Hellsing: Impure Souls (vol. 1)

Reviewed By:   Carla Land

DVD  Pioneer/ Gonzo

Review based on disk #1 (Episodes 1-3)

What it’s (basically) all about:  The Hellsing Organization, located in England, has one mission- seek and destroy vampires. Interestingly enough, the vampire Arucard is working for them.  With him is a newbie vampire, Victoria, who is having trouble coming to terms with her new self. This goth meets sci-fi series is filled with action, intrigue, and lots and lots of vampires.

Nitty Gritty:  The character of Arucard is fascinating. He’s a vampire that works for a pretty shady human (Hellsing, who is as androgynous as they come) who is out to seek and destroy all vampires. Both of them have series issues with the Catholic Church. Arucard also has a very low opinion of most other vampires, seeing them as a lowly group of being not worthy of being called vampires. He offers Victoria the choice of either dying (she’s a cop being held hostage, and the only way to shoot the bad guy is to go through her) or becoming a vampire. He sort of takes her under his wing while her character is trying to come to terms with the day-to-day existence of a vampire. His motives remain unclear as of episode three.

As the above synopsis may suggest, there is a lot of violence in this series, and not a whole lot else. In truth, the character development is sure to be a big part of the series as it plays out, but a vast majority of the show is guns and knives and swords being used to kill blood-sucking, man killing vampires with lots of fangs and ghouls at their command.

The gore in this series is pretty high. While vampires tend to disintegrate into dust when killed, not all do, and all of their human victims tend to get covered in blood. The second episode has a vampire Bonnie and Clyde going around killing whole families for the fun of it, leading to some disturbing moments. All of the episodes have gory, bloody scenes of some sort. In short, this is no different from your average slasher film as far as gore goes, and in some cases is worse.

There is a lot of very foul language in this series. The F-bomb is used casually in both the subbed and dubbed versions, “sh*t” gets a fair amount of use, and other foul words appear in both versions.

In the first episode a very scantily clad woman appears in the first scene; in the second episode two teenage vampires engage in oral sex; in the third episode a homosexual relationship gone wrong starts off the show. There is, however, no real nudity at all.

Special features include clean opening (which is ironic, considering the amount of blood in the opening sequence), a gory music video using footage from the show, previews for other Pioneer releases that are all mature in nature, the DVD credits, concept art, and a preview of the Arucard action figure.

Survey says:  There is no question that this belongs in adult sections only. It is mostly R rated violence and language with some R/ X rated sexual situations thrown in to boot.

Personal Ad: I’m not a big fan of horror myself, but this series had enough interesting characters and hints of plots-to-be-developed that I’d be willing to watch more. Arucard is an enigma, and it’d be interesting to see what his reasons for working for Hellsing are.