Blood and Chocolate Review

By Lee Arcuri

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed from the title, Blood & Chocolate is about a girl who can turn into a wolf.

Let me give you some insight into how the title of this movie was chosen.

Marketing Guy#1: So, we’re thinking a movie called “Blood” will really get the male demographic interested.
Marketing Guy#2: Wait, what about the chicks? Girls don’t like blood.
Marketing Guy#1: What do girls like? Flowers? Backrubs?
Marketing Guy#2: Hmmm… “Blood and Foot Massages.”
Marketing Guy#1: No wait, I got it. “Blood and Chocolate.”
Marketing Guy#2: Yeah!
(high five)

That was a lie. Research tells us that this movie is based on the novel “Blood and Chocolate” by Annette Curtis Klause. She named the book after the 1986 Elvis Costello and the Attractions album.

No, that was another lie.

Research tells us the name “Blood and Chocolate” comes from a quote from a Hermann Hesse novel called “Steppenwolf.”

Research tells us that Steppenwolf was the band that sang “Born to be Wild.”

All of these facts are far more interesting than the actual movie, but this is a website called LameMovies.net, so you knew that already. Also you should know that everyone who works in my local video store thinks I have wretched taste in movies. This is the sacrifice I make for you (Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me coming soon).

The first indication that there’s going to be a problem with this movie is the dreaded “film by” credit. Anyone who fancies themself auteur enough to put “A Film by” credit in front of a Wolman movie called “Blood & Chocolate” is obviously incapable of delivering the goods. That’s just my opinion, and I am never wrong. Stanley Kubrick can put “A film by” on his flicks. Katja Von Garnier has not yet earned that privilege.

Research tells us that Garnier is a brand of hair products.

Anyway, the story concerns Vivian, a young girl who is not human. She is loup-garoux.

Research tells us that loup is the French word for wolf. And I think garoux might be like a French sauce made out of flour and fat. So loup-garoux literally means “wolf gravy.”

No, I’m lying again. Loup-garoux means werewolf I guess in French, even though they live in Romania. We learn that Vivian likes to run. Occasionally, for no reason, she’ll jump at a wall and sorta leap off it. Not in any kind of spectacular She-Wolf kind of way, but obviously I’m supposed to gather from this pathetic wall bouncing that Vivian is different. Vivian is special. Vivian can do things. Vivian works in a chocolate store, no doubt an effort by the screenwriter to shed some light on the title.

Vivian belongs to a secretive clan of werewolves that live in Romania and hide their true nature from mankind to remain alive. Secrecy is paramount to these people, because throughout history man has hunted and killed them whenever they discovered their true nature. Vivian learned this lesson the hard way when her entire family was killed. So under no circumstances can anyone be told about their secret, but occasionally it seems okay to hunt and kill humans. Just keep the secret. Everything else is gravy. Wolf gravy.

So now Vivian lives in Romania making chocolate. The leader of the pack is Gabriel, and it is time to pick a new mate for himself. Vivian is most likely going to be chosen, but she doesn’t want this life. She doesn’t want to ride the wolf gravy train as the leader’s wife. She just wants to be left alone.

That’s when she meets Aiden, a human artist of graphic novels who is doing research for a new project about the loup-garoux legend. He doesn’t realize she’s a werewolf. She however, quickly realizes the danger Aiden is in for sniffing around (har!) and promptly starts dating him.

Then they actually have the dreaded date montage. Nothing in cinema makes my kidneys hurt more than the date montage. You know, a series of clips to music of them laughing, having fun, falling down, playing in fountains… sort of like a chewing gum commercial.

This spells trouble for the pack, and Gabriel orders Aiden run off or killed, and Vivian is forced to choose her loyalties. Man or Wolf.

The most interesting thing about the movie is that the loup-garoux are not portrayed as your typical werewolves. They turn into real wolves, instead of into those half-man, half wolf creatures we are used to seeing. The reason this is interesting is because when they change into a wolf (in a flash of glowing light), their clothes disappear. And when they change back to human form, they are naked.

The clothes don’t come back.

Where do they go?

Where are the clothes?

Research doesn’t tell us.

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