Salem's Lot (2024)

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

It's amusing to me that Salem's Lot has been adapted three times, and while the first two were TV miniseries that got theatrical play*, this newest incarnation was meant for theatrical release only to be shipped off to streaming (Max, specifically). However, we were lucky enough to get a one-off showing here in LA as part of Beyond Fest, so we could appreciate the visuals and fine work from its cast on the big screen, without rebuffering issues or–if applicable–spending part of it looking at our phones if the movie failed to hold our attention. But in a weird way, maybe it'd be better to watch the movie that way, as we could assume all of the missing story beats occurred while we were doomscrolling.

For those who haven't read the novel or seen either of the other adaptations (Tobe Hooper's celebrated 1979 one, and Mikael Salomon's solid TNT take in 2004), the basic story is intact—no one's ever drastically overhauled King's 1975 novel. A writer named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman this time around) returns to his small hometown in Maine to get inspiration for his next book, targeting the town's obligatory "haunted" house once owned by a gangster named Marsten. Upon his arrival he learns that the house has just been purchased by a pair of mysterious antique store owners named Barlow and Straker, with the former man never actually seen as the latter handles all of the operations. Not long after their arrival in town, a body count starts to rise, and after a pooling of information between Ben, a kid named Mark, a teacher named Matt, and a local woman/Ben's love interest Susan, they conclude that the town has a vampire problem, and they go about trying to end it.

All of that is intact here. Writer/director Gary Dauberman doesn't change much from the original novel (even the period setting is retained; the 2004 one updated it for modern day but this is actually set in the novel's publication time of 1975); the most significant diversion is that the town has a new drive-in, and the climax is set there instead of in/around the Marsten house, with the story concluding there instead of an epilogue set years later (if I'm being honest, the ending of King's book wasn't very satisfying, and all three versions have done their best to improve on it). But perhaps he should have made more changes, or followed the path of the predecessors and pushed for a two part movie, because seeing this familiar story being told again albeit on double speed does it no favors.

A friend of mine said he went to a test screening of the film that ran around three hours, and I do not doubt it (it's around 110 min now including both credit sequences). Not only are there names in the credits for characters who do not appear (such as Ruth Crockett, daughter of Larry the real estate guy, who himself is given far less screentime than he did in the two previous adaptations), but it seems like the entire second act of the movie occurs off-screen. There's a scene where Alfre Woodard's character, Dr Cody (usually a male named Jimmy) goes to see the sheriff (William Sadler, always a delight) to ask for his help, and he replies something like "Look around you, you see what they're doing to this town!?" - and I burst out laughing, because NO, we haven't seen any of it! Characters are constantly popping up as if we should have met them already; hell, when (spoiler) Barlow kills Mark's parents, it's in the same scene where we met them for the first time. Right from the start it felt like a movie that was being sped up in the edit, as there's zero buildup to Barlow and Straker being in town and the guys are moving the coffin into the Marsten house basement at like the five minute mark. And, to be clear, my friend didn't tell me about this until days later; it wasn't information I had in my head all along. He just confirmed that the "this was cut to the bone" sense I got from it was 100% apt.

In fact I almost feel bad writing a negative review, because there was probably a good movie in there before the re-editing robbed it of its soul. Dauberman has proven to be a dependable talent over the years, and again, the cast is great. I've always enjoyed Pullman's work since he was younger (he was the 18ish son in Strangers 2) and it's nice to see him ascend to leading man status here, and Bill Camp (as Burke) is one of those actors who seem to have been put on this earth to play folksy/endearing Stephen King characters. And while he didn't seem to be on the same page as everyone else tonally, I was delighted by Pilou Asbæk as Straker; the scene where he attempts to kidnap the Glick kids had me full on cackling as he just keeps staring at them after they turn down his offer to drive them home (and the subsequent scene where he does indeed capture one of them, played out in silhouette against a setting sun, is gorgeous). Barlow's design is a direct recycle of Reggie Nalder's from the Hooper version, which is a little disappointing, but it's still an effective visual.

Alas, the director is Gary Dauberman, not Zack Snyder, so I doubt there will be enough angry/petulant losers harassing HBO for years until they finally give him more money to complete his original vision just to shut the crybabies up. I'm sure a few years from now he will give an interview somewhere and talk about his longer cut and what was lost, but until then, all we have is this: a nice looking, well cast movie that tried to stay too faithful to a story that previous filmmakers couldn't even fully capture with nearly twice as much time to do so. Maybe those who are completely new to the story will find more to like, because those story beats won't be as familiar, but for me, who has seen/read this story before (three times, in fact!), it came across as too hollow to make much of an impact. And that's damning for a big screen showing (at Beyond Fest no less, where the crowd energy is always infectious). If I watched on Max, I can guarantee you I would have found some really funny memes on Instagram by the end of it.

What say you?

*Hooper's version was (irony alert) cut down and played theatrically in Europe. Both parts of the TNT one had a one night Fathom Events kind of theatrical exhibition the night before it premiered, which I remember because I went. And it played off a DVD at a time when 35mm was still the majority format, which tickled me: a dvd in a theater of a movie designed for broadcast.

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Abigail (2024)

APRIL 19, 2024

GENRE: KILLER KID, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

(THIS REVIEW ASSUMES YOU'VE SEEN THE TRAILER OR AT LEAST KNOW THE PREMISE! IF YOU DON'T, STOP READING!)

I've often wondered if anyone ever got the opportunity to watch From Dusk Til Dawn without knowing it was a vampire movie. For the first 45 minutes or whatever it was, there's nothing in the film to indicate anything supernatural would be happening; it's just a straight ahead hostage thriller with some humor, with the vampire stuff being sprung as a total surprise. But naturally, the marketing focused on that, so there was no way for us 90s kids to go in blind. But perhaps there's a better chance for it happening with Radio Silence's Abigail, which similarly doesn't tell you you're watching a vampire movie until about the halfway point and may frustrate some viewers who were sold on that very premise.

Luckily for me, I enjoyed my pre-vampire time quite a bit, as the film was loaded with actors I enjoy watching (Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Giancarlo Esposito, and - my man! - Kevin Durand) and their Reservoir Dogs-esque dynamic, where they've been assembled for a job under strict rule not to reveal anything personal about themselves and have been given code names (Joey, Dean, Frank, Sammy... either you'll get the theme or you'll need further explanation than I have space for here if I were to spell it out) to address one another. Joey is Melissa Barrera from the last two Scream movies, continuing her partnership with the Radio Silence team, and she's never been better, I must say. She's the requisite "criminal with a heart," as she has a young son that is currently with his father after she lost him due to a drug addiction she picked up during her time as a combat medic, using the money from their job to hopefully start a new life with him. Hard not to root for that!

Of course, if you're watching unaware then you can't root for her either, as the job is "kidnapping a little girl and holding her for ransom in a scary house." It's an odd disconnect; I never once really felt bad for the girl even when they have to knock her out to finish the kidnapping process, because I knew she was a little demon that could have killed them all right then and there if she wanted, but again, if some hypothetical person goes into this movie completely unaware, they'll probably have a tough time feeling for Joey even with her sob story. And the rest don't even have anything noble to even it out; an ex-cop, a mafia enforcer, a rich girl hacker... get em, Abby!

Even beyond that, the marketing and casting also kind of tips us off that despite the RD-esque setup that this won't be a movie about the team's paranoia turning them against each other. We know from the trailer that this house they all go to is actually HER house, and that their boss (Esposito) picked it specifically. And since Esposito exits after his first scene, we know they didn't cast him for that one rather thankless part, so basically while you're waiting for Abigail to show her true nature, you're also kind of waiting for the "reveal" that they were all set up by Esposito from the beginning. Amusingly, when Abigail explains why they were chosen, it comes off as a giant homage to another '90s crime classic - which Esposito was also in! So I can't help but wonder if Radio Silence intentionally cast him as tribute, only for the marketing to kind of gum up what also plays as a surprise reveal.

But like I said, it's fun to watch the group hang out, take shots at each other, attempt to bond (the late Angus Cloud, as the wheelman, gets plenty of laughs from his very terrible attempts to woo Newton's character), etc. And even though there are no specific "she's a vampire!" kind of things until she bares her fangs, there are some in-jokes that tell us what we're watching: she's introduced during her ballet routine set to "Swan Lake", and when Dan Stevens forgets to put on his mask when entering her room, he quickly tries to hide it by pulling his jacket over it, in a manner exactly like the not-Bela Lugosi guy in Plan 9. So there's plenty of amusement to be had, and while there might be a genre switcheroo (from thriller to vampire), it's *fun* from start to finish, which keeps it from a tonal inbalance. I feel an audience can go with anything a lot easier as long as the tone remains consistent, so it's only the severely impatient that should really have an issue.

Plus, it's not like they don't make it worth the wait. While the Screams made a lot more money we shouldn't forget that this is also the team that gave us Ready or Not, and whether they wanted to pay tribute to their first big success or just absolutely love doing it, there are once again very bloody body explosions in this movie, allowing nearly character to be drenched in blood at some point before they either die later or walk off into the sunrise. The compact cast (the six kidnappers, Esposito, and Abigail herself are the only people on-screen for 95% of the runtime) means the body count is obviously not going to be very high, but Abigail's pint-sized attacks means she doesn't always land a kill shot as quickly, so, yeah. Blood. Lots of it.

I also liked their take on vampires, where rather than just get the standard fangs she gets a row of sharp teeth over her normal ones, giving it a more monstrous flair than the typical bloodsucker. Her skills also involve flying, contortion, and (I think?) shape-shifting (there's a scene with a rat that suggests she turned into a cat? Unless I was just processing it wrong), but they never forget the fact that she's a ballerina either. So instead of just running she often twirls and Grand Jetes* her way towards her victims, a sight that never stopped being funny to me. And (spoiler that the trailer only offers a quick glimpse of) she does turn someone at some point, giving that actor even more fun stuff to do while also showing off a "puppet" skill where dance comes into play again, and the whole thing is set to Danzig's "Blood and Tears" for good measure. It's a truly awesome sequence.

It's also consistently funny, with very few duds in the attempts. Stevens' delivery of "F***in onions" (another character thinks they're a protective garlic) had me laughing for quite a while, and the reveal of his character's actual name is a funny little easter egg that pays homage to another filmmaking team he's worked with. And Kevin Durand is an absolute scene-stealer as a big lug who is a little slow to understand things but seems like perhaps the only genuinely decent person in the group except for Joey (his size and slow intellect kind of led him down the "bruiser" path more than any inherent malice), making him even more endearing than she is at times. His very late understanding of why they got the code names they got had me reeling. He's the main villain in the new Planet of the Apes movie too, so despite the mocap stuff obscuring his face I hope it catapults his star power a little; dude's been killing it for like 20 years now and deserves his due. If you can manage to entertain an audience during the insufferable Wolverine Origins, you deserve the world, far as I'm concerned.

OK ONE LAST SPOILER, I promise. Skip this next paragraph and the little one after it if you've been successfully hidden from some dumb social media bickering about the film's former connection to a certain vampire film of yore.

This movie was announced as a reimagining of Dracula's Daughter, and that information remains as current on the film's Wiki page, leading some lazy critics to accept it as fact. But she most certainly is NOT Dracula's daughter in the movie, because her dad shows up and I'm pretty sure they'd say his name if that's who he was (it's Grazer or something like that). However, those who have followed this movie from the time it was announced know that it only got its name very recently, and for a while was just referred to as "Untitled Radio Silence Universal Monster Movie." The fact that it took so long to say what it was actually called suggests to me that maybe the Dracula element was removed fairly late in the process, and that until then it was going to go out with that title OR they would call it whatever (including Abigail) and reveal her dad was Dracula when he showed up. Further, one could assume that since this is another comedic vampire movie from Universal, that said Drac would be played by Nic Cage, reprising his role from Renfield. But that film's total (undeserved!) failure probably would have put a stake into those plans even if that was indeed the case. Still, when her dad appears, it's an actor you might recognize, but he's hardly a big name worthy of a surprise appearance (though if you want to maybe grasp at straws, it IS kind of a funny bit of casting if you think about the title of this film that he starred in, but that's all I got). Nothing against him, he's not someone that the audience is going to be blown away by their sudden appearance, like Statham showing up at the end of Fast and Furious 6, or Sam Jackson in Iron Man, though the reveal plays like such moments.

(Ironically I had my money on someone even less exciting to a general audience: Henry Czerny, who appeared in Scream 6 and Ready or Not and even makes a random appearance in the film with his photo on one of the walls the characters slowly walk past. I would have cheered, anyway. Love that dude. But they shot the movie in Ireland, so maybe he was still in Prague.)

Besides that, my only issue is that the climax dragged, though that's been an issue with their other movies too so I can't say I was surprised. It's one of those things where things could have been wrapped up in the next five minutes, but instead they introduce another element that keeps it going. And then another element on top of that, so that what looked like the climactic scene ends up being almost an act onto itself. It also meant making one character I kind of liked as an anti-hero into a full on villain, so that was a bummer. It's mostly made up for by the final line from _______ to ______ before they explode (if you've seen it, the one involving "the cool s**t"), but it still could have been tightened. I know most people will complain it takes too long to get to the vampire stuff; I was mostly fine with that (if somewhat surprised at the delay) but weird ol' me started checking their watch during a bloody, stunt-filled battle. Just one turn too many for me.

Otherwise: total winner. I was sad but not particularly stunned to see that the box office wasn't all that great (better than Renfield at least), though I took solace with the decent Cinemascore (B, above average for horror) so maybe word of mouth will help out and it'll be a minor hit. But audiences just never tend to flock to see these kind of movies even in better theatrical times (even From Dusk Till Dawn, with a red-hot Clooney from ER and Tarantino's first script since Pulp Fiction, didn't perform all that well), and like Disney+, Universal has done itself no favors for its theatrical output (outside of major blockbusters) by training audiences to expect that they'll be on Peacock in a few weeks. You'll enjoy it just as much at home, I'm sure, but man. It'd be nice to see something like this get the "surprise smash" label, if only to ensure we get a few more before every decently budgeted (so, not Blumhouse, which keeps spending to a minimum) original horror goes extinct or streaming only. A friend of mine, who has been involved in some very gigantic movies (meaning: his stuff doesn't go streaming), believes that in 20-30 years, theatrical releases won't exist at all. *Theaters* will, but purely as a repertory or specialty thing, while the studios gradually lose interest just as audiences seemingly do, and put their slates on streaming (or whatever the next thing is) for mass audiences. People kept saying "superhero fatigue" led to the failure of the last couple Marvel movies, but if audiences want new things, they're not showing up for those either. I've stopped doing the bullying "YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!" kind of thing that I used to, so see it or not, your call. But just know, the writing on the wall is getting easier to read by the day, and expecting to be able to go to the multiplex and seeing films like this alongside the "IP" stuff forever is perhaps misguided optimism.

What say you?

*I had to look it up, I assure you.

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The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023)

AUGUST 13, 2023

GENRE: MONSTER, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I didn't start writing about horror movies until 2006, and at that point, The Last Voyage of the Demeter was already on its second round of rewrites after the initial version started falling apart. Since then a series of directors have come and gone, and considering the final version has seven known writers in addition to Bram Stoker, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the film feels hollow; whatever original spark may have existed in its original draft has been sanded (rewritten) away, so all that's left is a technically proficient and occasionally engaging monster movie, but without any genuine excitement or obvious passion. It's just THERE.

The concept is fine: taking the Demeter chapter from Stoker's Dracula (which, I hope I don't have to explain, depicts how he got from Transylvania to London) and expanding it to a full length feature, pitched more or less as "Alien but on Dracula's boat" (a scene where the ship's men fret about their bonuses seems to be a direct tip of the hat to Ridley Scott's classic). But not only is it not as novel as it might have been once upon a time, since they basically already did that in the second "episode" (basically a movie) of BBC's Dracula from 2020 (which is terrific and should be seen by anyone reading this, if they haven't already), but it also lacks the mystery of that film. The crew of the Nostromo didn't know what they were dealing with, and neither did we - we learned along with it. Here maybe our heroes don't know who/what Dracula is, but we in the audience do, so we're always several steps ahead of the characters, several of whom are fairly anonymous (there are two mates who I literally couldn't tell apart), unlike Scott's memorable crew. A better comparison might be Alien 3, where there were a few standouts (including a Game of Thrones guy! Charles "Tywin" Dance there, Liam "Davos" Cunningham here) and a bunch of glorified extras (prisoners, in that case).

Also, Alien's timeline made sense, whereas this film's month long journey is shown to be doomed almost from the start, when "something" (read: Dracula) kills all of the livestock meant to serve as the crew's food. After two weeks Drac starts helping himself to the crew, which would be fine if there were like 30 guys on board, but there are a total of ten, one of whom is a victim already stored away in one of the Count's wooden crates and thus not in any danger until she gives off her obligatory exposition. The first victim is explained away as possibly drunk and fell overboard, but it's not long until most of them have seen the creature, at which point the movie should be basically one non-stop hunt, right? Like in, er, Alien? Nope, they keep going as normal, with the Captain (Cunningham) demanding two men take each watch at night, an amusing line because at that point there's only like four left anyway. And it's not a particular big boat, so why they can't find him in a single day (when he's sleeping, of course) is just silly, let alone after several. Since the whole "Bulgaria to London by boat" aspect doesn't make a lick of sense anyway (look at a map if you're confused as to why), there's clearly some huge liberties with geography, so why make up the arbitrary month-long time it would take when it just weakens the story?

Part of what got me excited for the film was the comparisons to Hammer movies, but I'm not sure which ones they were watching because two of the issues I had would never happen under Terence Fisher's watch. One is that the film is too damn long, running just under two hours when most Hammer movies had the good sense to come in at 90 or less. Sure, all movies are longer now, but usually there's a story that demands such length. Here the plot is "Dracula is on a ship and kills everyone", a mystery that even a complete novice wouldn't have a chance to see unfold because it (sigh) starts at the end, with the doomed ship already crashed on the shores of England, crew dead/missing. There's no real point to any of this material (there's no real twist to the other end of this framing device), and lessens the impact of the boat crashing on the rocks when it happens.

The other thing is that Hammer movies notably, at times even laughably ended as soon as the monster was dispatched; if credits weren't already rolling more than 60 seconds after Dracula or Frankenstein's Monster met his (temporary) end, something was amiss. Here, we get an extended and very obnoxious scene where the film's lone survivor (I won't spoil it because I guess it technically counts as a surprise as to which one it is, when you consider the rest of the cast) has voiceover explaining that they're not finished with Dracula and blah blah blah setup for The Second Last Voyage of Demeter or whatever you'd call a sequel to a film with such a definitive title. Even if the film hadn't tanked at the box office, ensuring no sequel would ever exist, it would have been a pretty weak way to end the film, and again goes against whatever "Hammer style" approach they were taking. Those movies all ended definitively and would be retconned or explained in a sequel IF ticket sales encouraged them to make one! At some point they got it backwards, and it sucks.

On the plus side, it was cool to see Dracula as a monster again, as opposed to the usual handsome guy (especially since Universal already had one of those this year with Renfield, a far more inspired film). He talks a little, and it's an actual actor in makeup as opposed to a CGI creation, but there is nothing typically *human* about their appearance, and director André Øvredal uses it sparingly, sticking him in shadows and lightning-strike glimpses even in the third act. And the R rating is fully earned, with very gruesome throat gouges, a couple icky demonstrations of what happens to vamps in the sun, and other bloody showcases (he sure wastes a lot of his food, but whatever). Luckily, Øvredal doesn't apply that sense of showmanship to the animal deaths - they're all killed offscreen (including a dog, just fair warning). Tear a guy's head off, sure, but do not show us a pig being bitten!

And the cast was fine; Cunningham is always a pleasure to watch, as are Corey Hawkins (as the newest member of the crew and also the doctor) and David Dastmalchian (first mate), all of whom commit to their performances and keep things lively even when they're repeating beats from previous scenes (sometimes it feels like Dastmalchian's character merely forgot about earlier events whenever a new body turns up). I didn't recognize anyone else, but the script didn't give much for anyone else to really work with; even the lone female doesn't particularly stand out beyond, well, being the lone female. She's tasked with some of the exposition and thankfully spared a romance with Hawkins (or decidedly less consensual attention from the rowdier mates), so it could be worse, but at one point Noomi Rapace was cast in this role (assuming the basic plot was always the same across twenty years of development) and it's clearly not a role she'd have much interest in, considering how thin it was. Bear McCreary's main theme was pretty good too, though I can't deny I wish Thomas Newman had stuck with the film (yep, even composers came and went on this thing), as he doesn't do a lot of genre work but one of the few exceptions was The Lost Boys, so it would have been interesting to see him return to vamp fare with another 35 years of experience to draw from.

I get sort of sad when a movie like this comes along and doesn't grab me, because on paper it's the very thing I wish to see more often: an R rated monster movie designed to actually be scary. And I'm a sucker for contained location horror, plus it basically unfolds like one of my beloved slasher films. But it just never really came together for me, always feeling like it was just putting its pieces into play before stepping things up, only for that escalation to never really come. There are some inspired moments, such as Hawkins' heartbreaking reveal that the reason he, a Cambridge-trained doctor, was in Romania looking for work is because he was hired based on reputation only to arrive and be shunned because he was Black, and a funny little bit where Dastmalchian questions how his education could be any use at the sea, but those moments are a. few and far between and b. notably not part of the horror-driven scenes. Øvredal knows how to make suspense in confinement work (Autopsy of Jane Doe is an all timer), but he never managed to really raise my pulse here - there was more tension in the damn Nun II trailer beforehand (that magazine flipping bit) than I ever felt on this Voyage.

What say you?

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FTP: Children of the Night (2014)

MAY 29, 2023

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I don’t know what the oldest movie in “the pile” is, but Children of the Night (aka Limbo) has to be in the running, as it came out in October of 2015 (and, since it was sent for review consideration, means I probably got it a month earlier). My life is very different now! Since this film has been sitting there waiting for me to watch it, I’ve moved, gotten a new (used) car, published two books, lost two side jobs (typical layoff and covid shutdown, respectively), and helped turn a baby who only just started walking into a 9 year old who has his own TV and can figure out Zelda bosses easier than I can. Kind of crazy, at least in a low key way that's probably not interesting to anyone reading.

But I bring it up because I wonder if I would have enjoyed the film as much then as I did now. My thoughts on “evil” children movies have gone through the wringer since I had my own child, but here’s one where the kids – who are all vampires – are actually the good guys. Sure, they need human blood and can be pretty creepy, but they also just want to do kid things and eat curry (a drug to their vampiric kind – a delightfully odd idea I must say), as none of them asked to be vampires. And they’re all being hunted by a group of black-clad men who believe them to be the devil spawn or whatever, so it’s not hard to, at the very least, hope they take down the hunter jerks with them.

Caught in the middle is Alicia (Sabrina Ramos), a writer who got a tip about the retreat where all of the children live, believing them to all be suffering from some kind of illness with no cure. At first she’s confused, then scared once she realizes what they are, but then comes around to being an ally, thanks in part to the fact that one of the children is actually her girlhood bestie. As vampires tend to do, he hasn’t aged since she last saw him when they were adolescents, so she finds herself weirdly drawn to this now-man trapped in a child’s body, and of course wanting to protect him so she doesn’t lose him again. It’s a potentially icky plot point, and has a few eyebrow raising moments (they don’t *do* anything, I should stress – she just acts charmed by his seemingly inappropriate comments instead of overly concerned), but it’s ultimately a rather sweet unconventional (and, again, physically platonic!) love story.

But it’s also a vampire movie, and while there isn’t a lot of action, what we get is pretty entertaining, since it’s… well, a bunch of kids taking on grown men. At one point a kid literally kicks the head off one attacker, and the other kids momentarily kick it back and forth like a soccer ball – it’s delightful. The music accompanying these scenes is also top notch, as it weirdly reminds me (of all things) of the music in Tetris Effect: Connected, where it’s exciting but also kind of relaxing? Hard to explain unless you’ve also played that game (and you should! It’s the best version!). I also like how they handle the usual tie-in to pop culture vampires, as it proposes the idea that Bram Stoker was a self-loathing vampire who wrote his book to expose the (real) Dracula, who as it turns out is the grandfather of one of the children there. Silly? Sure, but I’ll take it over the usual corny line about Bela Lugosi “getting it wrong” or whatever

. Honestly the only real flaw, besides running a little too long, is that the low budget is occasionally far too apparent on screen. The video/soap opera look I eventually adjusted to, but there are a number of scenes where it seems like they tried to hide a mistake with a superimposed black oval? For example, in one scene, it seems one of the child actors missed their cue and just stood there while the others ran around, and they tried to hide it with one of these ovals, but another actor crosses in front of them, so the oval disappears and we see the kid just standing there – it’s seriously far more distracting than it would have been to just not draw our attention to it in the first place, though I’m sure it could have worked if the oval in any way matched the color of the rest of the image. There are a few other lo-fi “fixes” like that in the movie that kind of keep calling attention to how under budgeted it was, distracting away from the surprisingly involving story. For some reason there’s a remake of One Cut of the Dead coming, but I feel something like this would be a far better option to remake, as the low budget (which was part of One Cut’s charm, not a handicap) actually harms it here and it deserves a polished presentation.

Director/writer Ivan Noel provides a commentary where he notes some of their budgetary issues and thanks the many people who did favors (CGI shots of a moon eclipse, for example), making it a fine track for those who might feel they can’t pull off their own ambitious projects due to a lack of resources. He also notes that the movie was an hour longer at one point (I’m sure he meant his first assembly as opposed to a “director’s cut”; people who don’t understand the difference make reporting on such things an incredible nuisance), though the only other bonus feature is a 20ish minute behind the scenes where we can see everyone was just enjoying the experience and having a sort of summer camp vibe during the proceedings. Since the movie was still too long, I can’t say I need MORE scenes from the film, but if this stuff was in any way elaborate I can’t help but wonder if he tightened his script in the first place perhaps some of those limited resources wouldn’t have been spread so thin.

That said, what’s left is still much better than I would have guessed after the first few minutes (my heart sunk when I saw that video look), so he pulled it off! It has a lot of tones (sweet and nostalgic! Dryly ironic! Kind of scary!) but Noel balances it out fairly well, and Ramos is an engaging presence (as is Ana María Giunta as Erda, the childrens’ caretaker, wearily dealing with things like one of the children sleep-flying). And then I had to laugh that since the movie’s ten years old now, all of the kids in it are now adults. Such is life in the pile!

What say you?

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Renfield (2023)

MARCH 30, 2023

GENRE: COMEDIC, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL)

As a big fan of Nicolas Cage, I was stoked to see him return to the multiplexes last year with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but was mixed on the movie itself (as I tend to always be when people play exaggerated versions of themselves, i.e. Last Action Hero and the Jay + Bob Strike Back movies). And it wasn’t exactly a huge hit, so I feared it would be a one and done “return” and he’d be back in VOD stuff for a while, but here we are only a year later with a full on big budget studio movie. Renfield isn’t just Cage’s return to would-be blockbuster material (I don’t think Massive Talent was ever expected to be a smash; Renfield needs to hit nine digits at the box office just to break even), but it’s also his return to vampire territory, 35 years after one of his best films: 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss.

Of course, in that film he’s not an actual vampire, he just thinks he’s one (amusingly, the day I saw Renfield in New Orleans via the Overlook Festival, my copy of the new 4K UHD of the similar Martin arrived at home). No such ambiguity here: he’s not just a vampire, he’s THE vampire – Dracula himself. The movie curiously posits itself as a sequel to the Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi film, inserting Cage and Nicholas Hoult (as the title character) into classic moments from that film in order to bring us up to speed – we even get Cage delivering the “I never drink… wine” line! If you think about it too much it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (and changes the ending), but it’s fine – it’s just a quick way to establish early on that this is a “what happens next” kind of story, not a modern retelling of the usual tale (albeit from Renfield’s perspective) or whatever, with the added bonus of seeing Cage do a surprisingly solid Lugosi impression.

Anyway, as you can expect from the title the main focus is on Renfield, who is also seemingly immortal thanks to occasionally drinking Dracula’s blood (which can also heal wounds simply from being poured over them). So it’s now the modern day (in New Orleans; not sure what prompts them to move there but it’s a fun location all the same) and he’s quite lonely, having obviously lost his family long ago and living an empty life devoted to nothing but doing his master’s bidding. In order to find fresh victims he joins an AA type group for people who are in/trying to escape from toxic relationships, using the information his fellow members divulge to track down terrible people for his boss to feed on (so like, when one girl talks about her abusive boyfriend, he finds the guy and brings him to Dracula – a fine way to keep Renfield sympathetic!). But after experiencing an epiphany and realizing he himself is in a toxic relationship, he decides to use what he’s learned and try to escape from Dracula’s shadow – something his boss is unsurprisingly not too happy about.

This alone probably could have generated a pretty good movie – not to mention given Cage more screentime – but part of Renfield’s journey is inspired by a chance meeting with a cop played by Awkwafina. She too is fed up with her bosses, who stick her on DUI checkpoint duty (“in a town with drive-thru daiquiris!”) when she really wants to take down the local mob that killed her father (also a cop), which should inform anyone that’s ever seen a movie before that the cops are under the mob’s thumb and her poking her nose in their business is going to get her killed by one of her own fellow officers. While she makes a few appearances in the trailer I was surprised how much of the movie focused on her and the mob story (the latter of which not hinted at in the trailer at all; Ben Schwarz as the Sonny Corleone-esque hothead under the mob boss/his mom, played by Shoreh Aghdashloo*, also has more screentime than Cage), to the extent that it’s basically a two-hander instead of relegating her to “the love interest”. Which is fine in theory; I just feel she’s not a particularly engaging actress who plays the same character in everything, so not only is she not believable as a cop but it’s also asking a lot of the audience who was sold on, you know, Nic Cage as Dracula.

And he’s great! He doesn’t do the “mega-acting” thing all that much (if anything he’s subtle compared to the likes of Gary Oldman in his uncle Francis' movie) and while the movie is basically a comedy it’s very rarely on account of anything he’s doing or saying. He’s a legit menacing presence, with some fantastic makeup in his early scenes as he is left nearly dead from the opening encounter and has to be nourished back to health. In his first big modern day scene he comes off more like The Hunchback (or, to go outside of the Universal Monster canon, Paul McCrane in Robocop right before he meets the business end of Kurtwood Smith’s car), and then each subsequent appearance has him more “intact” until he’s back to his seductive glory – with the actor clearly relishing the process and having different shades to play; going from kind of pathetic/angry to suave and fully in control. So if you’re the type of person who judges the actor’s performances on how many memes it will inspire, you might be disappointed, but if you’re like me and just find him a genuinely talented and interesting actor who commits to whatever role comes his way, you’ll hopefully share my opinion that this is, even if somewhat by default due to his mostly generic VOD stuff, one of his best on-screen performances in nearly 20 years (along with Pig, Joe, and Mandy – I guess single word titles are a good luck charm?). Even the sadly limited screentime (30 minutes would be an optimistic guess?) is ultimately kind of a good thing – he makes his scenes count, and after all this time “away” (he’s never stopped working, it’s just… look, even I haven’t heard of half the stuff on his recent filmography, and I love the guy) as someone rooting for a comeback I love that people will walk out saying “I wish Nic Cage was in it more!”

That’s nothing against Hoult or the other cast, I should stress. Schwarz is pretty funny as the other antagonist, and Brandon Scott James (John from The Good Place) steals just about every scene he’s in as the leader of the self-help meeting group. I mean, I should be clear if you haven’t figured it out from the trailers: this is a horror comedy that is more concerned with the latter part of that equation, and Hoult’s depressed state means he doesn’t get too many laughs himself, so the supporting cast is what keeps the energy high. It’s a pretty short movie (93 minutes) and clearly had some slicing – the credits tout all of the dancers used in a scene that didn’t make the cut (though a few frames are shown in the accompanying stylized animated credits) – but I think it works in the movie’s favor. It’s just plain FUN, racing along through the somewhat generic mob story but engaging us with Renfield’s plight and Dracula’s increasing menace over everyone. You’re never more than a few minutes from another big laugh and/or gory action scene, and that’s fine with me – escapism is a good thing.

Back to the gore, I was at times surprised at how splattery it got. A little too digital at times for my tastes, but I can forgive it when it’s not supposed to be taken seriously anyway. This is no “Rated R because they didn’t feel like trimming out 12 frames to make it PG-13” type movie – there is a shocking amount of dismemberment going on, and most of it comes from our hero. When he eats bugs he gets super strength, and uses it to literally kick villains (mob guys or dirty cops) apart when it’s time for another action scene. And Cage gets in on the action too, decimating a room full of people with his claws and fangs – the R is earned several times over, which is much appreciated for a relatively big budget ($65m!) studio film that, while not technically an original since it’s still a Dracula movie, isn’t exactly a can’t-miss “franchise” movie either like Scream. Let’s put it this way: in order to be counted as a theatrical hit, this will have to be the highest grossing Dracula movie ever (not counting the animated Hotel Transylvania series), so it’s a risky but admirable move from Universal to sink that much into it at all, let alone focus the ad campaign around an actor who hasn’t toplined a major hit in 14 years (Knowing). During the peak of Covid times, there was some talk about how when theaters came back it’d only be surefire safe movies (i.e. Marvel stuff and Blumhouse type horror), with almost nothing aimed specifically at adults, but Universal is consistently shrugging off such worries with offbeat R rated fare – they just had Cocaine Bear (a surprise smash) and later this year they’ll have a talking dog movie that also sports an R rating. Good for them!

Anyway, it won’t be for everyone, especially if the humor turns you off or you’re some kind of purist that can’t get past the idea of this being a sequel to Browning’s film (I guess they also hate Abbott and Costello’s adventure?). And as I said, if you’re like me and find Awkwafina kind of grating, you have to deal with her having as much screentime as its title character, though thankfully she’s not too bad (if, again, not believable) and scores a few good lines (poor Officer Kyle) to balance things out. Hoult and Cage do terrific work and the movie rarely slows down long enough to start questioning things, and I think that’s exactly what makes it a winner. That it also has something to say about dealing with narcissistic personalities and how you can escape from them is just icing on the cake; a message that enhances the goofy fun of the rest of the movie instead of dwelling on it and bumming people out. And unlike the last big Dracula movie (2014’s Dracula Untold) it’s not concerned with setting up a stupid cinematic universe, so that’s another check in the “pro” column.

What say you?

*BEHROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZ!!!

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FTP: The Velvet Vampire (1971)

AUGUST 17, 2022

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

At our monthly(ish, damn you Covid!) horror trivia game, we always have a charity to donate the entry fee to, and while it varies from month to month, several bounties have gone to the Stephanie Rothman Fellowship, which helps women filmmakers with their projects. Which is a worthy enough cause for me to never actually look into who Stephanie Rothman was by checking out one of her films, until now, when I found one in my own collection. Indeed, I am certain I won this copy of The Velvet Vampire at one such trivia event, so it's a fitting way to finally get a taste of what she was up to during her relatively brief career.

Well I must admit the movie didn't do much for me, but it's clear that she was marching to the beat of her own drum, at a time where women were given even fewer opportunities to make films than they are now. I wasn't even surprised to see that Roger Corman produced, as he's always seemingly had little interest in following the path of his peers and letting men call the shots all the time. This was the fourth of Rothman's seven films as a director, not all of which were horror but fit comfortably in the exploitation/drive-in market of the '60s and '70s, and I can't help but wonder what she might have accomplished had her career not been effectively cut short by her own desire to make bigger/better films and the industry's hesitation to allow women to make anything more substantial. Feeling stuck in between, she quit the business, and I can't say I blame her.

But she (along with other genre trailblazers like Debra Hill and Amy Holden Jones) inspires filmmakers today, which is all that ultimately matters. And it's not that Velvet Vampire is bad, it's just a "not for me" type, which wasn't too surprising - I've never quite been taken by the vampire genre as a whole. The plot concerns a married couple who is visiting a new friend named Diane (Celeste Yarnall) who loves raw meat and occasionally does vampire-y things, though is fine to go out during the day (provided she wears a giant hat) and doesn't seem to have any powers beyond seducing both of our heroes (though she unsurprisingly has more success with the male). There's some stuff in here I enjoyed, like when Diane sucks the poison out of the heroine's snakebite, noticeably taking longer and being more graceful with the last suck, and seeing the idiot husband get what's coming, but it never stops feeling padded out to meet a runtime. Every now and then the heroes realize "something's not right here..." and decide to leave only to discover that their car still isn't fixed, and it's like they both have mental resets on why they wanted to leave in the first place, making the film feel a bit too stagnant for me. A subplot about a girlfriend of one of Diane's victims also does little to break things up, clearly just added in to make sure it hits 80 minutes. Also, the climax, while fun on its own, feels weirdly disconnected, as it takes place in the middle of Los Angeles instead of in the desert location we've spent the past hour or so in.

And yes, this vampire movie mostly takes place in the desert, and in the daytime to boot. Whether it was a budgetary constriction or Rothman's design from the start, I don't know, but either way it was the right call, because the DVD is of remarkably poor quality (full frame and seemingly taken from a VHS), so if it was mostly at night like you'd expect, I'd probably have trouble making out the images more often than not. It took me back to the Chilling Classics days, and it made me kind of nostalgic for such releases. Yes, obviously I'd love to have 4K UHD transfers of everything, but we all know that isn't going to happen, and it gets easier and easier to overlook the older formats when the new ones come in, and in turn that means closing yourself off to countless movies, as each new format only carries over a percentage of the films that made it to the format before it, and not a favorable one at that. Long story short, if I was someone just starting to dig deeper into horror history, and saw that beloved Chilling Classics set on the shelf, my eyes would pass right over it in favor of Blu-rays or 4Ks.

I've been told Terminal Island is the real gem of Rothman's output, and it certainly sounds up my alley (the plot synopsis gave me a whiff of No Escape, the 1994 action movie that - ironically given my last paragraph - is finally coming to disc after being available only on a non-anamorphic DVD for the past 20 years), so maybe I'll give that a look. As for Velvet, you don't need a DVD - it's on Shudder and Tubi and such (no surprise given the disc's poor quality, it seems to be in the public domain), so give it a look if it sounds up your alley. It's one of those movies I can see myself enjoying more at a different time in my life (or even just in a different mood, today), and at 80 minutes it's hardly going to consume too much of your day to see for yourself. I just can't get into most vampire movies!

What say you?

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Morbius (2022)

MARCH 31, 2022

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (IMAX SCREENING)

Today was the anniversary of when I "retired" from Horror Movie A Day, giving up the "A Day" part of the deal in favor of, you know, having a life. But I still slum my way through stuff every now and then that I really should just shut off/walk out of after twenty minutes or so and try to find something better to do with the remaining hour or whatever. So with that in mind, I had to almost begrudgingly appreciate Morbius for feeling so much like one of those movies that I wished I never had to think about again once they were over, but knew writing up a review would bring a few eyeballs over to the site (which the likes of my beloved Cathy's Curse could not, being that it did not star an Oscar-winning actor nor have a global fanbase based on its studio name).

To be fair, I've seen worse movies. Hell I've seen worse vampire movies, Marvel movies, Jared Leto movies... it's the worst Al Madrigal movie, I guess? Not really a damning indictment, my man usually chooses well! But it's been a while since I've seen a movie that's had all of its reason for being stripped away through what was probably a lengthy production process and what appears to be the result of some post-production tinkering. We've all joked about how long we've been seeing the trailer for this film (it premiered before covid shut the theaters down over two years ago), but that lengthy exposure has only made it more apparent that we were clearly being denied a look at a lot of things that trailer promised. Madrigal and Tyrese seem to have gotten the worst of it, as at least half of their trailer footage isn't in the film (that bit where they are in the woods? Nothing even remotely close to that happens in the film, no mere "they re-edited the scene and lost that line" excuse can be given), and Jared Harris is probably close behind, with one of his big scenes also MIA and with no obvious spot where it could have been placed.

We also get a confusing opening that starts in the present so we can see Leto ASAP, only to then flash back to 25 years ago to meet the younger version of Michael Morbius, a comic movie staple that they for whatever reason didn't have enough faith in to present chronologically (Black Widow did it for an entire reel!). It's as a child that he meets Lucien, who suffers from the same ill-defined disease Michael does (something about blood, naturally, given the vampire-themed premise), and makes a promise to someday find a cure for both of them. Then we cut back to the present day, where Michael has just turned down a Nobel Prize (a seemingly interesting scene that we don't get to see, only hear about without much explanation) and is really close to finding his cure. But Lucien (Matt Smith) is in even worse condition it seems, so time is running out, and Michael uses some bats and blah blah blah, look, he inadvertently becomes a vampire.

I mean, even if you didn't know much about the comic character you could probably figure out what was going to happen (Lucien will take the serum and become a villain that Michael has to stop), but few could guess that the film's final edit would leave so much to our imagination. Lucien is rich, I guess - why? What does he do? How did Michael get the bats from Costa Rica back to New York, since they're said to be incredibly dangerous (he has some sort of wire cage with him when he draws them out of their cave, but we see them flying through it quite easily). How does Tyrese know that Michael likes to make origami, since that's how he connects the doctor with a bunch of corpses he finds on a ship? Why does the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital in 1981 have a better security camera setup than this present day one in New York, since half the movie hinges on someone else doing something Morbius is blamed for, when security footage could prove his innocence?

But my favorite thing is this, which takes a bit of explanation first. As kids, Michael gives Lucien the nickname "Milo", because that was the name of his first roommate at their children's hospital, who has presumably died, and there have been others - the idea being why learn a new name when they're not going to last long, right? So they're all "another Milo" to him. Kind of a heartbreaking but endearing nickname for Michael to use for Lucien, who doesn't die but ends up being his best friend until adulthood. But... Jared Harris calls him Milo too, even when Michael isn't even around (Michael himself goes back and forth). Given that the real Milo is a child/patient of his who died, it's remarkably coldhearted for the doctor to use that nickname as well, on top of just being confusing (it'd be like if your dad referred to your wife/husband by your own pet name for them, "Bunny" or "Lovey dove" or whatever).

It's a small thing, but it perfectly encapsulates the shrugging attitude toward about 90% of this movie, where Smith seems to be the only one willing to fully embrace the silly material. Because ultimately, the only reason this movie exists is for Sony to plant another seed for their long gestating Sinister Six movie, a would-be Avengers level event if they could ever manage to get that far. Now, even a casual Marvel fan could tell you that Morbius was not a known member of that team, but since they have no other heroes to use beyond Spider-Man (who often ropes in his pals to help him battle the team when they strike), they're presumably counting on having a few antiheroes like Morbius (and Venom, likely) to help him out against the likes of Kraven, Carnage, Electro, etc - they have the whole library to choose from, so the sky's the limit.

We can assume Vulture will be part of the group though, since he pops up in what has to be the most confusing/terrible post-credits scene in one of these things since 2014's Amazing Spider-Man 2 (a movie so hated that it forced them to partner with the Disney Marvel stuff and salvage what was left of Spider-Man's box office appeal). We've seen Keaton's character (from one of the MCU Spider-Man films) in the trailer, but of course that scene isn't in the movie. Instead, he only appears in the first post credit scene, beaming in from his own universe into this one (sure, why not) and joking that he hopes the food here is better. OK, whatever - not sure how he quickly establishes he's in an alternate universe within seconds, but fine. Then he returns in full Vulture costume for the second scene (so, Keaton's voice only), meeting up with Morbius somewhere and saying that they should work together. Even if it wasn't confusing (he just beamed into this universe, how does he even know who Morbius is? Any why would he seek out Morbius when the film just spent 100 minutes establishing him as a hero, not a villain - and certainly no one with any sort of issue with Spider-Man?), it's just so goddamn cynical to remind us on our way out the door that none of what we just sighed our way through actually mattered in the long run. It's just so we can presumably be excited to see Leto share the screen with Keaton and Tom Hardy someday.

For those who do not care about the MCU stuff and just wanted a vampire movie, I have good news! You'll be just as annoyed by the movie as the comic fans! Being that it's PG-13 I wasn't expecting much in the way of violence, but it's bizarre/distracting that Morbius is repeatedly seen slashing at throats and such without a drop of blood to be seen, as if they were going out of their way to remind us that we were seeing a neutered version of its events. Even when he fights the villain, we're spared anything that can really show off his powers (his super strength is another trailer highlight that is omitted; he mostly just uses his echolocation and flight), with most of their big showdown consisting of the two of them swirling around swirling debris, with an endlessly swirling camera occasionally slowing down enough to let us know what is actually happening (they appear to hit the ground so hard that they cause a crater into the sewer? I couldn't quite parse it out). There's a pretty good bit with a nurse in a hallway being stalked by "something", but otherwise they spend more time differentiating him from a vampire (sunlight is OK, mirrors work, etc) than letting him be one. So he's barely a vampire, in a movie that goes out of its way to reference the director of Nosferatu, as if honoring a vampire connection they otherwise seem to be trying to subdue.

I truly wasn't expecting to be thinking so much about Halloween 6, as this film is similarly so mangled by reshoots and editing that it leaves character motivations, plot threads, even what should be major turning points for the narrative all left to our imagination. I was hoping that the 1:45 runtime was actually by design, but it seems that if they left it alone it'd probably be yet another comic book movie in 2.5 hr territory. And it probably would be better! But now they've soured most of it for the audience with this cynical "bare essentials" version that often resembles the trailer we have been terrorized by since the Before Times™, racing from one scene to the next so they can get us to the MCU cameos that much quicker. Sony cannot lose the rights to these characters fast enough; say what you will about the Marvel Studios brand, but at least they know how to actually make us want the films in the first place. Here I can't imagine anyone wanting a Morbius 2 unless it's a complete overhaul.

What say you?

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From The Pile: Fangs Of The Living Dead (1969)

AUGUST 25, 2021

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

The title seemed familiar, so I checked twice to make sure I hadn't already seen/reviewed Fangs of the Living Dead (aka Malenka) on the site before I opened the still wrapped disc from the endless "Pile" (now an overfilled box) with the intent of watching it, reviewing it, and - unless it was great - sending it to the *other* box, the one full of discs that are waiting to be traded in on a literal rainy day*. "I don't want to have another Killer Nun situation on my hands," I thought, before starting the film and discovering that it actually starred the Nun herself, Anita Ekberg. I found that pretty amusing.

Most things are more amusing than the film, as it turns out, as it's pretty much a total snooze. It was the first horror film for Amando de Ossorio, who found success a few years later with the Tombs of the Blind Dead films but hadn't quite found his groove yet (some would argue he never did; his name is certainly not one that inspires me to watch his entire filmography), though he's not entirely to blame for the film's lapses. Apparently no one could decide whether to make a fully serious horror movie or a lighthearted one with comedy akin to the recent (and successful) Fearless Vampire Killers, but even if they did settle that before shooting began, de Ossorio is no Polanski, so I don't think that switcheroo was the only reason the movie doesn't really work.

It's also far too chaste compared to what else we had at the time; it's nearly bloodless, the women don't show off a lot of skin (forget about actual nudity), and the ending can't even bring itself to kill off the hero's horny pal - a character who seemingly only exists to be pointy teeth fodder. Nothing wrong with dialing things back and aiming for a more atmospheric and suspenseful take on the subject matter (which is more or less just Dracula), but de Ossorio isn't exactly delivering on those fronts either, so it's just kind of sitting there like a wet fart for large chunks of its runtime. The only time it really comes to life is in the last half hour, when the town's doctor (Carlos Casaravilla) takes a more active role in the proceedings as a sort of Van Helsing type, but one who has looked the other way on the vampire villain's evil deeds.

As for the villains, well... their whole story doesn't make any sense really, as part of the plot reveal (spoiler for 50+ year old movie ahead) is that they're not actually vampires, though the main one's demise is straight up vampire stuff. So were they lying about lying about being vampires? And why wait until the end of the movie to tell us this when nothing much has happened? Do it earlier and then spring something more interesting on us for the finale instead of an endless scene of the guy's body turning into a husk after being staked. To be fair though, there's another ending where that doesn't happen, and it's presented on the disc as a bonus feature, but it's in the original Spanish language so his not-dying monologue is a mystery to my ears. That ending also gives everyone a happy ending, except for perhaps the hero's buddy, who is now a vampire himself (huh?) and sends us off while comically chasing after a frightened woman. Hilarious!

Honestly the highlight of the disc is the commentary by Troy Howarth, who thankfully doesn't think too much of the movie himself and spares us 90 minutes of defending it. Instead he runs through the filmographies and careers of its players as you'd expect, but also gives some interesting historical background on Spain at the time, operating under Generalissimo Francisco Franco (at that time, *not* dead), as this was one of the first horror films produced by the country. He also notes a few interesting tidbits, such as the fact that a character's name of Vladis was NOT a little nod to Vlad the Impaler, as I assumed while watching, as the connection between Vlad and Dracula was not introduced until a few years later. That sort of stuff is why I always listen to the historian tracks even if I don't like the movie; might as well learn something rather than write the whole thing off as a loss.

But hey, sometimes the discs from the pile end up being worth keeping, which doesn't help me in my never-ending attempt to pare the collection down. I have no desire to keep this one, so thanks for kind of sucking, movie! That's a quarter inch of horizontal space I don't have to find on the permanent shelf!

What say you?

*I started taking walks on my lunch break in an attempt to shed a few pandemic pounds, so that eats up the time I have to go across town and give the box to some weird dude at a CD/movie store and come up with some random amount of cash to give me for it. But if it rains? I will stay dry, and RAKE IN THAT TRADE-IN CASH!

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Nosferatu in Venice (1988)

MARCH 14, 2021

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I recently revisited the 1979 Nosferatu at a drive-in screening, which is a weird venue for that particular film (it was paired with Ulli Lommel's even more bizarre The Tenderness of Wolves, so... wacky night!) as even after a year of it being my only moviegoing option, I still think of the drive-in as something suited for B-movies, not something one might deem "artsy". If I had known of its existence at the time, I might have wondered why they weren't showing Nosferatu in Venice (aka Vampire in Venice), the Italian produced "sequel" that brings back Klaus Kinski as the title character and absolutely nothing else.

In fact it doesn't even really bring back the same Kinski incarnation, as the notoriously difficult actor refused to deal with the makeup again. So apart from an occasional fang shot, we don't really get "Nosferatu" but simply Klaus Kinski wandering around Venice, doing things like kicking at the fences separating him from angry dogs, taking silent gondola rides just as dawn breaks, and having graphic sex. On occasion he shows off his superpowers, including a great bit where a guy shotguns him and we see through the massive hole (which then closes up), or tricking people into thinking he is someone else (or that they are him), but despite his top billing there are large chunks without him (he only appears I think once in the first half hour). Even if he had donned the makeup, I can understand that a fan would feel pretty ripped off by his limited appearance.

The actual lead of the film is Christopher Plummer (given the "and" credit!) as Catalano, a sort of Van Helsing standin (Plummer would play an actual Van Helsing in Dracula 2000, so this is like a trial run) who has tracked Nosferatu to Venice and seeks to destroy him once and for all. But, best I can tell from his scattered scenes, Nosferatu himself wants to be dead, having tired of immortality. At least that's how I interpreted it, as even by '80s Italian horror standards the movie doesn't make a lot of sense, something that was probably never the case but certainly made worse by the fact that they never finished shooting all of it (it was also shot a few years before finally being released). A documentary about Kinski called Creation is Violent is included on the disc, and it explains a lot about the movie's issues.

In fact the documentary (which is feature length) should be required viewing for anyone who watches the film, as it not only helps explain why it's so "off" but also adds some illuminating context to a few scenes. One key bit of hilarious trivia is that the production team decided to film lots of footage at the local Carnival, which took place months before Kinski was scheduled to arrive. So they used a double in the traditional Nosferatu makeup and created some exciting scenes with all that free production value, but when Kinski decided he would not be donning the makeup again, they had to toss almost all of it out, as it wouldn't match. But they didn't let it all go to waste, so occasionally they just cut to people celebrating in between scenes, even though the majority of the movie takes place in those same streets that are otherwise empty.

Here we also learn that a lot of that random footage of Kinski just sort of aimlessly wandering around Venice was directed by the actor himself, who kept complaining about the revolving directors on the shoot (there were, I believe, five when all was said and done). To get him to shut up for a bit, the producer gave him a camera and an operator and told him to go shoot whatever he liked. Apparently he shot around two hours of footage, of which Kinski handpicked around twenty minutes that could be used and the film ultimately included about 90 seconds or so of it. This caused a drain on the budget since all that film had to be processed and such; you get the idea Kinski would have thrived in a digital filmmaking world, but alas (?) he died in 1991.

So when you take all that information in and watch the movie again, realizing it's not by some unexplained design, it ends up in the "better than you'd expect" category. With Kinski's behavior and the constant change of directors (and again, a shoot that was never actually completed), it's surprising that the movie is even watchable, but it manages to overcome most of its messiness and become kind of mesmerizing in its own way, not unlike the original. Even without the makeup, the film ends up sharing a number of qualities with Herzog's take, and so what if it's accidental? Plummer's intro, for example, lasts several minutes as he rides as a gondola through the canals up to where he's staying (a church run by Donald Pleasence, who is largely kind of subdued here), and the music - by Vangelis! - droning on feels very much like a sequence from the earlier film, even if it was just a necessary bit of padding to make up for missing footage elsewhere.

But it's also got some of that 80s Italian wackiness you'd probably want, including a few ridiculous impalement deaths and out of nowhere things like belly dancers. I also nearly cried from laughing when Plummer just suddenly exits the movie before the climax, and no I don't mean he gets killed off. The character simply decides to leave, so the final showdown with Nosferatu comes down to a few random dudes whose grand plan is to shoot him with holy water bullets and then run away if/when it didn't work. They don't even cut back to Plummer arriving home or something; he just leaves and never looks back with 20 minutes of the movie left to go. It's kind of divine.

The Kinski doc (and a few deleted scenes from it, both of which focus on this film) is the only extra on Severin's disc, but that's not really surprising. And again, it's an essential doc if you're a fan of this film or even Kinski in general, as it mainly centers on his final years (including his sudden death at a time where he had apparently found peace) and features priceless anecdotes from some of his former collaborators (most of whom seem to have forgiven whatever insults/attacks he dished on them, but not all) as well as some interview footage where he's just rambling. I would suggest perhaps reading up on him if you're completely unaware of his transgressions, as they can be pretty ugly, but if you're already aware of what kind of person he was I think you'll find the doc highly engaging, not to mention a solid companion piece to the feature.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Brides of Dracula

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

GENRE: HAMMER, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Slowly but surely, Scream Factory has been building up their Hammer library, inching me closer to a dream of having the complete Dracula and Frankenstein sets in something resembling consistency on my shelf (an actual boxed set seems to be a pipe dream). And since my very out of order journey began with The Brides of Dracula, all the way back in 2007, it makes me particularly happy to see this one added to the lot. My enjoyment of the film inspired me to keep watching the others, often on DVD (one was actually VHS!), and it's been a long time since those viewings, making these remastered blu-rays an ideal way to see them again for what might as well be the first time.

That said I specifically remembered one bit in this one: Peter Cushing's Van Helsing (the lone returning character from Horror of Dracula, though another HoD actor plays a different bit part here) using the shadow of a windmill's blades as a makeshift cross to vanquish his vampiric foe. No, I'm not sure if that would actually work, but I'm always a fan of people making crosses out of other things in a pinch, and you can't get much better than Cushing going through the action hero theatrics of pulling it off in what's already been a slightly more action-driven entry than average. Having rewatched a lot of the Universal horror films over the past couple months, it made me appreciate how much more exciting the Hammer counterparts often were; I still enjoy the Uni ones of course, but if my son ever asked to watch "classic" horror, I think he'd lose interest in those pretty fast, but he might be able to stay focused on something like this.

I suspect the additional action here was a way to make up for the absence of Christopher Lee, as the movie has several antagonists in his place. There are the titular Brides, of course, though neither of them are married to Dracula as far as I can tell (the big guy is only mentioned once or twice in passing throughout the film), as well as a human woman, Greta (Freda Jackson) who is a sort of Renfield to the film's main "Dracula", Baron Meinster (David Peel) as well as his Baroness mother. All of these people are mostly introduced via Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur), who is en route to teach at a Transylvanian school when her coach abandons her in one of those towns that only exist in period horror movies, where everyone eats at the same inn and seems to be perfectly aware that there's a vampire/monster/whatever in town but don't feel particularly compelled to do anything about it.

Anyway, Marianne ends up staying at the Baron's manor, where she discovers Meinster chained up and frees him, unaware that his confinement (imposed by his mother) is for the protection of women like her. She runs off after learning the truth and passes out in the woods, only to be rescued by Van Helsing, who was summoned to the town due to one of the Baron's previous misdeeds. Van Helsing's reappearance is bizarrely without any fanfare; they make you wait over a half an hour for him to return in this "sequel" and when they finally do he just kind of shows up as if he was already there all along. Over the next hour he takes care of all the vampire problems that have sprung up, while Marianne inexplicably decides to marry the Baron (it is quickly but unsatisfactorily explained that she can't remember anything that happened in the first half hour), so you get the seduction stuff as well as the standard Van Helsing staking action - it's a pretty great mix.

Fitting for one of the better Hammer films, the blu-ray is packed and will take you several hours to get through it all. There's a full hour long episode of The Men Who Made Hammer devoted to director Terence Fisher, who helmed this and at least half of the other Hammer titles that probably come to mind when you think of the brand. It covers some biographical material but is mostly devoted to his biggest Hammer entries, as host Richard Klemensen illustrates why Fisher's work, often labeled as "work for hire" stuff, actually does have some consistent themes, as well as noting how much work he would put into the films despite their sometimes underwhelming scripts. That sentiment bleeds into a shorter episode about DP Jack Asher, who was also the type to give 110% and eventually fell out of favor due to being a bit too slow for their liking (despite the results speaking for themselves). Then there's also a piece on composter Malcolm Williamson, and a featurette on Oakley Court, which was used as the Baron's exterior here and has been featured in any number of other genre films (including Rocky Horror Picture Show!) and still stands today, as the hosts tour the grounds as the editor cuts in footage from where this or that part of the building was featured in different films.

And as always there's a historian commentary, this one from Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr. They goof on the "amnesia" subplot a bit more than necessary, but also go into why the script is sometimes a bit sloppy - it had to be rewritten twice, once just to get Cushing to be in it at all (he hated the first draft he was approached with) and also to account for Lee's absence, as they did try to get him to make a brief appearance which would have explained his connection to the Baron. They also refer to the bits that were originally written for this film and then resurrected for the (unrelated) Kiss of the Vampire, which Scream put out just a couple months back - the two would make a nice double feature, especially if you take in their respective commentaries as well. There's also an older making of retrospective piece featuring Monlaur and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, among others, that was on a 2013 release in the UK and (I assume) now presented on a Region 1/A disc for the first time.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I truly hope these releases are successful enough for them to keep tracking down the others, because they're much more exciting to me than updating modern things like Idle Hands or Willard (i.e. movies that already had special edition releases when they came out). I doubt they'll ever get their hands on the Universal classics (just the B-movies that they collect for these sets, which I enjoy), leaving Hammer era material to account for the bulk of their "old" catalog and keep their portfolio a little more diverse. The Warner Archive discs that are available for a few of the entries in this series (Dracula AD 1972, for example) are bare-bones, and deserve better, but if these titles aren't big money makers for Scream I don't see them bothering to try to wrestle the license away from Warner or whoever else owns this or that entry. Here's hoping there will be more in 2021 and beyond!

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