twists that add a bit of intrigue and suspense to the film. Yet overall, Out for Blood is a stereotypical horror film that sticks to the usual tropes.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
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Audience Member
One sentence summary: Which is worse, fighting vampires or the ex?
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Hank is an LA detective, and his wife Susan has left him. He follows her. A fool tries to rob him at gun point; Hank disarms him, then proceeds to beat the crap out of him. His captain reads him the riot act, then gives him a new assignment: find out about young women who go into raves, then go missing.
Meanwhile, Susan is on TV on the book circuit, selling her latest book on vampires, and dating an actor.
Hank starts his assignment, and meets vampires the first night. He gets close to a female vampire, Layla. They saunter through a den where an orgy is going on. Then Hank starts to see the vampires feeding on their human partners. He shoots several of them; the leader claims him and bites him on the neck. He wakes up in an abandoned office floor.
He has a lot to answer for, and he tries to be honest about his experience. 'Vampires did it' was not well-received.
Hank reconnects with Layla. Two officers intervene, but Layla kills them both. He awakes the next morning, and the evidence is gone.
Hank starts to turn to being a vampire. He seeks the help of his ex, but she is the opposite of helpful. When she starts to recognize his change, she goes for another plan: use him to get a story for another book or three. Susan convinces him to help her get to the leader, so she can know so much more, and, as a collateral matter, perhaps keep Hank from becoming a vampire.
Layla and friend break in; the vampires are about to eat Susan when Susan's new friend and his private detective burst in. The vampires kill them and eat them, then leave with the rising morning sun. Before leaving, they tell Hank that he has 24 hours before he turns.
Hank and Susan find the nest. Hank handcuffs Susan to a railing, then goes in alone after giving her his cell phone. What could possibly go wrong?
------Scores--------
Cinematography: 8/10 Good, but not great.
Sound: 8/10 OK.
Acting: 5/10 Lance Henriksen was competent as usual. Kevin Dillon was better than I expected, but Vanessa Angel was worse. The side actors were unimpressive.
Screenplay: 5/10 The plot meanders somewhat aimlessly at times, but at least there is a plot. Too many times, a large chunk of vampire rules gets introduced suddenly from left field. That seemed to be one of the purposes of the Susan character. Hank wears one shirt (that I could see) during the film. Yet the blood stains on it change remarkably more than once.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
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Audience Member
I'll literally watch anything with Lance Henriksen. Here he's largely in a supporting role, still effective but not a lot that can be done to punch up what is pretty much a by-the-books vampire tale.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/19/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Not the worst movie I have seen... reminded me of Buffy though >_<
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Out for Blood (Richard Brandes, 2004)
The best thing I can say about Out for Blood, also released under the variant title Vampires: out for Blood, is that it's betterâ"slightlyâ"than the other Richard Brandes movie I've seen, 2006's Penny Dreadful (which should have simply dropped the âPennyâ? from its name for purposes of accuracy). However, Penny Dreadful sets the bar so low that this isn't saying much. When your top-billed stars are Kevin Dillon (the 1988 The Blob remake) and Vanessa Angel (Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2), this is a movie that pretty much screams âSci-Fi Channel Original.â? Add in a small role for perennial SFC favorite Lance Henriksen, and this movie's fate was guaranteed.
Plot: Hank (Dillon) is an alcoholic cop who's dangerously close to getting thrown off the force for using his official connections to help him stalk his ex-wife (Angel), a writer of lurid pulp vampire novels. As a last-ditch effort to give him something to do that will get his mind off his ex, Hank's captain (Henriksen) assigns him to track down a missing girl, Layla Simmons (Prison Break's Jodi Lynn O'Keefe). He finds her relatively quickly...and discovers she's the newest recruit in a band of vampires who travels around the city looking for prey. Needless to say, no one believes him...
If you were to slap together every clichà (C) you can find in any vampire film made in the past, oh, thirty years, you might come up with the script for Out for Blood. Brandes manages a couple of amusing twists (there's a great sequence that involves baiting the Renfields, who are capably, and amusingly, played by character actors Adrian Roberts and Nick Stellateâ"they're the best thing about the movie), but by five minutes into this, you will be able to map out the entire film's trajectory withou expending any brainpower at all. And when your end credits include such deep, meaningful roles as âHot Girlâ? and âWild Girl #2â?, well, you know why you're watching this. **
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
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