Near Dark (1987)

  This is one of the worst vampire movies ever made.  Content warning: blood, dodgy consent issues

Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) is a small-town hick on his way to full yokel status when he spots Mae (Jenny Wright).  After a night of star-gazing (her) and showing off (him), Mae expresses some urgent desire to be home before dawn.  Caleb, presuming that she is trying to avoid being beaten by her parental figure, tries to extort sex in exchange for driving her home and gets bitten instead.  Turns out the ethereal drifter who waxed poetic about seeing the heat death of the universe is a vampire.  Go figure.  Mae's found family of amoral killers reluctantly take in Caleb as he turns, criss-crossing the southwest to avoid law enforcement, feeding on whoever they can scam, and trying to teach Caleb the ropes of immortality.  But Caleb already has a family and his father (Tim Thomerson) has been searching for him.

This is the watered-down, low budget knock-off of The Lost Boys that's only famous because it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and stars all the people taking a break from filming Aliens.  Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are great, as always, but Pasdar can't escape being the Great Value Jason Patric.  Part of that is the script's fault.  Caleb is written to be as uncool and square as possible to contrast with the hedonistic cowboy-grunge of the vampires and also suffers from a strong shift in social mores about what's acceptable in first-date behavior.

The worst crime here is that there's no internal logic with regard to vampire lore.  It feels very half-assed whatever gets to the next scene, and that's really disrespectful to actual vampire fans.  Also, the movie feels homophobic without ever saying explicitly that.  The vibes are rancid is what I'm saying.

It's not currently available except for rental but it's totally okay to let this film slide further into obscurity.

31 Days of 2024 Horror - Day 5 - Abigail (2024)

  I love vampire movies!  Content warning:  heavy gore

Six strangers are recruited to kidnap a billionaire's 12-year-old daughter, Abigail (Alisha Weir).  The plan is to hole up in an isolated manor house and wait for the ransom demand to be paid.  But Abigail has some bad news for them.  Her father runs an underground crime empire and he's not about to pay to see her returned.  Also, she's not locked in with them; they are locked in with her.

This movie was such a fun time but I really wish the marketing hadn't spoiled Abigail's identity.  It would be so much more fun to anticipate, rather than know.  That being said, Weir is a tiny powerhouse in this role.  Also, shout out to Kevin Durand as the heavy.  He was hilarious.  

The idea of a bloodthirsty ballerina is such a Cabin in the Woods roulette wheel choice and I loved that.  I also enjoyed that nobody is afraid to say the word "vampire."  I hate when franchises use euphemisms like no one has ever heard of this kind of monster before.  

There is a lot of fake blood in this so if you are squeamish maybe give it a pass.  Otherwise, grab some friends, put on your sparkliest tutu, and settle in to enjoy some pint-sized ass-kicking.  It's not currently on streaming services unless you rent.  It was on Peacock for a while.  I bought it in anticipation of this month, so that's also an option.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 25: Let the Right One In (2008)

  This was the pick for Movie Club but I wasn't going to re-watch it because I thought I had already posted about it.  Turns out, I had only written about the American remake.  An oversight I have corrected.  Content warning:  blood, some gore, bullying, burned bodies

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is trying to work up the nerve to stand up to the bullies at his school, when he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), a strange new tenant who looks about his age.  Eli needs fresh blood to survive and her adult (Per Ragnar) is supposed to provide that by harvesting from healthy specimens.  Unfortunately, he is terrible at it and gets caught, leaving Eli in a pickle.  Can her and Oskar's new friendship survive the demands of her diet?

This is one of the best vampire movies made in the last thirty years.  It is honestly riveting and a fresh take on behavior and abilities.  Eli is much more of a cryptid than vampires derived from Western Europe (the Stoker kind).  She is an apex predator in that she is deadly but also very sensitive to her surroundings.  She uses terrain and ambush instead of enthralling her victims, and seems very aware of how removed she is from humanity.

I cannot overstate how gorgeous this is.  It is cold in a way that is hard to describe, but you will feel it down to the bone.  It is currently streaming on Kanopy, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Peacock, and PlutoTV.  Don't miss out.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 5: True Blood season 5

   Is this the season that's finally shitty enough to make me stop my absurd need for completion?  Nope!  Content warning:  gore

Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) continues to deal with the fallout that is her life and learns more about her Fae heritage.  Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) are arrested by the Authority, a vampire ruling council, and tasked with finding Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare) or be killed themselves, only to discover they are actually pawns within a religious schism.  Meanwhile, back in Bon Temps, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), Hoyt (Jim Parrack), and Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) try to navigate their broken relationships with each other, a new hate group is targeting shifters, and Terry's (Todd Lowe) past from Iraq catches up with him.

This show remains the junk food of vampire TV.  It is so bad, but when you are in the mood, just satisfying enough to make you hate yourself later.  This is probably the most disconnected season and felt the furthest removed from its beginning.  Almost nothing revolved around Sookie's magical faerie vagina and which buff super-dude gets to have it.  That's kind of an improvement, if it wasn't immediately replaced by Hot Vampire Ladies in Your Area.  It was like someone at HBO was going to die if there wasn't a naked woman on screen every 10 minutes per episode.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-nudity but this show has always had a problem with how Male Gaze-focused it is.  At least they finally let Rutina Wesley be hot instead of constantly dialing her down.

The entire series is streaming on (sigh) Max.  This was a massively popular show a decade ago.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 1: Rapture (Arrebato) (1979)

  Welcome to Spooky Season!  We're starting off with the weirdest vampire movie I have ever seen.  Now, I love vampires.  I love movies about movies.  So a movie about the vampiric nature of art creation should be something I enjoy.  Wrong!

José (Eusebio Poncela), a struggling filmmaker, receives a reel of film and a cassette from a weirdo he met with an inexplicable connection, much more avant-garde and experimental, but a shared love for the transcendence of art and also heroin.  The film and soundtrack detail Pedro's (Will More) documentation of himself sleeping.  An accident at first, but when he notices a section that's blanked out in the middle, a mystery to be solved.  But the missing sections keep growing the longer the camera is on him, and he fears that he is losing more than just film.

If the only Spanish movies you ever saw were this and Pain and Glory, you'd think that every single Spanish person was a bisexual heroin addict.  

It is an interesting movie but not one I enjoyed.  It's a lot of commentary on unhealthy obsessions in relationships, work, and recreation, the consuming power of art, and of course, drugs.  There are no real scares, everything is basically Vibes, there's no gore, very very little blood, and the main actor looks way too much like Riffraff from Rocky Horror.  It is currently streaming on Criterion.

Scare-a-Thon 2021 Day 24: Byzantium (2012)

  Mmm, feminism and vampires.

Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) has been sixteen for 200 years and she is tired of constantly hiding.  She obsessively writes her story, as much of it as she knows, again and again only to destroy the pages when she's finished.  Her mother, Clara (Gemma Arterton), is adamant about the need for secrecy.  She has never told Eleanor that they are hunted as abominations.  A chance encounter with a boy (Caleb Landry Jones) sees Eleanor's story turned in as a work of creative writing, prompting a health and welfare check by a concerned professor (Tom Hollander).  More deaths means more chances the vampire brotherhood will find them.

In the wrong hands, this could have been a disaster.  It's a story about an oppressive patriarchy, motherhood, coming-of-age, sex, and death.  Clara was forced into prostitution and gave Eleanor to an orphanage/convent to be raised, leading to a huge disparity in their values.  They both have to kill to survive, but their codes are different.  Eleanor only takes the old and the sick, preferring to think of it as easing their passing.  Clara attacks the powerful and the abusive.  Eleanor chafes at her restrictions.  Clara sees it as protecting her young.  Both think the other needs to grow up.  

Arterton and Ronan are perfectly cast, Arterton especially.  The production design is lush even through its grime.  It's a great vampire movie that is unfortunately not streaming anywhere.  I got it on disc from Netflix but it's completely worth buying a copy.

Scare-a-Thon 2021 Day 2: Kiss of the Damned (2012)

  Christy recommended this to me ages ago and I tried to watch it last year but just didn't have the attention span for it.

Djuna (Joséphine de la Baume) is a vampire who falls for Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), a human screenwriter, and decides to turn him.  Then her chaotic sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida) shows up and refuses to leave.  Djuna doesn't drink human blood but Mimi does, so you can see where that might cause some conflict.  Parties are attended, philosophies are shared, blood is spilled, and relationships are tested.

If Only Lovers Left Alive were less arty and more Cinemax, you'd have Kiss of the Damned.  It's not a bad vampire film, but it is a lot of very tired tropes.  Mostly, I think this film exists to have very pretty people fucking while wearing vampire fangs.  There's some gore but overall it's pretty mild.  It's currently streaming on Kanopy.

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002)

  Unfortunate subtitle aside, this was one of the most interesting takes on Dracula I've ever seen.

Lucy Westenra (Tara Birtwhistle) is besieged by a wasting illness that transforms her into a creature of the night.  Her three suitors, led by Dr. Van Helsing (David Moroni), trace her troubles back to recent immigrant Count Dracula (Zhang Wei-Quiang).  Lucy rises from the dead and must be destroyed, Dracula escapes the hunters and sets his sights on Mina (CindyMarie Small) as his new bride, only to be killed by the dawn.

You know this story.  What is original here is that Pages from a Virgin's Diary is presented as a ballet filmed in the style of a German Expressionist silent film.  When I talk about being on my bullshit, this is what I mean.  If I could have injected this movie straight into my veins, I would have.  The ballet work is beautiful, Birtwhistle especially.  She basically carries the entire first half of the production and has a lovely expressive face.

If I have any complaint, it's that the camera work overshadows the ballet.  I would have liked for it to be slightly less faithful to the aesthetic in the interest of showing the dancing.  You can have too much of a good thing.  Overall, however, this was an original interpretation of a classic and I am here for it.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

  You might have guessed by now that I'm not doing my 31 Days of Horror feature this year, seeing as it's Oct 3 and I haven't started.  This year has been hard enough without trying to push myself to watch a movie a day.  I want this to be a hobby not a stressor.  But that doesn't mean I'm not going to watch horror movies.  I love them.

A vampire (Tilda Swinton) tries to get her immortal husband (Tom Hiddleston) to remember his joie de vivre but a sudden visit from her chaotic little sister (Mia Wasikowska) may spoil everything.

It's intensely rare for a film to be so perfectly cast but this is.  Swinton and Hiddleston don't even need makeup to play pale and perfect.  Plus, it has performances from the late Anton Yelchin and John Hurt, as well as a small bit for Jeffrey Wright.

I didn't watch this movie last year for my feature because it's not precisely a horror film.  It's just a vampire film, which is not the same thing to me.  I watched it this year, though, because I frankly need a good vampire film every once in a while.  They soothe me.  And this was like a balm to my weary Gothic little soul.  This basically just reaffirmed my commitment to vampirism as a way of life.  Honestly, creatures of the night, hit me up.  I'd be so good at it.  Like, I would be an okay werewolf but I would rock the shit out of being a vampire.

Only Lovers Left Alive is currently streaming on Starz, which I get through Amazon Prime.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

  This was supposed to be part of my Halloween marathon but I didn't get it in time.  I've been looking forward to seeing it but I think it may have been overhyped for what it turned out to be.

The New Zealand Documentary Board is granted unprecedented access to a rarified subgroup of citizens for the first time ever:  vampires.  A crew follows flatmates Viago (Taika Waititi), Vladislov (Jemaine Clement), and Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) as they try to navigate modern life.  A wrinkle is introduced when a victim (Cori Gonzales-Macuer) is accidentally turned and must be introduced into the finer points of vampire society, specifically that one doesn't go around broadcasting that one is a vampire unless one wants hunters to stick a dining room table leg in one's chest.

As a mockumentary, this is top-notch.  The effects are never overwhelming, the cinematography is just the right amount of grainy, and the characters are firmly on the right side of being total dorks.  The humor is a little too awkward = funny for me but the performances are delightful.  I feel like I might have enjoyed it more if people hadn't been broadcasting that this is the pinnacle of comedy, but that is the problem with high expectations.  I don't know that I would watch it again but it was very sweet and a fun film overall.

We Heart Horror - Day 30: Vampyr (1932)

  Here's a throwback to when vampires weren't sexy, misunderstood, tortured souls but rather just reanimated corpses that fed on the living.

Allen Grey (Julian West) is a student of the paranormal looking for an experience, and boy, does he find one.  While on vacation in a small town, he stumbles upon a family plagued by a mysterious illness.  One of the daughters, Léone (Sybille Schmitz), has wasted away with only a mark on her neck.  Though she is being treated by the local doctor (Jan Hieronimko), her prognosis is grim until one of the servants (Albert Bras) reads about a similar occurrence from years ago believed to be the work of a vampire.

Allen Grey is much less of a protagonist than he is just kind of a nosy bystander.  He is a very passive character that things just kind of happen around, which is also an unusual narrative choice.  There are some pretty neat effects for the time period and it's a scant hour and a quarter long, but I will say that it involves a fair amount of reading and the subtitles superimposed over the text of a book makes it kind of challenging.

I did think it was neat that this version was restored from French and German prints with the English believed to be lost.  Is this the most important film ever preserved?  No, but it is definitely worth watching.  It's on the Criterion channel and they also have a full length commentary that I'm sure is also great but I didn't listen to because ain't nobody got time for that this close to Halloween.

One more day!  Light your jack-o-lanterns and ready the candy!

We Heart Horror - Day 22: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

  I loved this movie so much.  It's sure to put people off because it is both black and white and subtitled but it is honestly worth looking up.  It's a critical darling but that's generally not a selling point for most people so I'm making sure you all know it has the Lucy stamp of approval

Arash (Arash Marandi) is trying to get by without being hassled by the local drug dealer (Dominic Rains) about his father's (Marshall Manesh) heroin habit when he meets a girl (Sheila Vand) walking alone at night.  She is a vampire and Arash doesn't know it, but she is going to change his entire life.

I've been worried all month that I wouldn't get a vampire movie.  The last three I've tried to watch have unfortunately been taken off their streaming platforms.  Y'all know they're my favorites.  But Criterion and Shudder had my backs and made this beauty available.

This is not the first Iranian movie I have ever seen, but it is the first horror.  Director Lily Ana Amirpour has a master's grasp of the interplay of light and shadow, banality and horror, beauty and ugliness.  It is a stunning debut feature and definitely a new vampire classic.

New TV shows!

I didn't have a chance to get a third movie in this week.  I'm about a third of the way through NCIS season 2, season five of Arrow, season 4 of The Librarians, and nearly finished with seasons 3 of The X-Files, season 2 of The Orville, and season one of The Umbrella Academy.  Last night, Tyler and I did finish the brand new A Discovery of Witches, based on the book series by Deborah Harkness.  And I finished watching season one of Will and Grace. 

As you can see, that is a lot of television which is why I almost never review it.  It takes up so much time, even with no commercials and the ability to binge watch. 

Will and Grace was one of those 90s shows that my parents weren't interested in and I had very little awareness regarding.  I don't know why, but I had seasons 1 and 2 on the server so I thought I'd go ahead and give it a shot.  (Maybe Christy?  I think she watched it.)  I'm pleased to say that it still mostly holds up.  There's a lot of humor based on old LGBTQ+ stereotypes but the core relationships between Will, Grace, Jack, and Karen are worth watching.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

A Discovery of Witches starts out pretty slowly.  It's only eight episodes, though, so when it picks up it does so with breakneck speed.  Tyler kept asking me questions because I had read the book series but it was so long ago that I barely remembered anything.  I ended up skimming through the novel to try and answer some of the topics alluded to but not covered in depth.  Which is not to say you have to have read the book beforehand.  He enjoyed it perfectly well without any of the extra information.  Since it is very new, I will give the overview of the plot.

Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer) is in Oxford doing research on alchemy when she accidentally calls forth a book that had been considered lost for centuries.  All of a sudden, magical creatures are swarming all over her trying to get her to call the book back for them, including Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode), biochemist and 1500-year-old vampire looking for answers as to why the species of witches, vampires, and daemons are declining, and Peter Knox (Owen Teale), a witch looking to use the book to destroy vampires forever. 

If you have the patience, it's available on cable from AMC and BBC America with commercials.  If you are not patient, it's available through Shudder or Sundance Now as add-ons to Amazon.  Shudder is a streaming service I've been thinking about for a while now so it was worth it to me to go ahead and start shelling out $5 a month for all the horror my little heart can stand.  If you're not ready for that kind of commitment, you can use the 7-day free trial to binge and then cancel.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

  This is one of my favorite vampire movies and I'm really surprised I haven't reviewed it here already.  Bethany came back this weekend so we could finish our Dracula marathon.  We watched Shadow of the Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula Untold, and about half of Interview with a Vampire before she called it quits.

In 1921, acclaimed German filmmaker Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) sets out to make a knock-off of Dracula after the widow Stoker refused to sell him the rights to the novel.  Unbeknownst to the cast and crew, Murnau has made a bargain with an actual vampire (Willem Dafoe) to star in his film as Count Orlock.  Murnau eventually realizes that the creature's bloodlust is not worth the verisimilitude he brings to the role.

This is really a love letter to F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, one of the greatest vampire films ever made.  It bears almost no resemblance to the truth, other than the names of the actors and the filming locations, which only adds to the fun of it in my mind.  It's also a great showcase for Dafoe as he hams up Orlock's general air of creepiness and obsession with the film's lead actress, Greta (Catherine McCormack).  I honestly love this movie and I really wish more people would see it.

Horrorthon 2018 Day 4 - Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)

  This one is kind of a ringer because I've seen it before, but I haven't reviewed it so it doesn't technically violate any of the rules.

I love this movie.  Vampires have always been my favorite monsters and this is such a great take on the Dracula tale.

Maximillian (Eddie Murphy) is the last of his breed of vampire and he has traveled from the Caribbean to Brooklyn to search for his destined mate, Rita (Angela Bassett), a woman born from a union of a human and a vampire.  He must seduce her before the next full moon or his line will end.  Unfortunately, Rita is a cop and not as susceptible to Max's charms as he would like. 

This has held up surprisingly well.  Eddie Murphy was in peak form and restrained himself to only playing three characters in the movie.  Angela Bassett is so often cast as the badass, it was a fun turn to see her play a character so vulnerable (but still badass).  Kadeem Hardison was almost too much comic relief for me as the motor-mouth ghoul/Renfield but he was Tyler's favorite character.  He did have kind of a manic charm.

And even though Eddie Murphy did his whole Eddie-Murphy thing, this isn't just a spoof.  It was directed by horror maestro Wes Craven and never skimps on the sense of menace or danger.  It's just menace and danger with witty one-liners thrown in. 

I thought it was also great that Rita is the instrument of her own salvation and freedom.  Part of the vampire's "seduction" is to systematically eliminate Rita's support system of friends, spiritual leaders, and especially the potential romantic rival of her NYPD partner, Justice (Allen Payne).  Max repeats through the movie that he needs to have Rita go to him willingly, and then he does everything possible to manipulate her.  That's not romance, that's abuse.  Sure, Justice (ugh, such a terrible name for a cop) figures out that Max is a vampire and tries to rescue Rita, but ultimately, she's the one who decides her own fate.

I also really love how traditional Max's vampire is.  He can shapeshift into a bat or wolf, control mist, mesmerize, sleeps in a coffin of graveyard dirt (sand, in his case because Caribbean), and levitate, if not outright fly.  After all the daywalkers, sparklers, and mutated virus survivors, it's nice to see a return to the classics.

Pumpkin rating:  4.5/5

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

  The prequel no one asked for and no one needed.  The backstory was sufficiently explained in the first movie and this is really just a shameless grab for cash.

Lucian (Michael Sheen) is the first lycan born with the ability to change back into a human.  This is enough of a marvel that Viktor (Bill Nighy) spares his life and makes something of a pet of him.  While also forcing Lucian to bite other humans and turn them into creatures just like him so Viktor can have a slave army.  Lucian plans to escape but he doesn't want to leave until he can convince his lover, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), Viktor's daughter, to leave with him.  Meanwhile, Viktor is under a lot of pressure as a leader.  The other vampires are concerned about the rogue lycans attacking and there are whispers that Viktor can't even keep his own daughter under his thumb.  So when the inevitable truth about Sonja and Lucian comes out, he overreacts just a bit.

Honestly, if this movie hadn't given Bill Nighy more to do, it wouldn't even be worth writing about.  I love that man, though.  He gives 100% even when a movie doesn't deserve his name in the credits.  Also, Rhona Mitra is way too good to be wasting her time here as Kate Beckinsale's understudy.  She absolutely should have her own franchise as an ass-kicking heroine.

Just one more of these damn things to go.

Underworld: Evolution (2006)

  So here is the second movie in the Underworld franchise.  It's slightly better than the first, if only because the focus has switched from just Selene (Kate Beckinsale) to Selene and Michael (Scott Speedman) as a couple, even though they've only really known each other for about three days, according to the in-film timeline.

Beginning right where the first film left off, Selene and Michael find themselves targeted by the surviving elder, Marcus (Tony Curran), after some werewolf blood dripped on him while in stasis.  His brother, William (Brian Steele), has been locked in a prison for centuries as the progenitor of the lycan breed.  From the blood memories he ingested, Marcus knows that Selene has the key to William's prison as well as the childhood memory of its location and he is willing to do anything to get those things.  Selene knows that releasing William, who differed from his more famous descendant Lucian (Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film) in that once he bit he stayed furry, will be the beginning of a plague of lycanthropes.  To stop him, she must uncover a deep secret of the vampires.

This is still a relatively shitty film.  The plot is paper-thin and relies a lot on panic instead of reason.  For example, the first time she sees Marcus, she runs even though she objectively had no reason to at that point.  It wasn't clear that Marcus knew anything about Viktor's (Sir Also-Not-Appearing-in-This-Film) death and the vampire factions are so split, it would have made more sense for her to look to him as an ally.

Also, the words "gratuitous nudity" apply here.  I generally have no problem with nudity, even when it doesn't relate directly to the plot, but this was just silly.  It's less than a minute but its very brevity argues against its inclusion.  There's just no point other than to keep men's attention.

Underworld (2003)

  I've never really cared for this franchise, though I've somehow ended up owning all the movies.  I don't think I ever paid for any, however.  They were either gifts or just ended up with me in the carnage of my break-ups.  So I'm going to give them one more shot and see if they've somehow improved with age.

Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is one of an elite group of vampires that hunt Lycans, the vampires' mortal enemies.  She discovers that the Lycans are tracking one particular human, Michael (Scott Speedman), which leads her to uncover one of the biggest secrets in the war:  the original werewolf leader of the rebellion, Lucian (Michael Sheen), didn't die but has been patiently planning the ultimate revenge on his former masters.

This movie has not gotten any better but I have matured enough to at least know what I don't like about it and why, as opposed to when I first saw it where I was just angry and couldn't articulate anything but that I was angry.

The writing is extremely lazy.  It's a very basic premise (werewolves vs vampires) that has been done over and over again since the old Universal horror days with the only "modern" update that the protagonist is a female action hero.  There were four writers according to the credits, with final screenwriting credit to Danny McBride (no, not the one you're thinking of.  Different guy, same name.)  McBride is the one I am blaming for this misogynistic claptrap masquerading as a badass heroine.

There are a ton of different types of vampire myths.  Every franchise has handled them a little differently.  Sometimes they can walk in daylight, sometimes they have reflections, sometimes they have fake Southern accents.  But the writing is what communicates these differences.  Underworld doesn't specify any particular qualities of its vampires.  It just leaves it for the audience to assume "vampire" carries a particular set of traits.  But if so, then the actions of the characters need to conform to those traits.  Only Selene doesn't.

Erika (Sophia Myles) is shown jumping straight from a kneeling position to the ceiling of a room, hanging there like a hissing lamp when Michael wakes up in the vampire mansion.  Okay, so that would imply vampires have super strength and speed.  But Selene can't catch up with Michael as he's running for an elevator in the safe house.  Why?  He's just a human (at that point).  She should have taken two steps and had him by the scruff of the neck.  Then, a little later in the same fight sequence, she takes some damage to the collarbone from a sword.  A few moments later, she is still shown to be bleeding, to the point where she passes out and loses control of the car, sending her and Michael into the river.  Okay, so no superpowered healing?  No "hey, can I borrow your arm?  I need a snack to fix this damage"?  A vampire suffering from blood loss is just a hungry vampire, not a damsel in distress.

But again, lazy writing.  McBride and co. wanted to make it clear that Selene and Micheal need each other.  Instead of making Michael smarter or more resourceful, however, they just made Selene weaker and dependent on him.  What vampire needs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?  What vampire drowns?  The whole point is that they are already dead.  If the Underworld vampires aren't actually undead, just suffering from a virus or something (which has been done), that has to be communicated to the audience.  Otherwise it looks like a shoddy plot hole or worse, like forcing your main character into the "tough but vulnerable" trope and having her run to a father surrogate every time she gets in the least amount of trouble.  Selene is a fetish being sold as a protagonist and that's gross.

Enough TV to Rot My Brain

I have been watching so much TV lately.  Old, new, one-season wonders, established shows, hits and misses.

From my personal collection, I have been working my way through season one of Jericho, which was given to me by the Bowen's.  It concerns the residents of a small Kansas town that survives multiple nuclear weapons being detonated in U.S. cities.  With no infrastructure or outside help, the townspeople must examine their resources and do what they can to survive.  I don't remember when this aired (IMDb says 2006) but I do know that it was one of those shows that got cancelled, then brought back by a rabid fanbase.  It's an okay show but I'm not over the moon about it.

Summer is a slow time for my DVR.  I only have a couple of shows being recorded right now.  The one I'm most excited about is Preacher on AMC.  Based on the graphic novel, a small town preacher (Dominic Cooper) is accidentally gifted with a godlike power.  He wants to use it for good but the original owners are determined to take it back.  I cannot stress enough how awesome this show is.  There's vampires and explosions and bar fights and some weird side story about a cowboy.  So awesome.

I'm also watching BrainDead, which is about brain-eating alien bugs infiltrating Congress.  I've only seen a few episodes but it's pretty funny.

I was originally excited to watch the new American Gothic but it's been pretty disappointing.  I thought it would have more of a horror vibe but it's a pretty standard murder mystery.

Since I keep running out of shows to watch, I've been hitting up the On Demand section to fill in some of the gaps.  I watched the first season of Outlander and thoroughly enjoyed it.  A nurse from 1944 on holiday in Scotland gets accidentally transported back to the 18th century in the middle of the Jacobite Rebellion.  I had read the first few books in the series and was amazed at how faithful the show was to the source material.  Starz has an absolute winner on its hands.

I also watched the first season of Orphan Black.  That show was so intense I found it hard to binge-watch.  I kept needing time to process everything that I was seeing.  Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) is looking for a way out of her problems when she sees a woman who looks exactly like her step out in front of a train.  She swipes the woman's identity but soon discovers that she's actually one of a series of clones scattered around the globe for unknown purposes.  Such a good show.  I highly recommend this one.

Moving to my Netflix queue, I've been watching season three of Moonlighting.  This is by all accounts the best season of the show and it has been utterly charming.  There's been a lot more fourth-wall breaking by the two leads, Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, as well as their signature banter.

On the server, I saw the first season of HBO's Rome, which was very good.  I'd never seen Ray Stevenson in anything I really liked before this but the bromance between him and Kevin McKidd was excellent.

I had never even heard of Rubicon, a one-season gem from AMC's 2010 lineup.  Will (James Badge Dale) is an analyst who discovers a secret code in crossword puzzles that leads him to uncover a global conspiracy.  The ramping of paranoia and suspense-building is really great.  I was sad to think that there wouldn't be any more episodes when it finished.

I also watched season two of Red vs Blue, a show based on characters from the video game Halo.  I didn't think it was as funny as the first season but it was still pretty good.  Glad to see Tex again.

I tried to watch Rurouni Kenshin but I just couldn't get into it.  It's supposed to be about a samurai who gives up his life of bloodshed to wander Japan and right wrongs to atone for the harm he's caused.  I might have been able to appreciate the philosophy or action sequences but it kept trying to be funny by showing the main character being flustered by the main female.  I found it so irritating I turned it off after three episodes.

Currently, I'm watching Saiyuki Reload, which is much more serious in tone.  Four badasses are traveling across the continent to India to stop the revival of a huge demon.  The dialogue is a little stilted but at least it's not aiming for slapstick.

Whew.  You see what I mean?  That's enough TV for a while and I'm barely scratching the surface.

Priest (2011)

Shhh!  Don't tell anyone.  I'm in New Orleans!  Christy is here for work and she invited me to come do the touristy thing so while she is slaving away, I'm going to tour cemeteries, bone up on my voodoo, and eat beignets until I sweat powdered sugar.  I didn't forget about you guys, though.  I'll be posting on my regular schedule, just not as many since I won't be seeing any movies.  And they're not all reposts like this one.  I just happened to have watched this after five years.

I really wish this had been better received.  It's got such a cool world, it seems a shame that it didn't get more love.  I would have liked there to be a follow-up, if not the full trilogy effect.  It's based on a graphic novel, however, so that might be worth picking up.  The only other thing I have to note is that my early posts were kind of crap.  I didn't even try to present them as worth reading.  Ugh.  Thank God you guys stuck with me past these annoying growing pains.  Originally posted 15 May 11.    This was better than I thought it would be.  Way better than Legion, that's for damn sure.

It is a little weird, especially what with the animated opening credits.  (Done by Genndy Tartakovsky, the guy who did Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack.)  I couldn't help but make connections to Christian eschatological symbolism the whole time I was watching it.  Let me show you what I mean.

So, in this world, there was a huge war between the forces of men and vampires.  The tide is only turned with the development of supernaturally advanced warriors priests trained by the Church.  The vampires are confined to small reservations, in what I can only imagine was a misguided effort by hippie liberals.  Seriously?  In what way could that possibly end up a good thing?  But whatever.  After the war, the Priests are disbanded and forced to work menial jobs, discriminated against due to the facial tattoos they have.  One in particular, Paul Bettany, finds it hard going since he has recurring nightmares about losing his friend in the last assault.  Then his brother's farm (played by Stephen Moyer, who is the main vampire in TrueBlood) is attacked in the outlands and the local sheriff, Cam Gigandet, comes to tell him that Lucy (Lily Collins), the daughter, has been kidnapped.  So the Priest turns his back on the repressive politicized church (think V for Vendetta levels of theocracy) and sets out to rescue the girl.

This is where it gets all Revelations-y.  And maybe SPOILER-ish.  Use caution.

See, the guy behind all of this (a scenery chewing Karl Urban) is the guy that Priest couldn't save.  Surprise!  He is turned by the Vampire Queen (Whore of Babylon) and sets out to destroy the world, becoming the Antichrist.  See, because he's basically just like Priest, only in negative...and with a better hat.
Priest (the Father) and the Sheriff (the Son) are joined by the Priestess, Maggie Q, who never lost faith in the righteousness of their mission (the Holy Spirit).  Need more?  Okay.  Priest and Priestess are known only by their titles and they share superhuman abilities.  The Sheriff is named Hicks and is fully human, elevated only by his willingness to risk himself in order to save the girl.

Now all of this may be a little heavy-handed for some of you, depending on your feelings about religion.  I enjoyed it but then, I enjoy weird takes on things.  I saw it with my friend, Joe, whose only complaint was that the foley artist should have been fired.  He thought that the sound effects during the battle scenes were muted.  I didn't notice.  There are lots of explosions and slo-mo spinning kicks so I was entertained.