Razor Blade Smile - Jake West

There are moments: in the James Bond-style credit sequence, Lilith's fanged mouth yawns wide, disgorging a veritable blizzard of razor blades. And in the black-and-white prelude, West's camera looks down on his voluptuous vampire, sprawled on a bed, the only color the scarlet drenching her dress, bloodying her mouth. But artsy razzle-dazzle can't distract from Razor Blade Smile's overall failure to arouse horror, lust, humor, or any other redeeming response. First-timer Eileen Daley makes Lilith so soignee and hip it hurts; her femme fatale's couture runs to multizippered, skintight black leather, shades, fur hats; the picture's completed by ebony mane, cheekbones to die for, and an extraordinarily mobile mouth with alarming overbite. Lilith kills time at a vampire/goth bar, shagging lesbian or stud, but what she really lives for are century-long power games played with the love of her life--er, death. This cynical horror flick punctures the very conventions that are the genre's lifeblood: encouraging egregious mugging and milking portentousness from every remark, Smile reduces the primal sex-death themes of authentic vampire fiction to kiss kiss/bang bang/bite bite. --Kathleen Murphy ...