More lesbians please - Life Blood aka Pearblossom (2009)

Vampires, lesbians and films are three of my favourite things.  But here I saw very little vampire, virtually no lesbianism and to use the word film was pushing it.  God has entrusted our world’s fate to two new homemade avenging angels with a penchant for human blood.  The only problem? One of them turns out to be evil.

At a New Year’s Eve party actress Brooke (Sophie Monk) walks in on a colleague about to rape a young woman.  After being enraged by his chauvinistic attitude towards her (and, strangely, not because he is potentially rapey), she stabs him in the throat several times with a pin and the blood flows like tomato ketchup out of a squeezy bottle. Which, I suspect, may have been what they used to create the special effects.  She picks up her lesbian lover Rhea (Anya Lahiri) and they make their getaway along the Pearblossom Highway.  Brooke confesses that she’s just killed a man and while shocked, Rhea begins to calm down until they hit and kill an animal in the road.  Inexplicably Rhea, now playing on the uncontrollable, hypersensitive female stereotype no doubt, sees this as a sign that something bad is about to happen. And nothing to do with the dead man lying on the floor back at the party. Well they do say people love animals more than humans.  They get out of the car and God appears to them in see through night clothes.  Only God is a woman.  Stay with me, people.  God tells them that they have been chosen to be her immortal avenging instruments and to kill all of the evil people in the world.  They need to go through some kind of special supernatural incubation period that takes forty years but when they come out…they look exactly the same as they did before. Except that now, they need blood to survive. 

I did rather enjoy the neck breaking scene and Patrick Renna did well as the geeky drooling gas station attendant, Dan.  The comedic energy of the supporting cast made it feel as though they were in a separate film from the leads, who were as flat as pretty pancakes.  I could’ve watched Danny Woodburn as the hapless cop and the perfect Charles Napier as his short tempered Sheriff on their own.  Apparently Napier didn’t see the need to attend the screen test for the film as he’s played about ten different cops in his career, he was born for this role. He also got all the best lines.

I couldn’t quite tell if it was just that the acting was bad or that they genuinely thought that a realistic portrayal of a lesbian couple would be to merely look as sappy as possible.  The lesbian angle was virtually non existent and I suspect it was just peddled to get you to watch a film that held very little substance apart from its own hype.  Were we supposed to be shocked or excited at the thought of lesbian vampires?  I was hoping to be experiencing at least one of those but it just didn’t happen. The two leads’ dialogue was laborious and played as though they were having a boring chat over lunch.

I don’t think I was imagining the all-men-are-evil theme, what with God being a girl and the pointless heterosexual domestic scene at the end where the good-for-nothing boyfriend gets his just desserts.  But surely it’s worth a watch just for the sexy underwear and girls kissing?  I can’t actually believe I’m saying this, but no.