Vampirella Reviews

Cramming far too much plot into its surprisingly brief length, this comic book adaptation would probably have been better were it longer. Then again, the fact that it is short is the only thing this typically cheesy Jim Wynorski-directed tossoff has going for it. The planet Drakulon has been a civilized place since its residents learned to overcome their barbaric ways. But the evil Vlad (Roger Daltrey) and his followers prefer the old ways--namely, the drinking of blood. Fleeing from justice, they board a space ship, pursued by Ella (Talisa Soto), stepdaughter of the high elder whom they slaughtered during their escape. Thirty centuries later, Vlad and his followers have developed a network of evil on Earth. They are tracked and battled by a government agency led by Adam Van Helsing (Richard Joseph Paul). Meanwhile Ella, who was stranded on Mars while pursuing Vlad, finally gets to Earth by hitching a ride on an American spaceship. Tracking Vlad to Las Vegas, where he lives as rock singer Jamie Blood, she is about to exact her revenge when they are both apprehended by Van Helsing's forces. Vlad escapes, and Ella fills Adam in on their Drakulonian origins. When Adam is kidnapped by Vlad's minions, Ella sets off to rescue him. She is captured, deprived of the serum pack that keeps her alive, and locked in a room with Adam, on whom she must feed if she is to survive. Restraining her hunger and taking only as much blood as she needs, Ella confronts Vlad and his assembled followers just as they are about to launch a plan which will plunge the Earth into darkness long enough for them to take over. With the help of Van Helsing's forces, the fiendish plan is stopped. After a struggle, Ella kills Vlad; she vows to remain on Earth and fight his remaining followers. Based on the vividly-drawn, magazine-sized, comic-book series that began in 1968, VAMPIRELLA fails on the most basic and simple level: fetching as she is, Talisa Soto (whose character is never referred to onscreen as "Vampirella") just doesn't fill out the costume that ushered so many pubescent boys onto the first plateau of manhood. (It's a role that screams for Julie Strain.) It's an odd lack in a movie from low-budget moviemaker Jim Wynorski, the poor man's Fred Olen Ray, who has gotten as far as he has only by recognizing that bare flesh is the one factor guaranteed to put a made-for-video production into the black. The plot seems to consist of a string of scenes from the comic book series, with no thought given to whether or not they would work cinematically. Cheap, shoddy and self-consciously campy without being either amusing or interesting, VAMPIRELLA is pushed that extra mile into the zone of pain by Daltrey, who seems intent on proving to the world that there are worse things he can be doing in his 50s than singing "My Generation" on another The Who reunion tour. (Violence, nudity, adult situations, profanity.)