Review: The Transfiguration (2017) and Vampires vs the Bronx (2020)

It's been a whole year since I've done a review on this blog, and nearly two since my last vampire film, but it's Halloween week in 2020, and there have been a few fascinating new vampire movies that have been released in the past few years, so I figured it was time for a return to Fangtastic Films reviews!

Vampire films, and horror films in general, are often a commentary on their time and context, and so perhaps it is no wonder that in a time of historic Black Lives Matter protests, gentrification, and rising housing costs in cities, we have movies like The Transfiguration (2017) and Vampires vs. the Bronx (2020).  

Review: The Love Witch (2016)

Okay, I mentioned I needed a pallet cleanser after Witches of Eastwick, so I present: The Love Witch.

Review: Witches of Eastwick (1987)

I was warned about Witches of Eastwick. "I remember that movie being terrible," my mom told me when I told her I was going to watch it. "That movie is awful," my boss mentioned when I mentioned my list of witch movies to watch this Halloween season.

Surely they were wrong though, I thought. This was a movie that had "witches" in the title that starred Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and freaking Cher! John Williams scored it, and it was directed by the master of Mad Max: Fury Road himself, George Miller! What could be terrible about this movie?

Review: I Married a Witch (1942)

Oh boy, the sexism is strong with this one.   This inspiration for the TV show Bewitched hardly has as strong or charming a lead... and yet I occasionally found myself bewitched anyway. Thus is the power of I Married a Witch.
  

Quick review: What We Do in the Shadows (2015) and Witch-tober!

This blog was dead. Very dead. Steak through the heart levels of dead. But this has been a horrifying year, and not in the fun watching-a-horror-movie way, and I need a bit of Halloween joy in my life right now. Thus, this blog is at least temporarily rising from its coffin to discuss and review some movies this Halloween season.

However, this October I will not be focusing mainly on vampires or werewolves. Instead, I'm feeling like a bit of a witch hunt...

... but first, I finally saw What We Do in the Shadows.

Review: The Forsaken (2001)

For Andy - I finally got around to your favorite vampire film

Here at Fangtastic Films, we've seen vampirism as a metaphor for mental illness, addiction, and even African-American struggles and oppression by European upper classes. Now we have vampirism as a metaphor for AIDS; yes, I've gotten around to The Forsaken.

For your Halloween movie night...

Happy Halloween, dear readers! There is a new vampire movie review on its way, but before the witching hour passes, I wanted to give you all my top recommendations for a very vampire and werewolf Halloween Movie Night! If you're having a movie marathon to get in mood for the holiday, you won't want to miss these.

Review: 30 Days of Night (2007)

It's October, which means Pumpkin Spice Lattes, candy sales at every grocery store, and (of course) HALLOWEEN.

You know, Vampire and Werewolf movies likely seem perfect for this season, but not all of them necessarily fit the Halloween "mood." To celebrate the start of this special spooky season, I picked a vampire movie to review that is known for being authentically scary. Should this be added to your Halloween movie marathon list? Let's examine 30 Days of Night.

Review: Bloodsucking Bastards (2015)

The past several vampire movies I've watched for this blog have been of a range of quality, from stunning to fascinating to absolutely dull. However, regardless of quality, they've all had a similar tone and pace; they've been slow, ponderous, serious films, ones which play with subtle mood and mix vampirism with the directors' questions about morality, culture, and philosophy. While many have been well done, this last film left me so drained that I found myself wondering why I was trying to keep this blog updated .....Why had I even wanted to make a vampire movie blog anyway?

Thankfully, my local independent movie theater had a one-week showing of the film Bloodsucking Bastards and it reminded me of one important truth: vampire movies can be a lot of FUN.

Pictured: a lot of fun

Review: Da' Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)

After sitting with this movie and this review for well over a month now, I finally understand: Spike Lee has not just made a vampire movie; Spike Lee is a vampire.

Review: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Picture this: a child walks up to a soda fountain. She has a large cup and now must decide which soda to choose; does she pick the lemony Spite? The complex Dr. Pepper? The classic Coke? The far-too-sweet-and-unnaturally-colored Hawaiian Punch? Unable to decide and wanting the best characteristics of each, she squirts all of them into her cup. The resulting concoction is either the best combination she's every tasted or the most disguising barely-drinkable mess of flavors, depending on the ratio and choice of the combination.

It is easy to imagine a film working very similarly; when you mix concepts and genres, what results can be be either fascinating and brilliant or a confusing and barely-watchable mess. This weekend I got the chance to see one such film: the Iranian, 1950s and Spaghetti Western inspired, black-and-white, independent, vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night from writer and director Ana Lily Amirpour.

Review: Universal's Dracula (1931) and Dracula Untold (2014)

I recently had a good friend visit Seattle, so we went sightseeing and ended up at the EMP Museum. There we saw the currently running horror instillation "Can't Look Away," which examines our fascination with the horror genre.

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The entire exhibit was fascinating, but it made me especially reflect on the influence of the Universal monster films; our images of Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's creature are all so thoroughly shaped by these movies.

Universal was also one of the first companies to create a "shared universe." As the science-fiction site io9 reflects: "The original Universal Monsters series (1931-1945) featured the first crossover between established characters in movie history with Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943), and eventually threw Dracula into the mix in House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945)."

Now, 83 years later, Universal is trying to make a new monster movie shared universe, and they're bringing back all of their classics... but for a new audience. One that is used to superheroes and vampires that sparkle. Out of morbid curiosity, I pulled out my anniversary copy of Universal's 1931 Dracula and decided to compare it to my screening of Universal's recent attempt to launch a new monster movie series, Dracula Untold.

So, is the original classic as good as we remember? And is the new Dracula the start of Unversal's return to monster movie greatness... or just horrifying?

The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 3: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011) and Part 2 (2012)

What's scarier on Halloween than a slasher movie where a crazed lunatic tries to kill a group of teenagers? How about a movie that seems like it's trying to kill a whole genre?

This, I'm sorry to say, is THE ULTIMATE TWILIGHT RUNDOWN, PART 3 - 

The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 2: New Moon (2009) and Eclipse (2010)

So it's fall here in the Pacific Northwest and the weather has changed. As one of my friends put it, Seattle currently has perfect "traipsing through the fog in a top hat and scarf, looking for Cockney prostitutes to vivisect" weather.

This creepy, Gothic feel actually makes me appreciate even more what Catherine Hardwicke did with the original Twilight movie. Which just makes these next films just so... so... so much worse.

The Ultimate Twilight Rundown, Part 1: Twilight (2008)

The success of Twilight really doesn't shock me. After all, in many ways, the formula is an old one.

Gothic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries was mostly read by female audiences, and the more popular and romantic examples included plots which featured vulnerable heroines (weeping, suffering, and fainting at the slightest shoe drop) who encountered supernatural elements and mysteries and who, after the defeat of some horrible foe, often ended up married to a wealthy lord (perhaps previously disguised). Common tropes of a Gothic novel included a mysterious and suspenseful tone, elements of the supernatural, omens or visions or prophesies, a lonely and suffering heroine, melodramatic reactions and emotions (especially those related to love or suffering), lovers parted, and often one lover's uncertainty about the reciprocalness of the other's love. While some of the most famous and memorable Gothic novels, like Frankenstein, deviated from the standard tropes, the Twilight series can actually be seen as a revival of a type.

But is that a good thing? And does that mean any of the films are actually worth watching? Well, grab your smelling salts and hold on tight: I watched all five movies so that you don't have to. 

This is the Great Twilight Run-Down - PART 1, the original Twilight movie.

The sparkles are coming...

If anyone is wondering why Fangtastic Films hasn't had a review in a while, that would be because I just finished a 1500 mile move from sunny Arizona to the much more vampire-friendly Washington state. It's been a lot of work and boxes are still being unpacked, but I thought I would take a moment to tell you all that a series of reviews are in the works. Namely, reviews of a film series, based on a book series, that is about a protagonist who meets vampires after moving from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington State.

Yes, I've referenced it and teased it before. And I've watched bad teen monster movie after bad teen monster movie, so I feel I'm a bit inoculated. Well... maybe. But either way, it's coming: The Ultimate Twilight Movie Rundown.

Yet another vampire Mean Girls reference... God help me.

Full disclosure, I've never read the Twilight novels. However, I know what I would consider "far too much" about them and have a sense of each book's plot because I work with teenagers and I feel it's important to know these things. Like being able to joke about Katy Perry lyrics. It's a bit of a curse.

So stay tuned, dust off your "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" flags, and wish me luck. I think I'm going to need it.

~ LK

Review: The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998)

The Wisdom of Crocodiles is a film that was doomed to not do well in the United States. This UK film (titled Immortality for American audiences) grossed only $21 thousand during its entire US theater run. In comparison, Blade and John Carpenter's Vampires, which both came out in the same year, grossed $17 million and $9 million in just the US respectively. Yes, in 1998, a philosophical independent film starring a then-nearly-unknown Jude Law was really not going to appeal to an audience used to Hollywood-style action or horror. But, in the era of more thoughtful vampire films like Byzantium and Only Lovers Left Alive, how does the film hold up now?

Review: Vampire Academy (2014)

The main thing to know about Vampire Academy is that it is basically Mean Girls. With vampires. And less humor.

Review: Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)

If you had asked me a month ago what I thought the "golden age" of great vampire stories was, I would have said the early 1990s. Back then, there was a wealth of authentically interesting vampire novels, a popular role-playing game, and films that focused on vampire history and class, like Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film and, of course, Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire. It was also the start of Joss Whedon's popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, which balanced teen issues and humor with the same reverence for candlelit history that was popular in Interview.

The 1990s was what got me "into" vampires personally, and an era which I was sad to see "die" with the rise of Hot Topic and the neon and pleather clad vampires in the late-1990s and early-2000s, followed by the rise of Twilight and what seemed like the end of anyone taking vampire films seriously. Ever since, vampire films have often borrowed from other genres (science fiction, comedies, or zombie movies) to stay relevant. As of recently, the age of just good, seriously approached vampire stories seemed like it was in the past.

And then I watched Byzantium, which was haunting and lovely and ultimately much more emotionally compelling than Jordan's earlier Interview. And I could have dismissed that as a single film and not (perhaps) a shift in the vampire genre if I also didn't get the chance to watch Jim Jarmush's Only Lovers Left Alive this past weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, are we in for a vampire art renaissance?

Review: My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987)

Teen monster movies have a troubled history. From Twilight, to Blood & Chocolate, to Teen Wolf, to I was a Teenage Werewolf, making teenagers the main audience for a supernatural film is usually a recipe for awfulness. Is that same true of the 1980's comedy My Best Friend is a Vampire? Let's find out!