Red Blooded American Girl (1990)

When compared to the 70's and 80's, the 90's is often looked down upon as a slow or “down” time for genre films, particularly horror when in fact the decade saw more than its fair share of highly original horror films that followed little to no trends. One subgenre that had new life breathed into it (pun very much intended) throughout the decade was the vampire film, with many filmmakers finding different and clever ways to update the classic bloodsucker lore with 90's sensibilities. Films like The Reflecting Skin (1991), John Landis' comedic mobster vampire hybrid Innocent Blood (1992), Michael Almereyda's David Lynch backed Nadja (1994), essentially a 90's take on Dracula's Daughter (1936), Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995) which took a philosophical approach to vamprism as well as using the affliction as a metaphor for drug dependence, Larry Fessenden's Habit (1997) and John Carpenters' action packed neo-western tinged Vampires (1998) all bringing fresh ideas to one of the genre's most classic monsters. Over in New Zealand, master transgressor David Blyth even tried his hand at a more family friendly vampire film with My Grandpa is a Vampire (1992) starring Al Lewis of The Munsters fame but it was the film Blyth helmed two years prior, Red Blooded American Girl, that took a more series, adult and almost science fiction approach to vampires, resulting in one of the most original 90's vampyric offerings.

Owen Urban, a drug designer prone to experimenting on himself is propositioned by Dr. John Alcore (Christopher Plummer), the head of the mysterious Life Research Foundation to work for him under the guise of researching blood-born diseases. While touring the facilities, Owen meets and immediately falls for Paula, a research volunteer who soon quits and warns Owen that not all is as it seems at the clinic. Not entirely convinced, Owen takes Paula along to snoop around the clinic where Paula is bitten by a bloodthirsty patient and Owen soon discovers Alcore is in fact a vampire, searching for a cure through blood research. Paula, now infected, soon escapes the clinic forcing Owen to rush to not only find her before she infects anyone else but to find a cure for the vampyric viris.

Although Red Blooded American Girl belongs to a different subgenre than Death Warmed Up (1984), Blyth's initial claim to horror fame, the film nonetheless feels like the appropriate film Blyth would follow Death Warmed Up within the genre. Much like Death Warmed Up, there is a touch of cross subgenre pollination to Red Blooded American Girl, with both films having one foot somewhat planted in the mad scientist realm of sci-fi, with a good chuck of both films taking place inside the clinics of both films respective scientist characters and it's science gone wrong that provides the springboards for both narratives. All the scenes taking place within the Life Research Foundation in Red Blooded American Girl give the film a cold, strange, almost hermetically sealed off atmosphere just as Dr. Archer's clinic in Death Warmed Up did and it's impossible not to make comparisons to David Cronenberg, Rabid (1977) especially given the element of disease in the story. The films vampires also display symptoms of something akin to opiate withdrawal and it's important to note that the film predates Ferrara's aforementioned The Addiction by five years. Blyth directs in his typically stylistic fashion, the film at times has the aesthetic of the type of erotic thriller that was beginning to become very popular around the time and Blyth even employs some strategically placed humor by way of witty one liners delivered by Heather Thomas as Paula and there's a particularly funny scene involving Paula feeding her urges in a gym that's quite memorable.

Curiously, despite the title of “Red Blooded American Girl” and the emphasis of the American flag on most video releases, the film was actually financed and shot in Canada. While giving a career retrospective interview on the Never Repeats podcast, Blyth said of the film “It was a situation where I had a lot less control and it wasn't my script, it was a script by Allan Moyle and it was a wonderful opportunity to work with Christopher Plummer and that had a sort of real budget as in about a million.” Blyth also admitted that his originally intended ending was drastically different from the one that ended up being used in the film, a situation Blyth would once again find himself in a few years later with Hot Blooded (1997), another film Blyth shot in Canada for the same producer who for some odd reason felt should be marketed as a squeal and was even confusingly released in some territories as “Red Blooded American Girl II” or simply “Red Blooded II” despite having nothing to do with vampires. Released direct to video, Red Blooded American Girl has made it to DVD, released on its own and in multi-film set grouped together with three other films and no matter which is the preferred purchase it's a worthy one to make as the film is great example of a unique 90's take on vampires.

Death Warmed Up (1984)

AKA Death Warmed Over

New Zealand has a pretty interesting pedigree when it comes to horror films. In recent years the island nation has become a hotbed of horror/comedy hybrids with the success of films like What We Do in the Shadows (2014), Housebound (2014) and Deathgasm (2015), all gaining major worldwide film festival accolades. Of course there are other types of Kiwi horror to win international praise such as the serial killer themed The Ugly (1997), which won several awards abroad. Naturally the early films of Peter Jackson immediately spring to mind as films like Bad Taste (1987) and Dead Alive/Braindead (1992) are often the very first titles many think of whenever New Zealand is mentioned within the context of horror films, but just as he was the first in line to put New Zealand on the map as it relates to cult films in general, it was David Blyth who beat everyone to the punch in delivering New Zealand's first homegrown horror film and over the years has proven himself to be the king of transgressive Kiwi horror with more recent films like Wound (2010) and Ghost Bride (2013) being worlds removed from the lighter, more comedic films that the countries horror films have become synonymous with. It all began however in 1984 with Death Warmed Up, a landmark film that served as an unforgettable introduction for Blyth and New Zealand to the horror world.

Michael Tucker, the teenage son of scientist is injected with a serum by Dr. Archer Howell, effectively brainwashing him after Michael's father, a college of Howell's, confronted Howell about his radical brain experiments, Howell's end goal being immortality. Under Howell's control, Michael is ordered to murder both his parents and is sentenced to an asylum. Seven years later, Michael is released and sets out for revenge, taking along a group of friends to a remote island where Howell has been continuing his experiments. An unfortunate encounter with Spider, a henchman of Howell's sets off a chain of events with Spider pursuing Michael and his friends across the island, unleashing a group of Howell's zombied test subjects who wreak havoc on the island and ultimately Howell's clinic.

One of the most inventive and stylish horror films of the 80's, in a lot of ways Death Warmed Up could be seen as a deranged concoction of various horror subgenres all rolled up into one, the end result being something wholly original and Blythian. It's a film that works on a multitude of levels. The first and perhaps most obvious way to read the film would be as a revenge film and on that front it works for the obvious reasons, Michael's quest for revenge against Dr. Howell being engaging enough. The character of Dr. Howell gives the film a science fiction bend and also puts the film into the classic mad scientist subgenre but Blyth takes that a step further with the end results of Howell's experiments. While not “zombies” in the classic sense, the horde of test subjects unleashed later in the the film exhibit enough zombie-like symptoms to place the film into its own unique corner of the zombie subgenre. Howell's clinic and a good portion of the island give the film a very Cronenbergian feel in the vein of Shivers (1975) and Blyth's penchant for kink makes an appearance with Howell's nurses sporting very fetishistic mesh surgical masks. The film also exhibits certain aspects of the teen slasher craze that was hot at the time and Blyth doesn't hold back on the gore either with the films final third containing several displays of blood splatter and a few gruesome brain surgeries are seen up close throughout the film.

The film won the grand prize at the 1984 Paris International Festival of Fantasy and Science Fiction Film where it made a fan out of jury president Alejandro Jodorowsky who gleefully said of the film “It would not be an exaggeration to say that Death Warmed Up has been the shock event of this Festival. It is an apocalypse of slaughter!” The films history on home video is a pretty interesting one. As the story goes, due to a mishap from an intern at the New Zealand Film Commission, the can containing the original film elements ended up being burned and rumors of a print stashed away somewhere in a vault in Los Angeles led to dead ends. The film did become a VHS favorite, however due to censorship several releases were cut and Blyth himself has admitted to spending years haunting video stores and second hand shops snatching up used VHS copies, looking for the best looking tapes in order to splice together a complete, uncut version. Many budget, unofficial DVD's have been released internationally as well. Finally in 2018 the film was restored by the New Zealand Film Commission and hopefully finds itself a new audience as not only is Death Warmed Up one of the finest examples of what made the 80's such a great decade for horror, but given its history, it's an incredibly important film for the genre.