31 Days of Guilty Pleasures – ‘Bordello of Blood’
A few years ago I did a daily countdown to Halloween that featured some of my favorite scares from 31 different horror movies. This year I’m bringing back the feature, but this time we’re taking a look at some of my favorite guilty pleasures.
There’s no rhyme or reason to how these movies are being listed, so the placement on the countdown doesn’t denote any sort of ranking. Also, my definition of guilty pleasure is a movie that ranges from either being not very good to outright bad, but there’s something about it that still makes it endearing to watch.
Growing up it was pretty common for me to see a LOT of movies that were definitely not age appropriate for me. For one I had a cool aunt that would let me watch R-rated horrors movies when I was seven. Then my dad would take me to cool-guy action movies starting with “Tombstone” in ’93. My third way of accessing movies that weren’t age appropriate was when we got cable. I don’t remember when I saw it, but I know I saw “Bordello of Blood” on cable late one Saturday night and it definitely blew my mind. At the time I still wasn’t sure what porn was like, but I totally thought “Bordello of Blood” was it. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized it was a legitimate movie.
“Bordello of Blood” is part of the “Tales from the Crypt” films and was written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis of “Back to the Future” fame. The film starred Dennis Miller as a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Corey Feldman at a brothel. Miller soon discovers that the brothel is a front for vampires and the head vampire, Lilith, takes an extreme interest in him.
And it turns out only Lilith wouldn’t Dennis Miller as he was a complete ass on set from all accounts. There’s a great documentary on one of the versions of “Bordello of Blood” released a few years ago called “Tainted Blood” and it goes into the production of the movie. One of the things that gets brought up is how Dennis Miller acted like he didn’t want to be there the whole time he was filming and did everything he could to avoid filming.
In fact Dennis Miller didn’t even want to be part of the movie and when he was asked to star he said he’d only do it for a million dollars, probably knowing that no one would pay him that much at that time… or even now. As the documentary reveals, they were able to get a million dollars to Dennis by taking it out of the films budget. A fact that certainly endeared him even more to the cast and crew.
And of course after the films release Dennis Miller really couldn’t care any less about promoting the movie.
Still, despite Dennis Miller’s off camera behavior, there’s a cheesy beautiful charm to “Bordello of Blood.” It has a lot of gore and skin that make it a ridiculously fun experience, no matter how hard Dennis Miller tries to ruin it.
