THE CULT OF KIM NEWMAN
THIS MONTH, WE’RE paying tribute to the long-lasting influence of Die Hard.
Thirty-three years of yippeeki-yay, and filmmakers are still pitching ‘Die Hard-in-a…’ Peter Thorwarth’s Blood Red Sky is Die Hard-in-the-sky with a vampire tiger mom as Bruce Willis. Nadja (Peri Baumeister) takes a transatlantic flight, departing and arriving at night, to get to a clinic that may have a cure for her condition. Ruthless faux-terrorists hijack the plane and Nadja goes off her meds, sprouts fangs, drinks blood, and does her best to save the day… though some of the baddies she kills rise again as monsters. In disaster-movie style, passengers and staff all have their own microstories — the most obvious stereotype, a gay flight attendant (Alexander Scheer), is putting on an act as elaborate as the heroine’s pretend-to-be-human bit — and stages action-in-an-enclosed-space vampire-on-crook and vampire-on-vampire fights with bloody flair.