695

Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.

Every Wednesday and Friday

Daughter of Darkness

I certainly can’t fault Daughter of Darkness for starting in a graveyard. Not only do we have a funeral, we have Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend (The fact that the character is from Chicago just abuses me all the more) chasing a black robed figure into a bolt that transforms into a long handled chamber… Between this opening in the knowledge that Anthony Perkins is going to show up in a second, I’m totally on board.

For a TV movie, this has got a good opening scare, and I kind of dig the Dark Shadows font on the credits. They’re setting it in Romania (actually filming it in Bucharest, Hungary) you know the Stuart Gordon is going to make the most of that landscape!

There in Romania, Mia Sara dreams of more black robes, and mysterious shops, and people catching on fire. She awakens from the nightmare, so it only makes sense for her to pop on down to the American Embassy, manned by Jack Coleman from Heroes… (Or more importantly Nightmare Café ). She’s looking for her father, the only family she has left.

As she searches through Romania for some trace of her father or his work, she discovers the glassworks he used to work at, inhabited now by Anthony Perkins… who introduces himself as her father’s old apprentice. Perkins also informs her that her father is dead. She just can’t believe it, and decides to stick around a little while longer to investigate.

As we learn more about her father’s background, his work as a reformer and his flight from the secret police, one can almost forget that I’m watching a vampire movie … except for Sarah’s dreams, and a brief scene with one of the club kids…   but as we get into the second act, we’re definitely about to be plunged into vampire madness. Sara starts to fall for a vampire club kid, but at the same time attracting the attention of the Romanian government who claim her father didn’t exist. Indeed, when the exhume the grave, that’s not her fathers body there, but that of an old woman. Moreover, she discovers that the necklace she wears is the crest an old family, rumored to be vampiric. She is determined to find their family strong hold, which resides of course, in Transylvania.

The castle is now a tourist attraction, but a statue in the courtyard catches Sara‘s attention. It’s the black cloak to figure from her dreams and it’s pendant matches hers. It’s about here, at the halfway point of the film, that the vampire cult catches up with her, and she discovers that Perkins himself is in fact, her father.

It seems like a missed opportunity when she calls him a maniac… She should’ve called him a psycho. Just saying.

While Mia Sara is inprisoned with other vampire victims, the vampire council debates her fate… and it’s the first time I really feel like I am in a TV movie. We’ve got some of these councilmembers pulled straight out of central casting chewing the scenery. Still the entire subject matter is quite a bit spicier than what I expect to see on a CBS movie of the week, and it’s still lit with shocking skill. Stuart Gordon has his fingerprints all over this.

The plan is to breed Sara, to create a hybrid vampire… A race that could in fact, walk in the light. The club kid tries his best to seduce her, two woo her, but she’s not having any of it. Her father to, would not wish that life upon her. He  springs her, and spirits her away. The cult however, isn’t willing to relinquish their prey quite so easily, and reach out through their vengeance on her father.

It’s such a strange collection of actors and actresses, that in of itself makes the film feel eclectic. But the mixture of Stuart Gordon and television production values is another one of those things that really makes us curious oddity. It feels like exactly the sort of film that should’ve been a regular rental at Blockbuster, like the Patrick Stewart vehicle Safehouse, or the Curse of the Blair Witch. In many ways, Gordon infuses the fun that I usually find a full moon feature, perhaps with just a touch less lunacy in a bit more sterility. Moreover, he’s come up with a curious twist on the vampire. Indeed, Stuart Gordon has given us most unique creature designs I’ve ever seen for a vampire… completely out of left field  and way more creative than anything you expect from a TV movie. I almost wonder what this would be like if Gordon hadn’t given the option to do this as unrated or R rated. But honestly, I can’t see it making a huge amount of difference. The film stands on its own and acquits  itself well.

694

Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.

Every Wednesday and Friday

693

Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.

Every Wednesday and Friday

Paul Taylor

If anyone was going to replace Doug Bradley in Hellraiser, I’m glad it was paul Taylor – a true fan and great guy.

 

 

692

Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.

Every Wednesday and Friday

Gremlin

I’ll give Gremlin this… Monster within moments of the film starting, and it looks exactly like it does on the box. The gremlin is trapped in an ornate box that has an arcane timer on the top. The trick is you have to give it to somebody that you love before the timer runs out… And then they have to pass along as well. It’s a hot potato, and you don’t wanna be caught when it opens.

It’s made its way to a family that’s recently lost their son, and they don’t know about the older daughter is knocked up. They’re already going through a hard time… But things are about to get harder.

Grandma is the first to get it, and it turns out the thing doesn’t wanna go back to the box unless it’s killed somebody. Of course, when they try and pawn it off on the deadbeat boyfriend, he’s not someone I love… And the Gremlin expresses its displeasure by murdering the boyfriend right there. that still leaves the problem of how to get rid of it.

One by one the family dies, and the prophecy about what happens when the time reaches its final countdown is revealed… Bringing us to a fairly spectacular climax. All I see is the Cloverfield monster design seems very popular these days.
All, this is not bad. It, promotes a certain hopelessness and inevitability, and overall really makes you care about the characters and their fight. This one I’m definitely glad I found.

 

The Howling : Reborn (Part 8)

 

 

The Howling Franchise

Wasn’t the howling already reborn once?I mean, you can’t have Howling 8 “Reborn, when you just had Howling V Rebirth just three sequels ago!

Made in 2011, Howling 8 is a very different looking movie, young people, quick cuts, and desaturated film stock. We get typical High School bullying and an outcast named Will,  worried that after graduation everything will change – or worse, NOTHING will change.

“Fun science fact – what separates us from other animals? 2% of our DNA” – it’s a good line that stats to touch on the themes of the original movie, and well representative of the introspective nature you’re going to get throughout this entire thing.

Will gets chased by a werewolf in the sewers one night after a party, but it could just be the ecstasy talking. Still it gets him thinking about it. He’s not just worried about being food, but about what happens if you expose the secret of their existence.

Hey! There’s a scratch on his neck and he doesn’t need his glasses anymore (also the vegetarian wants meat – another nice callback to Christopher Stone in the original movie)! That bully about to pound him in the bathroom is in for a surprise. It’s all very Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, until the bully pulls a gun and then it’s Wolf POV time.

Will’s best friend is up on the lore and gives us the rules for this movie. You don’t necessarily need to be bitten, the wolf just needs to draw blood. Silver and fire will kill you and wounds instantly heal in a nice 21st century CG morph. Fortunately, the girlfriend is into it.

But now school is over, the building is locked down (It’s an awfully high tech lockdown for a crumbling old church-like building! this thing puts House on Haunted Hill to shame!) and the rest of the clan is coming for Will, and they’ll either bring him into the pack or destroy him. Of course they have to destroy the girlfriend first, right? It’s the wrong move and he flees with her instead. They head to the school lab to fashion weapons. The flame throwers Will makes remind me a lot of Mike’s from Phantasm 2.

Down in the basement, the werewolves have slaughtered everyone. Will father is there and killing him is to be Will initiation. He won’t d it, and decides to fight back – and now it’s finally time for some (brief)wolf action.

I actually really like these werewolves. Muscular and leathery – real Twilight influence. CGI and suits. But they are seen so briefly throughout the whole thing that it might be disappointing. For me though – I actually found the story and the personalities so compelling that I barely noticed the lack of wolves.

The ending sets itself up to be a homage to the original, and twists at the last moment – subverting expectations. It’s a good example of the surprisingly strong storytelling going on here. This is a genuinely good sequel, though not really enough to reignite the brand in the age of much more familiar werewolves in things like Twilight and Teen Wolf on MTV. Nevertheless, don’t overlook this one. Modern reboots get a bad rap, but this is one of the good ones.

Silent Night Deadly Night 4 : The Initiation

Clint Howard watching a flaming corpse fly off a roof? Now THAT’S how you start a movie! Between this, Reggie Bannister  and Allyce Beasley (the receptionist from Moonlighting), I have high hopes for this film. Seeing Brian Yuzna in the director’s chair is another good sign. The director of Return of the Living Dead 3 (arguably the most iconic of the series with it’s pierced heroine) and several of the Re-Animator films, this is a guy who gets how to make a solid, memorable piece of horror, especially a sequel. He also knows enough to hire someone like Screamin’ Mad George to sling latex and create horrific monster FX, not to mention bringing Full Moon alumni Richard Band along to do music.

We find ourselves in the bullpen of a newspaper with a classifieds clerk who wants to break in to reporting and thinks the jumper, being ruled a suicide, is her big break. She heads to the jump site where the chalk outline is still fresh and encounters Clint Howard – “Ricky”, as she browses books on spontaneous combustion. He’s a creepy homeless person who follows her to the roof as she checks out the ledge the victim jumped from. Cockroaches seem to follow her home – a problem that will escalate around the half hour mark with the most terrifying giant roach I’ve ever seen, a skull airbrushed into it back. It almost feels like our slasher series is morphing into a horror edged fantasy as our reporter drifts into nightmarish visions.

There’s nothing particularly Christmassy about this story of a young woman, being initiated into a coven of witches. No real connection to the rest of the Silent Night series either unless Clint Howard’s “Ricky” is meant to be Ricky Cauldwell, somehow still alive and now having grown some skin over that brain box from the last film. It’s possible. He almost hints at it during a scene where he watches the dream sequence from SNDN3 and answers “Santa Claus Killer” when asked who he is. He serves the witches and I suppose they could have magically shoved his brain down and generate some flesh to cover it.

In any event, the creepy FX are spectacular and the dreamlike confusion of the film give it a “Serpent and the Rainbow” kind of feel. It’s actually a really good film on it’s own, but feel like it should be it’s own thing and not a part of this franchise. That’s kind of ironic, because it may just be the single best film in this series.

691

Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.

Every Wednesday and Friday