Starsky and Hutch: Vampire

How did I never hear about this?  There was a vampire episode of Starsky and Hutch, starring John Saxon as the vampire and it's directed by Bob Kelljan of the Count Yorga movies. I've included a link to the minisode version- it's like a Reader's Digest edition.

Season two, episode seven- 10.30.76 Almost like an episode from Kolchak: The Night Stalker, it was a special holiday episode- just in time for Halloween.  I don't watch much regular broadcast televsion these days, but I was thinking about this this morning- back when, television shows would have special Halloween episodes where things go creepy for an episode and everything is back to normal the next week- I especially remember an episode of Happy Days that was, to the five year old me, was pretty terrifying.  The Hardy Boys encountered Dracula on their show. (Even though it wasn't a Halloween episode, Eight is Enough did an episode based around Psycho, airing in January.  I was eight, yes it was scary.)

 

Shock: The Wolf Man

Well, even though this is one of the A-listers, I watched it for two reasons:  1) because it was on the list, and 2) because I've been watching Lon Chaney Jr movies and I needed to watch this before I commented on any of the future installments.

I love this film.  It's fun.  Set in Wales, where Lawrence Talbot, Chaney, comes back home from California with an American accent.  And gypsies.  With gypsy wagons.

Bela Lugosi plays one of these gypsies, one named Bela.  Yeah.  But he's killed shortly after showing up, giving the always haunting Maria Ouspenskya the voice of exposition.

Except nearly everyone in the village, the one where Talbot grew up in, knows the legend of the were-wolf and the poem about it:

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

There's so many little quirks and contradictions in the story that it's inadvertently funny- up until the point where Talbot realizes he's cursed, and then Chaney gives this softly heartbreaking performance that's probably in the top four of the Universal horror movies.  It's a good show of a range that start with Lennie in 1939's Of Mice and Men.

BUT

Here's something I've been wrestling with since I started this project:  In other movies, seems to me Chaney is kind of lumpy, and I don't get him.  In Weird Woman, he's got women fighting over him.  In  The Pillow of Death, he's got a younger woman going against the wishes of family to be with him when he leaves his wife.  He's got it going on somehow.  And I'm totally missing it.

As Talbot, he rocks- in this and the subsequent movies in the series.  I'll deal with my thoughts on his portrayals of other characters as they occur. 

His sweetheart, Gwen, is played by Evelyn Ankers, who we last watched in Weird Woman.  Another face we'll come to recognize as project progressed will be Talbot's father, played by Claude Raines.

I think the thing I love most about this movie is how incredibly, amazing tightly the folklore from the movie made it's way into the idea of "real" werewolf folklore, despite the fact that Curtis Siodmak wrote it up. 

As much as I'm not looking forward to the Inner Sanctum movies, I'm eagerly looking forward to the subsequent movies.

Required Reading

I've been re-reading David Skal's Monster Show and leafing through Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946 as "homework" for the blog. 
There's also the excellent blog Shock!: The Shock! and Son of Shock! Phenomenon of the Late 1950s and Early 1960s - With The Shock and Son of Shock Viewing Project that I've been reading as well- they've got scans of the original Screen Gems promotional materials as a treat.
I was looking through my old blog posts and I saw I'd considered doing the Shock blog before, back in March 2011.  I think Perry is having an easier time with the Universal movies than he did with the vampire movies.

Shock: The Cat Creeps (1946)

Well, it's a cool poster isn't it?
That's as far as it goes for me.  An overly complicated set up to get a group of people to an island, then there's murder.  Maybe a murdered woman's spirit is possessing her cat... maybe not.  Fred Brady, who went on to write in Hollywood, plays a fast talking witty witty witty reporter.    It was distracting actually, because all I could think of while listening to him was Bogart's comment about someone "cracking foxy" in the Maltese Falcon.  His photographer is played by Noah Berry Jr, a very young Rocky Rockford from tv's The Rockford Files.
Lois Collier was more impressive as a scorned college student in 1944's Weird Woman.

Erle Kenton, the director, also helmed House of Dracula and House and Ghost of Frankenstein, as well as Island of Lost Souls.

I realize that not all these movies are going to be "The Mummy" or "The Black Cat."  Despite this, you could tell The Cat Creeps was produced and acted in a totally professional, if not by the numbers, manner.  That said, I'm going to keep the A list movies in reserve til I can't take any more of the B's.

Shock: Weird Woman

The flaw, for me at least, in working my way through the Shock Theater package, isn't seeing "new" movies- it's the realizing that I've got more stuff to get. 


First, I need to get my hands on the Inner Sanctum collection, seven movies Universal did based on the radio show of the same name.

Second, I need to read Fritz Leiber's classic novel, Conjure Wife, which today's movie, Weird Woman was based on.

Weird Woman, part of the Inner Sanctum series, is about Norman, an anthropology professor, played by Lon Chaney, a firm believer in rational thought without any room in his life for superstition, who has married Paula,  a witch, more accurately a practitioner of strange south seas Voodoo.  Their mysterious rituals and rites are pretty peppy- it reminded me of the bit from MST3K:  "You know, liturgical dance is weird. " "Yeah, but it brings in the parishioners."

There's lots of college intrigue, the whole publish or perish thing, as he vies the position of department chair.   Paula uses her charms to help him, and when he discovers this, he's annoyed, since it's the sort of primitive superstition he's trying to eradicate.   Paula has also fallen afoul of Ilona, a colleague of Norman who'd had designs on the professor. 

Anne Gwynne, Paula, and Evelyn Ankers, Ilona, are in several other Universal movies, like The Wolfman and House Of Frankenstein.  Since I've already seen the core movies of the Universal Horror collection, they weren't unknown to me.

And of course, Lon Chaney is Lon Chaney.  I have some problems with him that I'll address when I watch The Wolfman.

Shock: The Secret of the Blue Room

One of my Resolutions for 2014 is to write more, to blog more. Another is to watch as many of the Universal Studios horror classics as I can- specifically those that comprised the syndicated packages for Shock Theater and Son of Shock.

So I've decided to merge the two and resurrect my old Vampire movie blog (once upon a time, I'd decided to watch 365 vampire movies- I made it to August) to document my viewing, based on the reference book Universal Horrors.

It was tempting to start with Dracula or Frankenstein, but part of the experience was not just to watch movies I loved, but to find new favorites- that's why I started with the thriller The Secret of the Blue Room.

It's Lionel Atwill and Gloria Stuart in a rather by the numbers mystery set in an old family castle- Stuart has three suitors visiting for her twenty-first birthday.    One of the three challenges the others to spend the night in the cursed Blue Room.  Soon one is vanished, another dead, and the third left to discover what's behind the deaths.

As someone who originally encountered Stuart in Titanic, I've come to admire her in the Universal movies, such as this, The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man;  I was lucky enough to find a studio picture of Stuart at a flea market a couple of years ago.  I guess I've become quite a fan.

I felt for certain I'd read somewhere that The Secret of the Blue Room was a lost movie.  So when I did a google search that turned up the entire move, I was pleasantly surprised.

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.

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.