Bloody Mallory (2002)

Strong and Moving!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Freshman French feature film director Julian Magnet's "Bloody Mallory" qualifies as campy but colorful supernatural saga. This profane, R-rated chiller about an elite anti-paranormal commando squad of misfits that battles the demoniac forces of evil with special weapons is a lot of goofy fun. The head chick-in-charge is the eponymous heroine who dresses like a cyberpunk slut with her hair dyed red and totes around a huge automatic pistol modified with lots of attachments. The French Ministry of Secret Service employs Mallory (Olivia Bonamy of "Jefferson in Paris") and her paranormal pal. They tool around in a shocking lipstick pink hearse. Accompanying her on this mission is Talking Tina (Thylda Bares of "Amazon"), a mute girl with telepathic powers who can enter the bodies of her opponents; Inspector Durant (Thierry Perkins-Lyautey of "The Code"), the head of this government paranormal commando outfit, and a tall drag queenl, Vena Cava (Jeffrey Ribier of TV's "Highlander") with long nails and platform shoes that have machine guns built into them so she can fire off bursts from either her toes or her heel. They confront demons, zombies, and vampires in this hilarious, but fast-paced piece of nonsense. You can watch it either in its original French language version or in an English dubbed version. The English dubbed version sounds like a Japanese anime movie because everybody speaks perfectly."Bloody Mallory" opens with Mallory's back story. She is shown in a bride's white wedding dress pursuing her handsome groom. Suddenly, he has satanic red eyes and Mallory plunges an ax into him. Somehow, the groom turned into a ghoul and Mallory dispatched him with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, she wound up with some of his tainted blood. She becomes a Laura Croft type in a tight-fitted, slutty-style, red and black ensemble. Mallory and her people are called in after several ghouls assault four nuns in a remote Catholic Church. As it turns out, the nuns have been impregnated and they give birth to slimy ghoul soldiers. Things really come to a head when the ghouls abduct the Pope (Laurent Spielvogel) and heroes have to rescue him. There is one scene straight out of "Star Wars" where our heroes are confined to a room and a heavy wall with studs in it descends from the ceiling and separates them. Initially, the wall closes in to crush Mallory and Father Carras, but Vena Cava reverses the wall so that it comes toward her, Talking Tina, and the Pope. Vena produces a harmless looking lipstick container and it sprout a missile that blasts a hole in the wall for them to escape.Magnet deserves some praise for making this pastiche of fantasy, horror, and actioneer so lightweight and giddy that you cannot help but tolerate it.

lets blend enormous chunks of "Blade", "Vampires", "Buffy", "Vampirella", and every other movie with armed Vampire hunters. But lets also toss in the whole Japanese girl superhero tradition, and slather it all with odd color tinting, and Hair. There is quite a bit of influence from stuff like "Eko Eko Azarak", and "La Blue Girl", but without the extreme sexual touches. And the odd coloring hearkens back to French pop product of the 60's, like the "Fantomas" series. but the kidnapping of the Pope, and his discussions with his rescuers, are almost priceless. Surprisingly for such a derivative project, it's rather fresh, and even occasionally inventive. it will sell more in America, when it gets re-dubbed, and receives a standard hard rock soundtrack. it pulls some unexpected touches more frequently as it goes along, and is quite enjoyable. the "Kill Bill 1" crowd, should just love it.

Just saw this movie at the Russian premiere and was a bit disappointed. I was expected to get a real trash b-movie comedy, but the comedy element was underused. It was voiced by famous Russian presenters which was kind of funny in places, but again that was not really what the director's achievement. The premise was simple enough and they could have used more gore and blood for my liking. Not enough monsters, but my main point is that they didn't make a good use of the music. This movie is crying out for a loud rock soundtrack, but the director, probably, decided to save some extra cash, which is a pity.

Mallory maried a demon she had to kill on her wedding day. Since then she hunts vampires, gouls, succubs and demons of all kinds with her friends, a telepath kid ans a she-male. Well that was not a bad starting point, but, but, but... It's not very well made, it is, for me, the sketch of a future good movie, exactly like "Buffy" - the feature movie - that was really bad but started a brilliant tv-show. You can watch it, but do not expect too much of this b-movie.