Bleading Lady (2010, Screener Review) Breaking Glass/Vicious Circle
Director: Ryan Nicholson
Cast: Dan Ellis, Sindy Faraguna, Nathan Durec, Nick Windebank
Breaking Glass Pictures / NTSC Region 1 / Unrated / 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen / Dolby Digital 5.1 & Dolby Digital 2.0 / 75 minutes / PURCHASE FROM TLACULT.COM
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The only rule for low-budget, indie horror films should be this; DON’T BE BORING! There are many ways to be keep me entertained, the easiest is to include tits, ass, violence and gore in your film. Hell, if you want throw some muff in there too, go to it… but that’s optional. Be campy, funny, over-the-top, that’s what makes horror awesome and Hollywood seems to have forgotten that for the most part (although they are getting a bit better as of late). Can a filmmaker fuck even that simple rule up? Sure, it happens all of the time. Indie directors and writers sometimes take themselves too seriously and they try and make a “politically correct” film in hopes of catching some big studio’s eye.
No one can ever accuse Ryan Nicholson of being boring or playing it safe. He is a throwback to the days when horror was taboo and fucking in your face. That is a good and bad thing. Sometimes with all of the gratuitousness flying about, the story, acting and pacing can suffer. With his new film Bleading Lady –formerly Star Vehicle, a much better title in my opinion– Nicholson rides that line of demarcation, sometimes landing on one side or the other. I also believe that low-budget horror should keep things simple and he does by taking the slasher/thriller template and adding in a little ironic nods to the genre, think Wes Craven’s Scream.
Cardini is a driver (get it, CARdini) who shuttles the talent to and fro from the film set to the hotel. One of his new clients is his favorite Scream Queen, Riversa Red with whom he quickly becomes attached. He is already a rude asshole with an attitude problem, now he becomes obsessed with protecting Riversa and he only uses violence to make his point. The young, artistic director with lofty aspirations quickly gets on Cardini’s shit list when he questions the driver’s knowledge of Miss Red. So the story goes that after a short courtship period, Cardini begins to lose what little control he had and he begins picking off everyone, sometimes making them kill each other. He will not be happy until the lovely Riversa Red knows how much he loves her. But how far will he take it?
As you can see, Nicholson doesn’t complicate the goings on with too much fluff. There is the occasional talky bit that tries to show the relationship between Cardini and Riversa and him spouting his philosophy on “the good old days” of horror, etc. but it only slows the pace a little. For the most part the “movie behind the movie” thing works as an awesome set-piece, often getting twice the blood and gore since both movies are horror. And there is tons of that to go around. Nicholson sprays blood all over the place with some awesome kills — my favorite being a crowbar fish-hooking, OUCH! — and he lets some tits fly, small as they may have been. And yes, he even throws in a muff… full-frontal, baby!
The occasional “why the fuck didn’t they fight back” and nonsense like that pops up and I wondered why “Nicholson, the writer” didn’t tighten up the script. But he is a very visual director and the story comes second. That is not a knock so much as a hope that one day his writing matures to where his effects and sense of aesthetic sickness is now. You will see the reverse end-around climax coming 15 minutes into the movie. The acting was pretty standard fare for a “B Movie”, pretty wooden but acceptable. I did have a problem with Dan Ellis as “Cardini” because he wasn’t very imposing and there was no inflection in his delivery at all. Maybe he was supposed to be sort of monotone and “psycho” but it didn’t work for me. Sindy Faraguna as “Riversa” was pretty decent as the famous screamer, which she did very well and she is smoking hot.
In all, I had fun watching Bleading Lady because the action kept moving for the most part and I was never bored. Ryan seems to enjoy what he does and even though this isn’t as sick as his other flicks –like my favorite Gutterballs– it does have appeal to horror fans: blood and tits.
