Pale Blood

 

Vampire flicks, t.v. shows or any kind of media isn't something I normally gravitate towards. I still don't really know why I chose to even watch Pale Blood at all-maybe it was because of the seductive cover art, maybe it was because Wings Hauser starred in it-no matter what, Pale Blood was a fun watch even in spite of how terrible it truly is. There are many twists and turns here that are pretty much what you would expect and nothing was a huge surprise to me during this romp, and that would most likely be the case for pretty much everyone that watches this unless you've been Amish your whole life and just broke out of the faith and watched this to piss off your devout family or you're just to young to have experienced all of the main, well known vampire tropes and clichés that everyone that has ever lived knows about by now. There are spots here and there with some decent gore and tension, but overall I'd have to sit here and say that Pale Blood is a fucking silly vampire film from start to finish. You can't take this one seriously even if you tried, and I'm not so sure that we're supposed to in the first place. The ADR in this piece is hilariously bad and it's blatantly louder than most of the other sound effects and speech going on here-and the music is like that as well. They somehow were able to get the punk band Agent Orange to actually perform in the movie too, and the first time you hear them and see them, the scene with them playing goes on for waaaayyyy to damn long-but I get what they were going for and what they tried to do-they were trying to get them playing their song "Fire in the Rain" to go along with Michael Fury getting intimate with and eventually biting Jenny to suck her blood. From one of her boobs. Yeah. Vampires are supposed to bite necks not breasts, but hey-what do I know.

Michael Fury shows up randomly in L.A. because a woman is laying dead in the front display of a clothing store or whatever, and at first you think he's a cop or detective or something like that because that's the trickery this film puts the viewer through right at the start-a big juicy, red herring for you to nibble on right when this thing opens. He eventually (and randomly) runs into Wings Hauser at some point, whose character is some famous video artist or some bullshit that makes and edits these bizarre videos of attractive women breaking eggs between their legs and makes it look sexual somehow. I don't know. All I know is that he also has a linage to a vampire hunter or whatever and somehow figures out that Michael Fury (in all his fury) is one as well and wants to kill him to rid the city of vampires once and for all. None of this matters though because Agent Orange is laced through this film to often, Wings Hauser is a nutcase as usual and Michael Fury never gets furious enough for this to be any better than a semi-mediocre vampire flick that tries to have to much going on at once and just ends up where Hauser does at the end-in the loony bin. 

Airports are the worst place in the world for introverts.

Michael Fury? What a cool name. You might as well just start calling me Gregory Berserk.

 I wonder if all of these studios realize how bad the ADR is in all of these flicks.

There were still gas stations in 1990 where the employees filled the customers gas tanks for them?

Getting kind of meta there Mr. Fury.

Yeah, what you're doing is "art". Just like Andy Warhol's Empire is "art". 

Michael Fury is watching you with fury. I love saying that.

Look-Agent Orange is a solid old school punk band, but this scene has been going on for way to fucking long now.

  Michael Fury is about to put the fury into some furious sexy time.

I thought you were supposed to bite a woman in the neck to get her blood, not her boob.

Nosferatu is a silent classic.

Mr. Fury's excuse is always some kind of sleep related issue. Get to bed, man. This furious vampire isn't going to wait around for you to unleash your fury upon him to put him behind bars. 

Zits and zombies, Pale Blood honestly is a fun watch if you have the right mindset for a vampire movie that tries to hard to be serious, and fails. It's not a hard fail because it ends up being lighter than I first expected, mostly because of the production quality and budget restraints. Wings Hauser is terrific as usual playing a nutty bastard that ends up being the off-center nucleus he needed to be here, and everyone else fit right in where they needed to be for this film to work. I'm honestly glad that Vinegar Syndrome put this out on blu-ray sometime ago so the cult fans of Pale Blood that are out there can finally stop watching their worn out VHS copies after all of these years and witness Michael Fury in all of his vampiric fury in glorious HD or 4K. Although, with a cool name like that I was hoping he was going to herald more fear and fury in this universe of perverted video artists, blood and breast sucking and not-so-surprising vampire reveals that may have cultivated into a frenzy of the artist versus the vampire, but unfortunately, something like that never happens here. Pale Blood is a good time. Even if Michael Fury's fury isn't so furious.