Chuck Steel: Night Of The Trampires (2021)
Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires is a British stop motion animation action/comedy/horror movie, which originally premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2018 and is blasting into cinemas in the UK from 29 October, just in time for Halloween.
Trampires is the feature debut of writer/director/producer/voice talent Mike Mort and his Animortal studio and sets out to “parody and pay homage” to live-action films of the 1980s. Think Viz comic meets Die Hard meets Evil Dead.
Our ‘hero’, Chuck Steel is a no-nonsense maverick renegade cop who comes face to teeth with a horde of vampire-like beings: trampires. Trampires feast upon the blood of those who are drunk – alcoholic tramps being a favourite target – and can be killed via exposure to sunlight or a stake through the liver. Steel’s schtick is that he always “works alone”, and after a series of partners quickly decease, we see why. But Steel seems the only man who can defeat the trampires, if he can get past the toxic wokeness which is taking down the LA Police Department from the inside.
Before you watch Trampires, it’s worth doing a little self-check. Did you
grow up with or enjoy the action movies of the mid-80s? Do you like your
humour pretty broad (fart/vomit/penis/boob/ass jokes, digs at
cross-dressing, quite a bit of sexism and the odd gay joke)? Do you enjoy
your animation with plenty of gore, exploding heads and torn off limbs? If
you answered YES to all this, proceed and have fun. And have fun you will.
After a slightly slow start, Night of the Trampires gets nuttier and
more exciting as it barrels along. Body and explosion counts rise
steadily through the roof and the movie culminates in a blockbuster
climax including a truly inspired and quite hilarious fight scene
(clowns feature heavily here and are indeed something of a leitmotif
throughout). Trampires is great festival-fodder, or for a night in with
broad-minded mates, beer and pizza, definitely more of a boys’ movie in
all honesty.
Steel’s unconscionable behaviour is presumably designed to set up his
redemption arc, but this gets a little muddied by the often equally awful
behaviour of the other characters. Instead, the mild degree of character
growth Steel ultimately experiences is swallowed up in the excitement of
saving the world.
Ultimately, Trampires feels like a movie slightly out of time, as
unreconstructed as its hero, but if you sometimes feel the world has
gotten a little too PC, and like your animation comedy raw, gory and
visually spectacular, you’ll be roaring in the aisles.
Where Trampires misfires a little is at the level of the script, which
is at times clumsy and occasionally wince-inducing.
The classic ‘80s action heroes were at their best when they were witty –
think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall telling the
corpse of his fake wife (Sharon Stone): “consider that a divorce”
– but Trampires takes a lower road, preferring fairly corny, sometimes
pretty juvenile humour. The tramp that Steel gives quarters to on the
street stores them in his foreskin, Van Rental remarks on the size of
Steel’s penis while at the urinals in a bar (his large penis comes up a
lot – fnar...), the female partner Steel has been insulting tells him
she loves him as she plunges to her death and so on.
[UK RELEASE]
FORMAT: MOVIE AVAILABLE ON: THEATRICAL RELEASE
(Oct 29) FROM: ANIMORTAL RATING 15 RUNNING TIME : 90 mins
IN A NUTSHELL: A visually arresting, ambitious labour of love, but Trampires' deliberately un-PC script means it may struggle to find an audience beyond animation festivals and beery nights in with the lads.
★★★☆☆
COMMUNITY RATING- VOTE NOW
Mark Brandon has been a fan
of all things animated since he can remember, and a writer since he could put
pen to paper. He lives in the south of Scotland, where he writes science
fiction and fantasy, goes for walks in the country and lifts big bits of metal
up and down (mainly for vanity’s sake).
*SCREENER PROVIDED BY ANIMORTAL*
