Double Feature: Vampitheatre and Vampegeddon

Ok, so I have a new rule: no movies with portmanteau words in their title, like Vampegddon or Vampitheatre. These are bad, bad movies and to be avoided. I've taken the bullet for you, don't make my sacrifice be in vain.

Vampegeddon is about a goth girl who, in an attempt to do something to get out of her small town calls up the spirit of a vampire. The vampire looks like Uncle Fester and was killed by an Englishman in the Old West. Honestly, the Old West portion of the movie was like a LARP gone wrong.
How bad is it? It's so bad that someone who worked on it says "don't buy". Really- right here (actually, the behind the scenes essay is better than the movie, and much, much shorter.)



Vampitheatre is about a goth bad that's ACTUALLY vampires. It's not a bad premise but the acting kills it. Well, that and the sets and costumes and ... I suppose if I was still wearing too much black and smoking cloves, I'd find this... amusing. As it was, it was merely tedious.

The one two positive things I could say about watching these movies are: 1) that's two out of the way toward the total, and 2) after watching Nadja, I'd be a harsher critic with good movies, this way I'm directing my venom toward movies that really deserve it.

Nadja

I'm not sure how I missed this, but Nadja is amazing.
For all intents and purposes, it's a remake of the 1936 movie Dracula's Daughter.
Filmed in black and white, it's a slow dreamy thing, like a vampire film by David Lynch, which isn't surprising as Lynch is a producer and has a cameo as a morgue attendant.

Nadja, Dracula's daughter, lives in New York and is lonely. She's having to deal with the death of her father at the hands of Van Helsing.

Elina Lowensohn is haunting as Nadja, while Peter Fonda is delightfully manic as Van Helsing.

Aside from the black and white, it's got footage filmed with the Fisher Price pixel-cam, adding another layer of dreamy-ness to it, capped off with the use of My Bloody Valentine on the soundtrack.

A nice touch for Universal fans is the use of Bela Lugosi from White Zombie in a cameo as Dracula.

I think I'm going to try and pick this up for my permanent collection- it's the perfect movie to watch while sipping bitter, licorice flavored, green liqueurs.