Tag Archives: vampire movies

Fright Club

Best Draculas Countdown

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There is a new Dracula movie, which begs the question: Do we need a new Dracula movie?

No. There’s nothing new to say, and with so many worthy options already available, why buy new? With that in mind, we have pulled together a list of our favorite cinematic Draculas. (Note, we cheated here and there. Sue us.)

10. Frank Langella

In 1979, Frank Langella recreated the Stoker anti-hero as a virile romantic lead and the ladies swooned. Langella is a consummate actor who brings a wry charm to the screen.

9. Jack Palance

Breathy and weird – as always – Jack Palance makes the vampire into a strange beast in a film that’s campy and ridiculous but worth watching.

8. Udo Kier

Speaking of weird! The effortlessly bizarre and uniquely compelling Udo Kier is the anemic and pathetic monster at the heart of Andy Warhol’s Dracula – a gorgeous piece of vampire trash if every there was such a film.

7. William Marshall

Officially, no, he is not Dracula. He is Blacula – respect him! Fear him! Dig him!! There are few Seventies blaxploitation films that can hold a candle to this one, mostly because of Marshall’s rich baritone and compelling presence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXrL_Hm50eU

6. Klaus Kinski

In 1979, Werner Herzog revisited F. W. Murnau’s masterpiece Nosferatu – a film that was originally meant to be a Dracula film, but copyright forbade it. Herzog fixed that, with a mesmerizing Kinski as the bloodthirsty count Hypnotic and creepy, Kinski nails it.

5. Gary Oldman

What I love about most of the vampires on this list is that the actors zero in on the inherent weirdness in the role. Oldman channels the Count’s smolder, but that granny version early on is the one we remember.

4. Willem Dafoe

OK, so this is a bit of a stretch. In Shadow of the Vampire, Dafoe plays Max Schreck, the actor who played Count Orlock in Murnau’s Nosferatu. But Orlock was supposed to be Dracula, and the point is, Dafoe is amazing – hilarious, creepy and terrifying all at once. He is easily one of the best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAn5uLNMmjk

3. Bela Lugosi

Sure, #3 may seem low for the actor most linked to the role. He’s the icon, we give him that, and even if there are others we find scarier or more interesting, Bela will always be image of Dracula.

2. Christopher Lee

But Christopher Lee – the six foot five inch baritone – is so much more menacing. This was the Dracula to fear. This was the one we believed could turn into a wolf and tear your throat out, the one that had the strength of ten men, the one who could woo the ladies. Christopher Lee was the one.

1. Max Schreck

Hopefully we’ve made the case by now that Murnau’s Nosferatu counts, and our favorite Count is Orlock because Max Schreck is one sick genius. So sick that an entire brilliant film was created to due him honor. He’s the creepiest, most memorable, all time best Dracula, even if he is a vampire by another name.

Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 9

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Let the Right One In (2008)/Let Me In (2010)

In 2008, Sweden’s Let the Right One In emerged as an original, stylish thriller – and the best vampire flicks in years. A spooky coming of age tale populated by outcasts in the bleakest environment, the film breaks hearts and bleeds victims in equal measure. Kare Hedebrant‘s Oskar, with his blond Prince Valiant haircut, falls innocently for the odd new girl (an outstanding Linda Leandersson) in his shabby apartment complex. Reluctantly, she returns his admiration, and a sweet and bloody romance buds.

Hollywood’s 2010 version carries the less confusing title Let Me In, and fans of the original that fear the worst can rest easy. Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) managed to retain the spirit of the source material, while finding ways to leave his own mark on the compelling story of an unlikely friendship.

Twelve year old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a lonely boy who’s being bullied at school. When young Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her “dad” (Richard Jenkins) move in next door, Owen thinks he’s found a friend. As sudden acts of violence mar the snowy landscape, Owen and Abby grow closer, providing each other a comfort no one else can.

While the original had an ominous sense of dread, a feel of bleak isolation, and a brazen androgyny that the update can’t touch, Let Me In scores points all its own.

Moretz (Kick-Ass) and Smit-McPhee (The Road) are both terrific, and give the film a touching, vulnerable soul. Reeves, also adapting the screenplay, ups the ante on the gore, and provides more action, scares and overall shock value. Incredibly, he even manages to build on the climactic “revenge” scene that was damn-near flawless the first time.

Together the films set the standard for child vampire fare, and neither one should be missed.

New In Theaters, Slider

Not Worth Telling

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Dracula Untold

by Hope Madden

Who’s eager for another Dracula movie? Because that is not the single most worn out, overused, tired storyline in cinematic history. But wait – what if there was something you didn’t yet know about Dracula? Something untold?

If you’re thinking not even then, well Dracula Untold goes to show just how wise you are.

What amounts to the love child of Bram Stoker and George R. R. Martin, Dracula Untold takes a decidedly Game of Thrones angle to share the old bloodsucker’s origins story. Full of epic battles, impaling, damsels in distress, and even two Thrones actors (Art Parkinson and a woefully underused Charles Dance), it’s a medieval bloodbath and unfortunate snoozefest.

An oh-so-earnest Luke Evans (The Hobbit) trades in Middle Earth for the Middle Ages as Vlad, once The Impaler, now the peace-seeking prince of Transylvania. He had a crisis of conscience after all that impaling with the Turkish army and now just wants to live peaceably with his lovely wife and son. But the Turks are having none of it, and without a real army of his own, he turns to an evil force to help him protect his kingdom and his family.

Evans makes for a fine dreamy, noble, tragic vampire if you’re into that kind of thing, and if that’s your bag you might enjoy the first 60 minutes or so of this film. But then – by the time the rest of us are fidgeting in our seats, having abandoned all hope for a film with real bite – first time director Gary Shore throws some creepy, gory bits at you.

It’s not enough to make the film tolerable for horror fans, but probably too much for the romance lovers.

For anyone interested in a lucid film, first time screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless leave you with more questions than answers as they bend, introduce and retool vampire lore to suit them. Look past the moony love story and there’s a whole lot of silliness underneath.

Worse still are the dialog profundities. At one point, the Turks employ some Jedi shit, blindfolding the entire army because, “You can’t fear what you can’t see.”

What kind of counter intuitive nonsense is that? Plus, imagine how idiotic it looks to march an entirely blindfolded army up the side of a mountain. Ridiculous.

I know Game of Thrones Season 5 is a long way off, but Dracula Untold won’t satisfy your jones.

 

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

Fright Club

Fright Club: The Reflecting Skin

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The Reflecting Skin (1990)

It isn’t often when documenting horror cinema that you have the need to mention an art director, but for The Reflecting Skin, the work of Rick Roberts deserves a note. His gorgeous, bucolic Idaho is perfectly crafted, with golden wheat and decrepit wooden outbuildings representing both the wholesomeness and decay that will meld in this tale.

Writer/director Philip Ridley has a fascinating imagination, and his film captures your attention from its opening moments. A cherubic tot walks gleefully through wheat fields toward his two adorable little buddies, carrying a frog nearly as big as he is. “Look at this wonderful frog!” he calls out to them.

What happens next is grotesque and amazing – the casual but exuberant cruelty of children. It’s the perfect introduction to this world of macabre happenings as seen through the eyes of a little boy.

Seth Dove lives with his emotionally abusive mother and his soft but distant father, who run a gas station in rural Idaho sometime after WWII. Seth’s older brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) is off serving in Japan. Seth has decided that the neighborhood widow Dolphin Blue (a wonderfully freaky Lindsay Duncan) is a vampire.

Positively horrible things begin to happen, each of them clouded by the dangerous innocence of our point of view character.

The film plays a bit like a David Lynch effort, but with more honesty. Rather than the hallucinatory dreaminess Lynch injects into films like Blue Velvet (the most similar), this film is ruled by the ferociously logical illogic of childhood. With this point of view, the realities of a war blend effortlessly with the possibility of vampires. Through little Seth Dove’s eyes, everything that happens is predictably mysterious, as the world is to an 8-year-old. His mind immediately accepts every new happening as a mystery to unravel, and the jibberish adults speak only confirm that assumption.

This film is a beautiful, horrifying, fascinating adventure unlike most anything else available. A kind of thematic cross between Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Terry Gilliam’s Tideland (nice company!), The Reflecting Skin manages to feel more honest, and therefore more deeply frightening, than either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGHoknFI2I

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One Scary Movie Every Day in October! Day 29: Let Me In

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Let the Right One In (2008)/Let Me In (2010)

In 2008, Sweden’s Let the Right One In emerged as an original, stylish thriller – and the best vampire flicks in years. A spooky coming of age tale populated by outcasts in the bleakest environment, the film breaks hearts and bleeds victims in equal measure. Kare Hedebrant‘s Oskar, with his blond Prince Valiant haircut, falls innocently for the odd new girl (an outstanding Linda Leandersson) in his shabby apartment complex. Reluctantly, she returns his admiration, and a sweet and bloody romance buds.

Hollywood’s 2010 version carries the less confusing title Let Me In, and fans of the original that fear the worst can rest easy. Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) managed to retain the spirit of the source material, while finding ways to leave his own mark on the compelling story of an unlikely friendship.

Twelve year old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a lonely boy who’s being bullied at school. When young Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her “dad” (Richard Jenkins) move in next door, Owen thinks he’s found a friend. As sudden acts of violence mar the snowy landscape, Owen and Abby grow closer, providing each other a comfort no one else can.

While the original had an ominous sense of dread, a feel of bleak isolation, and a brazen androgyny that the update can’t touch, Let Me In scores points all its own.

Moretz (Kick-Ass) and Smit-McPhee (The Road) are both terrific, and give the film a touching, vulnerable soul. Reeves, also adapting the screenplay, ups the ante on the gore, and provides more action, scares and overall shock value. Incredibly, he even manages to build on the climactic “revenge” scene that was damn-near flawless the first time.

Together the films set the standard for child vampire fare, and neither one should be missed.