Retro
Just Vamps 2024!
by
Kristin Battestella
It's
been awhile since I did some dedicated vampire viewing! Here's a trio
of toothy throwbacks varying in their vampire success.
Pale
Blood
– It's 1990 and our thoroughly modern vampire traveling with a
fold-out portable coffin hires a Los Angeles detective agency to
solve a series of gruesome copycat crimes in this Hong Kong direct to
video production that shows it's age with a flat print, poor sound,
and far too many hustle and bustle traffic transitions. Voiceovers
that won't make sense until the end, airport minutia, anonymous
driving, logistical exposition, and then more driving make for a very
slow start. Punk music at the club is edgy with tense, electronic
seedy to set the mood, but the music montage vignettes serve no
purpose – save for a nonchalant Sybil Danning (The Howling II)
as a blink and you miss her pedestrian. Berets, brooches, boxy coats,
vintage cars, and a mod vampire condo provide cool nostalgia while
blue nighttime lighting, red spotlights, and neon signs pepper steamy
scenes. Sensationalist news crews report on the dead body at the
boutique, but our ingenue detective has Nosferatu
clips
and knows all the vampire lore. The clever deduction is well done
with debates on the puncture marks and questions why a vampire
wouldn't just take enough blood rather than unnecessarily kill. Where
does the blood go if he's not drinking it? What do
you do
if the killer is
a vampire and you actually
catch him? Our cruising vampire needs no pick up lines – getting
right to the strobe in the bedroom, colorful pink titillation, bitten
boobs, and overhead revelry. Shadows and silhouettes accent violent
flashes of the bloody crimes as the splatter and psychic visions
escalate. Everyone in the club watching who might be the vampire when
they each have a different piece of the puzzle creates tension. The
enthralled dame loves his hypnotic eyes, but he doesn't want her to
fall in love with him and uses an eerie echoing voice to make her
forget him. However, our photographer repeatedly demands his models
touch an egg during a suggestive shoot, luring hookers who need the
money into sessions they don't want to do. Toxic masculinity abounds
as the women are bitten, manhandled, and harassed before being
strapped to the table with bloody tubes, sinks, and drains. Locked up
vampires able to poof out and levitate make little sense before a one
on one fight hampered by obvious cut corners filming. The style grows
stagnant in last half hour with dated cheapness, and the silly twists
run out of steam. Fortunately, the revelations are surprisingly smart
with a bemusing finale comeuppance. This is an entertaining midnight
movie – for the erroneous hokey as well as for the ambiance it gets
right.
The
Reflecting Skin
– Viggo Mortensen contends with a would-be vampire in rural 1950s
America for this 1990 British/Canadian co-production from writer and
director Philip Ridley (also of The Passion of Darkly Noon with
Mortensen). However the lovely golden fields and patriotic flag
waving aren't what they seem thanks to the bittersweet score, youths
tormenting frogs, and bloody pranks against kooky widow Lindsay
Duncan (Rome).
Unique, innocent names like Dolphin Blue and Seth Dove contrast
debates on killing reptiles and if the dead are angels in heaven or
in a coffin being eaten by worms. Seth's father reads a book about
vampires that suck the life out of you while his mother obsessively
cleans in hope that soldier son Viggo's return will make their
downtrodden life better. She also makes Seth drink too much water
until he pees his pants, and metaphors about drinking blood,
dehydration, and thirst accent the creepy farmhouse with old whaling
artifacts. It's actually funny how our imaginative boy with nothing
to do jumps to the conclusion that the widow is a vampire. She gives
Seth a freaky old harpoon and recounts how her husband hung himself
and took all the sunshine out of her life. Of course, from a child's
perspective, grief making a woman feel 200 years old is taken
literally rather than as sad and lonely. When another youth goes
missing, the hysterical blame scapegoats and social outcasts as the
repressed isolation is passed between weird twins and screaming kids.
The cartoonish sheriff advertises our dad's gay encounters because
surely
he must
be the pervert responsible for the dead body in the well, and mom
slaps her husband around for having to live down his gossip. Serving
was the only way for Viggo's Cameron to get away from the fiery
destruction and shrewdly layered symbolism on the repression about to
burst, and he doesn't appear until forty minutes into the film. Their
home is ugly and smaller now and he admonishes young Seth that he is
not a hero thanks to his guilt over the atom bomb. Upon discovering a
calcified dead fetus, Seth talks to it and keeps it under his bed
like a doll. It's both silly and worrisome when he makes a cross and
spies on his brother, not understanding the sadness at the cemetery
nor his intrusion upon Cameron's flirting with Dolphin. Seth's lack
of comprehension grows while his empathy diminishes; he mistakes
Cameron's radiation symptoms as the vampire's doing when the naked
man lies as the babe in her arms. Disturbing abductions and lies
happen in the picturesque daylight, and there's no one to blame but
ourselves once mentally unstable youth become little monsters filled
with secrets and sin. Once his brother intends to leave with his lady
love, Seth won't be left behind with his dead baby doll. He makes a
demented choice to perpetuate violence as the sun sets on his
innocence. Obviously this is not a true horror piece, however this
dark social commentary still speaks on today's horrors of war that we
pretend don't exist. This is an excellent, ahead of its time vampire
as mirror to nature metaphor analyzing fear and fanatics. One
bereaved mother asks what's killing our children but we are – and
that's the real horror.
Skip
Unless You Want to Laugh
Dracula's
Guest –
This low budget 2008 direct-to-video production is very loosely based
on Bram Stoker's titular short story, and the amateur acting and bad
accents compound the overly wordy, trying to sound ye old script. The
in
media res opening
also has Elizabeth Murray telling her betrothed Bram Stoker that
Dracula has raped her with the seed of his beast, giving away the
violence, death, and family secrets before going back six months
earlier for time-wasting fencing and BFF sparring. Coastal
photography, spooky crescendos, and tolling
bells herald Dracula's realty request for a rental with high walls
and no windows. However his constant scowl is... a choice...., and
the men bending over backward for his commission are humorous
alongside proper Victorian fathers tut tutting at an arm around the
shoulder as practically fornicating in public. Admiral Murray demands
Elizabeth and Bram wait a year to marry, so she runs away to be
captured by Dracula. The talking back dialogue is too modern yet
naive, and cutting away from danger for men talking about what they
are going to do about it again wastes time whilst also hampering any
attempt at patriarchal commentary. Simple sets, low budget
necessities, and minimal effects are fine; but it's a disjointed hop,
nonsensical skip, and instantaneous jump to Transylvania as
convenient. Rather than staying with the candlelight menace, we cut
away again to lovelorn Bram taking scenic strolls when his hackney
old landlady does her best Una O'Connor impression. Such unnecessary
elements short change the story with unintentional laughter on top of
the erroneous attempt to make the rapaciousness romantic as if this
were Meatloaf's “I Would Do Anything for Love.” Despite being in
a dungeon with only a mattress and her corset, Elizabeth never
realizes her peril. She
cries out for Bram – who's being chased by French peasants through
Germany on Walpurgisnacht – and that's actually the only segment
from the Stoker source. Unfortunately, the poor pacing, weak writing,
and character stupidity play like a parody of Billy Crystal and Carol
Kane in The Princess Bride.
The entire opening scene repeats in the final twenty minutes, and
despite some attempted eerie sequences, there are no really scary
scenes. Action hero Bram dangles on the castle ledge, putting up his
fists and vowing to defeat Dracula with his Notre Dame logo looking
self before the Admiral's sword fight with Dracula makes room for a
bad quip between every thrust and parry. Our Big Man Vampire is
easily defeated with little point to Elizabeth being pregnant and
immortal with her own supposed magical abilities. If this wasn't
going to be a self-aware comedy, then it should have stuck more
faithfully to Stoker's story. Although this isn't a waste of time if
you can laugh, it can't be taken seriously, either.