director
Julien Magnat
screenwriters
Stéphane Kazandjian
Julien Magnat
producers
Olivier Delbosc
Eric Jehelmann
Marc Missonnier
cinematographers
Sophie Cadet
Nicolas Duchêne
music
Kenji Kawai
editor
Jean-Denis Bure
cast
Olivia Bonamy (Mallory)
Adriá Collado (Père Carras)
Jeffrey Ribier (Vena Cava)
Laurent Spielvogel (The Pope)
Valentina Vargas (Lady Valentine)
Julien Boisselier (Mallory's Husband)
Thylda Barès (Talking Tina)
Ludovic Berthillot (The Dog)
Thierry Perkins-Lyautey (Durand)
Sophie Tellier (Morphine)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 94m
french
release: 7/17/02
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
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Bloody Mallory can best be described as Buffy
the Vampire Slayer on acid. Its eponymous heroine (Olivia
Bonamy, who resembles a young Demi Moore), once married to a
man who turned out to be a demon, dyes her hair a fiery red (like
the heroine of Run Lola Run)
and tools around in a pink hearse, with the words "FUCK
EVIL" emblazoned on the knuckles of her gloves. Her Scooby
Gang includes a tall, blue-wigged drag queen named Vena Cava
(Jeffrey Ribier) and a mute telepath named Talking Tina (Thylda
Barès), a little girl who can also transmit her mind into
the bodies of people and animals. Her mission is to save the
newly selected Pope (Laurent Spielvogel) from hordes of demons
led by the ab-fab vampire bitch Lady Valentine (Valentina Vargas).
I don't need to tell you this is a French movie, do I?
It never quite rises above
the level of a well-done pilot episode for a series that would
probably be cancelled after four weeks (for being too weird),
but I enjoyed Bloody Mallory all the same. The few reviews
I've found have been rather hostile and uncomprehending, as if
director Julien Magnat and his co-writer Stéphane Kazandjian
hadn't intended to make a cheerfully schlocky horror farce.
For me, Bloody Mallory goes on a special shelf alongside
Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter and
Frankenhooker, two other movies that revel in the horror
genre and in their own self-conscious cheesiness. Released in
France in the summer of 2002, it has yet to get any sort of release
here (other than the occasional festival), though I'd think any
fan of loopy horror who doesn't mind subtitles would slurp it
up as avidly as Lady Valentine drains one of her victims.
Mallory, who still has some
of her demon hubby's blood in her veins and is often visited
by him (Julien Boisselier plays him with a mix of insouciance
and smitten affection that reminded me of Jean-Claude, the vamp
lover of Laurell K. Hamilton's vamp-killer Anita Blake), grudgingly
accepts her mission to rescue the Pope. (He's a dick anyway --
his first words upon ascending to the papacy are to condemn gay
people as evil. Even our current pope is a little more subtle
than that.) The mission is personal for Mallory anyway, since
the same demons who absconded with the Pope also killed her former
comrade Inspector Durand (Thierry Perkins-Lyautey) and put Talking
Tina in a coma (from which she escapes by occupying various bodies
throughout the film -- most amusingly when she inhabits a big,
brainless bruiser les scoobées meet in a village
overrun by demonic power). Along for the ride is a young priest,
prankishly named Father Carras (Adriá Collado), who gets
on Mallory's nerves but does get to use his self-defense papal-bodyguard
training on occasion (like the famous priest in Peter Jackson's
Dead Alive, he kicks arse for the Lord).
Bloody Mallory looks cheap (especially some of the
demon make-up, which is sub-Buffy) yet ravishing -- Magnat
puts together a colorful piece of eye candy, wedded to a propulsive
techno beat by Kenji Kawai (who scored Ghost in the Shell
and Ringu).
The fight sequences are about on par with Buffy, sometimes
pushed over the top by absurdist touches (such as Vena Cava's
deadly boots or the head-exploding spray Mallory keeps in a cross
on her belt -- you wonder why she doesn't use it more often,
though). The narrative's big surprise is really no surprise to
anyone who's seen a movie before, and the climax lacks a certain
oomph (it's as if the filmmakers ran out of money). Still, Bloody
Mallory is worth seeing just for Olivia Bonamy, a fun addition
to the growing roster of ass-kicking heroines, whose defining
moment comes early, when she kisses the near-dead Durand and
her voice-over informs us, "I never cared for him much,
but how can I deny a man's final wish?" Both cynical and
sentimental -- she still wears her demon husband's ring -- Mallory
may have been too much for the French and not enough for American
viewers trained by Buffy, Xena, and Alias.
But she demands to be taken on her own terms or not at all, and
so does the goofy, consistently amusing movie she's in.
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