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THE BREED

This kind of plot has gotten awkward in recent decades when played as straight drama whenever one character is made into a spokesperson for an entire real ethnic group, it tends to sound stilted and naïve but the premise still can be perfectly good fun when it's cast in fantasy terms with aliens or mythical creatures, always assuming it's done right. Director Michael Oblowitz and writers Christos N. Gage & Ruth C. Fletcher (with an uncredited assist from Larry Gross of 48 HRS.) have a good time showing various facets of the vampire community and come up with a novel take on the reason for all the mayhem.

Oblowitz soaks the film in the slightly sickly greens and retro-futuristic physical discomfort of Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL and 12 MONKEYS. He does a nice job of creating a sense of unspoken paranoia while the characters never discuss it, we have only to look at their surroundings to understand that the crisis at hand is only one pressure among many.

Woodbine exudes leading-man assurance with an engaging touch of youthful bravado, while Paul puts across a strong sense of a man struggling to maintain decorum while wrestling with profound emotional turmoil; he's at once standoffish and anxious to bond.

The costume design on THE BREED is worthy of special mention, especially the get-ups designed for Bai Ling as a 1,200-year-old seductress. Peter Halasz, as a vampire elder statesman, looks as though he's stepped out of the borderland between folklore and nightmare. The action is vigorous and varied, with enough bloodshed to uphold the film's horror credentials (even if there are virtually no jump scares).

The DVD is two-sided, with letterboxed widescreen on one side and full-screen on the other. Since the shots are staged for the letterbox framing, this is the recommended version. The sound mix is excellent, with wonderful directional effects that come through beautifully in a 5.1 sound system. Characters approaching from behind in the action are first heard in the rears and then move into the mains, while a massive gunfight surrounds us with flying lead. The dialogue track is clear and strong, holding its own amidst plentiful sound effects.

The DVD has the added feature of an audio commentary track from director Oblowitz and actor Paul, which is highly entertaining and not a little subversive. Most commentary tracks are praise fests not this one. "Remember when the producers didn't want us to..." is a familiar refrain; there seem to have been disputes about everything from the accent Paul employed to the hiring of the stunt team to how many takes were permitted on each scene. As the film unspools, the two men cheerfully point out one scene that the producers told Oblowitz he didn't have time to shoot so he left the set and let Paul direct it instead. It's a lively, spiky dialogue, marred only by the fact that the duo tend to interrupt each other so that many stories are left incomplete. For instance, there are a number of references to Paul being dropped on his head during the making of the film, but the circumstances are never fully explained on the commentary - albeit Paul and Oblowitz have both discussed the incident elsewhere. (See CINESCAPE's forthcoming interview with Oblowitz for details.)

Oblowitz cleverly honors all of THE BREED's nods to various genre conventions without letting it turn into camp. The film optically and narratively creates its own screwy, tense little universe, which turns out to be a great place to visit.