I like a bit of variety on this here blog, and after last post’s discussion of three classy, classic Dracula films, I thought it would be good to go in a completely different direction and take on something cheap and grotty. I’m no gore hound per se and I’m not the kind of horror fan who is constantly hunting for the roughest stuff I can handle, but I do really appreciate when something works – when the effect actually gets to me – when the horror of a piece can linger in my mind and my mood. Today’s film is clearly one of those. Filmed to the brim with top notch suspense sequences, viscerally disturbing violence, and gritty, dangerous atmosphere, and furthermore grounded by a totally committed, unhinged, and scary central performance from Joe Spinell, William Lustig’s Maniac is really one to watch… if you’re up for it – and, to be fair, not everyone will be.
Maniac (1980)
On paper, this doesn’t necessarily seem like a film that might top a lot of lists: following a creepy weirdo with mommy issues around NYC as he hunts down young women, kills them, scalps them, and nails their hair onto his collection of mannequins. Writing about it, I have to look up synonyms for “skeezy.” It’s the sort of movie that might make you want to take a shower afterwards (but maybe you’ll feel vulnerable there – at the very least, you may want to open a packet of moist towelettes). Ugly and mean, with an uncomfortable conflation of sexual desire and violent impulse, as well as a really downbeat ending – this is a “feel-bad movie,” and I kinda love it.
Made during the first big slasher boom (though I don’t think I’d actually call this a slasher), Lustig’s film turns the still gelling conventions of the sub-genre on their head by focusing entirely on the killer himself rather than his victims, such that the real horror of the piece is more in its character study of its pitiable, if no less frightening, protagonist, Frank Zito, as embodied (and largely written) by character actor, Joe Spinell. There are wonderfully executed chase and kill scenes here that would shine in any early eighties slasher, but while they are really scary, their horror pales in comparison to just spending an hour and a half inside of Frank’s fevered mind. This situates the film closer to a work like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) or Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel, American Psycho, but whereas both of those examples follow a central killer who is at least outwardly cold and in control, Frank Zito is hot and tortured, and Spinell keeps his performance’s engine solidly in the red for most of the film.
Really, it seems like it shouldn’t work so well. The performance should come off as over-the-top and melodramatic. Frank’s backstory (growing up with a sex worker mother who alternatingly neglected and abused him resulting in his compulsion to prey on attractive women for their sexuality as he gibbers and mutters – a fevered exchange between the traumatized child he was, the mother who maltreated him, the adult killer he’s become, his victims, and the mother he has recreated and asserted control over via the bloody wigged mannequins he surrounds himself with) should come off as at best facile, and at worst, offensively reductive in its armchair psychology rooted in misogynistic tropes. The plotting should come off as nonsensical and unrealistic. This feels like it shouldn’t rise above being a run of the mill, grungy, cheap little body count movie, memorable primarily for its squalor (and, to be clear, there can be value in films such as those, but I think there is so much more here).
But this is one of the reasons I really do love this genre. All of those accusations are basically true, and it is still a great film: intense, moving, uncomfortable, and wholly worthwhile. Though it seems to have been made largely in an exploitation mode, all involved mainly just trying to put something together that would be shocking, exciting, and sell tickets, the talent and total commitment of the creative team just shines through, resulting in a scary, disturbing, rough art object. Lustig put all he had, financially and otherwise, into getting his first non-pornographic feature off the ground, and it shows. Spinell was a great character actor (who also co-wrote and developed the piece, investing all of his salary from Cruising in it as well), but he’d never had the chance to lead a film before, and his work here is so emotionally grounded even while he plays for the cheap seats. Tom Savini had no budget to speak of for the effects, but everything is set up to be filmed so perfectly, making simple “right out of the kit” solutions (as I’ve seen him describe them in an interview) land with visceral power. At every turn, the love and passion and talent and hunger that went into this ugly little picture is just so abundantly clear. This all yields a commitment to the material that elevates it far above what it could have been, without adding a hint of pretension.
The film begins in typical fashion with a cold open kill scene – a young couple sleeping on the beach are murdered by a giant, looming figure that has been watching them while hiding among the reeds. The girl is dispatched quickly with a scream and a slit throat, but when her boyfriend returns with more firewood, his death takes time – garroted and held aloft by the killer, the camera focusing on his feet as his body jerks and twitches and finally falls limp, blood pouring down from above as the wire cuts through flesh. It is effectively savage, but could fit in many other films of the era, but then in the next shot, the film reveals its uniqueness as we cut to the main character, Frank (recognizably the killer from the first scene), waking up in bed as if from a nightmare. He is drenched in sweat and panting in misery and fear. Was this a dream or a memory? Did he actually kill them? The title card announces “Maniac” and we get a gist of how we are going to spend the rest of the run time. As the opening credits roll, we are shown something of his living situation. His cramped room features a candle lit shrine to a photo of a woman (his mother, as we will come to understand) and is otherwise filled with objects of art – some merely abstract and some disturbing, but the one that catches out attention is the mannequin revealed to be lying in the bed behind him, with what looks like a bloody wig nailed onto her head. This guy is clearly not well.
Shortly thereafter, we see Frank go upstairs with a street prostitute one trick away from making her rent and calling it a night, and what follows is so awkward and naturalistic as to initially feel sad and sweet, though always with the edge of fear – we can only assume he is actually a killer and she is in great danger. She seems nice and genuine – warm with him, but also clearly just doing her job and trying to upsell him out of economic need. He is clearly uncomfortable with physical intimacy, but also plainly wants it, at first asking her to model for him and leave her clothes on before finally getting more physical. The scene takes its time as she tenderly coaxes him out of his shell until he is capable of participating more fully, and it is strangely affecting, but at the same time, the tension is so thick; we know how strange he is – even if he isn’t actually a killer (and he probably is), he is quite off.
Thus, it’s not terribly surprising, but still shocking and awful when he rolls on top, grabs her by the neck and starts squeezing the life out of her, the camera largely zoomed in on his flushed, murderous visage, the sweat pouring down his face, until her body stills and his expression changes from rage to sorrow before he has to run to the bathroom to vomit. He is so dangerous, so scary, and at the same time, he does not seem to take any pleasure in his activities – he acts out an unwanted compulsion – he is a long suffering victim of his own impulses as well as a perpetrator of horrific acts. But of course, the viewer’s sympathies are tempered by the fact that he returns from the bathroom with a razor blade and proceeds to scalp the poor, dead woman.
Much of the film is relatively low on plot after that – we see many more scenes of Frank hunting and killing and suffering and fighting with himself (as he speaks for the myriad voices that fill his head). But for all that it reiterates a similar scenario, I don’t feel it wears out its welcome or becomes repetitive. Also, it is surprising how much it never feels exploitative – the victims are primarily women (he kills men too, but only when they get in the way), and the violence is certainly gendered, but the filming is never leering and the violence doesn’t feel sexualized. In each instance, I find myself really caring about the given victim or victims, honestly more than in many a slasher flick wherein they can so often feel two dimensional and disposable. Here, we aren’t given much in the way of background information, but I do believe in each of these women, filmed as actual humans and not objects, sexual or otherwise – I worry for them – and I hold my breath, waiting for the possibility that this time he won’t do what he always does, that this time he won’t succeed – he is, after all, not some mythical embodiment of evil, but just an overweight, middle aged guy with mental health issues.
And the play of identification is a really interesting aspect of the film that sets it apart from the pack. Though Frank generally dominates our point of view, we meet each of his (potential) victims as authentic people with depth and nuance and lives, and we temporarily live and fear vicariously through them. At no point do I ever root for Frank or cheer his violence (as might happen in something like a Friday the 13th or a Halloween film where the masked killer is the main draw). There are drawn out sequences of one young woman or another encountering his threat (sometimes understanding the danger she’s in and sometimes not until it is way too late) wherein Lustig teases audience expectation so expertly: Why is that door cracked? Is Frank there? No. Ok. Is he coming now? Yes, but he doesn’t see her. But does he and he’s just waiting for a better moment to strike? Maybe – but where is he now – the room is empty. Will he get her in the bath? No, but he’s still got to be in the apartment, right? I think so, but I don’t see him – he could be anywhere. She lowers her head to splash water on her face and oh no – he’s going to be in the mirror standing behind her, isn’t he? And, Bang! He appears and brings the scene to its nigh inevitable conclusion. Most famously, there is a standout chase scene in the subway that could hold its own against any other in any thriller, but the movie is full of similarly well-crafted scares. And all of those scares are so much more effective because Lustig lets us feel for those in danger before they are dispatched and we must once again accompany the killer back into his apartment and his mind and his fevered madness.
And that is not a pleasant place to be for him or for us. Past that, one feature separating Frank Zito from many a slasher killer is how deeply uncool he is. We endure him and even pity him, but I don’t think we are ever meant to like what he’s doing, and the film never endorses his violence. He is not some kind of aspirational anti-hero and his post-Norman Bates, proto-incel motivations and madness do not feel like they speak with an authorial voice. Sure, the whole “pathetic, misogynist killer obsessed with mommy” thing feels particularly skuzzy and played out, and I can’t say that I enjoy it, but honestly – it does feel rather realistic and therefore, so much scarier. I don’t believe that the shadows contain many masked killers with “the devil’s eyes,” but it goes without saying that the world is filled up with unhappy, emotionally and psychologically screwed up men who will target and hurt women to assuage their own pathologies. Frank really could be around the next corner.
Also interestingly, we don’t really know just how deep his insanity goes, and as his is the perspective we mostly see the world of the film through (as Ellis did about ten years later with his novel), I read it all as through the eyes of an unreliable narrator – though that is never really confirmed. We begin with a moment that could either be a memory or a dream. There is one scare with his mother rising from her grave that clearly didn’t really happen, as well as a horror set piece finale that must be taking place in his head. On top of that, there is a whole act of the movie that feels like it might be wholly, or at least significantly, imagined.
One day in the park, Frank notices a photographer snap his photo and he follows her home. She, Anna (Caroline Munro), is in the middle of developing said photograph when he rings her bell and introduces himself. She never asks how he found her home, but in a very friendly manner, she invites this stranger in to examine and discuss her photography, seemingly delighted to have the company. Over the course of the next half hour, interspersed with more scenes of murder (including a model friend of Anna’s), their relationship grows and deepens. In a strange little movie, this is perhaps the strangest part, and I think it is key.
Whenever Frank meets with Anna, he is so much more together – he dresses well; he looks clean; he isn’t constantly breathing hard and talking to himself; he is, if not charming, then at least a seemingly pretty “normal” guy, and it really appears that she enjoys spending time with him – perhaps romantically, or perhaps just as a friend, but regardless of the exact nature of the relationship, these scenes show that Frank can relate – he can be a person – he can control himself and there is some kind of hope for a “normal” satisfying life, free from his compulsive, miserable killing (a hope that will inevitably be dashed on the rocks). It is all kind of – nice – which is more than a little bizarre.
So bizarre that one could just chalk it up to bad writing, simply an entirely unbelievable turn of events – but I don’t. Though the film never outright explains this one way or another, for me, the whole Anna relationship, a significant portion of the movie, tells me that all is not as it seems. Either she isn’t real – or at least she isn’t really the way we see her. No one could be that nice to this creepy stranger – no one could be that available, always willing to drop whatever she’s doing any time he calls on her. No one would ask if a guy they’ve just met has a picture of his mother with him and not find it a little odd that he apparently always does in the pocket of his jacket. She seems like a fantasy – everything to him that his mother never was. So maybe she isn’t real…. Or, maybe she is real and the killings all happen in his mind – the clammy madman, bathed in perspiration and grunting insanely is his true inner life, while on the surface, he appears to be a totally “normal” person, passing through society undetected every day. Is that a more frightening scenario? This doubt in my mind as I view it is never resolved and it lingers after the film is done.
Unsurprisingly, Maniac came in for no small degree of criticism on release, often seen by film reviewers as a vile, irresponsible, reprehensible film, a symbol of how our culture had degraded itself. Gene Siskel, for example, announced in his televised review that it was one of only two films he had ever walked out of (after only thirty minutes), he and his partner, Roger Ebert, no friends to the slasher film in the eighties. While I can understand a person being put off by content like this (and I can easily accept that someone wouldn’t want to spend this time with Frank, wouldn’t want to be in a position of having to pity such a monster, or to be reminded of how commonplace, and thus terrifying, this kind of gendered violence can be), to so flatly dismiss its admittedly queasy artistic value is short sighted at the least, and not worthy of serious criticism.
That said, it is sometimes a rough watch and is clearly not for everybody. But if you are ready for its unpleasantness, Lustig and company will take you on a real horror ride – sometimes enjoyably scary and suspenseful, sometimes sickly and uncanny. You will be confronted with ugliness and tragedy and pain, but also, strangely enough, I think it’s always evident how much, for its creators, this low budget gem was a true labor of love into which they poured their whole hearts. In that, there is beauty, just as in the depth of the film’s grotesque abattoir, there still resides something of humanity.
Is there a character in the horror landscape that looms as large as Dracula? My whole life, from long before I was at all into horror, I’ve known him. Simple plastic Halloween masks, Scooby Doo cartoons, funny characters that reference him (the Count on Sesame Street, Count Floyd on SCTV, Count Chocula on cereal boxes), TheMonster Squad – he was everywhere. And he was one of the only characters so omnipresent as to warrant an indefinite article – you might see a little kid on Halloween with a widows peak, a medallion, and a cape, and if you ask who or what they are, there was a good chance they might say “a Dracula” – like being a tiger or a princess – he wasn’t just a particular vampire from a particular story – he was his own thing – on one level, synonymous with “vampire,” but also having totally specific traits and markers – and of course all of those characteristics were based on one and only one portrayal, and it wasn’t Christopher Lee (though he’s great), Gary Oldman (I love his performance, but it hadn’t been filmed yet when I was little), or Udo Kier (no way I would have watched Blood for Dracula as a child – too obscure and not exactly kid appropriate – Kier’s most famous line being “The blood of these whores is killing me” after vomiting blood into a bathtub for what feels like 15 minutes because none of the nubile Italian girls he’s feeding on are virgins); of course it was all Bela Lugosi.
So I thought this week, it would be an interesting project to dip back into the 1931 root of this image, this icon (of course the true origins begin much earlier than that). But first I had to reckon with my own expectations of his eponymous film. The last time I watched it was in the late 90s and at the time, while I could kind of appreciate its historical significance, I don’t think I particularly enjoyed it. I remembered it being slow and stately. I remembered it had been made before scoring talkies became common and that the absence of music made it really drag. I remembered, if anything, that some things looked cool, but that it hadn’t blown me away – at least not like the other Universal monster movies I’d seen from the likes of James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Old Dark House – all favorites of mine); other films I’d seen from its director, Tod Browning, such as Freaks (1932) or, more recently, The Unknown (1927); or Murnau’s granddaddy of vampire cinema, Nosferatu (1922).
So, yeah, I didn’t come to it this time particularly as a fan, but I did come with interest. Furthermore, I thought it could add perspective to look at Browning’s film in comparison with a couple of other Draculas with which it shares strong similarities, specifically, George Melford’s Dracula (1931) which was filmed in Spanish for the Latin American market at night, based on the same script, on the same sets, using many of the same shots, and generally with the same costumes as Browning’s, and also John Badham’s Dracula (1979), starring Frank Langella in the titular role. All three films came from the same studio – Universal Pictures, and all three were based on the same source material, by which I don’t mean Bram Stoker’s novel, though of course that’s there, but rather Hamilton Dean and John Balderston’s drawing room thriller theatrical adaptation first produced in England in 1922 (and actually licensed by Stoker’s widow, Florence, unlike Nosferatu), revived on Broadway in 1927 (starring Bela Lugosi), and further revived on Broadway in 1977 (starring Frank Langella).
Far from identical, all three do share much of the same structure, as well as a lot of dialogue and character choices and therefore, I feel looking at them next to each other helps bring their respective qualities into starker contrast. Primarily I will be examining the two films from 1931 as one of them has really left a shadow over the last century of culture and awareness of the other is helpful in understanding why. At the end, I plan to discuss the 1979 film just a bit – it’s fine, and is a historical-cinematic curiosity with some praiseworthy elements, but ultimately, I don’t feel it’s had the same kind of impact.
Night and Day: The Two 1931 Draculas
Given how much they share in common (sets, costumes, props, animals, shots, source text), it is striking how different these movies are, really playing differently, with different pacing, a different style, and ultimately a different lasting effect. Browning filmed during the day with his cast and crew and apparently, Melford got to watch Browning’s dailies, recreating what he liked and adjusting what he felt he could improve on before shooting with his cast at night. This resulted in two films with many of the same strengths as well as many of the same technical limitations, but they really do diverge strikingly – it is fascinating to compare them.
Interestingly, on first viewing, I enjoyed Melford’s film much more. It is more dynamic, more naturalistic, and benefits from greater narrative flow and a lively energy. Nevertheless, it is Browning’s film which has really stayed with since I watched them both last week, and which I expect will continue to linger in my memory. In a way, each excels where the other falters.
This is from Browning’s film, but the castle is the same in both.
In both cases, as was done for the play, the story has been greatly condensed (it was not a short book), and characters, settings, and events have been reduced to bare essentials, mostly playing out on the grounds of Dr. Seward’s Sanatorium where Renfield is a patient, Mina is Seward’s daughter, and the mysterious count has just moved in next door. This is, of course, after a brief first act in which Renfield travels to Transylvania to meet the Count and arrange for his land purchases in England, and it must be said that the production design is uniformly gorgeous. Kicking off Carl Laemmle Jr.’s cycle of gothic horror films for Universal, it is all spooky, decrepit castles, cobwebs, dark shadows, dramatic lighting, and incongruously placed animals (the castle features possums and armadillos, neither of which were native to Transylvania – I’ve read that the possums were used because censors at the time didn’t approve of rats, and it was assumed that most viewers outside the American southwest had never seen an armadillo and that they just look weird enough to live in a vampire’s castle).
Generally, throughout the post, the English version will be on the left and the Spanish on the right.
Off the bat (whoops), there are differences. While there was notable moving cinematography in Browning’s version, Melford utilized a far more mobile camera and found some very striking shots. Still, though it was more static (and this does affect its pacing), Browning filmed every moment as if intentionally creating an icon, resulting in lasting images that really have staying power. He also absolutely benefitted from Lugosi. Carlos Villarias, who played the Count in the Spanish language version is more active, more natural, and somehow therefore sadly more silly. He plays it big, and is fully committed, but somehow doesn’t rise above being a guy in a cape. On the other hand, Lugosi brings a weight and a weirdness that just lands. Every moment he is on screen, he’s magnetic, holding the eye with a kind of fascination. I think there’s a clear difference in the first few times we see both actors: freshly risen for the night from the coffin, as the coach driver, and staring through magnetic eyes. Villarias does his best, but Lugosi is a special effect that never fails to wow.
The coachman
Still, while his Dracula doesn’t bring the same power, Melford found striking ways to film certain moments. Below, on the left, you can see Lugosi’s Dracula staring down Renfield with his hypnotic gaze. The shot is relatively straight on, with Browning highlighting the eyes with focused hard lighting. On the right, you can see how Melford handles the same moment – a tight close up at a sharper angle – it’s a great shot and very effective, but for my money, Lugosi’s performance delivers the scene – we feel his hunger in the moment, his unsettling urgency to have his business matters dealt with before he takes this man for himself.
Which brings us to our two Renfields. Dwight Fry (in English) and Pablo Alvarez Rubio (in Spanish) are both highlights of their respective films, but they play the character in quite different ways, embodying first his cautious fear and, later, his madness quite contrastingly. Again, there is an issue of naturalism, with Rubio bringing a far more manic, unhinged performance that feels more like a gibbering lunatic and Fry delivering something a bit more stagey, more stylized, but no less effective. Fry’s performance feels quite chosen, quite controlled, even mannered, but when he goes mad, it is all the more chilling. Also, while Rubio feels more “realistic,” I think Fry brings a greater degree of nuance to these first interactions with the vampire in question. There is a tautness to their scenes, a sustained tension. Renfield has come such a long way to find such a strange man in such a creepy place, and he constantly seems to cycle between unsettled, temporarily comforted, fascinated by his charming, off-putting host, and totally weirded out by him. Is it terror or possibly attraction? Either way, it’s richer than Rubio’s well played, but less intriguing histrionics.
On the differences between the films, there are a few illustrative moments after Dracula has left Renfield for the night and the vampiric brides come for him. First of all, I think Melford clearly wins the composition here (there’s a benefit in going second). Whereas Browning has the three ethereal ladies simply enter a doorway and come for him, Melford sets up the shot such that we see them first lurking in the doorway in the distance as a terrified Renfield enters the foreground looking for a means of escape, the audience seeing their approach while, oblivious in his fear, he does not. It is a great, creepy moment.
I had trouble catching a still that does justice to Melford’s shot – in this one, you can barely see Renfield in the lower right corner. Trust me, it works when it’s moving.
Here is the Spanish version moving.
But then, Browning delivers a significant moment from the book lacking in the Spanish version. In Melford’s film, we see the brides bend to feast on the poor man, but in Browning’s the Count returns and sends them away, taking Renfield for himself.
As noted on the Shudder docuseries, Queer For Fear, this moment in the novel seems to have been particularly significant to Stoker, and in his original manuscript, he’d repeated the line, “This man is mine!” over and over again. It’s easy and obvious to conflate the vampire’s predation with sexuality – the hunger for another’s body, the ‘taking’ of the victim, and while the Spanish version restricts Dracula’s diet to one of lovely ladies, Browning shows us a figure with a less exclusive thirst. One could approach this with a simple queer reading, but for me it goes deeper – he is more and less than human and beyond such taboos and/or identifications. This kind of pansexual lust for blood and body was present in core texts such as Stoker’s Dracula and Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and it comes down, perhaps through this iconic moment, to later works, such as the novels of Anne Rice or films like The Hunger (1983).
So why does Melford excise the moment? Is it just that he is streamlining the scene and felt having Dracula return, stop the brides in their tracks and feed himself slowed things down? It’s possible – Browning’s scene is certainly slow and silent (both films suffer from the fact that scoring talkies had not yet become standard and there is a lot of silence in both – but it feels more present somehow in Browning’s film). Did he just want to give the brides something more to do? They are cool and mysterious, and it’s a shame we see so little of them. Is it instead a hunch that something that might be read as gay coded wouldn’t play so well in a more machismo oriented market? Who knows? But the absence is notable.
In either case, the next time we see him aboard the Vesta (I have no idea why it was changed from “The Demeter”), Renfield has gone round the bend, respectively with Rubio’s howling, maniacal cackle, or with Dwight Fry’s slow, haunting, vibrato laugh. Again, Rubio feels more like a real crazy person (or what you might expect from the representation of a “real crazy person” in the 30s – mental illness not being well understood yet – as if it is now), but Fry’s laugh is one of the best things in either movie, or any other movie from the decade for that matter. Troubled and troubling, it resonates with an eerie off-ness – suffering and threatening in equal measure. It really is something special.
Also, the image of the dead captain, strapped to the wheel is chilling. Again, this is Browning’s shot, but it repeats in Melford’s film.
And so, Dracula comes to England and high society. This, I think is one of the lasting influences of Bela’s performance, and of the presentation of Dracula spearheaded by the play. In Stoker, Dracula is royal in appearance, but far from handsome:
“His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth.
These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.”
Valentino on the left and Schreck on the right.
Rudolph Valentino he was not. Rather, Max Schreck’s rat-like visage in Nosferatu seems a rather faithful representation. Now, Bela Lugosi’s Count, in his impeccably-tailored tailcoat and vest and his elegant cape is an entirely different creature. Stoker’s vampire was not without charisma or even seductive power, but he also elicited a shudder of revulsion. Lugosi brings a movie star charm to the role. He has the exotic accent and he moves with peculiar mannerisms, but he makes the Count attractive, even sexy for the first time, and this is a quality that would stick. These days it is a rarity to see a Dracula who isn’t a charmer. And, at the same time, Lugosi still retained an element of the monstrous. His Dracula is no tragic romantic figure, chasing lost love and doomed to an eternity of isolation – he is always a predator: a rapacious, dignified, bewitching predator. Whether he is padding through the streets of London to prey on a poor girl selling flowers or hypnotizing an usherette at the opera so that he might better make the acquaintance of his new neighbors, this Dracula never ceases to both captivate and unsettle. He is a beast, but he’s never not the most interesting person in the room. It is a terrible shame that Lon Chaney was cut down so early by cancer (he’d been the first choice for the role), but it is a gift to our culture that Bela got the chance to bring to the screen what he had been doing on stage (which he begged to do, drastically undercutting his earnings in the process). By contrast, Villarias’s Count can wear the cape, but he doesn’t exactly fill it out, and at the worst, he can even come off a bit goofy – forecasting the fate of many a “Dracula” costume wearer in the future – unsurprisingly, you can paint on a widow’s peak and still fail to look cool.
Another striking feature of this Dracula (and I believe this comes down to the play as it is featured in all three versions) is how little he seems to care if people know what he is. In modern times, one is accustomed to blood suckers who feel the need to hide their true nature, but he is apparently wholly unconcerned, and that makes him come off as all the more powerful. The first time he meets the main cast (Lucy, Mina, Jonathan Harker, and Dr. Seward) at the opera, he speaks like one who has lived an unnaturally long life, with lines like,”To die – to be really dead, that must be glorious!” or “There are far worse things awaiting man…than death.” Um, ok, nice to meet you, Mr. Dracula, was it? Care to come around for tea?
Browning’s is better lit, but I like how Melford has the unreflected Count kiss her hand farewell.
Or, later, when Van Helsing has discovered his vampiric nature having glimpsed his lack of reflection in a mirror, Dracula responds, “For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you are a wise man Van Helsing.” In that moment, Dracula knows that he knows, but while irked at being discovered, he ultimately doesn’t care. He apologizes to his host, Dr. Seward, for reacting so violently (either swatting away the mirrored cigarette case in English in a short burst of rage, or explosively lashing out and destroying the case in Spanish), and exits, telling Seward that his friend, Van Helsing, will explain. He then doesn’t try to run away, knowing that they know he’s a blood sucker – instead, he immediately lures Mina outside to drink her blood under his sexy cape. He is really, really not worried.
Lugosi explodes for the briefest of moments before composing himself, but when he does, you can see how much hatred has been tightly wound within. By contrast, Vallarias bugs out his eyes and throws a tantrum.
The other players are the next significant field of difference. The English speaking cast is good, and their performances seem appropriate to the Victorian origins of the text. They are all proper gentlemen and ladies, a bit staid and respectable, their genteel English world invaded by this bold outsider, this royal figure from beyond their understanding of society or reality, undaunted by conventions of propriety – all qualities that make him both appealing and disruptive. They are all also, kind of boring (on one of the commentary tracks, I think, it was said that the role of Renfield was increased because everyone knew what a drag Jonathan Harker was). Browning thus dully plays up Renfield for all he can, allowing him a far creepier moment at one point when the camera cuts away just as he has finished crawling over to a nurse who has fainted – in the Spanish version, we see him snap out of it and laugh/cry away the notion that he might have hurt her – in the English version, her fate is unknown and we can only assume the worst.
On the other hand, the Spanish speaking cast is consistently less tightly bound, and comes across as far stronger emotionally. While the English version may be more fitting to the social conventions of 1897 when Dracula was written, I’ve got to say that the Spanish speaking cast is far more compelling, and I was more engaged with their trials and tribulations as they are targeted and try to fight back against this threat. Helen Chandler’s Mina looks lovely while she turns from her lover knowing that only unlife awaits her, but Lupita Tovar’s Eva sheds real tears and breaks down in a way that can really tug on your heart strings.
The English version has the better still, but the Spanish version has the better scene.
This is one way that the Spanish version excels. In general, it seems a bit more free, and it also seems less burdened by concerns over what the censor might think (I don’t know much about what could be shown in cinemas in Latin America in the early 30s, but it doesn’t seem crazy to expect that the English speaking market of America and Britain would be more prudish). This can be seen in small things like Tovar’s almost see-through night gown vs Chandler’s shiny silver nightdress.
Plus, Tovar’s exuberance is infectious.
It is evident in acting choices like the English language Van Helsing’s easy, reclining power as he holds the cross vs the Spanish Van Helsing’s dramatic bombast.
Or in the bite marks on Lucy’s neck, shown in Spanish, but only talked about in English.
It comes across in significant plot details that are glossed over in the English language version. For example, we see Harker and Van Helsing come out of a cemetery, but we don’t know why – whereas in the Spanish version, Van Helsing talks about how terrible it was to stake Lucy in the heart, but in doing this terrible deed, they have saved her soul (however, in both versions, Lucy dies so suddenly and isn’t much discussed or mourned afterwards – it’s odd…). Furthermore, there is a strong Catholic religiosity in the Spanish version utterly absent in the English. As far as I can tell, this is both an issue of targeting a very Catholic market (Latin America) and avoiding running afoul of censors who might disapprove of anything that could be seen as sacrilegious. To some extent, this is just a matter of local flavor, but in at least one case, it really changes a key moment, resulting in the Spanish version having a much stronger finish.
As the Spanish version is concerned more with the fates of the souls of those under Darcula’s thrall, it contains a meaningful exchange, the absence of which renders the ending of the English version quite wanting. In both versions, there are many scenes of Seward and Van Helsing dealing with Renfield, who constantly vacillates between devotedly serving his dark master, fearing him, pitying himself, mocking the others, and just trying to eat as many bugs as he can. At one point, in Spanish, when the others are discussing Lucy’s sad end and how they may have to do the same for Mina, Renfield plaintively asks Van Helsing if, even though he is a sad lunatic, he would also do this act for him. This comes back significantly in the final reel after Dracula kills Renfield, either causing him to fall down the curved staircase in English, or, more brutally, directly pushing him off the staircase in Spanish.
At the climax, after Van Helsing has hammered a stake (off camera in both versions) into Dracula’s chest and Mina/Eva have sympathetically felt the pain of the wood piercing their own hearts before finally being freed from the vampire’s dark spell,
Jonathan/Juan and Mina/Eva are about to leave and they ask Van Helsing if he’s coming with them. In the English version, he just says, no, he’ll come later. That’s odd? Why not now? Maybe he needs to pee or something? Ah well, the young couple walk up the stairs in a wide shot and leave. Sometimes older movies end quite abruptly and this is one of those. I was quite surprised to suddenly see the spinning Universal globe and the cursive text of “The End.” In the Spanish version, it all makes more sense and ends with more of an emotional punch.
Browning’s ending
As in Browning’s, the young couple asks if Van Helsing will come with them and he says no, but this time, he goes on to explain that he has to keep his promise to Renfield. The next shot is from the top of the stairs, looking down on the romantic leads as they climb into the light of day, into a more hopeful future, the nightmare finally over, but then Melford cuts to a wide shot in which we see them nearing the top of the stairs as we also see Van Helsing approaching poor Renfield’s corpse, ready to mutilate his body that his soul might survive. It lands with a sting and is, by far, the stronger ending. Personally, I’m not a fan of religiosity in my horror, but it is nice when scenes make sense and deliver on the emotion.
Melford’s ending
Across the board, I would say that Melford’s film in Spanish is consistently more engaging – I felt more of a sense of narrative drive, I enjoyed watching it more (sometimes in Browning’s, I got sleepy), I was more invested in the fates of the characters; by many counts, you might call it the better movie (and some do). And yet, and this is weird, I don’t think it actually is.
Melford’s film plays it straighter, it makes more sense, and I had more fun watching it; however, it also feels less substantial, more superficial, more forgettable. On the other hand, while the camera may be static and the performers stagey, every moment, every element, every choice in Browning’s film feels like it is creating a new icon that will last, that should last. I understand Browning had a very successful career as a director of silent movies (though I’ve only seen one of these, I really loved it), and I have heard the opinion that he shot his Dracula more like a silent movie, not entirely comfortable with dialogue. I don’t know if that’s true, but almost any still from his film could be framed and carry a kind of power. Browning’s lead players: Dracula, Mina, Van Helsing, and Renfield, each speak with an unhurried, chosen steadiness that can slow things down, but they all work their way into the memory. There are reasons that this film, these shots, and these performances have persisted into our culture.
Melford’s film is good (and, having been largely forgotten for many years, it is great that it is now readily available, at least if you’re willing to pick up a physical copy). It is engaging, exciting, and entertaining, but the fact that all of that engagement, excitement, and entertainment somewhat pales in comparison to Browning’s work says something about how significant that work is.
Dracula Tends To Return
In 1977, Frank Langella headlined a revival of Dean and Balderston’s play on Broadway, emphasizing more romantic, sensual readings of the character than had heretofore been dominant. This production was such a success that Universal apparently thought it was time to return to the Dracula well for a new film, still based on the theatrical text, but with a new sensibility.
Directed by John Badham (a director with no other horror credits, but who made many films that I loved as a kid, like Short Circuit and War Games), the 1979 film succeeds in many ways but didn’t exactly blow me away and I probably wouldn’t be writing about it were it not in relation to these other two films. Like those two, it is also rooted in the playscript, and in some ways adapts it more faithfully by setting itself entirely in England, beginning with the Demeter running aground, the crew decimated by an unseen, animalistic force.
Soon Dracula is getting to know the Sewards and the Van Helsings (confusingly, the film switches the names of Lucy and Mina, so now Lucy is the main character and the daughter of Dr. Seward, whereas Mina is the first victim and now the daughter of Van Helsing) and striking up a steamy relationship with Lucy. How these characters and the relationships between them are handled is the greatest strength of the film. From the beginning, we get the sense that Jonathan Harker is pretty much a needy, possessive, petulant jerk and when Lucy (who, we must remember, is the character traditionally known as “Mina”) meets this charismatic, dashing, intriguing man from abroad (with an American accent rather than anything Eastern European), she is drawn to him not because of his dark magics, but because she, as an adult woman with agency and sexual desire, finds him hot.
Thus, the film works best in the first half as they circle each other, falling in love and lust. Dracula does not cast her under a spell, but they mutually fall under each other’s. He can still be dominant, but it feels more like he’s performing a role – speaking dominantly to one who finds that sort of thing attractive, rather than controlling her with magic. This finally culminates in a big lovemaking/blood drinking scene at about the halfway point, after which much of the drive falls out of the movie. I was invested in their flirtation, but once she is thus bonded to him and the focus of the film shifts more to those who would oppose him, it was a bit harder to maintain interest.
Also, while Langella plays the Count successfully as a lonely romantic, I didn’t find him to be much of a monster and he just feels less threatening than one might like when squaring away against Harker, Seward, and Van Helsing. Thus in the second half, I felt a bit adrift as an audience member – Dracula is clearly a bad guy and it’s not like I’m rooting for him, but when there’s no more seducing to be done, he’s not that scary so I don’t really cheer for the people trying to kill him.
But the film has other things in its favor. Set in 1913, it is very attractive and well costumed. It brings back into a Dracula film a few elements from the book that hadn’t made it to screen in the 30s, such as the bit where he climbs down the wall like a lizard or seeing what actually happens to Lucy (even though she’s named Mina here – argh – it’s unnecessarily confusing).
Some moments of vampire business rather work, such as a surprising moment of “Bat!” when it seems Van Helsing may have the upper hand, and some comic moments between Dracula and Renfield. Also, the production design is really fun and over the top – seriously, who designed Carfax Abbey to have a giant Hellmouth in the lobby, a giant Bat as a chandelier of sorts, and how did Dracula find the time to light all those candles? I joke, but it really does look quite cool in a gloriously over the top, gothy kind of way.
Finally, I really got a kick out of Donald Pleasence as Dr. Seward, whose dominant character trait seems to be voraciously, unconcernedly eating while the world around him burns. It’s a fun character, in turns oblivious and helpless, offering pretty poor medicine, such as when he explains to his friend, Van Helsing that of course he’d had his friend’s now dead daughter on the morphine, but laughing away the suggestion that he might give something so harmful to his own daughter (probably right before shoving something else in his mouth). It’s quite a funny performance – choices were made, and I believed in and enjoyed this odd little man. Also, the degree to which her father, and by extension her home, her whole world, is so banal, small minded, and ridiculous probably underscores Dracula’s exotic appeal for Lucy.
Also, it ends satisfyingly – the boring men come and defeat the big bad vampire, but at the finish, Lucy (Mina) sees his cape fluttering away on the wind and can’t hide a secret smile, relieved that he somehow persists and will continue in the world, maybe even returning to her one day. It’s a more satisfying ending to the love story between them than if it were all just wiped away when he dies, and she felt “freed” from his power. I appreciated that.
However, one aspect that I found difficult was the color timing. I guess Badham had wanted to film in black and white and the studio execs had nixed that idea, releasing the film theatrically in vibrant color. He hated how it looked and when it came to releasing the movie on home video, Badham arranged for it to be a “director’s cut” in which he muted all of the colors.
Ah, a nice day lit exterior. It sure is nice to visit dreary, grey British seaside towns.
Honestly, I found its dinginess just oppressive and deadening and found myself craving some degree of saturation (though exactly what I’d expected did occur – in the middle of the film, when Dracula finally drinks from Lucy, there is a hyper-red artsy sequence which pops all the more for being in the midst of so much grey and beige). But for me, it was not enough to justify just how dull the rest of the movie looked.
So that was difficult. As far as I can tell, most versions available on streaming are the desaturated version (it’s what I saw), though if you want to buy a more recent double disc with both versions, that is for sale. Still, having looked at stills from both versions, I can see why the director disliked the theatrical – the full color doesn’t look great either – and the desaturated version is a bummer. Maybe they should have just let him work in black and white as he’d wanted to – it probably would have had some actual contrast and could have been starkly beautiful.
Also, I must say that I went into this viewing with the wrong expectations. I’d always heard that this was the “sexy Dracula” and had expected something lurid and over the top, perhaps like a Ken Russell flick or maybe like the gloriously pulpy extravagance Francis Ford Coppola would go on to craft in 1992 (a film that holds a special place in my heart). That was the wrong way to approach this film, and it kind of did it a disservice – it is better to say that it focuses on the romance between Dracula and Lucy (which, as described above, it does effectively), but otherwise plays as a more “realistic” period drama, and is in no way sensationalistic. So it is worth watching, but don’t go in looking for a superabundance of sensuality, cause you could be disappointed.
Just Three Draculas?
From The Lost Boys
Of course, there haven’t been only three Draculas – Draculas are everywhere! He’s been in hundreds of films, on loads of TV shows, in comic books and cartoons, and transformed into other characters like Blacula or Bunnicula; the Count gets around. There have been other great performances and also plenty of terrible ones. But I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that most of them are in some way indebted to Browning’s film and to Lugosi’s performance. Almost every gesture Lugosi made, almost every inflection in his voice, every shot, every utterance became a ‘meme’ long before that word was reduced to meaning simply a funny captioned picture on the internet. Rather, a meme is a viral concept – an idea that circulates throughout a culture, replicating itself, planting itself in new hosts from which it can further spread. In Stoker (and in Murnau’s Nosferatu), Dracula was associated with plague – he was a kind of viral illness, a sickness of the blood, a venereal disease that could infect proper, buttoned up, Victorian England. It is only fitting that Lugosi’s iconic persona and Browning’s film should similarly exist as just such an infectious concept.
I gotta say – I started this post admitting that I hadn’t returned to Browning’s film as a fan, but after spending this last week and a half with it, I think I’ve come around. It is iconic for good reason. RIP, Bela. I’m sorry that after gifting our culture something so, so good, you had such a famously hard time of it in the rest of your career.
I’m about two and a half years into this blogsperiment? Blogventure? Bloject? (Ugh – I think these are just getting worse and were never necessary to begin with) And in that time, I’ve had good runs (last January – April, I managed a new post every week) and I’ve had drier spells (lately, I’ve averaged a post every two weeks). The blog has given me opportunity and impetus to finally check out loads of work I’ve been meaning to get around to, but just never had, and it’s also given me the excuse to devote some regular time to thought – what am I going to discuss this week? What did I think about this work? What, quality notwithstanding, did I find interesting in it? Why did (or didn’t) I enjoy a given moment of awfulness? What bigger topics do I have thoughts about or do I want to think about? There’s a lot of thinking about thinking about thinking. Sometimes there’s more of that than writing…
And so, at the turn of the year, as everyone is making best of lists, looking back at the year that’s passed or looking forward to the future to come, it has become my tradition (of only two and a half years – stop fiddling on my roof) to do a list as well – but it’s tricky. I can’t in good conscience do a “best of” list for 2023 releases because I’m terrible at keeping up with new stuff (out of the 123 horror movies I watched in 2023, only 11 were new releases). Past that, choosing the ten best to write about is rough because most of the best horror content I’ve watched this year, I’ve already done posts on (83 movies in 2023) – so in a way, these are all leftovers: The Ten Best Things I’ve Watched This Year That I Hadn’t Seen Before And Haven’t Written About Yet. It’s a mouthful. Also not a catchy title. Ah well…
In case you’re wondering, Silent Night, Deadly Night IV isn’t on the list (I wrote about it last time). But I figure she’s holding up TEN fingers in a form that is NEW for her, so there you go…
Some of these I’d watched planning to do a full post about them but for whatever reason I just didn’t make it happen. In that case, I hereby reserve the right to return to any and all of these in the future for longer analysis (I don’t know who I’m submitting this claim to, but it is thus declared). Some of these I really enjoyed, but just didn’t feel the urge to commit three thousand words to them, and so here I can briefly sing their praises without the burden of deeper consideration. So yeah – these will be short (in some cases, I watched them once almost a year ago and we’ll see what’s stayed with me). Also, this isn’t a countdown – these are in no particular order – just that in which I think of them.
But that’s probably enough set up. Let’s get to it, shall we? For a change, as these will all be short texts, I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I’m not exactly making any promises.
Curtains (1983)
What an absolute blast! This Canadian slasher with a troubled production history (directors coming and going and taking their names off the project – resulting in wildly divergent tones and, shall we say, odd plotting) has a bit of everything: creepy dolls; that scene on the ice with the hag masked killer, the sickle, and the slow motion skating; a head in a toilet; the total defiance of physics (how can you get knocked out of an upstairs window only to crash into the downstairs window?); some legitimately suspenseful sequences, better acting than it probably deserved (Samantha Eggar is great, John Vernon, most recently mentioned in my write up of Killer Klowns from Outer Space, has to be one of the all-time greatest portrayers of cinematic bastards, and I was so happy to see Lynne Griffin, Clare from Black Christmas), and a twist ending that for my money, really lands. And for all that it is more than a little stylistically messy, it even has strong contemporary resonance – a #MeToo movie thirty years ahead of its time.
We follow Samantha, a famous actress researching her next big role which will require her to play “crazy” so her director, Jonathan Stryker, a real prince of a guy, has her committed to an institution to “research” the role. He then abandons her there and invites a group of young ingénues to his remote house to “audition” them instead, and by audition, of course I mean psychologically torment them and try to get into their pants. What he’s looking for in the part is a bit of a mystery as the women are professionally, respectively, an actress, an ice skater, a stand-up comedian, a ballet dancer, and a musician. But maybe he’s not even casting, and he just wants a group of attractive women to sleep with and belittle while doing acting exercises. Like I said, a real prince.
Of course, everyone starts dying (I’m pretty sure only one person makes it to the end), and there is a reasonably enjoyable whodunit in puzzling out who’s actually behind all this slashing, as well as a turn at the end that took me by surprise, but I think this is a movie most enjoyed for its idiosyncratic little details rather than the big picture. Really – it’s a hoot.
Sante Sangre (1989)
I was so impressed with this one and really intended to write a full post on it and somehow failed to (I think it just felt so big and worthy that I needed to invest more thought and take the time for another couple of viewings, and that week, I just wasn’t up to the task). One day, I hope I circle back and do so because it is tremendous. In short, it’s about a young man, Fenix, who grew up in a circus where he witnessed his knife throwing father cut off his religious-cult-leading mother’s arms as revenge for her acid-poured-on-crotch revenge on his infidelity with the tattooed lady. After escaping from an asylum, Fenix becomes his mother’s new arms and is compelled by her to carry out a series of murders. In terms of plot, it’s relatively straightforward (relatively), but Alejandro Jodorowski’s carnivalesque, manic, utterly gorgeous and disturbed arthouse horror is anything but.
There is such an overwhelming sense of ritual, of devotion (religious, familial, romantic, sexual, psychotic), of the cruel compulsion to serve what and whom must be served and the nearly completely crushed spirit of an individual trying to assert itself, trying to live its own life, free from the oppression of the holy, of beauty, of family. Heady stuff – but it’s also just so full of life – weird and wild and bloody and baffling. No matter how lofty the ideas at play, this film is never ponderous or weighed down, but is rather a rollercoaster of passion and murder and absurdity and art and lived-in details. I absolutely loved it – easily one of the best films I saw last year, horror or otherwise.
The Ring (1998)
It is embarrassing that it took me so long to finally get around to watching the Japanese original, but I’m so very glad I did. I’d seen the American remake on release (on video, at home, and the moment my roommate and I finished watching, the phone rang…it was only his mom, but still creepy as all get out) and had always heard how good this was, but somehow never before pulled the trigger on it.
Wow. It’s always nice when something lives up to the hype – this really worked for me, even though the remake had been faithful enough that there weren’t too many surprises to be had – but yeah, it still creeped me out. And what’s more, it really lingered with me for a couple of days afterwards – not in the sense of being scared of video tapes (not many of those around these days), but in the mood, the feeling.
I won’t go into the plot much because a) I feel like everyone already knows the basic idea whether they’ve seen it or not (watch a cursed video and die in seven days) and also b) if you haven’t seen it, there are some twists and turns in the final act that really surprised me when I first saw the remake and still land dramatically on finally watching the original. But I will say that the film does something so interesting in combining elements that feel so richly folk horror – urban folklore, old curse, angry ghost, kids creeping each other out with scary stories – combining all that with modernity, with technology, with elements that feel utterly of the “modern world.” Although all of the tech at play here – video tapes, film cameras, and landline telephones have gone the way of the dodo, the idea of viral concepts self-perpetuating through the technology that dominates our lives, the space in which we really live, and haunting us, changing us, dooming us – that idea is as current as could be. It really holds up.
Hellraiser (2022)
This is another one that I mean to write about at greater length. I’d waited for it for quite a while as it took more than a year to finally be rentable on a streaming service where I live (Poland) and I wanted to be a good boy and pay for it. I can’t say that it’s a perfect movie and when I finally go into more detail, I’ll discuss why, but at least the first half felt so much like a Clive Barker story and it really scratched an itch for me, sending me down a rabbit hole of rewatching the first two Hellraiser movies (the only ones that really had Clive’s involvement) and re-reading “The Hellbound Heart” (the novella on which the first film was based).
The intersection of addiction and the compulsion to work the puzzle box, to keep going even if it hurts and is clearly self-destructive, really felt like something out of an early Barker short story, specifically putting me in mind of “The Inhuman Condition,” (the one with the knots) and I liked Riley as a flawed, but compelling protagonist. Furthermore, Roland Voight, the villain of the piece, is such an absolutely Barkerian figure – the hedonistic, amoral playboy art collector seeking out experience beyond limit, and I really liked the visualization of the cenobites, no longer just S&M leather demons (though that is an iconic look and really worked in its own way, bringing a fetishistic sexuality to the first and all subsequent films), but remade into monstrous puzzle boxes themselves, their bodies and souls perpetually held in extremis.
While it’s true that the story somewhat lost me in the second half once they’re all trapped in the house getting picked off one by one, on the whole, it had the right flavor. It gave me a taste of the author who first brought me to the genre, and that was more than worth the watch and the wait.
Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)
Sometimes you just have to be in the right mood to appreciate a given film. I’d heard of this years back as a “famously bad,” “so-bad-it’s-good” B-movie, striking for being so terrible even though it’s the first sequel to a bit of a modern classic (I mean once you get to Part III: The Marsupials, you already have lowered expectations – though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that one yet). So, long ago, I gave it a try with a terrible copy available on Youtube and quickly gave up, deeming it not worth my efforts. But then sometime this year it showed up on Shudder and I’m so glad I gave it a second chance cause I absolutely ate it up!
What’s it about? Unsurprisingly, this guy discovers that his dead sister (Karen, the protagonist of the first film) was a werewolf (wouldn’t have guessed that from the title) and therefore has to travel to Transylvania to fight Stirba, the immortal werewolf queen before she can take over the world. Along the way, eyes get popped out, there’s a werewolf orgy, there’s a telepathic mind battle, and surprisingly little stuff that feels like a traditional werewolf story – but who cares? It is brash and fun and so lovably shameless in its sleazy immaturity (infamously, a moment when Stirba tears her shirt off is repeated seventeen times over the closing credits as the theme song plays one last time).
Is it actually a good movie? Maybe not, but who’s to say? Is it frequently laugh out loud absurd in surprising, delightful, cheeky ways? Absolutely! Does the soundtrack basically just feature one song that it plays on repeat constantly? Yeah – but (as I wrote about recently) it’s a banger! Has it got Christopher Lee wearing the most 80s sunglasses imaginable and uttering ridiculous expository dialogue with great, silky voiced gravitas? Oh yeah! And somehow, in spite (and because) of all of its weirdness, is it actually kind of a cool, folksy, rockin’ werewolf (though they kind of seem more like vampires sometimes) flick that, if you’re open to it, is just a party and a half? I really think it is.
Talk to Me (2023)
Hey! A new movie – look at that! I know that this Australian feature already got a lot of buzz this year, but I’ll add to it. A group of teenagers start playing a party game with this weird mummy hand that’s being passed around – you hold the hand and suddenly find yourself face to face with a dead person. It’s creepy and weird as party games go, but it’s also thrilling and wild. The plot kicks in as a girl still in mourning for her mother who’d OD’d two years earlier comes into contact with this addictively sinister item and goes down an unsurprisingly dark path.
Now, I will say that where the story ultimately went didn’t exactly blow me away, but I loved the energy of the early scenes with all of the kids basically getting high on this new party drug (of summoning the dead). As an addiction narrative, it put me in mind of the bit in Trainspotting when Renton narrates, justifying his heroin habit, “What (people) forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid.”
The play with this mysterious object feels like such a dangerous game – and no one understands it. We get no real lore. No exposition (so refreshing). Different kids tell different stories about its origins, but it’s obvious that no one knows anything, and there is an essential mystery which is enticing and cool and scary, and I love that the filmmakers commit to it and don’t ruin things by explaining everything (or really, explaining anything at all). As a viewer, you feel how wrong it is and at the same time how awesome it is too. In the second half, the story took some predictable turns, but the early vibes were eerie and cool enough to earn it a place on this list.
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)
This is another “wow” movie that I think I watched a second time the very next day. Jodie Foster (maybe 13 at the time of filming) is captivating in her portrayal of Rynn, a precocious teenage girl, living alone in a big house, who seems beset on all sides by adult threats to her life, her freedom, and her autonomy, and who also just might be a sociopath. But even if she is, that’s no matter – I think it’s impossible not to root for her independence and self-assurance.
One could certainly quibble about the genre classification here (maybe it’s a thriller, maybe it’s a mystery, maybe it’s a drama), but there is enough of the unsettling, and the threatening, enough looming doom, for me to happily count this a horror film. Plus, it features a young Martin Sheen as the local child molester, which the town takes as a kind of open secret and does nothing about, who comes to prey on Rynn, and he feels so dangerous and scary – it gets pretty uncomfortable and he’s great in the role.
The whole film is intriguing and unnerving, as Rynn both takes on and is subjected to adult situations and dangers (the treatment of age and sexuality is more than a little disquieting and it’s hard to imagine this being made in quite this way today – but it’s also, I would argue, absolutely central to the character, to the story, to the admittedly controversial idea at the center of the film – that Rynn alone has the right to her own decisions, financial independence, and sexual agency, and that any attempt on the part of “grown-ups” to protect her amounts to a unacceptable violation of her liberty). And the whole time, while I always felt on her side, there was also a mystery at the heart of her character – there is a depth under the surface we can never see. Her clear eyed understanding of the world around her is a kind of power, as is her unbothered willingness to do what she needs to do to assert her right to self-determination. But this power is also dangerous in its way, and she is able to carry out consequential acts without moral compunctions. Still, these same qualities are magnetic; separating her from others in the ‘killer kid’ canon who might be seen as monstrous. On the contrary, she always feels like the most reasonable, mature, qualified figure in the narrative, and any threats she feels the need to dispatch, I wouldn’t begrudge her right to do so. It is a really interesting little movie.
Alligator (1980)
What “right” does any film have to be good? That’s an odd judgment to make. Nevertheless, on watching this giant-alligator-in-the-sewers movie, I immediately felt that it was so much better than it had any right to be, or perhaps simply any need to be. I mean, to be successful, so many elements could have been lacking – if there’s a big alligator eating people, that’s really enough. But this Jaws-esque romp gave me so much more.
Penned by John Sayles, and starring Robert Forster, there is a surprising depth of character and feeling in this otherwise silly but entertaining story of an alligator, brought as a baby from a vacation in Florida home to Chicago where it’s flushed down the toilet and lives in the sewer, feeding on test animals from a lab, which causes it to grow extra large and extra hungry, eventually going on a rampage wherein it eventually consumes the evil scientists inadvertently responsible for its creation as well as the corrupt politicians whose turning a blind eye to corporate malfeasance has made this all possible.
But along the way, we are treated to Forester’s genuinely grounded performance as a world weary cop whose partners keep dying in the line of duty – and who thus carries a great weight of guilt, grief, and exhaustion (we see at least one get got by the gator and it actually lands with real, effective horror notes), a hesitant, tentative romance, alternatingly tender and combative, that develops between him and Marissa, the local herpetologist, and any number of little moments of life and specificity – Marissa’s mother who just won’t stop talking and is somehow both irritating and charming, a delightful short scene in which the cocky big game hunter brought in to take down the gator is being interviewed by an attractive female reporter and flirts with her by performing alligator mating and/or distress calls (sexy, huh?), and Forster’s quiet, gently sad disdain for the scientists he talks to early in the film who are experimenting on cute dogs before furtively discarding their remains in the sewer for giant reptiles to eat.
We also get loads of big puppet work (which is pretty much ok), a small real alligator on miniature sets (which is fun), and wild shifts of tone, like when we cut between the central romance and a kids birthday party where some little boys dressed as pirates make another kid walk the plank before pushing him into a pool where he is brutally and bloodily devoured by the titular creature, or the wedding party filled with rich jerks, where the alligator invades and causes glorious, ridiculous havoc. What fun!
Scream VI (2023)
And we have one more new movie on the list. I’d enjoyed the previous year’s jumpstarting of the dormant franchise, but this entry felt more like its own thing. Sure Gale Weathers is still on the scene, but the story otherwise belongs to the new young cast, and particularly Melissa Barrera’s Sam, and her struggle with her own useful, but nonetheless concerning capability for violence, which she fears may be an inherited trait. This internal conflict has developed over the course of these last two movies and it’s a compelling story (which, sadly, may never be resolved as the next film seems to have been scuppered after Barrera was fired for social media posts about Gaza – Ortega left immediately after, as did Christopher Landon, the director of the upcoming entry).
I think the Scream movies are pretty consistent in their quality (sure, there are ups and downs, but on the whole, they’re pretty solid) and in maintaining the mystery of the identity of the killer (or, more often, killers) each time, and this is no exception (I didn’t exactly love the why this time, but the reveal of who was satisfying). Also, they allow certain characters to make it from one film to the next, such that we can become invested in their survival (of course, characters frequently die, but the others we do get to know and come to like spending time with). I think it was always a strength of the series that the final girl was the star, returning time after time, targeted by new killers, rather than “ghostface,” the voice modulated psycho of the week wearing a store bought Halloween costume. Though the mantel of final girl has changed in this new cycle, this film continues that trend, giving us more time with the new “core four,” all of whom are likeable kids that I’m not hoping to see offed.
But the highlights are clearly a few action/suspense/horror set pieces of great tension and excitement. The series of kills in the cold open kick the mystery off in a refreshing way, the final conflict in the movie theatre/shrine has its thrills and viscerally satisfying brutality, Gale’s fight is high paced and really feels like it could go either way and this could be the last we see of her, and of course, the ladder scene shines as, under attack from the masked killer, all of the kids seek egress from their apartment terrifyingly high in the air. It is tense and scary and just fun. I think the co-directing team of Radio Silence really shined in the last film and in this one with some stand out suspense scenes. It’s a shame they’re not continuing with the series (but after recent developments, one wonders if the series will even continue with itself, or maybe lie dormant for another ten years, before doing another soft-reboot in which they may actually be willing to pay Neve Campbell’s asking price for some 40th anniversary return to the endless trials and tribulations of Sydney Prescott). But whatever (if anything) comes in the future, this was a good night at the cinema and I’m glad I got to see it on the big screen.
Chucky Seasons 1 (2021) & 2 (2022)
And, finally, this one isn’t even a movie. For a while I’d been hearing how good the Chucky show is, but it just wasn’t playing anywhere I had access to, and then finally, over the course of this year, the first two seasons showed up on Shudder (who knows how long I’ll have to wait for the third, currently airing), and it kinda blew me away.
I’ve long respected Don Mancini’s Child’s Play/Chucky movie franchise. The first is a modern classic – really well made, fresh and scary. Then there is such a strong sense of continuity that runs through the rest of the movies, even as they’ve adopted wildly different tones, from straight horror to high camp and back to horror again, with many characters returning over the years, and furthermore, showing evidence of growth and change. And also, it feels special to have such a strong authorial voice that runs through it all. Mancini has only directed the last three films, but he wrote all seven of them and creatively leads the show (though both writing and directing responsibilities are shared with a team as is common on television).
And what a show – I think it manages moments that are properly scary, and it regularly surprised me or even shocked me with brutal turns. You know nobody is safe, but all the same, my jaw fell open more than once at just how willing the show was to let horrible things happen to characters you would expect, following the patterns of pop-culture entertainment, to be inviolable. And then the story really hooked me – in many ways, it follows the sort of tropes one expects of a teen coming-of-age drama: bullying, feeling isolated and weird, romance, in this case between two boys, one of whom has to deal with a homophobic home life, growing up and asserting independence from family – normal teen drama stuff…but…add a killer doll to the mix, add a real sense of constant danger, add wild turns of character carried by top notch actors (the work Jennifer Tilly gets to do in this series is really special – the same goes for Lachlan Watson, who plays Glen and Glenda, Fiona Dourif, and of course, Brad Dourif, whose been voicing Chucky since the beginning), and you get something totally new and exciting. It’s also nice how open and warm hearted the show is towards its young characters’ gender and sexuality at the same time as it can be so harsh and brutal when it feels like it – there’s a tension of tone that strengthens the whole. I also love that all of Chucky’s movement is actual puppetry – apparently digital effects are only used to remove strings or other remnants of the puppeteers from shots, but everything is done by hand – how rare and special – and it’s really well done.
Finally, I just got fully invested in the directions the story would take – it all happens against a backdrop of heartfelt teen romance and angst, but as the antagonist driving the story forward (which can be genuinely affecting), Chucky gets up to surprising plots and ploys and the show consistently kept me guessing. Really, these two seasons are the most fun I’ve had watching a TV show for a long time (it even got me listening to music from the soundtrack which hadn’t happened since I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I laughed, I cried, I got startled, I got shocked, I had a great time. I can’t wait to see the third season someday.
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And there we have it, my ten favorite things of the year that I hadn’t yet written about. I imagine a bunch of these I might return to at greater length – lots of them deserve extra consideration. But either way, these last couple of days, I’ve had fun remembering them all – these might not have made the cut for a full post back during the year, but that is not due to any lack of affection for them on my part. There’s nothing on this list I wasn’t utterly enthusiastic about, both on first viewing and this reconsideration.
And so, that’s enough looking back. Let’s go forward and see what’s to be found in 2024.
