Although I watch a lot of films, for various reasons I’m not huge on reviewing them. However, seeing as I’ve been a “Dark Shadows” fan for over 40 years and a Tim Burton fan since Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), I thought perhaps his new epic deserved a paragraph or two from me. I saw it this past weekend on the Hamilton IMAX screen in what seemed liked a rather depopulated theater, but I’m not sure what their usual Sunday crowd is like–perhaps everyone else was taking their mom to dinner for Mother’s Day. At any rate. . .

I had followed the dribbling out of info and photos over the past year or so and had seen the infamous trailer that makes the film look like “Vampires Suck Part Deux”. As a disciple of the original series, none of this sat any better with me than I think it did for most fans. Once more we have Tim Burton going his own way without much regard for audience’s expectations or their affection for the originals (think especially Planet of the Apes or even more so his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the latter of which I still haven’t managed to make it all the way through.) I can understand not working toward expectations, but is it always necessary to tread on sacred ground with jackboots? This being said I will consider Dark Shadows from two different perspectives: as a remake of the original series, and as another entry in the auteur’s canon.

Many fans of the original series are going to hate this film. Hands down. Jonathan Frid’s beloved, beautiful, complex, tortured Barnabas Collins has been morphed into a typically Burtonesque, overly made-up, funny pages version of the character, ripe for rendering into dolls and action figures. Johnny Depp‘s pancake makeup is so thick and obvious he constantly makes the viewer think of someone made up as Dracula for Halloween (indeed, one wonders if this isn’t partly the idea–this is Tim and Johnny’s make-believe, pretend Barnabas, their version of going out for trick-or-treat.) The makeup of many of the other major characters is similarly troweled-on, particularly Helena Bonham Carter‘s Julia Hoffman and Eva Green’s Angelique. Beyond that, Depp’s face is not possessed of the same stately aquilinity as was Frid’s, and in this makeup he looks more like Eddie Munster (or perhaps Michael Jackson.) Other characters are monkeyed with under the surface. The strong willed Dr. Julia Hoffman of the series here becomes a jaded alcoholic, played by Carter with slovenly disdain. Green’s Angelique is all bitch with no real passion. Bella Heathcoat’s Josette/Victoria Winters are both doll-eyed ciphers. Jackie Earl Haley is largely wasted as Willie Loomis. Nods to the original are brief and obligatory; a snatch of Robert Cobert’s breakthrough series score before the credits and a faithfully executed Collinwood exterior, together with breathtakingly brief cameos from four of the original cast, including Frid (who died before the film was released).

Burton intentionally sets his film in 1972, the year directly following the original series’ cancellation–either to say he will not “mess with the past” or “I ain’t goin’ there”, take your pick. Despite that, the film picks up pretty much from the beginning of the Barnabas epic (Frid didn’t actually join the series till it had been going for nearly half a year.) Occasionally Seth Grahame-Smith’s script quotes the series to good effect, but not often. Apparently obligatory nods are given to other cinematic vamps, especially F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, and we get a cameo from ’50′s and ’60′s king vampire Chris Lee, nowadays a Burton regular. Beyond that, and aside from the basic key plot points, the film has almost nothing to do with the original series in either style or intent. It has a lot more in common with “Scooby Doo” or “The Munsters,” and while it isn’t quite the total send-up the trailers threatened, it is definitely “over-the-top” in a way the original never was. Grahame-Smith’s script tries to pack far far too many plot points into 113 minutes, some of which blindside the audience (like Carolyn’s inexplicable late-film advent as a werewolf.) In the meantime Burton seems far too fascinated with the idea of bringing in as many blasts-from-1972 as he can; perhaps in an attempt to pander to the ’70′s-chic fad, which I believe was over 10 year ago. In the end it’s the kind of film that often passes for comedy these days; high octane, breathless, shallow, dumbed-down. The humor here is more like those bad old vampire jokes about “iron poor blood” than anything truly dark and interesting.

Dispensing with its value as a “Dark Shadows” remake (or a comedy), I’m left to consider whether it succeeds simply as a Tim Burton film. Some of the script and character anomalies are explainable within the Burton canon. Burton is always more interested in style than substance and what passes for theme in most Burton films is the simplistic search for acceptance for the less-normal among us. The Burton/Depp Barnabas joins the long line-up of characters in this vein: Edward Scissorhands, Lydia in Beetlejuice, Pee Wee Herman, Batman, Ed Wood, Jack the Pumpkin King. In Burton’s world there is a nearly scrupulous distinction between those innocently, perhaps organically, drawn to darkness, versus those with a psychological twistedness, which may or may not be expressed physically (as it is with the Batman villains, for instance.) For Burton, it is the dark psyche that leads to doom (Catwoman, Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.) In Dark Shadows we are presented with a Barnabas who, like Scissorhands, is basically childlike, innocent, blameless for his misdeeds (his vampirism is the result of a curse) and, frankly, not overly tortured by them. Indeed, the Depp Barnabas makes bare pretense toward disguising what he is (and looking like that how could he?) as if to say “I refuse to live a lie” (only Michelle Pfieffer’s Elizabeth Stoddard works to keep that news under wraps.) All of this works against the original’s “House of Secrets” tone, straightening out all the fun kinks in the plot, but nevertheless, in light of Burton’s canon it does make sense. In the end, Burton goes the extra mile in confirming Barnabas’s vampire-liberation, as he finds acceptance from his lost love Josette only when she too is made a vampire.

Lastly, does the film succeed on what is often named as Burton’s strong point, its visual presentation? It’s an attractive film overall, with good sets, good photography. But the lighting is often overly harsh, as mentioned before making the made-up characters appear clown-like and unconvincing. There’s no real delight or visual surprises, as if Burton’s bag of tricks has run dry (which, sadly, for many it seems it has). Despite all of this there are moments of fun to be culled from the film, and Depp is too clever an actor not to score occasionally even when being hampered by a bad script and tired direction. A bright point is Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elizabeth, one of the few portrayals in the film, aside from Depp’s, with some dimension (not that the breathless pace gave many of them much of a chance.)

I would not rate this at the apex of the Burton canon by any means, but neither would I say it belongs at the bottom (that I’ll reserve for the ridiculous, if high grossing, Alice in Wonderland or the aforementioned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Final verdict, I would give it a gentle thumbs down, with the hope that the soon-to-come remake of “Frankeweenie,” which was trailered before Dark Shadows, will somewhat redeem Tim Burton.

DIRECTED BY: Jean Rollin

FEATURING: Jean-Loup Philippe, Annie Bell (as Annie Brilland), Natalie Perrey, Catherine Castel, Marie-Pierre Castel

PLOT: Sparked by a castle he sees on a poster, a man has visions of a long-forgotten girl he

fell in love with as a boy; mysterious forces try to stop him from finding the locale in the photograph, while a vampire coven helps him from afar.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Slow, atmospheric, with vampires in see-through nighties; Lips of Blood seems a little strange to the ordinary horror fan, but by the surreal standards Jean Rollin set for himself, it’s a bit blasé.

COMMENTS: For a movie about the living dead, Lips of Blood is lifeless. For a supposedly erotic movie, most of the time it just lies there. Only Rollin’s trademark dreamy cinematography and a few bold images save this action-and-suspense-free horror from being a complete bore. The scenario sets up a mystery that is not very mysterious, and posits a timeless romance in which we feel only a theoretical involvement. The movie is peppered with poorly scripted moments that don’t come across so much as absurd as simply awkward. For example, when protagonist Frédéric tracks down the photographer who snapped the photo of the castle he sees in his visions, she just happens to be photographing a nude woman masturbating (in a surprisingly explicit moment). When he asks the photographer, herself a beautiful woman, for the location of the mysterious château, she promises to tell him later at a midnight rendezvous, strips naked, and gives him a long wet kiss! Not only is this whole diversion a shameless device to shoehorn in two more nude scenes, it actually damages Frédéric’s character, since he’s supposed to be pining for the mysterious dream girl with whom he has a deep psychic connection, not fooling around with nude models. In a more exploitative movie this brand of brazen sleaze would be entertainingly incongruous, but in a film with serious ambitions as a moody psychological horror, it’s a misstep. The intended eroticism is somewhat better integrated when Frédéric accidentally awakens a coven of female vampires, who then walk around a Paris graveyard in sheer, gauzy babydoll burial shrouds from Victoria’s Secret. Among the sexy bloodsuckers he raises are sensual twins Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castel (Rollin favorites, for obvious reasons). They shadow the doomed hero, saving his bacon from the shadowy forces trying to keep him from locating the mysterious castle. At one point they go undercover as nurses (sexy twin vampire nurses—now that’s mixing fetishes!), while at another juncture they save Frédéric from cinema’s longest stare down the barrel of a gun by turning on the fountains outside the aquarium. After a “twist” resolution that depends on the notion that the actors can’t distinguish an obvious prop from the real thing, it all ends with some torrid lovemaking on the beach and a coffin floating out to sea. I’ve hit the highlights here, which make the movie sound more entertaining and ludicrous than it actually is. In fact, Lips of Blood is mostly talking, walking, and a thug holding the hero at gunpoint for what seems like ten minutes, deciding whether he wants to pull the trigger or not.

With this review of Lips of Blood we’ve now covered all five of Redemption’s 2012 Rollin remastered releases; time for a rundown. Lips is the least interesting and essential of the bunch, essentially a standard softcore Eurohorror with a few unusual touches. For weird fans, Fascination (1979) is a step up; it’s a solid horror outing with a some memorable scenes (aristocratic ladies drinking ox blood, a topless Grim Reaper). The Iron Rose (1973) is the most challenging of the quintet; this graveyard tour shows Rollin’s at his most deliberately surrealist, but at times the film seems to mistake “slow and uneventful” for “poetic.” Shiver of the Vampires (1971), with its pair of scraping “bourgeois vampires” and a bisexual bloodsucker emerging from a grandfather clock, features the director’s most successful blend of dreamlike weirdness and solid Gothic filmmaking. Shiver would make a good entry point into Rollin’s erotically weird universe, but we have to say that our favorite of the five is the earliest entry, The Nude Vampire (1970). It’s raw filmmaking, especially in the acting department, but it’s the fastest moving of his minimalist stories, and features all the usual dreadful atmosphere while adding enough concentrated craziness for four Rollin romps. Of course, there are still several Rollin films of potential weird interest that weren’t included in this Redemption drop, including his first movie, the notorious Rape of the Vampire (1968).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… equal parts creepy, silly, and disturbing.”–Tom Becker, DVD Verdict (DVD)

FEATURING: Olivier Rollin (as Oliver Martin), Maurice Lemaître, Caroline Cartier, Ursule Pauly, Catherine Castel (as Cathy Tricot), Marie-Pierre Castel (as Pony Tricot), Michel Delahaye

PLOT: A young man discovers his father has kidnapped a vampire and is studying her in hopes

of learning the secret of immortality.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: As we explained in our review of Shiver of the Vampires, we’re expecting to add one of Jean Rollin’s surreal erotic vampire films to the List (though we’re open to the possibility of more than one making it). We want to consider all of the director’s major horror works first, however, before picking the best movie to represent Rollin’s arty and irrational vampire vision. 1973′s Shiver showed a notable improvement in Rollins’ technical filmmaking skills, but Nude, with its suicide cult and multi-dimensional twist ending, holds a slight edge as being the more delirious film. Compared to Shiver, Nude is amateur and raw, but this may be a case where worse is better—or at least, weirder.

COMMENTS: The Nude Vampire opens with a scene of a hooded woman stripped naked in a laboratory by other hooded figures; they take a sample of her blood. Next we find ourselves following a woman slinking through oddly deserted Paris streets in a sheer orange negligee. She’s carefully and quietly followed by men wearing animal masks: a chicken, a bull, some sort of cross between a frog and an insect, and a lavender stag with enormous, impractical horns rising from his head. She meets a strange man outside the Metro and touches his face; together they flee the masked cultists, until the stag-man catches up with her and shoots her on a bridge. Oh, and this entire 8 minute introductory sequence contains no dialogue, just atonal free jazz explorations, first from a wailing baritone sax and then from a screeching violin. If you’re not at least a little intrigued by that opening, well then, you may be browsing the wrong site. Nude tantalizingly rides the fine line between sense (the plot points do connect from one to the next) and nonsense (the entire premise of a suicide cult kidnapping a mutant transdimensional vampire is preposterous). Some scenes are exquisitely haunting: the stag-man standing on cobblestone streets, the slow torchlit march of the undead. Other scenes are staged with an embarrassing amateurism, as when a woman committing suicide fails to react on time to a badly dubbed gunshot to her own temple; or, when two miniskirted women are killed after a third waves a torch in their general direction, causing them to roll themselves down a flight of stairs (flashing their white panties as they work their way around a bend in the staircase) in a way that defies the physics of murder.  From moment to moment the movie could be categorized as either a pretentious student art film or a bad b-movie fever dream (scenes where topless dancers gyrate before businessmen wearing avant-garde pasties weave both strands into one variegated thread). The result of these competing elements is an ambiguous style that makes the distinction between “good” and “bad” irrelevant. Moments of brilliance and flubs are both subsumed into the atmosphere of general weirdness. There’s always something new popping up on screen to raise your eyebrows, like the sexy twin assistants whose favored uniforms are scale mail miniskirts with mobiles covering their breasts, a nude model who goes into a spontaneous interpretative dance, and a suddenly sci-fi ending that might remind you of Phantasm (1979). You’ll sympathize with the minor character who, near the end of the movie, asks the rhetorical question “do you understand any of this?” Rollin’s films failed financially in their day because they proved too pretentious for general horror fans and too exploitative for arthouse patrons, but today they hit the sweet spot for cult movie enthusiasts who crave utter unpredictability in their scare flicks.

Although it’s not chaste by any stretch, there is less sex and nudity in this production than would show up going forward in Rollin’s oeuvre. In the interest of truth in advertising, the movie should have been titled The Vampire in the See-through Nightie. (That is, if she is a vampire at all…)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a strange work of conspiracy, family rebellion, and innocence imprisoned, both a vampire film and a strange science fiction fantasy…”–Sean Axmaker, Parallax View (Rollin retrospective)

DIRECTED BY: Jean Rollin

FEATURING: Sandra Julien, Jean-Marie Durand, Dominique,  Marie-Pierre Castel (as Marie-Pierre Tricot), Kuelan Herce, Jacques Robiolles, Michel Delahaye

PLOT: A honeymooning couple stop at a creepy castle to visit the bride’s distant cousins, but

find their hosts have been turned into vampires.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The films of Jean Rollin come with a reputation/warning: their mix of artistry and exploitation isn’t for everyone, and they’re all variations on the same idea. The director’s formula is thick Gothic atmosphere, beautiful visuals, mild surrealism, nude female vampires, and an indifference to rational plot. In terms of making the List, what this suggests is that one Rollin movie might be appointed to represent the director’s entire canon; but, is Shiver the chosen one? We’ll have to see them all to decide for sure.

COMMENTS: Plotheads need not apply to a Jean Rollin movie. Shiver of the Vampires does have a story, but it’s thin and generic, full of the usual staples of the vampire genre: coffins, stakes through the heart, crumbling castles, crucifixes. Rollin approaches this film more like a painter than like a storyteller, and you have to engage with the film as if you’re looking at an art exhibit rather than listening to a ghost story. Certain startling imagery jumps out at you by design—the vampire emerging from the grandfather clock, the goldfish bowl containing a skull, the deadly spike bra—but the decadent backgrounds are just as appealing to the eye. It’s the kind of film where curvaceous maidens in diaphanous gowns walk through dusty corridors carrying candelabras, and there’s always mist wafting across the tombstones at night. There’s ample nudity—the women of Shivers doff their duds at the slightest excuse—but it’s often shot with an artist’s rather than a voyeur’s eye for the female form. Otherwise, however, the sexuality of vampirism isn’t presented very subtly; a female vamp is dispatched in a phallic staking ritual, and when nude vampires are exposed to sunlight they writhe in a torment that looks remarkably like orgasm. With liberal use of red gels, aquamarine backlights, and pigmented fogs, the color schemes are brilliantly unreal (proving the Eurohorror tradition of crazed chromatism well predates 1977′s Suspiria). A prog-rock guitar, drum and bass trio dither ecstatically over the action; the electrified score contrasts with the Gothic atmosphere, but it works well to ground the otherwise timeless tale in its contemporary era. There are also unidentifiable, animalistic howls that show up on the soundtrack at strategic points. A pair of nameless “bourgeois vampires” who bow and scrape, finish each others’ sentences, and lecture on the worship of Isis add further oddness to an already strange story. Shiver is partly a tribute to and partly a parody of bloodsucker conventions, but the film’s overall tone is hard to pin down, except to say that it’s detached and dreamlike. The human victims’ reactions to their predicament are dazed and out of sync with reality, as if they’re drugged or hypnotized. Isle appears not at all terrified when a strange woman emerges from a grandfather clock in her room (and her modest attempt to cover her bare bosom is woefully inadequate).  After the groom witnesses a vampiric ritual he returns to the conjugal chamber but, rather than rousing his bride to flee, strokes her naked sleeping body. Terror transforms into lust quickly inside Shivers‘ hermetic dream. For decades, Rollins’ slow-paced, arty, irrational musings on the vampire myth have frustrated horror fans looking for old-fashioned bloodletting, but they are subtly strange artifacts that reflect the unique preoccupations of their creator. These fetishistic documents are ultimately of more interest to fans of neosurrealism than of horror.

The French title, Le Frisson des Vampires, does literally translate as “Shiver of the Vampires,” but “frisson” has a secondary connotation of “thrill” (like the pleasant spine tingles provided a good horror movie shock). Rollins’ two previous features had more salacious titles: Le Viol du Vampire (Rape of the Vampire) (1968) and La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire) (1970).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… [a] vexing piece of psychedelic nonsense…”–Robert Firsching, Rovi

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)