DVD Reviews

Blood Creek – DVD Review

By Frankie Dees Jan 25, 2010, 15:18 GMT

In 1936, the Wollners, a German family living in Town Creek, West Virginia, are contacted by the Third Reich to host a visiting scholar. In need of money, they accept Professor Ricard Wirth into their home, unaware of the Third Reich\'s practices in the occult or Wirth\'s real mission, which will keep the family bound for decades to come. Now, in 2007, after mysteriously disappearing two years ago near Town ...more

What looks like your usual straight-to-video horror schlock fare, ‘Blood Creek’ actually has a little pedigree behind it in that it was directed by hit-and-miss Hollywood stalwart Joel Schumacher - who seemingly wanted to get back to his ‘Lost Boys’ roots but falls short. 

There has to be a really interesting story on the behind the scenes of this pic as just one film ago, Schumacher was directing the big-budget ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ pic and now this clunky little horror pic?

Granted, this isn’t as terrible as his ‘Batman & Robin’ (or as scary for that matter), but I can’t help but think that the studio and filmmakers had higher hopes for what was originally known as ‘Town Creek’ and then pulled the plug on an expensive theatrical release when the horrible test screening numbers came back.

The film starts off with an unsettling black and white flashback. It’s 1936 and a German family who has made a life for themselves in America with a farm receives a letter from the Third Reich asking if they can send a scholar to their farm to study what they believe to be a supernatural Nordic runestone.

As referenced in any number of genre pics, Hitler was fascinated by the occult where it was thought he believed these runestones held the key to immortality. 

Who shows up at the farmers’ door is Professor Richard Wirth (Michael Fassbinder who played the English soldier masquerading as a German in ‘Inglourious Basterds’) and the farmers soon realize they made a grave mistake.

We cut to the present day and meet a EMT worker Evan Marshall (Henry Cavill) still nursing the pain of the disappearance of his brother, Victor (Dominic Purcell), who disappeared two years earlier when the two went camping down on town creek. 

Suddenly one night, a frenzied, unshaven Victor shows up at the side of Evan’s bed and asks him to gather weapons and to meet at their old camping spot. Giving no answers to Evan’s questioning, Victor escorts Evan to an ancient farmhouse, the same we saw in the prologue, where Victor wants Evan to help in taking the family hostage and getting retribution for his two years of being kept prisoner and being tortured. 

You see, Hitler really was on to something and Wirth has been using the power of the Runestone to feed off the blood of living so he could make the crossover into a three-eyed immortal demon (yes, really) and Wirth has been keeping the very same German family alive all these years to trap and keep his victims hostage. 

So Victor and Evan get a little more than they bargained for when they set Wirth loose (kept under somewhat control by the German family with ancient protective Nordic symbols) and have to hole up in the farmhouse with what’s left of the German family while Wirth terrorizes outside.

This all isn’t quite as silly as it sounds but it’s close - particularly when Wirth, having the ability to bring animals and people back from the dead, kills and then commands some horses to storm the house in a flurry of hoofs, teeth and bad effects. 

The make-up effects of the mutated zombie-like creature that Wirth transformed into over the years is actually really well done, basically all the practical effects are quite good but obviously the budget was cut short of CGI completion as the horse sequence is laughably bad as is the majority of the clunky dialogue.

The script was badly in need of a rewrite. And while Fassbinder does a menacing job in the prologue, our two clunky leads offer zero charisma chiefly Cavill who seems completely lost in the film, as an actor, not as the character. 

The film is presented in anamorphic 2.35 widescreen with a 5.1 Dolby Digital Track. The lone special feature is a feature-length aud commentary with director Joel Schumacher that’s actually quite informative as far as the history of the Nazi’s fascination with the occult. It just cements the fact that the film had a great idea but completely fell off the rails somewhere along the way. 

The opening prologue is definitely the work of an experienced filmmaker but it’s as if a completely different filmmaker took over when the film moved to present day. There’s some okay gore and a great idea, but I can’t see how this pic is anything but an embarrassing misfire for Schumacher.

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