Dracula Week: The Worst of Netflix Presents Red Lips 2!

Over the past six hundred years or so, Dracula has been involved in a lot of terrible things. There’s all the impalings of course, and the thing where he feeds on a terrified populace, and then you get into the minor stuff like the many zoning violations that arise from spontaneous Demon Castle Construction.

His second-greatest crime*, however, is that he has inspired others to make terrible, terrible vampire movies.

 

 

For this week’s Worst of Netflix column, I’ve taken on the no-budget vampire “anthology” Red Lips 2: Bloodlust, and while this might not be clear in the review, it is quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.

Essentially two unrelated movies stitched togther to form one shambling cinematic horror, Red Lips 2 manages to combine the lingering, unerotic, possibly meth-induced nudity of a truck stop magazine rack with the cinematic acumen of a Manos: Hands of Fate. Thrill! as writer-star Maria Ortiz and Canadian “scream queen” Debbie Rochon improv their way through scenes where the sound is so bad that all you can hear is that they’re stepping on each other’s lines! Chill! as you realize that the movie theater set is just the oddly spacious bathroom set with the single toilet swapped out for two rows of seats! Spill! your drink as the previously softcore sex scenes suddenly turn into an unobstructed shot of the slimy male lead’s junk!

Over at the column, there’s a picture of the guy–clothed, thankfully, though to be honest that’s not much of an improvement–and when you see it, I want you to think about this: I saw that dude naked for you guys.

Dracula, you owe me big time.

 

*: Dracula’s greatest crime, of course, is his involvement in Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest.

26 thoughts on “Dracula Week: The Worst of Netflix Presents Red Lips 2!

  1. Hey, I dunno, the video game treatment of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was pretty rancid.

    Looking at that sentence, I realized I could have said ‘the sun is yellow’ and still not have stated something more obvious.

  2. Now that the topic’s up, I’ve long wondered: what’s Solomon Stone’s connection to Dracula, if there is any?

  3. @Reth Eldirood

    Same can and should be said about most of the film adaptations of Dracula, and vampires in general.

    And I guess it’s just as needless to point it out.

  4. The phrase “the worst movie of all time” gets bandied around so much these days . . .

    If you’ve got Netflix, it’s on Watch Instantly. If you feel like spending seventy minutes of your life watching it so that you can contradict me, then you’re welcome to it.

  5. Great, now I’m going to have nightmares about the horrifying consequences of using Graveyard Duck to clean my toilet.

  6. Great, now I’m going to have nightmares about the horrifying consequences of using Graveyard Duck to clean my toilet.

    (It does seem odd that Graveyard Duck is apparently part of the Crown Royal family of beverages.)

  7. I’m really sorry about the multiple posts. This kind of stupid mistake is why I’m usually only a lurker.
    Again, sorry.

  8. The phrase “the worst movie of all time” gets bandied around so much these days . . .

    Funny, that’s not what Chris said…did you hear this in your head?

  9. Wait a second, Bully… “Possibly the worst movie I have ever seen” does not mean Chrs is making the statement of “worst movie ever”? Because that’s how I read all his statements. I gotta re-evaluate everything now.

  10. Mr. Sims, you are a strong man. I can only hope you were adequately fortified with alcohol for your trip down Cinematic Atrocity Lane.

  11. Ken…I was just kidding. I got what Bully was saying and was essentially agreeing with him-but joking that I assumed if Chris said something was the worst he’d seen that this was equal to “the worst ever”… I am tempted to suggest it was the worst attempt at humor attempted in the ISB blog comments.

  12. >his involvement in Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest

    Considering you can kill him in one attack without moving in that game, I’d say that crime is its own punishment. Still, I’m pleased to see that in an unusual show of geek restraint no one has yet mentioned what a horrible night it is to have a curse. …Oops! I did it again!

  13. I really wouldn’t be surprised if Ms. Ortiz’ appearance in the sequel was just recycled footage from the earlier film. Something about that tribute to her makes me profoundly sad.

  14. Speaking as someone who has seen Troll 2, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Manos: The Hands of Fate, I will say that nobody who has seen all three could possibly suggest that Troll 2 is the worst movie of all time. It is competently lit, consistently in focus, uses synch sound, and the camera is pointed at the faces of the actors. Those four points alone put it head and shoulders above “Manos” in terms of quality.

    Don’t get me wrong. Troll 2 is bad. It is entertainingly bad. But it is not even in the same league of badness as Manos. Manos makes Troll 2 look like Citizen Kane. Think of it as being the difference between Celsius and Kelvin. Troll 2 might be zero on the Celsius scale, but watching Manos makes it very clear to you that there is a whole other scale of badness, and its zero is the absolute. :)

  15. @John: I’ve seen all those you mention (and own most of The Asylums productions) but I have to disagree.

    Yes, Manos is so very bad that it hurts but what makes Troll 2 so bad is that they “almost” get it right.

    Manos – and the movie in this post I assume – doesn’t even try which makes them just “sad bad”.

    Compare it to mindnumbingly boring STV action flicks with budgets of a couple of $100k – they’re awful but still not as bad as Troll 2 in my book.

    The more I argue my case I am suspecting that we look at bad from different viewpoints. If all we go for is bad production then yeah, 100’s of movies are worse than Troll 2.

    To me an “epic fail” when it comes to a movie is comparable to the somewhat slow kid in class who studies for weeks for the big test, skipping playtime in favor of homework, spending time at the library instead of the toy store and still gets an F on the test.

    Kids who doesn’t give a crap about the test and still gets an F isn’t in any way as bad – they’re just lazy.

    Feeders would be another movie that falls into the “lazy” category (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeEc_F_wr5Q).

    So I can agree when you say that Manos is worse but it’s not bad in the same way as Troll 2 is. :)

  16. Apparently the footage of Ortiz in the next RED LIPS is just recycled- they use the same framing footage and put in new “stories” under it.

    Google is unusually unhelpful on this, but there is a reference to a story on “Hollywood Tragedies: Maria Ortiz and Maria Pechuka” in the sex-horror magazine DRACULINA, dated early 2001.

    Which means, horribly, that if she is dead, the most prominent record of it is in a low-budget FEMME FATALES wannabe that doesn’t even publish anymore.

  17. At first glance, I thought it said “When a curious obsession leads to diarrhea,” which, somehow, made the movie sound marginally more interesting.

  18. Yes, Maria did die in 2000, and the 2005 video features recycled footage from Red Lips 2. And yes, it’s a pretty lousy movie, but as someone who actually knew Maria, Red Lips 2 is a treasure to me. She was an intelligent, funny, and likeable woman, and she was enchantingly beautiful in person. Her acting is much better in Blood and Honor, a Civil War movie that’s admittedly tedious any time Maria wasn’t onscreen.