Razor Blade Smile
Written and Directed by: Jake West
Starring: Eileen Daily
Christopher Adamson
Jonathon Coote
Released by: Manga Live
An EYE DEAL IMAGE production in association with Beatnik Films.
This review is based in the video release.
This is a vampire movie, told in first person. Razor Blade Smile is a British movie, set in the present day, about a hit-man called, The Angel of Death. Her latest assignments have all been about one sect, the members all wear a ring that resembles the Evil Eye. There’s also connections with the Illuminati and the Free Masons.
Sounds good doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. Sorry. The storyline is good (the idea of it anyway), problem is the acting is so lame, zombies would do a better job with the script. And here lies the second problem. The script sucks. The dialogue is forced and immature, unnatural in every aspect. The killing scenes are impossible to devour, the Van Helsing part was wooden and unbelievable. He is part of the Illuminati and associates with vampires in the ‘group’ but doesn’t believe in them.
It’s like this movie starred puppets.
I endured 95 minutes of this … and why? Because the dialogue was so bad it was almost funny.
The movie starts off in first person POV and constantly switched back and forth, between first and third point of view. A confusing watch. I mentioned POV here, due to the fact it is a telling-type movie (first or second person POV – here it was first person), yet it is also played out in third person.
There were two good actors in this movie but they only had small roles (hey, don’t wanna ruin the Z-Grade effect) and played them very well.
The scene with the widow screaming about the hit-man being a monster, a vampire, was very well done. I was enthralled for those brief 2 minutes. And the second was the lover-boy/hit contract-maker, when he was kidnapped and video taped.
Anyway, a bit about the movie:
A vampire hit-man (female), accepts contracts for the thrill of doing something. She claims it’s boring being alive for hundreds of years with nothing to do. So she visits a Goth bar, makes friends with this chick who is right into vamps (movie versions). She becomes dinner part way through the movie. The man who arranges the contracts for ‘The Angle of Death’ is also her part-time lover.
In her last hit, she failed to collect the ring and it falls into the hands of the police. This will not do, so the ‘bad guys’ want their money back and to get it they kidnap lover-boy. She races to his rescue and during a terrible filmed battle scene involving guns, he is killed. She faces off with her adversary who turned her into a vampire.
An unpredictable twist arises here (yes there is one), but it pulled off so suddenly and terribly that instead of saying, “What the……”, one finds oneself laughing. On reflection, I’m thinking was this movie meant to be comedy, black comedy perhaps? On further reflection, I must discount this theory, as the movie tried to be a real horror. It had the blood and a story idea that could have worked well, but sadly didn’t.
Not one of the story plots were investigated, a third grader speaks better than these actors, and the action scenes (maybe trying to be artistic) were instead hard on the eyes. The camera work was jittery and the editing could have been a lot better.
At least we didn’t see the mike and the actors not once looked at the camera. That’s a bonus.
Only hardcore vamp lovers could endure this movie, and only just barely.
Overall rating: 1
Acting: 1 (except for the two above mentioned).
Script / dialogue / action scenes: 2
Worth owning / viewing: No.
Yes, it’s true I’m being hard on this movie. Watch it and you’ll find out why.
