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Bullets, Fangs, and Dinner at 8
USA 2015
produced by Matthew Rocca, Joe D'Amato (II) (executive), Stacie Kennerly (executive), Jay Rock (executive), Ashley Weidenbach (executive), Leslie Rocca (executive), Vito Rocca (executive), Donato Pompo (executive), Tricia Pompo (executive)
directed by Matthew Rocca
starring Garrett Schweighauser, Eva Rocca, Matthew Rocca, Brian Patrick Butler, Diana Ferrer, Vinnie Pompo, Joe D'Amato (II), Caley Nicholas-Price, Bill Reilly, Annaiah Jones, Tracy J. Paye, Julie Seal, Anthony De La Cruz, Les Valenzuela, Kevin Wertzberger, David Quintero, Robert F. Nixon, Cristina Orozco, Amanda Kelly, Vito Rocca, Hayley Gulizia, Janell O'Meara, Evon Hynes, Dominic Lerma, Michael Parrott, Dairrick Hodges, Sam Sea, Michael Mason, Fatima Pimienta, Rumor Solanine, DeDe Kuddlz, Cassandra Betancourt, Layne Nguyen, Chris Rullie
written by Matthew Rocca, music by T.J. Landry, special makeup effects by Brian Butler
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Vampires are real ... or maybe not. Anyways, of late a cult has
emerged with members being into torturing, drinking human blood, and
opposing the Christian faith wherever possible, which culminates in a
church shooting. Now most of these vampires are "lifestyle"
vampires, not real ones, and most of them are in it for the kick, not
because they are really violent and bloodthirsty persons - but they are
said to have a leader who's an actual vampire, a leader who nobody really
knows ... Michael (Garrett Schweighauser), a seminarist, is part of a
gang of vigilantes specializing in vampire-hunting, and they have found
out the identity of said vampire leader, none other than pastor Steven (Matthew
Rocca), the very priest whose church has been attacked in
that church shooting. Michael's team wants to take down pastor Steven, who
can't stop acting holier than though, during a fundraiser for the families
of the victims of that shooting, but then Michael's team is erradicated,
and he finds himself burdened with Vivian (Eva Rocca), a girl he has saved
from a vampire attack, and who now wants to help him under any
circumstances. And even if she's not very well suited, she helps him steal
Steven's laptop and out of a tight spot when Steven catches them. Presently,
Steven is holding a dinnerparty for his funders while Michael is trying to
find the location of Steven's torture dungeon ... and Vivian learns that
while trying to get to Steven, Michael and his group have tortured and
killed many innocent "lifestyle" vampires, making him no better
than Steven and his gang who have killed many innocent Christians ... During
the dinner party, Steven gets more and more phonecalls about how his
organization is falling apart, and he slowly loses it, which makes his
dinnerparty fall apart as well, while Michael closes in on him, with
Vivian in tow, who doesn't know what to believe anymore - which can only
lead to a very lethal finale ... Now what's really cool about Bullets,
Fangs, and Dinner at 8 is its really cool extended finale, not only
because of its many unexpected twists and turns and gore scenes but
because it also reveals the ambiguity of all of its main characters,
defying audience expectations, up until the very end. And it features a
few tongue-in-cheek scenes too the set-up preceding it unfortunately
misses - and that's one of the problems with the movie as a whole: It
takes itself too seriously. Plus, it spends too much time on its set-up
and thus gets overly convoluted and unnecessarily complex - and unlike the
finale the build-up is disappointingly formulaic and frankly not all that
interesting. That's not saying the movie's a trainwreck, far from it,
there is plenty to entertain genre audiences in there - but it stays a few
feet clear of what it could have been with a tighter script ...
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