"Movie Review: Roger Corman's Vampirella"

Last night on one of the Showtime channels they showed the Roger Corman Vampirella flick from 1996. Being one that has always tried to watch every movie based on comic book type characters at least one time, I waded thru the 90 minutes of what I expected from Corman.

I won't get into the specifics of the flick too much, or all the various people who was in it; just a quicky review here because the above link (if you want to click onto it) can tell you all of that anyway.

But basically it involves the Warren vampire character following evil vampires from her home planet to earth to extract revenge upon them for killing her father, and trying to take over her planet. The main evil vamp' calls himself: "Vlad".

Her space craft crashes on Mars and she stays there in a "suspendo" chamber for three thousand years until mankind finally sets foot upon the red planet, discovers her and brings her to Earth. She hypnotizes the crewmen into forgetting they found her, and when the craft lands she turns into a bat and flies off to seek out the killers.

The main evil dude, Vlad, is played by Roger Daltry of "The Who" fame, who makes a fairly realistic evil sort. Since he's already been on the Earth for three thousand years he's built up a legend by renaming himself, of course, "Dracula"(after the name of his home planet "Drakulon").

And in a nut shell, Vampirella (played by Talisa Soto) goes around fighting all the baddies until she finally finds and kills Vlad.

It contains all of the fair to half-ass "good and cheap" special effects for which Corman is infamous. The fight scenes are decent and the space crafts and alien landscapes are passable.

I can't say that I cared very much for Ms. Soto in the role, tho', as I always remember Vampirella being depicted as more voluptuous, and here she almost to the point of being skinny...well...let's say atheletic in build. Anyway, nothing really like what Frank Frazetta's original idea showed her. And the costume was just not quite right, but over-all I give this flick probably a grade of C+ just for the effort. Something to watch while you're doing other things, or just plain bored.