Tag: vampires

Zombies, Vampires, Magical Girls, Necromancers, and Maidens

by Waifusandweeaboos

On this episode of the Waifus and Weeaboos Podcast I bring back one of our originals ideas! I reviewed “Is this a Zombie?!” and “Is this a Zombie of the dead?!” to let you know if you should avoid this anime, just watch it, or watch it and buy the Blu Ray as well.

I also take a look at the currently running manga Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku (The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity)

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Horror Movie Night Episode 114: Tales from the Crypt – Bordello of Blood (1996)

by Saintmort
Someone doused our shriveled black hearts in hooker blood and we’re back from the grave for another week of Halloween celebration with the sequel (sort of) to Demon Knight – 1996’s surprisingly unsexy Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood! Matt has been hyped to pick this for years, but like any Tinder date involving Corey Feldman, expectation outweighs execution. The only thing in this episode that ISN’T flaccid is the conversation, so fill your pocket with rubbers, eat your veggies (vampires really hate vegetarians) and hang out with your fangs out enjoying another episode of Horror Movie Night!

Feel free to join in discussion at on our Facebook Group or in the comments below.

Do you have a movie suggestion for us or just want to tell us stories about your experiences with the movies we’ve watched? Send them to us at HMNPodcast@gmail.com

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E3 2017: Watch A Gorgeous New Trailer For DONTNOD’s ‘Vampyr’

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: Wow.

This is the first E3 2017 trailer that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing thus far, and damn if it doesn’t kick of this year’s expo with a bang (yeah, I understand that the actual expo is still several days away).

DONTNOD won my heart in 2015 with the phenomenal Life is Strange, so you’d better believe that I’m watching Vampyr with a close eye, and along with the just revealed three minute long E3 trailer for the game, the company has also announced that Vampyr will launch for PS4, Xbox One, and PC this November – I thought that it would be much further away than that.

In Vampyr, you are Dr. Jonathan Reid, a famous surgeon home from the Great War and recently turned into a vampire against your will. As a doctor, you have taken an oath to save lives and take care of the sick; as a vampire, you are cursed to hunt those you vowed to heal.

To survive against deadly foes roaming the streets – vampire hunters, undead Skal and other monstrosities – you will need to choose which civilians to feed on, so you can grow stronger and evolve your vampiric abilities. Use your unholy powers to manipulate and delve into the lives of those around you – but be prepared to live with the consequences of your actions. A web of interconnected citizens with unique lives and relationships react to your decisions, and killing just one may cause the downfall of an entire city district. Your actions will save or doom London.

Take a look at the new trailer below, and be sure to let us know what you think!

Horror Movie Night – Episode 26: Vamp (1986)

by Saintmort

Picture this: you and your best bro (and the rich geek you talked into driving) are hanging out in a seedy strip club, trying to pick up a lady of the night to take back to the frat house for a party. Through the sea of writhing bodies, stale booze and impermeable shame, you see Grace Jones do the most inhuman, bloodless interpretive dance on stage. You must have her. Forget the hot girl you kissed in junior high! Grace Jones or GTFO! This is the plot of 1986’s horror comedy Vamp, so turn off your brains and let the body fluids flow as the guys discuss vampire mythos, 80s racial stereotypes and poorly-pronounced stripper names – it’s Horror Movie Night!

Feel free to join in discussion at on our Facebook Group or in the comments below.

Do you have a movie suggestion for us or just want to tell us stories about your experiences with the movies we’ve watched? Send them to us at HMNPodcast@gmail.com

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Horror Movie Night – Episode 15: Lifeforce

by Saintmort

Don’t put your clothes back on yet, you have 7 more minutes of screen time in Tobe Hooper’s expensive flop Life Force! Adam and Scott lose their minds to the space vampires, while Matt pushes up his glasses and focuses on the facts. The robot from Rocky also makes an appearance, because why not? It’s Horror Movie Night!

Feel free to join in discussion at on our Facebook Group or in the comments below.

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Back to School Horror: 10 Movies To Get You Through September!

by scottevil

School is back in session! With it comes new things to learn and new social anxieties to realize. And if you’re especially lucky, there may be an interesting new face hanging around the fringes of your circle of friends, wanting nothing more than to get to know you (and possibly bestow some sort of witch’s curse upon you or alien slug-monster inside of you). Give your fancy book-learnin’ a rest and take a gander at these here back-to-school spookshows!

10) The Woods (2006)

When Bruce Campbell is your dad and he ships you off to a creepy all-girls school in the wilderness, you can pretty much assume that something bad is going to happen. There’s a foreboding headmistress (Patricia Clarkson, no less), mean girls and an ominous witch legend. is it just the new school jitters, or an actual curse? Imagine the setting and concept of Suspiria, mixed with the time period and character focus of Girl, Interrupted, minus the gore. For some reason, The Woods was not given a theatrical release, instead being shipped direct to bargain DVD bins everywhere and being largely forgotten, but it’s worth a watch if you can handle the slow pace.

9) Suspiria

Dario Argento’s 1977 pastel gorefest is a must for any “new kid at school” movie list. You don’t have to be a world-class ballerina to enjoy this classic Italian horror, though I’m sure it helps… I will never understand why someone at this dance academy decided it was a good idea to store all that razor wire in one room. Come on now!

8) Phenomena

Didn’t get enough Argento? Well, good, here’s another: 1985’s Phenomena. More weird Italian boarding schools, more ominous headmistresses, more Goblin soundtracks, and this time, Donald Pleasance and a razor-wielding chimpanzee. Really. Thrill at young Jennifer Connelly’s bad acting and the disturbing amounts of live bugs they used! All of the usual Argento plotholes are here, so it’s best to just sit back and not question anything. So, basically higher education in general.

7) Child’s Play 3

Time travels differently in the Child’s Play universe (much like it did during Chem 111 for me), with the third movie taking place eight years after the events of Child’s Play 2, though only a year passed in our time. Andy Barclay is understandably messed up after his previous run-ins with Chucky, and finds himself at a military academy. A newly-reassembled Chucky follows and sets his rubbery sights on a young recruit to be his new fleshsuit. It’s a thoroughly run-of-the-mill killer doll film, but worth watching if you’ve got 90 minutes to kill and a thing for foul-mouthed toys.

6) Disturbing Behavior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPdDyROQJM

After the death of his brother, James Marsden moves to a sleepy Pacific Northwest town with his parents and sister (Katharine Isabelle in overalls, by the way. Overalls.) Even his chiseled features can’t get him in with the cool kids, so he slums it with a paranoid stoner, a Powder stand-in, and gothy Katie Holmes. If that sentence doesn’t illustrate how insanely 90s this film is, I don’t know what would. There’s a convoluted plot about mind controlled teens too, but the plot is secondary to William Sadler’s Rainman impression. How bad does this town suck if your only romantic interest is Katie Holmes? Poor James Marsden.

5) The Faculty

As mentioned earlier, sometimes you gotta watch out for those mind-controlling alien slug monsters, though it seems odd that they would attack a small town in Ohio of all places, during an Indian summer drought of all times. I mean, this species is intelligent enough to master space travel, but not smart enough to wait until springtime when it rains every day? Kevin Williamson must’ve been a bit over-busy on Dawson’s Creek to do a logic-check on this plot, which is basically new girl shows up, stops people from beating up Elijah Wood, stops Josh Hartnett’s amphetamine business, gets gothy Clea Duvall to shower, and teaches the T-1000 to be a little easier on his football team.

4) Fright Night 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uYdPX2EG5U

Almost all the stuff you loved about Fright Night, college edition! Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent are once again thrown together to take down a sexy female vampire instead of Prince Humperdink. If you start waking up from frat parties with a killer hangover and really gross hickeys, you might want to brush up on your whittling skills and grab a couple bottles of Garlique.

3) The Craft

Sometimes the only thing that can make you feel comfortable at a new school is to join a coven of witches. Is it weird that this trope comes up 3 times on this list, or does it just show how likely this scenario really is? I never moved around, so I can’t say, but Robin Tunney sure knows how to pick her friends – or at least, her friends know how to pick her. There’s complainer-to-cutiepie Neve Campbell, token Rachel True, and trailer chic Fairuza Balk. If they were X-Men, their powers would be skin-shedding, racism-finding, and the ability to float 4 inches off the ground and kill your drunk stepdad, respectively. That’s the kind of horrors that await anyone who tries to join their clique, so you have been warned.

2) Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

If your family moves into the town where a bunch of teens died in their sleep, CHECK THE BASEMENT FURNACE. There will invariably be a Freddy glove and directions on how to win over your crush (who looks oddly similar to Meryl Streep) by killing your classmates at her pool party. Score! I’ll never know why they went with Freddy’s Revenge instead of The Man Inside Me, but if you’re looking for tips on how to fit in as the new kid in town, look no further!

1) The Lost Boys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_lwtRMg0ts

Of all of the new towns in all of the movies listed here, Santa Clara has to be the coolest. There’s a carnival every day on the boardwalk, a well-stocked comic store, oiled-up saxophone dudes and gypsy vampires. You can have a new girlfriend with big hair and mom jeans, while your brother pals around with Corey Feldman; there is literally no downside to this scenario. Just don’t touch Grandpa’s root beers and double-thick Oreo cookies or there’ll be hell to pay.

Honorable mention:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1 episode 1, because it’s hard to top Buffy’s first day in Sunnydale. New friends, new town, new vampire menace… Pretty standard Hellmouth stuff.

So, what do you think? Did I miss any hidden horror gems in the bottom of my moving boxes? Leave a comment!

Horror Movie Night Episode 2: Waxwork

by Saintmort

Velcum to Da Vaxvoooooorrrrrkk!!!!!!

In this episode of Horror Movie Night, Scott desperately pours water out of the boat while everyone pokes holes in it, Adam reads six hours of useless notes, and Matt remembers a third of the movie. Thrills, chills and tangents abound – would you like a closer look?

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Kari’s Manga Corner: ‘Seraph of the End’

by Kari Lane

Vampire stories are pretty common nowadays. Many writers try to change it up or put a new spin on the genre. Seraph of the End takes place in a world where vampires have taken control. In a post-apocalyptic future, a mysterious illness kills everyone over the age of 12. Then the vampires appear and the remaining humans, mere children, flee underground. Young Yuichiro is determined to kill every vampire – they killed his sister and his best friend, and pushed humanity into the shadows. Will he be strong enough to fight back? Does humanity have any hope?

 seraph_of_the_end_by_suinomi-d82bgxs

I found this series rather interesting. It starts off with a young boy filled with just blind rage set to fight all vampires, but it expands when he meets a more organized force with the same mission. Yes, it is somewhat formulaic – unskilled youngster wants revenge, meets someone that teaches them how to fight and then the real battle begins. This version, however, still felt very intriguing. Seraph of the End has a similar vibe and art style to Blue Exorcist (which is an awesome series!).

If you like action, mystery, young people taking on the world and the supernatural, then check out Seraph of the End!

SeraphOfTheEnd-GN01

SERAPH OF THE END, Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens ·

MSRP: $6.99 (U.S. / CAN) · Available Now!

Download the free VIZ Manga App for Android and iOS devices at www.VIZ.com/apps.

To learn more about VIZ Manga, please visit www.vizmanga.com.

 

‘Nosgoth’ Open Beta To Launch This Winter

by MoreLikeAndy

Square Enix announced that their free-to-play, team-based human versus vampire competitive multiplayer game Nosgoth, will launch an open beta sometime this winter. Nosgoth is based off the Legacy of Kain universe.

If patience is not one of your stronger qualities, you can purchase one of the Founder’s Packs to gain immediate access to the closed beta right now. In addition to the open beta announcement, players will have a chance to experience Nosgoth with a upcoming free weekend on Steam starting August 7 and ending on August 11. Of course you will need a Steam account in order to participate in the free weekend but looking at the FAQ for Nosgoth, it seems a Square Enix Membership account will be required as well.

Anyone who plays in the free weekend of Nosgoth will receive double experience points as well as an in-game badge to show off to other players once the open beta starts.

SDCC 2014: Our First Impressions On Square-Enix’s Free-To-Play ‘Nosgoth’!

by jake108

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I had a chance to sit down and play a little game called Nosgoth. To put it simply, the game pits humans and vampires against each other in a player vs. player environment. Coming out of Square Enix, Nosgoth is a planned free-to-play title that is currently in beta. We also took a look at it back at E3, and we’re happy to say that the game is coming together nicely.

nosgoth2

Now, like every game that pits _____ vs. _____, replayability and repetition becomes an issue. From the few rounds I played, I found each session to be far different from the last. Part of the reasoning behind this are the abilities that are incorporated into the game. Some of the abilities include the standard grenade toss and such, but a limitation on said abilities employs a sense of strategy.

The art style and different player models also help Nosgoth create its own image. There are a variety of classes that players can choose from. Unfortunately for me, playing with a band of randoms did not make for great team strategy. Still, the door is open for team communication and domination.

nosgoth3

While I was only able to play one map, the session made a lasting impression, part of the reason being that in each of the rounds, there was not one set meeting place between each team in which combat would ensue. For players that yearn for team-based combat, this should come as refreshing news. Perhaps the most telling aspect of this game are how weapons and upgrades work. In fact, there are no upgrades, but rather “side-grades.” This decision was made in an effort to create a fair free-to-play environment. The same goes for weapons. No one weapon is better than the other!

Nosgoth is free to play now, and from my first impressions, I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Dark’

by MoreLikeAndy

Waking up with no memory sucks. Waking up with enormous migraine pains between your temples is just icing on the crap-stained cake. I’m not sure finding out that all of this is brought on because you’re a Vampire makes this any better or worse. I guess it all depends on whether or not you’re a sparkly douche… or the real kind.

In Dark, you are thankfully more on the non-bedazzled evolutional tree in vampire lore. Dark‘s plot feels like it was put together in a rush, like the writer was pressed for time and took some shortcuts in the story creation. The game follows Eric Bane, a newly turned vampire suffering from amnesia. He learns that his transformation into a creature of the night will only be complete if he drinks the blood of his sire. Becoming a mutated, mindless ghoul awaits Eric if he doesn’t. The speed at which this info is conveyed is so fast that no time at all is given for not only Eric, but the player as well to process said info. What makes things even more strange is just how well Eric takes the news of being a vampire from Rose, the owner of the club Sanctuary. After a few questions about vampires and Sanctuary, Eric is more than happy to go kill whoever Rose points him to without the slightest hesitation. I know I would have a lot more questions before even leaving Rose’s office.

dark

Dark is billed as being a stealth-action game, where the action part is hitting the restart level option multiple times per area. Other than that, there is essentially no action in Dark which gives it more of a stealth-puzzle vibe than stealth-action. There is no melee to speak of besides the one-hit close up kills you can do. As you earn experience from completing goals and kills, the skill tree opens up more active abilities that use Blood points (should have went with pints). I found only one active ability worth maxing out in the beginning, Obscure. Obscure partially turns Eric into a shadow, making it harder for enemies to see him. Combine this with the passive teleport ability, Shadow Leap, and you were pretty much a ghost. Since I maxed all but two abilities in the skill tree, there is no consequence to picking the previously mentioned powers to max first.

dark

Level design did provide some hindrance to the powers for the creature of the night. Large, open areas with inherently funneling pathways riddled with what seems a never-ending supply of enemies ends up making all of my powers useless. It becomes a game of brute force to get past the multiple sections in each chapter. After multiple quick saves and quick loads, I finally gave up on trying to play Dark the way I expected the developers have me play it, and started looking for ways to break it instead.

dark

The best example is in the chapter two boss fight with Vlad the Impaler. It’s a enormous level with very claustrophobic paths everywhere. By accident, I found out that the shrubbery was essentially bulletproof. I cleared out the entire army by alerting them, leading them to a section of bushes, then popping out to kill them one by one until the bodies covered every inch of the small area I was controlling. It’s pretty telling when finding ways to break a game is actually more fun than simply playing it.

My experience with the music in Dark can be summed up with this lovely image right here:

dark

June, the DJ vampire, is lying her ass off. The song that was playing at the start of Dark when Eric enters the club is the same damn song I here every time I come back successful from a mission. I think June needs to lay off the drugs and glowing body paint and dig into the crates for more tunes to “mix.”

dark

Speaking of body paint, the cel-shaded art stood out with the neon colors Dark uses. The purple was a little eye straining in Sanctuary. Gladly, that purple didn’t dominate outside the club into the rest of the chapters. The color scheme seemed to be toned down in terms of brightness which made the neon colors less harsh to the eyes, thus making the details of the environment more noticeable.

No amount of colors could hide the poor animations, though. When feeding on enemies to fill your active power bars back up, the animations made look unfinished and rushed. It looked more like nibbling on air than it did sinking fangs into the human juice box. Animations for enemies also felt like the animators didn’t have time to polish them. Enemies would pivot on an axis like they were on a pedestal. It felt like the enemies were imitating the tank controls of earlier Resident Evil games.

dark

Even the voice work gives off that unfinished feeling. The jarring cuts from when one line ends and another begins hurts to sit through. The back and forth table tennis match of cuts totaled in just one scene has to be some sort of Guinness World Record. With all the inner monologuing Eric Bane does, it’s a shame that those jarring cuts are in his head too. “A throbbing in my head pounded on my temples” indeed Mr. Bane.

Dark seems like it was made in the dark. The unpolished, rushed feel of the completed project left me pivoting my body on an axis of disappointment as Dark sucked the life out of me ever having fun playing a vampire. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines this is not. Dark scores a shadowy 2/5.

Geekscape 292: Talking Blood Kiss With Leah Cevoli and Daniela Di Mase!

by Jonathan

‘Blood Kiss’ is an upcoming Vampire Noire film from television writer Michael Reaves, that stars Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson! Yes, Neil Gaiman is acting in it! After successfully hitting their Kickstarter goals, producers Daniela Di Mase and Leah Cevoli arrive on Geekscape to talk about the project’s stretch goals as well as what a “Vampire Noire” is in the first place! Daniela talks about getting Neil involved in the project and Leah shares her love of all things vampires! Oh, and I kind of give Leah a hard time about her vampire teeth while asking if I can have a special role in the film!

Cool thing from the episode: After listening, comic book and Blood Kiss artist Tom Mandrake drew this picture of me in my starring role:
stake_TomMandrake

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:09 — 22.5MB)

Interview With The Vampire: Claudia’s Story-The Geekscape Review

by Eric Diaz

Unlike Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Gray, Anne Rice’s seminal vampire novels were not the instant pop culture sensation the way we are used to seeing with book series now. These days, a book series hits big almost right away, selling multiple millions in almost no time at all, and movie adaptations announced and in production almost simultaneously as the books are coming out. In fact, when Interview with the Vampire came out in 1976, it flat out flopped in hardcover, selling only 25,000 copies. The subsequent paperback release did marginally better, but the book’s reputation grew steadily over time, and eventually a cult following developed, especially among the goth subculture, the LGBT community and female readers. By the time The Vampire Lestat, the sequel to Interview, came out in 1985, the cult novel had become a bonafide sensation in the interim. It was because of that growing reputation of the first book that the second novel was an instant best-seller, and began what would become The Vampire Chronicles. As of 2012, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series has sold 80 million copies worldwide. In terms of book series, the Vampire Chronicles are the best selling adult-skewing fictional book series behind only James Bond, Perry Mason and the Star Wars novels.


But despite the huge success of the novels, The Vampire Chronicles adaptations in other media has been spotty at best over the past thirty-five years, including in comic books. In 1990, Innovation Comics produced a twelve-part adaptation of The Vampire Lestat which was a huge hit, leading to comic book adaptations of Interview as well as the third novel in the series, The Queen of the Damned. But Innovation comics went bankrupt in the comics bust of the mid 1990’s, leaving the final issue of Queen unpublished. In 1994, eighteen years after hitting bookstores, Interview was made into a blockbuster film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst. The movie made $104 million at the box office in the States (about $200 million adjusted to today’s dollars) Back in the 90’s though, studios weren’t thinking ahead when adapting sprawling book series; actors were signed for one movie at a time, not like the multi-picture deals you see now with actors being locked in for three, sometimes four movies in advance. So when the time came to make a sequel, all studio Warner Brothers eventually produced was a terrible cheap-o version of The Queen of the Damned, and one that bore little resemblance to the book and tanked at the box office. Aside from a short lived Elton John Broadway musical, that was the last adaptation we’ve seen of the Chronicles in any format, all while the vampire phenomenon Anne Rice began resulted in the vampire boom of Twilight, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Being Human and more.

The original comic book versions of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, published in the early 90’s by Innovation Comics. The cover artwork was usually far better than anything in the interiors.

But now Yen Press, the manga style graphic novel company who had much success with their recent adaptation of Twilight, has come in and secured the license for Anne Rice’s series and is giving it new life outside of the original books once again, and the first offering is Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story. The adaptation is done entirely by Ashley Marie Witter, an artist whose only comic book work so far is a series called The Eternal Sad, as well as various web comics. Yen Press took a chance on the mostly unknown Witter, but it payed off, as she produced a beautiful book that is as professional looking as anything from a seasoned comics pro.

Yen Press has a true gem on their hands with Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story in my opinion. The artwork for newcomer Ashley Witter is highly detailed, while also being lush and sumptuous. While the look of the artwork is certainly in a manga style, it isn’t overly manga-esque, and shouldn’t be off-putting to anyone who isn’t into Asian comics. The artwork is done almost entirely in sepia tones, with only the blood and moments involving fire done in a red color. This trick, or one very much like it, has been done many times in comics, most notably Sin City, but that doesn’t make it less striking or effective here. The more feminine look to the men in this series is a staple of manga art frankly, but works here in a way that manga-esque adaptations of overly muscled and masculine western characters like Batman never really does. The male characters in Rice’s novels are almost always said to look feline and androgynous, so in a way this is a match made in heaven. Unlike other adaptations of this universe before, the characters here look exactly as they are described in the books. The original Innovation comics series made the character of the vampire Armand for instance, described in the novels as a 17 year-old cherubic auburn haired boy, into an older looking and frankly ugly looking man. (the movie version of Armand was a thirty-something, jet black haired Antonio Banderas, maybe the biggest deviation in terms of looks for any character in the film.) The character of Louis in this graphic novel also looks more like the character as described by Rice.

The best thing about this graphic novel though, is that it’s not just a straight up adaptation of the original book. The original novel, for those among you who haven’t read it or seen the movie, is told from the point of view of a vampire named Louis, a plantation owner who is transformed by a French aristocratic immortal named Lestat during the time of antebellum New Orleans. At about the mid-way point of the book, Lestat transforms a six year old orphan named Claudia into a vampire, completing his vampiric family. This adaptation is told from her point of view instead of Louis’, mostly from the moment she is “born” and then proceeds from there, jettisoning the first quarter or so of the original novel. The character of Claudia only really appears in that first novel, but made such an impact that she is mentioned in almost all the subsequent books. But Rice herself never did a follow up book told from her point of view as she did with so many other characters introduced in that first story, making this a unique extension of the Vampire Chronicles mythology for long time fans.

Despite all the good, there are a few things that are odd about this adaptation however; first off, the title itself is kind of a misnomer, as the character actually being interviewed in the original novel isn’t being interviewed here at all. In fact, there is no modern day interview framing device, as the character of Claudia is obviously now telling the story. But telling the story to whom? And from where? (SPOILER for the novel and movie here folks, but Claudia dies at the end.) Of course I understand the business reasons for putting Interview with the Vampire in the title, as that is the most famous book in the series, but still….The Vampire Chronicles: Claudia’s Story would have worked just as nicely as a title in my opinion. But really, the title is a minor quibble. The notion that the main character is telling her story from beyond the grave is what’s a little more strange to me, but hey…if it worked for American Beauty, then I can buy it in a book about a vampire. So as I said, these are minor complaints.

Yen Press has made a gorgeous product here, and I certainly hope we see similar adaptations for the other books in the Vampire Chronicles series coming from them sometime soon. Anne Rice’s vampire novels is at the top of the list of my favorite fictional universes, and yet the one with the least amount of adaptations in any media. Hopefully this is the start of something more. And then maybe I’ll get my Vampire Chronicles cable television series I’ve been fantasizing about for years to actually happen before too long.

Mark Rahner Brings Biting Satire To ‘Vampirella vs Fluffy The Vampire Killer’

by Molly Mahan

In this month’s Vampirella vs. Fluffy the Vampire Killer, writer Mark Rahner continues his series of Vampirella one-shots, taking Vampi into the worlds of current vampire fandoms. Previously, in Vampirella Annual 2, we witnessed Vampirella venture to the fictional city of Spoons, where she went to a convention for Gloaming, the in-universe equivalent of Twilight, and battled the fans and characters of the franchise (based, in part, by Rahner’s own experience in Forks, WA). This time , Vampirella is pitted against a satirical version of the much beloved pop-culture alluding, cheer leading, vampire slaying Buffy Summers. And. It. Is. Awesome.

Granted, my lack of love for Joss Whedon is well documented, so it may be hard for me to not actively fangasm all over this particular book for poking fun at the Buffyverse. That said, I do believe any Whedonite who can take a light jab at his or her fandom will thoroughly enjoy this book as much as anyone who isn’t all that familiar with the Slayer and her universe. Which is to say: a lot. It truly is a book for just about anyone, except maybe children (there’s a sufficient amount of blood and gore) and die hard religious conservatives (but they don’t read comics, right?).

Here’s the gist of the story: Vampirella goes undercover as a teacher (cue: multiple jokes and references to Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher) at a high school that is located right on top of an occult portal to Hell (insert: snide comments about government and improper use of tax dollars). Luckily for the town, peppy Fluffy and her friends Xtanley and Sallow, along with her Minder Miles, all attend or are employed by the school and therefore have been able to handle the supernatural situation up to this point. However, a new group of demonic (im)Puritans are mutilating the sexually active members of the student body in order to unleash the wrath of a greater demon, who gets his power from sexual repression, onto the world. And as “Abstinence Education Week” is in full swing at the school, there’s a lot of pent up sexual frustration going on. Whatever shall the teen-aged vampire killers do?

In addition to Fluffy and company, Whedonites may even be able to spy their beloved creator hidden somewhere in the story, as well.

The dialogue is plenty clever, even with—or perhaps because of—the forced puns and dated music and film references. I found myself genuinely laughing and giddy throughout. Even so, my favorite line is actually an on-the-nose statement about feminism, particularly reactionary to Whedon’s brand of female hero.:

After countless jabs from Fluffy regarding Vampirella’s scanty costume, Vampi finally states, “Empowerment means I can wear whatever I want and kill anyone who has a problem with it.”

While killing isn’t exactly an option in the real world, the sentiment is understood. Clothes, or lack thereof, should not be the focus or the excuse of any attacks on a person (from slut shaming to “forcible” rape). But that’s a different article entirely.

Like all satire worth its salt—and any decent horror story—, Vampirella Vs. Fluffy the Vampire Killer is more than just wildly entertaining. It addresses serious real world problems, as well. While playfully jabbing at the Whedonverse, critical hits are dealt to the United States’ ultra-conservative movement’s war on education and sex via the “Abstinence Week” setting, the demons’ M.O., and even a line of dialogue from Sallow that is poignant and painful in retrospect. It’s too much of a spoiler to disclose here, so pick up the book. Seriously. I’d love to discuss the themes further.

Finally, the art. While Nick Bradshaw‘s cover serves its purpose, interior artist Cesar Razek (Zorro) is pitch perfect, rendering gorgeous, in addition to some truly gruesome, images. While Vampirella, Fluffy, et al, are of course comic book beautiful (as are the men in the story), his style here is decidedly not cheesecake, which is always a relief. I love my female heroes and I will defend to the death (in true Voltaire fashion) their honor and right to style to any non-comic reader or slut shaming jerk, no matter the artist or the writer. Nevertheless, it certainly makes my job easier when I don’t have to do so in view of 20 consecutive panels of pure T&A and back breaking poses. So thank you, Mr. Razek for that. I hope to see your art again in the near future.

If you are looking for something fun and bloody, clever and violent, all the while remaining culturally relevant, then Vampirella vs. Fluffy the Vampire Killer is most certainly the book for you this Hallowednesday (see what I did there?).

Vampirella vs. Fluffy the Vampire Killer is out Oct. 24 from Dynamite Entertainment. Look for it at your local comic book shop!

Sony Moving Forward With Will Smith’s Vampire Biblical Film ‘The Redemption Of Cain’

by Shawn Madden

Sony Pictures has agreed to move forward with The Redemption of Cain, an epic retelling of the Biblical tale of sibling rivalry….well, with vampires that is. Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment is producing the film and Sony is moving forward with the pic with hope for starting production in July 2013. Earlier this year reports came in that Smith wanted to make his directorial debut with this film.

Casting is set to begin in the next few weeks and there’s no word whether or not Smith will indeed be directing. Filming will take place in London and Jordan, with exteriors to be shot in Morocco. So, just how exactly will vampires factor into the Cain and Abel story ? Well, that’s currently unknown at the moment. Could this end up being another Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? Highly doubt that but we will keep you updated as details are revealed.

Source: The Wrap

Celebrating 25 Years of “The Lost Boys”

by Eric Diaz

When The Lost Boys came out, twenty five years ago this past week, it wasn’t even #1 at the box office. It came in at #2, behind The Living Daylights, the 007 movie starring Timothy Dalton that almost no one really likes anymore. In fact, The Lost Boys never reached the top of the box office heap in its entire theatrical run. And yet the pop culture legacy of The Lost Boys is ultimately much greater than most movies that came out that year, proving that in the long run, it doesn’t always matter who comes out as number one in that first weekend.

For all two of you reading this who don’t already know (or more likely, were too young to remember) The Lost Boys is director Joel Schumacher’s 1987 movie about two teenagers and their single mom (Dianne Weist) who move to the California seaside town of Santa Carla (a barely disguised Santa Cruz) only to find the town the secret nesting ground of teenage vampires who look like they all belong on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball. In order to defeat them, Sam (Corey Haim) and Michael (Jason Patrick) team up with local teenage vampire hunters Edgar and Allan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander, although they would prefer you just call them the Frog Brothers.) As a horror movie, The Lost Boys isn’t particularly scary, and it isn’t even the best vampire movie to come out that Summer (that award goes to Near Dark, which coincidentally starred Jason Patrick’s younger brother Joshua John Miller) but it is funny, charming, and always entertaining, and there is an undeniable appeal about the entire movie that makes it perfect watching on a Saturday afternoon year in and year out.

The Lost Boys wasn’t a major blockbuster when it came out, even by 1987 standards (it made $32 million back in the day, which is around $63 million in today’s dollars. Decent for an R rated horror flick, but nothing to write home about) And yet its shelf life extended far beyond its relatively brief theatrical run that summer. As soon as it hit cable and home video, that’s when the movie really took off. The Lost Boys went on to be one of Warner Brothers top selling movies of all time, far outgrossing whatever it made in the theaters as a home video perennial. And the movie was on constant rotation on HBO and Showtime for what seemed like years. All these factors went on to make The Lost Boys something of a mini-classic, as well as a total time capsule of its era of 80’s cheese. Death by stereo anyone?

“Sleep all day. Party all night. Never Grow Old.Never Die. It’s Fun to be a Vampire”. Best movie poster tag line ever?

The Lost Boys has a special significance for me as a budding horror geek, because it was the first horror movie that I ever saw in the actual theater. In the summer of ’87 I was thirteen years old, and had already seen a good amount of horror movies on cable television when my parents weren’t around, not to mention at various friend’s slumber parties. But buying a ticket for a PG movie and sneaking into an R rated one was a right of passage, and Lost Boys was my first (I believe the movie I bought a ticket for was Innerspace, for what it’s worth) I had already become a vampire aficionado thanks to constant re runs of Fright Night on HBO, but Lost Boys sealed the deal. I was a vampire fan for life from there on out.

The Secret Origin of the Lost Boys

The first screenplay for Lost Boys was written by screenwriters Janice Fischer and James Jeremias, and featured “a bunch of Goonies-type 5th-6th grade kid vampires”, with the Edgar and Allan Frog characters as “chubby 8-year-old cub scouts.” The character of Star, ultimately played by Jamie Gertz, appeared as a boy instead of as an older female love interest. The original concept centered around the idea of Peter Pan and his tribe of lost boys as vampires. The vampire connection was mostly based on the idea that Peter Pan could fly, made visits to the Darling family only at night, and never grew old, so they must in fact be creatures of the night. In one of the early scripts, Kiefer Sutherland’s character of David was originally named Peter, and other characters also had names from J.M. Berrie’s story. The Peter Pan connection was ultimately far less explicit in the final product, despite the title of the movie remaining. Goonies director Richard Donner was set to direct, (which probably explains all the similarities to Goonies in that first script) but due to his commitment to making Lethal Weapon around the same time, the project was turned over to director Joel Schumacher.  Schumacher had the smart idea to turn the the little kids into teenagers, among other things. While Schumacher’s style was glossy Hollywood 80’s to a T, but that same style that was so wrong years later for the  Batman franchise was exactly what Lost Boys needed to be memorable.

The Legacy of Lost Boys

Without a doubt, the legacy of Lost Boys continues to this day. By the time the 90’s rolled around, the ultimate success of the modestly budgeted teen vampire flick gave way to bigger budget  A- list vampire movies like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula and Interview with the Vampire. The mix of comedy and vampires also led to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn. The movie might be the first time that a mainstream Hollywood movie really pushed the notion of the vampires as the sexy, desirable ones and not just as the villains; in other words, you can find the DNA of Lost Boys even in Twilight , but let’s try not to hold it against the movie. I mean, they couldn’t have known. But perhaps the biggest influence of the movie would ultimately be exhibited by a ditzy blonde cheerleader with a wooden stake named Buffy Summers.

The Buffy Connection

Of all things pop culture influenced by The Lost Boys, there probably is none greater than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Although it has never been made explicit by Joss Whedon or anyone else involved with the show, the influence of Lost Boys on Buffy has got to be pretty significant. Both stories are set in small California towns that have reputations of being “the murder capital of the world” and a secret haven for the undead; The Frog brothers, a couple of teenage vampire hunters who seem to be the only people in town who know the truth about Santa Carla, are also a proto-version of Buffy and her Scooby Gang, also the only people who know the demonic truth about their hometown of Sunnydale. The teenage vampires’ lair in Lost Boys is an old hotel that got swallowed up into the ground by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In the first season of Buffy, the Master Vampire’s lair is in a church similarly buried in the ground by the very same quake. Then there’s Kiefer Sutherland’s character of David, a bleach blonde, motorcycle riding, trench coat wearing  bad boy type of vamp who had to be at least the physical model for the character of Spike on Buffy, if nothing else.

Kiefer Sutherland’s David and James Marsters’ Spike are clearly products of the same vamp gene pool.

The Two Coreys

Of course in the eyes of many, the most significant contribution to pop culture from the movie many would say is the first teaming up of those two giants of cinema, the two Coreys, Feldman and Haim. After their time together in Lost Boys came a series of movies starring the two together like License to Drive, Dream a Little Dream, and a bunch of others you’ve probably never heard of. And then came bouts with drug addiction  (and eventually reality television) for both of them. Feldman would kick his habit, but Haim ultimately succumbed to his. But in the minds of a million Gen X-er’s, the two teen idols became synonomous with one another for forever, and it all started with The Lost Boys.

The Lost Girls: The Sequel That Never Was

Warner Brothers tried to develop a sequel to The Lost Boys almost right off the bat, but for whatever reason could never get all the right pieces together. A script was written by Jeffrey Boam, who is one of the credited writers on the original, that centered on Corey Haim’s character of Sam. Taking place not long after the original film, Sam Emerson is still in Santa Carla and in summer school. His brother is away at college presumably now, and his mother is on vacation (as a way not to pay Jason Patrick and Dianne Weist no doubt and keep the budget down) he is left to live with his Grandpa and all his eccentricness. Eventually a new vampiric threat would entangle Santa Carla, female this time, and Sam and the Frog Brothers would band together to take care of it. SPOILER for a movie that never was–the new head vampire would have turned out to be Kiefer Sutherland’s David character, who apparently didn’t die at the end of the original. For some reason this movie never happened, and I have to wonder if Kiefer Sutherland just plain refused to come back.

Warner Brothers would ultimately produce two extremely cheesy and cheap straight to DVD sequels in the last few years, Lost Boys: The Tribe and Lost Boys: The Thirst. Both were awful, but ultimately I’d rather they make these quick and cheap straight to video sequels than make a remake with whatever hot CW actor they can find in the lead. At least the sequels were so under the radar as to not tarnish the legacy of the original film. Still, I expect an announcement any minute now about the original movie being remade. Frankly, with Twilight mania, I’m shocked it hasn’t already.

The Lost Boys isn’t on the level of being regarded as one of best horror films ever made, or even one of the best vampire films ever made for that matter. But it has such an undeniable charm that has made it a fan favorite for twenty five years now. I know I will keep pulling it out to watch every year or so, and when this movie turns 50 and no one left on Earth remembers it but me, I’ll still be watching it and laughing at the same cheesy jokes that I laughed at when I was thirteen and actually thought they were funny. *ahem* Once again, death by stereo anyone?

Cast Photo From ‘Mockingbird Lane’ Gives Us First Look At The Munsters!

by Shawn Madden

So, if you haven’t heard by now they’re remaking The Munsters but taking a less-comedy, more drama approach to it. The pilot, written by Bryan Fuller and to be directed by Bryan Singer, is described as:

A reinvention of the 1960s sitcom about The Munsters, a family of “monsters” — vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein, and their “plain” cousin (Charity Wakefield) — that will feature striking visuals in the vein of Fuller’s ABC dramedy Pushing Daisies. O’Connell will play family patriarch, the handsome and gangly Herman Munster, a great dad and devoted husband. He is married to Lily, a vampire, with whom he has fathered a 10-year-old boy, Eddie (Mason Cook). Strong but sentimental, Herman works at a funeral home, and worries that Eddie’s transformation into a werewolf and burgeoning awareness of his family’s origins will crush the boy’s spirit.

Take your first look at the cast as The Munsters!

From left to right: Charity Wakefield, Eddie Izzard, Mason Cook, Portia de Rossi, and Jerry O’Connell.

The show is said to have a much darker and serious tone. As described by Fuller:

“The Munsters actually do what monsters do. They eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous. It’s like grounding it in a reality because the half-hour was a sitcom, we saw the monsters: they were monsters on the outside and weren’t monsters on the inside. For us, they’re monsters outside and inside, and we get to double our story.”

“Everything is a metaphor for something that you can identify with in a relationship. The fact that Herman is in a constant state of decay and he’s married to someone who doesn’t age. We get to play with all those insecurities. The fact that he was made by his father-in-law and then has to live up to those standards; he’s always trying to find his own identity.”

Source: JoBlo

Viggo Mortensen Offered Lead In ‘The Last Voyage Of The Demeter’

by Shawn Madden

‘The Last Voyage Of The Dementer’ has been in production for quite some time now. The film about the ship that carried Dracula’s coffin from Transylvania to England has had director Neil Marshall (‘Doomsday’, ‘The Descent’) attached for quite some time now and rumors of Ben Kingsley (‘Iron Man 3’, ‘Shutter Island’) to play the ships captain and Noomi Rapace (‘Prometheus’) to possibly star as Anna Billington.

We haven’t heard any news on this project until now. Bloody Disgusting has reported that the lead role of Henry Clemens has been offered to Viggo Mortensen (‘Lord Of The Rings’, ‘A History Of Violence’)

The most recent draft of the film has been written by Lowell Cauffiel and is said to be “a tale that is reminiscent of the first movie in the Alien franchise, in which a crew is slaughtered one-by-one by a mysterious passenger.”

Check Out Three Clips From ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

by Shawn Madden

Courtesy of Fox Films we have three new clips from Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetovs ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ which hits theaters next Friday.

“Train Escape”

“Waltz Of Death”

“The Pharmacist”

 

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” Gets Not One But Two New Trailers!

by Scott Alminiana

Director Timur Bekmambetov’s latest flick, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” is set to slay audiences on June 22. In anticipation of it’s undead upcoming release, 20th Century Fox has released two new trailers. The first trailer has some new footage in it and plays up Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address briefly shown in past trailers:

The second trailer is a red band trailer that was released last week and shows some more gore:

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” is based on the Seth Grahame-Smith novel of the same name and stars Benjamin Walker as honest Abe. The movie co-stars, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Dominic Cooper, Alan Tudyk, and Rufus Sewell.

The Geekscape Review – Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows”

by Eric Diaz

Dark Shadows is a really weird movie to review. Actually, it is just a really weird movie, period, and for the most part I ended up liking it for that very reason. About 75% of the movie plays more or less like a fairly amusing spoof of the original 1960´s daytime soap opera of the same name, before entering its third act and demanding to be taken seriously as a movie. It is one of the weirdest and most abrupt tonal shifts in a modern mainstream Summer tentpole movie I can remember, and while this is kind of a fatal flaw storytelling wise, it is really hard to hate on a movie that is so strangely endearing up until that point.

For those of you unaware, Dark Shadows was originally a daytime television series which ran from 1966-1971. Initially a gothic soap opera without any supernatural elements, the show was tanking in the ratings, so the producers decided to bring in a vampire character to spice the show up. Actor Jonathan Frid joined the show in 1967 as Barnabas Collins, a 200 year old vampire who oversaw his descendants in the wealthy Collins family. The addition of Barnabas turned the ratings of the show around, and Dark Shadows became a pop culture phenomenon. The show was pretty much a convoluted, campy mess, with actors flubbing lines and the cheap sets sometimes coming apart on live television (forever preserved in syndication) but none of these things stopped the show from being a genuine phenomenon.

The show covered everything; alongside vampires there were witches, werewolves, zombies, time travel and parallel realities. No supernatural stone was left unturned in the show’s five year life span. And while storylines barely made any sense sometimes, that didn’t stop the show from developing a fiercely devoted following of teenagers and kids who ran home from school in time to catch the show. It should be noted that camptastic soap or not, Dark Shadows is the first significant sympathetic portrayal of a vampire in popular culture. Without Barnabas, we wouldn’t have had Anne Rice’s Lestat, Joss Whedon’s Angel, or any of the current crop of lovable sexy vampires that permeate our culture at the moment. In fact, the CW’s Vampire Diaries is pretty much a direct descendant of Dark Shadows, equally convoluted  in terms of storylines, and equally lacking a sense of humor about itself.

One of the kids who grew up obsessed with the series was Johnny Depp, who idolized and imitated Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas as a young child. He eventually secured the rights to the series and got his BFF Tim Burton (who was also a big fan growing up) to direct this big screen remake. What results is a movie that is kind of a hot mess, but one that is almost consistently enjoyable as well. The best way I can describe it is this: This is the kind of movie you know isn’t great (or even really good in any objective sense) but every time it shows up on tv in the future, you likely won’t change the channel and keep watching anyway.

The movie begins with a flashback that shows how Barnabas Collins arrived in America as a young boy from 18th century England, and with his family establishes the town of Colinsport Maine. After spurning the affections of family servant Angelique (a delightfully over the top Eva Green) who it turns out is a powerful witch, she kills Barnabas’ one true love Josette by hypnotizing her to throw herself off a cliff to the ocean below, and in turn curses Barnabas and makes him a vampire. As if being a vampire wasn’t bad enough, she chains him in a coffin and buries him for two centuries. This whole five minute prologue sequence reminds me a lot of one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola’s lavish and overwrought 1992 adaptation. Both movies have the lead character lose their beloved who throws herself off a high precipice to her doom in the prologue, and then then both characters become vampires in unconventional ways. In both movies, the vampire’s long lost loves turn up hundreds of years later, reincarnated and ready to be wooed all over again.

But that’s pretty much where the similarities to Coppola’s Dracula end. As soon as that whole opening sequence is done, the movie just desends into pure camp territory, and that’s actually a good thing. Johnny Depp’s Barnabas wakes up in 1972, and the movie has a ton of fun playing up the whole Rip Van Winkle aspect. Some gags land better than others, but Depp is clearly having a ball in every scene he’s in, and you can tell this whole project is a labor of love for him. He’s having such a blast playing Barnabas it is hard not to have a blast along with him. In fact, most of the cast is having a blast camping it up here too, especially the still gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer as Collins matriarch Elizabeth Collins, and Chloe Moretz (former Hit Girl from Kick-Ass and future Carrie White) as her surly 15 year old daughter Carolyn. Rounding out the cast are Jackie Earle Haley as Willie Loomis, the Collins’ drunkard of a  groundskeeper (think Renfield from Dracula) Johnny Lee Miller as Elizabeth’s loser brother Roger, Gulliver McGrath as Roger’s son David, and the obligitory (yet awesome) Helena Bonham Carter as boozy chainsmoking live in shrink Dr. Julia Hoffman.

Arriving just prior to Barnabas’ awakening is Bella Heathcoate as young David Collin’s new nanny Victoria Winters. Heathcoate is problem number one in this movie; unlike seemingly everyone else in the movie, Bella Heathcoate has no idea what movie she’s in, and plays everything straight. Whenever she is onscreen the fun grinds to a halt, and it is no wonder her scenes are so limited. Unfortunately, because her character ends up with so little screen time, her love affair with Barnabas feels forced and uninspired.

Tim Burton continues to pursue an obsession with women who like like the ones in Margaret Keane paintings.

There isn’t much of a plot to Dark Shadows, but what passes for one is Barnabas trying to get the family business prosperous again, and in the meantime destroy his old rival Angelique’s competing business, and her with it. (really, that’s it, that’s the whole plot) But most of the running time is really devoted to Barnabas’ antics adjusting to life in the 70’s. All of these moments (of which there are plenty) makes me wonder just who the target demographic for this movie is; certainly Johnny Depp’s younger Jack Sparrow/Alice in Wonderland fans aren’t going to get much of the jokes that rely on nostalgia on how ridiculous the 70’s were, much less get that most of the movie is a spoof on a show they’ve never even heard of, much less seen. Having seen the movie, it is kind of shocking that Warner Brothers gave this thing the greenlight. But I guess that is the power of Burton and Depp; none can resist them.

At nearly two hours, I’d say for over 90 minutes of that running time the tone of the movie is pretty delighfully campy and frivolous, but it is after that where the problems come in. Once we get to the last act, the movie suddenly wants the audience to start taking this story very seriously, where as before there weren’t really any stakes; the whole thing played like a lark. Without giving too much away, the kitchen sink is thrown in, and the ending almost derails the whole movie for me. But there is just enough fun to be had here to at least recommend this as a matinee, especially if you’re a Burton fan who feels slighted by his more recent output.

There’s a lot of hate these days for Tim Burton, especially online, and it is easy to understand why. In the last decade, Burton hasn’t made a single movie based on an original idea, instead just “re-imagining” old properties. Even his two most well regarded project of the past dozen or so years (Big Fish and Sweeney Todd) are based on pre-existing material. Dark Shadows isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about Burton, but at least this time both Burton and Depp seem to be having more fun together than in Alice in Wonderland, or even Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dark Shadows is the eighth big screen pairing of Burton and Depp, and even though I enjoyed a lot of it, I still think these two need a long break from each other. (say, maybe a decade) But if  we all get what we wish for, and Dark Shadows turns out to be their swan song as a team, there could be worse ways to go out than this.

Image Comics Vampire Series To Be Adapted For The Big Screen By Piranha 3D Director

by Scott Alminiana

According to Deadline.com, Piranha helmer Alexandre Aja is negotiating to direct Undying Love, an adaptation of the Image Comics title created by Tomm Coker and Daniel Freedman for Warner Bros studios. The movie will revolve around a former solider who falls for a vampire, though in order to be with her, he must take on the vampire who created her in the first place and his army of monsters in the Hong Kong underworld. Original comics book series creators Coker and Freedman are writing the script.

Director Alexandre Aja, the French director best known for the horror film High Tension and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D, is still in negotiations, so no cast news to report yet, but as long as the vampires don’t sparkle like the bedazzled Twilight vamps and it doesn’t star anyone from The CW, I am so far intrigued.

Director Alexandre Aja

This Geek in Netflix: We Are the Night

by Allisonnnnn

I know some of you may have been panicking at the absence of my typical Wednesday article and I would like to let you know that I appreciate your concern and apologize. You see, when a woman likes a man (or men), she loses track of time and gains a certain… bodily soreness which results in delayed reviews.

Most of my dreams start like this.

In 2010, things happened. The Berlin Wall fell. Pearl Harbor was bombed. Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena and two Valley kids retrieved him before becoming the biggest band to grace Earth’s history: Wyld Stallyns. Somewhere in all this uproar, a German film titled We Are the Night was released.

Much (exactly) like with other European films I’ve reviewed, no one is actually going to know who any of the actors are and, continuing with my belief that Europeans have no true emotions, we’re going to skip this section.

Pout about it, why don't you? We know you're faking.

Actually, I’m going to lie about the actors.  That seems even better.

Dick “fucking” Van Dyke plays the lead female bloodsucker, Louise. You may know Dick “fucking” Van Dyke from movies such as How I Married a Machete Murderer (the hapless Arlo) and I Know What you Did Six Summers Ago in Band Camp (Yvette’s cuckold, Gregory). We also have Macauly Culkin as Lena, Gabriel Byrnes as Charlotte, and Cillian “Oh My God, Take Me Now, You Creepy Blue-eyed Man” Murphy as Nora. If you watch carefully, you might notice a few cameos from people such as Ian McKellan and Colin Firth.

So it’s a pretty star-studded(ish) cast that you won’t want to miss. Ever. Just watch this movie on repeat and bask in its golden light, but don’t forget to turn over half-way through, as we don’t want you getting skin cancer.

It's hard to believe he played Scarecrow. He's got such range.

Before I launch into the summary of the start of this movie (which I am now beginning to question as a good format for a review), I have to really address what I feel is a truly important topic in regards to this film.

“We Are the Night“? What does that even mean, really? Are they personifying the night, as I’ve always imagined a personified night to be more along the lines of a Greek goddess or something. Flowly dark robes, glitter in their hair, prone to family in-fighting.

You know what? Fuck this “we are the night” spooky bullshit. How goth do they need to sound, anyway? How about “We are three vampire bitches in Europe”?

GET OVER YO’SELFS, GOTH SUBCULTURE.

Quick summary of this film: crazy blonde lesbian vampire is focused on the idea of finding her soulmate and then never, ever, ever, EVER letting her go. No matter what. Even if she wants to leave. Kill her, cut off her limbs, bronze said limbs, make them into some sort of surrealist art on wheels that she would drag behind her for the rest of her life.

In sum: a typical lesbian relationship.

Caption screened so as to avoid hatemail.

I know that I now have at least five friends who are planning on punching me for the above statement the next time I see them. For the moment, I will wave at you across the internet and remind you that you can’t reach me from where you are now, and you’ll likely forget to inflict pain on me by the next time we meet.

With this crazy blonde we get sidekicks in the form of an adorable quirky sometimes-redhead and a sultry brunette that managed to keep my attention the entire movie. We also have the strawberry blonde love interest.

I keep trying to order her from the catalog, but she never arrives.

You might be wondering why I’m not calling these characters by their names. I’m wondering too.

There is one other character: the male lead and love interest to Miss Strawberry Blonde 2010. He’s a cop, and, to my mind, is way too young and attractive to be a cop. Well, at least an American cop. If all cops in France look like this dude, send me over. I’ll bring my own handcuffs.

He's not really my type but, you know... handcuffs.

Continuing with this hair-identified plot, we’ve got these five characters, three of which are of The Undead, one of which looks like death, and another which is there solely to be a plot device.

Simply: brunette is miserable, redhead is everything you’d expect from a hyperactive anime character, blonde is nuts and obsessive, strawberry blonde is smarter than most give her credit for, and blond is a cop that barely features but has impact on the story.

Does that make sense? No?

Okay, let’s sell you on this movie. The strawberry blonde goes exploring one night and sees two dudes climb through a hole in a fence. She follows them into DINOSAUR LAND!!!

HOLY SHIT, IT'S JURASSIC PARK!!

Dinosaur Land disappointingly turns out not to be a land of dinosaurs at all, but an underground club full of incredibly hot people in skimpy outfits. Totally fucking lame and lacking in its possibly reptilian, possibly avian content.

While at the lame club, that blonde vampiress sees the strawberry blonde’s tendency towards pick-pocket activities and strategically places some cash in eyesight and then does the “come hither, Imma lesbian with money” dance at her, which looks creepily like a seizure, but with more oral sex.

The strawberry blonde, being young and naive, takes the bait. Eventually winds up a vampire. (Serious side note: the transformation scene for this is one the best I’ve ever seen in the category of “beautiful turning into a vampire scenes”.)

Not Dinosaur Land, but a suitable alternative.

Being a vampire movie, the strawberry blonde isn’t exactly happy with this transformation, though she tries to hide it. Wants her human life back. Cries a lot. Blames Lestat for turning her. Changes Kirsten Dunst into a vampire, leaves the swamps of New Orleans, has dirty sex with Christian Slater. Dirty, dirty sex.

Shit, that was the summary of my latest fan-fic! Now the plot is spoiled!!

My grief at spoiling my upcoming novel aside, this movie goes exactly to where you think it will. However, while there’s more than a couple cliches come with the expected plot that are scattered through it’s scenes, the film itself done with a bit more pizzazz than we (I) have come to expect from the genre.

I actually enjoyed it (after the rough beginning, which was totally overdone), as it was something fun. The photography, while not amazing and epic, had more than one typically sees in a horror movie, which I have to appreciate, especially now with the nausea-inducing found-footage trend.

This movie does come with a warning, I will be honest. While there are lesbians, there’s no lesbian sex. I can’t actually remember seeing a single bare breast (not that I was manning the TitWatch 2012 campaign or anything). But there’s some dude junk, if you have a fear of dude junk.

Fears dude junk. (For which I am so, so glad. So. Glad.)

So, if you want to watch a movie that hits all the vampire cliches we’ve grown to expect (and if you can overcome your horror of dude junk), this is the film for you. Just ignore the incredibly shit dubbing and fire up Netflix.

The Week In Geek: Star Trek May Return To TV, American Horror Story, Plus Vampires & Slayers

by Eric Diaz

 

Bryans Singer and Fuller To Bring Back Star Trek To TV?

I’ve mentioned in this column before a few times in recent weeks how writer/producers Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are working on a Munsters reboot for NBC, now re-titled Mockingbird Lane. But these two might have more than just the Munsters in mind for television, and in fact are hoping to possibly collaborate on a new television incarnation of Star Trek in the near future.

Both Singer and Fuller are huge Trekkers; Singer even has a cameo in Star Trek: Nemesis as a random helmsman, and before producing cult series Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me, Fuller got his start as a young staff writer on Voyager and Deep Space Nine. In late 2005, after Star Trek:Enterprise was cancelled, ending an eighteen year run of non stop Trek on television, Singer had his longtime friend and fellow writer/director Robert Meyer Burnett come up with a detailed pitch for Paramount for a new Trek show called Star Trek: Federation. Federation was set in the year 3000 to a vastly changed and declining United Federation of Planets. Singer and Burnett’s  proposal took into account how television storytelling had changed since the glory days of The Next Generation, something that Enterprise ultimately failed at. When Paramount decided to let the franchise rest on television for a while and reboot the series on the big screen instead with JJ Abrams’ film, Singer dropped pursuing his pitch. However, it’s been seven years since all that…could Singer and new colleague Fuller be reviving this idea?

My personal opinion is that while Singer and Burnett’s pitch for Federation is exactly what the franchise needs for television…now is probably not the time to do it. The movie franchise was only recently re-launched, and the first sequel does not arrive till next year. I say Let JJ Abrams and crew wrap their new Trek trilogy, and then maybe in say, 2016 (the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek) they could bring back the series to television and people would welcome it back with open arms after such a long absence.  The world of television is in major flux right now anyway, with the cost of shows growing and the viewership shrinking, and Netflix and the like becoming a new venue for showcasing new television series. Waiting a bit longer allows for the dust to settle in the television world AND whets the appetite for more television Star Trek among the general public.

 

Jessica Lange Returns To American Horror Story


Something else I mentioned in this column a few weeks back was the news that FX’s new hit series American Horror Story would effectively reboot every season, with a new haunted location and a new cast of characters and actors each time. But series producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have made at least one concession about returning former cast members, as Jessica Lange is confirmed as returning for the second season.  

Jessica Lange was easily the show’s most valuable player, as her acting elevated the show’s sometimes cheestastic and over the top craziness to something resembling really good Grand Guignol theater. American Horror Story also got Lange a much deserved Golden Globe recently, and it would be foolish of the producers not to capitalize on Lange’s talent and buzz for as long as possible. Not much else is known yet about season two of the show, which isn’t set to debut until October. But FX released one promo image for the second season this week, which seemingly suggests not a haunted house, but a haunted hospital instead. I guess we’ll all find out just what location is haunted, as well as what other cast members will be returning, when the show comes back in the Fall.

 

Anne Rice’s Lestat Might Return To The Big Screen

For the last few years, as the vampire trend has spread through Hollywood like wildfire (or herpes) there has been one very noticeable omission: The Vampire Lestat, and all the other undead denizens of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series of novels.  But it looks like that might change very soon, as Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment has bought the rights to Anne Rice’s fourth Vampire novel The Tale of the Body Thief. Author Anne Rice announced the news on her Facebook page this week that Imagine has acquired the rights to Body Thief, and hired writer Lee Patterson, who wrote a well-regarded screenplay titled Snatched, to write the script. Producing with Imagine are Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the writer-producers behind  Fringe, Star Trek and Transformers. Say what you will about this particular writing duo, but just about everything they work on eventually gets greenlit.

While it might seems strange to effectively reboot a film series using book number four in the cycle, Tale of the Body Thief is more or less a stand alone story that only really references characters and events from the first novel Interview with the Vampire, which was already successfully made into a movie. In the novel, Lestat is killing serial killers in Miami (kind of like a vampiric version of the television series Dexter) and grows bored of existence and tries to end his life, only to find that he can’t actually die. When approached by a mortal psychic who claims he can switch bodies for a brief time and Lestat can gain his mortality back, Lestat jumps at the chance, even when the titular body thief makes off with his powerful body and he has to track him down and get it back.


Unlike the two previous installments in the Vampire Chronicles, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, which both have a huge cast of characters and move around in time a lot, Body Thief is a pretty linearly straight forward story that would be far easier to make into a two hour movie than the previous two books in the series. I still maintain that the first three books of the series would make for a great cable series though. Please, someone in Hollywood get on that soon.

Buffy Makes A Controversial Choice, Gets Headlines In The Process

And  while we are on the subject of vampires, arguably the most famous vampire slayer of all time, Buffy Summers, made media headlines this week for probably the most unlikeliest of reasons. SPOILERS for Buffy from here on out folks- In Joss Whedon’s current comic book continuation of the series for Dark Horse Comics (Season 9 to be precise) Buffy has found out she is pregnant. In this past week’s issue, Buffy mulls over her options about what to do with her pregnancy, and ultimately decides to get an abortion.  It isn’t a decision Buffy comes to lightly, and it is handled extremely well by writer Andrew Chambliss and series creator Whedon.


Of course, just because Buffy is planning on getting an abortion doesn’t mean she’ll be successful at it though. The character of Buffy seems convinced the father is any number of men she could have had sex with (but conveniently doesn’t remember) back in a raging house warming party in issue #1 of Season 9. However (again-SPOILERS) I would be genuinely shocked if the father of the baby is anyone other than long time vampire love Angel, whom Buffy had sex with at the end of Season 8 while both characters were in this mystical God-like state (don’t ask) Yes, those events were supposed to take place a good six months prior to the where the comic storylines take place now, but who is to say how long mystical pregnancies are supposed to last? And do you really think Joss Whedon would have the father of Buffy’s baby be some new character the readers have little emotional investment in, or have the father be none other than Buffy’s greatest lover/enemy?

Of course, if this really does end up being just  “A very special episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer” where she gets an abortion and just has to deal with the consequences in a real life kinda way, then the father just might be a nobody. BUT…if indeed the baby can’t be aborted somehow and she is forced to have it, then I stick to my theory that the father is none other than Angel. If I’m right, then you heard it here first fellow geeks.

DC To Launch Smallville Season 11 In Comic Book Form

Taking a cue from Dark Horse Comics’ previously mentioned continuation of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series, DC Comics is looking to continue the long running (ten frickin’ seasons) television series Smallville with a comic book version of Season 11. The Smallville television series ended with the Tom Welling version of Clark Kent finally wearing the cape and tights of Superman, making some longtime rabid fans of the series really happy. Seriously, just watch this one fan watch the Smallville series finale around the five minute mark-I’ve never had an orgasm this intense. 

Although previously rumored to be a series of prose novels, DC Comics have officially announced a “Smallville Season 11” comic book series this past week, which will be published digitally beginning April 13 with a new issue every week. The series will also be collected in print beginning in May. Series scribe will be Bryan Q. Miller, a former writer and story editor from the TV series, as well as former writer of the Stephanie Brown version of Batgirl which ended last year before the big DC reboot. The current plan is to pick up some six months from where the show left off, with Clark finally embracing his role as a public super hero. As part of the press release, Miller said “I couldn’t be more excited to help give seasoned viewers and new readers an all-access pass to Clark’s first year in the cape.”

Smallville is certainly the most popular version of Superman in the media since the Christopher Reeve version, so continuing that version of the character seems like a no-brainer to me. My question is-which of the new DC 52 Earths is “Earth-Smallville?” And will Supes ever wear the red shorts or not? Because ya know, I find that I kinda miss those.