Sometimes the devil wins, and when Thalberg died at the age of 37, Old Nick (Mayer) had no one to rein him in.  MGM, under Mayer, had a notorious  habit of buying out rivals—the original versions of the studio’s watered-down remakes—and then would make every attempt to destroy and/or suppress the superior original.  For instance, they bought out the 1940 British version of Gaslight and unsuccessfully attempted to destroy all the copies just in time for the debut of their inferior 1944 version, starring Charles Boyer.  MGM did destroy many, but not all, copies, and understandably earned the genuine resentment of the British film industry.

MGM did the same to Paramount’s  superb, 1931 Academy Award winning Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to make way for their laughably bad 1941 version.  They were successful, or so they thought.  For a number of years, it was believed all copies of the 1931 Hyde had been destroyed and it was therefore a lost film, until, may years later, copies resurfaced—much to MGM’s chagrin.

When Tod Browning wanted to remake his London After Midnight as Mark of the Vampire in 1935, MGM did not have to go on a search-and-destroy mission, since they owned the original.  The studio saw no commercial value whatsoever in preserving a silent film, so the original was essentially buried to make way for the new version.  Predictably, it fell into neglect until some thirty years later the only remaining known copy was destroyed in a fire.  It is entirely possible that MGM intentionally destroyed multiple copies of its own film, simply to make competitive room for the remake.  Whether that remake is superior or inferior is pure speculation.

In 2003, Rick Schmidlin of Turner Classic Movies arduously produced a photo still reconstruction of London After Midnight.  It is probably the only version of the film we, and future generations, will ever see.  Even from a stills-only reproduction, it is clear that Midnight is the original American Goth Film.  Chaney’s vampire, partly inspired by Werner Kruass’ Caligari, is a make-up artist’s delight, and an actor’s hell.  Fishing wire looped around his blackened eye sockets, a set of painfully inserted, shark-like teeth producing a hideous grin, a ludicrous wig under a top hat, and white pancake makeup achieved Chaney’s kinky look.  To add to the effect Chaney developed a misshapen, incongruous walk for the character.  To his credit, Chaney’s crepuscular rogue looks as loathsome today as it did over eighty years ago (enough so for Henry Selick to pay the character a homage in The Nightmare Before Christmas).

The film, taken from Browning’s story “The Hypnotist,”  is essentially a drawing room murder mystery, with a detective hiring actors to play vampires in order to smoke out the guilty party through sheer fright.  As with most of Browning films, the plot is painstakingly preposterous, which will alienate contemporary audiences who religiously subscribe to ideas of hyper-realism.  It is the spectral ambiance and erratic characterizations which stamp the film with Browning’s aberrant panache.

Chaney as the vampire and Edna Tichenor as Luna, the Bat Girl are the original creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky duo.  Chaney also plays the second role of the professor Edward C. Burke and in some of the stills he could pass for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Robert Bloch (writer, Psycho-1960) saw London After Midnight in his youth and wrote of a Browning oddity in the film; the sight of armadillos scurrying across the dilapidated castle floor.  It is an image we do not see in the still restoration, but Browning would repeat this surreal bit in both Dracula (1931) and Mark of the Vampire.

The late William K. Everson, a reliable historian, saw both films and claimed that the 1935 remake was considerably superior.  Critics of the period disagree with Everson, holding the 1927 film as the better of the two.  London After Midnight received mixed reviews upon its release in 1927, but the majority of the reviews were positive.  Of all the Browning/Chaney films, Midnight reaped the biggest box office.

In its current state, which is a remarkable, commendable effort on producer Schmidlin’s part, it still is virtually impossible to compare this with the remake.  What is evident is that the earlier film’s production design, set in London as opposed to Prague in the remake, is superior; which is saying a quite bit since Vampire’s design is, in itself,  handsomely mounted.

Midnight also has fewer characters, a more minimal murder plot, is silent (an art form both Browning and Chaney were far more comfortable in) and has Lon Chaney starring, which would seem to add up to a better, overall film.

In 1935, Browning requested to remake Midnight as Mark of the Vampire, starring Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill and Carol Borland.  Browning’s  status at MGM was sensitive at best, even though he was still under Thalberg’s protection.  Neither Mayer nor the studio had forgiven Browning for Freaks (1932) and his salary for Mark was cut to half of its former amount, which he humbly accepted.  Thalberg’s protective umbrella vanished when the producer died prematurely, shortly after the release of Browning’s The Devil Doll (1936).

After that film, Browning sat dormant for two years until he was able to direct Miracles for Sale (1939), an uneven film that featured yet another Browning depiction of below-the-waist mutilation.  It was to be his last.  He was unceremoniously fired by MGM producer Carey Wilson, whose early career Browning had greatly assisted.  So much for loyalty.

For Mark of the Vampire, Browning worked with cinematographer James Wong Howe (who later photographed Citizen Kane-1941).  Howe’s work in the film was praised, but Howe did not care for working with Browning, who he said “did not know one end of the camera from the other” (but, then, neither did Luis Buñuel).  Browning, however, was a hard-driving perfectionist and took great care in the craft and design of the film; the expressionistic, winged descent of Borland is strikingly impressive.

Browning always grumbled about the finished state of his Dracula (1931).  In his original edit, Dracula was ten minutes longer and was even more deliberately paced, with Lugosi’s count almost entirely invisible during the second half, which, according to Browning’s sensibilities, made perfect sense.  The Count, as Browning’s “Living, Hypnotic Corpse” (an act the director played in his carnival circuit days ) pulls a disappearing act.  But, Universal spoiled that by cutting  several scenes and adding close-up shots of the vampire grimacing, much to Browning’s permanent dismay (he refused to ever watch the film again).

Browning got his way regarding the presence of the Count in Vampire.  As in Terence Fisher’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) the vampire is mute and predominantly an unseen spirit.  Lugosi is even more effective here with his reduced, minimal presence.  He is made up to look like Dracula, but projects increased savagery in his silence, making for a highly effective, grinning demon that differs from Chaney’s look but emulates the former’s pantomime.  Lugosi’s Count Mora also sports an unexplained bullet wound to the temple.

Unfortunately, Browning once again fell prey to unimaginative producers, who butchered Vampire by excising some twenty minutes, which is evident throughout this highly incoherent film.  The result is something akin to a fascinatingly flawed, unintentional surrealist egg.  In the original script, the Count and his daughter were  incestuous lovers who committed suicide with bullets to the head, thereby incurring the curse of the vampire.  Not surprisingly, that part of the story was  cut, but Lugosi’s bleeding temple remained untouched, sans explanation.  Borland is equally impressive.  Her Luna tops the look of Tichenor’s, and her portrayal inspired Charles Addams’ Morticia.

Guy Endore (Werewolf of Paris) wrote the script from Browning’s story.  Mark of the Vampire is saturated with sensational Gothic texture (which includes possums inhabiting the castle).  The visceral editing somehow add to the film’s appeal, even if it is a bit too talkative, bogged down with moments of forced comedy relief and Lionel Barrymore’s on-the-sleeve acting (although sometimes he seems more villainous than the vampires, which is beneficial to the overall milieu).  Vampire adds up to an outrageous, hallucinatory film with genuinely perverse personality and a surreal, ominous style, far more so than the average Universal genre potboilers.

When released, critics generally praised the film, but many complained about the  “trick” ending, which is stupefying since it is hinted at fairly early on.  Plus, it has the same ending and story as Midnight, which was a  huge box office hit only eight years before.  Perhaps critics from the period all suffered from long term memory loss.  The ending actually makes the film, giving a facetious, Addams family-like sheen to the proceeding austerity.

Browning ended his collaboration with Lugosi with this film. Their work together started with The Thirteenth Chair (1929) when the director was scouting around for Dracula (despite rumors, Chaney was not set to be cast as the Count and there is no evidence that he would have been, even if he had lived, although Chaney would have been an obvious choice to consider).

Browning’s long term association with Barrymore would come to an end in the following  year’s The Devil Doll. It was also the beginning of the end for Browning’s unparalleled brand of artistry.

Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster present Bram Stoker’s vampire as a feeding predator. To his victims, he is attractive and desirable. Throughout his Hammer films, Terence Fisher clearly presents evil as erotic temptation. Seen in this light, Dracula’s silent, predatory portrayal in the first “true” sequel—Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)—makes perfect sense. This is what sets Fisher apart from his predecessors who told the same story, and the successors who imitated (and exaggerated) his style in increasingly inferior sequels.

In F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), the vampire is loathsome and repulsive. In Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) the vampire has far more static dialogue, and more charisma, albeit in a silent film stylized theatricality.  With Fisher’s take on the subject, the erotic quality of the antagonist is pronounced, fleshy, and unmistakable.  Yet, Fisher and Sangster also expertly balanced that sensuality with the narrative, never allowing the eroticism to become a caricature the way successors did (thus robbing the series of its freshness).

Compare Fisher’s direction of Dracula’s seduction scene to Freddie Francis’ in Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968).   In the former, Dracula seduces Mina (Melissa Stribling).  The scene is shot in a series of extreme close-ups.  Mina expresses dread (with a quivering lip) and breathy anticipation.   Dracula enters her room and descends upon her bed-ridden form.  As he draws towards her, his lips part.  The next sight of Mina is unconsciously collapsed on her bed, violated, blood lightly splattered on her throat and gown.  It is the blood of her husband (in a transfusion) that saves her life.

In Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, the vampire approaches Zena (Barbara Ewing) in the forest.  Zena nearly spills out of her top and the vampire removes one extra snap for increased spillage.  The attention is so drawn to the stripping that the narrative is second thought.  Later, when Veronica Carlson is seduced by Dracula, her Victorian doll falls from her bed, awkwardly symbolizing the loss of innocence.

As superb as Christopher Lee is in his role as the Count, Peter Cushing is the quintessential Van Helsing.  He is suave (no one, not even Bogart, can make smoking a cigarette seem so natural), benevolent (i.e. when he drapes a coat around a child’s shoulder, hands her a crucifix, tells her, “there, isn’t that pretty?” and gently instructs her to watch for the sunrise in the distance), empathetic (displaying caution and wise, reserved patience),  educated, scientific (but a man of action), determinedly faithful, and in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave he relentlessly pursues his goal to achieve one of the best endings in the genre’s history.

Van Helsing and Dracula engage in a vivacious struggle.  Van Helsing leaps over a table to a grand window, pulling down the curtain to allow the beam of morning light in. The vampire is caught in the ray of light, burning his foot.  Van Helsing finishes off his nemesis by thrusting a cross, made from two candles, in the face of evil.  Dracula retreats fully into the ray of light, burned to ashes.  The ending is classically religious without being obvious, without blatant chest-beating, the way a Stephen Sommers or Cecil B. DeMille might have filmed it.

Freddie Francis in Risen, throws in DeMille’s kitchen sink.  The Vampire is staked, pouring out gallons of blood, while Ewan Hooper’s disgraced Priest tells atheist Paul (Barry Andrews) that he must pray in order for the stake to take effect.  Of course, Paul can’t, and leave it to the priest (after having assisted in the killing of two people, including his superior) to have a born again experience.  The priest prays the vampire, now impaled on a large crucifix, into oblivion (until the next sequel, of course).  The sight of the vampire destroyed prompts Paul to make the sign of the cross over himself. Atheist Paul also has had a born again experience.  It’s as subtle as a pair of brass knuckles and, frankly, imitative of Fisher’s style in a clumsy way.

However, Risen has good points along the way.  The relationship between the Monsignor (Rupert Davies) and his priest, who is under Dracula’s control, is a tense development.  The Monsignor’s ordeal and eventual demise is dramatic and unexpected.  However, the revival of Dracula , imprisoned under the ice, is hackneyed and rushed compared to the conveyed, purple dread that Fisher cast with Philip Latham in the immediate and highly underrated prequel, Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966).  In that film, Dracula is entirely a beast, whose only motive is survival through sustenance (hence, Fisher’s focus on the other principals, such as Helen, Klove, and Ludwig).

In Risen the Count’s motive is revenge, which seems somewhat feeble.  This would be Dracula’s motive in each of the successive films.   There would still be good moments in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) and even less (but still a few) in Scars of Dracula (1970).  However, the remaining films in the Dracula series would see the vampire reduced to a tenth rate Fu Manchu; a long descent from Fisher’s initial Horror of Dracula.

Fisher’s efforts in the Frankenstein series made it increasingly experimental and less predictable.  All but two of the films in that series (the weaker two) were directed by Fisher, and that ensured an avoidance of the pedestrian formula that befell the Hammer Dracula franchise in the last entries.  Of course, the Baron always had more interesting motives (plural) and goals than did Count Dracula, or any of the Baron’s creations.

While Terence Fisher certainly belongs among the rank of the great horror auteurs, he was not able to project his best qualities in the films he did outside of Hammer.   Yes, Fisher was an assignment director (as was James Whale, Tod Browning, and Jacques Tourneur) but the marriage between Fisher and Hammer was perfectly matched. Unfortunately, the studio never realized that to its full potential. Although all of Hammer’s films were, by today’s standards, economically budgeted, lush set design, brilliant color and convincing actors elevated their output. However, lacking the foresight to take even greater advantage of their best talents, the studio was unable to sustain solid direction and retain the level of quality that Fisher and their best visionary, innovative writers gave them.

Despite the slow slide downward,  Hammer’s Dracula series started off with three superb films in a row.  For many years, it was their introductory The Horror of Dracula (1958)  that was ranked, by many, as the greatest of all horror films and, by some, it still is.

For the first (and best) sequel to Horror of Dracula, Fisher and the writing team (which included an uncredited Anthony Hinds, Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan, and Edward Pearcy) chose a disciple of Dracula, in the person of Baron Meinster (David Peel), as the antagonist rather than the Count himself.  The Baron is blond, pretty, manipulative, charming, and genuinely menacing.  Luckily, Peel fits the bill, although by general consensus he is no Christopher Lee.  Still, he is refreshingly different.  Such a choice allowed the production imaginative freedom and innovation.  The resulting film is inordinately elegant,  poetic and seething with atmosphere.

Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) is on her way to start a job at a girl’s school when she is stranded at a local inn.  The Baroness Meinster arrives and offers to put Marianne up for the night at her castle.  The locals , well aware of the Baroness’ motives, attempt to to keep Marianne from accepting the invitation, to no avail.   Marianne is introduced to the Baroness’ imperious maid, Greta (Freda Jackson), and discovers that the Baroness’ son, the Baron Meinster, is a shackled prisoner in the castle.  The Baroness’ plan to feed Marianne to her son is upset when her guest releases the Baron from his chains of bondage.

Marianne flees the castle, confused and frightened, unaware that she has set a vampire free.  Peter Cushing‘s  Van Helsing, ever the father figure, discovers  her in the woods, takes her to the school, and, after hearing Mariann’s story, knows that his crusade to rid the world of vampires is far from finished.

Jackson, as Greta, is one of several acting delights here.  She cackles and theatrically waxes poetic.  She hams it up in several scenes, most notably one in which she assists a vampire’s attempt to resurrect himself directly through the soil.  Equally good is Martita Hunt (best known for her role as Miss Havisham in David Lean’s Great Expectations-1946) who becomes her son’s Oedipal victim.  Miles Malleson also does a charming turn in the role of the alcoholic Dr. Tobler.  Cushing, as usual, conveys self-assured, icy precision in a part that  he seems  born to play.  Peel’s Baron puts the bite on Helsing and, in a blood-red, thrilling scene, the Doctor plants a burning iron to his own throat to cauterize the wound.  Cushing masters the scene in his inimitable way.

However, Monlaur, as Marianne, is merely decorative and, consequently, bland, which is a serious defect in the film.  Another glaring flaw is in the some slipshod writing (the result of too many hands in the pot, no doubt).  A compelling, eerie henchman character appears and is ingloriously dropped.  Van Helsing’s appearance is far too convenient and contrived.  A cheesy flying bat is a major distraction.  Despite  the flaws, however, Fisher’s enthusiastic direction is contagious; aided , in no small part, by lavish art direction and camera work.  The finale, at a windmill, is sumptuous and visually exciting.

Unfortunately, there would only be one more good film in the series; Fisher’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness.  After that, the series was pretty much turned over to the hacks and it did not take long at all for the rot to set in.

FEATURING: Phil Caracas, Maria Moulton, Murielle Varhelyi

PLOT: The Son of God recruits retired Mexican wrestler “Santos” to help him defeat the

vampires who are preying on Ottawa’s lesbian population.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  It’s defiantly odd, but not consistently funny or entertaining enough to rank among the all-time greats.  If you saw any two-minute stretch of JCVH selected at random, you might be convinced that this was a work of camp genius; but string 45 such segments together, and the comedy value runs a little thin.  It’s a hard movie to peg: in its own way, given its low budget, its a sort of masterpiece, and at the same time it’s sort of a disaster.  I think that if it had offered us one less overlong kung fu battle, and one more song and dance number, it might have had a shot at exalted weirdness. Ultimately, though, just as the tone is more irreverent than blasphemous, the style is more zany than weird, and that should keep it off this particular List.

COMMENTS:  Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is a stew of pop-cinema leftovers, mixing kung fu with horror, Mexican wrestling and even scraps of blaxploitation, all seasoned with a hint of sacrilege.  Like all peasant cuisine, it will be comfort food for many, but offend some refined palates—it’s definitely an acquired taste.  The technical aspects effectively evoke the feel of late seventies/early eighties exploitation movies, with drab urban cinematography, sound obviously added in post-production, and even a cheesy “waka-waka” funk theme as the heroes cruise down the highway. The action scenes are a problem here: for one thing, there are too many, and they’re too long. They’re just competent enough to remind us that they’re not quite up to snuff; Phil Caracas’ Jesus shows reasonable high-kicking athleticism, but he’s no action hero, and it would have been funnier and more endearing if he’d been clumsier. At any rate, the movie can’t be accused of false advertising. The campy/sacrilegious title scares off the squares and the fundies (though it’s obvious the filmmakers are clearly fans of JC’s philosophy of love and tolerance, if not proponents of his divinity). More to the point, the movie delivers exactly what the title promises: the Prince of Peace staking multiple bloodsuckers through the heart. As if that weren’t strange enough, there are plenty of absurd little low-budget surprises along the way: a crazed, shaggy narrator who jumps out from hedges and spouts Bible verses; punk monks; a martial arts melee between J.C. and a gang of atheists; a talking cherry sundae; a fat masked wrestler with his own theme music. There’s even a musical number, which is decently choreographed and librettoed (“C’mon now gentlemen, c’mon now ladies/We’ll kick these vampires straight back to Hades!)”  Still, with all that deliberate jokey absurdity inserted into the movie, it’s the idiosyncratic oddities that catch the mind’s eye.  For one thing, there’s the movie’s obsession with lesbians—not fetishized lipstick lesbians, but unglamorous, butch tattooed lesbians.  In the movie’s view, they represent the dispossessed—Jesus’ kind of people—the modern day equivalent of the New Testament’s tax collectors and harlots.  At one point, the Virgin Mary, speaking through a night light, tells us that God loves lesbians because “they get so much done in a day!”  Then there’s the minor character named Gloria Oddbottom (possibly the only heterosexual woman in the film). She’s equipped with a huge prosthetic bottom, and every man she passes gives it a squeeze; she has no other function than to serve as a bizarre running joke. But possibly the weirdest thing about Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is the fact that the messiah’s first act in anticipation of his grand apocalyptic battle with hordes of sapphic nosferatu is to tool into Ottawa on his wimpy blue motor scooter and go and get a shave and a haircut. Through the rest of the movie Christ sports close-cropped hair and a pair of earrings, and he even dumps his iconic white robes for a nondescript navy blue t-shirt. No explanation is ever offered for this un-Christlike behavior; it’s one of those unconsciously weird touches that turns the film into something a little odder than your typical revered-religious-icon-battling-the-undead comedy.

Actually, I have an explanation to offer for Jesus’ mysterious haircut. If you watch Caracas’ pre-shearing scuffle with the lesbo vamps, you’ll see that his long wig is constantly blowing across his face, making it difficult to execute his stunts. The scene probably required multiple takes because of follicle-induced visibility issues, and a directorial decision was made to lose the flowing locks for subsequent tussles. Jesus’ new, hip look is therefore more the result of practical considerations rather than aesthetics. I consider the above theory to be my foremost contribution to the massive body of Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter scholarship.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a chopsocky, zero-budget masterpiece that has ‘cult classic’ written all over it in big, bloody letters.”–Adam Nayman, EyeWeekly.com (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Funakdelic,” who added, “fair warning, though it’s weird, J.C. Vampire Hunter really is BAD.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

The film belongs primarily to Barbara Shelley, who was easily Hammer’s best actress and, consequently, was repeatedly used by the studio; a rarity for a studio who tended towards a new glamour girl for each film.

Shelley is Helen; an ever constipated, repressed Victorian type on vacation with her husband and in-laws. The foursome meet Fr. Shandor; a charismatic and provocative monk at a local inn. Andrew Keir invests personality into his role of the priest, who warns the couples to stay clear of the castle. Fisher expertly builds tension in the first quarter of the film. Even though Dracula has been dead for a decade, the local villagers refuse to acknowledge his castle and still attempt to stake dead young maidens, hence Shandor’s natural contempt for his flock.

Predictably, the couples wind up spending the night at castle Dracula, despite the warnings. Philip Latham’s remarkably menacing Klove is Dracula’s disciple, awaiting the opportunity to resurrect his master, which has now been given to him. Helen’s husband, played with apt blandness by Charles Tingwell, will not heed his wife’s impassioned pleas to leave. In typical Fisher fashion, the seemingly prim and proper heroine proves to be one who is right after all, by nature of her virtuous caution.  Helen falls victim to the recklessness of her husband and in-laws. The scene of Tingwell being sacrificed was, at the time, somewhat controversial and considered blasphemous. It is a highly effective scene, made more so by Helen’s discovery of the deed. Helen recoils in sensuous horror on a evocatively lit stairwell as Dracula approaches.

Christopher Lee has claimed that he requested the removal of his dialogue, which makes little sense. Dracula is merely presented as a seductive, feeding animal, and speech was unnecessary.  The much discussed, wordless, hyper erotic scene in which Dracula slices his own chest for Farmer to feed on, is consistent with Fishers’ vision for the character.  Fishers’ development of that character in the first film, where Dracula said nothing more after his initial greeting to Jonathan Harker, gives way to a depiction of evil as both attractive and shallow. The transformed, voluptuous Helen joins her master and attempts to seduce her in-laws, played by Suzan Farmer and Frances Matthews, neither of whom can match her performance.

Regular Hammer character actor Thorley Walters plays an under-developed Renfield type named Ludwig, whom Walters still manages to give a charming personality.  The staking of Helen is nail-biting, exciting, dreadful, arousing, and unbearably tense. Metaphorically, the scene conveys the result of Victorian sexual repression and two-folded liberation.  Helen, once comfortable only in her caution, was stifled by pious mores. Due to her fun-loving brother in-law, she has lost the life she knew in exchange for brief, but hollow liberation. Once bitten, Helen insists, to her sister in-law, that the men are not needed. Yet, Helen also attempts to seduce the man who put her in this predicament to begin with. Even Helen’s new master, Dracula, rejects her after she yearningly reaches for him. Helen attempts to bond with Farmer, but it is Dracula and the monks who put a stop to her. The staking is something akin to a gang rape by inquisition-like priests, and it is only in her final death that Helen is aglow in saintly peace and true liberation, which her previous two lives denied her. Helen’s liberation from the pains of life is noticed and subtly celebrated by Fr. Shandor.

Klove is dispatched, but not by Fr. Shandor, who , in keeping his priestly vows, refuses to take a human life. Dracula’s demise, on ice, is awash with religious symbolism (watery baptism). The build up is tense and kinetic, let down a bit by obviously limited budgetary restraints. Dracula, Prince of Darkness is the last Dracula Hammer with genuine style via Fisher’s red-blooded type of poetic horror. The sequels became increasingly clumsy, repetitive and pale in comparison; meanwhile, Fisher found more of interest in the Frankenstein series and elsewhere.

FEATURING: Yukie Kawamura, Takumi Saito, Eri Otoguro

PLOT: Two Japanese high school girls compete for the affections of a fellow student. One of

them is a vampire, the other becomes a “Frankenstein girl” built of composite parts with the help of her mad scientist father.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It certainly has its share of weird and outrageous moments, but on the whole Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is too slick, too self-aware, and too ho-hum to warrant a place on the List.  Splatterpunk has its place there, but this is not the best representative of the genre.

COMMENTS: Narrated by Jyugon, a spineless but attractive high school boy, the film attempts to parody several high school subcultures while the paranormal plot thickens.  Though Jyugon is forced to date Keiko, a bossy Lolita, he soon finds himself the object of the affections of quiet transfer student Monami.  She feeds him a chocolate with her blood in it and turns him into a vampire, and inadvertently kills the jealous Keiko.  The latter’s father is the unassuming vice principal to the naked eye, but with the help of the sexy school nurse he secretly kills students so he can attempt to reanimate them in his basement lab.  He has a breakthrough with a magical drop of Monami’s blood and is able to assemble a new body for Keiko so she can wreak havoc on Jyugon and Monami’s tepidly developing romance.  There doesn’t seem to be much at stake, really, since Jyugon isn’t actually interested in either of the girls who are fighting over him.

Shooting a good portion of the movie as if it were a music video, directors Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu don’t lack for visual ideas.  The kabuki costumed mad scientist, wide-jawed vampire, acid-trip hallucinations, non sequitur demon fight opening, wacky Bride of Re-Animator-esque composite creatures, and of course showers upon showers of blood tie well into the quick cuts, fluorescent lighting, and spontaneous musical numbers.  Scuffles with a feisty drop of blood and all-out duels between a crazed re-animated nurse and a manservant wielding human bones as weapons are sure to amuse any fan of weird Japanese grindhouse flicks, with a number of solid blood-based tools adding that vampiric flavor.  The model-attractive high school students and mini-skirts bring an appeal to various other viewer types.

With about an hour of build-up and 20 minutes of reward, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl tests the audience’s patience.  The scenes involving the wrist-cutting club and Ganguro club are meant to be satirical but feel haphazard and irrelevant, while Jyugon’s narration is over-obvious and not as funny as it was probably intended.  Of course one wouldn’t expect well-developed characters or an especially clever script based on the title alone, but it just isn’t as fun as it could have been.  Everything is very slick, choreographed, and over-digital, making it less loose and enjoyable than many other films of this ilk.  Its interesting battle scenes and goofy gore don’t quite make up for lackluster humor, poorly thought-out characters, and an unsatisfying climax.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Japan has never really been shy of weird and crazy horror flicks… Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl is the latest to join the cult… [this entry is] a more comedy-oriented film that still bears all the typical treats of its predecessors, but adds a layer of silly comedy not quite unlike Cromartie High. The result is mighty strange, as you might have expected.”–Niels Matthijs, Twitchfilm (DVD)

FEATURING: Rob Stefaniuk, Jessica Pare, Malcolm McDowell, Dave Foley, Alice Cooper

PLOT: A struggling Canadian rock band finds sudden success when their female

bassist becomes a vampire.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s a campy, tongue-in-cheek music movie with a horror/comedy flavor, but doesn’t do much we haven’t seen before.  It draws from other films and music videos to create a light parody of the music industry that’s enjoyable but ultimately forgettable.

COMMENTS:  The plot of Suck is oddly (and I assume unintentionally) reminiscent of Zombie Strippers: both feature a group of performers who willingly become a monstrous entity in order to boost their own popularity, and then climatically reap the consequences of their selfishness.  It gives a satirical bent to the overdone “fledgling musical group hits the big time but get more than they bargained for” premise, substituting blood addiction for drug addiction and topically tapping into society’s sudden Twilight-fueled obsession with vampires.  The concept of vampirism is handled in a very matter-of-fact way, resulting in a lot of unexpected jokes and straightforward humor.

Writer/director Rob Stefaniuk stars as Joey, the lead singer of “The Winners”, playing the straight man surrounded by ridiculous figures for most of the film.  Jessica Pare holds her own as the only female lead, funny and sexy as the hot bassist Jennifer, while Malcolm McDowell (always ready to bring the camp) is awesomely over-the-top as vampire hunter “Eddie” Van Helsing.  Appearances from an impressive bevy of old timer rock stars lend Suck an air of credibility as a rumination on modern-day rock and roll.  Iggy Pop is a wise rocker-turned-recording engineer, Alice Cooper is a creepy mind-reader who spouts unwanted advice, Henry Rollins is a goofy rock DJ, and Moby is a meat-loving frontman.  The highlight for any Kids in the Hall fan will of course be Dave Foley’s few scenes as the Winners’ incompetent manager, delivering the film’s best deadpan lines.

Suck incorporates a lot of different visual techniques that give it more variety than one might expect of a low-budget horror-comedy.  The use of stop-motion miniatures and blood-stained maps for transitions were a neat touch, and the frenetic cuts and dramatic lighting during many of the vampire-centric scenes cleverly reference contemporary music videos.  The music itself is catchy and fun, but doesn’t do much to set itself apart from any generic indie rock band’s output.  It’s not a true musical, saving most of its songs for stage performances except for one unexpected impromptu goth music video set at a vampire’s really pale party.

As a movie, this sits somewhere in the middle of funny and boring, smart and stupid, bold and underachieving, rocker and poser.  It’s got a good concept that blends several genres, but isn’t as effective as it could have been.  It needed to be funnier, scarier, more rockin’, or all three.  As it stands, it’s a cute film with some really enjoyable comedic bits and a few great performances, but not nearly humorous or weird enough to be memorably entertaining.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…Stefaniuk bites off more than he can chew in this star-studded rock ‘n’ roll fantasy vampire flick. Juggling conventions, skewering clichés and referencing genre cues, Stefaniuk packs the film with so many insider jokes that what could have been a wild ride simply isn’t.”–Barbara Goslawski, Box Office Magazine (festival screening)

FEATURING: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco

PLOT: An NYU grad student is bitten on the neck one night, leading her down

a rabbit hole of moral and physical degradation.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The Addiction strips away the clichés from the vampire formula, replacing bats and theatrics with a personal disintegration reminiscent of Repulsion.  What it lacks in weird imagery is more than made up for by its melding of Sartre, heroin addiction, and the supernatural, as well as the eerie atmosphere established by its chiaroscuro photography.

COMMENTS:  Throughout his career, Abel Ferrara has made New York-centric films with a grindhouse flavor and an aspiration to artistry.  In Ms. 45 (1981), he took on the rape-revenge film; with Bad Lieutenant (1992), he made a Scorsese-esque crime drama.  Similarly, The Addiction is a one-of-a-kind vampire movie, marrying urban realism, graphic horror, and several films’ worth of existentialist banter.  Although the latter attribute occasionally renders the film inaccessible, it also grants the characters’ neck-biting intrigues an unexpected gravity while making Ferrara’s serious cinematic intentions very clear.  This is The Hunger for the smart set.

I Shot Andy Warhol star Lili Taylor plays Kathy, who’s en route to getting her Ph.D. in philosophy when a late-night run-in with a mysterious seductress (Sciorra) leaves a bloody gash on her neck and spurs a metamorphosis from mousy student to loud-mouthed blood junkie. In a series of violent encounters, Kathy’s newfound aggression (coupled with severe photosensitivity) spreads like a virus to her friends, professors, and even the strangers who harass her on the street. Late in the film, she meets an elder vampire named Peina (Walken) who teaches her to control her addiction while quoting William S. Burroughs and Charles Baudelaire; the ending that follows is puzzling but weirdly suggestive, as orgiastic indulgence and Catholic guilt come into play.

The Addiction is shot in high-contrast black and white, bringing expressionistic shadows in conflict with a tendency toward naturalism, especially as Ferrara’s camera prowls the classrooms and hallways of NYU. Taylor gives a stand-out performance as a woman rotting from the inside out, matched by her poetically hard-boiled voiceover. When she enters a university library, for example, she growls, “The smell here’s worse than a charnel house.” These lurid monologues color our perceptions of Ferrara’s New York like the saxophones in Bernard Herrmann’s score for Taxi Driver, drawing us deep into Kathy’s dissipation. And Walken, as usual, is the voice of demented authority, cavorting around Kathy’s exhausted body with his slicked-back hair and daffy energy. He’s only in one scene, but he casts a long shadow across the preceding film.

At times, The Addiction teeters dangerously close to being unforgivably pretentious; it’s packed wall-to-wall with philosophical jargon, grandiose statements about hell and morality, and vampiric metaphors for sex, drugs, and genocide. But the film’s saved by its (and Taylor’s) sheer conviction that something intelligent and well thought-out is being said. Even when the film’s open-ended chronology and its abstract conception of vampirism threaten to make the plot totally incomprehensible, you can hold onto Ferrara’s sincere interest in spiritual redemption and moral culpability. In the end, this thematic integrity, when brought out through Taylor’s uncompromising performance, blasts away any doubts: this is a totally different species of vampire movie.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…this is one wild, weird, wired movie, the kind that really shouldn’t be seen before midnight… Scary, funny, magnificently risible, this could be the most pretentious B-movie ever – and I mean that as a compliment.”–Time Out London

DIRECTED BY: Ron Carlson

FEATURING: Sophie Moon, Anya Lahiri, Charles Napier

PLOT: As they head home from a 1968 New Year’s Eve party, God stops two lesbian fashion

models on a deserted highway and turns them into vampires so they can do Her will on earth.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Life Blood squanders it’s weird premise and settles for being just another undistinguished B-movie.

COMMENTS: The literal message of this Ron Carlson film is that vampires are God’s avenging lesbian angels.  (Pause for a moment and try to wrap your mind around that weirdness).  Returning from a 1968 topless New Year’s Eve party, two lipstick lesbians meet the super-sexy Supreme Being on a deserted highway.  She turns them into vampires, dresses them in lingerie and buries them by the side of the road to ripen for forty years (?), after which they rise to do their holy duty (which is never fully explained, although it has something to do with selectively killing off the wicked so She won’t have to flood the world again).  The movie plays this wacked-out premise with a straight face, but something sad happens to Life Blood on its march to psychotronic immortality: it wimps out on weirdness and abandons originality.  Besides lots of lesbian tongue kissing and a grisly hairpin murder, in the first half-hour we also get a dwarf deputy, a truck stop inexplicably named “Murder World,” and a wonderfully wacky TV show called “Chics Chasing Chickens,” wherein bikini-clad babes stalk the titular poultry.  But then, rather than exploring the interesting idea of vampires as avenging angels, the script simply has one of the pair go rogue, turning into a standard bloodsucking baddie.  The movie holes up inside a mini-mart, dispatching the occasional customer but more importantly killing off the burgeoning weirdness and the dramatic thrust.  B-movie cliches take over, a major character disappears, and after a couple of desperate-for-work actors are sacrificed, a deus ex machina in a see-through negligee shows up to send the plot hurtling to an anticlimax.  Pouty Sophie Moon tries to have fun playing a villainess, but hearing her purr repetitive threats wears thin fast; the rest of the acting is serviceable.  Editing, camerawork, and sound are pro.  The movie went through three name changes before distributor Lionsgate finally selected the most generic title it could come up with.  Apparently, the average person knows who someone named “Scout Taylor-Compton” is, because she gets co-top billing on the DVD box (although I couldn’t guarantee she was in the movie). The lesbian scenes are sparse and not hot. All in all Life Blood ends up being a watchable (in a train-wreck sort of way) disappointment, a movie that makes you wonder “what were they thinking?” on many different levels.

Life Blood‘s mystical lesbian hook is so outré it’s hard to imagine the movie’s not conscious of its own ridiculousness, but it never becomes clear whether writer/director Carlson falls on the Ed Wood (clueless fetishism) or the Russ Meyer (deliberate exaggeration) end of the B-movie self-awareness spectrum.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The movie is a (CGI) total black hole, sucking in your time and energy…and unfortunately, no negligée-wearing God-broad is going to emerge from that black hole when it’s over to make out with you.”–Stacie Ponder, Final Girl

DIRECTED BY: Chan-wook Park

FEATURING: Kang-ho Song, Ok-vin Kim, Hae-sook Kim

PLOT: A priest becomes a vampire after he receives a blood transfusion during an

experimental treatment to find a cure for a deadly virus; after his transformation he becomes erotically obsessed with a young woman who lives as a virtual slave to the family that adopted her.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  All of Park’s films at least flirt with weirdness, and Thirst is no exception.   In a way, however, this vampire drama is the Korean fantasist’s most conventional effort.  Aside from a disorienting dream sequence intercut into a bout of lovemaking, Park adds only a few short surrealistic bursts here and there, instead sticking surprisingly close to the vampire formula.

COMMENTS: Like all Chan-wook Park films, Thirst is technically excellent: the cinematography, musical accents, and nuanced performances are all top-notch.  The plot, while rambling and overlong, ties up loose ends neatly by the end.  Many of the individual scenes are nearly perfect, too; the long and violent sequence where a furious Sang-hyeon forcibly converts Tae-joo into a vampire in front of her paralyzed adoptive mother is intense and beyond criticism.  Hae-sook Kim’s Lady Ra has a particularly excellent turn that catches fire once her character becomes nearly comatose, and Song and Kim’s love scenes sizzle with guilt-ridden eroticism.  Park even scales back the distracting, heavily stylized directorial flourishes (such as the dotted line coming off the hammer in Oldboy) that seem to pop up in his every effort just because the director thinks they look cool; the imagery in Thrist flows naturally, like uncoagulated blood.

With all of the above going for it, what I found most shocking about Thirst is how little spark or originality it emanates.  We’ve seen the tragic reluctant vampire since 1936′s Dracula’s Daughter, and thirst for blood has always been a metaphor for lust (in the 1970s exploitation filmmakers became quite explicit with the theme in flicks like Lust for a Vampire and Vampyres).  There’s no real spin on the vampire legend to be found here.  A few traditional nemeses—garlic and crucifixes—have been jettisoned, but the vampire’s psychological essence—predation and isolation—remains intact.  Making the bloodsucking protagonist a priest, while adding the superficial appearance of depth, doesn’t pay off in any profound poetic or philosophical way.  If there’s a spiritual dilemma to be found here, it’s of the most obvious sort, as the fallen Father struggles to reconcile his vow to serve his suffering flock with his need to drink their blood and avoid sunlight.

The film’s supposed organizing principle, the vampiric curse, gives way to a noirish supernatural love triangle; as it turns out, it’s that old snake in the garden, sex, that’s the root of all evil, not nocturnal bloodsucking.  The shift from the struggle to create a personal system of ethical vampirism to a story about falling for a femme fatale means film looses its thematic focus, if not its drama, about halfway through.  Thirst is well worth the watch, but frankly, it left me thirsty for more.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“If, like me, you believe Thirst can’t possibly get any weirder, then you’re in for a comically surreal ride as Park’s genre mash careens of the beaten logical path into that magic land that seems to exist only in the mind of Korean filmmakers.”–Jacob Powell, The Lumiere Reader (contemporaneous)