One of Hammer's best horror films, starring Peter Cushing and real-life identical twins Mary and Madeleine Collinson. Cushing plays Gustav Weil, a zealous witch-finder seemingly determined to rid Central Europe of pretty young girls by burning them at the stake. Enter his orphaned nieces -- both young, both pretty -- one of whom so resents his authoritarian ways that she seeks out the local degenerate, Count Karnstein, who promptly turns her into a vampire. Based "on characters created by J. Sheridan Le Fanu" -- which means that Le Fanu's Carmilla, her name here scrambled as Mircalla (Katya Wyeth), is briefly but effectively summoned from Hell to turn Karnstein himself into a vampire. Hough and screenwriter Tudor Gates make good use of the twins motif in a story that is actually more complex and satisfying than most horror films of this type, with several genuinely dramatic moments, as well as a healthy sense of eroticism, particularly in the early going. Cushing gives a fine performance as the stern but ultimately conscientious Gustav, while the Collinson sisters, perfectly suited for their roles (and only a year removed from being Playboy's Plamates of the Month for October 1970), belie their resume of seemingly minor roles in a string of British sexploitation films. The third entry in Hammer's so-called Karnstein Trilogy, after The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire.
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One of Hammer's best horror films, starring Peter Cushing and real-life identical twins Mary and Madeleine Collinson. Cushing plays Gustav Weil, a zealous witch-finder seemingly determined to rid Central Europe of pretty young girls by burning them at the stake. Enter his orphaned nieces -- both young, both pretty -- one of whom so resents his authoritarian ways that she seeks out the local degenerate, Count Karnstein, who promptly turns her into a vampire. Based "on characters created by J. Sheridan Le Fanu" -- which means that Le Fanu's Carmilla, her name here scrambled as Mircalla (Katya Wyeth), is briefly but effectively summoned from Hell to turn Karnstein himself into a vampire. Hough and screenwriter Tudor Gates make good use of the twins motif in a story that is actually more complex and satisfying than most horror films of this type, with several genuinely dramatic moments, as well as a healthy sense of eroticism, particularly in the early going. Cushing gives a fine performance as the stern but ultimately conscientious Gustav, while the Collinson sisters, perfectly suited for their roles (and only a year removed from being Playboy's Plamates of the Month for October 1970), belie their resume of seemingly minor roles in a string of British sexploitation films. The third entry in Hammer's so-called Karnstein Trilogy, after The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire.
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+1/2 Garbled adaptation and laughable telefilm of James Patterson's Virgin, a poor novel that should not have been difficult to improve. When the Vatican learns the truth of two virgin pregnancies, Father Justin (Tony Denison) and Sister Anne (Sela Ward) are dispatched to figure out which girl carries the new Messiah and which the Antichrist. Brian Taggert's script substitutes a constant stream of meaningless 9-volt shocks for character development and logic (in much the same way Patterson did), and it's a toss up whether the worst example of this is the dumb ending or the moment when Sister Anne crashes a family meal in the nude. A dismal film, in no way saved by its at best nondescript but otherwise wooden performances. ++1/2 Proto-slasher film based on actual events about a mask-wearing psycho who attacks people, killing most of them, in Texarkana in 1946. Written and filmed like a crime doc reenactment, but not quite so accurate as its claim that "only the names have been changed" would have you believe. This is particularly evident in the scene of one of the killings where the filmmakers turn an irrelevant saxophone into a deadly trombone. Plays better than its small budget in the "filler" scenes between the killings -- they aren't nearly as embarrassing as they might have been (see The Zodiac Killer and others) -- and becomes something special during the scenes of the attacks, which are so well done that even that killer trombone comes off as both believable and terrifying. Just as in real life (and countless later slasher films), the killer here is never caught. Dawn Wells, of Gilligan's Island fame, plays one of the victims. Followed in 2014 by a sequel/remake, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. +++1/2 Admirable adaptation of W. H. Hudson's novel stars Anthony Perkins as a hate-filled refugee from Caracas, Venezuela, whose search for the gold he needs to bankroll his return and revenge leads him to a forbidden forest where he meets a strange, beautiful woman. Screenwriter Dorothy Kingsley takes a throwaway lie of convenience told by the man in the book (about the gold), makes it true, and then uses it to motivate all his early actions. Did we say this was an "admirable" adaptation? Oh, yes -- inspired, even. It's no longer quite the same story, but it is a more than reasonable version of it, for film. Much of the novel was unfilmable anyway: its long interior monologues, for instance, and not least the ineffable beauty of the woman. Her name is Rima and she is played here by Audrey Hepburn, herself a more than reasonable version of her literary counterpart. What remains -- and quite a bit remains -- captures the essence of the essence of Hudson's story: a tantalizing romance -- not a "romance of the tropical forest," as Hudson wrote, but one yet between harsh reality and unsullied innocence. Several of the best scenes in the book also survive; there is humor, excitement, and some wonderful dialogue. And, finally, a different ending. ++1/2 The third, last, and weakest of the RKO horror films produced by Val Lewton and directed by Tourneur, after Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. This one is set in a small town in New Mexico where young women are killed after a publicity stunt goes awry and a leopard escapes. Low-key and atmospheric, with a very nice first victim stalking sequence, but ultimately too fragmented and impersonal for its 66 minutes: the story spends itself on an excessive number of characters and the heroes have little more on the line than their guilt over staging the publicity stunt in the first place. Definitely worth a look, however, for fans of this kind of noir. Based on the novel Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich. ++ Dated, somewhat stagy horror classic, based on Bram Stoker's novel by way of the 1924 play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. The revised story (written by Garrett Fort) asks a great deal of readers of the book, particularly in that here it is Renfield, not Harker, who visits Castle Dracula. Harker is still engaged to Mina, but Mina has somehow become the daughter of Dr. Seward. At only 85 minutes, what could we expect? Not this. Not a condensation when what was really required was a distillation. The story lies with Harker and Mina, but that story is too busy fighting for screen time to establish any meaningful ties with the audience. The long opening at Dracula's castle -- now wasted on an ancillary character -- unbalances the entire film. With Renfield's continued antics and the filmmakers' refusal to jettison Lucy, bless her heart, Harker is reduced to a blind fool and Mina to mooning over how it feels to become a vampire (it feels pretty good, evidently.) It all runs so quickly that this feels like the Cliff's Notes version of a badly mistranslated copy of the book. On the plus side, Helen Chandler, as Mina, is quite good and director Browning manages a few good shots along the way, particularly those involving long, wide staircases as are found in Dracula's castle and his London home of Carfax Abbey. With Dwight Frye as Renfield, Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing and, of course, Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. Followed by a sequel, Dracula's Daughter, in 1936. ++++ Seminal slasher film "introduces" Jamie Lee Curtis as a smart, virginal teen who becomes the primary target of a mask-wearing psychopath named Michael Myers. Michael, however, is no ordinary man: as Donald Pleasance, playing his psychiatrist, tells us, he is, in fact, the boogeyman come to life. Still holds up today, thanks to good performances all around, a simple but effective script, and suspenseful direction that relies as much on showing us the killer as not. That, and the terrific theme music, written by Carpenter himself. With Nancy Loomis, P. J. Soles, and Nick Castle as "The Shape." Followed by six sequels, and a remake directed by Rob Zombie. +++ NFL quarterback (Warren Beatty) gets second chance in the body of another man after he is mistakenly whisked to the afterlife before his time. He also falls in love. Like a rom-com for guys: sweet, pleasing, but uncommitted to either storyline. Still, not a bad choice for date night. With Julie Christie, Buck Henry, James Mason, Charles Grodin, and Dyan Cannon. No relation, despite the heavenly connection, with the 1943 film of the same name. This is instead a remake of 1941's Here Comes Mr. Jordan. +++ The Coen brothers weren't going to improve on the original adaptation of Charles Portis' book, the wonderful 1969 film starring Kim Darby and John Wayne. They just weren't. But perhaps they thought it was worth updating anyway, both to give it a little more realism and to restore the hard truths of the novel. Well, it is grittier, and it does end the way the book did; otherwise, it's the same thing, only less entertaining. Precocious fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires trigger-happy Federal Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track the man who killed her father, figuring either to kill him or bring him back to face justice. They're joined by a brash young Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who is after the same man for an entirely different murder. The first time we hear Cogburn, he's in an outhouse. There's nothing wrong with that -- except that it warns us that realism isn't necessarily a virtue. Bridges speaks as though he still has the memory of marbles in his mouth, and Damon, after nearly having his tongue severed, speaks pretty much as he did before. Steinfeld just talks a lot. They all speak in the formalized way of the characters in the novel, as if the Coen brothers failed to realize that what made sense for a book written in Mattie's voice didn't make so much sense for a movie with actors playing the individual parts. For all that, this isn't a bad movie -- it retains some of the humor of the original and the book on which it's based, and the story itself is good -- but the drearier tone combined with characters who aren't as likable make it noticeably less enjoyable. ++1/2 Middling effort that re-works H. Rider Haggard's novel in some very important ways, yet manages to stay true to its own internal logic. Three Englishmen are lured into a quest to find a lost city in Africa, where they find a beautiful queen (Ursula Andress) who has little regard for her subjects, yet is delighted that one of the Englishmen (John Richardson) appears to be the reincarnation of her former lover, a man of ancient Egypt. Significantly, the queen is introduced as She-who-waits; though she is later called She-who-must-be-obeyed, the damage is done: this She, in power and beauty, is a pale shadow of her literary counterpart, and much less interesting as a result. Does, however, include one nice, if particularly cruel, scene in which a daughter is returned to her father. Peter Cushing also stars. Followed in 1968 by the semi-sequel, The Vengeance of She. |
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