Eternal (2005)

Title's about right. From what I can tell, this was made in the best (read: worst) traditions of the grindhouse flicks of yore, by which I mean that the film is all tease and very little please. It utilizes one of the sturdiest of naughty-vampire exploitation-film premises (the Elizabeth Bathory legend) in crafting one of the most transparent genre ripoffs in recent memory. It's almost perverse in its obnoxious perfection -- a skinflick with no skin and a goreflick with no gore. (Did Cleanflix get at this or something?) It seems to me that a film about a 400-year-old lesbian vampire who bathes in the blood of young women to keep her youth would have more to offer than endless expository scenes wherein a lunkheaded cop (who wants so badly to be a dimestore Vin Diesel) walks and talks and tries to figure out what the hell is going on and why everyone around him is turning up dead. Is there something oh-so-difficult about the tits 'n' blood approach to filmmaking, or were the directors laboring under the apprehension that their lesbian-vampire movie was about something deeper than lesbian vampires? Jesus, people.

Grade: D-