In this episode, we are examining the 2003 vampire movie, Underworld.
This is an especially slick Vampire flick, which really rips off so many cinematic motifs from the Matrix, both types of shots, action scenes, and sound edit. Really, thematically it is very similar as well. This is probably part of the reason why it has cult popularity, it's like the Matrix, but in a fantasy horror scenario, rather than cyberpunk.
Introduction
Selene, played by Kate Beckinsale, is a Death Dealer, part of a warrior group whose task is to wipe out the Lycans (Werewolves).
Michael Corvin, played by Scott Speedman, is an intern ER doctor. The movie starts with him being followed by the Lycans who the Deathdealers are following.
Budapest - the Location
I want to bring this up early because I didn't realise until watching it after having spent a month living in Budapest, that this is where it is set. I have not been in most of the places shown in the movie, but I know one of the street names quite well, and spent many hours walking up and down it. Or at least, a street named like it.
Raze is the strongman of the Lycans. He is played by the same man who plays Mr Coffee from The Green Mile, Kevin Grivioux. I love this guy's voice, it's one of those most singular and peculiar voices you hear. He isn't so much of a cuddly teddybear giant in this one, but instead a devoted, loyal follower.
Product Placement Gratutity
I brought up the thing about how this movie is mostly set and filmed in Budapest, also because I wanted to talk about this most notable example of product placement.
When Selene shoots this Lycan, as he is thrown back by the shots, he knocks this sign down. I personally have never seen a sign certainly not in front of an East European Pavillion that could be bumped off its mountings so easily. I would guess that Bacardi corporation paid a lot to have this in there. Alcohol manufacturers certainly get a lot of custom from the kind of people who would watch a movie like this one.
Next I will introduce you to Lucian, who appears first in the movie to quiet down a rabble of Lycans who are in the midst of watching a fight between two notable Lycans. Lucian is the character whose motivations lay at the centre of the plot and the thematic undertones of the film. You are supposed to hate him, of course. Lucian is played by Michael Sheen, who maybe the most notable other role he has played in Hollywood was the voice of the White Rabbit in the Disney movie Alice in Wonderland.
It was the noise of this ruckus that leads Selene to believe that there might be a Lycan coven hiding in the sewer tunnels under Budapest.
Kraven is a would-be usurper of the Vampiric Empire. Behind him you can see his General, of sorts, Soren. As I was watching this again to create this review, I thought it was the guy who played Loki in The Avengers movie. No, it is not. Kraven is played by Shane Brolly, and Soren, by Scott McElroy, who for me most notably had a role in Pulp Fiction. Soren is Kraven's right-hand man.
Kahn is the leader of the Deathdealers. Kahn is played by Robby Gee, who has not appeared in many hollywood films. Kahn and his warrior clan take their jobs very seriously. But the caretaker of the Coven, located in Budapest, Kraven, does not like them because they are so serious about their job.
Erika is the pretty blonde who is infatuated with Kraven. She seems to be oblivious to Kraven's infatuation with Selene.
This is the most notable example but throughout the film there is a lot of very very fancy metalworked items. I'm not sure where the Vampires get this stuff from, but this luxurious craftsmanship seems to be a constant attendant of the Vampires. Actually, I think that Hungarian metalwork is quite notable, so this is probably why.
Selene despises Erika, because she is basically a sycophant. Perhaps also because she is infatuated with Kraven, and Selene is very serious, and these two are very fake. But Erika pays a lot of attention to Selene, possibly because she senses that her unrequited love, Kraven, adores her.
Singe is Lucian's scientific advisor and a very close ally. He is played by the notable Austrian actor Erwin Leder. He is very likeable but creepy. According to the backstory, he made a deal with Lucian to help Lucian find a way to blend the Vampire and Lycan clans, buying him immortality as a Lycan.
This is an image of a dossier about Michael. It is interesting to me because there is a section of the main drag on the East side of the Danube called Joszef Korut, that I passed many times, since it is on one of the main tram lines that crosses the Danube from Buda to Pest. Yes, really, this is where the name comes from, but I won't bug you with the historical details regarding the kingdoms these names refers to.
These are the cops, who work for the Lycans. They are Lycans, obviously. They are deliciously cheesy goons, and dumb as posts.
Doctor Adam Lockwood, played by Wentworth Miller. Dr Adam thinks that Michael, a coworker, a fellow intern, might have lost his mind after being injured. He seems to help the Cops, but he is a bit of a nothing character.
Now some plot:
The procedure through which Selene produced a hole in the floor to drop a level to escape a horde of Lycans, and also to chase Michael who got away from her in an elevator, is epic, cheesy hollywood over the top gunplay. I am not sure exactly why it is necessary that female leads in action movies have to always have automatic-tweaked semiauto pistols, but it's terribly common.
Of course, like all heroes in Hollywood, her gun is a Beretta 92. It is not a coincidence that most US police forces give this pistol to their goons also. The bad guys always have Desert Eagles. I did not show this but I wanted to mention it. Virtually all of the Lycans carrying pistols, have this unweildy, ridiculous Israel-manufactured gun. I supposed in the 80s it was the Uzi 9mm.
This scene involves Selene pursuing this mysterious human who the Lycans have taken a particular interest in.
So, I show this with the caption on it, because this particular audio sample has seen use in several of my favourite bands' music. This is the point that Selene and Michael are formally introduced. Selene's motivation here is wanting to know what the Lycans are up to, and why they are so interested in this seemingly ordinary human.
Lucian, being a quite old and very powerful Lycan, of course runs up to and is able to jump on top of the car that Selene and Michael are in. He has a special spring-loaded sword that he can flip out from his forearm, and here you see him getting a direct hit on Selene's shoulder, a serious injury that shapes what happens next.
Of course, Selene tries to run Lucian over, but in a shot very reminiscent of The Matrix, he regains his equilibrium mid-flight and lands on the ground afterward, of course, pretty much uninjured.
Selene's injury causes her to black out while she is driving. They end up driving into the river, which is, of course, the Danube. Michael, being a paramedic and doctor, attempts to revive her after she inhales some amount of water as he drags her up from the submerged car.
Lucian, in spite of taking quite some silver bullets from Selene's Berettas, managed to get a sample of Michael's blood for his mad scientist Singe. Lucian had sent out his tough henchman Raze, who failed to bring anything back except a lot of fancy vampire ninja stars from Selene. Singe is very focused on this job of getting the special blood from Michael, who was the last candidate left in their search.
Erika meets Michael after Selene brings him back to the Mansion of the Budapest Coven. Then she sees his Lycan bite wound, and is instinctively revulsed. She is looking down from the ceiling in this shot, hissing at him like a cat. I'm not sure where this cliche exactly came from, but it makes me laugh every time.
This is the identical gun used by Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. It is in fact a target shooting pistol from Heckler and Koch called the Match. You can clearly see this name on it, and of course it is a shiny, silver gun, perhaps in the old tradition of Hollywood Westerns... It seems to be often used by females, for some reason. This is the pistol that is given to Selene by Kahn after they have devised a version of the 'ultraviolet rounds' the lycans are using, and it is loaded with bullets of this type.
When I was studying chemistry in highschool, we got to play with a little Silver Nitrate. It is of course not silver. In fact, when it is exposed to light, it turns sepia brown. In typical hollywood style, however, this silver compound is depicted entirely different to reality. The ooze that comes out is clearly sparkly silver paint.
Here is a good close shot of Soren, while he is organising the assassination of the envoy from the Western coven.
At this point in the story, the collusion between Lucian and Kraven is revealed. Kraven is motivated by lust for power, and wants Selene as his Queen. Lucian has manipulated Kraven into both covering for and assisting him in his quest for revenge over the death of his would be vampire bride Sonya, with promises of his ascendancy to leadership of the Vampire clan, as well as promises of a peace treaty between Vampire and Lycan.
After seeing Lucian, Selene needs to investigate some ancient history of the story surrounding the supposed death of Lucian. This is the supposed proof that Kraven killed Lucian in an epic battle and inferno. This is the slave brand from Lucian's shoulder, next to the illustration depicting him, bearing the emblem of Viktor.
Convinced that Viktor, the most senior of the Vampire clan, needs to be warned about the suspicions she has that Lucian is in fact alive and Kraven is in league with him, she commences the wake-up procedure with her blood, in which her memories are transmitted. She is not, however, competent for this task, and does not succeed in convincing Viktor.
During the confrontation that ensues between Selene and Viktor, there is this scene, which is another source of sampling from certain industrial music bands that I am particularly fond of. "It's the oldest story in the book. He desires the one thing he cannot have."
This is again from that same encounter, and another notable sample moment, as I call them. "You have broken the chain and the Covenant. You must be judged." The chain is the power sharing between the three Vampire rulers, and the process of memory sharing they are supposed to perform. The Covenant is the rules by which the Coven operates.
Yes, until I was watching this again last night, I never connected Coven and Covenant. A covenant is a secret deal between a group of people, and when you realise this linguistic connection, it has malefic overtones, that you may not have thought of until I just pointed that out.
The sample moments come thick and fast in this part of the story. The irony of this scene is that, in some respects, his prediction comes true. But more on that later. Selene does not know yet the dark secrets of Viktor, and especially his appearance in her life, where she believed that he rescued her from a pack of ravenous Lycans.
I did not show you the other notable, and frequently appearing Hungarian act-person in this film. Amelia only appears very briefly, and never speaks. Rigel, the Death Dealer partner you see at the beginning of the film, with Selene, is also Hungarian. He has only one line in the movie, and Amelia has none. I should comment, that Hungarians, at least some significant part of their population, are very pretty people. Amelia is classic vampire beauty at its' finest.
It finally dawns on Erika, after Kraven declares in her earshot, that he wishes to have Selene as his Queen. At this point, after Selene is confined in a room, Erika triggers the fire alarm, shuts down the power, and brings Selene's Berettas to her. The text is in response to Selene's question, "Why are you helping me?"
This is just another atmosphere generating short scene, and I believe that the buildings you can see lit up in the background, are some significant structures on the West side of the Danube in Buda. Possibly Parliament. By the time that I was in Budapest, there were not many of these old style trams, but there was a few.
This is another example of the otherwise Budapest setting. Sor (with an umlaut) is beer, which you can see pictured in the iconography of the banner on the right side of the street. In this scene, after leaving Michael chained up in a Vampire interrogation room (for Lycans), where Selene and he share their life tragedies and motivations, she is returning to rescue him after Erika allows him to escape.
Here is a gratuitous action shot of Selene discharging one of her Berettas, with a nice big muzzle flash. I wanted to show this one for the guns thing. In this scene, a swarm of Lycans, including Singe, the mad scientist, comes up the stairs, which are of course dripping water from the rain. Because, you know, Hungarians are terrible roofers. No, really, they are not.
This is where Selene gets her evidence to bring back to Viktor and vindicate herself. Namely, Singe, who survives being hit by her silver bullets.
There is numerous shots like this in the movie, and I showed already the one with the Matrix-like slow motion somersault being done by Lucian. This style of shot was pioneered in the Matrix, however, it is in fact drawn directly from comic books. It is intended to give a sense of the pettiness of the characters involved. Perhaps also this style of shot has become popular thanks to the many computer games in the 80s that use this viewpoint.
Note that the police car says Police. In Budapest, and all over Hungary, the word is Rendorseg, pardon my spelling for those who know Hungarian. It took me quite some time to recognise what Hungarian police cars look like when I was in Hungary. They are not nearly so outlandish looking as many other countries. I believe the word means 'order keepers' as well, literally translated.
Here, Selene bring Singe before Viktor. Viktor is very dubious about this character, but then during the exchange, it just so happens that Kahn returns to report that Amelia and her envoy have been assassinated by Lycans.
Singe, being proud of his discovery and achieving his mission for Lucian, of course gets all mouthy with Viktor, and eventually, Viktor shreds his face and makes him dead. Just after proudly declaring that 3 feet away from where Singe was bound to the floor, sleeps a relative of the legendary Alexander Corvinus. Of course his blood seeps into the sleeping place of Marcus, the remaining sleeping vampire monarch, which forms the premise of the following sequel, Rise of the Lycans.
Which reminds me. Not far up the road from Joszef Korut is a district known as Corvin. Corvin is based on the Hungarian name, of course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvinus and this Alexander Corvinus is supposedly a close relative of the famous Mattias Corvinus, and I suppose must have been a relative of the Hunyadi family. Laszlo Hunyadi is another notable Hungarian monarch whose name appears on several major streets of Budapest.
The memory recall scenes, mostly from Michael after being bitten by Lucian, are mostly pretty hard to capture. But here is the most crucial moment, whose consequences lead to pretty much all of the stories in this and the following Underworld movies. Lucian's vampire bride, who was pregnant at the time of this memory, is pictured here incinerating after being exposed to sunlight. Her name was Sonya. She was the daughter of Viktor.
An epic, and really quite boring and poorly choreographed battle ensues in the underground tunnels where Lucian and his coven are based. This is one of the better moments, where Raze goes animal-form and fights Soren, who has his razor-steel whips with him. It does not go well for Soren after one of his whips gets stuck in some concrete rubble.
Finally, although Lucian did manage to get some of Michael's blood into him, he is interrupted and is unable to continue and complete the task by adding Amelia's blood. Lucian explains to Selene that Viktor in fact fed on and killed her family, but could not bear to kill Selene, who reminded Viktor of Sonya.
So at Lucian's urging, desperate to do away with Viktor, she bites him, to infect him with the vampire virus. How exactly this transmits the Vampire virus I am uncertain, but this is stock Vampire mythology. In more sophisticated Vampire stories, turning a mortal is a mystical, magical procedure, but not in Hollywood schlock.
In the middle of the fight that ensues between Michael, now a Hybrid, and Viktor, Selene intervenes with Viktor's fallen sword, and delightfully and cheesily slices his head in half across an angle, which takes several seconds to actually fall off, or even separate. This is her landing after her coup de grace.
Thematic Analysis
So, there is two major themes in this movie. One is that of the blood feud starting nonsense of Viktor, who feared the slave Lycans from breeding with Vampires, and thus in particular him losing his powerful position, who killed his daughter, which of course he regrets, who also happens to have been pregnant with a Lycan slave, the most senior. The typical 'love outside your station' story.
But there is another undercurrent which I think is thematically identical to the Matrix - somewhat connected but distinct, of a servile class throwing off their oppressive rulers, and the deception by which these rulers hold hegemony, that eventually sees them undone. The Matrix has the same, in that, the oppressors hold humans in slavery by deluding them.
Sounds
The movie is very well edited, and as I mentioned, rips off a lot of shots and edits that were made most famous in the Matrix movies. But it's more than just this semi-futuristic noir that is slavishly and quite artfully copied, the sound editing also. In the direction there is some elements that are typically B-grade but try to be epic and significant, which is why this movie has so many notable sample moments.
Underworld, even though it is quite a long movie, moves along at a fairly quick pace. Upon my re-viewing of it, initially I was a bit sad because I realised I didn't hate Lucian at all anymore, and Kraven's sampleworthy speech was ironically prophetic - not in his lust for power, but in that, she will also oppose Viktor, who was the central cause of the feud between Lycans and Vampires. I also didn't hate Erika so much either, even though she and Kraven were as deep as a sheet of tissue paper.
It is certainly a B-grade movie, but done in such sumptuous style in such a perfect setting for such a film. The acting is generally even quite excellent, especially Selene, Michael and Singe. In typical B-grade style, the setup hook for the sequels is also very gratuitous.
But the excellent music, sound editing, visual composition and scripting make this a real pleasure to watch. It is one of my all time favourite movies still, even after looking at it so closely.
Update
I was just watching this movie again, and I noticed a woman hanging around the werewolf den when Raze brings back his fallen colleague and gets roasted by Lucian. Obviously, she was a Lycan, but you never see them. Maybe because Canid females have 8 boobs, not just 2.
We can't stop here! This is Whale country!