Kristanna Loken | Through the Shattered Lens

In 18th century Romania, Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a vampire/human hybrid who is being forced to work in a freakshow by Leonid (Meat Loaf). After Rayne escapes, she meets a fortune teller (Geraldine Chaplin) who informs her that her father is the feared king of the vampires, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), and that he raped her mother. Rayne teams up with a group of vampire hunters (Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen) and sets out to destroy her father once and for all.

BloodRayne is perhaps not the worst film ever made about a vampire/human hybrid in Romania but it’s also nowhere near the best. Instead, it’s another one of Uwe Boll’s cheap-looking video game adaptations where a group of talented actors slum it as action stars. (Michael Pare, Udo Kier, and Billy Zane also appear in the movie.) The movie is full of bad wigs and big swords. Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez are neither convincing as Russians or people who lived in the 18th Century. Geraldine Chaplin tries to keep things interesting, Ben Kingsley doesn’t. Kristanna Loken is actually a good choice for Rayne, in that she’s hot and she’s convincing in the action scenes. This is an easy film to laugh at but it features enough blood and nudity to keep its target audience happy. Don’t try to follow the plot, though. You’ll get a headache.

While we were watching the movie last night, Lisa suggested that Ben Kingsley was using his Gandhi Oscar as a stake. Now that would have been something worth seeing!

One of the first rules of moving to a new place, avoid any location that has a potentially ironic name.

Seriously, don’t live near a virgin spring. Don’t move into the house at the end of Charity Drive. Avoid Peaceful Meadows at all costs. Happy Street? Don’t even think about it. And Purity Falls?

Listen, there’s no way that moving to a town called Purity Falls is a good idea.

Still, that’s what Nicole and her children do in the Lifetime film, The Madam of Purity Falls. The recently widowed Nicole (Kristanna Loken) even gets a job as the guidance counselor at Purity Falls High School! Since the family is still struggling to come to terms with the death of Nicole’s husband and the children’s father, the hope is that a new home can help them move on. Younger sister Justine (Sloane Avery) is willing to give it a try. But older brother Jason (Trevor Stines) is resistant from the beginning. Even meeting and befriending Chad (Jonathan Bouvier) doesn’t seem to help with Jason’s angst. Of course, Chad is soon found floating in a swimming pool, dead. Can you believe such a thing could happen in Purity Falls?

Trying to adjust to a new school, Jason joins the wrestling team and even meets a girl who seems to like him. But how can Jason go on a date when he doesn’t have a car!? And how can he get a car if he doesn’t have any money!? Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t his new neighbor, Courtney (Olivia d’Abo), mention that she had some odd jobs that she needed done around the house and that she would be willing to pay him to do them? At first, Jason is reluctant to work for Courtney but one of his fellow wrestling teammates assures him that working for Courtney will be the greatest experience of his life.

Courtney has a nice big house and a lucrative job selling organic cosmetics. Everyone in Purity Falls seems to know her. She puts Jason right to work, paying him for landscaping and sex. Realizing that there’s a lot of money to be made from being a suburban prostitute, Jason agrees to become one of Courtney’s “boys.” Soon, he’s sleeping with almost every frustrated housewife in Purity Falls, making all sorts of money, and getting into all sorts of danger!

Of course, Nicole is curious as to why her son keeps sneaking out of the house and then staying out for so long. And some of Jason’s clients are into some things that make Jason uneasy. And, of course, there’s the fact that people are dying. Hmmmm …. being a suburban prostitute might not be as easy as it looks! But is Jason already in too deep to escape his new life?

The Madam of Purity Falls is an enjoyably over-the-top in execution as it is in its name. This is one of those films where everyone lives in a nice, big house and they’ve all got nice, big secrets to hide. Don’t take the film too seriously. Just enjoy it for the melodrama and the sex and for Olivia d’Abo’s enjoyably villainous turn as the Madam of Purity Falls.