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.

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.