Deux Ex Non-Mortuus

Posted by donal on May 30th, 2008 filed in Movies, Rants

I’m a fairly harsh critic of films: I get bored easily, I get annoyed with unrealistic happenings and I have a near non-existent tolerance for cartoon violence in live-action films. There are certain things which really annoy me, such as characters hiding from automatic gunfire behind a plywood wall. I can assure you that two and a half inches of plaster and wood will not stop a five five six bullet that left the barrel at a kilometer a second.

Scenes like this could be avoided with a little bit of forethought…

Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to warble on about inconsistent ballistics in movies (and I would – have you ever seen the shots Will Smith makes with a pistol in Bad Boys!), my major grievance at the minute is to due with vampyres. I’ve just watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie with Kristy Swanson, not the series. The movie is pretty bad, but it has a certain nineties charm and it doesn’t take itself seriously. I even laughed out loud a few times, but really, I spent the last half of the film wondering why the fuck the vampires, who have been practising their trade for literally lifetimes, don’t invest in some bloody body armour. I’m just sitting there, watching undead after undead being dispatched by their only terminal weak spot, and all I can think of is, Why didn’t you take some Goddamn chain-mail from one of the presumably dozens of medieval knights you neck-raped in your n-hundred years of farting about, you dozy, heliophobic eejit!.

An Artist’s Impression of an Up-Armoured Vampyre.

Admittedly, Kevlar by itself isn’t great against blades (Just one more reason not to get rid of bayonets!), but should be sufficient against wooden stakes. For that extra peace-of-mind, the upmarket undead could splash out on ceramic plates. All in all, this is a classic case of where a little proper prior planning would have prevented a piss-poor performance.

Full Disclosure: The stills from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are from www.slayermovie.com. I couldn’t find any contact details on the site, but it the owner wants me to take them down, e-mail me or leave a comment.