The aptly-titled The Bloody Indulgent is a rare thing: a horror musical that stars a former boyband member. Rarer still, the pop starlet in question has had a strong career after quitting the teen idol business. Kevin Richardson, a former member of The Backstreet Boys, plays Burt, a vampire master with a fondness for singing.
As mash-ups go, combining horror movies with musicals tends to make for a surprisingly pleasing combination. The Little Shop of Horrors and Repo! The Genetic Opera are both standout examples of this unusual sub-genre. They’ve even turned the Evil Dead into a musical in the past and it worked very well because the songs are so good. What makes this remarkable is that both musicals and horror stories are very easy to get wrong; make one element too gross or too long and the entire production can be ruined. It’s a fine balance which is hard to achieve. The aptly titled Bloody Indulgent is an example of how not to do it.
The plot, such as it is, involves Burt the vampire over stepping the boundaries of his power and making another vampire on a whim. This new blood swiftly sets out to make his own mistakes as Burt capers off to indulge in his own vices; having sex with and then devouring pretty young women. Burt’s nest of monsters are mostly dissatisfied with their boss and want him dead. He’s also upset some local strippers, who have a ‘stripper-thon’ in order to raise the money to pay for a vampire hunter. It’s that sort of feature.
The movie consists of set pieces strung together with over-acting and a bit of plot. We get a song here and then a bit of burlesque there, followed by some special effect or other. The burlesque is nice enough though it’s nothing special and there’s not enough of it. It also feels tacked on, as if someone in the production is indulging a friend. The effects are also okay, especially for a low budget movie. The plot is crap and doesn’t make sense toward the end, but that’s all right, many cheap horror movies suffer from the same issue. The biggest problem is the songs.
They are badly put together, crude in entirely the wrong places, ridiculously ill thought-out and boring. There is a not a single earworm amongst them and the lyrics are so idiotic and trite that you actively try to forget them. This is quite sad because the performers are mostly giving their best.
For example, Richardson’s performance is superb. His acting and singing skills are very good and he has a lot of presence and power throughout the movie. Sadly, the material he is working with is bloody awful. The music highlights every weakness in the script and the production.
The Bloody Indulgent looked like it was a lot of fun to make, and perhaps the clue is in the title. Others have done much more with much less; this is simply a waste of time, talent and money.
THE BLOODY INDULGENT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: KEN ROHT / STARRING: KEVIN SCOTT RICHARDSON, BRANDON HEITKAMP, BRIAN GASKILL, DIVA ZAPPA, DANIELE WATTS / RELEASE DATE: TBC (UK), SEPTEMBER 29TH (US)
