Tuesday, November 9, 2021

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #7: THE LAST SECT (2006) **

(Streamed via Cinehouse)

Tone (Jordan Van Dyck) finds video evidence on the “Vampire Web” that vampires still exist.  He shows it to his boss, Van Helsing (David Carradine), and they make plans to stake the vampire vixens responsible.  Meanwhile, a reporter named Sydney (Natalie Brown) is working on a story about an online dating service called “Artemis”.  Lonely and looking for love, she becomes a member, unaware the website is owned by the queen of the vampires (Deborah Odell), who happens to have her sights set on the mousy Sydney.  

The constant use of on-screen titles to establish the locations get annoying really fast.  It doesn’t help that the font is similar to that garish grungy white lettering that was used for those anti-piracy “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car, So Don’t Pirate Movies” PSAs that appeared on DVDs in the early 2000s.  What’s worse is that the lettering is jittery and hops around at the bottom of the screen, which is really unnecessary.  

The Last Sect could’ve worked, but it almost seems as repressed as its heroine.  Just when it looks like it’s going to loosen up a little bit and allow the characters to engage in romantic lesbian vampire sex and/or softcore bondage, the camera coyly pans away and/or cuts to another scene entirely.

Carradine hams it up nicely, which is appreciated.  His offbeat energy helps to makes his scenes worthwhile, even when all he gets to do is rattle off a bunch of exposition.  Too bad he’s confined to his apartment for the nearly the entire running time and delegates a morose mortician looking motherfucker to kill most of the vampires for him.  The stuff with Brown falling under Odell’s spell isn’t nearly as involving, although it isn’t out and out bad or anything.  I just wish the movie allowed them to get past first base.  Even if the film had the benefit of some lesbian vampire T & A, The Last Sect still wouldn’t have been a winner, but it would’ve at least had a reason to exist.

AKA:  Van Helsing 2.

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