Grab your popcorn and two liter bottles of Hawaiian Punch, because it's time for

(New Line Pictures release, directed by Stephen Norrington)

Oh boy... Blade! Well, let's state right up front that this movie has a great deal of flying red chunky gooey computer graphics and hence so will this gallery / review / rant, so be prepared. Mommy, Daddy, take your kids and lock them in a closet until they're 18. Done? Good. We're starting.

Blade ranks a seventy four on the Cool-o-Meter(TM). It's just that bad. And that's bad in the good sense of the word, because it's got all the staples of the badass American action flick -- gratuitous use of a word similar to 'fork', copious amounts of mass destruction, people exploding into ketchup gysers, and large men in black trenchcoats who can only PROPERLY deal out pain while wearing black sunglasses. This is a six foot cheeseburger erection with a hotloaded magnum .44 on top. And to add onto that, we also have a large amount of goth posers with pasty white flesh and snippy attitudes to kick around! And they EXPLODE! You can't ASK for a better combination.

Of course, the pacing's totally off, giving us a nicely wild opening, a long stretch of very little interesting activity and one helluva ending. Plus, there are a few plot conveniences, and some really glossed over vampire lore and a few special effects that look like they walked out of Ed Boon's workshop, but we can look past that and see... the MOTHER of all B movies. I'm so hyped that I may need to change my pants, so let's get right down to it. (Any image with a red border can be clicked to get a high quality JPG nine times the size of god.)

I'm sorry, but I just can't see this logo any more without thinking... "MOOORTALL COMBAAAAAAAT!!!!!". See, New Line did the Mortal Kombat movie too (another low intelligence, high on cool buttkicker) and when the logo was flying on screen, they had that Sega guy screaming the title at the top of his cranium. We knew right then that this would clearly be a movie of subtle themes and effectations. On a side note, it's nice to see the blue New Line logo turned into an evil red logo of bloody death. Gets you right there. We'll see this sort of thing again when we review Dark City, where everything that was red in this movie is suddenly green.

Who are these so-called imaginary forces, and are they a threat to our way of life? The Illuminati isn't just for breakfast anymore, people, it's REAL, and it's IN OUR FACE, and it's going to TAKE AWAY OUR LAWNMOWERS and MOLEST OUR HOUSEPETS! Fight the power! Defeat the unseen menace! Roswell! ROSWELL! ...anyway, let's move on.

You know it's a bleak near-future when Apollo Smile goes bad. Still, attending all night raves while gyrating in strobe lights with questionably bisexual vampires in the latest threads from The Gap has to have some benefits. I think the only problem might be accidentally impaling yourself on one of the many meathooks that hang around your local discotheque, but hey, you're a vampire. Don't complain or we'll stake you on general principles.

Here we see our MASTER VILLIAN, the diabolically hip Frost, as he glides right by the camera. Of course, the first shot he's in has to be cool -- otherwise, the audience won't laugh at his comic relief or cheer him on whenever the hero's not around. Ergo, here he goes, swooping by, all menacing and stuff. Of course, we don't see him again until the third reel, so presumably he was just in the club to spook the audience and flee before Blade starts tearing the place to itty bitty pieces. Smart man. We need more villians with that kind of self-preservational instinct.

Bloodbath! Again, proving the subtle visual connection between thematic elements, what is declared to be a 'bloodbath' is in actuality a blood SHOWER. What cunning deception! Indeed, in this disco inferno, the ceilings spray all those fun-loving vampires down in O-positive -- a plain, domestic sort of blood as compared to the more rare types that only one in a million donors match, but hey, this stuff isn't cheap. The DJ who's trying to be that dude from Orbital with funky lights on his head is actually Edge of 'The Brood', a team of gothic vampire warriors in the World Wrestling Federation. In fact, they frequently give their opponents bloodbaths. Of course, I could just be infering a link where none exists, but shove off, it's my universe and I like to keep it fun.

...proceed on to Part II, "Blade Whuppin' Ass."