Dracula

BBC. Dracula. I've seen the production from the seventies starring Louis Jourdan that the BBC did, and it was good, especially considering how well it aged.
So when I heard there was a new, I was excited. David Suchet (Poirot) as Van Helsing? Marc Warren as Dracula? I'd seen Warren in the adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather as the assassin Mr Teatime and I was impressed. And as the new Doctor Who as the yardstick of what the BBC could do with special effects, well... Dracula should be just awesome.
Really.

It should be.

It wasn't.

I'll try and do this quick beause it hurts to think about it. First, the focus shifts from Mina and Jonathan to Lucy and Arthur Holmwood. Lucy want's to marry Arthur, but Arthur has syphilis, passed on from his mother at birth.

Arthur doesn't want to infect Lucy, so he... he contacts a cult that brings Dracula to London to help cure the VD.

Yes, really.

Things go wrong. I'd like to say "Things go wrong from there," but really, they go wrong from the moment the dvd starts playing.

Other than as something for Poirot fans to watch between seasons, I'd say avoid this version. It's well acted and the sets and costumes are nice, but the story is as dumb as a bowl of hair.

Hellboy: Blood & Iron

I'm a big fan of the Hellboy comic book, and I enjoyed the movie, so when a Hellboy movie showed up on the vampire sort on Netflix, I knew I needed to see it.
Hellboy: Blood & Iron is probably the closest thing to a Hammer Studios cartoon we'll ever see.
It's nicely layered, taking place in the present and in 1939, where an adviser of Hellboy, the Professor, is much younger and hunting a vampire in Eastern Europe. In the present, Hellboy, his team, and the elderly professor are having to face a plan to resurrect the vampire on Long Island.

What impressed me the most were two things: the flashbacks are told in reverse order- the killing of the vampire, then the trek to her castle, the arrival in the village- for some reason this sort of structure worked for me here, and the fact that the vampire is named Erzsebet Ondrushko, a take off on Elizabeth Bathory, as seen in Hammer's Countess Dracula.
It's such a terrific homage that her rejuvenation scene might as well have been in a Hammer movie- she's returned from dust, but still weak and shriveled. In this mode, she's gray and misshapen so it doesn't really matter that she isn't wearing anything. When she regains her youth, she's still unclothed, but she'd bathed in a bathtub of blood, so she's strategically crimson all over. An elegant and plot effective solution to a problem which might have put an R-rating on this cartoon.

Shadow of the Vampire

Shadow of the Vampire has one of the best "What if" premises I've seen on a vampire movie- what if Max Schreck, star of the original Nosferatu, was a vampire? And what if director FW Murnau knew, but didn't care?

It's a lark sort of movie. Willem Dafoe as Schreck gets to over act, you can almost see the kid playing dress up gleam in his eye- but still manages to bring out a sense of melancholy out of this lonely creature, willing to do the movie as a respite from it's sad existence.

John Malkovich captures the obsessive fire that Murnau needed to bring his vision to life- at whatever the cost.

It's a pretty film, not as pretty as Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the 1920's period costumes and setting are great to look at.

I was a little confused when the movie came out, back in 2000- pre-wikipedia, mind you- because I'd read a novel back back in 1998 called Nosferatu that dealt with a similar scenario. It wasn't until I watched Shadow of the Vampire again for this did I realize that they were unrelated, just one of those odd creative coincidences.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola has a lot of critics, mostly for the idea of Winnona Ryder and Keanu Reeves as Victorian Londoners.

But aside from that, it's a snazzy little movie. It's artsy but accessible- the costumes by Eiko Ishioka won one of the three Ocars awarded to the film.

It's a standard Dracula as romance story, with Gary Oldman as the vampire, fallen for Mina, as played by Ryder. Reeves plays Harker with what could be imagined a Victorian uptightness- it just seems wooden to me. That's ok, though, since Anthony Hopkins, as Van Helsing, and singer Tom Waits, as Renfield.

I think it's one of my favorite Dracula productions, simply because it's such a lush movie to watch- it makes for an excellent bedtime movie.

As enjoyable as the movie was, I've got a warmer spot in my heart for the short story Coppola's Dracula. It's part of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula cycle- where the events in Stoker's novel play out differently to the degree that Dracula ends up married to Queen Victoria- lifting characters left and right from movies, literature and history. In Coppola's Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola is filming Dracula in a world where he never made Apocalypse Now, but still suffered through the same hellish conditions he dealt with for Apocalypse Now with the added wrinkles of it being in Romania, instead of the Philippines, and there are vampires to deal with. There's more to it than that, just click the above link, you'll see.

30 Days of Night: Dark Days

Well, amazingly, I haven't burnt out on direct to dvd movies yet, though I think tonight's movie, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, might be the last for a while.

Having really enjoyed the the first 30 Days of Night (and it seems, I'm going to re-watch since I can't find the blogpost for it), and having read the graphic novels, I was enthusiastic about 3DoN:DD more than I usually am about a direct to dvd sequel, and surprisingly, I wasn't too disappointed.

Stella Olsen, one of the survivors from 30DoN, has taken her story public as a book in memory of her husband, Eben, the sheriff of Barrow who gave his life to stop the vampires. She meets up with some vampires hunters, carnage ensues.

It's a little annoying in the direct to dvd things when the cast changes, as Stella was played by Kiele Sanchez here and Melissa George in the first installment, as does Eben, played by Josh Hartnett in the original and Stephen Huszar here.

There are a lot of liberties taken in the transition from graphic novel to film, especially then ending, but there's a scene where Stella rents a hall to promote her book and proceeds to out the vampires to the general public with UV lights that comes across excellently.

All in all, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days was better than the From Dusk to Dawn movies- as there are several graphic novels in the 30DoN series, I'd love to see them give another on an adaptation.

From Dusk to Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter

Well, tonight I decided "To Hell with it" and watched the third movie in the From Dusk to Dawn franchise, FDtD 3: The Hangman's Daughter.

Well, it gets points for involving Ambrose Bierce, although one looking a bit sprier than the 71 years of age that really went to Mexico in 1913, who manages to get involved in a Weird West adventure involving vampires, setting up the stage for the previous movies.

It wasn't very good, actually, even with an actress as amazing as Sonia Braga taking a small, but important role. A nice bit of continuity between the other movies in the series is Danny Trejo's bartender at the saloon.

Yep, really, that's all I really got out of it- Sonia Braga and Danny Trejo. But I've finished the trilogy and never, ever need to see any of them, ever again.
That's an accomplishment.

From Dusk to Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money

I'm finding myself on a bit of a Miramax/Dimension kick
lately, since they churned out a lot of stuff the went direct to video, it's like a B-movie bonanza.
Then they went bankrupt. It's one of those odd things, after several Academy Award winning movies, how could a studio like that go under?
Movies like From Dusk to Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, perhaps?
I'm just a fan, I don't know too much about the movie industry- just enough to be a little dangerous-but I have to question the wisdom of filming a movie set in Mexico in South Africa. I mean, really?
So- the movie. It's not as much as sequel to From Dusk to Dawn as it's just a Vampire movie set in Mexico with criminals as the protagonists. This time, they're robbing a bank- if there weren't vampires, this would be a caper movie. But as it is, a quintet of gringos going to rob a bank funded by narco-barons, throw in vampires, it's a blood bath.
Literally, at one point.
The director is a pal of Quentin Tarantino, and it comes through in some of the over indulgent camera pov work- the hood of a car and an oscillating fan are just two examples.

After Perfect Creature, I'm a little jaded- I didn't enjoy this as much as I might have had I been watching lesser movies. I'll still watch the third From Dusk... installment, though, just to complete the set.

Perfect Creature

Movies like Perfect Creature are why I do this.
I had no idea what it was about, all I knew, thanks to netflix's tags, was that it was a vampire movie.
In fact, I wasn't sure about it, so I'd put off watching it a couple of days after receiving the dvd.

I wish I'd watched it sooner.

It's set in an alternate world where vampires are the Brotherhood, a religious/scientific order, living integrated into human society. It's a dieselpunk world where cars share the streets with horse drawn carriages, with zeppelins in the sky.

Silas is a Brother tasked to track down his biological brother, Edgar, also a Brother, who has gone on a killing spree endangering the relationship between the Brothers and humans. Lily is a police officer investigating thee killings as well.

Like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans was an excellent use of vampires in the Fantasy genre, Perfect Creature crosses the lines between sci-fi and serial killer thriller. Visually, it's like some sort of film noir, set in a neverwhen reminiscent of the rock and roll fable Streets of Fire.

Perfect Creature is an unexpected genre bending treat, a nice diversion from the cliches of the tradition.

Dracula 2000

So, what did Captain Von Trapp do after The Sound of Music? He went on to be a fearless vampire killer.
At least, that's what my brain kept telling me as I watched Christopher Plummer play a descendant of Van Helsing in Dracula 2000.

Van Helsing has an antique store where one of his employees plans to rob his secret treasure vault with a group of her friends.
Unfortunately, there's nothing in the vault but a big ol' locked coffin.

Yeah, they steal it.
Yeah, it does have Dracula inside.

Turns out Van Helsing is the REAL Van Helsing, kept young-ish all these decades by shooting up Dracula's blood.

He's got an estranged daughter living in New Orleans, which is where the coffin ends up, with Dracula seeking the daughter out because she's got a part vampire heritage because her father was shooting up the Dracula blood when she was conceived.

I know. It's like they could have worked this into a soap opera or something.

The poster says "Wes Craven presents", really it's a Miramax/Dimension movie in the wake of first Scream Trilogy, but with a mostly twenty-something cast it's like some bizarre offspring of Dracula and the Scream movies.

Best Part: the casting surprises- a pre-300's Leonodias, pre- Phantom of the Opera Gerard Butler as Dracula and Star Trek Voyager's Jeri (Seven of Nine) Ryan as a reporter doomed to become one of Dracula's brides.

The Thirst

A lot of films deal with the idea of vampires as junkies, but The Thirst is the first one I know of that deals with people in recovery as vampires.

Maxx and Lisa are in a twelve step program to deal with their drug addiction when Lisa develops terminal illness. Vampires seek her out as a potential vampire to save and she accepts their offer.

When she does, it's in the classical manner, where she dies and comes back three days later.

It's really a down beat premise, switching one addiction for another, but Matt Keeslar and Clare Kramer manage to pull of young junkies in love pretty good. Jeremy Sisto and Adam Baldwin play vampires that have drawn them into the undead existance.

It's a low budget little movie, but with good enough actors and production values to be reminiscent of Miramax/Dimension movies during the Scream era.

Scream Blacula Scream

As awesome as Blacula was it was missing a couple of things... Voodoo and Pam Grier.
Thankfully, Samuel Z. Arkoff saw how well Blacula did and figuered the best way to fix that problem was to do a sequel- and cleverly addressing the Return problem.

Prince Mamuwalde was dispatched at the end of Blacula in a classic manner, but his bones are used in a Voodoo ritual at the beginning of Scream Blacula Scream by Willis, a practicioner, to take revenge on the cult that rejected his leadership.

Since leadership in the cult had to go to someone, it goes to Lisa, played by Pam Grier, who, despite that fact that Mamuwalde's reincarnated love died at the end of the last movie, is the reincarnation of his bride.

Lucky for her she's involved with Justin, a police officer with an interest in ancient African artifacts.

Again, William Marshall bring so much to the role- the tormented gentleman, revolted by what he was to do to survive. There weren't enough seventies Blaxploitation horror films, but the Blacula films are at the top of the list- even making more contemporary films like Vampire in Brooklyn pale in comparison.

Martin

I remember seeing the ad for Martin in the newspaper when I was a kid, the razor made a big impression on me.

Then back in 1985, when we were preparing for Hurricane Gloria to hit, my dad and I went on a battery/water/candles run to a nearby drugstore and for some unknown reason, they had a copy of the novelization. I snagged it and fell asleep reading it- so soundly that I missed the winds and everything hitting when Gloria came to town.

I finally got around to seeing it in 1997 when Anchor Bay released it remastered on VHS, watching it on netflix DVD for this project.


For a movie released in 1977, it holds up pretty well in terms of story- Martin is sent to live with relatives outside of Pittsburgh. From the very beginning, it's clear he's got... issues. Like drugging women to drink their blood- while viewing the world in a black and white late-movie haze, a romantic contrast to his real world, a small rustbelt town in the middle of a crappy economy.

In fact, that's the part of Martin I enjoyed the most, the little time capsule to the Carter administration. The fact that it's written and directed by George (Night of the Living Dead) Romero is just icing on the cake.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

One thing I need to grasp about many of these movies I'm watching:

they're not all horror.

Which is a pretty counter-intuitive comment until you notice how many comedies I've see, how many action/adventure movies I've sat through over the past six or so months.

Fantasy is a genre that vampires world well in also, like tonight's prequeal to Underworld, Underworld Rise of the Lycans.

Set in a swords and armor medieval once-upon-a-time, we get to see how the Lycans- Werewolves- were bred as a slave race for the Vampires.

And of course, "slave race" is always a bad idea, in fantasy as history, and the Werewolves revolt.

Since this is an Underworld movie, the leader of the revolution loves the daughter of leader of the Vampires.

No, it doesn't end well. It can't otherwise we'd not have gotten the conflict that lead to the other Underworld movies.

It's an oddly beautiful movie, filmed with a heavy blue, cold palatte, the warmer colors for the most part appearing as fire.

I didn't mean to watch this until I'd seen Underworld2, but it's well enough constructed that I wasn't lost- heck, I could have never even seen Underworld and it would have still worked.

The Fearless Vampire Killers

I'm not sure why I haven't seen The Fearless Vampire Killers before now. I'm sure that if I had, I might have enjoyed it, but now...there's always something weird about watching someone in a movie when you know the actor or actress is dead, but when you see Sharon Tate in this movie, knowing her ultimate fate as a victim of Charles Manson's followers, or knowing that director Roman Polanski would later be involved in a statutory rape incident... it's like this weird Greek tragedy vibe going one.

That said, TFVK is like some kind of ... parody is too harsh a word, evoking a sense of the vulgar sort of productions of today like Scary Movie, it's more like a light hearted appreciation of Hammer Studios' Dracula films.

Though I'm being a real nerd about the fact that my favorite thing about the whole movie is the Frank Frazetta poster- I love his art.

Double Feature: Blade and Underworld

So, it's a black leather kind of night.

We started off with Blade, the first of the Wesley Snipes trilogy.
I've already watched one of the movies in the series, and I'd seen this in the theater- it still holds up.
Wesley Snipes plays a vampire hunter affected by a vampires bite in utero- an attack against his mother. As such, he's got all the strengths of a vampire but none of the weaknesses.
Armed with a pair of awesome sunglasses and a samurai sword, Blade takes on the the forces of Deacon Frost, an ambitious vampire looking to rise in the vampire heirarchy.
It's a fun action movie with perhaps one of the best openings sequences in not just any vampire movie, but action movies as well- check it out here.


Underworld. It's one of those movies I'm sort of annoyed at liking. It is, for all intents and purposes, Romeo and Juliet with Vampires and Werewolves.

And Kate Beckinsdale in body hugging battle-fetish leather as a Death Dealer for her vampire clan, an enforcer tasked to kill Werewolves due to a centuries old rivalry. She falls for a guy who's the last of the werewolf bloodline without the abilities- until he's bit by one. Lots of kickass.

Both movies are more action than horror, highly stylized action, which made for a terrifically escapist few hours. If you've got netflix, queue them up to arrive at the same time- best time's a friday night. Trust me on this.

The Shiver of the Vampires

So, tonight's movie was another Jean Rollin movie, The Shiver of the Vampires.

Maybe it's just my provincial little American brain, but I don't get it. I mean, I sort of get it- it's about style, mood and tone rather than plot. I can handle that.
I'm no stranger to subtitles, so that's no problem. And I love films from the early seventies, so I've got that set. There's just something... foreign about the combination that makes me want to watch it after a couple of shots of Nyquil.

The Shiver of the Vampires is like that. A newlywed couple visits the home of the bride's cousins.

Yes, the cousins are vampires.
Yes, there's some girl/girl stuff.

Of course there is, it's that sort of movie.

I swear, I 've got to start watching these movies earlier if I'm going to survive the Euro-Erotic-Artsy ones.

Vampire in Brooklyn

I skipped on Vampire in Brooklyn in the theaters back in 1995 because it had Eddie Murphy in it. He's funny, but not what I consider lead in a vampire movie potential.

I picked up a copy of the movie today and my suspicions were confirmed. It's not a bad movie exactly.

It's directed by Wes Craven, so the pacing and suspense is there- sort of. Unfortunately, it's diluted by the humor necessary to an Eddie Murphy movie.

Angela Bassett plays a cop who's a daughter of a vampire, unaware of her heritage. Bassett is one of the selling points of the movie. I'd watch footage of her read a laundry list.

Eddie Murphy is Maximillian, the title character, come to find another of his bloodline to prolong his immortality. As such, he's over the top as a sauve badass. But the entire time, I'm thinking "oh look, Eddie Murphy is wearing fangs.".

Because Murphy is the star, a lot of the film is played lightly. I think Vampire in Brooklyn had the potential to be a better film, a scarier film with another actor in the lead (kind of the reverse of Beverly Hills Cop where Mickey Rourke and Sylvester Stallone were considered for the role Murphy eventually made his own, but they would have certainly made BHC a different kind of movie.)

I wish Vampire in Brooklyn were better. There aren't enough African American vampire movies. Fortunately, when I do want to see a good one, William Marshall's Blacula movies are available on demand from netflix.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula aka Count Dracula and His Vampire Brides

First, let's just clear up the fact that Dracula doesn't actually have a vampire bride in this movie, and shee is most definitely NOT the queen of the zombies as claimed on the poster.

Next, for some odd reason, this movie is in a copyright gray area, so I've actually embedded a version someone's posted on youtube. Don't watch it a work- it is a Hammer film, and not five minutes into the movie there's a nekkid woman. Under the 74 ratings standards, it was an R. Now, it's more like pg-16.

As the last "real" Dracula movie from Hammer Studios (Satanic Rites was followed by the Legend of the Seven Gold Vampires, with Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, but without Christopher Lee as Dracula), The Satanic Rites of Dracula has more of a feel of a thriller than a horror film.

Satanists, upper class Devil Worshippers, are part of a plot involving biological terrorism.

The British intelligence investigating the them is stuffy, stuffy, stuffy, like something out of a John LeCarre novel, having to disavow the investigation into the cult because of politics, so they send in a detective from Scotland Yard with help from Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, the descendant of Van Helsing from the period Dracula films.

Christopher Lee as Dracula doesn't even show up until and hour into the movie, the big reveal kind of spoiled by, well, the opening credits.

A pleasant surprise is a very young Joanna Lumley as Van Helsing's neice.

A fun bit is the panorama shots of London, groovy London of the early seventies.

I had planned on watching the Hammer movies in order, but I've decided to just watch them when the mood hits me.

Vampire Wars Battle for the Universe (aka Bloodsuckers)

I picked up Vampire Wars Battle for the Universe at the local used media store in order to burn some of the credit I accumulated while clearing off my bookshelves. Essentially, it was free.

So I guess it was worth what I paid for it.

Turns out it was a SciFi channel original, original being one of those loaded terms.

It felt like someone at SciFi had watched Firefly a couple of times and thought "Yeah, that was good, but you know what it needs? Vampires."

There are vampires out there in space, and the V-San (vampire Sanitation) teams are tasked with hunting them down. There's got the paint by numbers crew, handsome captain, loyal teammates, enigmatic special team member-half vampire half human hunter, and a bad guy who's EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEvil, played by Michael Ironside.

Despite the made for tv pedigree, it does suffer some budget constraints- most notably daytime filming. Not oldschool day for night filter filming, but actualy sun's shining but these are SciFi vampires so they can go out during the day.

A good way to kill a couple of hours if you don't have to pay too much for it.

God Of Vampires

Well, God of Vampires was a nifty change of pace. It's an American movie with a mostly Asian American cast, with the vampires taken not from Central European folklore, but Chinese Mythology.

Frank Ng, played by Dharma Lim, is an assassin. Olympic level killer, taking down a warehouse full of drug runners in the precredits sequence, while talking to his brother's school about the boy's truancy. Killer with a heart of gold.

He take's an assignment that goes horribly wrong- the target turns out to be a Chinese vampire and in revenge for the attempt, the vampire goes after anyone Frank is in contact with- his informer, his agent, and his brother among them.

Carnage ensues.

God Of Vampires is pretty good- it's totally a low budget indie film, but it rises above the direct to video ghetto with passible acting, a good script, and pretty good direction.

While trying to find a poster for it- I snagged this image from Amazon- I encountered the backstory for the movie here, apparently it took them six years to finish the it... and you know what? It shows. Not the lag time in production, but the passion that cast and crew brought to the project. This is what keeps it from being just another vampire movie.