I woke up this morning and thought there would be nothing better on this dull and cloudy day than a good horror movie, a cup of coffee, and writing a few lines to satisfy my favorite ghouls at Monsters At Play. So I reached into my pile of screeners and grabbed the first one that fell into my sweaty little hand. Was it the tale of murder and mayhem I had my heart set on? Hell no! It was Sub Rosa's latest release, Realms Of Blood. I'll tell you this, friends, there are just some days it doesn't pay to gnaw your way through the state issued restraint harness!

After watching horror for as many years as I have, you come to understand some of the unwritten rules of the genre. I've also come to understand that the unwritten rules tend to vary depending on whether or not a male or a female is watching them. After I started doing reviews for our beloved Head Vampire, some of the unwritten rules were hammered home for me. One of the number one rules is as follows: if the filmmaker felt the need to show full frontal nudity within the first ten seconds of the film, you should consider the film a wash. Now, this is where some men may view a film differently. I've found that an opening scene containing full frontal nudity may be enough to sustain a fair amount of men through an entire movie full of crap. I've also known a few men that believe if you see a nipple any where in the move, the movie was not an entire waste of time. I (unfortunately) do not share this belief.

In this movie, we peek in on two room mates who decide to try and scare each other with a few bloody tales during a black out. The first tale tells us about a soldier. He's come home from war with murder on his mind and razor sharp fingernails that he uses on his unsuspecting victims. Then we hear about a lonely office geek. He's looking for love and has hopes that his new cologne will drive the ladies crazy. Our last tale takes into the world of vampires. A priest, looking for his lost daughter, is on the hunt for the vile vampires that inhabit the earth. The church won't let him preach at the pulpit anymore but that doesn't stop him from doing Gods good work.

It's really too bad that this wasn't a better movie. The story lines had potential but they just weren't carried out as well as one would hope. Not only that but if you look carefully, you'll see a good number of scenes that I seem to remember from other movies that actually did well in the box office. I guess you could call them tribute scenes but when they look almost identical to the originals (bad acting aside) I'd have to call it theft. Not to mention that it seemed to take forever to get through three short stories. It just drug on with a few flashy scenes that gave it a look that didn't match the rest of the film.

everything looked fine, all things considered, sound was presented in Dolby Digital Stereo and remained fairly consistent. The special features on the DVD include a behind the scenes documentary, two music videos, a blooper real, and the uncut "cologne" infomercial.

Over all, I wasn't overly impressed. I have to admit that partway through I nodded off and was forced to jump back two chapters. I missed a little bit during my nap. It was one of those odd films that left me feeling kind of ambiguous. It wasn't so bad that I out and out hated it but it wasn't nearly good enough to ward off my afternoon nap, either. If you use a slightly different rating scale then I do and a little nudity is enough to make it a fun evening, then be my guest!