Shower of Blood (2004)

Directed by Tiffany Kilbourne
Written by Keith Knapp, Kyle Kline, and David Hayes
- Lia Montelongo
- Martin Shannon
- Dave Larsen
- Melisa Mountifield
- Robin Brown

I’ll try to say this real plain, so that even the simplest wanna-be movie makers out there can catch my drift:

DON’T MAKE LOUSY MOVIES.

Isn’t there enough dross in the world? Aren’t there enough well-intentioned projects which turn out poorly for one reason or another? Why in the world would you devote yourself to making a movie which doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of being even marginally worthwhile? Why the hell are people making guano like Shower of Blood and inflicting it on other people?

I don’t want to draw conclusions about the filmmakers from the film. But I’ll be switched if it doesn’t make me wonder what kind of person makes a stupid, tedious (even with a 75-minute running time) amalgam of half-executed cliches and clubfooted dialogue, peopled with venal, irritating, dumb-as-a-stump protagonists (you know, the characters you’re supposed to root for).

Gah.

You know you’re in for a (ahem) rare treat when the prologue features a girl running through the dark woods from an unknown something — a girl who can’t even manage to trip and fall convincingly. And from there, we go to credits being shown against a background of rose petals falling lazily on overinflated boobs. Really, after seeing these two bits, is there any reason to continue watching the movie?

Because nothing says “quality” like a double handful of plastic.

And then we meet the characters we’re going to be saddled with for the rest of the movie, like prison cellmates for a life sentence, all on a trip into the countryside for no particular reason. The closest thing we have to a main character is Lisa (Lia Montelongo); she does have a bright smile and nice eyes (and breast implants that look like two teacups glued to her aerobicized torso, but we don’t have to see that until later). Her worst flaw is her piss-poor taste in boyfriends: Kurt (Dave Larsen), who likes to piss people off and crush beercans on his head. As protrayed by Larsen, Kurt delivered just about ever line in the same tone, that of a belligerent yammer. It only took ten minutes before I wanted to reach through the TV screen and belt him with a ballpeen hammer. There’s Terry (Peter Ranaud), whose character is pretty much identical to Kurt’s except for that beercan thing; fortunately, Ranaud has long blond hair to provide at least some visual distinction, and his delivery tends more toward somnabulism. Terry’s girlfriend his Heather (Melissa Mountifield), a skinny blonde whose main distinction is that her breasts are her own. The others describe her as “a bit conservative” — compared to how everyone else carries on, though, that could just as easily describe Mae West. And finally, there’s Megan (Robin Brown), whose upholstered luggage rack was catching the rose petals during the credits, and whom we meet as she pukes out the side door of the group’s minivan from too many beers.

Aren’t you just overjoyed to know these people? If not, stick around; I’m sure you’ll find their poorly-staged and poorly-scripted bickering endearing, right? (It’s more to this movie’s detriment that I watched it so soon after seeing The Undertow, which, despite its many other flaws, at least managed to make a group of argumentative friends sound remotely like human beings.)

I’m not sure exactly where their road trip was meant to take them, but they decide to drop unannounced by the house of Lisa’s Uncle Marty. Since Uncle Marty isn’t around, they make themselves at home in his large suburban house, which means that they raid the fridge, call each others assholes almost continuously, and engaging in witty sexual double entendres (by which I mean, a whole bunch of braindead sex references that would seem really witty to a seventh-grade student in the remedial class).

“Oh, great — now I’ll have to shower all over again!”

Oh, and they start the parade of shower scenes. First up is Megan, who’s still feeling sick and has puke on her clothes; she has a loooong, soapy shower. Meanwhile, Lisa wanders around the house, hearing whispers like, “Lisa… come this way…” When she goes back in to check on Lisa, she finds her not breathing under the water in the tub! But hey — it was just a trick. Get used to it. When there’s nothing else going on (i.e., for 75% of the movie), characters take turns scaring or startling each other and getting called assholes.

Then, while Lisa’s sitting beside Megan’s tub, she has a weird vision — of herself in a shower! Then the shower nozzle changes to a rose, and the water turns to blood. Oh, good, we’ve now justified our title. Can we leave yet?

No. We instead have to endure more pointless time-wasting. Thrill as Terry takes longer than you thought humanly possible to bring in the luggage! Gasp as Lisa insults and brushes Kurt off one, second, then acts all cozy with him the next! Watch in rapt attention as Terry keeps trying to get Heather to commit to their first night together, using the well-known seduction technique of “making an ass of himself”! Chortle as Lisa complains to the girls that Kurt is a little “quick on the trigger”! Sigh as Megan finds the guest room, lies on the bed, strews rose petals on herself just like in the opening credits, and proudly shows off her implant scars! Get sloshed as part of the “Someone Called Someone Else an Asshole” Drinking Game!

Alternate title: Shower of Blonde.

By 12 minutes in, I was bored to tears. By the end of the first half hour, I was honestly slapping myself in the face for fun.

Eventually, Uncle Marty (Martin Shannon) shows up, announcing himself to Heather and Terry, who are sharing a steamy shower. (Terry “surprised” Heather in that ongoing seduction project. “You asshole”? Check.) Uncle Marty looks like he’s never gotten over being God’s Gift to Women circa 1979, right down to the gold chain and proud body hair peeking up through his shirt collar. After his attempts to act pseudo-suave and his off-handed references to his recent trip to “the Old Country,” it becomes pretty apparent that he’s a vampire. Great, so he’s going to finish everyone off and the movie can end, right?

Yeah, you’re a tiger, Uncle Marty.

Well, yeah, eventually, but not before he makes weird semi-incestuous comments to Lisa, kills Megan and serves part of her up for dinner (“I musta gotten the boob — it’s so rubbery!”), and wanders in on everyone’s conversation at least once, making cryptic remarks. Meanwhile, Terry and Heather go through several rounds of “Yes we will/No we won’t/Yes we will/No we won’t,” Lisa does a striptease for Kurt (oh look, here comes Uncle Marty wandering in), and half the cast becomes vampires… and continues acting pretty much like they did before. (“You asshole”? Oh, many, many times.)

By the end, nothing makes any sense; who killed Terry after he became a vampire? Why does Uncle Marty tell Lisa that “she’s the One,” then decide to make virginal Heather his first bride in 300 years? Heck, we get an extended bump-and-grind session between Lisa and Kurt that turns out to be a hallucination, and one completely extraneous to the meager plot — its only function was to get full use out of the nudity clause in each actress’s contract. And you just have to love it when Lisa tries to dissuade vampirized Kurt from killing her with, “I know there’s some good in you!” Girl, that was a lost cause before he got bitten!

Well, that explains telemarketers.

All the way through, I was looking for some hint, some knowing wink, to reassure me that the filmmakers were intentionally patching together so many threadbare cliches with insipid dialogue between wafer-thin characters. I kept wanting to believe that nobody would sincerely make such a pointless, worthless clod of non-entertainment. But every time I try to cling to some shred of faith in humanity, somebody goes to great lengths to snatch that shred from me.