Mad Monster Party.

When I was a kid, every Christmas, we'd watch the Rankin/Bass stop motion animated specials on CBS, Rudolph and Frosty and Heat Miser and Cold Miser and Santa. Even Easter had a Peter Rabbit special.

But they didn't seem to have a Halloween special*. Little did I know that they went beyond television for that- that they'd created a feature length piece- Mad Monster Party- that fit the bill.

Doctor Frankenstein - voiced by Boris Karloff!- is retiring so he summons all his monster friends- Dracula, The Mummy, The Werewolf, Frankenstein and his Bride (voiced by Phyllis Diller), The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Doctor Jekyll /Mister Hyde. All but Jekyll/Hyde are patterned after the Universal Monsters, while Jekyll/Hyde is inspired by the Frederic March portrayal.

Frankenstein is going to leave his position of leader of the monsters to his nephew Felix, and the monsters, led by Dracula, don't take kindly to it.

That Felix has a voice that sounds like Jimmy Stewart is kind of odd. He's voiced by Allen Swift, who did voices on Underdog.

Mad Monster Party is good retro fun, probably the only thing I've watched so far that's really kid friendly.





*Apparently, they did a cartoon called Mad Mad Mad Monsters as a Halloween treat, but somehow it didn't show up on my radar like the Christmas ones did. Anybody remember it?

Baron Blood

The thing about people in movies: they're stupid. Like Peter in Baron Blood.

He's along with Elke Sommer (in the early seventies) in an Austrian castle, and what does he want to do? Read an incantation in his ancestor's torture chamber.

Stupid right?

I mean, of ALL the things one could get involved with Elke Sommer (in the early seventies), incantations would be the last thing on the list.

But they do read it, and bring the old guy back from the dead- hungry for blood.

It's a... vivid movie. Very seventies Euro horror, which makes sense, considering it's directed by Mario Bava, one of the Italian masters of horror- I saw his Planet of Blood back in January, and I'm glad to say I enjoyed this one more.

Planet seemed to be all about style, and since it was set in outer space, it was filmed largely on a soundstage, while Baron Blood has style and a greater visual depth, thanks to it being filmed on location in Austria.

Lost Boys: The Tribe

You know, I'm sure there's a guy in a suit in the Warner Brothers offices in LA who sits in an office, looking at "properties" trying to figure out how to bleed all the creative potential out of them.

He saw a poster for Lost Boys and thought- "hey, Twilight is hot right now, let's revive the brand."
Twenty-one years after the original. That's not too long a time between movies. I mean, there was a 16 year gap between the Space Odyssey movies and Chinatown and The Two Jakes. And eleven years between Screams 3 and 4.
Um yeah, it might be a while there.

So.
Siblings come to VampireCity, CA to live with their aunt after the death of their parents. They get mixed up with vampires. But instead of the punk vampires of the first Lost Boys movie, these guys are SURFER vampires.

In a (possibly too, too) clever bit of casting, lead vampire is Angus Sutherland- brother of lead vampire from the first Lost Boys, Keifer Sutherland.

Corey Feldman is back as Edgar Frog, vampire hunter, looking older than he did in Bordello of Blood, but not quite as burnt out as he did in Lost Boys: The Thirst.

Of course, what made the film for me was the appearance of Tom Savini in the opening sequence. After that, it was pretty much downhill.

Downhill being a relative term- on a movie like this it's still a helluva lot better than Beverly Hills Vamp.

The Vampire Bat

In Klienschloss, there are several deaths under strange circumstances- exsanguination. Obviously, it's the work of The Vampire Bat.

It's a 1933 movie from Majestic Pictures filmed on the Universal lot- sets from James Whale's Frankenstein (the German Village) and The Old Dark House.

And it's got a troupe of classic Horror actors- Fay Wray before King Kong but after The Most Dangerous Game, Lionel Atwill years before his Frankenstein movies from Universal, and Dwight Frye- THE Renfield actor from Universal's Dracula.

Wray and Atwill had previously acted together in Mystery of the Wax Museum, but The Vampire Bat was rushed into production by Majestic to cash in on it, releasing that TVB before MotWM.

It's a nice little movie from a little studio with a big studio feel to it, proving cheap doesn't have to be bad- unlike so many of the awful recent movies I've suffered through.

Some numbers:
Right now, I have 88 movie posts up. I have 11 posts in draft form. That's 99 movies total.

At the beginning of May, I should have seen 120 movies, placing me roughly 1/3 of the way through.

That's 21 more movies I need to see to be where I should be.

I can do this.

I'm probably not going to be where I should be at the end of April, but I think come New Year's Eve, I'll have this done right.

Then I probably won't want to see another damn vampire movie for quite a while.

Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood

Coming down off the high of last night's movie, I needed something a little lighter (dumber)- Tales from The Crypt: Bordello of Blood was exactly what I needed.

Vampires in a brothel. It's like a smarter, classier version of Beverly Hills Vamp.

There's a phrase I didn't ever think I'd type.

Here's another: Corey Feldman isn't too bad in this one. He's the McGuffin victim that starts the story- he's a badboy and his church secretary sister hires Dennis Miller (back when he was an actor and not a pundit) to find him.

The trail leads to a funeral home where - I love Hollywood- vampire prostitutes are working out of, diverting the funds from the business to the ministry the sister works for, run by Chris Sarandon playing a delightfully sleazy minister.

It's a hodgepodge of stuff from other movies- Beverly Hills Vamp, Vamp, and supersoakers filled with holy water from Lost Boys. But it works, because within the context of Tales from the Crypt, it isn't something you take too seriously.

I think the only thing this movie needed was popcorn.

Let Me In

"Because Americans can't be bothered to read subtitles..."
When I heard they were doing an American version of Let The Right On In, that was my first thought.

Then I heard that Let Me In was going to be one of the first films from the newly revived Hammer Studios. That sold me on the idea actually- who better to do a vampire movie, right?

But watching it... it's a theory versus practice thing.

And in practice, it didn't work out. It was a well made movie, though it was a faint echo of the Swedish movie.

The changes they made from LTR1I and Let Me In weren't too jarring, in fact, Let Me In is a pretty good movie. I can under stand the shift from Oskar and Eli to Owen and Abbey. There were some scenes that were shot for shot reshoots from the original.
That's where the problem lies for me: Let The Right One In was just such a darn good movie that Let Me In seems like just an ok movie in comparison.

Despite that, Let Me In is still superior to many of the movies I've watched so far for the project.

Twilight

Well. I had to see it eventually, so sooner than later, right?

I mean:
1) it is a vampire movie.
2) the director of the second movie, Chris Weitz, is the grandson of the Mina from the Spanish 1932 Dracula, Lupita Tovar
3) the fourth movie(s) is being directed by Bill Condon, of Gods and Monsters and Chicago.

Twilight was everything I expected from it: a teenage vampire romance. New girl in school Bella falls for Byronic vampire classmate Edward. Her father's the sheriff and something's out there killing people. Hilarity ensues.

In terms of mechanics, it's a great movie. Score, cinematography, direction... all the nuts and bolts stuff work.

In terms of a movie aimed at teenaged girls, it's perfect. Moody prettyboy. Average everygirl- the perfect stand in for the target audience.

It isn't a BAD movie.
It was just terribly, terribly overhyped. Like Titanic.

There are worse ways to spend two hours.

The Lost Boys: The Thirst

Working my way through what's left in the On Demand section of netflix for Vampire movies.

Tonight's movie was the second sequel to The Lost Boys- Lost Boys: The Thirst. Despite this, I'm still going to try and see the first one.

Corey Feldman is Edgar Frog again, reprising the character he created in 1987. Not having seen LB2, so I have no idea what he's like in that... but in LB The Thirst, Feldman is just kind of sad. He's like the guy who peaked in high school and never did anything else and kept reliving past glories while being kind of a burn out.

The bad guy's a ... rave DJ. Goes by the name of DJ X.

Really.

He uses his raves to comvert kids in to vampires by slipping them ampules of tainted blood as party drugs. Which would have been kind of a cool idea if I hadn't seen Vampires: Out for Blood.

The movie does get the opportunity to skewer both Stephanie Meyer and Laurel K. Hamilton, so on that note it worked for me.

Dracula vs Frankenstein

So- two of the cast members of Universal's House of Frankenstein- J. Carrol Naish and Lon Chaney, Jr- plus Forrest J. Ackerman doing a bit part. How can it go wrong?
Fairly well, actually.
Dracula vs Frankenstein is pretty bad, but bad in a grindhouse good kind of way.
Naish plays the descendant of Frankenstein, still playing his ancestor's games of life and death in Venice, California, with the assistance of Groton, Chaney in his last role. Dracula has possession of the original Frankenstein's Monster and has need of the Doctor. Groton's out chopping people up for the Doctor's latest project.

Meanwhile, a happening chick who's a headliner in Vegas has come to town to find her sister- one of Groton's victims. She runs afoul of Rico, a gang leader played by Russ Tamblyn.
This subplot seems almost like something out of another movie, but the director/writer Al Adamson handle it well, even though he's someone I think of more for his murder than his movies. He even got a E! True Hollywood Story: Al Adamson- Murder of a B Movie King.

Let The Right One In

Ok... this is what I've been doing this blog for. I knew that somewhere in all the crap I've been watching there'd be a diamond, and Let the Right One In is it.

It's a Swedish film, a cold quiet thing, about Oskar, a bullied boy living with his mother, and Eli, a mysterious girl who moves in next door with an older man.
Of course Eli's a vampire.

It's not just a vampire story. It's about Oskar growing up.
And Eli killing people.

But there's a haunting tenderness to Let the Right One In that's rarely seen in movies of the genre. Oskar gets Eli to come into his apartment uninvited, still skeptical about what Eli is, to see what happens if a vampire comes in without an invitation. The result is heartbreaking.

Let The Right One In isn't just a good vampire movie, it's a great movie in general. My only regret is that it's actually taken me this long to see it.

Vampires in Havana

Sometimes, I come upon a movie that I'm not sure what to make of it. Vampires in Havana is one of those.

It's pre-revolutionary Cuba.
Pepe is a musician, interested in playing his trumpet and having sex. He's also part of an underground trying to take down a corrupt general.
He's ALSO Dracula's grandson. His uncle, a vampire created a serum to allow vampires to exist during the day.

This serum becomes part of a power struggle between the North American and European factions of the vampire world.

Oh, yeah... it's animated too. The image on the dvd cover is Pepe vamped out. As someone who's used to the sophisticated animation of Japanese cartoons, and even the not as sophisticated but still pretty good animation of American cartoons, the animation style was... different. Primative, even for 1985 (point of reference: The Transformers: the Movie came out in 1986), it's got an almost European feel.

Vampires in Havana isn't for everyone, but if you're an fan of international animation, it's something worth checking out.

Vampyros Lesbos

I've watched several vampire films with girl/girl content during this project, some subtle, some arty, some cheesy. But Vampyros Lesbos cuts through all the subtext crap and puts it right there in the title.

It's... there's... oh, come on- it's not something most people watch for a plot (though there's a bit of one), but for the writhing naked ladies- it's an exploitation flick pure and simple from Jess Franco. This is the first of Franco's movies I've seen- but knowing he's directed a women in prison movie gives me some context.

Vampyros Lesbos has a seventies score and the sets- including a great spiral staircase with silver foil wall paper- are textbook examples of seventies design.
Really.
That's one of those things that helps me get through movies like this.

Three months down, nine more to go!

Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank

Jesus, what a rancid piece of crap.

Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank is awful. It's so bad I wouldn't even consider it for nomination as a movie for a bad movie night.

You know how you can record video on a digital camera?
I think that was how they filmed this thing.

That's after recruiting talent from the local community college.

There's better ways to spend ninety minutes.
Like sleeping.

The Devil Bat

The last few days have been a bit of a challenge blogging, since for some reason Blogger keeps transliterating my posts into Hindi.
Really.
So, I've got a back log of posts and tonight's post is as much as a regular post as it is a test to make sure this is coming in in English.
Which it seems to be.
Tonight's movie, The Devil Bat, is a little bit of a cheat, as it isn't a proper vampire movie. But it has a bat and Bela Lugosi, so it works thematically.

Lugosi plays a disgruntled chemist taking revenge on his former employers, a perfume company. He has mutated a bat that is attracted to a scent he's devised- a scent that he's mixed into some after-shave he's provided to this former bosses.

It's a little cheesy, but a lot of fun. The best part is where Lugosi instructs a victim how to apply the after-shave "on the tender parts of your neck."

Beverly Hills Vamp

To paraphrase Matt Groening: "Vampires are funny, sex is funny, and comedies are funny, yet no Vampire sex comedies are funny."

That pretty much sums up Beverly Hills Vamp. Three small town guys go to Hollywood in hopes of having their movie produced; when that falls through, they go to a brothel.
A brothel run by vampires!
One of the three is Tim Conway, Jr (he actually makes a Harvey Korman joke), while the stand out is Eddie Deezen- he's one of those THAT guy, you know him when you see him.

It's by Fred Olen Ray, and I really should have expected it to be bad, coming from the man who brought us Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

Dracula (1979)

Well, if I hadn't seen the Louis Jourdan version of Dracula, I'd declare Dracula (1979) what I'd imagine a BBC version of Dracula would be like.

It's pretty good. Since it's an actual theatrical release it had a budget for costumes, sets and most importantly, actors.

Dracula in this instance is played by Frank Langella. He's a sexyDracula though his blown-dry hair, all stylish and seventies is a little distracting.

Of course you can't have a Dracula without a Van Helsing, played here by Sir Laurence Olivier. Olivier isn't quite the classic actor he used to be but it was a good paycheck for him.

This version was an adaptation of the stage play- the same stage play that influenced the Lugosi version- that was famous for the set design by Edward Gorey.

Now in the era of CGI, I'd love to see someone do a video production of Dracula using those designs. They've been turned into a puppet theatre- this seems to be the best visuals I could find on youtube:

While someone has actually used them to make a loose, short adaptation of Dracula here.