BLOODY MALLORY

How to describe Mallory? Let’s see, start with Buffy. Then imagine that she’s a little bit older, watches too much anime, and is French. That should give you a pretty good picture of the eponymous lead from Bloody Mallory, an odd little piece of fromage from France.

In the “making of” feature included on the DVD, director Julien Magnat uses the term “manga” more than once. He certainly succeeded in creating a live action film in the anime/manga style. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends on how appealing the idea of a live action French anime is to you. (I definitely recommend watching it in French with English subtitles, as the English dubbing is horrible.)

After a quite beautiful opening title sequence, the movie immediately decends into a world of unmitigated cheese and resolutely stays there. The manga influence is evident in the costumes (colorful hair and clothes,) stunts (speed lines at one point,) and plot (demons!!!) The red and black clad and haired Mallory (Olivia Bonamy) is the leader of a little group of monster hunters called Anti-Paranormal Commando. She is joined by explosives specialist, transvestite, and apparently American Vena Cava (Jeffrey Ribier,) mute child telepath Talking Tina (Thylda Barès,) and the Government Head of Commando Operations- Inspector Durant (Thierry Perkins-Lyautey.) They all travel around France in a pink hearse, fighting monsters for the government.

I won’t go into too much detail about the plot but it involves a kidnapped Pope,

His Holiness, Hieronymus I and Vena Cava (Laurent Spielvogel and Jeffrey Rinier)

a Revolution era vampire,

Lady Valentine, vampire (Valentina Vargas)

a fallen angel who wants to unleash all the captive fallen angels and wipe out humanity, an ass kicking priest, and lots of Power Rangers style creature make up and fighting.

Joss Whedon wouldn't hire us, so we moved to France.

Bloody Mallory is no great work of art, but it’s a fun bite of cheese if you have a taste for cheese. If you have any pretentious ideas about the superiority of French cinema, however, this should help wipe them out.

Bloody Mallory is rated R For violence/gore and language and runs 94 minutes.
I give it 3 out of 5 bloody crosses.