RAZOR BLADE SMILE (1998)
By Chris Ward

Every so often, a movie appears that, although far from perfect, seemingly captures a mood, a scene or even just a vibe that makes it stand out from the rest of the pack. Although ‘Razor Blade Smile’ may appear to be just a low-budget British vampire flick that hardly breaks any new ground, there is a spirit – an enthusiasm – throughout it’s running time that makes it just so compelling and fun.

The story begins in the 19th century, where a duel is about to take place between Sethane Blake (Christopher Adamson) and an unnamed adversary. Lilith Silver (Eileen Daly) attempts to stop the duel, but is too late as Blake has already won. Picking up the dead man’s pistol she shoots Blake, but then gets shot herself by Blake’s assistant. It turns out Blake is a vampire and he offers a dying Lilith the chance for eternal life by biting her and making her feed on the blood of the man he shot.

Fast forward to the present day, where Lilith has become a leather-clad assassin, known as The Angel of Death, and is currently under the employment of her sometime lover, known only as Platinum (Kevin Howarth), who is also working for a mysterious employer. Her current mission is to eliminate the members of a mysterious group known as the Illuminati, and take their membership rings from their fingers as a trophy. But during her latest operation, Lilith is distracted and loses the ring after making the kill. While this is going on, the Illuminati have met to set about bringing The Angel of Death’s downfall. Unbeknown to Lilith, the group are spearheaded by Blake, who leaves it to the cretinous Detective Inspector Price (Jonathan Coote) to find out who is killing their members. Price has deducted that it is the work of a vampire, but trying to prove the existence of the undead in modern-day London is a bit of a task – especially when there are so many vampire fetish clubs around!

Soon after, Lilith receives a video showing Platinum being tortured and threatened with death unless she returns her £250,000 fee. Lilith knows it is a trap, but her feelings for platinum force her to go to the meeting place, where she comes face-to-face with her extortioner’s goons, and a rather pleased-with-himself Blake, who offers Lilith a choice and reveals the truth behind the cat-and-mouse games!

Overall, ‘RBS’ is a high-octane vampire romp in the spirit of the early Hammer movies, but with a modern setting and a healthy dose of humour, although there is a lot wrong with it. The acting is fairly diabolical, especially Adamson and Daly’s abilities to deliver convincing lines, but as the script isn’t brilliant and they both look the part, this can be forgiven. Jonathan Coote as Price is fairly amusing in his attempts to convince his superiors of his intuition about vampires, as is Grahame Wood as the photographer hired by Price to photograph the inhabitants of the Transilvania nightclub, but all the other characters seem to play it completely straight, which goes somewhat against the slightly kooky feel of some of the action.

But the action is plentiful. Although she may not be convincing with the dialogue, Daly certainly makes up for it with her physical performance as the high-kicking Lilith, and as such, her screen presence is fairly huge. The pacing of this movie is fantastic, thanks to some lightening-quick editing and some wonderful camera angles, evoking a semi-comic book style that brings to mind the 1960’s ‘Batman’ series. In an era when decent horror movies were few and far between, ‘RBS’ offers a not-wholly original, but still fresh take on the vampire legend.
If low-budget horror movies aren’t your thing, then this probably won’t convince you otherwise. But look beyond the bad acting and crude script and there really are some wonderful moments here – the action plays out like an early version of the fight sequences in ‘The Matrix’, the scenes shot in the Transilvania nightclub – with Lilith professing to know all about vampire folklore – are entertaining and, of course, there’s plenty of sex and bloodletting. Comparable to Ken Russell’s 1988 cult favourite ‘The Lair of the White Worm’, this is a great example of eccentric British filmmaking made with passion and heart, and definitely worth a look for fans of the current crop of genre movies.