“The universe was filled with intelligent life, most of it vampiric.”

Justin’s rating: The enemy can’t kill you if you take out its fangs!

Justin’s review: It greatly amuses me that filmmakers look at outer space, a truly deadly environment with more ways to kill you than you can possibly imagine, and think, “Yeah that’s pretty lethal and all, but what it really needs is a wayward camp counselor with a grudge! And a scheming Irish folk figure! And Roland Emmerich with space helicopters!”

Friends, you don’t have to make up terrors for a story of interstellar survival. Just take scientific facts and apply them… what’s that? You’ve got another idea? Sigh… fine. Give it to me. Seriously? OK, I guess we’re doing space vampires.

The atrociously named Bloodsuckers tries to slam together scifi and horror by saying that when humanity reached the stars, it found that most everything out there was vampires. I mean… that logic is sound. What else would be out there? Swedish Fish? Those are in Sweden!

The makers of this TV movie set themselves up for a mighty fall by describing this as “Star Trek meets Buffy in a Mad Max world.” The reality is that this is “dopiness meets bad CGI in a confusing setting.” It’s the kind of movie where you know that most of the budget was given to ketchup packets and karo syrup.

Because of all of the, y’know, intergalactic vampires trucking around the cosmos, the Vampire Sanitation department — V-SAN — was created to deal with this pesky problem. You’d think that if this was such a gigantic threat, that the military, national guard, and Mrs. Jenkinson’s fourth grade class would be conscripted to fight, but nah, it’s just a handful of colorful yahoos tooling around in a spaceship, staking whatever has pointed fangs.

I may not respect the level of quality here, but there’s something about the mishmash of genres and world building that made Bloodsuckers kind of interesting for a couple minutes. For one thing, apparently there are different types of vampires, more than just your average “suck the blood out of your body” type. That means that each type has to be identified to know just how to kill it. There’s even a worm vampire, why not.

But boy are these filmmakers trying in vain to make this whole deal look cool. Everyone is posing and strutting and spitting out exposition and exclamation in equal measure. The camera shakes around and randomly speeds up and gets in people’s faces while industrial music plays as the last dying gasp of ’90s cool. Sometimes the editor is cutting so frequently that a single gunshot gets eight, nine different viewpoints in rapid succession.

Our crew has all the usual suspects, including the fresh-faced kid who needs everything explained to him (and us), hunky redneck cowboy, tough lady, and a reformed alien vampire serving as their tracker. They seem to have a lot of fun toting around gigantic rifles and metallic stakes while looking for any opportunity to go crazy on a vamp or two.

Early on, the captain — call him “Captain Mal,” I know I did — gets killed and the new guy ends up assuming command to the displeasure of everyone else. They end up unraveling a conspiracy of sorts and chase around a big bad vampire between planets and space stations.

You know what this film wants to be more than anything else? It wants to be Underworld. Everyone thought that movie was hot stuff in 2003, and I can understand the intention to clone it in some way, right down to the “good guy” vampire girl in skintight outfits and industrial techno scoring action scenes. But it’s not good enough to be Underworld. Heck, it can’t even muster up the skill to be Underworld: Blood Wars.

Whatever Bloodsuckers had going with the premise it promptly lost on the awful scream acting and silly, Troma Studios-level of fake gore. Oh, it tries to play tough and drag out Michael Ironside from whatever Guantanamo Bay prison Hollywood stores him between B-movies, but it’s not enough to make this anywhere near passable. It’s so loud, so frantic, and so vapid that it’s a guaranteed headache generator.

Intermission!

• Don’t trust vampires that say they mean you no harm when there is blood running down the wall behind them
• Oh man that industrial music… and wipes as a way to transition scenes
• Running straight up a tree is not cheesy at all. OK, it is a little bit.
• Those are some giant TV dinners
• The filmmakers were obviously enamored with the “V-SAN” abbreviation
• When they all yelled “FIVE BY FIVE!” a part of my soul died
• Vampire hunters do not leave other vampire hunters behind. Except when they do.
• Hey, a pinball machine!
• Hey, a talking vampire worm!