NINJAS VS VAMPIRES

Well, there's a title that tells you what you're getting ...

The opening titles sequence is brilliantly energetic, set to the thumping metal of SolarIce's "Again to Die" (Stone Sour should sue) while a sexy female is torn apart by a ravenous vampire in the woods at night.

Then we meet Aaron (Jay Saunders), a geek with a certain chic about him. He’s secretly in love with best pal Alex (Devon Marie Burt), but can’t muster the courage to tell her. When he finally does one evening, she flips her wig and Aaron is left thinking his world is about to cave in.

And cave in it does, as moments later the pair are attacked by bloodsuckers. Fortunately for them, a group of nimble-footed ninjas appear on the scene and fight the vampires off.

Afterwards, Alex has no recollection of the trauma. Aaron, however, is obsessed with discovering more about what happened – and begins to fish around the local comic book shop. It’s here that he meets Cole (Cory Okouchi) and discovers that he was one of the ninjas who saved his life.

Winning his trust, Aaron gets to meet the rest of the ninjas – Kyle (Daniel Ross), tame vampire Lily (Carla Okouchi) and Anne (Melissa McConnell) – and learns that they exist to protect the world from vampires.

Which is good news, because it soon becomes apparent that vampire leader Seth (Kurt Skarstedt) plans to gather an elite crew of superior vampires from around the globe in a bid for total domination.

Aaron gets wind of this and vows to help the ninjas in their close combat battles against the fanged ones, if only to protect the vulnerable Alex and hopefully win her heart.

Fun to get sucked into, NINJAS VS VAMPIRES doesn’t even attempt at anything approaching art. It’s as unpretentious as films come, with its aim purely set on giving undemanding fans a good time.

The performances are largely rum, knowingly so, and the dialogue attunes itself to the hammy acting by way of its own ridiculousness. But with a steady supply of action, cheap gore and boobs, the film delivers in all the right areas.

A quick viewing online of the trailer for 2008’s NINJAS VS ZOMBIES illustrates how writer-director Justin Timpane has come on in terms of technical prowess. VAMPIRES is actually well-made when considering the merits of its lighting, editing, camerawork etc.

But, I suspect that these qualities are hardly what are going to matter to people attracted to a title like NINJAS VS VAMPIRES. Happily, the film is cheesy and fast-paced enough to keep up with the beer-soaked party night viewings it seems to have been made for.

The screener disc provided for review presented the film uncut in a very good 16x9 widescreen transfer. Blacks were stable, colours seemed accurate throughout and images were sharp without signs of obvious enhancement.

English 2.0 audio was also an agreeable proposition, offering a mostly well-balanced playback that treated dialogue, the competent sound design and pounding metal soundtrack with equal clarity. Whenever there were occasional dips in the audio, these appeared to be inherent in the low budget recording of the film, and not the disc’s mastering.

There were no menus or extras on the disc provided. The retail disc from Vicious Circle Films is set to include three audio commentary tracks, deleted scenes with optional commentaries, bloopers, a SolarIce music video, "From Zombies to Vampires" featurette, an exclusive sneak peek at the "Ninjas vs ..." comic book series, an alternate ending with optional commentary and a featurette focusing on the film's theatrical premiere.

NINJAS VS VAMPIRES is a well-intended romp of quite enjoyable proportions. Not all of the jokes work, but they are frequent (along with some agreeably splashy gore FX), and the film is being given what seems set to be a sterling DVD release from Vicious Circle Films.

By Stuart Willis