Fright Night 2

A most unusual sequel.

Generally speaking, we expect sequels to carry on the story line from the preceding movie, or at least the general tone or spirit. While Fright Night 2 is ostensibly a sequel to 2011’s remake, it really is as much of a remake as the last one was. The characters of Charlie, Amy, Peter Vincent, and Evil Ed return (despite Evil Ed’s demise) without any knowledge of vampires or the events of the first film, and Jerry the vampire is now Gerri the vampire, and female.  Curious. As near as I can remember, it doesn’t have anything to do with Fright Night Part 2, the original sequel to the original film.

Charlie (Will Payne), Evil Ed (Chris Waller), and Amy (Sacha Parkinson) are American university students (all played by British actors, of course) whose class has gone to Romania for a course, field trip or something else. Not exactly sure on that one. Their professor is the sexy Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray), and Charlie spies her one night from a window dining on a young woman. Gerri is a vampire! He tries to convince Amy and Evil of this, but they haven’t seen the previous Fright Nights, so they are hard to convince. Eventually Evil comes around, and suggests they consult Peter Vincent (Sean Power), the famous host of a ghost-hunting reality TV show, who just happens to be in Bucharest. Vincent scoffs at them and tells them vampires aren’t real.
The plot plays out pretty much in the same fashion as the original and remake of Fright Night. The major change is Gerri is Countess Elisabeth Bathory, and that Amy turns out to be a virgin born at midnight during a blood moon, whose blood can either turn a vampire human or allow them to walk in the daylight. Gerri wants Amy, Charlie wants to save Amy, things work out for Evil Ed as well as you’d expect, etc., etc.

The movie is barely passable for a straight-to-dvd feature. The movie lacks the humor which helped elevate the first two versions of the movie, and suffers for it. The actors are competent but bland with the exception of Jaime Murray, who really, um, bites into her role. This one is for hardcore vampire movie fans and those who can’t bear to miss a sequel, even if the sequel to a remake is really a remake itself.
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Subspecies

Way back in the late 80s/early 90s, when there was money to be made in the direct-to-video market, Full Moon Features was the biggest name in the B-movie market, at least for horror fans. They had several lengthy series, the best known of which is the still-going Puppet Master films. In 1991, they ventured into vampire movies, with Subspecies, which spawned three direct sequels and one kinda sorta sequel.

In rural Romania, vampires are still thick on the ground (The characters in the movie mention there being many vampires, although we only see three. The recession is hitting every profession.). The local vampire king is one Vladislav (Angus Scrimm from Phantasm in a cameo scene). He has a generally pro-human policy, and has left the local populace alone. He has two sons, Radu (Anders Hove) who is more the typical bad-guy vampire, as evidenced by his amazing finger extensions, and his wimpier son Stefan (Michael Watson). Vladislav is in possession of the Bloodstone, an acorn-shaped jewel from which drips the blood of saints. All the vampires crave the Bloodstone because…well, I didn’t really catch that part. Maybe the blood of saints has a chipotle flavor? I thought the blood of saints kept vampires from needing to drink human blood, but this is contradicted by the movie.

Careful where you scratch.

Anyway, Radu decides to kill his father for the Bloodstone, but is thwarted when his dad hits a switch that releases an overhead cage exactly where Radu is standing. What luck. Vladislav’s victory is temporary, however, as Radu breaks off his own fingers (!) and they turn into tiny demon-looking creatures. I swear I was not on any medication, legal or otherwise, when I was watching this. Seeing this, Vladislav obligingly runs to the other side of the room so the homunculi can get to the switch to re-raise the cage, instead of, you know, stepping on them. Radu is released, Vladislav is skewered.

(Incidentally, the little creatures are apparently the subspecies of the title. I assumed it referred to vampires, but no, it’s a group of four-inch high toadies.)

Coincidentally, there is the arrival in town of four graduate students to study local folklore. They are played by three attractive young ladies, hired more for their willingness to forego a no-nudity clause in their contracts than their acting ability. Well, two-thirds of them, anyway. They could not behave less like graduate students if they tried. It’s sort of Valley Girls in Eastern Europe. Stefan shows up, falls in love with one of the girls, and they fight to end Radu’s (short) reign of terror. Radu is disposed of, although if you remember where I mentioned sequels, you know this doesn’t take.

Subspecies is a victim in many places of the film’s microbudget, but it is a good bit of fun. Director Ted Nicolaou does a good job of setting the mood, and was strongly influenced by Murnau’s Nostferatu, most obviously with Radu’s long fingers, and the creepy way the shadows of those hands look thrown against walls and across of the faces of sleeping victims-to-be.

Subspecies was the first movie to be filmed in Romania following the fall of Communism. The featurette on the blu-ray disc shows a number of Romanians being asked if they believe in vampires. All say they do not, and think it a frivolous question, no doubt partly because they had just gotten out from under the thumb of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a dictator so beloved that when he fell from power he was given a two hour trial and an immediate three minute execution. One of the interviewees stated that Dracula was a myth made up by a “stupid American.” I don’t think Bram Stoker was stupid, and I know he was an Irishman.
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Vampire Ad

Original source unknown.

Priest

While I am pretty much up for any horror/supernatural/sci-fi movie that comes down the pike (as a casual perusal of this blog will attest), my beautiful wife is a little more discriminating. She likes some movies you wouldn’t guess in a million years (John Carpenter’s The Thing) but nothing will tempt her to watch most horror flicks (anything where someone has a knife or other sharp object). So, when something in the genre catches her interest, I make sure we see it. Which brings us to Priest.

Based on a Japanese graphic novel, Priest is set in an alternate reality where humans have been at war with vampires for centuries. The vampires here are more creature-like than human, although they do keep a few human familiars, who seem to have some sort of derived power themselves. After all the fighting, the humans, led by a theocratic, rigid Church, got the upper hand by creating an army of warriors called Priests, who are easily distinguishable by a tattoo of a cross that runs from their forehead down the bridge of their nose. The Priests turn the tide, and the few surviving vampires are driven onto reservations. We see one of the last battles of the war as the main character, Priest (Paul Bettany), enters a large hive of vampires, and sees his best friend, Black Hat (Karl Urban), carried away after an ambush. The authors did not seem to waste a lot of time working on names for the characters. Anyway, they win the war, everybody moves to heavily fortified, massively polluted cities, the Church disbands the Priests and limits their power lest they become a threat to their authority, and everyone settles down to a grim lifeless existence.

Priest’s brother, sister-in-law (Priest’s old flame) and niece (or is she?) are working out in the middle of a wasteland, prospecting for something or other when the vampires stage a surprise attack. The adults are killed, and the girl is taken prisoner. The young girl’s boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), who is too old for her, frankly, tells Priest he’s going after her. Although the Church tries to stop this, saying the vampires are no longer a threat, Priest goes anyway, eventually joined by Priestess (Maggie Q). I told you they didn’t waste a lot of time on names, although, disappointingly, Gigandet’s character is named Hicks, not Sidekick. Much fighting ensues, and Priest is shocked to discover who is leading the vampires, although if you hang around with a guy named Black Hat, you shouldn’t be surprised by this.

Was the movie any good? It’s a little hard to say. It’s certainly no Citizen Kane, but anyone who goes to see a vampire/apocalyptic/martial arts movie and expects to see Citizen Kane probably has something wrong with them. I was reasonably entertained, in a watch-the-good-guys-kick-the-bad-guys way. The plot, as you have probably noticed, is more or less the same as the classic western The Searchers, which seems a good source of material to use, but it definitely could have done with more character development. Bettany is a good actor, although he persists in choosing these dour, emotionless roles. I also like Karl Urban a lot, but he is under-utilized to the point of well, pointlessness here.

In closing, if it looks like something you’d enjoy, you probably will, although it won’t change your life. The director and star are the same as for 2009’s Legion, so this may be an ongoing working partnership.
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Blade Spinoff?

Actor Stephen Dorff has informed Total Film he has been in contact with Blade director Stephen Norrington about a possible spinoff with his character from the movie, Deacon Frost. I didn't see that coming. I thought Frost was dead at the end of the movie but then again (a) he was a vampire and (b) it's a movie. I also thought Norrington had retired after his problems working with Sean Connery on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We'll see what happens.
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R.I.P. Jean Rollin

French horror auteur Jean Rollin has died at the age of 72, according to Fangoria. It is common to refer to directors as “one of a kind” upon their passing, but Rollin truly was. In films such as Le viol du vampire (Rape of the Vampire), La vampire nue (The Nude Vampire) and my personal favorite La fiancée de Dracula (Fiancée of Dracula), he created a distinctive blend of surrealism and eroticism that will be difficult to match. I’ve watched Fiancée of Dracula three times, and I still don’t know what it’s about, although I like. To quote one of his films: “The person evaporates, but the memory remains.” R.I.P.

The Lost Boys: The Thirst

I don’t think you could call it a guilty pleasure, because it was fairly popular, but the 1980s vampire movie The Lost Boys has always been a lot of fun for me, despite a number of campy elements that now seem dated. For years, attempts to produce a sequel to the movie came to naught, but twenty years later, the story continued (sort of) in 2008’s direct-to-video The Lost Boys: The Tribe. Sales were good for the film, and the producers went ahead with this year’s The Lost Boys: The Thirst, which is more of a direct sequel.

Over twenty years have passed since the first movie and the Frog Brothers, Alan (Jamison Newlander) and Edgar (Corey Feldman) have been busy in the vampire-killing business. Things have slowed of late, since Alan became infected with the vampire virus during one of their battles. For some reason that isn’t explained in the film, he doesn’t become the sort of vicious murderer as the other vampires. Maybe it was the Frog steely willpower. Anyway, Edgar is on his own, and is hired by the author of a best-selling series of vampire romances to save her brother, who has been kidnapped by vampires.

It seems the original “alpha” vampire has been holding raves in which a drug called thirst is passed around to the revelers. Thirst is actually vampire blood, and “DJ X” plans to build a vampire army. Edgar leads a decidedly rag-tag group, including a reality TV star (!) into the vampire’s den, to save the brother (who looks uncomfortably like Justin Bieber) and kill the alpha vampire, which will presumably cause all the vampires in his bloodline to revert to normal. There is a fairly illogical ending.

It isn’t the first one, obviously. Feldman is asked to more or less carry the whole movie, and while I’ve never thought he was a terrible actor, his character is written to be fairly one-dimensional and mock-grim, and begins to wear on you. Production values, script and direction are decent, and there isn’t anyone in the movie having as difficult a time with their role as Angus Sutherland in the last installment. Whatever is up Feldman allowing one strand of hair to dangle in his face I have no idea, but he seems to do it in real life as well.

This isn’t as good as the original, but it does have its moments. Pop a lot of popcorn and disengage the logic portion of your brain, and you probably will have a good time with it. I liked it better than the first sequel, for what that’s worth.
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The Last Voyage of Demeter

According to Empire Online, Noomi Rapace, whoc became an international sensation for her performance in the title role of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its two sequels, has been cast in the upcoming film The Last Voyage of Demeter. If you recall, the Demeter is the ill-fated ship which transported Dracula to England in Bram Stoker's novel. The book doesn't go into details on the trip, just that it arrives with no one on board alive, and the captain's body lashed to the wheel. The movie will fill in the blanks as to what happened on board the doomed vessel, but it would seem it will struggle with the curse of the sequel: we already know how it ends, thus lessening the suspense. Still, it could be interesting. The movie will be directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky.
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The Fall

[WARNING: The following post of necessity has spoilers about the preceeding book The Strain. If you haven’t read The Strain and still wish to do so, you might want to skip this.]

The middle book of a trilogy is always somewhat problematic. It doesn’t truly have a beginning or an end – the beginning was in the first volume and the end will be in the next one. So, if you read them as they come out, you have to resign yourself at the outset you will get neither the joy of discovery nor the thrill of the conclusion, instead the connective tissue between the two. Despite that, The Fall, the second book in the trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan began by The Strain, manages to be a pretty entertaining bit of fiction.

The book begins only a week after the mysterious plane landed on the tarmac of a New York airport and began the nightmare. New York City is fairly well lost at this point, with only pockets of human resistance, and the rest of the world is following suit. Our core group of protagonists, epidemiologists Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Martinez, Professor Abraham Sertakian and exterminator Vasily Fet, are searching for a way to fight back against the vampiric Holocaust, but hope is growing dim. Their best chance seems to lie in recovering an ancient book that supposedly details how to stop The Master, the leader of the vampires. They have an unlikely ally in The Ancients, a small group of incredibly old vampires who want to see The Master fail for their own reasons.

With the introduction of characters and setup of the conflict out of the way in the first book, The Fall is mostly a book of action sequences. This is not a bad thing. Since we know we won’t reach the end this time, we might as well have some excitement along the way, and del Toro and Hogan are adept at keeping the story moving.

If I have a quarrel with the book, it is the character of Ephraim’s son Zack. As is frequently done in this sort of book, Zack is less a personal than a living plot device. The danger that befalls him serves to distract his father from the main issues, and unfortunately, do the same to us. Not to discount fatherly love, or how danger to a child adds to the suspense, but when the central issue is the survival of the entire human race, Zack’s troubles seem a little inconsequential.

I would recommend the book. The action is fast-paced, the vampires are not only evil but disgusting (in contrast to the pale poets we get these days) and there is enough resolution to make it worthwhile. I’m very much looking forward to the conclusion of the story sometime next year.
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30 Days of Night: Dark Days

[WARNING: This review of necessity reveals spoilers for the first 30 Days of Night, so if you haven’t seen it, want to, and don’t want its secrets revealed prematurely; you might want to give it a miss. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.]

I was pretty pleased with the original 30 Days of Night, which I thought was a fun movie, if you didn’t think too hard, so I was happy to hear a sequel was filmed. I knew there was a long series of comics that continued the original story, so I had hopes this would help. The movie was released direct-to-DVD October 5th.

The end of the first 30 Days of Night left the town of Barrow, Alaska pretty much devastated. 98 dead, including the sheriff, Eben Oleson. Among the survivors was Eben’s widow Stella, who was understandably haunted by the events. What happened was covered up and blamed on the explosion of an oil pipeline, but Stella wrote a book about what really happened and travelled the country lecturing about the fate of Barrow. Her claims are met with skepticism at best, laughter and derision at worst.

In Los Angeles for another lecture, Stella connects with a small team of vampire hunters. They tell her the Queen of the Vampires, Lilith (it is unclear if this is the character from folklore), is in Los Angeles. Lilith was the brains behind the attack on Barrow, and rules the vampires. The fearless (not really) vampire hunters sell Stella on a plan to kill Lilith for revenge, and because without her, the vampires will fall into a disorganized rabble, instead of their usual lightly-organized rabble.

None of the cast of the original return. Melissa George wanted to reprise her role as Stella, but a scheduling conflict forced the part to be re-cast, which is a pity. The cast of the sequel is mostly unknowns, except for the Annoying Guy from Lost. The acting is adequate but unexceptional, although the actress playing Lilith is quite hot, in a cool-to-the-touch walking corpse sort of way. The budget is much less than the first movie, so the effects are slight and average.

The three new guys sell themselves to Stella as experienced vampire killers, but their idea of planning a mission consists of finding where the vampires hang out, then charging blindly in, hoping to get lucky. They don’t, for the most part. Their reaction to the sight of a vampire and/or blood is pretty much hysterics. The other woman in the group in particular seems to get about three steps into a vampire den before cracking up and whining about running away. When she’s not around vampires, she does a lot of bragging about how tough she is. The capabilities of the vampires vary wildly. They are supposed to be stronger and faster than humans, unless a scene calls for them to just stand there and be killed. Some can be killed with a bullet to the head; some are made of slightly sterner stuff. It just strikes me that three of four people with guns shouldn’t be able to attack dozens of vampires and make it out alive.

I won’t go into details since most of you haven’t seen the movie (I presume) but the end features three separate illogical head-scratchers. Maybe the disc should come with a pop-up of the director to explain what the heck just happened.

Despite all these flaws, it wasn’t a completely unenjoyable film. It works as the sort of action movie where you shift your brain into idle and just go with the flow. The biggest shame, I think, is the movie could have been so much more.
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Underworld 4

Here’s some news from Dread Central that’s sure to elicit mixed reactions: filming will begin in March on the fourth installment of the vampires-vs.-werewolves Underworld series, with Kate Beckinsale returning as the vampire “death-dealer” Selene. This has been a love it or hate it series of films, so I’m sure there will be as many groans as cheers. I’ve enjoyed the first three, so I’m looking forward to it, although I hope they don’t bother with the already tired 3-D fad.
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Let The Right One In (Movie)

I told you there’d be more on this…

It’s been a while since I read John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Let The Right One In. I enjoyed it, but I’ve had the DVD sitting on the shelf for a year without watching it. Why the delay? I don’t like to watch a movie too soon after I’ve read the book on which it’s based. My feeling is reading a book tends to be an immersive experience, and if it’s any good, the mental images formed during the reading tend to overpower the more passively perceived ones from a motion picture. This, I think, is one of the reasons people tend to hate movies made from their favorite books. During the gap, two of my friends whose opinions I respect watched the movie. One hated it, one loved it. This made me fairly curious as to how I would see it.

I won’t rehash the plot elements it has in common with the book, since I’ve already done that in my original post, but I’ll mention a few things that are different. Most of the subplots are dropped, which is typical, since a filmed novel would be far too long to show as a movie, but there are two truly significant differences between the book and its adaptation. First of all, the character of Håkan is all but lost. In the book, he is a pedophile, in love with and devoted to the eternally 12-year-old vampire. That’s a pretty heavy theme, and the director of the film didn’t think he could devote enough time to it to do it justice. He’s probably right, but it reduces Håkan to a cipher. We don’t know who he is or why he stays with Eli, and more importantly, why he is willing to kill for her. Secondly, there is something of a shift away from the supernatural aspect of the story towards more of a romance between the immortal Eli and the bullied Oskar. Not that the supernatural is absent from the film, or that the romantic angle wasn’t present in the novel, but there is a definite tonal shift. This doesn’t necessarily make the movie worse, just…different.

The movie is beautifully photographed, although with a cold austerity rather than warm, bright colors. The snow is so prevalent as to almost be a character in the film. I thought the movie was as faithful an adaptation of the book as it could be, since there was no way to get everything in. In the end, I was more in tune with the friend who loved the movie, although I didn’t like it quite as much as he did. There are times the languid pacing of the film almost drowns it, but overall, it was a fine movie.

One explanation for why I didn’t rave over the movie as much as some may be found here. Apparently, when the U.S. distributor re-worked the subtitles for the DVD release, they lost much of the nuance and black humor of the movie. The site referenced offers some good examples, and a history of the controversy.

There is an American remake on the way (Let Me In, this time) which promises further deviations from the original material. Contrary to most that seem to feel the sky is falling on them when a movie they like is remade, I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes. Bad or good, it won’t change the movie I still have on the shelf.
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Transylmania

So, last night I’m looking for something to watch, knowing I will be having (very minor) surgery this afternoon. Although it’s simple, the procedure involves a scalpel jabbed next to my eye, so I’m looking for something light on the gore. Definitely no movies where something horrible happens to someone during surgery. I decide to go light with a comedy, completely ignoring the fact that comedies and I have a tortured relationship at best, and pick the horror spoof Transylmania. I should have picked Awake instead. Sure, it’s about the horrors of being awake during surgery, but at least I would have had Jessica Alba to look at.

The plot such as it is, involves American college students going to Romania to…do something. One of them is the dead ringer for the local head vampire, who is trying to resurrect his long lost love. Hijinks ensue. For some reason, the plot reminded me of an episode of Gilligan’s Island. There are flatulence jokes, vomiting jokes, etc., none of which are particularly funny. The movie is surprisingly light on sex jokes for what it is, and for what it’s worth.

The movie was made by some of the people behind the National Lampoon movies, but not any of the good ones. According to background info, it was filmed in 2007, but didn’t escape until 2009, when it went direct to dvd. The only cast member I recognized was Musetta Vander, who played the bug woman who tried to eat Zander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was better off as a bug.

Pass.
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Lost Boys: the Tribe

There was talk of doing a sequel to The Lost Boys even while making the original movie. The director, Joel Schumacher, went to great pains to give Kiefer Sutherland a “death” that would allow him to return (the antlers missed his heart, although why he became so still afterward is a mystery) in a sequel. When a sequel with Sutherland’s character didn’t pan out, talk turned to a distaff sequel, The Lost Girls, but that never came to pass either. It would take 21 years for the second Lost Boys film to appear.

In 2008, filming was completed on Lost Boys: The Tribe. Even if Kiefer Sutherland was available, he wouldn’t have worked in the role. Vampires don’t age, but actors do, and while Sutherland remains in good shape, he no longer has the boyish look of 1988. To replicate the feel of the original, Kiefer’s much younger half-brother Angus was cast as the new leader of the vampires. Sadly, this is where the movie goes off the rails. Angus lacks Kiefer’s charisma, which allowed him to play a vampire who could either become your friend or rip your throat out.

The movie starts with a vignette showing an older vampire (makeup great Tom Savini, always a welcome sight) confronting a group of younger vampires, with unfortunate results. This establishes the “tribal” theme of the picture, and the idea of vampires forming opposing tribes is an interesting one, but there is no follow through on this idea.

Meanwhile, Chris and Nicole Emmerson, the children of Jason Patrick and Jami Gertz from the first movie (you have to pay attention to get this) arrive in California. Chris was a champion surfer, but has been banned after an incident, apparently involving knee-capping another surfer. Hey, all the vampires are surfers, too! They even include the surfer Chris maimed! Welcome to Coincidenceville, California. Soon Chris and Nicole are recruited to join the vampires, Corey Feldman shows up as Edgar Frog from the first movie, and the head vampire has to die to save Chris and Nicole. Sound familiar?

Other than Angus Sutherland’s sub-par performance, the biggest thing dragging the movie down is an over-reliance on replicating the first movie, a common problem with sequels. The first movie had a nutty grandpa, this one has a nutty aunt. The motorcycle chase scene is repeated, this time including skateboards. It isn’t a terrible movie, but I would say its appeal would be to hard-core fans of the first one.

If you would like to see the late Corey Haim’s final appearance, be sure to watch the credits. Another sequel, Lost Boys: The Thirst, is due on video later this year.


Note: I just realized I don’t have the original Lost Boys on this site. I’ll have to rectify that.
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A Pointless Remake, But Hey...

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marti Noxon, formerly a writer/producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, has been hired to write the script for an upcoming remake of the 1985 horror comedy Fright Night. I'm not one of those who had an aneurysm every time a movie is remade, but this does seem a little pointless, since there is nothing really wrong with the original. The article implies the main purpose will be to "modernize the effects" but I don't remember that many effects in the original, anyway. I wish them luck (whether you like it or not, when a horror movie is successful, it makes it that much easier to get another horror film made) but, as with the recent remake of The Stepfather, you would do just as well to rent the original.
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The V Word

A lot of people were critical of the two year run of Showtime’s series Masters of Horror, but for the most part, I enjoyed it. Like all anthology series, the lack of a permanent cast or writing stable leads to a lot of inconsistency, and some of the one hour episodes were amazingly bad. But overall I would give the series a pass. I purchased the complete run in individual releases, since the producers of the series guaranteed it would never be released as season sets. Those sets look nice, too.

Ultimately, a horror anthology series, no matter how original it wants to be perceived, takes a shot at that most popular of dark creatures, the vampire, and for Masters of Horror, that shot came in the middle of the second series with the episode The V Word, written by series creator Mick Garris and directed by Ernest Dickerson. I assume the title is a play on the Showtime lesbian drama The L Word.

Kerry (Arjay Smith) and Justin (Brandon Nadon) are two high school friends, more of the rabid gamer type than belonging to the cool crowd. They decide to seek excitement by sneaking into a funeral home at night to see the body of one of their dead classmates. If you are a horror movie watcher, you know what a terrible idea this is. Once they make it into the mortuary, they find they are not alone, although strictly speaking they are the only living things in the building. Apparently of former teacher of theirs, Mr. Chaney (Michael Ironside), fired for inappropriate relations with students is there in a state of un-death. This not only poses terminal consequences for Arjay and Justin, but it brings danger to their families, as well.

The first half of the show is the two boys sneaking into the funeral home, and it is the best part. As they creep through the darkened building (“Wasn’t that coffin lid closed the first time?”) it is very spooky. Once the vampire is revealed, it becomes less frightening, more run-of –the-mill. Still the overall grade for the episode is positive. The cast is very good, particularly Arjay Smith, and Michael Ironside seems to be having a great time with the role. For some reason, I love the scene where he is walking under the moonlight holding open a tattered umbrella.* Some people may gripe the episode never explains how Mr. Chaney became a vampire (One of the boys asks him “What happened, did you bite on the wrong dick?” “Something like that” he replies.) but we know the basics, and the origin story would have just slowed things down.

There’s a fair amount of gore. These vampires don’t have fangs, so they have to tear out the throats of their victims to feed. Despite its flaws, if you are looking to watch a horror story and only have an hour to spare, you could do a lot worse than The V Word.

* I know I’ve said this before, but if vampires burst into flame at the touch of sunlight (unless they are sparkly girly vampires), how can they bear moonlight? It is reflected sunlight, after all. At least, they should get some nasty blisters.
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True Blood

Despite my affection for all things creepy and spooky, I didn’t really expect much from the HBO series True Blood. It is based on the paranormal romance series by Charlaine Harris, and the romantic part of the paranormal just isn’t for me. A few years ago, someone I know who was into that sort of thing suggested I give them a try, since they weren’t like the rest of the genre. So I started Dead Before Dark, the first book I the series, but quit about 50 pages in. No reflection on the books or Ms. Harris’ ability, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Still, I decided to check out the show when the first season was released on DVD, in part because the producer was Alan Ball, who had written the script for American Beauty and produced the HBO series Six Feet Under.

The series is set in Bon Temps, Louisiana, in an alternate universe where vampires (and other manner of supernatural creatures) exist. Vampires have just come out into the open with the invention of Tru Blood, a synthetic blood substitute which allows them to forego the usual murder-for-survival. Some of the vampires are trying to assimilate into human life, which is met with resistance by many breathing humans. The obvious over-riding metaphor for the series is the gay rights movement, although no one has marketed a de-gaying soft drink yet.

The town of Bon Temps has a friendly neighborhood bar and grill called Merlotte’s, where a young waitress named Sookie Stackhouse works. Sookie is special in her own right, as she can read minds, something she finds to be more of a curse than an asset. Her life changes when a customer comes in whose mind is inaccessible to her – a vampire named Bill (Stephen Moyer). They embark on a romance that causes friction in both vampire and human communities, and get involved in the overarching story line for the season, uncovering a serial killer stalking Bon Temps. There is a major sub-plot involving the fact that a vampire’s blood acts as a drug on humans, leading to addiction problems and a reverse predator situation where some humans drain vampires for profit.

Other notable character include Merlotte’s owner Sam (Sam Trammell), who has secrets of his own, Tara (Rutina Wesley), Sookie’s best friend, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), Sookie’s moronic brother who careens from one catastrophe to another, and the charismatic Eric (Alexander Skarsgård, son of the great Skellan Skarsgård), who serves as the vampire “sheriff” for the region.

[Some Spoilers Follow]

The series didn’t start off well for me. The first episode or two seemed predictable and dull. Bill and Sookie fell for each other too fast, and since it was necessary for the plot for Sookie to save Bill, he is subdued far too easily by a human man and woman. The opening pre-credits sequence featured a brief scene in which the character you think is a vampire turns out not to be, while the character least likely is, which is trite and is pretty much the same as the opening of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series.

But a few episodes in, things started to work. The characters acquired more than expected depth, with Sookie, rather than being a typical super-hero type, being very human, showing signs of jealousy, anger and petulance which made her seem much more real to me. Bill was not quite the typical mopey vampire sworn never to do harm to a human being, but rather a creature whose first thought when someone he cares about is threatened is to chow down. The series was also willing to have bad things happen to the characters, including killing some off when needed, injecting an element of danger. Pretty soon, I was hooked.

The story line for the season is brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and the whole thing is told with much humor. By the time we reached the end of the final episode of the first season, I was looking forward to the next one. So, if you have been thinking about giving True Blood a try but were afraid it would be too cute, go ahead. You might be surprised.

A trivial note: Stephen Moyer, who plays the main vampire in this series, was also a (rarely-seen) vampire on the great British TV series Ultraviolet.
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London Under Midnight

VAMPIRE SHARKZ
☺ THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU ☺

This is the mysterious graffiti that is appearing all over town in Simon Clark’s (Vampyrrhic, Vampyrrhic Rites, Blood Crazy, This Rage of Echoes) book London Under Midnight (a play on the title of the classic Lon Chaney movie, I suppose). Ben Ashton is a magazine writer assigned to uncover who is doing the graffiti and why. He gets more than he bargains for as he discovers London is undergoing a plague of vampires, who reach the city underwater from a small island in the Thames. The assignment turns personal for Ben when his unrequited love, April Connor, is attacked by a vampire and disappears.

In Vampyrrhic and Vampyrrhic Rites, Clark gave the vampire story a new twist by incorporating elements of Norse mythology. Here he tries to do the same using the Nigerian trickster god Edshu as the driving force behind the vampires. Edshu, as is explained in endless exposition by an old Nigerian man named Elmo, is doing this to test the city, or someone in it.

I’ve been a fan of Simon Clark for a long time, as you can tell if you read my earlier posts about his books, but this one just didn’t work for me. Although it is a short novel, just over 200 pages, it drags in places, as there are long sequences of conversation or characters thinking about things that don’t really have anything to do with the main story.

There are also plot points that go nowhere, as for example the point that is mentioned over and over that these vampires have sticky hair. You expect that to have something important to do with the story, but it doesn’t, and is never really explained. Most of the characters are also unlikeable. Some things strain credulity, like the fact that hundreds of vampires are making berserker attacks in London each night, but no one but our heroes seems very concerned. I guess London is so deserted, these things pass without notice. I would have expected martial law to be declared.

[SPOILER] The biggest problem is the ending, which is beyond silly. Apparently, all the lead has to do is imagine the problem being resolved and it happens, with all the vampires dissolving, except for the ones he cares about, who are cured. So for vampires, all you need is positive thinking. [END SPOILER]

If you haven’t read Simon Clark, I urge you to do so. He truly is one of the best horror writers working today. But, please, don’t start with London Under Midnight.

That Lesbian Vampire Thing

As predicted, the post I had earlier about Lesbian Vampire Killers caused an uptick in hits for the site - about a 20% increase in traffic. Thanks to all vampires flying the rainbow flag for that. The confusing thing is according to google analytics, none of the increase is due to that particular page, or people googling any variation of "lesbian". Strange. Anyway, I've got two more movies from the seemingly limitless lesbian vampire subgenre on tap, so we'll see what happens.
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Vampire Circus

A formative part of my horror movie watching experience was growing up with movies from England’s Hammer Studios playing on the late show. Watching Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and others do their stuff in dark castles and creepy laboratories helped make me what I am today. Unfortunately, due to the statute of limitations, I am unable to sue them over it. Hammer’s blend of blood (a bright red so striking it came to be known as “Hammer Red”), monsters and generally good English acting struck a strongly favorable note with the horror film watch. Oh, yes, you can throw “breasts” into the mix, as by the early 1970s, Hammer pictures featured quite a series of topless actresses, which I, uh, may have noticed. The general opinion is the sex was amped up due to a decline in favor of Hammer’s historical Gothic films in favor of more realistic modern films such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

Though Hammer has been gone for over thirty years (there are periodic rumors of a revival, but it hasn’t happened yet), my love for their films has not diminished with time. Despite this, there are a few movies that are difficult to come by, and that I have only seen for the first time recently. One such film is Vampire Circus, a movie I had looked for since seeing stills from it in the equally missed Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Vampire Circus is set in Hammer’s stock MittelEuropa, a location in the indeterminate past where everyone speaks English with a British accent, but everyone uses German titles and names. In a typical small village, the local count is preying on the children of the village, but he isn’t your run of the mill pedophile. Rather, Count Mitterhaus is a vampire, feeding off the children while carrying on a very human affair with the wife of the local school teacher. Eventually, he goes a Child Too Far, and the mostly cowardly townsfolk rise up and stake him.

Fifteen years later, the town is quarantined due to a plague, when a traveling circus rolls into town. The circus itself is pretty lame, but this is before television was invented, so the diseased villagers turn out to watch the show. Bad idea. It seems the main attraction, a guy who can turn back and forth into a panther, and two acrobats are also vampires. In fact, the main guy is the cousin of the late Count Mitterhaus, and has come to get revenge on the townsfolk and to raise his kinsman from the dead, which seems pretty easy to do if said dead person is a vampire.

Finally, the townspeople get hip to the fiendish plan and battle the undead carnies and the risen count. There is one of the more obvious identity twists in the history of film. Oh, and the plague subplot is quickly resolved when the doctor returns from the big city to tell them don’t worry, it’s just an unknown, extra-powerful form of rabies. That would worry me big time, but hell, they only had 84 minutes for the story, they had to wrap things up.

So how does Vampire Circus compare with Hammer’s better known efforts? Not that well, I’m afraid. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s missing many of the touches that elevated others from the studio. The art direction and visual style, usually a Hammer strong point, is dull and generic here. Most of the cast is quite competent, but the movie misses the star quality of Lee or Cushing. The most recognizable faces/names in the cast are David Prowse as the strongman, who was the guy inside Darth Vader’s suit, and Robin Sachs as one of the acrobats, who is best known for playing lovable villain Ethan Rayne on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t mean to come down too hard on Robert Tayman, who played Count Mitterhaus, but when he was in vamp mode, he looked more ridiculous than menacing:

See what I mean?

At the end of the day, the blood is still bright red and the bosoms are still heaving (don’t bosoms always heave?). This is a decent enough flick, but it is a far cry from Hammer’s best.
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