Details: Written by: Miloš Jovanović; Published: 15 March 2011

Bleading Lady Movie Review

Written by Miloš Jovanović

Written and directed by Ryan Nicholson
2010, 75 minutes, Not Rated
DVD released on March 29^th, 2011

Starring:
Dan Ellis as Don Cardini
Sindy Faraguna as Riversa Red
Nathan Durec as Luke the Director
Nick Windebank as The Lodgeboy

Review:

Don Cardini (Dan Ellis) is a part-time chauffeur, and a full-time psychotic. His part-time job involves driving movie "stars" around their set, campers, etc., and, sure enough, sounds like a completely boring exercise — especially when you're driving around B movie schmucks, not Robert De Niro.

But Don is also a horror movie aficionado, so when he gets to drive the crew for the latest Riversa Red (Sindy Faraguna) vehicle, his interested is amped up. Soon you get the feeling that Don has it in for the attractive Riversa, and we begin to feel that he thinks their connection might be, you know, special.

Which is where the "full-time" part from the first paragraph kicks in. To elaborate, Don also likes carving people up real good with his hunting knife, and he's less than enthused with the fact some people don't treat Riversa like a total movie icon. You can pretty much guess what happens next.

Bleading Lady, also known as Star Vehicle, is another movie from the gore-obsessed mind of Ryan Nicholson. Nicholson, a Canadian indie filmmaker who has previously attracted audiences with titles such as Gutterballs and Hanger, returns to the directing fray with a slasher-inside-a-slasher film. And it nearly works.

It begins auspiciously — Ellis hacks up a bunch of "actors", who act so obnoxious that you basically cheer for him to slaughter them as efficiently as possible. This segment also breaks some sort of a record for most curse words in short time span, as Nicholson, who also scripted, fails to give anyone here a sentence without at least one F-bomb or similar in it. So, after this "showcase", we switch to the main plotline, in which a movie crew shoots a slasher movie — and gets do deal with Ellis's character, who gets more and more deranged as the time flies.

Sadly, the whole "slasher on a slasher set" concept is shunted aside, because Nicholson is more interested in blood and gore. But we have to be fair here — if the film took a serious route, I'm not sure if it would have worked. This is indie horror with amateurish actors, and if you don't have the script or the cast to make it work, just go for gore. Nicholson does, and that part delivers. Bleading Lady is a pretty short film — 75 minutes with credits included — but it bleeds enough fake blood to paint a smaller apartment block. Most of the second half has gory set pieces scattered across, with a protracted finale as a highlight of sorts.

Dan Ellis has his moments as the disturbed main character. Obviously he overplays his act once every 15 minutes, which thankfully does not detract from his overall performance. Sindy Faraguna looks pretty stunning, but her part is slim script wise, and by the end she's just reduced to shrieking and moaning. Rest of the cast is nothing to write home about — and since Nicholson's script is also very heavy on profanity, it leads to heavy unintentional comedy at times. Still, direction is rather capable for the genre/budget, and special effects look outright awesome.

After the opening quarter I really wanted to hate this film, as it looked like just another backyard video bash. Yet, it grew on me as the time passed (Faraguna's full frontal nudity helps, too), and by the end I could applaud Nicholson for his vision. This is, after all, a gory, campy, raunchy made-for-DVD slasher, and it was probably my fault to expect something with higher aspirations. Genre fans are welcome, others need not bother.