Tuesday, January 31, 2023

BloodRayne (2005), BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007), BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011)


It’s another one of those weeks where I watch a franchise, or part of one. I decided it was the right time to get back into the Uwe Boll filmography and tossed on the BloodRayne movies, which gave me a few ideas for a new post. One of those ideas was fairly simple, but wouldn’t be able to sustain a whole post. Blubberella, a movie I watched way back in Sunday “Bad” Movies was essentially Uwe Boll remaking BloodRayne: The Third Reich, his own movie, as a comedy. The problem with that idea was that I haven’t seen Blubberella since I first saw it back in 2016. It has been six and a half years. I could recall bits and pieces. However, if I wanted to do a deep dive into the similarities of the two movies, I would need to rewatch Blubberella. I didn’t have time for that.

So I went with a second topic that I had in my head upon watching all three BloodRayne movies. It’s a topic that I may have covered before, thanks to another franchise I’ve watched having a similar trajectory. Each of the three movies in the BloodRayne franchise was set in a different time period. The same concept was overlayed into different settings to make the sequels feel fresh. It made the sequels feel different. That’s what I want to discuss. That’s what I will discuss. Beginning now.


BloodRayne followed a group of vampire hunters known as the Brimstone Society as they sought Kagan (Ben Kingsley), the vampire king, in the Middle Ages. Vladimir (Michael Madsen) led Sebastian (Matthew Davis) and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez) through the European countryside, fighting vampires and tracking Kagan. Along the way, they encountered Rayne (Kristanna Loken), a dhampir who happened to be the illegitimate daughter of Kagan. She joined their team, wanting revenge on Kagan for raping her mother and creating her.

Kicking things off for the BloodRayne trilogy was a movie set in the Middle Ages. This was a departure from the games. The first BloodRayne game was set in the leadup to World War II, with Rayne performing global missions to stop the Nazis from bringing Hitler to greater power through the occult. That’s nowhere near the same story. Even later in the movie trilogy, they wouldn’t touch upon the story of the first game. It did take slight elements from BloodRayne 2, however, with the patriarchal revenge storyline.


There’s a certain feel that comes from setting a vampire hunting story in the Middle Ages. The weapons used in that setting felt less explosive. Handheld gunpowder weapons hadn’t yet been perfected, meaning that guns weren’t a major piece of weaponry. There may have been cannons, but not guns. Swords, arrows, and spears were the go to weapons. When it comes to portraying the use of these weapons on screen, the battles are usually harder fought, more physical, and bloodier. There’s a certain spectacle you don’t get from modern weaponry. A certain athleticism that goes with swords and spears. It’s like watching a martial arts fight, but with heavy, bulky weapons.

The other aspect of the Middle Ages that can make a vampire movie like BloodRayne interesting is the time it took for people and news to travel. A vampiric character like Kagan could be more open with their intentions because it was less likely that people would know the truth. They would know him as a ruler. Maybe even a deadly ruler. People wouldn’t necessarily know he was deadly because he was a vampire. They might hear stories or legends about the guy. As people got farther away from him, the stories would be fewer and farther between. The people who heard the stories might not find truth in them. Not unless he was presenting himself in major public ways, which he wasn’t.


BloodRayne 2: Deliverance changed up the setting. Rayne (Natassia Malthe) was back to kill more vampires, this time in the Wild West. Billy the Kid (Zack Ward) took over the town of Deliverance. He was waiting for the railway to come through town so he could turn all the passengers and send them out through the US to spread vampirism. Rayne teamed up with Pat Garrett (Michael Paré), a member of the US branch of the Brimstone Society, as well as The Preacher (Michael Eklund) and Slime Bag Franson (Michael Teigen), to take down Billy and his town full of vampires.

As you can see, the setting changed for the sequel. Instead of the Middle Ages, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance was set in the Wild West. It was a good change. It showed that Uwe Boll was open to letting the franchise change. He was open to letting it evolve. Mind you, he’s also the guy that took the name and very, very basic idea of the games and used that to make an almost wholly original franchise. He threw out the stories of the games. And here he was, again, changing things up to make them his own. In this case, I think it worked quite well.


Changing the setting for BloodRayne 2: Deliverance changed the entire vibe of the movie. Instead of a medieval movie that was all about beating the villain through brute force, it was a western. Gunslingers were pitted against gunslingers. A lawman was pitted against an outlaw. A vampire hunter was pitted against a town filled with vampires. It was very influenced by the Kurosawa samurai movies and the westerns adapted from them. Of course, it had Uwe Boll’s sense of humour, as well. That was apparent through The Preacher and Slime Bag Franson, particularly in their introductions. The Preacher had his cartoonish sermon as he ripped his parish off, while Slime Bag was found in a brothel getting his kinky fantasies fulfilled.

Much like the Middle Ages setting of BloodRayne, the Wild West setting of BloodRayne 2: Deliverance added to the credibility of the villain. Outlaws of the Wild West era in the US were legends in themselves. That legendary status made unbelievable things believable and reality unbelievable. Jesse James, Bill Doolin, Butch Cassidy… They were all legends of the Wild West. What did people really know about them, though? This idea of people coming up with exceedingly out-there stories about the outlaws would make it easy for a vampire to hide among the rest of the outlaws. People would come up with stories that would steer the public in another direction entirely.


Then there was BloodRayne: The Third Reich. Rayne (Natassia Malthe) was back, this time during World War II. Dr. Wolfgang Mangler (Clint Howard) wanted to steal Rayne’s blood to use as a super-strength serum for Adolf Hitler. Commander Ekart Brand (Michael Paré) wanted to steal the serum for himself, after having been turned into a vampire. Rayne teamed up with Nathaniel Gregor (Brendan Fletcher) and his gang of rebels to stop both Mangler and Brand from enacting their evil plans.

Once again, the setting changed between movies. What was once a film franchise set in the Middle Ages and the Wild West was now set in World War II. This was as close to the time period of the games as the film trilogy would get. It brought a war backdrop that neither previous Uwe Boll movie provided. It was an all new vibe. The first movie was the raw brutality of the Middle Ages. The second film was the gunslinger, everyone can become a legend, Wild West story. And now Uwe Boll was placing Rayne into a story about how war is hell and sometimes everyone must die for the greater good of humanity. Three different styles of storytelling, all within one franchise.


That death leading to greater good could be seen through Nathaniel Gregor’s rebels. He was working hard to create any sort of disruption within Hitler’s Third Reich. There was a decoder who was able to crack any of the encryption in the Nazi messaging. There were the friends who fought alongside him through the many little skirmishes throughout the war. All of them would lose their lives while they came head-to-head with Ekart and Mangler, showing that war took many lives in the pursuit of stopping the bad guys. This theme pulled from the other movies, but it hadn’t truly been focused on until it had the World War II backdrop.

Much like the previous entries, BloodRayne: The Third Reich provided a way for the villain to be a vampire without the world knowing. The Nazis were already monsters. They set out to exterminate any bit of humanity that wasn’t within their idea of the perfect specimen. It aligned with the idea of vampires who want nothing more than to kill, or to turn other people into vampires. The world would become vampires sort of thing. Replacing a Nazi with a vampire wouldn’t make the average person question anything. It was practically the same thing by another name. A monster.


As you can see, each of the period settings brought something different to the franchise. Each period setting made the movies feel different from one another. That’s what was necessary to keep the franchise going. Having the same setting over and over again would make the action feel repetitive, especially on the relatively small budget that most Uwe Boll movies have. His In the Name of the King sequels very much felt that way, though each of those had different characters with different personalities. Switching things up kept the action fresh and showed that vampires existed in, and were a major part of, many significant moments in history.

The thing about placing vampires in these time periods is that the vampire aspect could be lost through the retelling of history. There’s no definitive account of these periods, minute-by-minute. There are large chunks of time in the Middle Ages that are lost memories. Same with the Wild West. The big moments have been remembered, maybe with skewed details, but the smaller bits have been forgotten. Especially if people wanted them to be forgotten. Pat Garrett, who was a famous Wild West lawman, probably didn’t want word getting out that vampires were real. It would cause more harm than good, when trying to stop the vampires. When telling the story of how he stopped Billy the Kid, Garrett would likely leave out the part where Billy was a vampire. With World War II, so much was going on that something like a vampire super-serum could easily be missed. Yes, I know the movies aren’t based on real stories. They’re based on video games. But it would be possible for them to be real, if vampires existed, because these moments in history could be forgotten.


I alluded to another franchise that changed the setting with each installment. That franchise was The Gingerdead Man. The first flick was set in the present day, where the spirit of a serial killer possessed a gingerbread man and attacked people at a bakery. The second flick changed the setting to a low-budget B-movie studio, parodying the studio that producer Charles Band ran. The third movie was set in a 1970s roller rink, becoming a merger of Carrie and The Gingerdead Man. It was a franchise that changed things up with the setting of each installment, which kept things from simply feeling like the same gingerbread man killing people slasher movie every time.

These aren’t the only two franchises to do this sort of setting change to keep things fresh. Horror movies frequently play this game. After seven movies that happened at or near Camp Crystal Lake and whatever it was named later, the Friday the 13th movies went to Manhattan, Hell, Space, and Springwood. The Leprechaun started out at a farmhouse before going to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Space, and the hood. Jack Frost went on vacation in the sequel, while Chucky ended up going to military school in one of his sequels.

Few of these franchises, however, played with time the same way that the BloodRayne movies did. They changed the setting, sure, but they didn’t change the period in which the movies were set. Aside from Gingerdead Man 3, that is. Not many horror icons are immortal dhampirs that manage to outlive generations, though. The period changes only helped to show that the threat of vampires wasn’t confined to one era. It was always a problem. It would always be a problem. Rayne would always be there to help stop the problem. That was the power of the time changes. Not that I think Uwe Boll ever thought of it like that. He probably just thought it would be fun to make these movies. And that’s cool, I guess.


Something almost as cool are these notes:

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)