Kelly WandIn Further Praise of Vampires (or not)
October 11th 2006 03:51
It is sad but true that, these days, even the slightest success will spawn a swag of sequels and imitations. When I last wrote of vampire movies, it seemed to get a fairly good response so I feel I should delve once again into the world of the undead just to keep up my populist touch. Who am I kidding? The fact is that I seem to have watched about half a dozen prime examples of bloodsucking celluloid over the last week and a bit. Just to keep up with the back log of films in need of review, I need another fang fest.
It is not as easy as you would imagine. Last time, I just set up an absurd framing sequence which I didn’t even bother to keep up until the end of the piece. Such lazy prose. Such half realised ambitions. You see? It already sounds like a sequel. The only way I can possibly raise the quality around here is to choose better films.
“Daughters of Darkness” may have funereal pacing but fortunately that extra time is well spent in the building of atmosphere. It shows its age through that kind of early 1970’s obsession with sex that drew punters to the drive-ins and flea pits of this bygone era but I won’t hold that against it. It actually works quite well as a piece of European art-house. Supernatural elements are kept to the barest minimum, it could just be a story of human evil and decadence.
A honeymooning couple played by (John Karlen and Danielle Ouimet) stop off at a seaside town in Belgium. They look frighteningly like the blondes out of Abba. Initially, they are alone in the hotel. It is the off season after all and this grey landscape of misery and rain is just the sort of place to go to watch love whither and die. Besides, hubby dearest is already keeping secrets. He has a penchant for sadism and his mother is a man. I hoped for some further revelations in that particular story thread but the writers did their level best to keep it enigmatic.
Arriving at the hotel is the Countess Elizabeth (Delphine Seyrig) and her doe eyed companion (Andrea Rau). The desk clerk thinks he recognises the Countess from forty years earlier. Then again, that might have been her mother.
The Countess is a descendent of the legendary Scarlet Countess who bathed in the blood of 300 virgins several centuries back. Of course, given the fact that this is a vampire movie, it is probably more likely she actually is the Scarlet Countess but there is some ambiguity there.
The Countess takes one look at the blonde wife and we know doe eyed companion’s days are numbered. As I watched this film, I had the oddest sensation that Tony Scott was sitting right there beside me. His film “The Hunger” certainly borrowed a whole lot of mood from this film.
Is that the laziest excuse for a segue into another review you’ve ever heard? I should get a job in television. Instead, I should leave my review of “The Hunger” until another day. Oh, what the hell.
Hey, what do you mean you haven’t seen it? It’s got Bauhaus in it and that alone is reason enough to get a copy for the Goth in your life. The soundtrack features the Flower Duet out of Delibes’ Lakme which is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever recorded.
David Bowie gets really old and has to go to sleep in a box. Susan Sarandon stops being Janet out of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” but is still a ways off going for a ride with Thelma. A whole lot of curtains blow in the wind and Catherine Deneuve looks gorgeous.
She makes a fairly good argument for becoming her thrall even if it does mean that one day you too will grow really old and have to go off to sleep in a box. Hey. It happens to all of us anyway. You might as well hang out with Catherine for an extended period of time and drink the blood of attractive young nightclubbers. It sure beats those interminable intermediate years of lawn bowling.
In its day, this was slagged off viciously for being an exercise in style over content. Sure, it’s full of style. The brothers Scott both started their careers in advertising so what do you expect? The thing is, there is plenty of content served up with the extravagant set design. On any given day, I’ll take this over any critically acclaimed Woody Allen film of that era. With content like that, who needs enemies.
Tony Scott is a funny director. On the one hand, he produces something wonderful like this or “True Romance”. He can still come up with something as strange as “Domino” out of nowhere. Say what you like about that film but it still looks like it sprang from the mind of some hot new Indie Cinema gunslinger. He can also hang out with Jerry Bruckheimer and toss out (or rather toss off) a “Top Gun” or a “Days of Thunder” and the less said about that, the better. Scott defends “Top Gun” as a piece of Pop Art but I don’t recall Andy Warhol doing army recruitment posters.
“The Hunger”, meanwhile, is pure and simple cinematic genius. Unlike “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Now, before the death threats arrive, I must point out that I am referring to the 1992 film starring Kristy Swanson. Having watched so many movies recast and turned into sub-standard television programs, it only makes sense that the best television program ever in the history of the world should come from such a sub-standard original movie.
I would never want to cast any kind of shadow over the notion of Joss Whedon’s God like brilliance but, clearly, something went wrong between conception and execution.
Two words; Luke Perry. These two words do not merely strike terror, they demonstrate lemming like suicidal tendencies on the part of film producers. For the money men, he is the cinematic equivalent of shoving several sticks of dynamite up your anus and lighting the fuse. Mr Perry is a blight upon any screen he appears upon but this film is so bad that it almost makes him look good. (“Almost” being the critical word here.)
It is not that Kirsty Swanson makes a bad Buffy. Whilst it’s true she doesn’t hold a wooden stake to Sarah Michelle Gellar, she does about as well as the production allows. The trouble with movie Buffy is that the tone is too damn light. Actually, it is too much damn light full stop. It features the kind of lighting one normally expects from a television soap opera. Television Buffy was always lit like a movie and what a difference that made.
It wouldn’t have taken much to improve the film. If you had got the vampires to take their roles seriously, the whole thing would have lifted enormously. Instead, we get to watch a bunch of idiots mess around with their plastic teeth. Rutger Hauer attempts to show some dignity but even he can’t keep it up. Most of the time he looks exasperated but how much of that is his acting I cannot say for sure. He may just have been cringing at the level he had sunk in search of a pay check. The one thing Rutger proves is that he should move heaven and Earth to avoid playing comedy ever again. Not that he has much choice these days.
The best of the vampires is Paul Ruebens who you may know better as Pee Wee Herman. Then again, you may be lucky and not know him at all. That he is the best of the vampires should set alarm bells ringing across continents. At least Donald Sutherland lends a certain authority to the Watcher role. Still, you see his eyes looking for the door and wondering whether his career will suffer more damage if he goes or if he stays.
When this came out, it was an amusing one joke movie stretched beyond any reasonable limits. With beer and pizza it was a fairly tolerable diversion. When the TV show came out it became unwatchable in a moment. Buffy completists probably have a copy shoved away in a corner somewhere (I know I do). You’d be better off picking up “Near Dark”.
The vamps in Near Dark aren’t depraved aristocrats or art loving parasites. You won’t catch them playing with rubber fangs either. Nope, they’re a bunch of shit kicking, white trashed, hillbilly boys and belles. Sure, we all have problems with the ennui associated with eternal life but these guys know how to party. Come to red neck bar, see red neck bar, eat patrons of red neck bar.
You know who the good old boys are in this flick right from the get go. It features Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein at the core of this cadaverous cadre and it helps that they had all just come off of the same military unit of “Aliens”. You loved them in that, you can love them in this, apart from the fact that they go around drinking the blood of the living.
Country boy Caleb goes into town and meets sexy undead chick. Fortunately, he is not like other guys and treats her with enough respect that she only bites but doesn’t drain. It looks like we’ve got us a new member for the gang. He retains a certain respect for human life that makes his transition rather difficult despite his love for the girl. That’s about all the plot you guys need.
You won’t hear me say this too often but it has a great score by hippy prog rock act “Tangerine Dream”. Fortunately, they go light on the prog and hippy elements of their oeuvre this time around. It probably explains my use of the word great.
Director Kathryn Bigelow is an under recognised Goddess. “Point Break” is cool. “Strange Days” is a masterpiece but requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to watch. Whilst it is really good, that doesn’t mean it is pleasant. It’s probably best if I don’t mention the recent “Weight of Water” because it does dampen my argument somewhat. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a watchable film but, with Bigelow, you are used to films it is hard to tear your eyes away from. I’ll go out on a limb here and call “Near Dark” her best film. It is certainly one of the most original vampire films even if you get the sense that someone had been reading Anne Rice.
Which brings us to “Interview with the Vampire”. Here is a film that offers no middle ground. The only sort of person who says “the film was all right I suppose” about this movie is the kind of person generally incapable of forming an opinion about anything. There are many who react to this film with such a stream of venom that it almost mystifying. Words like pretentious and boring come flying fast and furious. Brad Pitt plumbs new depth in the misery stakes and Tom Cruise is camper than a row of sequined tents.
There is another school of thought – one that I subscribe to – that these things are all to the films credit. This is one of the few films that has managed to balance the idea that vampirism is unspeakably evil and decadent against the notion that that evil is a small price to pay for immortality. It also puts the hidden price of such immortality into perspective. It is a lot smarter film than it is given credit and the fact Rice handled the scripting has a lot to do with that.
Whilst the story is unrelentingly dark, it is also one of the funniest films I have ever seen. The humour is pretty much on the black side – and I say black only until they can invent something darker. You have relatives who will give you withering glances that will remind you that you are not supposed to laugh at such things.
There was probably only one man who could have taken the directorial reins of this project and, fortunately, they got him. Neil Jordan has flirted with the A-list of directors but never quite got the chance to sink the deal. About as close as he got was “The Crying Game” but that was hardly his best work. If you’ve seen “Mona Lisa” and “The Company of Wolves”, you’d have signed him up for the job on the spot. If you’d seen “High Spirits” you would have probably snatched the contract from his hand, stamped on it, set it on fire and pissed on the ashes.
Jordan succeeds in creating a theatrical landscape that never seems theatrical. He makes a fairy tale out of the story and it visually delights. The small details are terrific. When a statue opens its eyes, you look twice at the screen to check what you have just seen. When Stephen Rea (dressed in top hat and tails) starts dancing on the ceiling you won’t think you are in the wrong movie and when Antonio Banderas starts playing with candles you’ll think that that looks like fun.
For me, this film is a genre high spot in a genre I dearly love. Genre films seldom get the respect they deserve from critics based on some notion that this is a sub-standard form of filmmaking. However, I believe the conventions of certain genres allow a filmmaker to investigate ideas that could not be investigated in any other way. The vampire film is particularly interesting in this regard.
A film like “Nosferatu” touches on the horrors of age and loneliness. The Bela Lugosi version of “Dracula” really plays on the fear of the foreign which makes it particularly interesting given the fact it was made during the rise of Nazism. The fear of sexuality has played an enormous role in the vampire film but this has been counter balanced by the attraction of sexuality.
Vampirism has been used as a metaphor for addiction but also as a hand reaching out to anyone who feels an “otherness”. Vampire films can be based in repressive notions of maintaining a social order and they can reflect an anarchic desire to break free of societies constraints.
Lumping vampire films together just because of a thirst for blood is a little ridiculous. Still, that’s just what I have done. I hope you will have read this and decided on at least a couple of the films you’d like to see.
One final film I would recommend is “Cronos”. Yes, it is a vampire film but then again it is not. I keep thinking about the work of Jeunet and Caro when I watch it. It has that marvellous edge of a fairy tale about it too.
An alchemist has made a cockroach shaped machine that prolongs life. If you wind it up, it digs into your skin and turns you into something like a vampire. An old shopkeeper does just that and soon finds himself dancing ladies of their feet again. The trouble is, seeing someone with a nose bleed becomes quite a distraction for the suddenly not so old goat. Soon he’s face down on the toilet floor licking up spilt blood.
Director Guillermo del Toro would go on to make Blade II, Mimic and Hellboy but this is his masterpiece. A beautiful slice of the fantastic.
It is not as easy as you would imagine. Last time, I just set up an absurd framing sequence which I didn’t even bother to keep up until the end of the piece. Such lazy prose. Such half realised ambitions. You see? It already sounds like a sequel. The only way I can possibly raise the quality around here is to choose better films.
“Daughters of Darkness” may have funereal pacing but fortunately that extra time is well spent in the building of atmosphere. It shows its age through that kind of early 1970’s obsession with sex that drew punters to the drive-ins and flea pits of this bygone era but I won’t hold that against it. It actually works quite well as a piece of European art-house. Supernatural elements are kept to the barest minimum, it could just be a story of human evil and decadence.
A honeymooning couple played by (John Karlen and Danielle Ouimet) stop off at a seaside town in Belgium. They look frighteningly like the blondes out of Abba. Initially, they are alone in the hotel. It is the off season after all and this grey landscape of misery and rain is just the sort of place to go to watch love whither and die. Besides, hubby dearest is already keeping secrets. He has a penchant for sadism and his mother is a man. I hoped for some further revelations in that particular story thread but the writers did their level best to keep it enigmatic.
Arriving at the hotel is the Countess Elizabeth (Delphine Seyrig) and her doe eyed companion (Andrea Rau). The desk clerk thinks he recognises the Countess from forty years earlier. Then again, that might have been her mother.
The Countess is a descendent of the legendary Scarlet Countess who bathed in the blood of 300 virgins several centuries back. Of course, given the fact that this is a vampire movie, it is probably more likely she actually is the Scarlet Countess but there is some ambiguity there.
The Countess takes one look at the blonde wife and we know doe eyed companion’s days are numbered. As I watched this film, I had the oddest sensation that Tony Scott was sitting right there beside me. His film “The Hunger” certainly borrowed a whole lot of mood from this film.
Is that the laziest excuse for a segue into another review you’ve ever heard? I should get a job in television. Instead, I should leave my review of “The Hunger” until another day. Oh, what the hell.
Hey, what do you mean you haven’t seen it? It’s got Bauhaus in it and that alone is reason enough to get a copy for the Goth in your life. The soundtrack features the Flower Duet out of Delibes’ Lakme which is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever recorded.
David Bowie gets really old and has to go to sleep in a box. Susan Sarandon stops being Janet out of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” but is still a ways off going for a ride with Thelma. A whole lot of curtains blow in the wind and Catherine Deneuve looks gorgeous.
She makes a fairly good argument for becoming her thrall even if it does mean that one day you too will grow really old and have to go off to sleep in a box. Hey. It happens to all of us anyway. You might as well hang out with Catherine for an extended period of time and drink the blood of attractive young nightclubbers. It sure beats those interminable intermediate years of lawn bowling.
In its day, this was slagged off viciously for being an exercise in style over content. Sure, it’s full of style. The brothers Scott both started their careers in advertising so what do you expect? The thing is, there is plenty of content served up with the extravagant set design. On any given day, I’ll take this over any critically acclaimed Woody Allen film of that era. With content like that, who needs enemies.
Tony Scott is a funny director. On the one hand, he produces something wonderful like this or “True Romance”. He can still come up with something as strange as “Domino” out of nowhere. Say what you like about that film but it still looks like it sprang from the mind of some hot new Indie Cinema gunslinger. He can also hang out with Jerry Bruckheimer and toss out (or rather toss off) a “Top Gun” or a “Days of Thunder” and the less said about that, the better. Scott defends “Top Gun” as a piece of Pop Art but I don’t recall Andy Warhol doing army recruitment posters.
“The Hunger”, meanwhile, is pure and simple cinematic genius. Unlike “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Now, before the death threats arrive, I must point out that I am referring to the 1992 film starring Kristy Swanson. Having watched so many movies recast and turned into sub-standard television programs, it only makes sense that the best television program ever in the history of the world should come from such a sub-standard original movie.
I would never want to cast any kind of shadow over the notion of Joss Whedon’s God like brilliance but, clearly, something went wrong between conception and execution.
Two words; Luke Perry. These two words do not merely strike terror, they demonstrate lemming like suicidal tendencies on the part of film producers. For the money men, he is the cinematic equivalent of shoving several sticks of dynamite up your anus and lighting the fuse. Mr Perry is a blight upon any screen he appears upon but this film is so bad that it almost makes him look good. (“Almost” being the critical word here.)
It is not that Kirsty Swanson makes a bad Buffy. Whilst it’s true she doesn’t hold a wooden stake to Sarah Michelle Gellar, she does about as well as the production allows. The trouble with movie Buffy is that the tone is too damn light. Actually, it is too much damn light full stop. It features the kind of lighting one normally expects from a television soap opera. Television Buffy was always lit like a movie and what a difference that made.
It wouldn’t have taken much to improve the film. If you had got the vampires to take their roles seriously, the whole thing would have lifted enormously. Instead, we get to watch a bunch of idiots mess around with their plastic teeth. Rutger Hauer attempts to show some dignity but even he can’t keep it up. Most of the time he looks exasperated but how much of that is his acting I cannot say for sure. He may just have been cringing at the level he had sunk in search of a pay check. The one thing Rutger proves is that he should move heaven and Earth to avoid playing comedy ever again. Not that he has much choice these days.
The best of the vampires is Paul Ruebens who you may know better as Pee Wee Herman. Then again, you may be lucky and not know him at all. That he is the best of the vampires should set alarm bells ringing across continents. At least Donald Sutherland lends a certain authority to the Watcher role. Still, you see his eyes looking for the door and wondering whether his career will suffer more damage if he goes or if he stays.
When this came out, it was an amusing one joke movie stretched beyond any reasonable limits. With beer and pizza it was a fairly tolerable diversion. When the TV show came out it became unwatchable in a moment. Buffy completists probably have a copy shoved away in a corner somewhere (I know I do). You’d be better off picking up “Near Dark”.
The vamps in Near Dark aren’t depraved aristocrats or art loving parasites. You won’t catch them playing with rubber fangs either. Nope, they’re a bunch of shit kicking, white trashed, hillbilly boys and belles. Sure, we all have problems with the ennui associated with eternal life but these guys know how to party. Come to red neck bar, see red neck bar, eat patrons of red neck bar.
You know who the good old boys are in this flick right from the get go. It features Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein at the core of this cadaverous cadre and it helps that they had all just come off of the same military unit of “Aliens”. You loved them in that, you can love them in this, apart from the fact that they go around drinking the blood of the living.
Country boy Caleb goes into town and meets sexy undead chick. Fortunately, he is not like other guys and treats her with enough respect that she only bites but doesn’t drain. It looks like we’ve got us a new member for the gang. He retains a certain respect for human life that makes his transition rather difficult despite his love for the girl. That’s about all the plot you guys need.
You won’t hear me say this too often but it has a great score by hippy prog rock act “Tangerine Dream”. Fortunately, they go light on the prog and hippy elements of their oeuvre this time around. It probably explains my use of the word great.
Director Kathryn Bigelow is an under recognised Goddess. “Point Break” is cool. “Strange Days” is a masterpiece but requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to watch. Whilst it is really good, that doesn’t mean it is pleasant. It’s probably best if I don’t mention the recent “Weight of Water” because it does dampen my argument somewhat. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a watchable film but, with Bigelow, you are used to films it is hard to tear your eyes away from. I’ll go out on a limb here and call “Near Dark” her best film. It is certainly one of the most original vampire films even if you get the sense that someone had been reading Anne Rice.
Which brings us to “Interview with the Vampire”. Here is a film that offers no middle ground. The only sort of person who says “the film was all right I suppose” about this movie is the kind of person generally incapable of forming an opinion about anything. There are many who react to this film with such a stream of venom that it almost mystifying. Words like pretentious and boring come flying fast and furious. Brad Pitt plumbs new depth in the misery stakes and Tom Cruise is camper than a row of sequined tents.
There is another school of thought – one that I subscribe to – that these things are all to the films credit. This is one of the few films that has managed to balance the idea that vampirism is unspeakably evil and decadent against the notion that that evil is a small price to pay for immortality. It also puts the hidden price of such immortality into perspective. It is a lot smarter film than it is given credit and the fact Rice handled the scripting has a lot to do with that.
Whilst the story is unrelentingly dark, it is also one of the funniest films I have ever seen. The humour is pretty much on the black side – and I say black only until they can invent something darker. You have relatives who will give you withering glances that will remind you that you are not supposed to laugh at such things.
There was probably only one man who could have taken the directorial reins of this project and, fortunately, they got him. Neil Jordan has flirted with the A-list of directors but never quite got the chance to sink the deal. About as close as he got was “The Crying Game” but that was hardly his best work. If you’ve seen “Mona Lisa” and “The Company of Wolves”, you’d have signed him up for the job on the spot. If you’d seen “High Spirits” you would have probably snatched the contract from his hand, stamped on it, set it on fire and pissed on the ashes.
Jordan succeeds in creating a theatrical landscape that never seems theatrical. He makes a fairy tale out of the story and it visually delights. The small details are terrific. When a statue opens its eyes, you look twice at the screen to check what you have just seen. When Stephen Rea (dressed in top hat and tails) starts dancing on the ceiling you won’t think you are in the wrong movie and when Antonio Banderas starts playing with candles you’ll think that that looks like fun.
For me, this film is a genre high spot in a genre I dearly love. Genre films seldom get the respect they deserve from critics based on some notion that this is a sub-standard form of filmmaking. However, I believe the conventions of certain genres allow a filmmaker to investigate ideas that could not be investigated in any other way. The vampire film is particularly interesting in this regard.
A film like “Nosferatu” touches on the horrors of age and loneliness. The Bela Lugosi version of “Dracula” really plays on the fear of the foreign which makes it particularly interesting given the fact it was made during the rise of Nazism. The fear of sexuality has played an enormous role in the vampire film but this has been counter balanced by the attraction of sexuality.
Vampirism has been used as a metaphor for addiction but also as a hand reaching out to anyone who feels an “otherness”. Vampire films can be based in repressive notions of maintaining a social order and they can reflect an anarchic desire to break free of societies constraints.
Lumping vampire films together just because of a thirst for blood is a little ridiculous. Still, that’s just what I have done. I hope you will have read this and decided on at least a couple of the films you’d like to see.
One final film I would recommend is “Cronos”. Yes, it is a vampire film but then again it is not. I keep thinking about the work of Jeunet and Caro when I watch it. It has that marvellous edge of a fairy tale about it too.
An alchemist has made a cockroach shaped machine that prolongs life. If you wind it up, it digs into your skin and turns you into something like a vampire. An old shopkeeper does just that and soon finds himself dancing ladies of their feet again. The trouble is, seeing someone with a nose bleed becomes quite a distraction for the suddenly not so old goat. Soon he’s face down on the toilet floor licking up spilt blood.
Director Guillermo del Toro would go on to make Blade II, Mimic and Hellboy but this is his masterpiece. A beautiful slice of the fantastic.
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
We disagree on one thing, I must confess I despised Buffy the TV series but loved the movie, weird.
Just seem to me that buffy as played by Sarah Michelle Gellar was just as empty a vessel in the first episode a she was in teh last. At least in the movie she learnt to give a shit about others and not just what she wears.
Plus I hate G rated horror that gives Vamps a bad name.
Im a big fan of Whedon's Firefly/Serenity though.
a few recent vamp films I dig.
Abel ferrera's The Addiction
RazorBlade Smile
Nadja
Comment by Bob Short
I hope we will continue to disagree on a good number of things. It upsets my stomach when everybody starts agreeing on everything.
B
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Me too, if people are agreeing with me all the time, I must be doing something wrong.
Comment by Bob Short
How can I possibly write glowing reviews of Godzilla movies whilst dismissing cinema classics as tired? Where is the fun in writing subjectively when no-one throws opinions back in my face?
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD