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| A 19th century woman (Eileen Daly) has become one of the undead, becoming a hired killer in modern times. When she starts knocking off part of the elite businessmen, "The Illuminati," who secretly are taking over business and the government, she becomes the target of a Scotland Yard detective (Jonathan Coote) in this British cult classic. ...Read more |
| The real truth about their mysterious adversary--a vampire--would "rip your mind's fragile hinges," the death's-head CEO of a secret society (Christopher Adamson) warns a human henchman. Your mind's fragile hinges have little to fear from this vampire-action-sexploitation hybrid. Director-writer-editor Jake West desperately tricks up his one-man opus in tech glam: sexpot Lilith Silver evolves from 19th-century vampire victim to modern-day hitwoman in black-and-white, color, freeze-frame, fast and slow motion, cartoon FX, overblown Freudian dreams. There are moments: in the James Bond-style credit sequence, Lilith's fanged mouth yawns wide, disgorging a veritable blizzard of razor blades. And in the black-and-white prelude, West's camera looks down on his voluptuous vampire, sprawled on a bed, the only color the scarlet drenching her dress, bloodying her mouth. But "artsy" razzle-dazzle can't distract from Razor Blade Smile's overall failure to arouse horror, lust, humor, or any other redeeming response. First-timer Eileen Daley makes Lilith so soignee and hip it hurts; her femme fatale's couture runs to multizippered, skintight black leather, shades, fur hats; the picture's completed by ebony mane, cheekbones to die for, and an extraordinarily mobile mouth with alarming overbite. Lilith kills time at a vampire/goth bar, shagging lesbian or stud, but what she really lives for are century-long power games played with the love of her life--er, death. This cynical horror flick punctures the very conventions that are the genre's lifeblood: encouraging egregious mugging and milking portentousness from every remark, Smile reduces the primal sex-death themes of authentic vampire fiction to kiss kiss/bang bang/bite bite. --Kathleen Murphy ...Read more |
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