Your father was the actual devil and your movie was still lame?

Lady Death
2004

Maybe it's taking me longer to get into the mood this year or something but this movie was disappointing, too. Maybe it's because it's an American produced film channeling Anime and that never bodes well. Maybe it's because I'd come to expect better things from the now defunct ADV. Maybe it's because it doesn't hold a candle to animated horror fantasy entries like the original Heavy Metal or Devil Girl. It just seemed like a lackadaisical effort for what should've been a great character.

Anyway...

Hope finds out her father, blood thirsty mercenary Matthias, is really the devil (specifically, Lucifer). He absconds to hell, taking the soul of her would-be lover, Niccolo, and leaves her to pay for his sins. She makes a deal with a demon who "rescues" her from burning at the stake and is transported to hell. It should be noted that the passage to Hell really resembled an anus and rectum - right down to the lingering excrement that covered her as she traveled. I'm not entertaining the subliminal message to this.

Hell is to be expected: deception and torture. Lucifer is a real bastard and keeps the soul of her dead mother trapped in a bauble above his throne. He offers Hope a place by his side but she refuses and is cast out. The whole rest of the movie is her training with a former slave named Cremator, to exact revenge on dear old dad. Along the way, her skin turns white, her hair grows longer and her clothes get skimpier. Dassit!

I kept hoping there'd be at least one gratuitous sex scene but they never went there. Even the gore was blasé. She only kills one of Lucifer's lieutenants and the battle with the Big Red was rather humdrum. Honestly, the trip down the poop shoot was the most memorable part of this. That's disturbing.