Here’s my Cold Hearts “Twilight style” one sheet
Fast forwarding through a VHS tape was such an annoying chore. Depending on the speed of your fast forward feature, it was easy to go way passed your intended spot. It was much like when Lone Star and Barf went plaid in Spaceballs. Even though both rewinding and fast forwarding rarely took very long, they were both still a nuisance. In comparison, scanning through a DVD is a heavenly pleasure. In fact, I’m fairly certain that the scan feature on DVD’s was invented for movies like 1999’s vampire flick, Cold Hearts.
You know what that Twilight movie doesn’t have? THE MOTHERF-CKING PINK RANGER!!! Wouldn’t you think that combining the mighty and morphin’ Amy Jo Johnson with a completely weird and random cameo by Fred Norris of The Howard Stern Show would immediately spell runaway success? Well, it’s a topsy turvy world and by some strange anachronism, Cold Hearts will forever be known as a much lamer, low budget Lost Boys. At least Cold Hearts didn’t send Amy Jo Johnson’s career into the crapper, she went on to play Keri Russell’s best friend on Felicity, dropping her bloodsucking role like a bad habit.
IMDB states that Cold Hearts was filmed in Ocean City, NJ
With all the Twilight New Moon hoopla, now is a perfect time to discuss this Jersey vampire movie. In some small way, my entire purpose for blogging is to prove to the rest of the world that the state of New Jersey is more than just guidos, overweight whistling through their nose mafia types, and pork roll sandwiches. Occasionally, I have to temporarily abort my mission. There are times when even I, a hardcore fan and supporter of the state that I live in, cannot condone the atrocity that is Cold Hearts.
Many of you might say, why rip into Cold Hearts? Why kick the undervamps while they are down? I say, if you are an up and coming filmmaker like Robert Masciantonio, why not head into the biz with a film that you are proud of, not this piece of Jersey trash. With just a little ingenuity, and naturally a shitload more cash, this movie could have gained a huge cult following at the very least. I do support and give credit to those artists who put in a valiant effort, but in this case, my heart is stone. The film is dated, the dialogue is cheesy, and the acting is terrible. Several of the actors including Christian Campbell, who played John-Luke, deliver their lines as if they were nervously giving a speech in freshman public speaking class.
Viktoria, the constantly ruminating main character, seems ripe for a guest role on the CW’s Vampire Diaries. She’s dealing with a major life issue at how underwhelming it has been to live the vampire life: “I thought it’d be like Peter Pan, but ya know, with sharp teeth or something.” But Viktoria is facing a bigger problem, she’s a vampire and she’s all out of blood, she’s so lost without it. Plenty of contemplative shots of Viktoria (Marisa Ryan) make it painfully obvious that she likes to smoke cigarettes and think a lot, usually while wearing her sunglasses at inappropriate times, like at night. Corey Hart she is not, but her character does spell her name with a K for that extra dash of mysteriousness. In her time off of pondering her thoughts, and gazing into the ocean, Viktoria enjoys hanging out with her best friends on the boardwalk. One of them is the offensively token gay latino guy named Darius (Jon Huertas), and the other is Alicia played by the only actor in the film who is semi interesting to watch, Amy Jo Johnson.
The squeaky clean yet secretive, Seth, comes to town and leaves Viktoria smitten. Little does she know that her new crush has a vendetta against her angry ex-boyfriend Charles (Christopher Wiehl), who is basically the really poor mans Kiefer Sutherland, and I mean that man is really poor. They call him Chaz because he thinks he’s cool. Remember when Charles in Charge became his alter ego Chaz? Now HE was badass, unlike this particular Chaz who sets out to kill Viktoria.
We find out that Seth is actually a werewolf. It intends to be a huge reveal, but the surprise was let out more like a queef. If you watch this film and you don’t predict that Seth is a werewolf in the first 10 minutes of the film, then you need to go back for remedial horror classes for zero credit. There’s a bit of a showdown between werewolf Seth and vampire Charles. I’m beginning to think that Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight novels, had too many nights getting stoned, eating Cheez-Its, and watching her Special Edition DVD of the Best Feature Film winner at the ’99 Atlantic City Film Festival, Cold Hearts.
Robert Masciantonio, writer and director of this mess, touts his working relationship with Kevin Smith on his IMDB profile. In the immortal words of Christian Bale “Ohhhh GOOOOD for you…” I also learned that Masciantonio briefly worked for an indy wrestling company based out of New Jersey. After watching Cold Hearts I wonder if they’d be willing to give him his job back? I bet he missed his calling as the next great Grand Wizard of indy wrestling.
Fred Norris spouts sage-like advice and douchebag Seth misses Philly
The Philly born Masciantonio based his film in Atlantic City in order to stealthily aggravate the Jersey/Philly grudge. Some of the screw twisting involves a line from the clean cut, jeans model, and unsuspecting werewolf guy, Seth (Robert Floyd), who tells himself out loud that “all things being equal, I’d rather be in Philly.” Of course, the pot smoking vampire scumbags who hang out at the boardwalk are the Jersey guys and the Secret Stash T-Shirt wearing Silent Bob worshipping band of frat fools are the Philly guys. What’s worse is that Chaz’s band of thugs actually refer to themselves as “his horsemen,” while Seth’s new group of friends refer to them as “the lost boys back there.”
Check out “R.P” who frequently reminds us that he’s wearing goggles
Thanks to IMDB, I found four super lame tag lines that were used for this film:
1) Eternity’s a Bitch
2) Not everything is as it appears
3) Eternity Bites
4) We are all cold hearted sons of bitches
What’s that? You have a brain and you absolutely cannot believe that they actually used such asinine tag lines? I’m usually the one to rush to the defense of everything that secretes out of my disgusting state, but in this instance I’m throwing Cold Hearts to the werewolves.