Nobody's written a review of this for a while, but never mind, so here I go. Got this for £1 second hand in a charity shop. This still represents mediocre value for money. My version was on DVD and has the title 'Hemoglobin' rather than 'Bleeders' or 'The Descendant' as some reviewers here. I've no idea if the different titles have different cuts. The cut I saw was pretty bad. The producers of this must have thought they'd lucked out for a while- the cast's actually quite good (including Rutger Hauer), the location's great- a spooky Canadian Island standing in for New England, and a script by 'Alien' writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusset, borrowing heavily from HP Lovecraft. But the end product is naff.
Where id it all go wrong? Well, the first rule of making a monster movie is make the bloody monsters scary. The second rule is make the bloody monsters scary. You get the idea. Well I saw these monsters and all I could think was 'I could kick their asses'. I'm not some macho meathead- I'm a 34 year-old nerd, but I could still kick those monsters' asses. They're weird inbred troglodytes descended from a family of 17th century aristocratic dutch perverts. They have messed-up faces and eat pickled corpses. They aren't vampires and can easily be harmed and killed by normal, conventional means such as knives, guns and boat propellers. They have strong arms, but move about by shuffling along on their butts because they DON'T HAVE ANY LEGS.
Yep. The 'terrifying' creatures in this movie are all seriously disabled and stalk their victims by walking on their hands and shuffling along on their asses, at a crawling pace. Plus they're deathly afraid of strong light. Their only weapons are small, stubby daggers made out of scraps of bone. The villagers, meanwhile are tooled up with a wide variety of high-powered firearms (that they somehow can't shoot straight) and have access to an endless variety of blades and blunt implements (that they somehow choose not to use).
Seriously. If I was in this movie, I'd have just sat in the lighthouse and shot the freaks one by one as they struggled to climb the stairs. Even if I ran out of ammo, I could just throw heavy objects at them. If I ran out of heavy objects, I could still smack them on the head with a big stick as they butt-shuffled slowly towards me. If they broke the big stick, then I could still kick them in the face before they could reach me. they'd have to bite my foot off before they'd even stand a chance. The average 10-year old could beat up a dozen of these with a bit of effort and imagination.
In short, these poor creatures are actually considerably less threatening than the average dairy cow. They aren't scary monsters, they're just very sick, profoundly disabled adults. Watching this turkey, I felt more sympathy than fear for these unfortunate individuals. They do not make the grade as antagonists of a monster movie.
Sadly, this film isn't quite bad enough to make it an ironic comedy in the vein of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'- or 'The Room'. It's just a bit rubbish.
Where id it all go wrong? Well, the first rule of making a monster movie is make the bloody monsters scary. The second rule is make the bloody monsters scary. You get the idea. Well I saw these monsters and all I could think was 'I could kick their asses'. I'm not some macho meathead- I'm a 34 year-old nerd, but I could still kick those monsters' asses. They're weird inbred troglodytes descended from a family of 17th century aristocratic dutch perverts. They have messed-up faces and eat pickled corpses. They aren't vampires and can easily be harmed and killed by normal, conventional means such as knives, guns and boat propellers. They have strong arms, but move about by shuffling along on their butts because they DON'T HAVE ANY LEGS.
Yep. The 'terrifying' creatures in this movie are all seriously disabled and stalk their victims by walking on their hands and shuffling along on their asses, at a crawling pace. Plus they're deathly afraid of strong light. Their only weapons are small, stubby daggers made out of scraps of bone. The villagers, meanwhile are tooled up with a wide variety of high-powered firearms (that they somehow can't shoot straight) and have access to an endless variety of blades and blunt implements (that they somehow choose not to use).
Seriously. If I was in this movie, I'd have just sat in the lighthouse and shot the freaks one by one as they struggled to climb the stairs. Even if I ran out of ammo, I could just throw heavy objects at them. If I ran out of heavy objects, I could still smack them on the head with a big stick as they butt-shuffled slowly towards me. If they broke the big stick, then I could still kick them in the face before they could reach me. they'd have to bite my foot off before they'd even stand a chance. The average 10-year old could beat up a dozen of these with a bit of effort and imagination.
In short, these poor creatures are actually considerably less threatening than the average dairy cow. They aren't scary monsters, they're just very sick, profoundly disabled adults. Watching this turkey, I felt more sympathy than fear for these unfortunate individuals. They do not make the grade as antagonists of a monster movie.
Sadly, this film isn't quite bad enough to make it an ironic comedy in the vein of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'- or 'The Room'. It's just a bit rubbish.