Hemoglobin

The Movie

This rather weird movie is not a vampire film, though it does share some values with the best of them.

"In 1652, the King of Holland forbids intermarriage, a popular lifestyle choice for the aristocracy. Eva Van Damme, who enjoys the pleasures of the flesh with her brother, refuses to change her lifestyle and moves the family to the New World community of Van Damme's Landing, Maine.

More than three centuries later, a ferry carries ailing John Strauss and his wife, Kathleen, to latter-day Van Damme's Landing. He is dying from a mysterious blood disease and is searching for his roots here, in the hope what he learns may hold the key to his life.

On the island, in addition to strange inhabitants, Strauss meets a visiting doctor, who develops a desire to help cure the man's illness. Strauss knows he was born here, but that he was sent as an infant to Paris and subsequently adopted. If his relatives can be located, he may live on. What he does not know is that sometimes what you wish for may prove to be far worse than death."

• Director: Peter Svatek
• Main Cast:
  Rutger Hauer as Doctor Marlowe
  Roy Dupuis as John Strauss Van Daam
  Gillian Ferrabee as Eva Van Daam
  Kristin Lehman as Kathleen
  Joanna Noyes as Byrde
  Lisa Bronwyn Moore as Toot
  Leni Parker as Baby Laura
  Felicia Schulman as Yolanda
• Screenplay by:
• Charles Adair, Dan O'Bannon, Ron Shusett
• Language: English

Review

Painfully slow, this movie has few moments of horror, though plenty of moments that you feel should be horrific. Even the oment of devouring a 75-year-old embalmed fetus doesn't really shock, though the love scene that follows is a little unsettling (How could she, after seeing that?).

Rutger Hauer is miscast here, and his role, like many others shows a strange inconsistency. Who's good? who's bad? who knows? who cares?

With Dan O'Bannon on the script, we're entitled to more, and the excellent 'monster work' comes too little, too late to save the film.

Worth seeing as a curiosity; no more than that.