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movie review

A biting scene from The Death of Alice Blue.

The Death of Alice Blue

  • Written and directed by Park Bench
  • Starring Alex Appel, Park Bench, Gordon Currie, Kristin Holden-Reid and Amanda Brugel
  • Classification: 14A

It's easy to hope for and forgive a young, first-time actor-filmmaker named Park Bench. So here's hoping Bench gets another chance to make a movie and that he'll benefit from the experience of fumbling The Death of Alice Blue, a vampire movie without enough sharp teeth.

Yeah, there are too many vampire shows. Then again, young filmmakers have been learning the business of making B-movie knock-offs ever since Roger Corman threw up a shingle in the late fifties. No, what's wrong with The Death of Alice Blue isn't that it's derivative. It's that the movie simply doesn't know how to access the pleasures of B movies.

It's way too complicated. Too talky. Overpopulated. With no action until the final reel.

Alice Blue (Alex Appel) shows up at a Toronto company, Raven Advertising. She's ambitious, wants to get ahead. The owner, Amanda (Amanda Brugle) doesn't like her for mysterious reasons and resents the fact that the creative director (Kristen Holden-Reid) does. There is also a mysterious revolt within the firm, an uprising on the way.

Okay, that's enough conflict and mystery to get a good movie started. But Bench junks up proceedings with way too many incidental, do-nothing characters - a solemn detective; wicked Cinderella-type co-workers who hate our heroine; Alice's unpleasant mom; and a nervous guy who is always trailing behind, biting his nails. Movies, especially B movies, are supposed to move like feeding sharks - fast and straight ahead. The Death of Alice Blue meanders like grazing sheep.

And no one can agree upon an acting style. Gordon Currie, Bench and Holden-Reid resort to a relaxed naturalism, while many minor characters employ the slightly arch, camp readings you encounter in porn movies.

The film picks up at the end, when the villains bare their teeth, whereupon filmmaker Bench starts employing nifty special effects, killing off many of his film's unnecessary characters. But by then the audience is dead to the world.

It's unfortunate Bench didn't start his movie at the end, with half the characters gone, and the other half armed, dangerous and interesting.

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