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Directed by Katja Von Garnier
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
The most laughably bad film (horror or otherwise) of 2007, BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE, seems less like it was written by paid professionals and more like it was torn from the journal of a thirteen year old Goth girl who saw MOULIN ROUGE too many times and has a Laurell K. Hamilton fetish. No sense of humor, no grace, no wit, and EVERYTHING is stated as though the weight of ALL EXISTANCE depends on what she thinks is cool.
“I draw horsies… BLACK, MOURNFUL horsies…”
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE almost goes so far as to rent out the Jumbo-Tron at Shea Stadium to proclaim its ass-crackinality (and that’s a real word, starting… Now) right up front at the starting gate. Christ almighty, it shoots itself in the foot before you even RENT the Goddamn thing. Right there on the TV ads, it says…
“From the producers of UNDERWORLD and THE COVENANT.”
Really? You sure you wanna tell folks that your new flick is associated with two other films so bad they can give you kidney stones the size of mothballs?
We fade up on a little girl in Romania, who is spinning around in the snow and we hear a voice over saying “When we’re little, we believe the world is full of magic…”
Awwwwww, SHIT! Yes, folks, it’s “one of THOSE movies.”
That little girl grows up to be Vivien, played by the black hole of charisma and chemistry that Astronomers have dubbed “Agnes Bruckner.” The film makes it obvious from the beginning that this orphaned American girl in Bucharest is a Werewolf. She’s a member of the “Loup-Garou” wolf-pack and is promised to the Alpha Male Gabriel, (the uber-cheesy Olivier Martinez) who takes a new wife every seven years.
But a kink is thrown into those plans when Vivien meets emo-hunk artist Aidan (Hugh Dancy) who does illustrations for “graphic novels.” And you can tell he takes his work as seriously as a heart attack because when Vivien makes the near-fatal error of calling Aidan’s work “comic books,” he… gets… PISSED!
Vivien’s attraction to this “meat boy” (as Werewolves call us human-folk) at first brings derision, then fear from the pack, most notably from Rafe, (Bryan Dick) who makes Liberace look like ’77 Burt Reynolds. We ROMEO & JULIET up and the Loup-Garou post an APB on Aidan’s scrawny ass.
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE is so bad the Broadway Musical version should be coming any day now. With the exception of the camerawork, every other aspect of the film gets splinters in its tongue from licking the bottom of the barrel of “suck.” But the thing is, it provides a shitload of laughs in its suckiness. It’s too mediocre to be truly awful. Consider the following heated dialogue exchange between Aidan and a confrontational Rafe…
AIDAN: “I’ll leave. Seriously. I’m on the train.”
RAFE: “I AM the train…”
And I haven’t touched the keyboard in ten minutes for giggling myself into a schoolgirl stupor. And you can have even more laughs at the expense of Martinez, whose every line delivery sounds like Clouseau emulating Hannibal Lector. Normally I get a little put off when I receive comments saying “You made this movie sound so bad that I HAVE to watch it.” No, you got it twisted. I sat through it so YOU don’t have to.
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE, on the other hand, will make you pee your drawers. By all means, have at it.
The transformation of the characters into their wolf form is just priceless. These people aren’t giant hybrids like every other Werewolf movie. But rather, in the same burst of light that turned Prince Adam into He-Man, they start glowing and BOOM! they’re wolves. Of course, why have slathering and frightening killing machines in your Werewolf movie when REGULAR wolves are JUST SO PRETTY?!
And yet in spite of all this incompetent chicanery, I am a tad ornery at this movie. BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE is an attempt to staple the same damn oily Eurotrash aesthetic to Werewolves that they have Vampires in the last ten years in movies. When one gets turned, are they given a Ryan Seacrest starter kit? With the leather pants, designer sunglasses and exfoliating cleanser?
It ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. While Vampires were Barry Manilow, all clean cut and makin’ the old broads swoon, Werewolves were the fuckin’ Hell’s Angels, beating the shit out of everything in sight and spilling blood at every turn. And yet I could almost hear the high squeal as BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE snipped the nuts off of Werewolf legend. It’s a damn shame.
Werewolves are a gore freaks wet dream and an Old School horror fan’s fondest wish. Good people inexplicably cursed; letting the animal within out every full moon in blazing Jungian glory and sanguine ecstasy.
Is it THAT fucking hard to make a decent werewolf movie?
1 out of 4
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