DVD review Blood Relic (Video 2005)

This horrific tale begins in 1983, when shortly after coming across a magical ancient artifact, Navy pilot Hank Campbell loses his mind and murders all his fellow pilots. Right before getting locked up, he hides the powerful object somehwere in the plane. BLOOD RELIC tells the harrowing story of what happens more than two decades later, as preparation of the aircraft for an air and space museum exhibit coincides with Hank's release from a mental institution. With the knowledge of where the talisman is hidden, Hank sets out to wreak voodoo havoc on the people who put him away Blood Relic is written by Matthew M. Howe and J. Christian Ingvordsen who also is the director. The acting is pretty decent, Billy Drago is good but in my opinion he should have had much more screen time as he is without a doubt the strongest actor of the bunch. The camerawork and editing is good. There is some pretty nice use of military stock footage, it is used to good effect and edited in in such a way that it blends pretty good with the rest of the flick. The pacing is good. There´s isn´t much suspense or thrills in this as we are in very familiar territory. The soundtrack is good. There´s gore, slit throat, knife imbedded in head and so on but Blood Relic isn´t as gory as I hoped for, let´s face it this could have been a very gory slasher. Quite a few scenes aren´t graphic at all, it is kept off screen. There´s gratuitous T and A in this, courtesy of Caitlin Sabins, Kelly Ray, Melanie Rademaker and Debbie Rochon
Blood Relic is also known as Scare Museum.
This review is based upon the region all (region 0) DVD release from Mti Home Video. Beware that the UK DVD release is cut.
Rating: 2 out of 7. There´s no real surprises in Blood Relic, if you know the slasher genre you can more or less predict everything that´ll happen on the screen. There are a few good moments and we do get Billy Drago who is great but that isn´t enough to make Blood Relic better than the mediocre slasher that it is.

/JL