Celebrating Dracula, Part One

In May of 1897, Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" was first published. It went on to popularize vampires and become one of the most adapted books ever. Counting the numerous spin-offs, Dracula may well be the most written-about figure in all of pop culture.

This is the first in a series of posts presenting artist visions of the King of Vampires. This week's selection are all interpretations of Dracula as viewed through the editorial lens of Marvel Comics.

By Russ Heath

By Dick Giordano

By Gene Colan

By Bob Hall

'Submerged' shouldn't have been allowed to rise

Submerged (2005)
Starring: Steven Seagal and Christine Adams
Director: Anthony Hickox
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Commander Cody (Seagal) and his misfit Special Forces submarine crew are released from a Navy brig so they can assault the stronghold of an international criminal who has somehow managed to assassinate a U.S. ambassador. Treachery is piled upon treachery, and Cody and his crew find themselves fighting against a foe who can turn even the firmest friend into an enemy through a flawless brainwashing technique.

There are some movies that are just plain bad, and "Submerged" is one of them. It's got a nonsensical script that is so badly paced and so flimsy in its motivations that it manages to sap even unintentional humor from the notion of a collection of action movie stock characters who conduct secret missions that rely on stealing submarines to be successfully concluded. The most remarkable thing about the movie is how pathetic the submarine sets are, given how central the submarine is to the first half of the movie (which, by the way, has virtually nothing to do with the second half). I would very much like to have the hour-and-a-half I wasted on thismovie back.

On the other hand, I should have realized that any film we're expected to take seriously by writers with so little self-respect and producers and directors so dumb that they'd let the main character be named Commander Cody couldn't possibly be any good. It's too bad really. There was a time when Seagal starred in fun cheesy movies instead of awful ones.

Featuring the craziest pre-1960s femme fatale?

Night Editor (1946)
Starring: William Gargan, Paul E. Burns, Janis Carter, Frank Wilcox, and Jeff Donnell
Director: Henry Levin
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A homicide detective (Gargan) having an affair with a thrill-seeking married wealthy woman (Carter) witnesses a murder during one of their trysts. Even though he can identify and arrest the killer (Wilcox), he can't do so without causing a scandal, destroying his family and ruining his career. Will a good cop who made a bad call do the right thing, or go further down the path of corruption?

This is the stuff good 1940s film noirs and crime dramas are made of, and this is pretty good crime drama. Part proto-police procedural, part film noir, part melodrama, this film is fun! It gets really exciting when classism enters the picture, and the psycho dame the cop is fooling around with decides to choose between "her kind" and doing the right thing when the cop's conscience really starts bothering him. It's a nice twist that comes at just the right moment to kick the film's suspense level up even higher.

While the high quality of the film--with its perfect pacing, appropriately moody lighting, superior cinematography, and a cast that gives excellent performances all around--is to be expected from a major studio like Columbia, the film offers the surprise of what is perhaps the most sociopathic/borderline psychopathic femme fatale I recall seeing in a Hollywood movie made before the 1960s. From her demand to see the body of the murder victim to the icepick action late in the film, I was surprised by just how nasty she was. She makes the crazy scheming women of "Strange Woman" and "Lady From Shanghai" look like they should be selling Girl Scout cookies. While Janis Carter made a career out of playing characters like this, this is the most twisted character I've ever seen her play, and I wonder if this extreme character could be a reason the film sank from view after its initial release.

The only serious complaint I have with "Night Editor" is that they filmmakers, aside from the cars being driven, didn't make even a halfhearted attempt to match the look of the characters to the late 1920s time-frame the bulk of it takes place in. Would it really have been that hard for a major operation like Columbia to adjust the hairstyles of the women and get proper wardrobe for the entire cast instead of having everyone in contemporary mid-1940s styles?

A smaller complaint is that the film's resolution is ultimately predictable (doubly-so if you pay close attention to the exchanges that take place in the newsroom as the story unfolds). However, getting there is so much fun that it doesn't really matter.

Fans of film noir pictures, classic mysteries, and the type of crime dramas where the hero has to work backwards to prove the guilt of a murderer he has already identified will find plenty of entertainment here. This is one of the many movies that could do with a little more recognition from us film-fans.




Trivia: "Night Editor" was a popular radio anthology series where the editor of title would relate the "unreported facts" of some news item. It later became a television series.

Everything's better with Mike Oldfield!

Okay, so maybe the title of this post is a slight exageration, but if this remix of Christina Aguilera's "Not Myself Tonight", which crosses that song with Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" that been the actual single, maybe it would have been a Top Ten hit somewhere other than Japan and South Korea.

Christina Aguilera vs. Mike Oldfield via DJs From Mars... "Not My Tubular Bells Tonight"!

Mike Oldfield's Crime of Passion

I'm not aware of this song ever being released on an album, but I remember hearing it in music stores as a kid and seeing the video and thinking it was supremely creepy. I still feel that way about it. (The singer is Barry Palmer, the psychotic guitar player is Mike Oldfield.)




As a pleasant time-wasting activity to celebrate my birthday, I decided to go looking for different versions of Oldfield's masterful song. I found this neat acoustic cover that stays true to the mood of the original (but isn't quite as creepy).



Here's a cover by an outfit named Bramble B. It's not a bad cover, but it leaves one with a feeling that there might be a way to improve upon greatness. (I also wonder if they really got the song, given what they added to it.)



Yeah... two Mike Oldfield-related posts in one day, but he's one of my favorite composers/musicians, and it's my birthday! Please forgive me while I am even more self-indulgent than usual; SOMEONE'S got to celebrate me by celebrating stuff I like! Heck, maybe I'll do a few MORE Oldfield posts today... :)

Princesses of Mars, Part Eight

Dejah Thoris and other Martian Princesses are hanging out at my house, celebrating my birthday! (Okay, so it's just my cats and I. But a guy can dream, can't he?)

By Bruce Timm

By Randy Green

By Mitch Foust

By Paul Renauld

In all seriousness, I'm getting together with friends. But Martian Princesses would be welcomed at the table if they chose to show up!

Saturday Scream Queen: Cheyenne King

Actress and dancer Cheyenne King made her film debut in the independently produced action/horror flick "Fist of the Vampire". She went onto star in three other indie horror movies, including the just-released "Wendigo: Bound by Blood", as well as the recently completed comedy "Scamalot".

King is a Native American of Ojibwe heritage and she is very active in that community.

'Bound by Blood: Wendigo' is a packed chiller

Bound By Blood: Wendigo (2011)
Starring: Brian Anthony, Cheyenne King, Leon South, and Bob Dobiesz
Director: Len Kabasinski
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

In the dead of winter, a small town sheriff (Anthony) and a doctor (King) face off against a band of ruthless assassins hunting a Federally-protected witness and the body-hopping, cannibal spirit known as Wendigo.

This is one of those movies that was much cooler in concept than execution. I absolutely love the set-up and the way the movie unfolds with three story lines--the Wendigo spirit cutting gory swath through the back country, the mysterious assassins honing in on their target, and the sheriff who you just know is in for the worst day of his life when he inevitably gets caught in the middle of several situations he can't even begin to understand. Or, rather, never gets a chance to understand, because the bullets are flying and the bodies are dropping too fast.

The biggest problem with the film is that here's simply too much going on. There are too many characters up to too many things at any given time. While Kabasinski is skilled enough as a writer and director to keep all these balls moving through the air in a steady and orderly fashion, he has to move back and forth between the sheriff and the doctor, the wendigo claiming victims, the FBI protection detail, and the hit team, with such frequency that the viewers never really get invested with one set of characters or another. The end result is not one that builds suspense but rather one that builds impatience. We don't care more for one set of characters than the other, so all we want is for the film to reach the three-way confrontation it's promising.

That's not to say this is boring movie. Kabasinski gives us plenty of action and gore as the film unfolds, and he generally keeps things moving at a fast pace. The only boring bit happens right at the beginning, in the pre-opening credits sequence. While I appreciate the need to set up the presence of the Wendigo spirit, that sequence could have been done in half the time and it would have freed up a few minutes later for some more time with the lead characters--the sheriff and the doctor portrayed by Brian Anthony and Cheyenne King respectively--or perhaps with the most interesting secondary character--the leader of the hit team portrayed by the director himself under the stage name Leon South.

This is the third film I've seen by Len Kabasinski, and it's the third one I've enjoyed. As harsh as my review of Kabasinski's "Curse of the Wolf" was, I still found it entertaining and with plenty of merit. He showed improvement as a filmmaker with his second movie, "Fist of the Vampire", fixing most of the flaws I complained about previously and showing improvement in just about every technical area. That development as a filmmaker for Kabasinski continues with this film.

With "Bound By Blood", Kabasinski continues to marry the action genre with the horror genre, but he has become far more adept in staging and filming the martial arts fight scenes. Camera placement is such now that viewers have the illusion that punches and kicks are being thrown and actually hitting home. The use of sound design to further the illusion has also improved over previous efforts. The only problem with the fight scenes is that choreography continues to feel under-rehearsed; with a little more practice time, perhaps the fights could be a little faster paced and the use of editing to conceal the fact they're not continuous could be reduced? I understand, though, that this might not be possible due to the budget constraints that Kabasinski operates under.

Kabasinski also once again deploys CGI effects with great skill through the picture, moreso than in his previous ones. Once again, it's mostly muzzle-flashes and bullet impacts, but it's done very effectively. He tripped up a bit when he decided to use CGI for a gore effect involving a character being shot in the head, but I've seen worse in movies with bigger budgets, so I can forgive him that one excess.

"Wendigo" is not a perfect film, but it's pretty good. I hope that Kabasinski eventually finds a backer who can give him enough time and money to make a movie that's closer to perfect, because I think he has the potential to create a kick-ass action/horror hybrid film.

Regardless, I'll be looking forward to his next movie with great anticipation.




"Wendigo: Bound By Blood" debuted on DVD from Midnight Releasing on May 3. My thanks to Maxim Media for providing me with a preview copy.

'From Dusk Till Dawn' is one of Tarantino & Rodriguez's best

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Starring: George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Quentin Tarantino, Ernest Liu, Salma Hayek, Tom Savini, Fred Williamson, and Cheech Marin
Directors: Robert Rodriguez
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Professional criminals Seth Gecko (Clooney) and Richard Gecko (Tarantino) take a family hostage (including Keitel, Lewis, and Liu) and flee to Mexico following a robbery gone bad. Here, they take temporary refuge in an isolated strip club until they can meet up with their contact. But the club harbors are dark secret, and the Gecko Brothers and their hostages must work together if they are to survive the night.

There are a rare few movies that take as sharp, surprising, and, frankly, genre-hopping plot turns as "From Dusk Till Dawn" and not lose control and explode into a fiery wreckage. Even fewer do it as effectively as is done here, as, for the most part, they have no re-watch value, because the main point of the film is the sudden change in plot direction and once you've experienced it, there's no reason to go back.

But "From Dusk Till Dawn" is so jam-packed with action and grim humor that it's worth coming back to every few years; you will either find something in it that you missed the first time around, or there is simply so much going on that you only remembered the highlights.

The film succeeds first and foremost because of its strong script. Quentin Tarantino's writing has never been as good as it is here... maybe he should try writing a few more linear screenplays every now and then so he can focus on character and dialogue instead of trying to be clever. Nothing he has written before or since has so many funny lines and really well done black humor; like some of the best moments in "Pulp Fiction", you will find yourself laughing so hard you'll tear up, even if you know you shouldn't be laughing at the gory, nasty action unfolding before you.

Secondly, the direction from Robert Rodriquez is rock solid at every stage of the film's unpredictable course from the opening to closing credits. The first half is a tense, border-line psychological thriller about violent killers on the edge and innocent victims trapped in their grasp. The acting is solid and the cinematic approach is intimate in the way scenes are filmed. We can feel the emotional and physical threats that the various characters pose to one another, and we know that whatever will unfold in the hijacked RV, it's not going to end well.

But there's no way we can predict exactly how badly and strangely things are going to end, because the first half of the movie gives no hint whatsoever what is to come...

And Rodriquez not only manages the transition from thriller to gory and over-the-top violent horror movie monster fest, but he does so with such efficiency and style that the viewers are startled and surprised by the sudden genre change, but we are not confused or put off by it. We all have a "what the hell just happened?!" moment, but Rodriguez is in such tight control of his movie that even as the story explodes into complete and utter mayhem, he never loses our attention for a moment. In fact, the shock only pulls us tighter in. And, of course, his control is bolstered by the exceptionally well-crafted script from Tarantino.

Finally, there is the acting. Every performer in this film may be portraying stereotypical characters, but they do it with great conviction and zest. Every actor in the film brought their A-game to the shoot, and every character seems fully alive on the screen. Clooney is fantastic as the handsome but dangerous hood with a (small) heart; Tarantino is great as the whiny but crazy hood; Lewis rocks as the rebellious teenager who doesn't comprehend the danger she's in; and Keitel excels as the concerned and deeply religious father who just wants to get himself and his kids out of the situation alive. (Keitel is perhaps gives the most admirable performance of all, because it is unlike almost everything else I've seen him do.}

The supporting cast is equally superb in their performances, with Salma Hayek leading the pack as the strip club's main attraction--a stripper whose act involves a boa snake and other twisted elements--as she manages to be very sexy and very menacing, at the same time on occasion. Tom Savini, Fred Williamson, and Danny Trejo stand out as a pair of outlaw bikers that join the Geckos in their desperate attempt to survive the night, while B-movie mainstays Cheech Marin and John Saxon also appear in small but memorable roles, due to their good performances.

"From Dusk Till Dawn" is a film that succeeds on every level. If you have a taste for trashy entertainment and don't mind gore, it's a film that you absolutely must see. (And if you're reading these words and haven't seen it yet, you shouldn't waste another minute. Rent or buy it NOW!)

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Happy Almost-Cinco de Mayo!

May your celebrations tomorrow be filled with beverages and bull fights!