MOVIE REVIEW : ‘The Shining Blood’: Polish Up Golden Turkey

There are vanity films, and then there are vanity films . Into this most emphatic latter category comes the mind-bogglingly vain “The Shining Blood” (at the Monica 4-Plex). This low-budget boondoggle marks the debut of director, actor, writer and producer Stash Klossowski, a jet-setting “playboy prince” whose wealth eminently qualified him to turn incoherent auteur.

Think Ed Wood with bucks.

And think a movie that offers gratuitous nude scenes in a topless bar and a trendy, ersatz American Indian mysticism that allows the star and his blond escort to transcend earthly existence and stroll directly into a red-hued heaven at the finale.

Even hardened bad-movie buffs might have to cry uncle as Klossowski plays Billy Hawkins, a Vietnam vet and recent parolee who meets up with a couple of kids in trouble in Arizona. He says, “Well, howdy-doo,” in an effete, laconic tone that sounds half-Texan, half-Transylvanian. So is Billy a martial arts-wielding tough guy or slumming aristocrat? Both: This handy man eventually confesses to having once been Lord William Hawkins, a revelation that serves only to explain the accent.

The filmmaker’s chief casting criterion seems to have been ensuring no one out-act him. Which brings us to the handsome young couple he rescues from an attempted kidnaping in a small-town bar: Gabriel DiCristofaro, the naive hunk, and Machel Penn, the beauty who inspires both their affections.

As these triangular three search for buried treasure and stumble fatefully across sacred Indian burial sites, it’s Klossowski, not the kid, who gets the love scenes with the girl. The filmmaker also gives himself world-weary flashback love scenes, and even hallucinatory deathbed love scenes (!). Then there’s his small additional role, a la Peter Sellers, as a whiny-voiced Arab sultan.

So who is this gift horse that grateful golden-turkey aficionados probably shouldn’t look in the mouth? Klossowski is the son of the famed painter Balthus, a purported buddy to the likes of Visconti and the Beatles, and self-described “rock star, yogi, guerrilla leader, poet, racing driver, ruler of an island in the Indian Ocean, automobile manufacturer, alchemist and explorer.” And, it’s apparent, a guy with still way too much time on his hands.

“The Shining Blood” (MPAA-rated R) bleeds into unwatchability considered as a narrative, but as an inadvertent study in human folly, it may actually offer something resembling a good time.

‘The Shining Blood’

Machel Penn: Debra Jo Paxton

Stash Klossowski: Billy the Hawk

Gabriel DiCristofaro: Dan Rebeaux

John Phillip Law: Heep

A Thrill Entertainment presentation. Director-producer Stash Klossowski. Screenplay by Klossowski, Patrick Lango. Cinematographer Cris Lombardi. Editor Jeff Rothstein. Music Johnny Lee Schell. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for nudity, sexuality, language, violence).