Horror Movie Reviews: Blood The Last Vampire

When a Japanese animated film gets the live action movie treatment it usually doesn't go to well translating some cool animated visuals onto live action (Fist of the North Star comes to mind lol!), but Blood The Last Vampire is actually a good film with a good cast and there are some striking similarities to the original manga film of the same name.

The story revolves around an age old vampire demon who has been seeking revenge for the murder of her father at the hands of a powerful demon Onigen, but along the way she has been enlisted by the council which have their own way of dealing with vampire and demon threats to stamp them out and clean up the evidence of any such demonic activity, although she is being used by the council, she uses them to obtain human blood which she needs to survive and retain her power, so then she can track down the demon Onigen and kill it.

There's some spectacular fight scenes with some vampires getting sliced and diced, although there are some dodgy effects when some grey looking demons begin flying about the place, but that aside, some of the other effects look nice and add to the story well and I like the asian woman who plays the lead character as you wouldn't really want to mess with her when she has a samurai sword in her hand or even if she didn't.

There's a couple of recognizable British actors in the film, although not for long as they get killed, but there's Eastenders Archie Mitchell who plays an American army general with a really convincing American accent (good job Archie!) and Colin Salmon who is a vampire demon creature.

It's great when you've seen the original Blood The Last Vampire manga film and then you watch this one as you can compare the scenes and what's different, but on the whole the story is near enough the same, although if you haven't seen the original it doesn't matter as it's a stand alone film in it's own right.

Most of the gore in this film is computer generated splattery, much in the same vein of Blade, which is fine as it adds to the energy of some of the fight scenes and with it being a multinational type of film there is no annoying dubbed voices, which would have made this film a bit frustrating to watch, much as I like some of the old kung-fu films with really bad dubbing that the voices just sound funny and over the top.

Blood The Last Vampire is one great film in a long line of world cinematic failures, so that's a good thing and I highly recommend this film if you're a fan of these types of films.

Go watch it!