This week in Netflix

July 8, 2008 on 3:37 pm | In Movies, Netflix |

Every week, the DVD-through-the-mail site Netflix announces new DVDs for rental. Most are films that never got a theatrical release. Ethan Kaye brings you This Week In Netflix, the most inexplicable actual description of an actual film actually posted by the Netflix staff.

This week?

Crimson

Two hard-partying nursing students (Jaimi Paige and Elizabeth Di Prinzio) must save a woman they find in the middle of nowhere, Sammi (Stuart Brazell), who’s on the run from a vampire cult and its bloodthirsty leader, Rachel (Erika Smith). After the girls bring a battered Sammi to their sorority house for care and to sober up themselves, they quickly realize that they’ve stepped into a gruesome battle that just might end in terror.

I picked this film out of a pretty good assortment this week for the use of the phrase “gruesome battle that just might end in terror.” Is “terror” really the word that you want to use there? Is that really the most awful endpoint you can think of? For me, I’d think that you’d want terror running throughout your entire horror movie, not just the ending. I mean, the use would imply that there is a chance that the battle does not end in terror, making it a fairly tame ride. “We’re fighting but we’re not scared! Yet there is a possibility that we may feel scared by the end of this! Ahoy!”

Silly words.

As I always have to say, I have not seen this film. I have, however, seen the Netflix ratings of this film, which give it less than two stars. In fact, the director’s other two films on Netflix, Corazon and In the Red, also have garnered less than two stars apiece, creating an average of less than two stars for this director’s entire output. It’s fairly damning, but also consider that each one of director Richard Proche’s films stars about 90 gorgeous women, which is about 90 more than have ever starred in a film by me.

But what do the critics say?

Well, that’s a tough question to ask, since all but one of his 14 straight-to-DVD films have zero user reviews on imdb. The one reviewer for “Candle in the Dark” says that it’s not bad, although he says the same things about “Blood Harvest”, “Mega Snake”, and “Blood Sucking Babes from Burbank.” Fairly large grain of salt there.

Netflix reviewers, however, are much more cruel.

For In the Red

“I read the reviews and thought “how bad can it be?” Well, I watched 4 minutes of it and each minute was excruciating.”

“Awful, awful movie, bad sound, bad picture quality, and stupid!! No action, doesn’t rate as a thriller, doesn’t rate as anything, especially anything to watch. A complete waste of time. Take it off the list. To rate this, we need negative stars.”

“This is the worst movie I have ever seen. Do not rent this movie, do not waste your time. This must be the worst 90 minutes of my life.”

So it’s fairly easy to make a judgement of “Crimson” from the reviews available of the director’s other films. But who knows? Perhaps a vampire cult film with extraordinarily hot nursing students, sorority girls, and vampire cultists could surprise you. Maybe it has some hidden allure that I am unaware of aside from the previously mentioned extraordinarily hot nursing students, sorority girls, and vampire cultists. Maybe if you pause the last screen of the DVD and print it out, it’s a coupon for free candy. Maybe it has a better movie burned on the other side. Maybe the DVD has an error on in and it stops automatically after the first 10 minutes.

It’s the future, right? Anything can happen!