Tales From the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood

1996 Universal Pictures
Directed by: Gilbert Adler; Written by: A.L. Katz and Gilbert Adler
Starring: Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak, Angie Everhart, Chris Sarandon, and Corey Feldman
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 87 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 4/10

Private Investigator, Rafe Guttman, is so down on his luck, when he gives someone his business card, he has to ask for it back...but maybe his luck is changing. Rafe's finally got a customer, a beautiful young woman whose brother has gone missing. The P.I. tracks the brother to a mysterious bordello, located beneath a local mortuary, which appears (except not in a mirror) to be populated by vampiric prostitutes. Looks like this brothel is actually a...Bordello of Blood.
Bordello of Blood is not a good movie. The bar is low, and Bordello of Blood still manages to knock it down during its fairly pathetic cinematic leap. Billed as the second part of a Tales From the Crypt film trilogy that never quite came to fruition in the 90's, Bordello sets its sights on simply being stupid fun, but mostly just ends up being stupid. Dennis Miller stars as Rafe Guttman, the P.I. you'll likely want to punch intensely. I've never minded Miller's sarcastic schtick before, but even felt like I was at my breaking point with him here.
Apparently, Miller not only ad-libbed just about every line he says for this film, but caused strife and discord on set by forcing the crew to adhere to his tight, idiosyncratic schedule. He also demanded an exorbitant sum to star in this film in which he apparently didn't even want to act. The extra $750K to his paycheck came out the film's special effects budget, and it shows. The movie's budget, including Miller's million dollar payday was only $2.5 million dollars. Thus, long stretches of the film seem to solely consist of scenes of Miller showing up at the bordello, then going to the police and saying, "You gotta believe me, there's vampires there who like blood more than you like donuts!" before going back to the bordello, and on and on, with no action cues until the super soaker finish.
Yes, this film climaxes with a strangely satisfying sequence where Miller and Chris Sarandon, who plays the female lead's televangelist boss, head to the bordello with water guns full of sacred H20. Lots of silly melting vampire flesh effects and mini-explosions occur, and it is all so, so dumb, but at least, for 15 minutes or so, fun. Bordello even wraps up with a satisfying little plot twist. Too bad the other 70 minutes are such a drag.
I'd be remiss if I didn't touch upon Bordello of Blood's female presences. The main female star here is bare breasts, the total film count of which I lost before Bordello's halfway point. After that is Erika Eleniak as Miller's client. Coming off of a Playboy pictorial and a starring role in Baywatch, Eleniak wanted to be taken more seriously as an actress. This was probably not the project to make that happen, but at least Eleniak comports herself well here, and might just be the only actress in the film who never takes off her top. Angie Everhart, on the other hand, is a bit...raw. Everhart, who had zero acting experience before this "film," and was cast simply because the producer wanted a model in the role, stars as Lilith, the lead vampire. She might actually have kept her top on too, but she was generally surrounded by so many bare breasts, I'm not really sure.
Everhart has presence if not the ability to convincingly read a line, but between the film trudging aimlessly for more than an hour, and Miller seeming to be paid by the word, there's not much to recommend here, outside of that final sequence. Then again, if you love trash, particularly 90's trash, HOO BOY, does this film have 87 minutes of that.