Hollywood Product - Underworld

Genre: Supernatural shoot-‘em-up

The pitch: In the midst of a centuries-long war between vampires and werewolves (or “lycans”), vampire Selene (Kate Beckinsale) gets the hots — or whatever vampires get — for werewolf-to-be Michael (Scott Speedman). But it’s less Romeo meets Juliet than Anne Rice meets The Matrix.

Body count: Way high, since the vampires use Uzis with silver bullets, while the lycans pack “UV-irradiated” ammo — sunlight in a shell. There’s more gunplay than monster-power on display.

Fashion statements: Beckinsale borrows a black trench coat and leather body suit from Neo and Trinity. Everyone wears leather, but the vampires look like goth Eurotrash, the lycans like unkempt club bouncers. The giveaway is that all have killer cheekbones.

Money shots: A vampire with a silver-studded whip fights a big damn werewolf. The werewolves run along walls and across ceilings. Under attack, Selene escapes by shooting in a circle around her feet, and dropping through the subsequent hole in the floor — the old Yosemite Sam maneuver.

Flesh factor: The werewolves lose their clothes during transformation, but apart from a distant buffalo shot, and some heaving vampire bosoms at decadent parties, it’s pretty puritanical.

Product placement: The opening subway shoot-out is brought to you by Bacardi.

Best bad line: As the lead werewolf, Michael Sheen (the only supporting player who can act at all) tells fellow lycans, “You’re acting like a pack of rabid dogs!” Well, it stands to reason.

Worst bad line: “What’s the ruckus?” asks the newly-resurrected vampire boss (Bill Nighy), who starts out looking like a rotting corpse and ends up the spitting image of Al Haig.

The moral: The movie offers a symbolic argument in favor of interracial dating, so don’t expect to see Underworld at Bob Jones University.

Local hook: Stone Mountain’s gaming company White Wolf is suing the makers of Underworld based on similarities to its role-playing games Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. But do they really want to argue that such a stoopid movie has stolen their ideas?

The bottom line: It’s pretty much like seeing a long, expensive Marilyn Manson video, but the last act becomes so ridiculous, complete with wacky foreign accents, that it’s fun to howl at.??