The Nude Vampire.

The Nude Vampire.... well, there's a title there that doesn't promise much. I do like the French poster though, reminiscent of something by Mucha. (image snagged from moviepostershop.com)

So, there's these scientists, doing experiments at the Eyes Wide Shut club. Things involving naked women and hoods and animal masks... the son of one of the scientists becomes concerned as to what might being going on. I think.

There's not much dialogue.

The score is... I don't know how to properly describe it, but it's rather like watching a sex scene in a movie set to Kronos Quartet's Black Angels.

Really, the whole thing feels like some freaky symbolist piece.

There's more dialogue later in the film, an attempt at exposition, but it doesn't help, not really. The Nude Vampire is something that works best on a visual level, stylish in the sort of way that a minor character is wearing seventies Pucci (I'm annoyed with myself that I was able to identify that, actually).

Now that I think about it, this is the sort of film that would work best while fighting a fever and drinking some high proof liquor like Chartreuse.

Van Helsing

When I saw Van Helsing at the movie theater, I hated it.

It's good to know it's just as good on dvd.

It's a sort of tribute to the classic Universal Horror movies, directed by Stephen Sommers, the fellow who did The Mummy movies. It has Dracula, Frankenstein's Creature, The Wolfman, and the Hunchbacked assistant, like the classics House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula.

Of course, the House movies didn't have superninja Van Helsing with ubercool steampunk weapons played by Hugh Jackman.

Nor did they have Kate Beckinsdale, playing Transylvanian battle vixen Anna. (Van Helsing and Underworld seem to have made her action-chick, which is disconcerting for me since I learned to love her during multiple cinema viewings of The Last Days of Disco.)

But Richard Roxburgh has a heckuva time playing Count Dracula- playing it over the top, since he is an undead prince of darkness.

Frankenstein's Creature is probably the most sympathetic here than in many productions in recent memory- in fact the opening sequence of the birth of the Creature and the angry villagers at a burning windmill is the best part of the whole movie, filmed in black and white, the sets reminiscent of the James Whale Frankenstein movies for Universal.

There's a nice tip of the hat to serious horror fans with the town undertaker, with his top hat, scraggly and feral teeth, he's reminiscent of Lon Chaney Sr in London After Midnight.

I think my main problem with Van Helsing is that it's a summer blockbuster- lots of fight scenes and explosions and plot holes you can drive a tank through (how many nights of the full moon does this story have?). I think I'd have liked it if it were a little tighter a story that wasn't so caught up on the special effects.

That said, Perry's glad I've finally found something that isn't totally annoying- he's actaully enjoying it.

Vampiro

So, I'm trying all sorts of movies during this project, giving movies a try I'd usually just ignore.

Vampiro was one of these.

Casanova is a half vampire, half human who... well, lives on a boat with a twelve year old vampire leprosy victim. He's kind of like a mix of Blade and Angel. But not in a good way.

He's a supersexy Hispanic guy who's suave as hell- of course he's named Casanova.

He falls for a white girl named Blanca.

Really.

There's a convoluted story involving Casanova killing his father, and his father's men trying to kill him, and Blanca's girlfriend becoming a vampire. It's one of those movies where someone needed to tell the writer "less complicated."

Its biggest flaw- for me- is that there are several flashbacks that are filmed in a manner that doesn't differentiate from contemporary events. I think it's more of a budget constraint than a stylistic choice, that could have been addressed more effectively somehow.

Lifeforce

The director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper, working with a script from the man who wrote Alien, Dan O'Bannon, with Captain Picard in a supporting role... how is that not awesome?

That's the kind of crazy Lifeforce is, based on the Colin Wilson novel Space Vampires.

The Churchill, a British/American space exploration vessel, is investigating Halley's Comet when they discover another ship in the comet's coma.

Of course they investigate. Inside, there's lots of corpses of bat-things and three nude humans, two men and a woman, in glass coffins.

Of course they bring them back.

But something goes wrong... the Churchill never makes it home; they send in the Columbia to investigate the derelict shuttle. There was a fire on the Churchill, killing all the crew, the glass coffins are brought back to London. The sole survivor from the Churchill ejected in a escape-pod and is brought to London as well.

The survivor is played by Steve Railsback, a favorite of mine from his appearance on the X-Files as Duane Barry (s 2.5 & 2.6) as well as his particularly chilling performance as Charles Manson in the 1976 mini-series.

The girl wakes up and feeding on the life force of people, draining them dry- literally desiccating them. The bodies she feeds upon re-animate and begin to feed as well.

Chaos ensues.

Railsback's character is effective as a Renfield to the aliens, while Patrick Stewart plays a doctor who becomes possessed by the girl alien in a particularly surreal piece.

The effects are pretty good.. the desiccated corpses looking as realistic as such things could; the light show at the end, when the aliens create a circuit built made up of the re-animated bodies and their lifeforces, is pretty magnificent.

I like the fact that Lifeforce works the bat iconography into the aliens- their true forms- and takes them from the world of magic and superstition into the realm of science fiction.

Rockula

If I should suggest you see Rockula, you should know that you've some how crossed me and I've developed a grudge. Seeing this movie would be my curse to you.

Yes, it's that bad.

Stanley is a vampire. His one true love reincarnates every twenty-two years, just for him to see her killed again by a pirates curse.

There's big hair.

There's eighties music, including Toni Basil and Thomas Dolby.

That does not save it.

After watching this, I felt it necessary to watch Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus just to bring my IQ up some of the points I lost during Rockula.

Bitten

So, Jerry Lewis has this movie, The Day The Clown Cried.

He plays ... um... a clown. In a concentration camp.

Yeah.

The movie didn't get finished and it looks like it's never going to get released because of the whole WTF? factor- like the idea of the original Nutty Professor in a Holocaust movie.

Where am I going with this? Oh, yeah, tonight's movie: Bitten.

Jason Mewes plays a paramedic who becomes involved with a vampire.

Jason Mewes as in Jay of Silent Bob and Jay from the Kevin Smith movies. So try as he does to seem all acting and stuff, I'm hearing a long haired junkie yelling Snoochie Boochie.

Him trying to do anything other than that, to me, is like Jerry Lewis in a Holocaust movie.

At least the clown movie has the dignity not to be released. Bitten's... bad.

I don't know if it's Mewes' impact, or not- maybe this movie would have been crap with another actor in the lead; there's an annoying thread about Mewes' character's interactions with people of non-European descent- he's abused by the local Indian convenience store clerk and harassed by his Asian landlady.

Alien Blood

I knew as soon as the Troma logo I was in for something... different.

First, for the first 25 or so minutes, there's little to no dialogue.

It's an indy artsy sci-fi horror film. A pregnant alien woman and her child are on the run.

There's a hitsquad after her. There's some martial arts action.

There's a scene with a fire-eater practicing.

A completely gratuitous naked girls scene. A sex scene.

Bagpipes! (The musical instrument, not some euphemism.)

It's like 35 minutes in... where are my vampires?

Oh, the nekkid girls are vampires.

The vampires are having an eve of the Millennium party, and it's rather like a contemporary country house mystery set up- Lord of the manor, his wife and mistress, assorted friends. Their party clothes are nice.

The alien woman shows up looking for shelter.

The hitsquad comes looking for the alien.

The vampires end up defending their house against the hitsquad.

According to the Troma guy who introduced the movie, it was Great Britain's first independent sci-fi movie. Which is funny, because British movies are good, and indy movies are good but this wasn't good. It wasn't bad, it was just... too artsy for it's own good.

Oddly, it's better than if it were an American production-there's a quality to it I have a hard time putting my finger on, maybe its utter absence of California-ness.

edit: AH! I realized what the odd quality was- it's the fact that the vampires hardly do anything vampiry, lots of "hissing" but that's about it.

I want more from my vampire films.

another edit:

Ok, the fact that the aliens speak French is pretty funny.

Nosferatu the Vampyre

I've seen a lot of movies, but Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre practically left me speechless.

Herzog remade the Muranu movie in the late seventies and it still holds up wonderfully.

First, it's a beautiful film. Composition, lighting, sets, costumes, it's just a joy to look at. It's like the Merchant/Ivory horror film- seriously, even a die hard horror hater that lives to re-watch Room With a View could watch this movie and love it.

Secondly, the acting is superb. Klaus Kinski brings enough melancholy to the role that even with the make up you almost feel sorry for him. It is a little distracting... that sometimes... he sounds... like Peter Lorrie.

Bruno Ganz plays Harker. Watching this made me realize, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed a portrayal of Harker in the movies. He's just... there. He gets the plot moving then it's on to the back burner with him.

Isabelle Adjani, however, I think is probably one of the best Mina's I've seen- even if she's called Lucy in this production. Despite being fragile in the first part of the movie- to the degree that she faints when her husband returns home and doesn't recognize her- she finds her strength in defending her husband and city against Dracula. There's a clip here that just blew me away- Lucy confronting Dracula.

And they do call him Dracula, officially, in this version, filmed long enough after Dracula had become public domain that Herzog avoided the problems of the earlier version.

What I don't understand is why I took so long to watch this. It's always been on my radar- my favorite reference is from John Skipp and Craig Spector's novel The Light at the End, where a vampire is preying upon New York City and a couple of movie fans realize what's happening during a showing of Nosferatu at a Times Square movie house.

Normally, I try not to include clips in my posts- it just seems like padding to me, but I want to share with you the movie gold that this thing is, so here's a clip- the ship bringing Dracula to Wismar, silently coming into port, piloted by a dead man:

Dracula (1931 Spanish)

Universal was very, very clever back in the day. They would save money by filming foreign language versions of their movies using the same sets and scripts. Probably the most famous of these is Dracula, starring Carlos Villarias as the Count.

I wasn't sure what to think the first time I saw this movie.

I'd seen the Lugosi version several times, so I was familiar with the sets and script, but this movie stands pretty well on its own merits.

Pablo Alvarez Rubio doesn't bring the same degree of pathos to Renfield as much as Dwight Frye does, but he's certainly crazier.

Lupita Tovar is Eva, the "Mina" for this production, is much sexier than Helen Chandler.

And Carlos Villarias. He reminds me slightly of Steve Carrell. Which makes him all the more menacing. He's kind of dashing as well. At least for me, he lacks the sense of otherness Lugosi as Dracula, speaking accented English, surrounded by native speakers, has, since Villarias is speaking Spanish to Spanish speakers.

Director George Melford was lucky enough to watch the daily footage of Tod Browning's Dracula and was able to use what suited him while changing things as well. He's got a much more dynamic use of camera than Browning.

Of course, my favorite thing about the movie is how the film faded into obscurity until David Skal's 1990 book Hollywood Gothic brought it back on to the cultural radar, Skal travelling to Cuba in 1989 to see the best print available. 1992 saw the movie show in revival in Hollywood.

In fact, when Skal revised Hollywood Gothic for a later edition, the chapter on the Spanish Dracula is considerably longer.

Graveyard Shift

Yes, I know the picture says "Central Park Drifter", but my vhs tape box say Graveyard Shift. It's one of those movies that has more than one title.

That should have given me a clue as to what to expect.

So. In the first twenty minutes, we get some vampire sex, some music video fishnet stocking sex, and a stripper.

It's from 1987 and it's filmed on video tape and both factors haven't held up well.

The premise is pretty good: Stephen is a vampire who drives a cab in Toronto New York City, preying on those who are lonely or despondent. Of course, this means he's also making more vampires and one of them's a killer.

I dug this out of the vhs stack when I couldn't get the Wii to work. If I recall correctly, the last time I watched this was pre-1998. I had to re-wind it tonight to watch it, which means I didn't re-wind after watching it before- I just wanted to hit the eject button, put the tape in the box and forget about it. It's like a really long, really bad episode of The Hitch-hiker.