"I bet you think you know all about vampires," says the heroine of England's Razor Blade Smile. "Believe me, you know fuck all." It's an auspicious start; in these twelve words the film blasts the monolith of vampire lore to smithereens and vows to rebuild it from scratch. This is a gutsy, deliciously blasphemous promise, but can Razor Blade Smile deliver what it advertises? Yes and no.

Lilith Silver (Eileen Daly) isn't like any vampire I've ever seen. She (literally) has a day job, whiling away eternity as a hitwoman who doesn't melt when she goes out in the sun. Lilith has it all--steady income, all the blood she can drink and an "office romance" with her boss, Platinum (Kevin Howarth), who doesn't even know her name. But then she notices that all her assignments are wearing the same freaky jewelry, someone kidnaps Platinum and carves an eye into his chest and, to top everything off, Scotland Yard's resident doofus Detective Inspector Price (Jonathan Coote) is hot on her trail. What's a 170-year-old girl to do?

Break out the catsuit and pistols, that's what.

Razor Blade Smile is writer/director Jake West's first feature film. For his graduation from film school he made the short film Club Death, which seems like a prototype for Razor Blade Smile. (Not that I would know for sure: the North American edition of the movie does not include Club Death). Not only do actors Isabel Brook and Christopher Adamson appear in both films, but some of Club Death's props have cameos in Razor Blade Smile as well. For example, the burn-scarred coffin where Lilith keeps her guns was originally built for the earlier film.

Such resourcefulness can only mean one thing: Razor Blade Smile is low-budget and proud of it. With only £500, the special effects department has given us Frank Miller-inspired color schemes, a star with a human eye (West's) in the center, and plenty of the red stuff. There are bad one-liners galore ("Don't you just love ball sports?" Lilith asks a tennis player just before shooting him in the goolies), lesbian vampire sex and vampires fighting with samurai swords. All this craziness leads to an ending that is either skillful or cheap, and after seeing this movie three times, I'm still not sure which.

Unfortunately, Razor Blade Smile is a little too cheesy for my taste. Watching Lilith kill is a little like waiting for Queen Dido to die in the Aenead: every murder requires her to hiss and rear up in slow motion, which gets old really fast. And the movie is loud all over, from the hellish hot pink of Lilith's apartment to the crunch of her teeth in human flesh. Even the sucking sounds she makes while giving an American college student a blowjob are deafening. Such sensory bombardment fits with Razor Blade Smile's send-up of vampire mythology. While most vampires slink quietly through the shadows, Lilith saunters fearlessly in broad daylight with unconcealed weapons. This kind of extravagance can be either corny or clever, and for me, Razor Blade Smile is often too much of one and not enough of the other.

Nevertheless, the movie does have brilliant little islands in its awful, awful sea. The plot has some sharp, mountainous curves, and some of its satire is dead-on. As Lilith rants about ridiculous vampire myths ("What the fuck does it feel like to be a mist?"), the color collapses into the grainy gray of 1930's horror films, and when she turns into a bat with very thick puppet-strings, we see just how illogical our most sacred beliefs about vampires are.

In another scene, we watch a Lilith-less reflection in a mirror while our invisible heroine reminds us that vampires have no reflection. "That's another bullshit myth," she proclaims, and her face suddenly appears in the glass as she touches up her lipstick. "Just imagine how I'd look after centuries without one." The movie also sports the funniest line I've heard in a while, which Jonathan Coote came up with when his character gets caught between two vampires and has no means of escape….except one.

The Manga division of Anchor Bay has given Razor Blade Smile a shiny treatment worthy of its own feverish presentation. Vibrant colors and crystal-clear images belie the film's miniscule budget. And while those of us Stateside don't get Club Dead, we still get lots of extras: a commentary with Jake West and actress Eileen Daly, a behind-the-scenes featurette, alternate scenes and outtakes.

Razor Blade Smile is definitely not like the "predictable Hollywood movies" its trailer chastises. But, although it claims (intriguingly) to change the way we think about vampires, in my case it didn't quite fill its own tall order. This film has an audience out there somewhere. I'm just not quite "out there" enough to be a part of it.