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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

Blood, Violence and Babes
John Allman

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Blood Creek

Posted Jan 27, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Jan 27, 2010 at 07:54 AM

Blood Creek
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Run time: 90 minutes
Rating: R
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: OK, first things first. It’s better than “Batman & Robin” and “The Number 23.”

Joel Schumacher has made some decent thrillers before, namely “Falling Down” and “8MM,” both of which ironically featured skinheads and/or neo-Nazi-type bad guys, but his first full-fledged foray into horror, “Blood Creek” isn’t as successful as you might hope.

There’s decent gore, but the story seems forced. The interesting plot – Hitler dispatches Nazi henchmen to small Midwestern U.S. states just prior to World War II to investigate and manipulate the supernatural power of rune stones to help create an unstoppable force – is too muddled to be effective.

There needs to be either a succinct explanation as to what the rune stones actually do or the mystery needs to be left alone as to what exactly is going on.

As it is, central characters don’t age for decades without a satisfying or even remotely decipherable reason why, and the main bad guy, while effectively creepy, is able to raise the dead but can’t push his way past some strange talisman symbol – again, without a sufficient attempt at explaining how or why.

Fortunately, there are zombie horses and dogs, which is somewhat refreshing, but both are woefully under-utilized.

The two leads, Dominic Purcell and Henry Cavill, behave in ways that only movie characters behave, which is a nice way of saying that they don’t seem the least bit flummoxed as to how an unstoppable Third Reich officer is able to hoist grown men over his head and crack them open like he’s shot-gunning a beer and gulp down their blood in the hope of sprouting a third eye and becoming an all-knowing, all-seeing monster incapable of being killed.

Schumacher also makes a questionable decision to shoot most of “Blood Creek” like it’s a washed-out, sepia-toned postcard from the 1930s, which might have been more eerie if the action onscreen made one iota of sense.

Still, it’s somewhat original, which these days can be a blessing given the soul-sucking black hole of stupidity that accounts for much of the genre titles being rushed onto video store shelves.

Schumacher is still a hack director, but at least he seems to be trying here.

The Stuff You Care About:

Hot chicks – No.
Nudity – No.
Gore – Yes.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Nazis. Zombies. Horses.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Release Date – Jan. 19, 2010