Review of Vampire Hunter D (1985) by Budda F — 18 May 2010

[b][font=Times New Roman][size=3][i]Vampire Hunter D[/i] (Ashida, 1985).

Personal Rating: 4/10 :rotten:

I meant to get [i]Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust[/i] but got this by mistake. It appears Netflix doesn't carry [i]Bloodlust[/i] (yet). That kinda sucks.

[i]D[/i] goes well for about the first half hour with the introduction of the characters and the overall setup but then the main story splits into a number of tangents that gives the whole thing a pretty screwy narrative. It's a bunch of poorly motivated characters with uninspired goals. They end up being as unimportant as they appeared to be to the overall story and just stretch the runtime of the film until it reaches the inevitable climax that was setup in the first 15 minutes. Sadly, you could cut almost an hour of this 80 minutes film and lose very little.

There is some cool stuff about the film. D's hand (comments and abilities) were kinda amusing, the mutant's power was cool and under-used, some cartoon nudity is fun (but pointless), and vampires are pretty much always cool with the main one here being no exception. But those were easily overweighed by the variety of pointless creatures and the weak battles. *SPOILER* That village asshole (the name escapes me) that stole the candle but we don't know (well... we aren't 100% sure) until later is the most impressive part of the film in terms of story telling... the film definitely needed a bit more narrative style.

Objective Rating: 4/10.

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