Blade (1998)

Before 2000, almost all Marvel Comics movies bombed. I'd heard that this was the one standout, however mixed its reception. At least it garnered a trilogy. I chose to watch for its seasonally appropriate theme and so I'd know Wesley Snipes from something other than the Bad music video, what little I recall of Murder at 1600, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

Modern L.A. is far more populated -- and dominated -- by vampires than you might guess. Nevertheless, Eric "Blade" Brooks (Snipes) is unusual: His mother (Sanaa Lathan) having been bitten moments before she gave birth, he has inherited most of their powers and only one weakness, the need for blood or its chemical equivalent. Under the influence of Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), he has moved away from preying on humans and toward taking down vampires. By the beginning of this story, he is their bogeyman, "the Daywalker." But he doesn't scare vampiric playboy Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff), who believes that Blade can unwillingly help him awaken a dark god worshipped in ancient times.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

A horror movie about making a horror movie? When I first heard about this, it sounded halfway comical, yet it clearly wasn't played for laughs. When I learned the focus more precisely much later, I became mildly intrigued.

In an assuredly alternate 1921, F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich again) is beginning to direct the classic Dracula knockoff Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Many of the people involved had expected him to be highly controlling but are perplexed by his secrecy, followed by his unusual process for dealing with the vampire's actor, Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe, in the role that got him into Spider-Man), whom they never heard of before. Schreck is creepily eccentric, but that just means he's an ahead-of-his-time method actor, right? ...Right?

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

I enjoyed the first two entries in this trilogy more than most viewers, but I couldn't be sure that I'd like the threequel. Some posters show the vampires at the beach by day, suggesting excessive deviation from the previous setup. Interestingly, while IMDb votes reflect diminishing returns for the series, Rotten Tomatoes reports a gradual climb. I didn't dare check it out in a theater and might never have gotten around to streaming it, but after my dissatisfaction with an art film, I needed...well, a vacation.

Dracula (Adam Sandler) appreciates the many happily married couples at his hotel, not least his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and son-in-law Johnny (Andy Samberg), but they make him miss his long-gone wife. Mavis thinks his stress comes from being too busy for family time, so she arranges a vacation on a cruise ship that caters to monsters but still has a place for humans like Johnny. Indeed, Captain Ericka (Kathryn Hahn) is human -- and immediately sparks the romantic interest of Drac, of all monsters. He's concerned that this is not what Mavis had in mind for their trip. He should be more concerned with how Ericka really feels....

Dead of Night (1977)

I'm not sure what got this TV movie with a 6.4 on IMDb onto my queue. Someone other than Netflix must have suggested it to me. Anyway, it's not like Night of the Living Dead. It's an anthology more along the lines of The Twilight Zone, starting with a Rod Serling-style narration that explains the title as referring to "a state of mind."

In "Second Chance," a young enthusiast for classic cars restores one from 1926, takes an old road, and finds himself literally in 1926. In "No Such Thing as a Vampire," around the time of Dracula, a woman keeps waking up with a bleeding neck, and her husband and servants can no longer shrug off the village rumors. In "Bobby," a woman appeals to a pagan deity to bring back her drowned son, but he's not quite the same anymore and becomes increasingly hostile.

As Long as You've Got Your Health (1966)

This was included on the same disc as Yo Yo. I was going to skip it, but at a mere 77 minutes on top of the previous 92, it called out to me. Besides, being divided into four stories averaging less than 20 minutes each would make it easy to stop whenever I wanted.

In part 1, an insomniac reads a vampire novel while his wife sleeps next to him. In part 2, people struggle to find acceptable seats in a movie theater. In part 3, people attempt to grin and bear living in a noisy, bustling city, sometimes with several medications against stress. In part 4, two picnickers, a huntsman, and a fence builder get on each other's nerves when they happen to choose the same neck of the woods.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

I wasn't sure I could still enjoy mockumentaries, as the last one I did was A Mighty Wind in 2003. Sacha Baron Cohen struck me as largely tasteless, and shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation turned me off in no time -- something about the combination of social awkwardness and shaky cameras, I guess. Was it them, or had I changed? Regardless, a focus on vampires promised something different.

Netflix describes the theme as three vampire housemates, but for most of the movie, four or five share the house. These five are all men who somehow wound up in Wellington, New Zealand. Don't ask me why they agreed to be filmed when they otherwise try to keep their vampirism a secret. By agreement, the cameramen carry crosses just in case, but vampires aren't the only supernatural danger to turn up....

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)

One of my most viewed posts on this blog compares Hotel Transylvania and its two rivals at the time. In the present review, I'm not inclined to compare HT2 to anything besides HT1, but feel free to skim the old post before continuing.

The sequel begins with the wedding of Dracula's daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) to human Jonathan (Andy Samberg), in the formerly all-monster hotel that has grown friendly to humans. In a matter of minutes on screen, they have a son about to turn five (funny I should watch this right after Room) named Dennis, or "Dennisovich" as Dracula likes to call him. It turns out that "Papa Drac" (Adam Sandler) has not entirely gotten over his bias against humans: He won't entertain the likelihood that his progeny doesn't take after him in powers. As a result, the formerly overprotective father has become an underprotective grandfather, dangerously hoping to summon Dennis's latent potential. Dennis and Jonathan may be easygoing about this fixation, but Mavis will move them away from the hotel if it seems necessary.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

I imagine that nobody was "ready" for this film when it arrived. For starters, it's set in Iran but made in the USA; that's why the on-screen credits are in English but the dialog isn't. Outside sources tell me the actors speak a pidgin Farsi, so it probably has limited popularity with Iranians. Seemingly the only reason for the setting is a whim of the debuting Iranian-American director, Ana Lily Amirpour. Who, admittedly, would be hard pressed to get it made in the real Iran.

If nobody had told me that AGWHAaN was a horror, I'd have had no idea for the first 24 minutes. For all that time, it's a deliberately monochrome, deliberately paced study of unwholesome characters in a bleak town called Bad City. (It sounds to me like they pronounce it "Bahd," so it must not be intended as the English adjective, except maybe for a pun.) These characters include young drug dealer Arash, his junkie father, a mean pimp, a tired prostitute, and an impish boy. And then there's the titular, severely laconic, unnamed "girl" in the black cloak, who stalks...well, I'm tempted not to tell you, but enough ads and reviewers have given it away already....

Horror of Dracula (1958)

Originally just called Dracula in its native UK, because Hammer Films was big on remaking Warner Bros. classics from a generation earlier. Normally I don't watch horror movies outside of October or November unless they're about to stop streaming on Netflix, but people keep associating the late Christopher Lee with this role (as opposed to a different Count D.), so I thought it my best choice for paying respect.

Unsurprisingly, Lee is the best thing about it. Sure, he doesn't have a non-British accent, but maybe he didn't want anyone to accuse him of trying and failing to imitate Bela Lugosi. Too bad he gets only 13 lines and not a whole lot of screen time -- and while not seeing a monster can ratchet up the fright factor, it doesn't work so well when we've already seen him at his nastiest.

Triple Feature: ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, and Hotel Transylvania

Boy, the next movie I saw after Vampyr also had vampires but otherwise couldn't be more different if it tried. I considered reviewing HT on its own, but I had recently seen the other two participants in its Hollywood "duel" and felt like talking about them too. You may ask, "Why bother with comparisons instead of just reviewing a film on its own merits?" Well, not everyone has the resources to make watching all three feasible, so why not help weigh the options?

To qualify for a duel, movies need to come out around the same time with similar themes -- in this case, comical PG family animations focusing on the undead circa Halloween 2012. At present, PN and FW are exactly tied on both the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes. HT does marginally better on IMDb but much worse on RT, as you might expect from the one that didn't get nominated for Best Animated Feature. I'd rather not discuss box office figures. I'll start with synopses.

Vampyr (1932)

Many early talkies aimed to take full advantage of sound, but some would have lost next to nothing as silents. Apart from some eerie, mysterious noises, Vampyr, the first talkie from The Passion of Joan of Arc director Carl Dreyer, falls in the latter camp. The music is nearly constant, several narrative intertitles appear, and it has about one minute of dialog in total. In fairness, dubbing was more difficult in those days: The same people had to speak or at least convincingly mouth German, French, and English for different releases. (I settled on German with subtitles.)

Dreyer didn't care for Nosferatu and resented Dracula for stealing his thunder in 1931, but I assure you that Vampyr is no retread. In fact, of the dozen films I've seen that include vampires in some capacity, it is probably the most singular and certainly the most artsy (eat your heart out, Warhol). It is also the most confusing, to the point that, for the first time in my life, I watched the whole thing again with commentary. Hey, it's only about 74 minutes.