Halloween Endurance Test: the Strangers (2008)

The Strangers totally destroyed me the first time I watched it. I had heard about it on one of those “Top Ten Horror Movies” television shows VH-1 constantly plays in October. They said it was spooky ‘cuz the titular “Strangers” barely talk. No motive behind their attack is ever discovered. Enough to be scary on its own, but that’s not what destroyed me.

The movie starts with Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) returning to the Hoyt family’s summer home after a wedding. He had proposed, and she refused. Making for one tense cottage stay. This killed me because a month before viewing it, my own 2+ year relationship had dissipated out of nowhere.

The opening still makes me a little uncomfortable. At least until they start having break-up sex. Lucky Hollywood fucks…

Or unlucky Hollywood fucks, as their coitus is interrupted when a blond girl (Gemma Ward) knocks on their door. She’s at the wrong house, but she’s also hesitant to believe them when they tell her that it isn’t the house she’s looking for.

After the midnight caller, James decides it would be a good time to go on a Chee-to run or something. He leaves in the only car. ‘Cuz it’s not like anything weird was going on that he might want to protect his ex from, or anything like that. I know what you’re thinking, and no, James is never implicated in being behind the attacks. Just so we get that out of the way.

Naturally after James leaves the girl returns; wearing a giant doll mask. Before she reappears, however, we see just how defenseless Kristen’s position is. While the house has two solid, wood front doors, the back doors are sliding glass. Which probably aided in creeping me out, ‘cuz the house I grew up in had doors like that out back too. They’d be super easy to just smash.

(Not that I ever had anything to worry about growing up. We didn’t live out in the middle of nowhere, oh wait, well, we lived in a town situated in the middle of nowhere. We had neighbors, and streetlights, and stuff. The only thing I had to worry about was the abusive drug dealer down the street.)

Of course, our assailants don’t actually want to come in. They tease her, following Kristen as she tries to hide around the house, knocking on the windows whenever she starts to feel safe. And also driving home the obvious point: you’re not safe if your hiding behind glass.

Scott returns, experiences the shenanigans himself, and finds his father’s shotgun. After an axe attack destroys the front door, Scott and Kristen decide holing up in the closet for the night is their best option.

Leading to one of the most shocking scenes. Scott’s in the closet, holding a shotgun with a twitchy trigger finger, when his friend, Mike (Glenn Howerton) arrives to pick him up. (Scott had called him earlier during the break-up sequence.) You can see the axe-wielding, mask wearing male Stranger (Kip Weeks) stalking behind Mike but just as Mike crosses the open closet and gets blasted to pieces. Making our “heroes” feel even more helpless.

This whole film is based off the old, over-the-shoulder scare. The one last seen in the grocery store scene in My Bloody Valentine. Where you can see the assailant behind our protagonist’s back, yet when they finally turn around the baddie is gone. It’s worked beautifully here, keeping the viewer as off-guard as the characters on-screen.

Director Bryan Bertino also relied solely on steady cams to do all the filming; getting the feel of this film uneasy. Every shot has some sort of camera movement; not necessarily engineered to make you nervous, but enough to keep you unstable.

You also have to appreciate all the different noises the Strangers get out of the Hoyt house. They’re constantly running things along the outside walls; creating a uneasy din for everyone involved. Serving as a nice break from the Strangers otherwise incommunicado stance.

(Though it is fun to imagine all three Strangers standing out in the woods calling each other via walkie-talkie to coordinate their attacks. It’s never shown, but how else could they pull it off? Alas, we’re not privy to any of these moments. Though Kristen does catch one sneaking a squat on the Hoyt family couch.)

For a film so indebted to silence for its scares, it’s fitting that when it ends, nothing is explained.

Kristen: “Why are you doing this to us?”

Dollface Stranger: “Because you were home.”

Halloween Endurance Test: A Bucket of Blood (1959)

A Bucket of Blood looks like it was a cheapie for Roger Corman. Short (65 minutes tops), two sets, with very little in the way of “action.” Of course, as we learned with his brilliant Creature from the Haunted Sea, Corman works best when the odds are against him. (As “against him” as it can be with a plot drawing heavily for inspiration from the original House of Wax. Making one wonder, if such a tale as this can be pulled from the source material, then why does the remake exist?) Here Corman has four very important words with which to protect his investment: A Bucket of Blood.

With an evocative title like that, this film could’ve been about anything, as long as it had a, you know, bucket in it. But Corman went ahead and set the tale in a bohemian coffee shop circa the 60s; a setting that’s just as much fun to sit and mock now as it was then. Luckily for you, dear reader, I’ve been to a few arty coffee places in my day (read: hipster bars), and the people there still talk the same way. Amazingly, the artists who’s names are dropped don’t even change, they’re just added to!

"It's Alice the Awful; come to spread cheer and cholera!"

It’s in such a bar that we meet Walter (Dick Miller), a loser waiter surrounded by pseudo-intellectuals. They’re all artistes, he’s a poor working-class slob, and neither they, or his boss, wants the two groups mixing. Spurred on by their derision, Walter attempts to become a sculptor. Except he doesn’t have a sculpting bone in his body.

Watching Walter try to sculpt in the beginning of this film might be worth the price of admission alone. Walter, alone with a huge slab of clay, desperately trying to bring it into a recognizable shape is priceless. Walter can’t hack it. What he can do, however, is hacking into things.

Walter’s salvation comes in the form of neighborhood cat, Frankie. Frankie gets trapped in the tenement’s walls, and Walter, attempting to cut a hole for Frankie to escape out of, accidentally stabs the cat. Rather than own up to his accident, Walter uses it as the base for his “sculpture.” (Classy, Walter doesn’t even take the knife out of poor Frankie before encasing him in clay.)

And thus Walter’s foot is in the door with the cool kids. And, as you’ve probably already imagined, there’s not much left with the story. Dick Miller does a great job acting as a innocent caught between two tough choices: own up to his lie, or continue killing. Even with a 60 minute run-time, a story needs more than that.

So we get a narc subplot; after all, the story is set at the start of the 60s. The first thing we learn is that narcs were as obvious back then as they are today at punk rock shows. Lou (Bert Convy) is the narc, and Lou trails Walter home after Naolia (Jhean Burton) gives him a bag full of heroine as a reward for becoming an artist.

"It's hideous. It's eloquent. It expresses man in all his self-pity."

The lovable loser, Walter naturally has no idea what the “horse” Lou keeps talking about is, let alone why he’s being arrested. So, after an argument, Walter hits Lou in the head with a frying pan. Enter sculpture number two: “Murdered Man.”

As Lou’s boss investigates what has happened to his missing agent, Walter’s jealous boss, Leonard (Antony Carbone), uncovers Walter’s secret. Leonard doesn’t call him out, because the prices of the sculptures (of which he’s taking a cut) are too great. Adding great depth to these characters. Walter is almost innocent, merely acting out against forces he can’t control. While Leonard is both tempted by the profits, but also aware of their price.

Leonard tries to convince Walter to go freeform, but Walter’s recent success has corrupted him. He willing takes Alice (Judy Bamber) up on an offer to model for him, just so he has a body for his next sculpture: “Nude in the Chair.”

Unfortunately, Carla (Barboura Morris), Walter’s final piece in the making, refuses to play along. Leading to a way too long chase scene running around a construction site. Walter wants Carla, the boys from the coffee shop want Walter, and you’ll want the great jazz soundtrack to keep playing!

Walter starts hearing the voices of his victims in his head (a beautiful touch of foreshadowing is this bit from Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart, as Corman would go on to great success filming Edgar Allan just a year later), as all the angles become skewed. He may make low budget cheapies, but Corman knows his cinematography.

The film ends the only way it can, as the moral has been implicit throughout its entirety, with Walter making his final piece: “Hanging Man.”

Halloween Endurance Test: Planet Terror (2007)

Any director who casts his own son (Rebel Rodrigeuz) as a suicide, and his nieces (Electra Avellan and Elise Avellan) as “the crazy babysitting twins” is a bad-ass. Robert Rodriguez and his Planet Terror sort of just rolls over everything in from of it. The original trailer he made (Machete) to precede his film in the Grindhouse package was so good he had to make it into a film! Planet Terror’s soundtrack is so good; a brilliant mix of From Dust ’til Dawn meets John Carpenter circa 1980 tunes that you’ll end up having to buy it too. Did I mention the knives specially made for castration? An unadvertised cameo by Bruce Willis? Star Rose McGowen singing a lounge cover of the Dead Kennedys “Too Drunk to Fuck?” There’s enough to talk about here to last all month…

This is what the Day of the Dead remake should’ve bee. Less (reserve) army soldiers running around a hospital and more depressed strippers go-go dancers slumming in Bar BQ pits. The go-go dancer in question is Cherry Darling (Rose McGowen), a girl on a quest to turn her life around when a military experiment goes awry (as they always do), and the whole world changes.

Rodriguez knows these exploitation films too well, and uses special effect hero Greg Nicotero superbly. They know blood is passe; failing to freak anyone out. Boils and lesions, however, are disgusting. So you use the boils to sell the squirting blood.

Also, you kill off Fergie real quick!

Also, you cast ex-special effect hero/current Sex Machine Tom Savini in your film. If anyone knows zombies, Tom does. He literally wrote the book on them with his effects in Dawn of the Dead! (He would’ve worked on Night of the Living Dead, but was drafted instead.) Tom rocks a pistol-powered uppercut here, just to remind everyone of who he is, and what he can do.

Newly found tension is mined when Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) tries to operate her car with two over-anesthetized arms amid the zombie outbreak. Nicely supplanting the tired and old “car won’t start/Oops, I dropped the keys” horror convention.

Planer Terror succeeds where all the other grindhouse and modern faux-grindhouse films fails because it jams as many piss-poor exploitation plots in and just runs them all together. The El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) “returning maligned avenger” plot. The “evil doctor(s) (Josh Brolin and the aforementioned Marley Shelton)” plot. The “feuding brothers (Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn)” plot.

Strangely, Rodriguez completely misses the chance to shoehorn some Italian-style “eye”-ploitation into the film.

But he redeems himself by having Cherry Darling upgrade her amputated limb with a machine gun.

Now all these plots would usually stretched-out to cover just one. individual film. But here the overarching “military virus” plot is used to cover all of them. All these sub-plots converging together to take on the aforementioned Lt. Muldoon.

Lt. Muldoon is a disgruntled soldier who killed bin Laden and was given a deadly, infectious disease by our government for a reward. So Muldoon decideds tp infect a Texas town in order to pressure the military into fast-tracking a cure before Texas gets big(ger), bulbous-boy Akira-style.

No doubt due to the walk-on nature of his role, Willis reportedly was not supposed to be in the film, Muldoon dies quickly. He bubbles up, takes a couple of rounds, presumably explodes. Leaving an army base of zombies to be taken care of our rag-tag team of heros.

Where we learn, for the first time in history, machine guns are effective against zombies! Leaving us with a total (original) Day of the Dead ending, with our heros trapped, backs against the coast, in Mexico; waiting for civilization to return.

Halloween Endurance Test: Class of 1999 (1990)

Italian variant poster showing off the Grier-bot.

Mix one part Escape From New York, with one part the Substitute, and sprinkle a little bit of the Terminator on top, and you’ll get today’s movie, Class of 1999. I’ve been searching for a copy of this movie since I started these Endurance Tests back in 2007. I finally gave in, and bought an overpriced Korean bootleg this year to satisfy my craving. Growing up, I had watched it religiously in junior high; effectively mis-molding my entire perception of how high school’s supposed to work.

My high school wasn’t run by gangs. Unless you consider the football team a gang, and that’s the reality in any school, anywhere. In the film, youth gangs have become so violent and powerful that they exist in “free fire zones.” Class of 1999 follows an ex-gang banger, Cody (Bradley Gregg), as he’s released from prison and he tries to reintegrate into society. His school, Seattle’s Kennedy High, is naturally in the middle of a “free fire zone.”

To combat these kids, Kennedy High has “hired” three robotic teachers from scientist Dr. Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell): a Ms. Connors (Pam Grier), Mr. Hardin (John P. Ryan), and Mr. Bryles (Patrick Kilpatrick). Each are humanoid robots specially programmed in one area: science, history, and physical education respectively. They’re also all programmed in gross, over-the-top, physical discipline. Mr. Hardin literally spanks two fighting students into submission! Spanks them!

(It’s never explained why anyone would robotize Pam Grier. She was the world’s most dangerous woman before having her bones replaced with iron and her brain filled with (more) karate moves!)

Cody’s trying to stay clean and stay out of trouble, so he does the sensible thing: befriends the principal’s daughter, Christie (Traci Lind) and picks a fight with the local gang leader. Cody notices the new teachers’ overzealous discipline and decides to investigate. In a nice touch, the teachers’ condo is filled with nothing but pressurized air and WD-40. Christie finds it weird that a woman, Ms. Connors, would only have one lace bra, and no matching panties. Personally, I find it weird that three teachers rooming in one small condo would have zero beds.

Realizing that their covers been blown, the teachers do the natural thing next: incite a gang war between the two local gangs. Giving us images that many would’ve thought we’d never see. A teacher in a three-piece suit sneaking around a junkyard firing automatic weapons at school children.

The gangs eventually realize what’s happening, so they trash the school. Bringing back visions of the motorcycle destruction in Class of Nuke ’em High. At school we learn that the teachers are all packing heat. Ms. Connors has a flame thrower under her arm, Mr. Bryles has a rocket launcher, and Mr. Hardin, oh Mr. Hardin.

The contract money must’ve run out by the time Mr. Hardin’s battledroid was designed, because all he gets is a three-prong iron claw with a drill in the middle. Pretty lame when your friends are packing flamer throwers and rocket launchers up their sleeves.

The robots fall to their gangland opponents, though, as Dr. Langford had already pointed out, his government manufacturing contract was just about set. So one could count the days before a sequel was shipped out the door. I really can’t imagine anyone who wasn’t 10 in 1990 remembering, or even hearing about, this film.

Grade-A, trashy, low-budget, dystopian fun; though the endings kind of a mess. Are the gangs truly reconciled? And even if they are, the rest of the nation’s still a violent wasteland. It’s kind of hard to know who to cheer for when everyone’s evil. The robots are, of course, and the same with the gang members. But what about the School Board that hired the battledroids-turned teachers? Aren’t they partially responsible for of of the bloodshed too?

Halloween Endurance Test: Young Frankenstein (1974)

Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein might be the ultimate Frankenstein film. Taking all the bits and pieces of the Universal oeuvre and bringing them together in a family-friendly mix. Sort of like what Universal tried to do with the House of Frankenstein film, only with Brooks succeeding this time, instead of failing.

Just watch the opening “FronkenSTEEN” scene again. Universal once made an entire film, Son of Frankenstein, to delve into a man’s desire to escape his family’s history. It’s also a great way to quickly dispose of all the exposition needed to set up the plot.

Everything is here. House of Frankenstein’s cheap Dracula skeleton is replaced here with a cheaper looking Baron Beaufort Von Frankenstein corpse. The Count’s famous abode (clearly the Todd Browning version) recreated and reused as Frankenstein’s family home. The credits even claim that the good Doctor’s lab equipment was from the original. (Sadly providing the film with a connection to the decidedly less fun Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.)

Young Frankenstein also makes a strong case for using comedians in all horror films. Gene Wilder’s over-the-fop acting gives Frankenstein the manic energy you’d expect from a mad scientist. Igor (Marty Feldman), and pronounced “Eye-gore” thank you) steals every scene he’s in.

Continuing in his grandfather’s line of work, henchman-ism, Igor brings a modern touch to his work. He’s well aware of his worth, and not afraid to deflate his employer’s delusions of grandeur. A great quality to add to a character who’s job is to aid a man with the (life-giving) power of God.

Wilder admits in DVD’s convenient documentary that it was Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein that served as his films main inspirations. Noting, however, that both Son of Frankenstein and even Ghost of Frankenstein added some spice. Which is just as well considering there’s probably only two or three interesting scenes between those two.

The documentary also notes that cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld played a large role in the film’s success. A factoid that’s obvious to anyone watching it. What’s not obvious, however, is how close Hirschfeld was to losing his job during production. The darks is darker on-screen, and the contrast is greater all because Hirschfeld was ordered to satirize even the original’s production.

All this morphing into a send-up that completely surpasses the original(s). Young Frankenstein is the horror genre’s version of This is Spinal Tap. Both reveling in the absurdity’s of each’s respective genre.

Halloween Endurance Test: Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Over the years, we’ve seen our little Leprechaun grow up right before our eyes. From launching Jennifer Aniston’s career (famously her last wish in the film was to be starring in a long-running, wildly popular, and insanely boring sit-com), to driving a Death Race 2000 car, to growing to normal boy-size (and then some!). Who would’ve imagined, after nearly conquering space, the Leprechaun would make his boldest move: taking on Ice-T.

This is a grudge match to end all grudge matches. Forget King Kong Vs Godzilla; no one can tell who won. Forget Freddy Vs Jason; Jason won, decapitating Freddy, he just couldn’t extinguish the life out of Krueger’s lifeless, sort of child-molesting eyes. Hell, we already know Ice-T’s going to win; before even watching it.

[Editor’s note: Okay, I was wrong here. Ice-T does die, but damn, how hard the Leprechaun has to try to get him there. He ends up taking two slugs that would’ve been fatal to any mere mortal, before having his stomach blown out by the Leprechaun’s magic.]

Why would I think Ice-T’s such a bad-ass? Well, Ice-T’s a gangster rapper who plays a cop on TV. Taking this role _after_ every law enforcement agency in the country had their sights on him for writing a song called “Cop Killer.” A song Ice-T performed with his metal band, Body Count. A rapper, vilified by the police, playing a cop when he’s not writing heavy metal tunes? And the Leprechaun’s got what? Some gold coins and wonky magic?

This movie was practically over before it started.

Taking an obtuse, yet inspirational cue from Leprechaun 4: In Space, Leprechaun in the Hood openly admits to its lack on continuity. The opening montage stating that the “solution” to the world’s Leprechaun problem is “unknown.” It then immediately contradicts itself by taking its following visual cues from Leprechaun 3.

Yes, Leprechaun 3’s protective gold medallion is back, though this time it doesn’t so much protect the wearer as much as it turns the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) into a statue. They throw a magical gold flute in there for good measure too; mainly because the mythos wasn’t rambling enough.

Mack Daddy (Ice-T) gets the flute, while the Leprechaun gets trapped again. Fast forward 30 years, and Mack is a big time music producer when he meets Postmaster P (Anthony Montgomery), Stray Bullet (Rashaan Nall), and Butch (Red Grant). Postmaster’s “P” stands for “positivity,” though their Native Tongues vibe doesn’t last long.

Mack Daddy tells them to toughen up their image or get lost, they plan revenge, and accidentally shoot Mack during their botched burglary of his place. During which Butch frees the Leprechaun, who immediately gets blown to pieces by their firearms.

Immediately making this one of the more interesting Leprechaun films. As the prologue admitted, there’s never been a clear consensus on how to defeat the Leprechaun. And while guns don’t kill him here either, they dismember him just fine. It’s interesting to see that the Leprechaun’s impervious to death, but not to damage.

The film then follows the boys fleeing from both Mack Daddy and the Leprechaun; holding onto the Leprechaun’s wish-granting gold flute. (Clearly the flute is made from leftovers of the magic gold coins the Leprechaun had in Vegas.) In their travels the boys meet Ms. Foutaine (Lobo Sebastian), the Leprechaun’s first cross-dressing victim, and Reverend Hamson (Ivory Ocean).

The Leprechaun’s gold coins aren’t the only piece of franchise history resurrected. Wrought iron is still capable of containing the Leprechaun; for reasons unknown to everyone except the scriptwriters. His weakness to four-leaf clovers is also brought back, this time creatively, with our boys loading the Leprechaun’s joints with them.

New to the Leprechaun’s arsenal are zombie fly girls! Though they really don’t do much except distract our male characters with their evil, green glowing eyes. Which is a shame, as Jay Lee would base his Zombie Strippers! off this idea.

I don’t think this film gets enough credit for being as solid as it is. Transgressive as hell; as already mentioned, there’s one minor cross-dressing character, and one scene where the major players also have to don women’s clothing. One going so far as almost giving the Leprechaun a hand-job!

Those are pretty risque plot pieces for a movie that’s just supposed to be a cheapie cashing in on hip-hop culture. Unlike, say, Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horrors which really is just a cheap exploitation film making some easy cash off of its hip-hop connection. Easily one of the more adventurous installments in the series.

—WANT MORE LEPRECHAUN?—

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood

Leprechaun 4: In Space

Leprechaun 3

Leprechaun 2

Leprechaun

Halloween Endurance Test: House of Wax (2005)

Why does a film that calls itself House of Wax, which would, one assumes, be a remake of the 1956, Vincent Price version, then borrow liberally from 2,000 Maniacs’ plot? I mean, some of the changes made here are for the better. Such as when they shoe-horned in a giant charnel pit of shit and animal corpses for no reason other than having a monstrous pool of fetid, fecal matter. In my book blog this is a major cinematic event! One that easily makes this movie worth at least one view.

Upon further review, this film seems to cannibalize every horror film the script writing team could think of. The crazy, bloodied hitchhiker suspiciously absent from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake? He’s here, working the roadkill shift and still creeping everybody out.

Okay, the one character, Wade (Jared Padalecki), openly admits to being interested in houses of wax. Now while I would love to go to one, I’m certainly not looking them up on the internet for them. So I”m going to make a wild guess and assume that people who’re still enthusiastic about wax museums in this day and age aren’t college football fans. I just can’t imagine the two crowds having too much in common.

Well, this alleged fan finds what must be the greatest house of wax in the history of wax houses. As the figures here aren’t just wax, but everything. From the floor, to the walls, to the ceiling. Wade and girlfriend Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) also find a playable piano, but there’s no mention about whether it too is wax. A nice homage to Mr. Price is that the crazy wax artist character’s name is “Vincent.”

Can someone someday please make a horror movie where there’s no scene involving a car inconveniently stalling? Just a film where everything works right, as most things normally do. I don’t even like my phone, and I’ve yet to lose it to an unreachable spot under my car seat.

Also, the scene where Wade is being made into a wax figure takes way too many cues from Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Beginning’s epic mask making scene. It’s sad that in both cases neither the new Leatherface or crazy wax artist Vincent have any sort of personality in these revamps.

Genre cliches aside, you really can’t fault the film for being this ambitious. The scene where the recently “waxed” Wade is found by his friend, Dalton (Jon Abrahams), is extremely effective. Riffing off of the original House of Wax’s “ah-ha!” scene where the characters find corpses inside the wax figures, here Dalton finds his friend mummified, but still breathing. Every time a sliver of wax is torn off Wade’s face, a piece of skin goes off with it. Giving Dalton a choice: either save his friend, and, in the process, reduce him to a grotesque mess, or leave him to suffocate.

A hard decision for any friend, luckily the machete-welding Vincent (Brian Van Holt) offers his help, by cleaving Wade’s jaw in half.

The wax town also allows the filmmakers the chance to create more elaborate scenes. The original House of Wax’s stabbed in a bathrobe piece? Pales in comparison to the remake’s movie theater full of wax mannequins. While Vincent’s murderous brother Bo searches the theater for Carly and her brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray), the audience is also scouring the theater, looking for a waxed-up extra to blink!

Such versatility does not forgive the film’s biggest flaw; the overall length. At just under two hours, the film is a good half-hour too long. When the film should be wrapping up, it’s stuck slaying off incidental characters.

Paige (Paris Hilton) and Blake (Robert Ri’chard) add absolutely nothing to the story. Not even sleaze value, as both just talk about having sex. Blake does provide Nick and Carly with a getaway vehicle, though, cutting Paige and Blake out of the picture would make Wade’s four seater more than adequate. Much like the film’s title, which was bought largely for name recognition, Hilton is also used solely for her star power.

Modern circular financing, where a star’s signing onto a “name” project then gives the filmmakers enough clout to pull in enough funding to actually buy the name of the property that started the cycle.

Halloween Endurance Test: Blood for Dracula (1974)

Leave it to Andy Warhol. Just a mere week ago, I was complaining to a friend about how Entrails of a Virgin mixed up the all-important sex/violence ratio. With too much sex, and not enough gore. Yet here I am watching Paul Morrisey’s farcical Blood for Dracula, and enjoying every minute of it.

Udo Kier plays the sickly and wheelchair-bound Count; who’s desperately seeking a virgin bride who’s blood will cure him. As the Dracula family name is too well known in Romania, the Count travels to Italy and meets the Di Fiore family. He meets Marchese Di Fiore (Vittorio De Sica), himself a struggling aristocrat, with four eligible daughters: Esmeralda (Milena Vukotic), Saphiria (Dominique Darel), Rubinia (Stefania Casini), and Perla (Silvia Dionisio). The Marchese hopes to marry one of them off to the Count, and reverse his family’s failing fortunes.

(Nerd Alert!: one interesting trip tidbit is as the Count travels, his coffin is strapped to his car’s roof. When questioned, he explains that it contains the body of his dead uncle; a la the famous “Dead Grandmother” urban legend.)

Unfortunately for the Count, Di Fiore’s daughters aren’t as innocent as they seem. They a.) have no interest in wedding the foreigner, and b.) aren’t virgins at all. Both conditions owing to the Marchese’s handyman, Mario Balato (Joe Dallesandro). Warhol superstar and Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers cover model, Dallesandro is the scene-stealer; with his New York accent serving as a stark contrast to the rest of the cast’s halting European-tinged English. He preaches class warfare when he’s not bedding the ladies; forever wondering what separates him from the aristocratic Count.

Mario is the natural foil for the Count, as his Communist leanings already make him suspicious of Dracula. This creates a masterful parallel that runs throughout the film. When Mario beds one of the ladies, they come to life; arguing with him and otherwise asserting their strength. When Dracula feeds off them, however, they end up as the Count is, sickly and ill.

These feedings also bear Warhol’s unmistakeable stamp. When he’s feeding, a red light is shone on Dracula’s head; creating a crafty, cheap, and yet still evocative effect. Immediately after feeding upon one of the “experienced” daughters, the light changes to green, and is followed by the Count comically vomiting up torrents of blood.

This constant poisoning with non-virgin blood makes the Count sicker, as well as peaking Mario’s interest. Thus creating the smallest chase scene ever enacted on camera. With the Count hurriedly trying to find which of the Marchese’s daughters is still a virgin, while Mario tries to sleep with all the girls to protect them.

This might be the only film in history where someone gets raped to be saved. Certainly the only film where Dracula is caught slurping hymen blood off the floor. Never mind that the protagonist (Mario) is regarded by all the other characters as the villain.

Leading to the greatest slaying in horror-dom. Before Dracula gets staked, he’s dismembered piece-by-piece, by the axe-welding Mario. A la Monty Python’s Black Knight, the Count stays defiant every step of the way, hissing and baring his fangs after he loses both arms.

Completely great and over the top, the same as the rest of the film.

Halloween Endurance Test: Twitches (2005)

I don’t want to say Disney’s not prepared to make horror movies, but Twitches is a mess. First there was the trailer on the Halloweentown DVDs. A variation on the old “Who’s on First” routine, the trailer had stars Tia and Tamera Mowry talking about how they are twin witches. Hence “Twitches.” Get it? ‘Cuz if you didn’t, they were set to repeat 90 more times. “Twitches; twin witches!”

When I finally broke down and bought a copy, within five minutes of starting the movie, characters were hopping around dimensions. And running from evil clouds. The Sister, Sister twins play Apolla/Camryn (Tamera) and Artemis/Alex (Tia) here; twins born on Halloween-one aligned with the sun, the other the moon. They each have a separate power that’s sort of related: Apolla is a gifted artist, and Artemis a writer.

To escape the aforementioned ominous-looking storm clouds that have invaded their home diminution of Coventry (okay, you have to love that name!), helpers split Apolla and Artemis apart; launching them into another dimension. Where, 21 years later, they’re reunited and quickly realize they’re related. And witches.

Artemis: “I’m driving in a Porsche with my twin sister. Magic truly seems to be the logical explanation.”

That, my friends, is how they figure out how they’re connected. 20 minutes earlier and they were both only children. Immediately after meeting, they’re certain they were separated at birth. 20 minutes after that, and they’ve pieced together their Coventry history from all the short stories Artemis writes when she wakes up. Apparently her dreams are actually the dimension’s history replaying in her head.

(Amazingly, 20 minutes after that, and Apolla tells her adoptive mother about her twin sister and other-dimensionality. Her adoptive mom naturally accepts this; without a hint of hesitation or “I’m gonna make my daughter take a piss test”-type sentiment.)

The epic "What.Ever.Loser" signing showdown.

This reliance on dreams to explain away the present makes one wonder, if one girl can relive the past perfectly, while the other can only draw pictures from the impressions she’s received, wouldn’t there be some jealousy involved? I mean, one sister obviously got screwed in the “powers” department. Here’s a pencil drawing of the alternative dimension that my sister is going to tell you everything about. Surely you don’t need me anymore, but then would we still be twins? Twins with magical powers?

Discussing their memories of childhood, the sisters discover that their biological father is dead, but their mother is missing. A rift develops when Artemis wants to track down their mother, who they find out is being hunted by “the darkness,” and Apolla who just wants to go back to her adoptive parents.

This is the scariest "bad guy" in the film.

Okay, I understand this is a Disney movie, and as such isn’t going to be on a Entrails of a Virgin-level of debauchery. But no conflict at all? The only instance of “conflict” here is the sisters’ disagreement over whether they should find their birth mother. The “evil” cloud of “darkness” is feared just ‘cuz it is, not because of anything it’s done.

I don’t know whether I should be shocked and impressed, or shocked and dismayed. Making a film with absolutely no antagonists is quite a risky move. Were they banking on everyone being scared of losing their own mothers?

The climatic showdown is anything but. The dark clouds circle overhead as the sisters hold hands and chant slogans about love. Which causes balls of energy to fly up, eventually dispersing the cloud. The end. (There’s also a double-cross around this time, from a character so inconsequential that you’d be hard pressed to remember who he was.)

Lack of “action” aside, it is interesting that watching Twitches made me ponder how witches might be one of the “horror” genre’s last remaining outpost’s for genuine scares. Vampires are everywhere, and werewolves, well, werewolves try real hard to be scary. But other than the pedophile-bait the Craft, not much has been made with witches. I mean, I assume the infamous Halloween III: Season of the Witch has something to do with witchcraft, but I don’t ever plan on finding out. (Not due to its awful reputation, but mainly because I’m not a fan of the “good” Halloween films either.) I guess you could make a case that the Satanist portion of Paranormal Activity 3 has a witchcraft-y angle though. Which would make that film perhaps the king of this particularly small hill.

—More Teen Witches, Fuck It, Twitches—

Twitches Too

Halloween Endurance Test: Horror of Dracula (1958)

Horror of Dracula was the second film in Hammer Films’ much celebrated original trilogy of horrors. Curse of Frankenstein had made both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee into stars, so they return in another haunting literary classic. (And by the point the Mummy came out, Hammer Studios was now the star.) Of course, by “literary” I mean inspired by the classic, perhaps based off of, not so much an adaptation. Don’t let this deter you though, since, as I discussed with Universal’s version of Dracula, Bram Stoker’s original tale is a mess. Written all the past tense, with the reporting characters hardly ever actively participating in the action being described. Hammer does its best to fix this here.

First off, Stoker’s obsessive use of the past tense. This amazingly gets used in the film, courtesy of voiceover work by the principals. Giving the film that “Hey, we have read the book!” quality while still keeping the action present. Also, it allows for background information to be given to the audience without having to rely on the old “let’s sit around the library and read vampire books” exposition scenes

Also, in a nice nod to its literary forebears, Horror of Dracula includes all the media used to tell the tale in the book. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) uses an early phonograph to learn about vampires. Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) leaves behind a diary to tell his tale posthumously.

We first meet Jonathan Harker, are welcomed into the castle with him, and learn he’s on a secret mission to kill Count Dracula (Christopher Lee). No boring introduction scene with Harker being assigned his job from some higher-up. Harker already has the job, we play catch-up, and continue on his mission. A pacing technique that would sadly be ignored by most in the genre.

Another change Hammer instituted was in the architecture of Dracula’s castle. Gone are Universal’s ceiling to floor cobwebs and swirling dust mists. Hammer’s Dracula clearly has a maid service on call, and, being a Count and all, has no problem living up to his title.

The most immediate thing noticeable in the film though is the use of sound. Given the voice-over narrative work, there’s hardly any speaking. When Harker commences on his mission, Dracula’s bride howls when she’s staked, waking the Count up. It’s still daytime however, so the Count is powerless to protect himself. Lee does a brilliant job of portraying this vulnerability through his eyes, as well as the following predatory instinct when the sun finally goes down. Not a word is said, ‘cuz the eyes say it all…

This theme of “action over audio” carries on throughout the entire film. Even when Dracula invades London, an otherwise bustling metropolis, hardly anything is heard but John Hollingsworth’s score. That and invectives directed toward Van Helsing, a man who’s much less beloved then in Universal’s version.

While I still love Bela Lugosi as the Count, Peter Cushing is clearly the superior Van Helsing. While Edward Van Sloan’s interpretation certainly seemed more intelligent, more book-learned, Cushing looks better prepared to act on his knowledge. A good doctor who’s equally ready to fight or write.

Van Helsing’s also quite bright. Explaining a chain of events that are vital to the story, but never integrated well. Everyone knows that Dracula starts hunting Lucy Holmwood after he arrives in London. Why Lucy, friend of Jonathan Harker, is never explained though. A strange coincidence considering how large a city London is.

Here Dracula’s pick is motivated by revenge. Jonathan murdered Dracula’s bride back at the castle, so Dracula murders both Harker and his bride-to-be. And yes, I know that Harker didn’t kill any of Dracula’s brides in the book, nor was he Lucy’s fiance. Just some of the changes needed to be made to Stoker’s classic to make it less cumbersome.

A philosophy which would form the basis behind Hammer’s horror movies. Using the stock literary characters, and just varying the surrounding situations enough to keep the public interested. Eventually taking it so far, in 1973’s the Satanic Rites of Dracula, that Dracula finds himself as the villain in a spy thriller! (Unfortunately, it sounds more interesting than it plays.)

—More Christopher Lee as the Count? YES Please!—

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Taste the Blood of Dracula

Dracula A.D. 1972