Some vixen vampire is still after a magical black cross that would allow it to walk in the daylight. Vampire hunters are dispatched and rehashed hijinks ensue.

The number one movie in America for women and effeminate males has finally arrived on video. The premise wasn’t all bad: a slutty girl with dreams of stardom shoots her lover and goes to jail circa 1920-something, making use of a lawyer showman of top caliber to get her off the hook. The idea went sour when we decided to take this tail of betrayal, murder, deceit, shenanigans, and sluttery™ and combine it with singing, dancing, and man-hating.

T.J. Sakasegawa, the man who helped bring you such original titles as Dark Waters, Dragon Storm, Dragon Fighter, andAntibody, now brings you the sequel to the four star (out of twenty) movie that you never heard of, Epoch.

A group of four vampire hunters and their master track the undead through 17th Century China, finding love, adventure, beatdown, and slapstick along the way. Oh boy.

Following a third world war, mankind clamps down on what it perceives to be the cause of war and hostility: extemes of emotion. Populations are issued a drug called Prozium to suppress their feelings, while anything intended to evoke emotion—such as art—is destroyed.

Somewhere out in cyberspace (not to be confused with text media, or arborspace), there are a bunch of science fiction fanboys who look to the Cube and Cube 2 as some great philosophical and scientific achievement. When I achieve world dominion, they will be the first to die.

Suppose I’ll look on the net for the critics’ takes on it, when I’m bored enough, but here’s how I see it. Basically we have a plot that keeps hinting at two major themes, so similar as to be redundant: personas are illusions of self, and seeking fame for its own sake equally hollows one out. We also have a director who really, really liked Pulp Fiction, explaining the various extraneous scenes, characters and imagery, as well as the frickin’ diner. Lynch also apparently likes Hellraiser; this I am led to infer after a horribly forced ending with the devil-bum and the cube (Hellraiser 1). I love easter eggs and homages as much as anyone, but when a work has no substance of its own and leans on easily-recognizable forms to cover for it, I think it’s pretty sad.