{"id":4446,"date":"2009-09-16T14:39:47","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T19:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2009-09-16T14:39:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-16T19:39:47","slug":"bad-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4446","title":{"rendered":"Bad Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vlcsnap-00039\"<\/a>That NC-17 rating sure is tantalizing. It will draw you into watching the<\/em> most routine and uninteresting films. What could the ratings board have objected to so strenuously as to mark a film unacceptable for anyone but adults? Why are movies like the relatively tame Bank Robber<\/em> or Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde<\/em> voted verboten by the soccer-mom-run MPAA? Could it be excused by the particular era, as those two movies were released in 1993, the first four years of the rating? Unlikely, if a movie as silly and inoffensive as Trey Parker\u2019s Orgazmo<\/em> (a movie about porn with virtually no nudity) received the rating in 1997.<\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-00032\"<\/a>Tibor Takacs\u2019 Bad Blood<\/em> (also known as Viper<\/em>) has nothing particularly distinctive in it to merit the more restrictive rating, unless it\u2019s the opening scene where the hero\u2019s brother crushes that lascivious and dastardly paper cup. Bad Blood,<\/em> like the other three films I mentioned, are all quite low-budget and the MPAA often have a hard time distinguishing between unpolished looking violence and sex and disturbingly amoral violence and sex. Bad Blood<\/em>, which is a standard Lorenzo Lamas direct-to-video action vehicle, was released in 1994 in a trimmed R rated version in the US and an uncut version in Sweden that same year. The difference is mainly the scene where a child is killed by the main villain, right after he\u2019s handed her a lollipop. It isn\u2019t all that traumatizing, there was far more of a shock when a similar thing happened to a child standing at an ice cream truck in the original version of Assault on Precinct 13<\/em> (as opposed to the remake, or the fact that AOP13<\/em> is already an admitted remake of Rio Bravo<\/em>). But Bad Blood<\/em>\u2019s pre-pubescent massacre is a bit more extreme than what was generally allowed at the time; Killing children en masse wasn\u2019t considered acceptable fare until the following year\u2019s The Usual Suspects.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-00044\"<\/a>If there\u2019s anything<\/em> that separates Bad Blood <\/em>from most of Lamas\u2019 oeuvre, it is that it retains a very consistent level of competency throughout, as opposed to the parts funny, parts camp, and parts boring of his multi-sequel inspiring Snake Eater<\/em>. Bad Blood <\/em>has nothing as entertaining as Snake Eater<\/em>\u2019s undercover cop\/botched drug deal opening, complete with metal spike traps coming out of the floor, combined with Lamas\u2019 deliberately fake Hispanic accent and eventually his even more unintentionally phony Cajun drawl. But there are plenty of lulls in Snake Eater<\/em> which can be attributed to the fact that it was directed by a stuntman, George Erschbamer. And so while the 2nd<\/sup> unit and action sequences are top notch, especially for a cheap film, the dramatic and dialogue-heavy scenes had no energy, probably because Erschbamer had no idea or interest in how to handle them. Takacs is a far more accomplished and competent, he started out in B horror films like The Gate <\/em>and I, Madman<\/em>, and so the sloppiness of Bad Blood <\/em>isn\u2019t constantly evident.<\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-00036\"<\/a>That\u2019s not to say that Bad Blood<\/em> is a masterpiece of mediocrity, there are a handful of inadvertent laughs, such as a fight scene where Lamas stabs his opponent with a metal pole that suddenly vibrates at the top as soon it enters his foe\u2019s body, suggesting it\u2019s either rubber or Lamas likes to carry around a pole vault, just in case. In terms of his<\/em> pole, Lamas\u2019 stripper girlfriend, Lindee, asks him \u201cshould I get my breasts done?\u201d And less than a minute later, when she gets to show off her natural gifts, it turns out that she had the fastest implant surgery in history. Lindee doesn\u2019t make much sense as a character anyway; she\u2019s just a conduit for the bad guy, played by the heavily diminutive former martial arts master, Joe Son, to figure out where Lamas is hiding out. Lindee betrays Lamas because she thinks he\u2019s sleeping with an ex, Rhonda*, who is actually now with his brother, Franklin, a wimpy money launderer who has only caused legal problems for his family. Franklin\u2019s trouble with mobster bankers** is the excuse for Lamas to fight and there are a handful of over-the-top creative moments, such as a scene where he does a back flip over<\/em> a speeding car in order to avoid impact. Clearly a spring loaded device was used, but it\u2019s so out-of-place with the rest of the earthbound set pieces of shootouts and hand to hand combat that it\u2019s amusing. It\u2019s also a hint as to where Takacs thought would be a good source of theft, as the car stunt is very similar to one in John Woo\u2019s 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, Hard Target<\/em>, and most of the other action is shot in slow-motion and\/or using a tuck and roll or props to fire guns sideways.<\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-00038\"<\/a> It\u2019s not the gunfights or the action choreography that are the highlights of Bad Blood, <\/em>it\u2019s Lamas, with his occasional southern accent, and Son, who is very creepy and funny, especially in a confrontation scene between the two that involves words instead of weapons. As Lamas says to Son, \u201cyou look like a man who treasures his private parts,\u201d and you realize that it\u2019s true because Son is so <\/em>short and stocky, private parts are all he has. And while the movie ends with them fighting in a steam and flame factory, on a catwalk, with lots of random explosions, it\u2019s really the juxtaposition of this stumpy Asian man versus Lamas, the tall, chiseled lone wolf with a ponytail, which makes it work.<\/p>\n

* She\u2019s the only other female character in Bad Blood, <\/em>meaning she\u2019s also a manipulative, scheming two-timer (the choices females are given in the movie are either vamp or tramp). The only saint in the movie is Lamas, an ex-cop who took the fall and did time for his brother.<\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-00043\"<\/a> ** There\u2019s a weird, illogical plot turn where Franklin dumps the money out of a satchel and throws it in a box in an abandoned warehouse. It\u2019s not clear why he does this, if he intends to go back and get it, or if he wants to screw over his brother and make Lamas think he\u2019s carrying the money and can give it back to the gangsters. Lamas and Rhonda discover the satchel only has newspapers in it (the money is later burned by homeless people to help them start a warm fire, they didn\u2019t even know there was money in the box) and you think this will amount to some major obstacle. But it doesn\u2019t end up mattering at all, since Son and his gang never even get to the point of exchanging the money for Franklin and Rhonda\u2019s lives (they\u2019ve been kidnapped). There\u2019s no epilogue dealing with the money either, and so it\u2019s a strange choice for Takacs to make sure we understand that the money is burned up, since it would serve as much purpose in the story if it were actually<\/em> newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That NC-17 rating sure is tantalizing. It will draw you into watching the most routine and uninteresting films. What could the ratings board have objected to so strenuously as to mark a film unacceptable for anyone but adults? Why are movies like the relatively tame Bank Robber or Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde voted verboten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1863,5188,4619,5532,5542,5549,1242,5546,5059,818,497,5536,1017,1814,5541,2446,4084,4624,5552,535,5550,242,208,1640,5538,3289,5530,1013,2660,5548,4600,972,96,5534,309,5539,5543,310,5189,246,4623,5547,276,5535,5545,2657,5537,5022,5540,5544,5551,2778,5533,2661,5531],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}