This lurid Canadian plasma of sex and bodily fluids poaches on the territory of countryman David Cronenberg, with anemic returns.
Maverick biomedical scientist Owen Urban (Andrew Stevens) is recruited to work at the high-tech Life Reach Foundation, whose wealthy director John Alcore (Christopher Plummer) seeks to contain a mysterious viral outbreak. The virus, it seems, has turned afflicted staff members into something very
much like traditional vampires (though without the benefit of fangs, the voracious bloodsuckers wield razor blades and syringes to get their hemoglobin fixes). Urban works closely with, and eventually falls for, Paula (Heather Thomas), a volunteer at the clinic who turns out to suffer from the
malady and prowls the discos at night for victims. Urban discovers the virus, a by-product of an attempted AIDS vaccine, has also turned Alcore into a blood predator. Alcore compares the condition to diabetes, but far from wanting to be cured, has Urban concoct an insulin-like treatment that will
tame its Jekyll-Hyde side effects while letting Alcore enjoy vampire-like longevity. While Alcore gets exactly what he wants, Urban succeeds in restoring Paula to full humanity.
With a pulsating soundtrack, sterile lab environments and mutant's eye-view conveyed by New Zealand director David Blyth, this shares some traits with Cronenberg's THE BROOD (1979) and SCANNERS (1980), among others, but remains more pedestrian, taking resonant imagery of disease, transformation,
and insanity as a low road to cheap gore and erotica. Heather Thomas metamorphosing into a bloodlusty punkette is particularly hard to take; she looks more like a dance-club denizen than a daughter of darkness, and her knife-fondling romantic interludes with Stevens are like fevered music videos.
Plummer's commanding presence gives the enterprise a shot of class, but it needed a massive transfusion. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment
