Dracula II: Ascension

I saw Dracula 2000 years ago, but I haven't seen it yet for the project. I did watch its sequel Dracula II: Ascension tonight because... well, I've gotta watch something.

I'm going to be watching a lot of somethings, I think.

A little (very little) background: at the end of Dracula 2000, Dracula is chained to a cross and left to burn in the sun.

This picks up later that morning, when Dracula's charred body is taken to the morgue. After some tests, the morgue attendants- medical students- realize that they've discovered

a vampire.

They contact their teacher and classmates who speculate what they could do with a vampire- specifically steal enough blood to fill a bathtub, then soak the vampire in it.

Their teacher suffers from a degenerative muscular disorder and sees the vampire as a chance to cure himself.

There's also a warrior priest hunting vampires.

This is from Dimension Pictures, the less artsy wing of Miramax. They used to do some quality stuff, then turned into a mill churning out direct to video sequels to movies that missed playing in theaters for one reason or another and distributing foreign genre stuff that deserved more attention that it got (like Dario Argento's Mother of Tears.)

Live Evil

Live Evil is one of those movies that would have played on the USA Network back when it was cool.

It's set in a real near future when humans have become biologically tainted, through drugs, alcohol, disease, that their blood is no longer palatable by vampires. So the vampires turn on each other, and there's a sword wielding warrior priest who's doing his best to shrink the vampire population one at a time.

The vampires are appropriately Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil, kidnapping babies for their clean blood, amongst other acts of mayhem.

As a b-grade movie, Live Evil is surprisingly non-trite. The acting is wooden, the dialog is clumsy, but the blood poisoning and vampire v. vampire situation is pretty good- one breed of vampires feeds through a fanged mouth on their hands.

It's one of those movies I'm enjoying watching, but it's doubtful I'll rewatch it. Too many other movies out ther to catch up with.

Subspecies

I saw this one the first time a million years ago, initially because Angus Scrimm, the Tall Man from the Phantasm film series, was playing a small part. A very small part, Vladislas, king of... um... the Vampires, I guess. Though there only seem to be two others- his sons Radu- looking like a young Count Orlok- and Stefan- looking like an eighties music video star.

Radu kill Vladislas to acquire The Bloodstone, a mineral that bleeds and feeds the hunger of a vampire. Radu also sets his sights on three pretty female college students, one of whom is falling for Stefan.

There's sword fighting and lots of quaint customs, owing the fact that Subspecies was filmed in Romania. Yep, brilliant plan, not only was it a very clever economic choice, but in terms of atmosphere, it sets a mood and tone unrivaled by most Hollywood productions.

It's fun, from Full Moon Studios, it's one of the first direct to video productions done with that purpose, as opposed to features that don't get theatrical distribution and linger until video. As such, it's got a vibe that you'd find in Roger Corman or AIP movies- something that'd play best at a drive in or in a double bill.

Full Moon later did three more sequals to Subspecies, as well as a spin off, Vampire Journals.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead

You see a title and you think "Oh, man, I have to see this." Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead.

It's a horror comedy that's actually funny. Dustin Hoffman's son Jake plays Julian, who's just gotten the job of director for a new version of Hamlet, called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, written by Theo Horace, a vampire played by John Ventimiglia. Julian casts his best friend Vince as Hamlet and his ex-girl friend as Ophelia, then there's vampire style craziness.

It's a smart movie with a great quirky sense of humor that never over powers the sense of impending menace the vampires bring to the table.

The score is pretty good, not as surprise as it's done by Sean Lennon- John and Yoko's son.

In the wrong hands, this could have easily come off as an overly hip indie-movie, but Jordan Galland, the director and writer, shows a familiarity with the source material that you don't see that often; he's someone worth watching.

Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned

Thank goodness I still have my vcr- I had to watch tonights movie on vhs. I picked up a graymarket copy of Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned at convention a few years ago, now someone's offering what's probably an even more graymarket dvd.

It's a Japanese animated version of Marvel Comics' The Tomb of Dracula. Which, as content for a cartoon, it pretty heavy. And the animation isn't bad, considering its from 1980.

Of course, I'm making the standard mistake of assuming cartoons are for kids, which not all Japanese cartoons are.

What are for kids however, are those book and records that were popular during the seventies. I don't understand the idea behind it but there was actually a Tomb of Dracula book and record set.

I still have a hard time reconciling "It's fun to read as you hear!" with "...Too late to stop this wooden stake from plunging into your heart!!".

Planet of the Vampires

You ever see a movie and think "Wow, I've got to see every movie this director has ever made?" and when you do, you eventually find the one that disappoints you?

I saw Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace and that was when I got hooked. Killer at a fashion house killing models.

Then his Bay of Blood- a grisly tribute to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None that inspired the original Friday the Thirteenth.

I finally got around to seeing Planet of the Vampires for this project.

Two space ships receive a distress signal from an unexplored planet.

The crew of the first ship go insane and there are casualties. The crew of the second ship must discover the why they went insane and the source of the signal... oh, yeah, the dead from the first ship are buried, and climb from their graves to menace the second ship.

Badness ensues.

Up til they came back, I kept thinking that the guys from Alien must have taken notes because if I didn't know better I'd call Alien a homage to Planet of the Vampires.

That said...

It's got a great color palate. Very colorful. And their snug black leather space suits wouldn't look out of place at a fetish party.

I mean, can't you see that woman with a riding crop in her hand? Better yet, you didn't before, but you do now, don't you?

It really wasn't very good. But it was fun. It's not something for the Bava novice.

Start with Blood and Black Lace. Check out the trailer here:

Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric

Tonight's a bit of a cheat-Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric - it's a feature length edit of a storyline from 1989.

First, it's fun to see how much the BBC has changed since 1989. The special effects and costumes are light years better now, but the quality of acting and story are still pretty nifty.

The time traveling Doctor has arrived in 1943 coastal England at a secret army base. The Russian have arrived as well. The Brits are working on a code breaker and testing it on ancient viking runes.

The runes decoded awaken ancient Viking vampires.

These vampires have a unique look- you can get a glimpse of them in the picture- having been underwater for centuries, they're wrinkled and covered in barnacles. Thanks to budget constraints they're pretty visible in the story since the show, despite being about vampires- is filmed during the daytime.

But it is filmed in Whitby, where Dracula first arrived in England in Bram Stoker's novel.

Since it's sci-fi, the sci-fi twist to the story is interesting- it's not the cross the repulses the vampire, it's the faith of the wielder that forms a psychic barrier against the vampire. This works to such a degree that one of the Russian soldiers repels the vampires with with his Soviet red star hammer and sickle pin and his faith in the Revolution.

I'd seen it years ago, back when I was a much bigger Doctor Who fan, and I'd forgotten how... convoluted this story was. The ending isn't very accessable to the new viewer since so much of this story- the next to last of the 26th season- relies on plot threads starting in the 25th season.

Salem's Lot

Considering that it's a CBS television production from 1979, Salem's Lot still holds up pretty well.

Because it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, I watched the mini-series version, all three hours of it.

Tobe Hooper shows much restraint in his version of Stephen King's novel- of course he does, it was a TV movie, but they pushed the envelope as far as they could for the time.

David Soul was a perfectly serviceable Ben Mears, while Lance Kerwin's performance still holds up; as does that of James Mason as the Renfield-esque antique seller while Reggie Nalder steals every scene he's in in his Count Orlok style make up.

I've seen the CBS Salem's Lot several times over the years, but I haven't seen the 2004 cable version yet- it'll be interesting to see how that stacks up.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It

Maybe I've seen the Tod Browning Dracula too many times, but I just couldn't get into Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

I've seen Blazing Saddles dozens of times. Gut bustingly funny.

And I loved his Young Frankenstein, which shows he understood the conventions of the classic horror genre.

But... that was the seventies.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It was dull, the worst thing a comedy could be.

It's a hodgepodge of cliches taken from most of the classic Dracula films, but the humor falls flat.

Not even Peter MacNicol's performance as Renfield was funny. Well, it was funny the first time he did it in Ghostbusters 2, but here it was just annoying.

I was, however, impressed and amused by Anne Bancroft's cameo as Madame Ouspenskaya, inspired by the Gypsy woman from the original Wolfman.

(I was tempted to examine what was wrong with this movie, point by point, and it occurred to me that I'd wasted an hour and a half on this movie. I'm not giving it any more of my life than I already have.)

The Bat People

I'm always scanning netflix's listings for vampire movies.

I see the word "bloodthirsty" in the synopsis and the word "bat" in the title, well, heck, "The Bat People" sure sounds like a vampire movie to me.

Well... sort of.

A man is bitten by a bat while touring a cavern on his honeymoon and the consequences are unpleasant.

He goes on a killing spree while cracking up- is his hand really changing into a claw or is he having an allergic reaction to the rabies medicine?

He does drink blood though.

Turns out he was changing. Into a um... bat man person.

Stan Winston makeup sort of saves the day, making the man look like something out of Planet of the Apes, but with Bats instead.

It's a goofy movie, trying to hard to be "serious" on an AIP productions budget- apparently it was goofy enough that Mystery Science Theater 3000 used it on one of their programs under the alternate title It Lives By Night.

Count Yorga, Vampire

Mysterious Count Yorga has come to California to steal beautiful women away from their husbands. Played by the dashing and seductive Robert Quarry, Yorga does this because he's a vampire.

That's not a spoiler.

The title Count Yorga, Vampire sort of gives away the twist.

He's a red-velvet-smoking-jacketed charmer, set up in an old Los Angeles mansion in the hills, using his vampire hypnosis to seduce his victims under the guise of seances.

Their husbands don't take too this idea. Lead by a blood specialist doctor, the men take on the role of the angry villagers.

You'd think LA would be a little too sunny for a vampire, but there's a California Gothic atmosphere to the movie, especially in the wake of the Manson murders- Yorga is as much groovy psycho cult leader as he is the vampire prince of Los Angeles.

Blade II

You know what I like besides horror movies? Martial arts movies. Martial arts movies with vampires? Those rock.

And that's what Blade II is.

Lots of butt kicking and sword fighting and gun play.

Blade, a half vampire- all the powers, none of the weaknesses- hunts vampires. The vampires are also being hunted by Reavers- the vampires' vampire. Nasty, freaky things with bifurcated jaws.

The vampires ask for help from Blade (the "enemy of my enemy..." theory) so he joins a pack of vampire hunting the Reavers.

Carnage ensues.

Wesley Snipes is pretty good as Blade, since honestly, it's not a character that needs subtlety or nuance. Kris Kristofferson is Blade's Alfred figure, Whistler, a grumpy old man- it's nice to see he's not typecast. Ron Pearlman plays Reinhardt, the leader of the vampire pack, who, prior to hunting the Reavers, had been training to hunt Blade. This was Perlman's second movie with director Guillermo del Toro, setting the stage for del Toro's Hellboy movies.

I'm not sure how I missed this in the theater, since I loved the first movie in the series. Despite the fact that I watched it on a Wednesday night, it's the perfect Saturday afternoon distraction.

The Vampire's Ghost

Tonight's movies was something from the vaults- The Vampire's Ghost. I wasn't expecting much from this 1945 Republic Pictures piece, then I saw the author's name: Leigh Brackett. A sci-fi novelist by trade, The Vampire's Ghost was her first movie, but she soon she was working with William Faulkner on Howard Hawkes' The Big Sleep. Now, she's most popularly recognized as the author of the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back.

It's a short film- only fifty-five minutes long and three minutes of it are given to a dancing girl in a bar.

Even at under an hour, it seems to move slowly.

There's a vampire, Webb Fallon, loose in the African country of Bakunda, playing as if he's Rick Blaine, running a bar/gambling den. His secret is compromised when he and a non-native local (white guy), Roy, have gone on an expedition to discover what all the Native drumming is about.

Webb hypnotizes Roy into silence, while turning his attention to Roy's fiancee Julie.

I realize it's a product of a specific time, but The Vampire's Ghost is terribly... colonial. The Africans are very... Native, while the whites are ever so wisely running things.

It's not bad for a low budget b-movie, my only complaint is with the overly sensational title: there's no ghost.

The Hunger

Tonight, I had to balance out last night's viewing, so I took solace in Tony Scott's The Hunger.

Adapted from the novel by Whitney Streiber, Catherine Deneuve plays Miriam Blaylock, a centuries old vampire whose current companion, John, played by David Bowie, is beginning to age rapidly, his centuries catching up with him. With John's passing Miriam sets her sites on a new companion, sleep/longevity researcher Dr. Sarah Roberts, played by Susan Sarandon.

I've probably seen this movie a few dozen time since the first time I saw it, late night on HBO back in the mid eighties. It's what I think of as a comfort movie- the quiet dialogue, the gauzy visuals and the chamber music score make it a perfect movie to fall asleep to (my other favorite comfort movie is John Carpenter's The Thing.)

Bowie and Deneuve's characters are both musicians, and as such, music plays a huge component in the story, from the opening scene in a night club where Bauhuas performs their hit "Bela Lugosi's Dead" to Deneuve's seduction of Sarandon set to The Flower Song from Delibes' Lakme.

It's a classy seduction scene.

The movie was filmed through a filter so it has a somewhat etherial look to it, and to a horror loving teenager back in 1985, it was a shock to someone who'd grown up on either the black and white classics or Hammer's movies- that horror movies could be more that just scary movies, they could be art.

I had to catch it a couple of times before I could watch the end credits to see who the band was during the opening sequence. Bauhaus. I remember how thrilled I was when I found their collection Singles: 1979-1983 at the record store in the mall- Mother Records and Tapes at Greenbrier Mall in Chesapeake. I've since worn the tape out, but the cd still has a special place in my music collection.

Queen of the Damned

One unifying factor in most of the bad movies I've seen so far is the fact that they've had small budgets. Watching Queen of the Damned is a big budget suckfest.
It's a pretty movie.
With a rockin' soundtrack.
But for all its production qualities, it's bad.

If the soundtrack would have been more radio friendly, I'd imagine they'd put this thing together just to sell cd's.

Of course, one of the reasons it's so bad is because the rights were getting ready to lapse so they had to get the movies made as quickly as possible. It's obvious actually.

I'm glad I watched this first, leaving Interview With the Vampire for later. There's a finite number of good vampire movies- there's a near infinite number of bad vampire movies.

Grave of the Vampire

I think Grave of the Vampire is the kind of movie that played at third tier movie houses in the early seventies as part of a double or triple bill.
It's pretty bad.
Starting in the fifties, a college student is killed and his girl friend is raped by a vampire.
Yeah.
Nine months later, she gives birth to a boy, a baby needing blood, not milk for nourishment.
Really.
He grows up to be a student of folklore, tracking down his father on college campuses where he'd prey upon the students in the guise of an instructor.
The son manages to get a class with his father, getting involved with two female students- one romantically fixated on the vampire, the other a dead ringer for the vampire's long dead wife.

It's... more than pretty bad, actually.
One odd bit, quite startling to me considering when the movie was made- when the girl finds out she's pregnant, her doctor tells her that it's not a baby, but a parasite, and that she should get an abortion. Pretty daring for something made not a year after Roe v Wade.

Suck

I have to admit, when I saw the title of Suck on netflix, I thought "oh good- I can be snarky with my post."
Except I can't.
Suck was pretty good.
It's a rock and roll vampire comedy about The Winners, a bar band looking for their big break. After a gig in Montreal, bassist Jennifer gets turned into a vampire.
This turns into a plus- she becomes the band's main attraction.
Thankfully, she's got a roadie, French Canadian Hugo, played by Chris Ratz, as her personal Renfield, who's got what it takes to dismember the corpses of her dinners: a hacksaw.
As the band gets more attention, her bandmates decide to change as well, all of this drawing the attention of vampire killer Eddie Van Helsing, played by Malcom McDowell.
It's a fun movie, written and directed, as well as starring as the lead singer of the Winners, by Rob Stefaniuk.
The music is pretty good and the guest stars give Suck a little street cred- Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Moby and Rush's Alex Lifeson.
Who doesn't love Iggy and Alice?

Lake of Dracula

My partner Perry likes movies. Merchant/Ivory movies like A Room With A View. Robert Altman movies like Gosford Park. So he doesn't quite grasp the idea of a good bad film. His movie world has good movies, like the ones I mentioned, and bad movies, like Ishtar.
My standards are different. There's good movies, like A Room With a View and Bela Lugosi's Dracula, and there's bad movies like Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires, and then there's bad movies that are so bad they're good- like Noroi no yakata: Chi o sû me a.k.a. Lake of Dracula a.k.a. Japula.
Yes, Japula.
Because it's Japanese.

First thing we see is that it's a Toho production.
Then there's a little girl being menaced in a strange house pre-credits sequence, it seems promising. The house is a European style house, out of place in Japan, so there's a little Hammer vibe going on. Then the credits kick in. Gothic, atmospheric credits. OK, cool, it's a Toho movie- the people who did the Godzilla movies. I'm thinking "Hammer meets Toho"- this should rock.

It didn't.

The little girl, Akikko, grows up to be a teacher and an artist. She lives with her sister, Natsuko, by a lake- yes, the one in the title. And thanks to the magic of bad dubbing, Akikko has an American accent and Natsuko has an Austrailian accent. Akikko's boyfriend is a doctor at the local hospital.

Akikko is being stalked by a vampire, one she met when she was a child. He wants her as his bride. He's got his own special accent. It's faux Lugosi that ends up sounding mock Scandanvian.

So, aside from the from the setting, a totally groovy early seventies Japan, it's pretty much by the numbers vampire movie. I think that's its biggest flaw- Lake of Dracula is a Hammer style script in a Japanese context and the incongruity coupled with the bad dubbing and awful music makes for a pretty good bad movie.

The Last Man on Earth

The Last Man on Earth is the first adaptation of I Am Legend, starring Vincent Price as Robert Morgan, a scientist researching a cure for a disease that causes, for all intents and purposes, vampirism.
It's a grim movie. For the longest time, it's just Price as a voiceover, going through his daily ritual of dealing with the vampires- making stakes, gathering garlic, maintainence on his generator. But it's been three years since the plague hit and as the only person immune to the disease, he's beginning to fray a bit on the edges.
Ok, alot.
Because it's just him, the vampires, and his memories- his wife and daughter were both plague victims.
Into this angst comes Ruth. He encounters her in the daylight, explaining how he couldn't be one of them- conversely neither could she.
But she is- of a different strain than the more zombie-esque vampires who've been menacing Morgan through the movie so far.

Yesterday, I commented that I appreciated The Last Man on Earth more than the remake The Omega Man. Watching this re-enforced that opinion.
Price plays the protagonist with more depth, more tragedy- still mourning his family- rather than Heston's almost wish fulfillment portrayal- he begins the movie speeding through downtown LA in a red convertible shooting things.
The vampires in TLMoE are more vampireish rather than the hippie albino cultists of TOM.
The stark black and white of TLMoE gives it a much more end of the world atmosphere rather than the Technicolor wonder of TOM.
But that's just me.
Your mileage may vary.

Oh, and in the words of Columbo- one more thing:

It's futile to wonder "What if...?" but I wonder what this film would have been like had Hammer Studios been allowed to make their version. The script was apparently too gruesome for the film board- Hammer never even started production, even though they'd scheduled Val Guest to direct.
Hammer sold the rights and the rest is history.
Here, watch:

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The Omega Man

So.
As progressive as I found Blacula, when I watched The Omega Man, I had just the opposite reaction.
Charlton Heston plays Robert Neville, a military scientist who's the last person left alive after a bio-weapon virus outbreak in Los Angeles, except for The Family, evil albino hippie mutant cultists.
Because Neville is an alpha male blonde white man, The Family is out to kill him. Because they're albino mutants, they only come out at night; since they're evil albino hippie mutant cultists, it's Neville's God given duty to kill them all.
It does turn out there's a group of people, mostly children, still left, infected but not mutated, lead by Lisa, a African-American woman, and Dutch, a hippie. Neville soon takes the alpha male lead because well, Lisa's an African American woman and Dutch's a hippie.
Thank God for Robert Neville! they must have thought.
Especially Lisa, since her younger brother is starting to mutate. Neville thinks he can cure him. While waiting for the brother to get better, Neville and Lisa begin a relationship.
It doesn't last; Neville cures the brother but Lisa's mutation kicks in. Since Dutch was pre-med
before the outbreak, Neville explains the cure to him; the Family manage to kill Neville but he gets Lisa away from them for Dutch to cure her. Then Neville dies, sprawled out like Jesus in the Pieta.

Honestly, I've seen other versions of this story- adapted from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and this one was the worst of the the three (I haven't seen I Am Omega, because it was a direct to dvd mockbuster from the people who made Snakes on a Train). They weren't even really vampires in this version, just evil albino hippie mutant cultists. And the subtle-as-a-hammer anti-hippie subtext is somewhat understandable, especially in LA, less than two years after Manson's Tate-LaBianca murders.
But in retrospect, the whole thing comes off as obnoxious.

Blacula

Blacula.
In a less capable hands, this movie could have been some cheap exploitation piece; despite being made during the golden age of Samual Z. Arkoff's AIP studio, it's got a smart script and a great leading man.
William Marshall brings a nobility and tragedy to the character of Prince Mamuwalde, who was turned into a vampire by Dracula in 1780 while appealing to the count to help end the slave trade. Dracula not only denies the appeal, the turns Mamuwalde into a vampire while entombing his wife, Luva, with him.

Nearly two hundred years later, Mamuwalde's coffin is taken back to America by two gay interior decorators. They free him and his rampage through early seventies Los Angeles begins.

He encounters the re-incarnation of Luva, Tina. Tina's sister Michelle is the girlfriend of the police scientist, Doctor Thomas, who's investigating the rash of strange deaths hitting the city.

The movie is surprisingly forward thinking for its time- the interior decorators are a bi-racial couple and not played for camp value. After they've been killed, their deaths are considered inconsequential by the police, a reflection of the contemporary LAPD's attitude toward minorities.

Unlike most of the vampires I've seen so far, Mamuwalde's story and demise has the depth to raise Blacula from a simple exploitation horror movie to a complex Blaxploitation tragedy.

The Vampire

A year before Paul Landres released The Return of Dracula, he touched upon the genre in The Vampire. The Vampire had a novel twist, unlike the movies I've seen so far, the vampire in question was that way because of science.

A physician accidently ingests a pill derived from vampire bats blood that was part of an experiment dealing with mind regression- developing a hunger for blood.

Landres brings the weird into small town, much like David Lynch doing Dark Shadows; it's so small town, the doctor's daughter is Betsy, and when he becomes concerned for her safety, he sends her to Aunt Sally's, such wholesome, All-American names.

The Vampire owes more to Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde than Dracula, but it's still an intreaguing piece of fifties film making.

The Return of Dracula

It's the late fifties.

The last Dracula film Universal put out was Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein. Now, on the theater marquee, it reads "The Return of Dracula."

But it's not a Universal movie. Instead of castles and fog, it's set in smalltown America, Carleton, California, where the Mayberry family is expecting a cousin to visit from Romania.

Of course, Dracula, on the run from vampire hunters, has taken the place of the cousin.

Now, taking into account the political atmosphere of the times, an Eastern European infiltrating Anytown, USA to menace our virginal schoolgirls makes for a subtle piece of Cold-War cinema fun.

In fact, The Return of Dracula owes more to Hitchcock's Shadow of A Doubt and Orson Welles' The Stranger, with a touch of Leave it to Beaver thrown in for good measure.

Amazingly, this gem was followed up about a month after it's release with another return of Dracula, Hammer's The Horror Of Dracula.

Horror of Dracula

It's the late 1950's.

The last serious appearance of Universal's Dracula was in House of Dracula in 1945. The last appearance all together of him was in Universal's Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

After that, Dracula was off the radar- for the most part- until Hammer Studios revived the series.

Unlike the Universal film, which was based on a stage play based on Bram Stoker's novel, Hammer went straight to the novel... and started cutting.

It's still the same basic story, Van Helsing, Mina, Harker, Dracula- this time it's in Technicolor.

Vivid, red, Technicolor.

And there's liberties- the entire story is set on the European continent; there's no voyage to England here. Relationships are different. Harker is engaged to Lucy, Lucy is Holmwood's sister, Mina is Holmwood's wife. Van Helsing is still Van Helsing and Dracula is still Dracula.

But what a Dracula this is. While Lugosi was Eurosuave, Christopher Lee's Dracula was upperclass-cruel-sexy- playing the Count ten times in his career.

It's interesting how Lee's had a comeback of sorts in the last few years- despite the fact that he never really went away. As Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings movies, in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Corpse Bride, Lee's getting a whole new generation of fans.

Slaughter of the Vampires

Slaughter of the Vampires aka Curse of the Blood Ghouls.
Nifty opening sequence involving angry villagers hunting down a pair of vampires, an interesting twist from the Hammer films where the villagers are always paralyzed with terror of the Vampire.
The Villager kill one of the vampires, a woman, while her husband escapes to his castle.
While he recovers from the attack in his coffin, time passes and newly wed couple, Wolfgang and Louise, have taken possession of the castle. The vampire awakens during a party the couple throw and he becomes obsessed with Louise.
Louise begins to waste away, so Wolfgang brings Dr Neitzsche to help cure her.

Harker, Mina, Van Helsing, same characters, different names.

Great sets, lush costumes... crappy dubbing. It's a fun little movie that's strictly by the numbers- it's Dracula with the serial numbers filed off, like an Italian Nosferatu.

House of Dark Shadows

I was annoyed to find that netflix didn't have this, but I got lucky and picked it up on VHS right before New Year's at a thrift shop. I saw that as a good augry about this project.

So. Barnabas Collins. From the early seventies, House of Dark Shadows takes the cast of the gothic soap opera places I really couldn't go on television, with a budget for sets and costumes that must have been a novelty for the them.

That and the violence and gore. The staking are crimsonly vivid, almost Hammer style- something that most certainly couldn't get by standards and practices back then.

There's also a shift in tone for Barnabas- he's less sympathetic, more monster here, in keeping with the original plan for him on television before he became so popular.

And the sets! Oh, being filmed on location gives the story so much more depth, making Collinwood almost another character, rather than the studio sets fans were used to.

Yes, I'm a fan of the old show as well- I watched it in syndication then on Sci-Fi back in the day, and thank heaven for vhs for the longest time. Now, many of the episodes are available on netflix, where I've been watching them with Perry- who used to run home from school to catch the show in first run.

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural

Well, I'd gotten it into my head that I wanted to see some kind of Southern vampire movie, even after last night's... abberation. So, tonight's movie was Lemora, aka Lemora A Child's Tale of the Supernatural and Lemora: The Lady Dracula.

It was like... Tennesee Williams gone wrong. Set in the 1930s South, the kind of South where The Reverend has taken sweet, innocent thirteen year old Lila (except the actress is totally legal) under his care – in the wake of Lila's mobster father killing his adulterous wife and lover. Lila sings in church for The Reverend, his congregation made up seemingly exclusively of women. Totally creepy. He cares for her a little too much, in that classic southern gothic manner, if you know what I mean.

Lila gets word that her father's dying in a town called Astaroth, so she goes to him. The bus driver to Astaroth tells her about the town, how the people there are wrong- some are violent, animalistic, some are vampires. They have the “Astaroth” look, he tells her. This was a treat for me, as the scene was practically lifted from HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Once she gets to Astaroth, it's revealed she's been lured there by Lemora, the leader of the vampires, who wants her as her new special friend. So it's kind of like Twilight... on Nyquil.

Apparently, the lesbian and ped0 overtones got this movie banned for decades. Which is a shame, because as far as early seventies drive-in horror movies go, it's got a lot going for it. Rich atmosphere and just a general WTF-edness make it fun.

Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires

Yeah.
You know, with a title like Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires I should have known better.
I made it 21 minutes into this thing before I had to turn it off.
So I spent the next forty-five minutes watching the X-Files episode Bad Blood, with Luke Wilson as a small town sheriff and a vampires that live in a trailer park.

It made an excellent palate cleanser.

A long time ago, last century, I used to wear too much black, read Anne Rice, and smoke clove cigarettes.
I don't do any of those things anymore.
In the mid-nineties, there was a lot of vampire novels out there, and almost as many movies.
David Schow called vampire the Star Trek of Horror.
We'd read them and watch them, as much as we can get.
One day, out of the blue, it didn't seem important any more.
I have a couple of theories why, but the end result was that I pretty much put a personal moratorium on anything vampire for nearly ten years.
Then I was at the music store at the mall and they had, on vhs, Universal's Dracula (as well as the rest of the horror pantheon) in the bargain bin. That did it.
Vampires are something that get in your blood. You think you can just put them away, forget abou them, But you'll come back to them.
That's part of what this blog is about.

Dracula (1931)

The problem writing about Dracula, the 1931 Universal movie directed by Tod Browning, is that there's so much written about it already- in fact, David Skal's Hollywood Gothic is the book on the subject.

So I'm not going to try and go over any of it again- I'll just bring to the table what I can.

I've probably seen Dracula over a dozen or so times- I've got copies of both the Legacy Collection and the seventy-fifth anniversary edition. The anniversary edition pretty much duplicates the contents of the Legacy collection- which has expert commentary by Skal as one of it's features- with the addition of commentary by Stephen Haber, scriptwriter of Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which adds nothing to the overall package.

What I like about Browning's Dracula is how quiet it is. Once you've seen it enough to appreciate it as a classic Hollywood film, it's almost hypnotic in its quiet. The absence of a score is part of it, but there are many scenes where things are communicated through a glance or a shift of posture.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about Bela Lugosi as Dracula. He's smooth.

Seductive. He sets the bar for any actor playing that character so high, even he couldn't meet it- reprising the role only one more time in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Well, playing the role of Dracula only one more time.

He played the Vampire several times, including Count Mora in Mark of the Vampire and Armand Tesla in The Return of the Vampire.

Sad, how he got trapped in his own success.

Happy New Year.

The UN has declared 2011 the year of the Bat.

Oddly, so did I.

Nosferatu

I decided to start my film series with the first vampire film, FW Murnau's Nosferatu.

It's so good, I watched it twice, the first time was Image Entertainment's edition streamed on Netflix, the second time it was the Alpha Video edition.

Image was the better of the two videos. The print had been cleaned up and scenes tinted different colors depending on context. There was a new score, which complimented the movies nicely but it was a little new-agey for me. The intertitle cards were re-written, nicely calligraphed in a formal script, while excerpts from a book were done in Black Letter style.
Alpha, on the other hand, had "original" intertitles- sort of. Vintage title cards but they use the character names from Bram Stoker's Dracula- Harker instead of Murnau's Harker becomes Hutter, Mina becomes Ellen, and Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok. It's untinted, but the print is scratchy.

The score is closer to silent film style score than the Image edition.

All things considered, I preferred the Alpha edition because it seemed to capture the “feel” of watching a vintage movie, the Image version was, in my twisted estimation, too polished.

As for the movie it self, Murnau transports the Victorian Dracula story to the late 1830's Germany, costuming the characters in period dress. Since there was no Dracula image to draw upon- as so many horror films have done- Murnau's vampire wasn't the suave Eastern European nobleman, but a ratlike creature of the night. So much of the night, as a matter of fact, the Murnau sets a cinematic/literary precedent of sunlight destroying the vampire- a fatal flaw not seen in the Stoker novel.

Despite degradation in the quality of the film, and the dated silent film acting styles, Nosferatu endures on the strength of it's atmosphere, an all pervading sense of fear, and the amazing wordless performance of Max Schreck as Orlok.

But don't take my word for it, check it out here:

After I'd written this post, it occurred to me that the movie is kind of a fairy tale- don't go into the mountains, city man- you don't know what's out there. But he does, and brings back evil with him.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.