4.5
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| "Forget about Buffy, watch out for Rebecca." |
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The Witches Hammer
DVD/APPROX. 91 MINS/2006/ENGLAND UNRTAED
DVD/APPROX. 91 MINS/2006/ENGLAND UNRTAED
THE WITCHES HAMMER begins with a woman, Rebecca (Claudia Coulter) being attacked by a vampire and left for dead. Her body is taken by a
government organization who then proceed to give her a transfusion and inject her with chemicals. She wakes up as a “genetically-engineered
vampire to destroy evil” and is trained for the next year in martial arts and taught how to use weapons.
If the plot doesn't sound particularly original, that's because it isn't. THE WITCHES HAMMER is like a cross between BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE
SLAYER and LA FEMME NIKITA.
Because of what she has become, she is not allowed to get in touch with her family (husband and son) for fear that she might harm them (she
does thirst for blood, after all), and is therefore forced to cooperate with the agency. She is sent out to battle other vampires.
(For the record, I am getting more than a little tired of the way vampires in these movies always know martial arts, and die in a burst of bright
sparks. It’s all becoming more than a little cliche.)
When the members of the agency who created her are killed in an ambush, Rebecca finds herself captured by a second agency, run by the
powerful witch Madeline (Stephanie Beacham). Her goal is to stop the vampire Hugo Renior (Tom Dover) from releasing the souls of the damned
into our world. In order to do so, they must acquire the ancient tomb The Witches Hammer, written by history’s first witch.
Rebecca is sent, with her witch companion Edward (Jonathan Sidgwick) to retrieve the book and use it in their final confrontation with Hugo. But
Hugo has hired some other vampires to stop them, including a ninja who can create multiple copies of himself (Sam Smith); Victor (Miguel Ruz) a
vampire who, as a human, had been a master assassin; and the circus team of Charlotte (Sally Reeve), a carnival fat lady turned vampire, and
Oscar (Jason Tompkins), a vampiric dwarf.
There are showdowns and double-crosses along the way.
There are traces of humor here, most of them involving Charlotte and Oscar. There is one particularly absurd moment in the origin of the corpulent
Charlotte – who was gluttonous in life and became a vampire by eating a delicacy which turned out to be vampire meat! Later we learn that the
meat had been taken from the vampiric corpse of her future companion, Oscar’s, mother! However, if vampires turn into bright sparks upon death,
how would one be able to retrieve any meat from them? Think about it.
While I thought THE WITCHES HAMMER was entertaining, it certainly is not in the same league as the sources that inspired it. There was no real
depth to any of the characters, and it all had the feel of a live-action cartoon.
THE WITCHES HAMMER felt more like a TV pilot than a feature film to me, it even has an ending that leaves things very open for possible sequels.
But unlike a show like the superior BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER or ANGEL, where the writing was solid enough so that you actually cared
about the characters, and their lives were just as interesting as the horror elements, there isn’t much that’s interesting about Rebecca and her
cohorts. I really didn’t care what happened to any of these people.
If this sounds like your kind of thing, and you’re a fan of movies like BLADE and UNDERWORLD, then you’ll probably enjoy this. As for me, I could
take it or leave it.
Extras: The version I saw was a screener copy, so it had no extras. It also had a very annoying logo for www.amberpictures.co.uk across the
middle of the screen throughout, which was very distracting.
government organization who then proceed to give her a transfusion and inject her with chemicals. She wakes up as a “genetically-engineered
vampire to destroy evil” and is trained for the next year in martial arts and taught how to use weapons.
If the plot doesn't sound particularly original, that's because it isn't. THE WITCHES HAMMER is like a cross between BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE
SLAYER and LA FEMME NIKITA.
Because of what she has become, she is not allowed to get in touch with her family (husband and son) for fear that she might harm them (she
does thirst for blood, after all), and is therefore forced to cooperate with the agency. She is sent out to battle other vampires.
(For the record, I am getting more than a little tired of the way vampires in these movies always know martial arts, and die in a burst of bright
sparks. It’s all becoming more than a little cliche.)
When the members of the agency who created her are killed in an ambush, Rebecca finds herself captured by a second agency, run by the
powerful witch Madeline (Stephanie Beacham). Her goal is to stop the vampire Hugo Renior (Tom Dover) from releasing the souls of the damned
into our world. In order to do so, they must acquire the ancient tomb The Witches Hammer, written by history’s first witch.
Rebecca is sent, with her witch companion Edward (Jonathan Sidgwick) to retrieve the book and use it in their final confrontation with Hugo. But
Hugo has hired some other vampires to stop them, including a ninja who can create multiple copies of himself (Sam Smith); Victor (Miguel Ruz) a
vampire who, as a human, had been a master assassin; and the circus team of Charlotte (Sally Reeve), a carnival fat lady turned vampire, and
Oscar (Jason Tompkins), a vampiric dwarf.
There are showdowns and double-crosses along the way.
There are traces of humor here, most of them involving Charlotte and Oscar. There is one particularly absurd moment in the origin of the corpulent
Charlotte – who was gluttonous in life and became a vampire by eating a delicacy which turned out to be vampire meat! Later we learn that the
meat had been taken from the vampiric corpse of her future companion, Oscar’s, mother! However, if vampires turn into bright sparks upon death,
how would one be able to retrieve any meat from them? Think about it.
While I thought THE WITCHES HAMMER was entertaining, it certainly is not in the same league as the sources that inspired it. There was no real
depth to any of the characters, and it all had the feel of a live-action cartoon.
THE WITCHES HAMMER felt more like a TV pilot than a feature film to me, it even has an ending that leaves things very open for possible sequels.
But unlike a show like the superior BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER or ANGEL, where the writing was solid enough so that you actually cared
about the characters, and their lives were just as interesting as the horror elements, there isn’t much that’s interesting about Rebecca and her
cohorts. I really didn’t care what happened to any of these people.
If this sounds like your kind of thing, and you’re a fan of movies like BLADE and UNDERWORLD, then you’ll probably enjoy this. As for me, I could
take it or leave it.
Extras: The version I saw was a screener copy, so it had no extras. It also had a very annoying logo for www.amberpictures.co.uk across the
middle of the screen throughout, which was very distracting.
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