Hub - Issue 17 by David Tallerman / Paul Kane / Alasdair Stuart

Author:David Tallerman / Paul Kane / Alasdair Stuart
Format: epub

Reviews

The Thirst reviewed by Paul Kane

Transformers reviewed by Alasdair Stuart

The Thirst

Directed by Jeremy Kasten

Starring Matt Keeslar, Clare Kramer, Adam Baldwin

Starz Home Entertainment, £16.99

On face value, The Thirst is a concept movie that seems to have been tailor made for low budget horror. Vampire films can be done exceptionally well on a small scale, all you need is a couple of fangs, some red corn syrup, and a few necks – but the ideas need to be fresh; after all, vampires have been around in fiction and in the cinema for a long, long time. At the start of The Thirst, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is exactly the case. Unbeknownst to alcoholic Maxx (Keeslar – best known as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen from the Sci-Fi Channel’s version of Dune), his girlfriend Lisa (Kramer) has terminal cancer. He tells his AA group that he thinks she’s back on recreational drugs, but when she reveals the truth his initial reaction is anger, then terror. Not to worry, though, because hospitalised Lisa is being visited by the ‘night doctor’ Mariel (Hostage’s Serena Scott Thomas) who has a rather special cure lined up for her.

Devastated by Lisa’s apparent death, Maxx hits the nightclubs with his mates, where he thinks he spots his ex hanging around with a very unsavoury crowd. Could it be that he’s just experiencing the effects of being off the wagon? Apparently not, because when he returns to the club alone, he finds Lisa’s new buddies tucking into a bunch of human prey. Following her back to their out of the way lair, he’s captured and introduced to her new ‘family’, including Lenny (Adam Baldwin, who still appears to be wearing his cowboy outfit from Serenity), Duke (Neil Jackson, who has had plenty of practise biting necks in the TV incarnation of Blade) and leader Darius (no, not the singing one - but an unkempt Jeremy Sisto from Six Feet Under). They’re vampires who believe in having a good time, which seems to revolve around Darius having threesomes with Mariel and Lisa, and slowly drinking their captives dry after pinning their hands to chair-arms with a nailgun. They offer Maxx a simple choice: he can join them or become meat…

The Thirst’s plot – such as it is – could really have fitted into an hour-long episode of an anthology series like Masters of Horror. In fact, it could even have been reduced to a half-hour of Tales from the Crypt. With all that extra time, you’d think the makers would have had more to say about the meaning of life, death, disease and everything…Instead, all this is pretty much glossed over in favour of one gore-ridden scene of bloodletting after the next. If The Thirst is different in any way to the vampire movies that have gone before it, then it’s down to the loving way director Kasten lingers on the biting and feeding that is integral to this species’ lives. You’ll see these guys ripping away vocal chords, chomping on crotches,

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