Lost Boys: The Thirst

LOST BOYS: THE THIRST

Released in 2010, this third entry in the Lost Boys franchise finds vampire hunter Edgar Frog facing eviction from his modest trailer in California.  A best-selling author (Gwen) offers him a high-paying gig rescuing her brother (Peter) from a vampire pack led by a rave-thrower named DJ X.  She claims that DJ X is the true “head” vampire, the original Alpha bloodsucker.  She also says that DJ X has been distributing an alleged drug (actually vampire blood) called The Thirst at his raves in order to create a massive army of vampires.  With the help of an ally named Zoe and a reality TV star known for wrestling a grizzly bear, Edgar sets out to crash the latest rave thrown by DJ X in an abandoned slaughterhouse.  Edgar hopes that slaying the Alpha vampire will turn his brother Alan back into a normal human (in a prologue set five years before the main action, Alan becomes one of the undead).  This rather short movie runs 77 minutes before the end credits roll.

In terms of special effects, plotting, and overall quality, this film is the best entry in the Lost Boys series thus far.  There are a couple of leaps in logic (Edgar somehow jumps to the conclusion that the vampires plan a sacrifice under a blood moon without any real clues indicating that this is the case).  Despite some minor flaws, The Thirst is a rollicking fun ride with innovative vampire death scenes, plenty of dry humor (the reality TV star continuously refers to Edgar as Toad rather than Frog), and a couple of fight scenes in the climax that rival the best action fare generated by Hollywood in recent years.  My main complaint is that the tale has one twist ending too many, but this is a minor quibble.  I recommend skipping over the first two films in the series and checking out Lost Boys: The Thirst at once.  It’s a stand-alone story with some passing references to incidents and characters from the first two films, but you really don’t need to understand the backstory to enjoy this fine adventure in which a band of eccentric vampire hunters triumph against all odds.  Here’s hoping that future sequels equal or surpass the quality of this movie.

Lost Boys: The Tribe

LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE

A direct-to-video sequel that was released in 2008, Lost Boys: The Tribe follows a former pro-surfer named Chris Emerson who moves with his sister Nicole to a community called Luna Bay near the ocean.  There the siblings cross paths with another ex-surfer named Shane who dropped off the grid awhile back (turns out he’s the head of a vampire pack).  Shane tricks Nicole into drinking his blood from a flask, thereby turning her into a half-vampire (per the lore established in the first film, she won’t fully turn until she makes her first kill).  Chris stumbles upon intrepid vampire hunter Edgar Frog, and together they set out to locate the vampire nest and kill Shane before Nicole becomes a full-blown member of the pack.

A flawed but watchable movie, Lost Boys: The Tribe features one plot point that left me scratching my head.  After Chris learns where the vampire nest is, he goes home and sleeps the day away until the sun goes down.  Wouldn’t he want to storm the headquarters of the bloodsuckers during the day when they are sleeping and vulnerable?  Instead he moves forward with an odd plan to infiltrate the pack and become a half-vampire himself.  The film includes one brutal scene in which most of the vampires (minus Shane) feed on some girls at a beach, and the gore quotient here is quite high.  Neither as awful as I’d been expecting based on comments at the Internet Movie Database nor as entertaining as I had hoped, this sequel may be of interest to fans of the first film.  It ain’t a bad little vampire flick, but nor is it a masterpiece.

The Lost Boys

THE LOST BOYS

A vampire film from 1987 that’s inexplicably well-loved (as evidenced by its high rating on the Internet Movie Database), The Lost Boys follows a kid named Sam and his older brother Michael as they acclimate to their new home in California with their divorced mother and her eccentric father.  A young lady named Star catches Michael’s eye on the local boardwalk, and he follows her through the crowd until she gets on a motorcycle with a guy named David and rides off into the night.  Sam befriends a couple of other kids (the Frog brothers) who work at a comic book shop and tell him that the area crawls with vampires.  Michael encounters Star and David (along with three other motorcycle-riding dudes) again, and David challenges Michael to follow him.  They end up in an underground hangout (the remains of a hotel that fell into the ground around the turn of the century due to an earthquake) where Michael swills from a bottle of red liquid despite Star’s warning that it is blood.  Turns out that David and his buddies are vampires, and they want Michael to join their pack.  Sam realizes that Michael has begun to transform into a vampire when he notices his brother’s transparent reflection in a mirror.  According to the lore provided by the Frog brothers, Michael (and Star, who is also transforming) can be saved if the head vampire dies before the half-vampires make their first kills.  Sam and the Frogs set out to destroy the pack of vampires.  A subplot follows the mother of Sam and Michael as she gets involved in a relationship with her new boss (Max).  In the finale, the vampires assault the house where Sam and Michael live.  Ultimately the family vanquishes the head vampire (who turns out to be Max and not David), and Star & Michael (and a little kid named Laddie who was also turning into a bloodsucker) become human again.

I’m stumped by the appeal of this film, which has quite a few rabid fans.  There’s a scene where Michael (distraught by the fact that he’s changing into a monster and looking for a way to save himself) abruptly has sex with Star, who he barely knows, and the moment felt horribly forced and shoehorned into the narrative.  I enjoyed parts of act three (there’s a particularly cool vampire death when a dog knocks one of the undead bikers into a bathtub full of holy water), but I was unengaged throughout most of the movie.  Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what I’m missing.

House of Fears

HOUSE OF FEARS

A reasonably entertaining horror film from 2007 that features exceptionally cool sets, House of Fears follows a young adult (Samantha) and her stepsister (Hailey) as they traipse through a haunted house attraction (the kind you pay to get into to be scared by animatronics and guys wearing rubber masks) before it officially opens.  They’re accompanied by four friends (Devon, Carter, Zane, and Candice).  What they don’t know is that a small statue the owner imported from Africa has the supernatural ability to manifest the fears of those who encounter it, so half an hour into the tale (which runs 80 minutes total before the end credits roll) all hell breaks loose (starting with the death of Zane, who gets sliced to death by a costumed mannequin that comes to life).  At first the group thinks a normal flesh-and-blood murderer lurks in the house with them, though they ultimately figure out that there’s something more happening.  Candice gets separated from the others and finds herself trapped in an area that looks like an Egyptian tomb, and her fear of suffocation becomes a reality as sand pours into the room.  Mummy hands reach out of the sand and pull her under in a particularly spooky scene.  The story becomes increasingly harrowing as the four others encounter an assortment of nightmares brought to life (including an ambulatory scarecrow and evil clowns).  Two survivors ultimately emerge from the house alive at dawn.

Slow to get going and featuring mostly generic and stereotypical characters, House of Fears is still worth watching as part of a decent Halloween-season film festival.  Readily available on DVD, the project includes some creative death scenes and fantastic production design.  It’s a shame that the early dialogue and group dynamics are bland (Samantha and Hailey don’t get along because Hailey is mad at her father for marrying Samantha’s mother, and Hailey and her boyfriend Carter bicker about whether or not they should date other people).  Despite these flaws, the movie delivers some genuine shocks and scares in an eye-catching environment (the house includes a hall of mirrors plus sections that look like a graveyard, an old insane asylum, the aforementioned Egyptian tomb, and other atmospheric sets).  Seven minutes pass in the opening before the audience meets the protagonist, and I’m not convinced that the prologue (in which the owner of the house acquires the statue in Africa) is really needed.  If you can sit through the slow first 30 minutes, House of Fears ultimately delivers some good jolts.  I recommend this film with mild reservations.

The Devil's Curse (aka Credo)

THE DEVIL’S CURSE (AKA CREDO)

A slow-paced film from 2008, The Devil’s Curse (also known as Credo) follows a college student named Alice who (along with her four roommates) gets evicted and opts to take up temporary residence in an abandoned dormitory of a closed Catholic school where in the past four young adults committed suicide after apparently summoning a demon.  Alice and her friends hear odd noises, and then they find one of their party (a lesbian named Timmy) hanging in her room.  A fellow named Jock (who the others blame for driving Timmy to suicide) slits his wrists with broken mirror glass.  Alice and her two other friends (a girl named Jazz and a guy named Scott) attempt to escape from the building by crawling through an old sewer (earlier they found the main exit padlocked from the inside), and Alice and Scott find their way to a room that contains the journal of a fellow called Seth who was the only survivor of the earlier group that killed themselves.  Jazz inexplicably gets lost in the sewer and apparently dies down there.  Scott returns to the main dorm and throws himself out a window.  Alice heads back into the main building and confronts Seth, who has been lurking around the whole time.  Alice stabs Seth and then runs upstairs to try to get a cell phone signal.  There she encounters her dead father, who blames her for his own suicide.  A final twist ending (the nature of which I won’t spoil) forces the viewer to reconsider all of the events that have transpired up to that point.

The Devil’s Curse has a fine premise that’s hamstrung by flat characters, a glacial pace, and a finale that makes little sense.  It’s a competently-made film in terms of production value and performances, but the story itself lacks suspense and real scares (a major problem for an ostensible horror movie).  Steer clear.

Curse of the Black Widow

CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW

A phenomenal 1977 made-for-TV production that proves a smart script can overcome the limitations of a small budget, Curse of the Black Widow follows a private investigator named Mark Higbie who (with the help of a sassy female assistant called Flaps) struggles to unravel the mystery behind a series of unusual murders.  Higbie concludes (correctly) based on the evidence at hand that the perpetrator is a woman who sometimes transforms into a giant spider.  He’s initially hired by the fiancée of a fellow who gets offed in the prologue, but he discovers a pattern of similar killings going back at least three years.  While the police struggle to cover up the existence of a huge murderous spider, Higbie pieces together a string of clues that lead him to believe that the monster is either the woman who hired him (Leigh Lockwood) or her sister Laura.  Higbie sets out to destroy the creature before it claims any additional victims.

With special effects that are merely passable rather than state-of-the-art, Curse of the Black Widow relies on a well-paced plot laced with humorous moments and some utterly disturbing concepts to keep the viewer hooked.  The dialogue is often sharp (particularly the banter between Higbie and Flaps), and much of the imagery toward the end (human skeletons in giant spider webs) is the stuff of nightmares.  I predict that at some point in the future an astute Hollywood producer will exploit the clever story contained in this made-for-TV gem to generate a big-screen remake.  The identity and motivation of the spider make perfect sense once all the questions posed early in the tale are answered, and the protagonist is a mildly quirky and memorable guy rather than a bland one-dimensional no-nonsense investigator.  Absolutely seek out Curse of the Black Widow (at present unavailable on official DVD) by any means necessary if you’re in the mood for a superior creature feature.