BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2010)

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BloodRayne: The Third ReichStarring Natassia Malthe, Michael Pare, Clint Howard, Brendan Fletcher

Directed by Uwe Boll


It has taken three movies for Uwe Boll’s BloodRayne franchise to finally catch up to where the BloodRayne video games started out in the first place: Nazi Germany. After a needless origin film in the old country and a sojourn to the old west, finally Rayne sinks her fangs and her blades into history’s greatest villains.

I’m of two minds when it comes to BloodRayne: The Third Reich. One mind screams, “Holy crap! That movie was complete gibberish!” The other mind screams, “Holy crap! That movie was complete gibberish – but I was still kind of entertained in a Cannon Films sort of way.” BloodRayne: The Third Reich truly is just a Dudikoff shy of being the BloodRayne flick Golan-Globus would given us back in the day. I hope Uwe Boll considers setting the next BloodRayne movie in the Middle East and has her teaming up with the Delta Force to fight Arab vampire terrorists during the Reagan era.

Natassia Malthe returns for her second go as blade-swinging, daywalking, half-vampire Rayne; and this time she couldn’t even be bothered to dye her hair red for the role. Instead we have a head of dark hair with the tips dyed red, a hairstyle I am fairly certain would look highly out of place in 1940’s Germany. Her whole self looks out of place with the time period. A pale, Eurasian looking woman with red-tipped hair and black fingernail polish, wearing a rather modern looking by Nazi Germany standards trench coat adorned with unusual designs and a very low cut top that displays her heaving bosoms like they’re trying to stage their own Great Escape. Is it any wonder she’s forced to hide out in a brothel?

While Boll may not have been able to get Malthe to fully dye her hair for this threequel, he did somehow convince her to get fully naked. Malthe bares it all in two sex scenes, one of which is girl-on-girl with a prostitute thanking her for saving a fellow harlot from an abusive john as only one can in a whorehouse. I mean, seriously; it goes down (pun intended) so suddenly the dialogue leading into this scene might as well have had the hooker saying to Rayne, “Thanks for the help. How ‘bout I eat your pussy?” No beating around the bush, so to speak.

Both of the sex scenes in this installment manage to be even more out of nowhere than the cell door bang session from the first flick. The finale – I am not making this up – begins with Rayne captured and unconscious in the back of an armored Nazi truck transporting her and local resistance leader Brendan Fletcher, with whom there has been not a smidgen of romantic chemistry with prior; she awakens, they exchange a look, and without saying a word, both proceed to drop trou and play hide the strudel. No thought of escaping; just nookie. I was so disappointed that the other resistance fighters didn’t stage their rescue a few moments sooner so that Rayne and Fletcher would have ended up buck naked in the snow battling Nazis.

BloodRayne: The Third ReichRayne unintentionally turns a Nazi Commandant into a dhampir like herself during the heat of battle. A Nazi doctor gets all giddy at the thought of using her blood to make Hitler immortal. Why exactly they can’t use the Commandant’s blood to make Hitler immortal was kind of lost on me. Not that any of it truly matters in the end since very little between the hacking and slashing and humping and carpet munching matters. A short running time, a breezy pace, and some enjoyable loopiness make it easier to digest.

You know what does matter? Casting Michael Pare as a Nazi! Correction: Michael Pare as a Nazi vampire! Double Correction: Michael Pare as a Nazi vampire that spends much of the movie appearing a tad unsure as to what do with himself post-transformation until the finale when he juices up on Rayne’s blood and starts screaming to the heavens about absolute power as if he were Skeletor on a coke jag.

The Commandant will be so quickly and anti-climactically dispatched in the end I’d dare say Count Duckula would have made a more worthy adversary for Rayne. If this movie is in any way accurate as to the tenacity and intelligence of the Third Reich, I cannot fathom why it took so many years to win that war.

Pare’s German accent vanishes faster than Kevin Costner’s British accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. He clearly speaks with a German accent in his first scene or two and from there either doesn’t bother at all or merely speaks with a slightly stilted inflection meant to make him sound less obviously American.

Boll will see your Michael Pare as a Nazi Commandant turned vampire and raise us Clint Howard as a Nazi mad scientist. Howard, too, forsakes a German accent in favor of doing what I can only describe as a full-fledged Igor voice. Considering this is Clint Howard we’re talking about, I just prefer to imagine this doctor used to be Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant Igor until he got corrective hump surgery and put himself through med school.

While I’m on the subject of voices, I’m sorry to say Natassia Malthe’s chirpy delivery just doesn’t carry the weight of a kickass action heroine. Original BloodRayne Kristanna Loken looked the part and possessed a husky voice that added some needed gravitas to her otherwise flat line readings. The silly aviator hat Malthe wears during many action scenes also detracts from her perceived badassery.

I could never determine from the sound of his voice if Brendan Fletcher’s resistance leader was supposed to be German, British, or American. A little annoying considering there are enough scenes involving his anti-Nazi brigade that the movie could have been cheekily retitled Inglourious Dhampirs.

There is one all-too-brief sequence that almost makes me want to give this sequel a five-star rating. Rayne experiences a daffy nightmare in which she gets the crap beat out of her by a vampire Hitler. She wakes up from this dream screaming in terror. I would have woken up laughing hysterically.


2 1/2 out of 5

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