Horror-thon: Part II - Transylvanian Terror

The first two films I watched for my Oktoberfest of Horror were two versions of Dracula, the 1931 classic starring Bela Lugosi and the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring Gary Oldman.

As someone who has read the book,  I must say that the '31 adaptation doesn't stand up to the novel. In fact, that version of Dracula wasn't technically based off of the novel itself, but was instead the adaptation of a play based off of the book. It is one of the downsides of the movie that the plot is much too simplified. Granted, it dates back to the 1930s, when movie norms were quite different from what they are now, but when I compare the movie with the novel, I can't help but notice certain jarring simplifications. Easily the most unsettling is the treatment of the "White Lady." The audience is shown that one of Dracula's victims has become a vampire, and is preying on children. And then?.... Nothing. The main plot line continues on without any resolution whatsoever of what you would think would be an important issue. After all, this only means that there's a second vampire loose in London.

On the plus side, however, there is the superb performance of Bela Lugosi, who effuses a wonderfully sinister charm and charisma. It is commonly said that Lugosi, a Hungarian, had to learn his lines phonetically because he didn't speak English when the movie was made. This is actually incorrect, although there is an element of truth to it, as Lugosi had played Dracula for years in the stage version mentioned above and had to learn his lines phonetically because of his then-poor English.

The 1991 version adheres more closely to the novel. It still has multiple alterations, however, but it is far from the simple story of the original movie.  Perhaps the alteration that I most like is the movie's introduction, which provides the origin story of the dark count. In fact, the overall arc of the movies suggests that Dracula is not so much a horror villain as a tragic character, a man who, when confronted with immeasurable and eternal loss, chose to renounce both his soul and humanity, and suffers the consequences over the following centuries.

Definitely an old man...

Another distinction of this version is its quite overt sexuality. I generally think it works on multiple levels. It taps into the longstanding perception that, in the stuffy Victorian age, sexuality was tantamount to depravity. And few things are as depraved as the depiction of the undead slacking their lust for the living (and not just for their blood...).  Then there's the juxtaposition of the sexually repressed Jonathan, generally considered the hero of the story, with the aggressively sexual Dracula, which further questions the distinction between the living and the dead.

It goes without saying that Gary Oldman is fantastic as Dracula, and Anthony Hopkins is a riot to watch as a callously straight-forward Van Helsing. Keanu Reeves, on the other hand, is cringe-inducing, mostly because of his horrific attempt to use a British accent. Among other butcheries, he possibly committed the most laughable mispronunciation of Budapest, "Byudapest," during a voice-over narration. I don't know what Francis Ford Coppola was thinking when he cast him.

Horror-thon

In response to a complaint that I didn't have anything to blog about, a friend suggested that I blog about my recent spate of horror movie watching. The month of October has two inconveniently contradictory realities for students (or at least me): one, the existence of midterm exams and papers, and two, the overwhelming desire to sit around watching horror movies, at the likely expense of performing well on aforementioned midterms. As someone who has loved horror movies since I was a pre-teen, I've been spending a bit too much time on the latter, but I don't care.

Unfortunately, my ability to watch my favorite horror movies has been hampered by my recent severing of ties with Netflix's DVD mailing service, which means I'm limited to whatever's available on instant viewing, Hulu, or movies that I own. Unfortunately, this means I can't watch films like Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Halloween (1978), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980), Ringu (1998), and Ju-On (2003). 

Nevertheless, I have made the best of a disappointing situation. So far this month, I've watched twelve horror movies, for a current average of one a day. (I've also had one in-class midterm, but the horror movies are obviously more important...) They are: Dracula (1931), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Fog (1980), The Thing (1982), The Lost Boys (1987), The Exorcist (1973), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), The Evil Dead (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981), The Howling (1981), Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), and Scream (1996). I will be writing blog posts about most, if not all, of them and other horror movies in the near future...

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

So, Saturday night I finally forced myself to watch The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day on Netflix. It appears that there's a reason why it sat in my queue for months.

Simply put, it was awful. I'll be honest and admit that the first Boondock Saints isn't a particularly good film, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Considering that there was some ten years between the films, the second one should have been much better.

I'll put a spoiler warning in case any of you want to watch this festering turd of a movie.

So, the film starts out with the MacManus boys and their dad in Ireland, and judging by their hirsute visages, 1) they've been there for a while, and 2) there aren't any razors on the Emerald Isle.

The boys find out that they've been framed for the murder of a priest, and come back to America to bring the vengeance of the Lord upon anyone connected with the crime.

The actual killer, a hired gun who is 5' 5", is obsessed with his lack of height. Pretty much half of his screen time is him silently gauging how short he is. It's pointless and annoying.

There are also a myriad of flashbacks and dream sequences. The primary purpose of which apparently is to provide an excuse to have the deceased Rocco make an appearance. Also pointless and annoying.

There are gun fights, and (generally lame) wisecracks, and a disturbing amount visible of an overweight man. Judd Nelson plays the son of Papa Joe Yakavetta, which is kinda weird since he's two years older than Carlos Rota.

An insufferably long story short, it turns out that Noah, the MacManus' father, who was simply known as "Il Duce" in the first movie, is being lured back to America by an old friend of his played by Peter Fonda. This friend helped Noah become the badass assassin he was in the first movie, and then arranged for his incarceration. The background for this showdown was provided throughout the film by additional flashbacks that appeared to be a tacky imitation of The Godfather Part II. In my opinion, the back-story, which casts Noah as a vigilante killer of Mafiosos, doesn't seem to mesh with the first film, which implies that he's a Mafia hit-man with a moral code.

Anyway, a violent shootout precedes the film's ending, which suggests that there may be another sequel in the works. Saints preserve us from that day.

AMC vs. TCM

Those of you who know me know that I look down on AMC in its current manifestation. The movie choices, the constant repetition of movies, the original television shows (though they are quite good), and the commercials (especially the ones for "male enhancement" products) all demonstrate to me that AMC is no longer the channel of American Movie Classics. To better analyze AMC, I created a scatter plot graph comparing the movie being shown this week on AMC and TCM.



Now, I'm not a mathematician or a statistician, I am fairly certain that when we look at this graph, we're supposed to ask, What does this tell us? So, what does this tell us? Not a whole lot. There are, however, a few things that can be inferred from the graph.

One: TCM is showing a larger selection of movies, 91 (one movie was not placed on the graph because it had no ratings on IMDb), than AMC, 47. The most likely reason for this is the fact that AMC's weekly schedule is cluttered with television shows, repeated movies and television shows, and penile growth commercials. Of course, the repeated movies are the worst as they take up the most scheduling time and keep AMC from supplying additional movies during the week.

Two: TCM's movie selection spans a greater length of time than AMC's, with selections spanning 71 years of cinema, from 1914 to 1982. AMC's, on the other hand, is representative of only 56 years, from 1950 to 2006. Possible reasons for this difference is that TCM can afford a wider diversity of movies. I make this assumption because of the commercial-free nature of TCM's movies, which implies that TCM doesn't need money from advertisers. Additionally, because AMC does run commercials, it will need to run movies that advertisers will want to run commercials during. Generally, these movies will be somewhat newer and/or more action-oriented, at least during the day.

Three: Interestingly, AMC's trendline implies that movie quality goes down the older the movie shown while TCM's trendline implies the opposite. My guess for why this is true is that TCM has a larger share of the rights to older movies, which restricts AMC's abilities to obtain the rights to quality movies from the '80s (I use the word "quality" loosely when describing '80s movies). Of course, as mentioned earlier, AMC's demand for older movies might not be that strong because of advertising. I do think, however, that more than one week's data is needed to see if the trendlines remain consistent.

There are some issues with the scatter plot. Probably the most significant of these is the use of IMDb ratings, which can be unstable and a bit susceptible to manipulation, as last year's ratings battle between fans of The Godfather and The Dark Knight shows. Particularly unstable are movies that don't have a lot of ratings, which is the case with quite a few older movies.