This 1974 film opens with a prologue in which a gunman kills two lesbian lovers. For reasons not explained, the women become vampires. They shack up in a sprawling dilapidated house with a well-stocked wine cellar and pose as hitchhikers to lure various victims to their abode. Fran (who appears to be the alpha vampire) for some reason keeps one fellow alive over several nights and days, while Miriam prefers to kill her blood sources quickly. A man and a woman camping nearby observe the house and speculate about whether or not anyone lives there. Eventually, the guy Fran kept alive escapes and drives off. Not much else occurs in this story.
Vampyres suffers from the lack of a clear single protagonist with a goal the viewer hopes he or she will achieve. The narrative focus meanders back and forth between Fran and the campers with Miriam sometimes popping up. The plot, such as it is, seems mostly like an excuse to string together some bloody images of the vampires feasting along with several nudity-heavy sex scenes. The musical score is awesome, and I love the location (the house looks exactly like the sort of place lesbian vampires would exist), but the tale itself ends with no sense of resolution and never gripped me, filled me with tension, or made me wonder what would happen next. Vampyres has fine atmosphere but a paper-thin plot. Don’t waste your 88 minutes.
The 2007 film Imprint is a Native American ghost story that follows a lawyer (Shayla Stonefeather) as she convicts a possibly-innocent young man of murder, then returns to her parents’ home to help her mother care for her ailing father. Shayla hears noises and eventually (just beyond the midpoint of the movie) sees shadowy apparitions. Is she being haunted by the spirit of the man she convicted (who was shot while trying to escape custody), or is something else going on? Shayla formulates a theory that involves her missing brother, but a twist ending turns the story on its ear.
Imprint is incredibly slow-paced and may not be to the liking of all viewers. I was pleasantly surprised that the project turned out to be much more than just another “restless ghost wants the protagonist to uncover the truth about his death” tale. If you’re patient and sit through this one, you’ll get to see some innovative low-budget special effects. My primary complaint is that Shayla begins as a rather cold and unsympathetic character. I recommend this movie only to those who can tolerate slow-developing narratives.
A film that premiered in Spain in 2002 but was not released in the United States until 2004, Darkness boasts a downright Lovecraftian ending and a story that blends aspects of the haunted house genre with a drama about a nuclear family of four that spins into dysfunction when the father becomes mentally unstable. A teen girl (Regina) moves to an isolated house in Spain with her younger brother (Paul), her mother (Maria), and her father (Mark). Regina, who has befriended a local fellow (Carlos) during her first three weeks in her new home, regularly swims at a community pool. Mark (like Jack Torrance in The Shining) grows irritable, unpredictable, and eventually violent. Meanwhile, Paul repeatedly draws six children with red slashes across their throats, and he sees kids in the darkness and develops bruises on his neck. Regina (for no discernable reason) begins to suspect that the house is somehow causing all of her family’s problems. She and Carlos research the house, visit its architect, and follow a trail of clues that lead them to conclude that the place was the site of an attempted occult ritual forty years earlier, and that someone is about to attempt the ritual again because a certain type of eclipse that only rolls around every forty years is about to occur. The ritual involves seven children having their throats slit “by loving hands.” I can’t summarize the plot any further without spoiling the best parts.
Though flawed in some ways, Darkness contains plentiful spooky imagery and a unique enough story to make it worth a watch. The tale includes some narrative hiccups that made me laugh (like when Carlos fails to mention to Regina that he developed a photo of her and saw children in the background who were not present when he snapped the picture and when Regina and Paul escape from the house where all hell is breaking loose and leave their mom to fend for herself). Also, there’s a scene that involves research at a library in which Regina and Carlos track down information about the occult ritual in quick and convenient fashion. There’s a subplot about Regina’s hobby of swimming that goes nowhere (I assumed that in the third act Regina would have to swim somewhere other than a pool). Despite these complaints, I liked Darkness overall. Original horror movies with disturbing endings are rare. This one’s worth a look.
A dark and subversive take on the “people with their own sentient robots” type of film (like Short Circuit), 1986’s Deadly Friend includes some wildly entertaining moments. You just have to exert tremendous effort to suspend your disbelief. The story follows Paul Conway, a young college whiz kid who studies the human brain and has built an intelligent robot named BB. Paul and his mom (with BB) move to a new neighborhood, where Paul swiftly befriends the local paper boy (a high school sophomore named Tom) and the cute girl next door (Sam, who has an abusive and controlling father). One night Sam’s father knocks Sam down a flight of stairs. She hits her head at the bottom and goes brain-dead. Doctors intend to remove her from life support after 24 hours pass. Paul goes all Frankenstein and concocts a plan to insert a small computer (which he calls a pacemaker for the head) that he salvaged from BB into her brain. With the help of Tom, he actually executes this scheme – with dire consequences. Cyborg Sam sets out to exact revenge on all those in the neighborhood who have wronged her, including her father and the mean old lady across the street (whose death scene, which involves a basketball, is one of the greatest ever filmed). Paul’s efforts to control Sam mostly involve locking her in different places (like her old bedroom and the attic). Ultimately Paul’s mom and later the police come face-to-face with the new Sam, and a cop’s bullet ends the cyborg’s deadly rampage. A brief epilogue makes no sense in hell unless interpreted as a nightmare.
Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (who also wrote Jacob’s Ladder) penned the screenplay for this project (based on a Diana Henstell novel called Friend), and Wes Craven directed. Though the source material sometimes veers into silly territory, the filmmakers successfully construct an engaging tale that evokes both chills and laughter. You know you’re watching a unique story when at one point you realize that the protagonist has slipped his mother a mickey so that he can sneak out of the house to perform unauthorized experimental brain surgery on the gal from next door. The tale is only ninety minutes long and absolutely worth sitting through to get to that death-by-basketball scene. Deadly Friend isn’t a realistic yarn, but it’s damn entertaining.
A Spanish-language film from 2007, The Orphanage is a ghost story that traces the journey of Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she lived for part of her childhood. Laura and her husband (who have an adopted seven-year-old son named Simon) intend to re-open the facility as a home for special-needs children. Simon chats with imaginary friends and even invites home a new one that he “meets” on the beach. After Simon vanishes without a trace, Laura grows to believe that the orphanage may be haunted and that the ghosts have knowledge of Simon’s whereabouts. Laura sets out to make contact with the spirits as she desperately searches for her missing son, who is HIV-positive and requires daily medication.
I wanted to like The Orphanage more than I actually did. I don’t mind films with “down” endings, and The Orphanage does become quite sad in its closing scenes, but the journey to the finale has to be entertaining. The Orphanage elicits a couple of good scares along the way (one of which seems like a variation on the “whose hand was I holding” scene in the 1963 version of The Haunting) but never fully gripped me and got under my skin the way some haunted house films do (such as The Others from 2001). The aspect of a child going missing in the context of ghostly happenings seems derivative of 1982’s Poltergeist. I’m always on the lookout for a good haunted house movie, but The Orphanage disappointed me.
Based on Stephen King’s debut 1974 novel but set in modern times, the NBC adaptation of Carrie premiered in November of 2002 and is available on DVD. The project is feature-film quality and is rather edgy for made-for-TV fare. The plot follows the life of Carrie White, a high school student who lives with her abusive Christian mother (a zealot who frequently forces Carrie to pray in a closet). Carrie (a social outcast) realizes that she has telekinetic powers that enable her to control matter with her mind, particularly in times of extreme stress. Some of Carrie’s cruel peers concoct a plan to douse Carrie with a bucket of pig blood at the prom. After they execute their plan, Carrie lashes out with her powers, psychically holding all the school exits closed. Carrie kills off the majority of her classmates (mostly by setting off the sprinkler system and then bringing some electrical cables crashing down, thereby electrocuting them) in a gripping fire-filled sequence. Carrie’s rampage continues in town before she ultimately heads home and climbs into the tub, where she later (when her mother finds her) cannot recall what happened. Her mother (convinced now that Carrie is a witch) attempts to drown Carrie, who uses her telekinesis to induce a heart attack that kills the older woman. Sue Snell (one of the popular girls from Carrie’s school) finds Carrie and saves her life with CPR. For reasons I don’t understand, Sue and Carrie essentially fake Carrie’s death and then head for Florida in a strange alliance. The main story is intercut with scenes of police questioning some of the surviving students about the scheme to humiliate Carrie as they struggle to piece together what happened.
There are a couple of lengthy dialogue scenes in this tale that stretch on a bit too long (like when Sue helps Carrie pick out lipstick in a store), but this is a minor complaint. The 2002 version of Carrie is dark, disturbing, and generally excellent. The ending (a serious deviation from the source novel) with Sue and Carrie en route to Florida puzzles me, but the journey to the finale is worth taking. The project features three of my favorite actresses: Katharine Isabelle (who somehow looks younger here than she did in Ginger Snaps) and Emilie de Ravin (who later played Claire on Lost) plus an award-worthy performance by Angela Bettis as the titular tortured teen. Quality adaptations of Stephen King stories are rare – this one is absolutely worth seeking out.
CARRIE (1976 version)
Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen and director Brian De Palma follow the basic spine of Stephen King’s novel: a tormented young woman named Carrie develops telekinetic powers and uses them to exact revenge against her high school classmates after pranksters douse her with pig blood at the senior prom. After her rampage, Carrie returns home and bathes. Her overly-religious mother (who perceives Carrie as a personification of sin) stabs Carrie in the back. Carrie, in her final moments of life, uses her powers to send various sharp kitchen implements into her mother. Carrie causes the house to burn and collapse all around her.
The first ever adaptation of a Stephen King novel, Carrie holds up well decades after its release and has just enough humor woven through its beginning and middle to balance out the horror of its ending. From the moment the bucket of blood dumps over the protagonist until the time the credits roll, Carrie is a wild ride. De Palma uses his trademark split screen to interesting effect here, sometimes showing Carrie on one side and what she’s doing with her telekinesis on the other.
Perhaps the most disturbing epiphany I had after watching both the 1976 and 2002 versions of Carrie is the realization that tales about school bullies and revenge of the disempowered seem timeless.
Very loosely based on the Bram Stoker novel, this interpretation of Dracula begins with a shipwreck off the coast of England. A young woman named Mina finds the only survivor (Count Dracula) on the beach. Mina’s friend Lucy happens to be engaged to Jonathan Harker, a lawyer who purchased a sprawling old house on Dracula’s behalf. Dracula attends a party thrown by Lucy’s father (Doctor Jack Seward). Shortly thereafter, Mina mysteriously dies with two puncture marks on her neck. Her father (Professor Abraham Van Helsing) comes to town and consults with Dr. Seward, who examined Mina’s body. Van Helsing grows to suspect that his daughter’s death was caused by a vampire, and he convinces Seward of the validity of this theory moments after one of the more disturbing images I’ve ever seen on film: when Professor Van Helsing comes face-to-face with his undead daughter. Van Helsing discovers who the Alpha Vampire is when Dracula confronts him. Van Helsing and Seward rope Harker into an alliance to try to save Lucy, who falls deeper and deeper under Dracula’s spell. Harker and Van Helsing pursue Dracula and Lucy to a ship bound for Romania. There the heroes attempt to vanquish the vampire once and for all, though whether or not they succeed may be open to how one interprets the film’s closing images.
How have I gone my whole life without ever enjoying this version of Dracula (which features a score by John Williams and a performance by Donald Pleasence as Jack Seward)? I’m glad I finally got around to checking it out. Though the filmmakers take tremendous liberties with the Stoker source material, the movie is totally engaging. It’s worth watching just for the scene (which takes place in an old abandoned mine beneath the cemetery) in which one gets a clear look at Mina after she’s transformed into a vampire – I got seriously creeped out by the imagery. My only real complaint is that some shots of a flying bat look sub-par. That aside, this might become my favorite adaptation of Dracula.
DRACULA (1931 version)
The old black-and-white Universal version of Dracula opens with one Mr. Renfield visiting Dracula in his Transylvania home, initially filling the Harker role from the Stoker novel by sealing a deal for Dracula to obtain a home in England. Renfield quickly falls under Dracula’s spell and becomes his bug-eating slave. Dracula and Renfield take a ship to Whitby Harbor. Dracula sets up shop in his new home and swiftly infiltrates the lives of Dr. Seward, his daughter Mina, and her fiancé (John Harker). Van Helsing (an associate of Dr. Seward’s) grows to suspect that a vampire is operating in the area given the way in which Mina’s friend Lucy suddenly died (massive blood loss with two puncture wounds on her throat). Van Helsing realizes that Dracula is the vampire when he notices that the Count casts no reflection in a mirror. With his cover blown, Dracula wages all-out war on his new enemies. Will Van Helsing, Seward, and Harker be able to save Mina from becoming undead?
Sadly, the 1931 interpretation of Dracula is rather slow-paced, boring, and tame by modern standards. It’s not without its charm, but it’s difficult to sit through even with a running time of just 75 minutes. The “special effects” of a flying bat are just sad. If you want to check this one out due to a curiosity about the history of Hollywood cinema, fine, but don’t expect a riveting fast-paced tale.
