Scars of Dracula (1970)

Title: Scars of Dracula (1970)

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Stars: Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanly, Patrick Throughton, Christopher Mathews

Review:

This is the fifth Dracula film from Hammer Studios starring Christopher Lee as Dracula, it comes to us from director Roy Ward Baker. To those of you who have not seen this flick or are just discovering Hammer films, go and search this one out; it’s a very enjoyable and creepy Dracula tale that will please fans of Dracula films and gore alike! Ive seen some of the best hammer Dracula films and I have seen some of the worst, and all I can say is that this one ranks way up there as a highly enjoyable Dracula story. Some critics and even Christopher Lee himself criticize this one for being a weak entry into the series. Me? I thought it was a kick ass vampire movie, old school style of course, but mega fun non the less. The only reason for it being called a “weak” entry is because it has more violence then other Hammer films. This in my opinion does not make it weak, if anything it made it a cooler film to watch. It made it more of a horror film.

On this film, the towns people are sick and tired of Count Dracula so they decide to takes matters into their own hands and burn down the bastards castle! So they hide all their sons and daughters and wives inside of the Church and run of to the castle to set it on fire! After they do this, Dracula gets infuriated and sends a bunch of his vampire bats to kill every last woman and child thats hiding in the church! Meanwhile, a young womanizer (and all around libertine) named Paul is escaping the local authorities for having his way with the burgomasters daughter. While escaping the local authorities, he ends up in Draculas castle; after that night, no one hears from him ever again. After his lengthy dissapearance, his brother Simon decides to go and look for him with his girlfriend Sarah. What they encounter is Count Dracula himself who of course first offers them his hospitality, then proceeds to try and suck their blood! Pretty soon, both Simon and Sara are running around Draculas labyrinthian castle looking for Paul and end up encountering the true nature of the Prince of Darkness himself!

 In Scars of Dracula we get reintroduced to Klove, a character that was also presented in Dracula: Prince of Darkness. He plays the role of Draculas day time protector. On this film Klove is a bit more like an animal, like a disfigured Hunchback of Notre Dame as opposed to how he is presented to us in Dracula Prince of Darkness, where he is just this regular dude who serves Dracula. On this film Klove brings a different twist to the story because he falls in love wih Sarah. So the issue on this movie is, will Klove be faithful to Dracula? Or will he faithful to his heart? Klove is Draculas servant, so on this one he is at war with his inner self because he' s also secretly obsessed with Sarah. So we have that whole will love conquer over evil thing going on with this one.

Its always a pleasure to see Christopher Lee play Dracula in these old Hammer films, no matter how reluctant he was to being typecast as the age old vampire, he always came back to the role that made him famous. On Scars of Dracula, the Prince of Darkness is a bit more evil than your usual Hammer Dracula film, and this is really one of the reasons why I like this one so much. On Scars of Dracula, the count is sadistic and violent! For example in one scene he uses daggers and swords to express his fury. Theres this really cool scene in which Dracula uses a burning hot sword to punish Klove with! All these touches simply make Dracula more evil for me, as opposed to how he was portrayed in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, where he just sends somebody to do his bidding, or other Hammer films where he is simply reduced to throwing furniture at his enemies, which is something I always thought was kind of dumb of these Hammer films. Hey, the good guys are following Dracula, what should he do? Oh yeah! Have him throw that candle stick at them! Or have him throw that chair! But not on Scars of Dracula! On this film Dracula is all about using weapons, which is something kind of different in these films. And theres also a wink at Vlad the Impaler for in one scene Dracula actually impales one of his adversaries.

Dracula is more of an Impaler on Scars of Dracula

Another thing that we get a lot of in this film is Dracula using his giant vampire bats to get to his enemies. Theres that scene where he sends a legion of bats to kill most of the towns people that are hiding from him inside of a church. And theres this one really cool scene in which Dracula is trying to bite Sarah but cant because she is wearing a crucifix! So Dracula sends one of his bats to rip the crucifix from her chest! Of course this also works as a way to focus on the actresses breasts, but such is the nature of these films. Dracula always goes for the hottest babes!

Theres more giant vampire bats on this Dracula film then on any other Hammer Dracula film!

These movies always tried to pay homage to Bram Stokers novel in one way or another. The films are never a direct adaptation of the book, but in between their story lines they will add moments that come directly out of Bram Stokers book. For example in Prince of Darkness, Dracula cuts his chest so that one of his victims can suck blood from it. That comes directly from the book. On this one, we get a scene in which we see Dracula crawling on the walls. This comes directly out of the Bramstokers novel, so I found it amusing. This was the first Dracula movie to show this! Another film that did this was John Badham's version of Dracula were Frank Langella does the scaling up the walls thing.

Dracula is more sadistic and violent on Scars of Dracula

After seeing this film, I see how other films have been inspired by it. For example, Draculas demise on Scars of Dracula, served as the the inspiration for Jerry Dandridges fiery death sequence in Tom Holland's 80's vampire film Fright Night (1985). Speaking of which, theres a scene in Fright Night where Charlie is watching TV and Scars of Dracula is playing on it! The scene we see is the one that I described earlier, with the giant vampire bat trying to take away a crucifix from Sarahs neck. It seems to me that theres a little bit of all these Hammer films in Fright Night.

This film comes to us from another one of Hammers best directors Roy Ward Baker, who was responsible for some of Hammers most unorthodox films. They always broke the mold somehow, Roy Ward Baker was very much in favor of breaking with that old Hammer formula of vampire films and made his films just a little bit different. On this one Dracula is more violent then other films. Roy Ward Bakers other Hammer films show that knack for breaking the mold: Vampire Lovers for example had lesbian vampires falling in love with each other! The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires has count Dracula move to China and take the form of a Chinese Monk! So he was always looking to do the most off beat films, and I have to tell you, Bakers films always ended being the most entertaining of the Hammer films. They had all the usual elements we could except from a Hammer film, but there was always something that set them apart.

Finally, I think that anyone fond of Dracula films, and specially Hammer films will find this film highly enjoyable, because of Christopher Lees evil performance, the films high level of atmosphere, the gothic sets and the high blood quotent. For a Hammer film anyways. Don’t go expecting a huge bloodbath, by todays standards its tame, but by Hammer films standards up to that time, its got lots of the red stuff. Expect a fun ride into gothic atmospheric horror.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5

Paranormal Activity (2009)

Title: Paranormal Activity (2009)

Director: Oren Peli


Review:

So every once in a while an indie movie comes along that gets people talking all about how it was made for so little and how good it is. Blair Witch Project (1999) generated this kind of buzz when it first came out and it got peoples attention so much that it quickly became one of the most successful independent movies ever made. In my book, Blair Witch Project succeeded because it managed to get people freaked, without actually showing them the freaking witch! That film effecitvely played with audiences minds, without actually showing anyone anything, it's in that sense a very suggestive film, it simply suggest that something really awful is just behind that door, or in your bed. The exact same thing happened a while back with an independent film called Open Water (2004) though, to be honest,  I have to say I wasn’t too impressed with that one, I actually felt cheated. But such is the nature of the ultra low budget film. Sometimes they are magic, sometimes they are not. Now here comes Paranormal Activity, another ultra indie, made with very little money. Is it a good indie horror film? Or will you feel cheated after watching it?

Story concerns a young couple named Micah and Katie. Katie says that she has been haunted by an entity since she was 8 years old and that it still haunts her and does things to bother her. Micah is the incurable skeptic, he wants to tape every second of Katie’s life to see if he can capture any of these supernatural events on film. In reality, he thinks that nothing is going to happen, he just wants to help his girlfriend get over the whole thing. But slowly and surely supernatural events begin to take place, until well, it’s a full blown supernatural attack!

So the story behind this movie is that the director, one Oren Peli, made this film way back in 2007 with only fifteen thousand dollars. He shopped it around to a couple of distributors hoping that some producer  would notice the film and buy it. For a while, nothing happened. But then the film fell on Steven Spielberg’s lap, and he loved it. Spielberg states that when he saw Paranormal Activity, he thought it was really haunted because after watching it, the doors in his room locked by themselves and he couldn’t get out until he called a locksmith. Publicity stunt on Spielbergs part? Either way, the film ended up in theaters and here it is, finally, in 2009. Halloween. How was the movie?

Well, I gotta tell you, I went into the theater with very low expectations. I had read reviews everywhere, and everyone was hailing it as this fantastically scary movie that was going to blow my mind. So I of course, took precautions and went in with really low expectations. I decided I was not gonna let other peoples ideas of the film get in the way of how I saw it. I wanted to see if the movie could grab me on its own, and possibly scare me? So, it started, and low and behold, when supernatural events begin to occur, I found myself saying “holy shit!” quite a few times. Which is something I do when something kind of impacts me in a film. The “holy shit!” factor went to about 10 by the time the movie was over; yes my friends, this movie actually managed to spook me. And check this out, I don’t even believe in ghosts or demons! I’m a complete non believer! Yet the movie told its story so well, that it managed to spook the hell out of me.

That’s how you know if a movie is good or not! What worked so well in this film? Well, of course what helps it a lot is the way it was shot. Director Oren Peli decided to use hand held video cameras to shoot the thing. Which was a fantastic idea, because suddenly, everything feels that much more real. Thing with movies shot on video cameras is that they feel like something you and I could have shot ourselves. Like a family home video. It just brings it closer to home. You can identify more with it. Now, I know that this hand held shaky cam thing has been abused to death in many films recently, and it can get annoying at times, testing the limits of your stomach. But I have to say that I was glad that this movie did not abuse the hand held effect. More often then not, the camera is simply placed on a tripod or on a table as the events unfold in front of it. So Im happy to say that the film is not the kind that will make you sick to the stomach because of the shaky cam effect.

As for the performances, the two new comers, Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston (the actors real names by the way) have a great chemistry together. The film benefits from having very realistic dialog. The actors were simply given an outline to follow and they were allowed to improvise most of the film which gives the dialog a more believable flow. We all hate that fake sounding scripted dialog, thankfully, this is nowhere to be seen in this movie. Micah and Katie feel like your regular young couple, they are not these ultra hot Hollywood model types. Nope, they are regular folk like you and me. Katie might be hot, but she is so in a very natural way. So you can rest easy knowing you are not gonna see bogus performances just because the film was made with so little money.

As for the scare factor, I gotta tell ya, if you believe in demons, spirits, the supernatural or anything related to the ideas of paranormal activity, then this movie will scare your pants off. I can tell you this because I used to be a religious person, and I believed there were invisible entities peering at me from "the great beyond". I used to think that an invisible force would grab me by the feet at night as I slept and all that. And I can tell you, this movie plays with all these ideas, and it does it so well that it spooked even this jaded non believer! It takes all those fears you have about Ouija boards and demons and hearing voices in the middle of the night and feeling that slight cold breeze run past by you and brings them to cinematic reality. It will play with your mind!

This film is getting compared a lot to Blair Witch Project, and though there are some technical similarities that have to do with the way both films were made, they are ultimately very different in execution because where Blair Witch Project showed you nothing, this one does. You will see supernatural events unfold before your very eyes, what makes them scary is that they play with the idea of this supernatural events happening within the comfort of your bedroom! As you sleep! What I loved most about this film is that it manages to tell this supernatural themed film without the aid of any cgi or computer generated effects like the CGI demons in the god awful excuse for a horror film Drag Me To Hell. Paranormal Activity also has a lot in common with The Amytiville Horror (1979). Same as that film, this one is about a couple moving into a house, and supernatural events begin to upset them, disrupting their peace. They have an expert on the supernatural visit them, its all very similar, only thing is that Paranormal Activity doesnt go into cheesy territory the way The Amytiville Horror did at times. The film did have one inside joke that some horror fans might pick up on. At one point, when a supernatural event occurs, it happens at 3:15, the exact same time that supernatural events occured in The Amytiville Horror. So I guess that right there is an indication of just what film Oren Peli was most influenced by.

So in conclusion, yeah, it will scare you, even more so if you believe in the supernatural. Go see it, it’s a great scary film. And a testament to the fact that you don’t need gazillions of dollars to make an entertaining and gripping film.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Title: Night of the Creeps (1986)

Director: Fred Dekker

Cast: Tom Atkins, Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow

Review:

Sometimes movies completely bleep out of the radar, disappear, cease to exist. This usually happens with really cheap sci-fi/horror movies that studios figure nobody cares about. Sometimes its films that were such box office bombs that the studio simply wants to forget about ‘em. But sometimes the public will claim for a long lost movie to re-emerge and re-emerge they do thanks to the good will of a distribution company who'll give a crap about these old movies and decides to rescue them from obscurity. I'm talking about companies like Anchor Bay, Synapse Films and Blue Underground, these companies thrive on pleasing horror/sci-fi fans by re-releasing these films on various formats. Even with companies such as these, Night of the Creeps was nowhere to be seen. But wait! Finally somebody out there heard audience’s cries (thanks Sony!) and released this long awaited gem from the 80's! Get ready, because this my friends is one of the best zombie films of the 80's!  

Storyline on this film is a complete homage to science fiction and horror films from many eras; it's as much a homage to 50's science fiction films as it is a homage to zombie movies from the 80's. But what you need to know is this: a meteor containing a deadly alien life form crash lands in the woods! A curious teenager ends up as a host to one of the alien beings! They begin to reproduce in his brain…until his body is found and cryogenically frozen. Fast forward 30 years and the body is unfrozen by a pair of teenagers trying to get into a college fraternity! The alien slugs escape and spread all through out college campus! Will Detective Cameron find a way to stop the alien slugs before they eat every football jock and cheerleader on campus?

I never got why audiences didn’t connect with this movie; Night of the Creeps had all the right elements to become a hit in theaters yet it didn’t; it died a quick and quiet death in theaters. Many members of the crew and cast agree, the film just wasn’t marketed properly. Apparently, the studio didn’t know who to sell Night of the Creeps too, since the film is a mish mash of genres, they couldn't pin point the proverbial target audience. Same thing happened to John Carpenters Big Trouble in Little China (1986), the studio didn’t know how to sell Jack Burton to people, as a result a fine film like Big Trouble in Little China tanked at the box office. Same thing happened to Night of the Creeps and consequently, same thing happened to Dekker’s second film, Monster Squad (1987), it seems as if Dekker specialized in making films that were a hard sell. But there’s one thing all these fine movies have in common: maybe Hollywood didn’t know how to sell ‘em to us, but we found the movie anyway and made it our own!



Night of the Creeps has so many cool things going for it, many elements make it an enjoyable watch. First off, it has this whole background with the alien experiment, the slugs that get released onto our world by an evil zombie midget alien/scientist. Yup, you read that correctly! So we got the science fiction angle there which is fun, especially considering the aliens are midgets! I mean little people.

Then, the movie shifts into a 50's horror film when we are introduced to this couple sitting in their car, enjoying the beauty of a quiet star filled evening. Suddenly a meteorite falls from the heavens! The teens investigate, but wait; theres an axe wielding maniac on the loose as well! Then the film turns into an 80's teen flick and now we  follow a pair of horny teenagers looking to get some action. How do we know this is an 80's teen flick? Well, the film uses that classic 80's plot device where the teens who want to enter a fraternity have to pull off some sort of prank to get accepted. Then it turns into a zombie flick along the lines of Return of the Living Dead (1985), when we enter a facility that conducts secret science experiments involving the dead. But wait, its also a mystery, and so the film suddenly feels like a film noir as we follow a detective slowly uncovering everything! On top of this, we’re on a college campus with cheerleaders and football jocks running around drunk, looking for their next hot date. As you can see, Night of the Creeps is entertaining because it mixes so many different genres, it keeps things fun.

Tom Atkins has to be mentioned as something special in this film because he truly is. He is the epitome of what a bad ass 40 something detective should be like. He’s always the smart ass, the guy who knows the answers to everything. Don't ask him a stupid question, because you'll get stupid answer! His character has so many quotable one liners here, but amongst my favorite is of course, the ever popular “Thrill Me!” or there’s the other one: “I got good news and bad news. Good news is your boyfriends are here, bad news is their dead!” Jason Lively, whom some of you might remember as Rustty Griswald in National Lampoons European Vacation (1985) plays a pivotal role here as the nerdy leading guy, again, the film plays with our expectations of a film, this time its the nerd who is the hero. Steve Marshall plays the wise ass handicapped best friend. And Jill Whitlows plays the hot yet innocent looking, quintesential 80s cutey!

The cheesy dialog and sci-fi angle might not sit well with some folks, but if you can’t take the midget aliens in the first five minutes of the movie, then what are you doing watching this movie anyways right? But if you love monsters, aliens, zombies, cool make up effects, flame throwers, exploding heads, sorority babes getting undressed, zombie dogs, zombie boyfriends, alien slugs, cemeteries, and corpses sleeping in cryogenic laboratories, then look no further, this movie is for you! 

The DVD has some really great extras. The film included in the DVD has the alternate ending, so you get to finally see that alien spaceship hovering above the graveyards, looking for that lost canister of slugs! The original theatrical ending is available separately on the DVD as a deleted scene. That’s the ending with the slug coming out of that dog’s mouth and flying at the audience. It’s got interviews with everyone, Tom Atkins, Jason Lively, Steve Marshall and Jill Whitlow. Its got extensive interviews with Fred Dekker the films director, you can see the guy really loved his film, and he really did put his all into  making it as awesome as he could. Don’t worry Mr. Dekker, your film rocks! I hope Dekker does finally get to make another film, and that he puts as much effort and cram it with cool stuff and love for the genre as he did with Night of the Creeps. Mr. Fred Dekker, this film connoisseur salutes you!

Rating: 4 out of  5

 

Orphan (2009)

Title: Orphan (2009)

Director: Jaume Collet Serra

Cast: Peter Saarsgard, Vera Ann Farmiga

Review:

The thing with horror movies these days is that so many crappy ones are made. Can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’m watching a horror film and I simply roll my eyes back in disappointment. It’s become a rare occasion when a horror film that is actually good comes along. But when they do, I relish them like a plate of caviar. This is how I felt while watching Orphan, finally a good horror movie amongst all the crap!

Orphan tells the tale of a family who has just recently suffered through a miscarriage and therefore lost what was to be their third child. So they decide that the right thing to do is adopt a child, and give that adopted child all the love they were going to give to the child they lost. The child they end up adopting is nine year old Esther. Esther is artistic, intelligent, well mannered and educated. What’s not to like about this little girl?

So evil little kid movies have been around as far back as films like Village of the Damned, Children of the Damned and The Bad Seed. Films like The Omen, Wicked Little Things, Joshua and The Good Son can be added to this list as well. These are films in which the main star is a child with all the evil capabilities that an adult might have. Orphan is this kind of film, but it has more in common with The Good Son, in which Macaulay Culkin plays the evil kid, and Elijah plays the good one. The element that makes these movies work so well is how they show us a little kid, whom we normally associate with innocence, purity and goodness being 100% pure concentrated evil! It’s not a new concept, but when its done well, it works wonders for a horror movie. Orphan ended up being one of my favorite evil little kid movies ever made.

Many elements make this one work. Number one: its got a great cast. Whatever film Peter Saarsgard is in, he makes that much better. I still have not been disappointed by Saarsgard and though his involvement in this film is not a career defining for him, he did a good job in portraying the naïve and good hearted husband. Vera Ann Farmiga, the actress who plays his wife does a great job of playing the depressed mom, looking for a way to fill the void left by her unborn baby. But the real star of the show is Isabelle Fuhrman, the actress who plays the adopted daughter, Esther. Now here is a career making performance! You will end up hating Esther, she has no moral code, no ethics, she has an agenda, and she’s willing to go all the way to make it happen. She’s an expert manipulating people, and emotions. Price of admission is worth it just to see her performance. Shes a young actress who was totally commited to making this a special role, even going as far as speaking in a Russian accent cause her character has a Russian background. She reminds me of that child actress that appeared in Terry Gilliams Tideland. Totally inmersed in her character, she gave a performance that might have well been given by an adult or an accomplished actor. Isabelle Fuhrman goes from a sweet and kind of weird little girl, to completely demented and psychotic bitch from hell! It’s an amazing transformation, and extremely believable. Her performance was one of the best surprises about this film.

What other things make this one a special one? Well, the amazing direction. The story is told in a very classy fashion. This is a rich family, they live in an amazing home, she’s a teacher, he’s an architect, so they live in this beautiful home in the middle of the woods to which they welcome Esther into. The family dynamics were very well achieved from the casts side, but also, the script made the situations interesting and different. The couple have two other kids, one of them is this sweet little girl who is hearing impaired. She’s just the sweetest little girl whom you’ll quickly fall in love with. She plays the kind of character you want nothing evil to happen to. Esther comes to disrupt this families peace. Gotta give props to the writers and the director for making everything believable, the family doesn’t feel like a generic badly written family unit.

From a visual angle, the film is amazing as well. The director, a Spanish guy named Jaume Collet Serra known for having directed the House of Wax remake (which wasnt that bad in my book) does an outstanding job of making the film visually interesting. They guy chooses the most unorthodox angles, great editing, and fills the movie with atmospheric, dark and isolated moments that add a real feeling of dread to the whole thing. There’s shots of the exterior of the house that make you feel like your in the middle of nowhere, the wind blowing, shots of lonely snowy hills. One of the most interesting elements of the film comes from the fact that Esther is an artist, and she loves doing these weird child like paintings. But then there’s another level to her art which you discover further on in the film that’s just so interesting visually. Kudos to this director for making the movie interesting from all angles, performance, story wise, and visually.

The thing with this movie is that it received a lot criticism because it portrays orphans as being evil. This is the part of the review where I get pissed off. There’s a group of super conservative reviewers out there, who work for these high and fancy magazines and newspapers that just loves to bash a movie whenever its “morally objectionable”. Whatever film comes along that portrays something in what they consider to be morally incorrect fashion, then no matter how good the film may be, they simply write it off as crap, as garbage. People read these reviews, and the movie tanks at the box office. Not because it was a bad film, but because a group of conservative self righteous idiots think the film might affect society in a negative way. And sadly, this is what some of these reviewers were saying about this movie. That it was trash, clicheish and whatever. These are the same folks who bashed Silent Night Deadly Night, an excellent slasher that came out in 1984 portraying a young man dressed in a Santa Claus suit killing people with an axe on Christmas Eve. Just because this film messed with the image of the cash cow known as Santa Clause, they bad mouthed it, no matter how good a slasher that film was. And is. Silent Night Deadly Night is an excellent slasher film, highly recommend you give that one a look see if you haven’t already.

So Orphan was destroyed by some critics because of this. So much so that before the film starts on the DVD, they put this commercial that lets you know that the orphans that appear in the film are fictional and that there are real Orphan children out there waiting for you to welcome them into your home. Really? As if watching a movie (a fictional tale) was going to change how I think about orphans. Please. Come on people. This is a movie. I know real life orphans are not as evil and vile as Esther is in the movie. But no, some idiots out there were actually worried that this movie might change peoples out look on Orphans and that as a result, people were not going to adopt a kid. Please, come on, give me a little more credit. I recognize the power of film, and I recognize that yes, it can change your outlook on certain aspects of life, and think about things you might not have thought of otherwise, but come on, we all know this is a horror film, and its just trying to scare us. Do you think I’m not going to go to a hotel after seeing The Shinning? No. Because I know it’s a freaking movie! I can tell the difference between fiction and reality, and so can the grand majority of you out there. But no, some reviewers saw this film plot as wrong, so the movie got bad reviews. As a result of these bad reviews, not many people went to see this excellent film in theaters, and boy, did they miss out on a truly excellent film!

But hey, now the film is out on DVD. And it’s ready to be discovered by everyone. So trust me, this movie is excellent, it wont make you hate Orphans in general. Just the particular fictional Orphan who appears in the film. Movie is a great suspense filled flick all around. An excellent film in every way. It takes many unexpected turns, and is genuinely spooky at times. Hope you guys don’t miss out on what is one of the best horror films to come out in a long time. Its edgy, risky, ballsy and dares to shock you like not many films dare nowadays. I hold Orphan in as high regard as I did Inside, another excellent recent horror film.

Rating: 5 out of 5