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Purple Glow. Canada 2005. Directed by Sv Bell

A meteor crashes on Earth surface. Two camper couples and hitchhiker woman Samantha find the rock, which seems to have mysterious and unknown powers. Sexy Samantha touches the rock first, and she becomes hungry for flesh - human flesh!

Sv Bell (The Night they Returned) has released his latest microcinema effort featuring horror, sci-fi, gore as well familiar faces and Melantha Blackthorne, Elisabeth Faure and Costa Alexandrakis from Bell's earlier films. Those who remember Blackthorne's directorial debut Sinners & Saints, may remember Michael Brunet (and Elisabeth Faure) from her rollercoaster of bad taste. Purple Glow has elements you wouldn't expect from mainstream horror film, but it is also much better and more carefully constructed than earlier Bell films. Filmmakers have been brave using minimal lighting for first half of the movie. It's not easy to do it properly with equipment that can't match with quality, that is used for bigger budget features. But here you can see the proof that it can work, if other elements are in balance.

The characters of the film are quite nice. Mia and Debbie (Magenta Baribeau and Elisabeth Faure) have been portrayed as irritating, nagging girlfriends when nice Samantha seems like a threat to couples peace and especially Mia and Debbie. This creates a tension between five lead characters, which eventually bursts out unexpectedly. This time Costa Alexandrakis and Michael Brunet are easily the cream of the crop with natural, simple and believable acting and dialog.

Purple Glow is an entertaining piece of microcinema, which doesn't try to be more than it is. The homages to good ol' 50's science fiction movies are clear. And thank god (or Bell) there are no lame jokes or one-liners, just straight-forward tension, action, horror, sci-fi fun and some appreciated erotic moments too! Of course I could whine about some techical aspects, but hey - like Sv Bell's website says: he "has a passion for fine B cult movies, low-budget quickies, horror and cheesy exploitation schlocks" there aren't really a need for that. Because I and many of you have the same passion. You could feed it with Purple Glow.