Returning for this third trip behind the camera is director Uwe Boll, with actress Natassia Malthe portraying the title character for the second time. CBM editor Ed Gross caught up with both of them for this exclusive interview.
Boll, obviously, generates a lot of instant response from people, but hopefully they’ll read what he and Malthe have to say about BloodRayne 3 before doing so. Then, go wild!
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Give me an idea of how BloodRayne 3 came about.
NATASSIA MALTHE: Well, when I was a kid and I daydreamed about being an actress. It was funny, but I often daydreamed about doing martial arts movies and vampire movies, and now this movie is a combination of both. It's kind of strange and coincidental that I'm doing mostly vampire and martial arts movies, because that's what I thought about when I was younger. I'm like, kind of weirded out by it, because all the things I did imagine I ended up doing. Now I have to imagine what else I’d like to do.
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Uwe, what’s the appeal of the character for you?
UWE BOLL: I like always the character of BloodRayne because she’s like a ruthless, violent, blood and sex driven spin-away superhero. If you look at UNDERWORLD and RESIDENT EVIL – they are so clean in a way; like Kate Beckinsale in UNDERWORLD, she would never play nudity and I don't even see her sucking blood out of other people. And with BloodRayne, in the video game she needs blood to survive and you can also refill her batteries with sex. When I did the first one, I planned from the beginning on a trilogy. I’ve made a lot of video game based movies, and I was never excited about doing a franchise or the second part – Lord of the Dark was actually done after the first one, and I produced the second one but I didn't direct it. With BloodRayne, I like the character and I really like doing the movies because the movies are always different genres. The first one is classical, a period piece, vampire/Transylvania kind of thing. The second one is a vampire western, and now the third one a vampire war movie. So I like moving in totally different genres with her character.
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: And this is because she's immortal –
UWE BOLL: Yeah, so she never dies. Of course she gets more and more anti-moral in a way, so I think in BLOODRAYNE 3 we really try to show her, almost lifeless – she's now a long time on Earth already…
NATASSIA MALTHE: She’s jaded.
UWE BOLL: And emotionless, a killing machine. She gets cooler in a way and this I think is interesting to see her going through.
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: It’s interesting that as it goes on, she seems to be finding it more difficult to retain her humanity.
UWE BOLL: In a way it's the survival instinct. When you go through the changing times, and you see humans never learn, and they never really change and they will always try to wipe each other out or to take advantage of one another, other countries, or taking over other countries -- so it's the same thing she’s experienced, over and over again.
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: From an acting point of view, is it difficult to take her in a different direction?
NATASSIA MALTHE: I did go different with her this time. In the first ones she's a little softer, while in this one she's Goth, jaded, and she's got way more of a dark streak and on the verge of going to the dark side, I think. I think that as an actress it’s more interesting than what I did in the previous movie. I'm more advanced with the character and I've thought about it more. So I really did do a little bit of a character shift, and I will again if I get to play the character again, a major character shift which would be fun.
UWE BOLL: If we do a part four, it would be present day, so she would have seen everything from the Korean War to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to 9/11. She would have seen it all and would be living now, and it would be another shfit to see how she would actually live in the society of today. What would she do What is her cover, because she couldn’t walk around in that costume living in New York City. So it would be a little bit of a Spider-Man kind of thing where you have a normal day appearance somewhere, but then at night you turn into Rayne and killing the organized crime guys or whoever. Whatever story we go with, I wouldn’t put her in a war, but would instead put her in a big city.
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Natassia, how do you view this character and how does she view the world?
NATASSIA MALTHE: I think the character views the world from a very objective viewpoint. In this film I think she was just doing her job and getting through the world war. She objectifies the world and is fighting her own demons at the same time, because she's lost people she's loved and she's seen hundreds of thousands of murders. What are you left with when you have murdered so many people for the right reasons – and lost so many people you've loved? I think emotionally the only place I could have played it from was a very scarred up internal world. Now in the fourth movie, if we do one, maybe there's a way we can incorporate how we can heal that, where she gets inspiration back again, about humanity. Because in this third one, I don't think she's inspired by humanity at all. Or maybe she lost her connection to humanity.
VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: On a physical level, shooting it and acting in it, how challenging is making a movie like this?
NATASSIA MALTHE: It's not a glamour shoot, that's for sure [laughs].
UWE BOLL: Actually, physically in the cold, in winter and shooting a lot of night times, it was not easy; it was tough on everybody. At the same time, if you do a lot of action scenes, it keeps you awake. You cannot shoot at 3:00 in the night outside, 5 ½ minutes of dialogue. If you shoot a drama outside in winter, I think it is harder to do than a BloodRayne movie where, as a director, you have to move a lot, you have to walk around a lot and tell everyone where to stand and how to start the scene. So I like this kind of movie as a director, because I can be very present and not only sitting there and watching people talk.
NATASSIA MALTHE: When I get into that situation and it's freezing cold, and I'm supposed to be the character at 5 am in the morning and you're exhausted, there's another part of you that just clicks on. You just force yourself because you have to, and if it's cold, you just have to ignore it. If it's really uncomfortable – well, that actually works for the character, because sometimes it helps you get into the character, that discomfort, and it reads well on camera.
To check out the gallery devoted to Natassia Malthe, just click on the image below: