Blood Sucking Babes From Burbank (2006)

1st Nov 07





Plot
A contest for archaeology students in Burbank, California starts a race amongst local students to find the ancient artefact 'Angela's Jewel Box'. They form teams and search through the local woods.

When a young woman finds the box it has a strange effect on her and the other female students, causing them to strip, writhe around and then eat men. A mysterious stranger who has been watching them helps some of the students track the box down so they can banish it to the sea and rid the gems from 'Angela's Jewel Box' of their evil powers.

Review
I've never wanted to be the sort of reviewer who rants about how terrible everything is. The internet is awash with those already. However, reviewing Blood Sucking Babes From Burbank placed me in something of a quandary. How can I construct a review of a film about which I found nothing positive to say without it appearing like a rant? This is what I came up with.

BSBFB is clearly a low budget film, which to an extent explains some of my complaints about it. However, taking some time to make sure you have a good story with a well-written script costs nothing. With this script telling this story, you could have had a budget of any amount and the film would still have fallen flat. The film-makers turn what should have been a simple concept into a unstructured mess.

It’s also filled with bizarre moments, such as when the mysterious stranger decides to introduce himself to a characterless young archaeology student by pinning her to the bed when she gets out of the shower.

Whilst the story may be the script's biggest problem, it's certainly not aided by some dreadful dialogue. And whilst De Niro himself would have had trouble making this dialogue work, the cast manage to make sure there's not an ounce of life in even a single line. The casting on the whole seems to have been based more on who was willing take off their shirt than who was right for the part. This would explain why nearly all the archaeology students are curvy young women who have trouble reciting even the most basic sentences.

BSBFB looks like a student film. This isn't just because it's shot on digital, but also because there serious problems with the lighting continuity, set design and sound design. Whilst on the subject of sound, the score is often one of the most baffling aspects of the whole film. At times sounding like it was taken direct from a Casio preset, it rarely matches the tone of the scenes and adds further to the amateurish feel of the film.

The look of the movie is a mish-mash of different styles. The first half features brief attempts at several different visual ideas, including a POV shot which bizarrely goes on to include the person we're supposed to be seeing the POV of, settling during the second half almost entirely for close-ups. The editing is also poor, with many scenes seeming to start before the actors are ready. This film also features the most shocking and ill-advised CG effects I've ever seen.

I understand how difficult it can be to make a film on a low budget. That this film exists is certainly an achievement. It's unfortunate, then, that the finished product is simply not good enough. It never commits to a tone. The effects, story and dialogue are too poor to be taken seriously but the film isn't nearly OTT enough to be any fun. The end result is that Blood Sucking Babes From Burbank is almost unwatchable.

Posted by
Matt Edwards



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