Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 26, 2005, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Today is a big day for theatrical releases that behave like cable movies. In my review of The Cave, I noted that it feels like a higher-budgeted Sci Fi Channel flick, and the Canadian import Eternal looks, walks and quacks like the sort of erotic-vampire opus you’d find late at night on Cinemax or the Playboy Channel. It isn’t terrible as such softcore fear fare goes, but it isn’t daring enough in either its themes or its presentation to make a mark, and is undone by shaky storytelling in the home stretch.
The protagonist is a Montreal detective named Raymond Pope (Conrad Pla), a renegade type who is catnip to the ladies. He’s first seen indulging in kinky stuff with his partner’s wife; his babysitter Lisa (Liane Balaban) has the hots for him; he’s a very popular customer at upscale sex clubs—heck, everybody loves Raymond! (Ba-dum-bum.) It’s no wonder he’s separated from his wife, who decides to investigate the other side and answers an on-line ad placed by Elizabeth Kane (Caroline Néron), a wealthy woman who lives in a splendorous mansion in the hills. Unfortunately for Mrs. Pope, Elizabeth either is or believes herself to be a modern incarnation of “Blood Countess” Erszebet Bathory, who murdered hundreds of virginal peasant girls back in the 16th century to bathe in their blood in an attempt to gain eternal youth. Why Elizabeth would consider a married woman with a child a good candidate for such exsanguination isn’t explained, but it does help jumpstart the plot.
Investigating his wife’s disappearance, Pope encounters Elizabeth, and as he recognizes another soul in touch with her sexual dark side, he begins a cat-and-mouse game with her instead of busting her for assault and Bathory. (Thank you, thank you very much. I’m here till Sunday. Try the veal.) Or at least, that’s the idea writer/producer/directors Wilhelm Liebenberg and Federico Sanchez are pursuing, but it doesn’t really come across; there are a number of subtext-laden confrontations between the two, but little real heat and no actual physical connection. Instead, Caroline and her servant Irina (Victoria Sanchez) start bumping off people around Pope and framing him for the murders, yet he somehow manages to avoid being arrested by the police brass who have been on his case since the beginning of the film.
Anyway, enough about the plot—what potential viewers will want to know is, how hot and scary does it get? Well, there are a couple of medium-steamy encounters, particularly a lesbian bondage setpiece, but neither the sex nor the violence are imaginative enough to really get your pulse going. Only one of the characters is sufficiently sympathetic for her murder to truly seem tragic, and she’s set up too clearly as a victim-to-be for her death to have the impact it should.
To their credit, Liebenberg and Sanchez have mounted an impressive-looking production for their first, low-budget movie. While the hi-def-to-film transfer results in murk and graininess in certain scenes (though it oughta look great when it comes to DVD, its natural destination), there’s an opulence to the visuals and settings that provides a touch of class. Unfortunately, the filmmakers let their penchant for extravagant locations get away from them in the final reels, when the action moves, for no particular reason, out of Montreal and over to Venice. The switch in cities provides little besides travelogue value, as nothing that transpires there would’ve made any less sense back in Canada. And what does transpire includes a silly sequence in which Raymond pursues a pickpocket to a hole-in-the-wall bookstore whose proprietor just happens to be an expert in Bathory’s history.
There is one significant difference between Eternal and a lot of its direct-to-cable/video brethren (or should that be sisthren?): It’s nearly two hours long, which at times threatens to make the title seem all too appropriate. You can’t fault the two filmmakers for their ambition, but for every image they create that sticks (like the sight of Elizabeth rising naked from her bath of blood, which is understandably the centerpiece of the advertising campaign), there are too many scenes that don’t advance the plot or that overdo the histrionics. Those ads are making much of the story’s connection to the Bathory legend, and the writer/directors might have done better to put more of the focus on their femme fatale and ditching the cop stuff.
