Production
Screenwriter Guinevere Turner turned in the first draft two weeks late. Rather than ask for redrafts, Boll accepted it and then made many of his own changes; he then asked the actors to "take a crack at it". Turner estimated only 20% of her script was actually filmed.
Filming took place in Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains. Filming also took place in a castle where Prince Vlad the Impaler presumably spent a night once.
Billy Zane was involved with distributor Romar Entertainment and Uwe Boll later sued him for revenue owed.
Box office
In its opening, the film only made US$1,550,000.
The film ended up grossing US$3,591,980 (June 2006) against a production budget of US$25 million. It was ranked 48th in Rotten Tomatoes's 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s. On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 18% based on 13 reviews, summarizing the reviews as "overwhelming dislike".
Joe Leydon of Variety said that the film "lurches from incident to incident at a graceless plodding place, offering little in the way of genuine excitement—the swordfights often are confusingly cut and choreographed—and only minimal amounts of guilty-pleasure titillation".
Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide wrote: "Though indisputably the best of Uwe Boll's first three video-game-into-film adaptations, this gory, ludicrous horror-action picture isn't good by any standard".
Critics ridiculed Boll for hiring actual prostitutes instead of actors for a scene featuring Meat Loaf in order to save on production costs.
Steve Chupnick of the Latino Review gave the film a B rating, saying that although it was not a good film, it was far from the worst he's seen and mentioned the Kristanna Loken nude scene as something in the film's favor.
Actor Michael Madsen called BloodRayne "an abomination ... a horrifying and preposterous movie", but added that he enjoyed working with Boll and would certainly work with him again if asked. Laura Bailey, who was the voice of Rayne in the BloodRayne games, was asked at her panel at Anime Boston 2007 what her thoughts were on the film adaptation, and said: "Oh God, that movie sucked. And that movie was so bad. I saw it on The Movie Channel and I couldn't even get through 20 minutes of it! It was so bad and it was kinda sad that they took that because I really liked the games". Guinevere Turner, who wrote the draft screenplay, found the film laughable and suggested that it was the "worst movie ever made" but that it was so camp it might ripen with age. It did, however, win Worst Picture at the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, as well as Worst Director for Boll, who coincidentally won both categories the previous year for Alone in the Dark.
{| class="wikitable"
! Date
! Award
! Category
! Recipients
! Result
!
|-
| rowspan="9" style="text-align:center;" | 2007
| rowspan="9" | Stinkers Bad Movie Awards
| Worst Picture
| BloodRayne (Romar Entertainment)
|
| rowspan="9" style="text-align:center;" |
The film was number one on GameTrailers countdown of the worst video game movies ever. The reviewers from GameTrailers said that "every actor is miscast, every wig is too fake, every sex scene is too inappropriate, and every action scene is too improvised".
Sequels
A sequel, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, was released in 2007. Natassia Malthe replaced Loken in the lead role. Due to the poor box office of the first film, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance went direct-to-video instead. A third film, BloodRayne: The Third Reich was released in 2011. Malthe reprised her role as Rayne. Both sequels were directed by Uwe Boll. Michael Paré appeared in all three films, but as different characters: Iancu, Pat Garrett, and Commandant Ekart Brand, respectively.
Home media
Before the DVD of this film was released, Boll removed the Romar name and logo from the credits and packaging of this film. As a result, Romar ceased distributing the film. In addition to the R-rated version which was shown in cinemas, a more violent unrated director's cut including an extended ending was released on DVD. The director's cut DVD box set included a full copy of the BloodRayne 2 video game on the second DVD.
See also
- List of films based on video games