Where are Bram Stoker or Bela Lugosi when you Need Them?

Rating: 4/10 (12 April 2006)

If a bad film were a misbehaving pet that had just piddled on that expensive hardwood floor you just waxed to spotless perfection, the ensuing yell of disapproval would have to be: "Bad! Bad movie!" This is pretty much the feeling I had in watching UNDERWORLD, a movie who was there because it existed in a list of films, positioned next to be shipped to my humble abode in Jersey City, and one whom I was loathe to watch.
There is a fine line between a bad movie that is a hoot to watch and a bad movie that accelerates bowel movement and/or brings forth severe mental decay. I wondered if it would be better to have tapeworm cysts swelling inside my brain and giving me convulsions and glimmers of beautiful, prismatic light like Saul on his way to Damascus. At least that pain and horror would have a happy ending -- my death, or my health restored at the hands of medics -- but this was unbearable.
However, before watching this wreck, I thought, "Anne Rice: eat your heart out!" Then I quickly thought (and thus corrected myself), "Oh. Right. She's found Christ now -- she doesn't engage in such evil, dehumanizing stories of the 'underworld' but tells happy tales of Christ as he was in life and wants us to embrace them. Now, if she'd only renege on the royalty checks she cashes in due to her globally famous Lestat stories I'd believe her total denial and repentance of such demoralizing wickedness...." Had I not run into such hasty conclusions! Even when the movie is rife in metallic colors which apply themselves quite well in conveying Gothic gloom, the movie is so chaotic I can't begin to even compare it with Rice's potboilers about vampires. At least she took the time to make me root for her characters even though the stories themselves were ridiculous. What this is, is a convoluted, uninteresting mess that happens to go on for two eternal hours.
So let's see. There's a lot of stuff happening during the start of UNDERWORLD, a shoot-'em-out sequence closer to a John Woo movie than horror, vampires at war with werewolves (for what purpose? Is this a thinly disguised story of racial intolerance?), a human caught in the middle who is really more of a non-entity, a love story, cartoonish special effects, equally cartoonish action, flat dialog, heavy metal music, not a shred of character build-up, the presence of a black bodybuilder (whose already artificially low voice makes Hulk Hogan's sound like a squeak) who is prone to flexing his chest muscles instead of his acting muscles, Kate Beckinsale (reason enough not to go see a film in which she appears), some mumbo-jumbo about the origins of such animosity between vamps and werewolves... basically, enough to make you mentally sign a check releasing any responsibility in caring for the plot, popping the DVD out of your recorder, call a priest, and hope for a clean exorcism on your entertainment center. Which, minus calling a priest -- against my convictions -- is exactly what I did because I couldn't take it anymore and I'll enjoy bad movies anytime providing they give me some reason to watch and enjoy them, like FROGS, for example. But not this one -- this demanded action instead of sitting there and sitting there and sitting there. Once action was taken, my mind was restored to its former, unpolluted serenity. Until the next bad, unwatchable movie, that is.