Shortly after the release of BloodRayne 2 Digital Webbing started a series of graphic novels to further explore the life of everyone's favorite sexy half-vampire, from her early days as a sheep-sucking orphan until a dark future. Tokyo Rogue even takes Rayne to the far east. While those stories are not officially canon, some ideas, like the personification of Rayne's DarkRayne costume as a supernatural split personality thing, met with approving remarks from game creators.

For the most part, each individual episode (or, later, each 3-part mini series) is drawn by a different artist, making for a wide variety of different styles, some of which are quite artistic and in one instance even surreal. Some of the different styles might not be for everyone's tastes, but the quality is excellent through the bank.

Not quite as much can be said about the writing, though. Like the art, it explores very versatile themes, but some stories depict characters out of tune, without the changes being comprehensible as "character development". The writers also didn't seem to have any consensus about how serious they take the established conventions of the franchise. One episode, Rayne dreads water just like the next dhampir, in the next she won't shut up about how she now really needs a hot shower after the action. Also, while it's cool to see a familiar face every once in a while, the rampant resurrection of dead villains in best (or worst) Marvel Comics manner does get ridiculous after a while. That doesn't mean it's all bad, though. Almost all the stories are quite entertaining, a few even great, and most of the aforementioned issues belong into the realm of nitpicking.

The series spawned 16 regular issues, four compilations of shorts called Prime Cuts and a Revenge of the Butcheress special issue, each released with three different covers. The first few episodes also got compiled in a trade paperback, but the vaning popularity of the franchise didn't spare the comic books, either, and the series was discontinued at the end of 2009.

The first BloodRayne film also resulted from a deal made during the BloodRayne 2 hype machine, but released quite a while later due to the longer preproduction and production time of a movie. It takes the sexy half-vampire (played by Kristanna Loken of Terminator 3 fame) back to early 19th century Romania - at which point we already know it doesn't take the game's storyline all too seriously, as Rayne was considered "very young" in the lifespan of 200 years dhampir are granted BloodRayne in her first adventure. Here she is held captive like a beast by a wandering circus, whose owner tortures her skin with water and cutting her flesh to show off her miraculous healing when he feeds her animal blood. But Rayne finally gives in to her killing instincts when one of the circus people tries to rape her, and in her rage slaughters everyone. The next morning three agents of the Brimstone Society (Michael Madsen, Matthew Davis and Michelle Rodriguez) examine the site, and start to search for the bloodsucking culprit.

Rayne in the meantime stumbles upon a fortune teller that reveals her origin to her, which is similar to the game in that she is the child of a woman raped by the vampire lord Kagan (Ben Kingsley), who also slaughtered her entire human family later. Rayne seeks out revenge, but first she has to find a mystical eye her father Kagan is also looking for (this fits in for the Eye of Belial from the first game, but has powers similar to the Heart, as it makes Rayne immune against all her remaining vampire weaknesses). But even after aquiring the artifact she's still no match for her father, so she teams up with Brimstone, who share the same goal of the destruction of Kagan and train her combat skills for the final confrontation...

It is probably not allowed to talk about an Uwe Boll movie without talking about Uwe Boll. He is no artist, alright, but a clever businessman who gets (or at least used to get) his films funded by exploiting German taxing loopholes. He knows video game fans are likely to complain the most vocally about everything, but he also knows they'll watch any film based on their favourite game no matter how bad they expect it to be. The reason you're going to see so many big-name actors in his earlier films is that he basically hires them in between contracts when they don't have time for "real" projects and quickly shoots their scenes so they can go on with their next contract. In a way comparisons with Ed Wood aren't entirely inappropriate. Just like the other "worst film director ever", he doesn't ask for a lot of drafts, takes or cuts, he just goes with what he can get in the quickest time as possible, and just like Ed Wood he keeps on doing what he believes in, no matter all the death-wishes and bad-mouthing in the world.

Like most of Boll's video game adaptions, BloodRayne is a welcome guest on many "worst movies of all time" lists. Sure, the swords look like they're made of cardboard (which they probably are), many supporting actors act as if its their first time on camera and the plot is in deep confusion about itself. When viewed in expectation of a proper adaption to the video game, the film can't be called anything but a letdown. The flic's biggest flaw, however, lies in the marketing that tried to sell it as a big silver screen event, when it should have been a direct-to-video B-movie. That would have spared it - along other early Boll movies - a lot of the feces that get thrown at it. When looking past all that vicious fan disappointment and mandatory Boll-hating, it's actually not that rotten as far as vampire action flicks go. It's not as pretentious as Blade and not as boring as the first Underworld. Of course those two look more slick and are partially better acted, but had BloodRayne been a direct-to-video release, that would only have been expected. The film was actually pretty successful on DVD after flopping terribly in cinemas. At least it got some (mostly involuntarily) funny moments and amusing/disgusting gore effects. Oh, and Meat Loaf's in it, playing himself a vampire pimp in a rather pointless scene with real life prostitutes. If that ain't a plus!

Now things really get bad. Apparently word has gotten around that playing in these movies might be a career hazard, so the cast is much less impressive in this sequel. Since the big stars didn't exactly deliver the performances of their lifetime, that's the least of the films problems, though.

Since the death of her father at her own hands, Rayne, who is now played by Natassia Malthe, moved into the new world, and started her career as a vampire hunter for the Brimstone Society. Her current target is Billy the Kid (Zack Ward), here a pedophile Vampire who assaults families in the small western town Deliverance to kidnap their children. It seems Ranye is no match for the gang, she gets captured and almost hung at the gallows, but can escape thanks to the help of some of the villagers and Pat Garrett, who's out for Billy the Kid, too. Him and Rayne hire a faux preacher and... some other guy to take the vampire gang on for the final showdown. (The sadistic trap the villain sets out for Rayne towards the end seems to defy the laws of physics, but maybe it uses a vampiric pulley, who knows.)

A vampire western doesn't have to be a too terrible idea, but Deliverance is almost all western and not much vampire movie. The supernatural nature of Rayne and her enemies is almost entirely inconsequencial, save for Billy sucking the blood of some helpless children and one blood-fueled miracle healing for Rayne. At least they're waving Brimstone amulets around like they're trying to sell them at a bazaar, as if trying to connect to the first movie at least somehow.

Apparently Boll was going for a Sergio Leone style with this film, since everything is drawn out endlessly. It's totally possible to set the film to 1.5x speed and completely forget, because it's still much too slow and boring. The camera that's slightly waving around all the time is irritating, but not as much as the useless characters, the constant failed attempts at "coolness" (Rayne walks around with a toothpick in her mouth. How rad.) and occasional jokes that are not only not funny, but so senseless that they're slightly disturbing. At least this time Boll went straight to video with the movie, saving himself another humiliation at the box office.

BloodRayne 2: Deliverance

Three time's a charm. This might be what trash dircector Boll had thought, and thus he set out to delight us with yet another BloodRayne. After fumbling around in unrelated settings for two movies, someone finally got what made the original game so compelling. The title already betrays who the enemies are in The Third Reich, and so in the opening scenes we see a group of prisoners about to get deported by Nazi soldiers somewhere in Eastern Europe, but Rayne shows up and starts killing them. While doing so, she bumps into a group of resistance fighters, who are also out to save the prisoners (never mind where they are supposed to go after their rescue.) Together they succeed in killing everyone, but Rayne gets shot at and spills her blood on the nazi commandant (Michael Paré, who also played Pat Garrett in Deliverance) and he survives as a "Daywalker." Much to the delight of a crazy nazi doctor (Clint Howard), who's studying the undead to turn Hitler into an invincible vampire (who only appears in a dream sequence, unfortunately) - with science! Soon he concludes: He needs Rayne and her Dhampir blood.

Not only do we see lots of nazis getting killed, for the first time some decent effort went into making Rayne (who is once again played by Natassia Malthe, even though Kristanna Loken had stated in earlier interviews that she'd return to the role), appear like the sexy but deadly killer she is in the game. Natassia Malthe also seems to have embraced the character by now, and you can see she's having much more fun in her role as a badass killer. Her only problem: The script has no clue whatsoever what to do with her. She's fighting a lot, alright, but there's no explanation what she's doing there to begin with, no mention of the Brimstone Society or any higher motive. She's just... there. When she's not around playing with the resistance or killing nazis, she indulges in lesbian sex at the bordello. She really has not much purpose in this movie as a character, most of the time she's but an object that the nazis want. She's not even good at not getting caught, jsut waltzing into town with her blades in broad daylight. "How did you know I was here?" she asks when approached in her "hideout" by the resistance. "Don't have to be a bloodhound to find you." She doesn't even talk back, she just turns away in a huff.

The cleavage/gore ratio has been significantly raised

In general the script isn't very good at dealing with people. By far the best characters and the best performances in the movie are Steffen Mennekes as the "good" nazi, the lieutenant who tries to talk sense into his superiors and is torn between his orders and his conscience, and Annett Culp as resistance fighter Magda Markovic, cryptologist, tough fighter in the field and seductress in undercover missions. These two don't even seem to belong in a cartoonish movie like BloodRayne, maybe that's why they're both killed off after far too few scenes. Instead we're stuck with a pansy for a resistance leader and a vampire commandant who starts out strong when he's alienated by his own new identity, but soon degenerates into a goofy vampire lord wannabe who's spewing pseudo-mystical babble. (Lord Vigo wants his catchphrase back, seriously!) Clint Howard's performance as the doctor is even more over-the-top, it almost seems as if he's mocking the movie on purpose (think Raul Julia in Street Fighter, only not as good and much more awkward).

Correcting the above statement: The script isn't very good at anything, cause what you've read in the first paragraph is all there really is about the plot. Afterwards it's only more back-and-forth between the nazis trying to capture Rayne, Rayne wanting to blow up everything but finding no explosives, the resistance launching some pointless operations, a few fights and a few sex scenes. But at least it doesn't succumb to the dull lingering of Deliverance. Thanks to a return to the the good old Boll "qualities" it is the most fun to watch of all the BloodRayne movies yet. The setups are awkward, the editing haphazard, and you'll never see any death scenes more nonchalant than those performed by the nazi soldier extras here. With 79 minutes it's also the shortest of the bunch, although losing even more dead weight surely wouldn't have hurt.

An hommage to the first game's intro! Gasp!

Of course you can't let that expensive World War 2 set go to waste with just one movie, so Uwe Boll took the chance to exploit the same scenario and requisites, as well as mostly the same actors for the "parody" Blubberella, starring a fat dhampir chick in place of Rayne (next to yet another, more serious WW2 film titled Auschwitz). While The Third Reich makes a surprisingly decent first impression in comparison, Blubberella has strong potential to become Boll's most embarassing film yet. Boll himself in the role of Hitler is bound to become a hot topic of conversation among his haters, at any rate.

Blubberella

After whoring out the franchise to Boll three times, Majesco finally found a developer to create a new BloodRayne game. With the first announcement for Nintendo's 3DS, a mysterious title called BloodRayne: The Shroud was listed among the sytem's lineup, but it has disappeared since. Instead, the 2D experts at Wayforward tried themselves at a new interpretation for XBLA and PSN. Instead of picking up on any previous installment, Betrayal is a complete reboot with a significantly different, manga-like tone. Many have likened the game to classic Castlevania, and it is true that it shares many aesthetic elements (the Gothic architecture, the style of the music), but in gameplay it couldn't differ much more while still being a sidescrolling action game.

The platforming is simply beautiful. Ever since smooth controls have become the standard over Mario's wonky high-inertia physics or Castlevania's stiff mechanics, platformers have struggled to keep the challenge up without resorting to cheap tricks and deceptive trope subversions. Almost all of Betrayal's higher level platforming sequences rely on the more abstract mechanics: Either Rayne has to dash in mid-jump, slash to keep herself suspended in the air, or get off the ground with her super-high backflip (done by running a few steps and then turning around just before the jump). In best Super Mario Bros. tradition, enemies serve as stepping stones, thanks to a bouncing footstomp move. To get to all the secret areas (mostly to collect hidden red skulls, which substitute for experience points), often all of the above has to be applied subsequently. Environmental hazards like moving chainsaws and laser barriers put extra pressure on the player. There are also dozens of lovely hommages to the classics, like the rotating cannons of Super Mario Bros. 3. Unfortunately Rayne can't duck, which not only feels unnatural, but also makes her an easy target, while fighting small enemies becomes a major pain.

Unfortunately, platforming is only half the game, as Rayne spends at least the same amount of time fighting monsters in a boring Devil May Cry-styled combofest. All too often battles take place in super lazy locked single-screen arenas. The game frequently gets ultra-chaotic with several different enemy types on screen at the same time, and that's were combat draws all its difficulty from. Rayne carries a gun for crowd control, but ammunition is very limited. The system shows much potential when combined with the platforming, but the drawn-out arena fights are just unecessary padding. After each stage, Rayne gets a ranking for her performance. After a normal playthrough, it's almost invariably "F", so in theory there's much potential for score runs. Unfortunately, the only way to really improve on the ranking in a meaningful way is to solve the arena fights more quickly. Given that they're the part one would prefer to skip in the first place, there's not much motivation to go back.

Is this BloodRayne, or Twilight?

At least sometimes clever use is made of Rayne's ability to use environmental hazards to her advantage, in a more varied manner than it was the case in Bloodrayne 2. (It even has portions were Rayne uses slain enemies as platforms to cross bodies of water/acid, which was planned for Terminal Reality's last game in the franchise but ended up being cut.) Wayforward hasn't been very creative with the bosses, though. During the first 10 stages, there are merely three boss fights, and two of them are against variants of the same monster.

Loyalty to the original games is sporadic at best. Many monsters are clearly inspired by the TRI horror universe, but the drawing style makes them all look much too cute and not nearly as disgusting and horrifying as was probably intended. The coffin rocket Rayne uses to get from level to level might have found its place in a kitschy anime like Hellsing or in Gungrave, but here it just comes off as silly. The worst part is the dialogue, though, which is truly abysmal. BloodRayne never was high drama, but it very well captured that certain B-movie charme with its mix of trashy one-liners and awkward pathos. Here, however, it's embarassing fanfic at its worst. There's even a shitty emo vampire who helps out Rayne by turning into a white raven (Rayne later learns to turn into a bird herself). The game could have been significantly improved just by cutting out all the dialogue (and the crappy emo vampire) - it's that cringe-worthy. At least the dialogs are few and far between.

Regardless, BloodRayne: Betrayal still is a really good action platformer. For fans of Devil May Cry, the combat might even be rewarding as well, while everyone else is annoyed by the arena brawls balancing out the more well-integrated fights for the worse. Whoever liked the original games' flair will get a toothache from all the bullshit anime tropes, but at least it's easy to ignore most of them.