★★½
“Olympic-level self indulgence.”
I have to give this credit for being something different. A vampire sports movie? Not a genre cross I’ve seen before. Especially when the sport is… um, modern pentathlon, the least-watched member of the modern Olympics. It’s a five-discipline event, based on the skills needed by a cavalry officer: running, shooting, fencing, swimming and horse-riding. All five play their part here, mostly in the form of Marcia Lorenz (Dordel), a former pentathlete, who is now a hunting guide. Well, was. She just got fired, and has absconded with valuable antique documents belonging to the customer who was responsible. Driving through remote woods, she stops to help a woman by the road, and that’s where things kick off.
Turns out the woods belong to the Countess Badesky (Wolf), a Bathory knockoff who escaped execution with her four henchmen, but have been locked in their estate for centuries courtesy of a magic spell. They’re not happy about it, but maintain their eternal youth by drinking the blood of penathletes, who are considered the ultimate warriors. It’s unclear what they did before the sport was invented in 1912. Kinda lucky Marcia was an expert in the sport, before injury ended her career. And what are the odds? Those documents she lifted are key to lifting the occult lockdown and letting the Countess roam free. Only Marcia, plus possibly plucky fisherman Josh (Paseti) and local cop George Balough (Alexander-Sieder), stand in her way.
There is actually more going on, as you would expect in a film running one hundred and thirty-one minutes. Logic is not its strong suit, stuff happening simply because the makers think it looks good. Marcia donning a wedding dress she finds in the castle is one such conceit. Not only does it fit perfectly (okay, it may be a little small in the bust, if you know what I mean and I think you do), she keeps it on while swimming. This kind of thing will eventually elicit derisive snorts, but is perhaps inevitable, with Tolke and Dordel having written, directed, produced, starred, edited and shot the whole thing between them. The film desperately needed an outside perspective to say, “Hang on – that’s a bit much, isn’t it?”
Dordel was previously in Mission NinetyTwo, which also seems to have been inspired by her real-life activities. There, it was a background in forest science; here, it’s Dordel actually being a fairly adept pentathlete. Her skill-set is spun off in this case, into a batshit crazy film which wears a grab-bag of horror influences on its sleeve. from the hedge maze of The Shining through to blatantly lifting Evil Dead II‘s “Swallow this!” line. Sometimes it works, but it is in desperate need of editing down. A streamlined version of this – with less jerky editing – might have had cult potential, along the lines of Bloody Mallory. Instead, it comes over too often as bloated and self-indulgent, when it needs to be lean and mean.
Dir: Guido Tölke
Star: Julia Dordel, Rita Wolf, Nicolo Pasetti, Anne Alexander-Sieder