B Plus Movies

Finding myself making my first post in days at the end of the Yuletide season, I am tempted to dip into the deep well that is bad, Christmas/Winter themed horror movies. There is certainly a plethora to choose from, from the seminal and protested Silent Night to the more recent and less probable Jack Frost. Almost all of them fall into B+ territory.

But I haven’t seen any of them. I have, however, seen The Breed.

If I were to boil The Breed down to its essentials, I think I could make a case for this being a solid and underated picture: A genetic offshoot of humanity, vampires, has revealed itself in secret to the government, just as a single vampire serial killer threatens to destroy the fragile peace. A pair of cops attempt to get to the bottom of the killings before things spiral out of control. One cop is a cynical wisecracker, played by Bokeem Woodbine, who lost his partner to the vampire serial killer. The other is a vampire, played by Highlander: The Series star Adrian Paul.

Where the problems start for this picture is in the bucket of details that aren’t essential. For instance, the fact that it’s the near future. For a second, that there’s an oppressive, dictatorial one-world government which apparently forces everyone to wear jack boots and use 1960’s technology. There’s the interspersed head shots of various vampires stating their political afflilation (taken from a database of the world’s vampires that is the one nod to the fact the movie isn’t set in modern day). Don’t get me started on the vampire panther.

The Breed is ambitious in that it attempts to make vampires the more sympathetic of the two branches of human evolution, asking questions about what it means to be a monster and sheding new light on the subject of racism. With better writing and a bigger budget, they might have effectively told that story but instead ended up spinning a pretentious yarn in which one moment our vampiric hero/sidekick is worldly wise from having survived WWII and the next is unaware of what the adjective phrase “big ass” means.

If there is any saving grace in this film, it comes from the acting of Adrian Paul and Bai Ling (who plays a Dominatrix/Vampire/Plot Device/Love Interest). They both avoid camping up their characters, delivering their lines with conviction and playing it completely straight despite a weak script and regretable costuming decisions. It’s through their acting that we see the glimmers of what this movie could have been.

Which is a shame, because The Breed ended up only getting a C from me. As vampire movies go, I’m sad to say this one sucks.

I apologize for the un-announced vacation. This week, B+ Movies will be getting new installments Teusday (today) and Thursday Jan. 1st. You’ll be seeing the blog back to it’s regular MWF schedule beginning next week. Thanks for reading.