Vampyr (1932)

Who's in it?: Mostly amateur actors. The lead actor was also the chief financer of the film, so that's the kind of production this was. Sybille Schmitz (Diary of a Lost Girl) has a small role as one of the vampire's victims.

What's it about?: An amateur monster hunter wanders into a haunted village and is drawn into the battle to save a couple of sisters from a vampire.

How is it?: I've seen the movie three times now and one of those was with Tony Rayns' commentary on the Criterion disc, so I feel like I finally have a pretty good handle on what director Carl Dreyer is trying to do and how well he actually does it.

It's a disconcerting movie the first time. Dreyer's deliberately trying to throw off the audience with his narrative and editing choices. He creates an atmosphere that makes it tough to connect with the film, much less fully understand what's going on. The film says right at the beginning that its main character, Allan Grey, is a guy who wants to believe in the supernatural and goes looking for spooky stuff. Since he's not an objective witness, we in the audience are meant to wonder if what we're seeing is actually happening or if it's all in Grey's head.

For myself, I think the ghosts and vampires have to be real. There are too many scenes that take place when Grey isn't around, although those could be imagined as well if you like the idea that he's making all of this up. Personally, I'm prejudiced against a vampire movie that doesn't actually have any vampires in it, so I prefer to read it as straightforward. Even so, there are parts where Dreyer is too many steps ahead of me and leaving clues that are too subtle for me to pick up even after a couple of viewings. It rewards coming back to, though, and I'm considering buying a copy for myself.

Regardless of your interpretation about the reality of its monsters, Vampyr is really effective at creating a mood and feels ahead of its time. The special effects, especially the use of shadows to depict ghosts, still look unique and feel fresh 90 years later. And I love that the vampire is a woman who looks like William Hartnell's version of Doctor Who. It came out the year after Tod Browning's Dracula, but feels more like low-budget, black-and-white '60s horror like Night Tide, Night of the Living Dead, or especially the also-dreamlike Carnival of Souls. It's innovative and creepy with very little dialogue (its way of managing the very new-at-the-time technology of incorporating sound into films).

Rating: Four out of five Minas (or Gisèles, as the case may be).

Dracula (2002)

Who's in it?: Patrick Bergin (Sleeping with the Enemy, Robin Hood, Frankenstein), Giancarlo Giannini (Mimic, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace), and Stefania Rocca (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Love's Labour's Lost).

What's it about?:An adaptation of Stoker's novel set in the 21st Century.

How is it?: I'm impressed with how well it updates Stoker's story to modern times. It keeps all of the main characters, even Quincey, and their relationships to each other are all sound. Jonathan and Mina are engaged. Mina's best friend is Lucy, who has three different suitors before she finally settles on Arthur.

Writer (alongside Eric Lerner)/director Roger Young makes a couple of big changes though, neither or which I like. The first is how he introduces Dracula. In this version, Jonathan and Mina are vacationing in Budapest when the story opens. Jonathan proposes to Mina and surprises her by having all of their friends - Lucy, Arthur, and Quincey - show up. (Dr John Seward doesn't know them yet, but enters the story quickly.) While all of this is going on, a middle-aged man named Vlad Tepes introduces himself to Jonathan with a business proposal that requires Jonathan to travel to Transylvania. I don't mind the prologue to set up the events of the novel, but what's weird is that Tepes claims to be the nephew of Count Dracula, the elderly nobleman whom Jonathan's going to work for.

Bergin plays both versions and he's good, but it's never made clear why he keeps at this deception. I don't see the advantage he gains by switching from old to young and back again multiple times. In Stoker's novel, Dracula appears old at the beginning because he's basically been hibernating in Transylvania for hundreds of years. I'm reading between the lines some, but the impression I get is that the locals are wise to him and it's hard for him to hunt. But once he gets to London's fresh supply of ignorant humans, he's able to drink freely and regain his youth. In Young's version, Dracula's elderly and youthful appearances are just parlor tricks.

The other change I don't like is how Young and Lerner make greed and materialism a theme for some reason. Jonathan and his friends suspect that what Dracula wants Jonathan to do isn't entirely legal, so conversations are had about whether he should agree. The materialistic Quincey is all for it - money justifies everything - while Arthur takes a more conservative approach. Jonathan ultimately agrees with Quincey, but comes to regret it, seeing the horror that follows as the consequence of his greed.

You could make a cool connection between the hunger for wealth and the hunger for blood, but Young/Lerner don't go far enough with it. If anyone is going to be hurt by the deal that Jonathan's getting involved in, that's not made clear. The only risk is to his own conscience (and perhaps his freedom, if he's caught). In order for the greed/vampirism analogy to work, someone needs to be drained of something by Jonathan's actions. The film glosses over other aspects of the caper, too, like just how Jonathan's friends are going to be involved in the scheme and why their agreement to it is important.

But I do love how surprisingly faithful the film is in other ways. I was worried briefly that Mina was getting sidelined and dumbed down from Stoker's version, but that ended up being a trick that the film was pulling on me. Rocca's Mina ends up being pretty awesome, not just as a vampire-fighter, but also as a strong, moral center for the group. And it's also great to see Giancarlo Giannini (from the first couple of Daniel Craig Bond movies). His character's not named Van Helsing, but that's who he's playing and he's a charming one. If it weren't for the changes I mentioned, some of the acting (English is clearly not a strong language for a lot of the cast), and CG effects that are truly horrendous, I'd love this version.

Rating: Three out of five Minas.

The Return of Dracula (1958)

Who's in it?: Francis Lederer (Pandora's Box), Norma Eberhardt (Problem Girls, Live Fast, Die Young), and John Wengraf (The Thin Man Goes Home, Wake of the Red Witch)

What's it about?: Dracula (Lederer) flees Transylvania in the 1950s, pursued by a vampire hunter (Wengraf), and assumes the identity of an artist in order to hide among the man's family in a small, California town.

How is it?: Shockingly great. I always have a fondness for black-and-white films from the '50s and '60s, so I expected to enjoy it visually, but I'm surprised at how well-acted and actually scary The Return of Dracula can be.

The Dracula-in-Smalltown-USA concept could have been cheesy, but everyone plays it straight and gives honest performances. Lederer is a darkly handsome and sinister Dracula; the kind of person you want to like even while fearing that you're disappointing them with everything you do. And that's exactly the situation that his "family" finds themselves in. Greta Granstedt is the widowed head of the family, raising her teenage daughter Rachel (Eberhardt) and young son Mickey (Jimmy Baird) on her own. They all want to welcome their cousin Bellac into their home and he seems pleasant enough, but he also keeps strange hours and is reluctant to communicate or get close to them.

The story follows the Dracula formula by having a friend of Rachel's become Dracula's first victim before he begins focusing on Rachel herself. It's about that time that Dracula's pursuers catch up to him from Europe, replicating the Van Helsing role. Wengraf is competent as the main hunter, but Eberhardt excels as the terrified daughter. I felt her fear. Baird is also very good as the little brother, nailing his own emotional scenes. There's also a neighbor boy (Ray Stricklyn) who's more or less dating Rachel and their relationship feels authentic. They argue just enough to be realistic without ever making me question why they like each other.

The film gets bonus points for setting the story at Halloween, including a procedural detective story as Dracula's pursuers try to locate him, and inserting a startling, sudden splash of color when Wengraf drives a stake into the heart of Dracula's first victim.

Rating: Four out of five Minas

Son of Dracula (1943)

Who's in it?: Lon Chaney Jr (Man Made Monster, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb), Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige (The Monster and the Girl, Hellzapoppin'), Frank Craven, J Edward Bromberg (Invisible Agent, Phantom of the Opera), and Evelyn Ankers (Hold That Ghost, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, Captive Wild Woman).

What's it about?: A Southern heiress (Allbritton) courts a vampire (Chaney) with a familiar name for her own, mysterious purposes.

How is it?: I love the Southern Gothic setting and the complicated morality of Allbritton's Katherine. She's playing a dangerous game for reasons that I won't spoil and don't agree with, but I totally understand why she thinks she's right. I didn't expect that kind of intricacy in a Universal Dracula sequel, though I probably should have after Dracula's Daughter.

Two things don't work for me. The smaller issue is the character of Katherine's boyfriend, Frank (Paige). He has a tragic arc as Katherine's plan has the unintended consequence of driving him insane. That's pretty cool, but Frank goes from normal to crazy too quickly, implying (if I'm generous in my reading of him) that he was already pretty close to nuts to begin with. (If I'm not generous, it's just bad film-making.) As soon as Count Alucard steps in as a rival and lays hands on Frank, Frank pulls out a gun and shoots the count. I don't really know why Frank's carrying a gun to begin with, but he's not entirely the calm, Southern gentleman he presents himself as. After he tries to murder Alucard, he spirals down from there. Once he's on that path though, the rest of his journey is captivating.

The bigger problem is Chaney Jr as the count. He looks great, but makes no attempt at a Hungarian accent or really appearing to be European at all. The effects around his vampire powers are pretty great (especially one chilling scene where he floats across the surface of a bayou), but he still isn't very scary. He comes across as a mundane bully, not Lord of the Undead. I guess it's better not to try an accent than it would be to have him do a horrible one, but if he's not capable, then he just feels miscast.

There are interesting things to think about from a continuity standpoint. The Dracula legend is widespread enough in this world that Alucard is a lousy pseudonym if the count is actually trying to hide his identity. The local doctor (Craven) figures it out in the very first scene and is immediately on Alucard's trail. When he calls in a Hungarian folklore expert (Bromberg) for assistance, they speculate about who Alucard might actually be.

The folklore guy, Professor Lazlo, wonders if Alucard might be a descendant of Dracula. That's as close as the movie gets to explaining the connection or justifying the Son of Dracula title. "Son," in this case, doesn't necessarily mean "direct offspring." And since it's just speculation by Lazlo, there's no reason to believe that Alucard is actually, biologically connected to Dracula at all.

Alucard clearly wants some sort of relationship to exist, though, and sees himself at least as the spiritual heir to Dracula's legacy. That's why he adopts such a ludicrous, easy to decipher alias. He wants people to make the connection. He may not even be Hungarian, or even European. That would explain his accent. I imagine that he's a completely American vampire who traveled to Europe and adopted a connection to Dracula before meeting Katherine and following her back to the States. He's a poseur, but he's a powerful one.

One last continuity observation and it's an important one: In relating Dracula's story to Dr Brewster, Lazlo explains that Dracula was destroyed at the end of the nineteenth century. That fits with Stoker's story, but not with the Universal adaptation that took place in the 1930s. There's no mention of any of the events of that film or Dracula's Daughter, so the easiest interpretation is that Son of Dracula is a sequel to the original novel and not the other two Universal films. Meaning that there are two separate realities.

I don't like that, though. I enjoy Son of Dracula too much to just put it aside in a pocket universe. Instead, I prefer to think that Lazlo is simply mistaken about when Dracula was defeated in the Universal films. It also makes more sense for the other sequels that followed if Son of Dracula takes place in the same world as Dracula and Dracula's Daughter, but I'll get into why that is later. It's a weird mistake for Lazlo to have made, but I think that's the best explanation.

Rating: Three out of five Minas.

Dracula 2000 (2000)

Who's in it?: Gerard Butler (300, RocknRolla), Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), Justine Waddell (Mansfield Park), Jonny Lee Miller (Dead Man's Walk, Mansfield Park, Eli Stone, Elementary), Vitamin C (The WB's Superstar USA), Jennifer Esposito (Samantha Who?), Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager), Omar Epps (Major League II, House), Danny Masterson (That '70s Show), and Nathan Fillion (Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Castle).

What's it about?: A hundred years after the events of Bram Stoker's novel, Van Helsing (Plummer) and a freshly resurrected Dracula (Butler) search for the woman (Waddell) who is the legacy of them both.

How is it?: Much much stronger than a movie called Dracula 2000 has a right to be. I love how it makes itself a sequel to the novel while expanding the mythology in cool ways. I say that it makes itself a sequel to the novel - and it mostly works that way - but there is a weird flashback to Dracula's defeat in the 19th Century that doesn't exactly match up with the way Stoker described it. It's still a cool defeat though. And Van Helsing's method of prolonging his own life into the 21st Century makes sense.

I also love the explanation of Dracula's origin and how it ties together and justifies some of his classic weaknesses. It's a clever bit of speculation and world-building that reminds me of some of the stuff White Wolf Publishing used to do with vampire history in their Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing game, tying vampires back to the Mark of Cain in Genesis. Without going into detail, Dracula 2000 has its head in a similar place.

The cast is pretty great, too. Plummer is the tired, but determined Van Helsing. Miller is his tough, but sympathetic protégé. Butler plays a sultry and dangerous Dracula. And Waddell is the frightened and confused woman who has to figure out how she's connected to Dracula and Van Helsing, then rise to the challenge of finding her own place in the story. Add to all that cool, smaller roles for Esposito, Epps, Masterson, Ryan, and Fillion and you've got a super watchable story.

One thing keeps me from loving it more, though. Mary is obviously a Mina-like character, which is fine, but her roommate's (Vitamin C) name is Lucy Westerman. That's a tough coincidence to swallow considering that Lucy Westernra is also a person who existed in this world. It's a small thing, but it pulled me out of the story when her name was revealed.

Rating: Four out of five Marys

Blood of Dracula (1957)

Who's in it?: Sandra Harrison (an episode of Adventures of Superman), Louise Lewis (a different episode of Adventures of Superman, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Vampire), and Gail Ganley (sadly not in any episodes of Adventures of Superman).

What's it about?: A teenage girl (Harrison) attends a boarding school where her anger issues are exploited by a science teacher (Lewis) who wants to turn her into a bloodsucking vampire. You know, for science. Ganley plays a fellow student who's also the teacher's aide/lackey.

How is it?: First up, this is not actually a Dracula movie. It's a sequel to neither the novel nor another Dracula film, though I think I can make it one in my imagination.

I don't know why it wasn't officially titled I Was a Teenage Vampire when it was made by the same people who did I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. It also has the same tone as those and really the same basic plot as I Was a Teenage Werewolf. The Blood of Dracula title seems intentionally misleading, especially when the only mention of Dracula is plural and as a synonym for all vampires. The line basically goes, "What if the murders were committed by vampires... you know, Draculas?"

As hilariously ridiculous as that is (and it's not the only hilariously ridiculous thing... hello, vampire makeup), and as disappointing as it is to see someone hypnotized into becoming a vampire instead of becoming one the usual way, I like the boarding school setting and the '50s teen shenanigans (secret "initiations" that are just parties where girls dance to records; midnight scavenger hunts, etc.).

I also like how the hypnosis for the vampire transformation is aided by an ancient amulet from the Carpathian mountains. If I want to work at it, I can imagine a backstory that does somehow involve the actual Dracula. Perhaps the amulet belonged to him and has become corrupted by his evil. Or perhaps it was somehow instrumental in his own transformation from Transylvanian count to undead bloodsucker. Whatever it is, I believe that it's the amulet's power and not Miss Branding's skill at mesmerism that actually transforms poor Nancy Perkins.

Rating: Three out of five vampire Nancys.

Monster Monday | Dracula's Daughter (1936)

I had such a good time watching Dracula adaptations last month that I decided to keep going and watch some of the sequels to those adaptations. And even movie sequels to the novel itself, but that don't follow up a movie adaptation.

Who's in it?: Gloria Holden (Dodge City), Edward Van Sloan (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy), Otto Kruger (Treasure Island, Tarzan's Desert Mystery, High Noon, Black Widow), and Marguerite Churchill (The Big Trail, The Walking Dead).

What's it about?: Immediately following the events of Dracula (1931), Dracula's daughter (Holden) comes to England to properly dispose of his body and hopefully cure her own vampirism.

How is it?: I love that it picks up right where Tod Browning's Dracula left off. Jonathan Harker and Mina have left the abbey, but Renfield's body is still there where Dracula left it and Van Helsing (Van Sloan, reprising his role from the previous movie) is still in the tomb with the count's staked corpse. That's when the police show up.

Van Helsing is arrested for Dracula's murder, but instead of calling a lawyer, he asks Scotland Yard to contact a psychologist friend of his, Jeffrey Garth (Kruger). Van Helsing apparently wants to keep Jonathan, Mina, and Dr Seward out of it even though they could support his story. He never mentions them in the film, but that fits with his personality from the previous film. He's stoic, independent, and strong-willed. He refuses to make up a believable lie about what he did, but he's not going to put anyone else in a position where their reputations are also at stake for claiming that vampires exist.

Jeff is skeptical, but (like Dr Seward in the novel) is a former student of Van Helsing and agrees to help the old professor out. Jeff is helped by his assistant, a cultured woman named Janet Blake (Churchill). Dracula's Daughter came out a couple of years after WS Van Dyke's Thin Man movie and I sense some Nick and Nora influence on Jeff and Janet. They're not married, but they clearly like each other even though they tease and bicker. They're a fun couple and I especially like Janet who has to exercise patience with the grumpier Jeff.

Meanwhile, a mysterious, exotic woman shows up at the morgue, dominates the mind of the guard there, and steals Dracula's body. It's Countess Marya Zaleska, who refers to herself later as the daughter of Dracula. It's never specified if she's the Count's actual, biological child or simply someone whom he turned into a vampire long ago, like his so-called "brides" in Transylvania. I like the second option and it makes sense with what's revealed about Zaleska's character. The term "bride" suggests some consent in her alliance with him. "Daughter" does not. You don't get to choose your parents. And since Zaleska resents her vampiric state, I can see why she might prefer that term.

In fact, she's come to London to make sure that Dracula's body is completely destroyed, hoping that doing so will free her from her curse. Her reluctance about being a vampire gives the film a different tone from Dracula and allows Dracula's Daughter to play with different themes. I've always read her craving for blood as an allegory for addiction that she tries to beat through sheer will power. Sadly, it's a tragic, doomed effort.

Other viewers have focused on the seductive side of vampirism and see the film as an allegory for homosexuality. That totally works, too; I just hadn't thought of it. Either way, Dracula's Daughter offers a lot to think about and Holden is a great actor to center the drama around. She's a perfect replacement for Bela Lugosi; aristocratic and exotically attractive in the same way that he was in the earlier film, but because she's also a sympathetic character, I'm more invested in her (and Jack and Janet when she gets involved with them, because they need Dracula's corpse to verify Van Helsing's story) than I am in her dad.

Rating: Four out of five Janets

Dracula (1979)

Who's In It: Frank Langella (Masters of the Universe, Superman Returns, Muppets Most Wanted), Laurence Olivier (Rebecca, Clash of the Titans), Donald Pleasence (You Only Live Twice, Halloween, Escape from New York), and Kate Nelligan (Wolf, US Marshals).

What It's About: The Hamilton Deane/John Balderston play gets a gothic update with extra focus on Dracula's (Langella) powers of seduction.

How It Is: Let's get the movie's big problem out of the way first and that's Dracula's costume. He looks like he's wearing a white turtleneck with a vampire cape from the Halloween aisle at Target. But there ain't nothing wrong with Langella's performance and he may just be my favorite Dracula outside of Max Schreck, who possibly doesn't count (pun totally intended). Langella is good-looking, suave, and charming and I believe it when people fall under his spell. (His hair is too poofy to be believable in the nineteenth century, but oh well.)

The rest of the cast is good, too. I've read somewhere that Pleasance was offered the role of Van Helsing, but turned it down because it was too similar to Dr Loomis in Halloween. I agree and I'm extremely happy with him as Dr Seward: a monster hunter, but sort of a reluctant one and certainly not the obsessed pursuer that Loomis and Van Helsing are.

Speaking of Van Helsing, Olivier disappears into that role. He's doing a convincing (to my ears, anyway) Dutch accent and his facial hair threw me off so that I had to actually go and remind myself who was playing him.

Kate Nelligan brings some extra gravity to her role as Lucy. For some reason (that I'll have thoughts about in a second), Mina and Lucy are switched in this version, so that Mina is Dracula's first victim and Lucy is the one whom everyone's trying to save for the rest of the story. Because the movie is playing up the seduction angle, Lucy doesn't try to resist in the same way that Mina does in the novel. Instead, she's intrigued by the gorgeous count and starts to fall for him, even though she suspects that something's not quite right. It's more similar to real-life romantic attraction than the novel or the Lugosi film are with their emphasis on Dracula's supernatural will. In the '79 movie, Dracula exerts power, but Nelligan plays Lucy more or less as a woman who's heart and head are telling her different things. I believed her falling under his spell much more than I do in other adaptations.

About the switching of Lucy with Mina: It annoyed me at first, because I didn't see the point, but as the movie went on, I started to see how it affected the characters of Van Helsing and Dr Seward in a powerful way. Like in other adaptations, Lucy is Dr Seward's daughter, but in this one, Mina is actually Van Helsing's daughter. So when Van Helsing arrives in England too late to save his own girl, it adds a layer of tragedy and motivation to have him trying to save the daughter of his friend. Pleasence adds to this by being pretty helpless in the whole affair, while Olivier is acting the crap out of his failure to protect Mina and his determination to not let the same thing happen to Lucy.

Describing it that way makes it seem like Lucy's story is subservient to Van Helsing and Seward's, but the movie is concerned about them all. I felt the stakes (pun intended again) in a way that's pretty rare for Dracula adaptations.

Rating: 4 out of 5 sessy vampires.

Vampyres (1974)

Who's In It: Marianne Morris (Lovebox), Anulka (Lisztomania), Murray Brown (Jonathan Harker in the Jack Palance Dracula), Brian Deacon (Jesus), and Sally Faulkner (who helped the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie fight some Cybermen in "The Invasion").

What It's About: A couple (Deacon and Faulkner) park their RV on the lawn of an old mansion that's inhabited by two vampires (Morris and Anulka) who lure motorists (like Brown) there for sex and... well, not so much blood-sucking as blood-licking.

How It Is: For a movie about sexy vampires, Vampyres is pretty unsexy. All the women in it get naked at various points, but director Joseph Larraz seems to think that's all that matters. None of the sex is at all romantic and most of it's super clumsy. Morris is an especially awful kisser who's all about the pecking and the licking, but everyone is just attacking each other in the make-out scenes. And not in a good way.

The movie's not all about the sex, but the other parts aren't much more skillful. I don't understand why John and Harriet decide that the lawn of a clearly inhabited mansion - with cars driving up to it every night - is a good place to camp. I do like them as characters, thanks to some nice acting by Deacon and Faulkner, but there's not a lot of sense to their being there or getting involved in the vampires' business.

And with John and Harriet on the periphery of the goings on, that leaves the motorist Ted (Brown) as the audience surrogate. Ted's the first person we see brought into Fran and Miriam's web and for some reason, Fran takes a liking to him. Maybe because he's as bad a kisser as she is. Whatever the reason, she keeps him around for most of the movie. I think I'm supposed to care about whether he makes it out alive or not, but the movie tells me nothing about him and Brown's performance is just sort of cranky and sulky. Don't like Ted. Don't care if he dies.

The one thing I do unreservedly like about the movie is the introduction of Fran and Miriam. John and Harriet notice Fran hitchhiking (that's how she gets her prey) and Harriet sees Miriam back in the woods, just lurking. That raises all kinds of questions in Harriet's mind, but John blows it off. It brought me into the mystery, too, especially with the cool, gothy outfits that Fran and Miriam were wearing. Unfortunately, none of the answers are remotely as interesting as that set up.

Rating: 1 out of 5 vampire women running through cemeteries.

31 Days of Gothic Romance | Dark Shadows

In 1966, gothic romance moved to television. Dark Shadows was a daytime soap opera that started off like Jane Eyre and added supernatural elements as it went along. Initially, it followed a young woman named Victoria Winters as she's hired by the mysterious Collins family to be a governess. Victoria is an orphan and believes that the Collinses may have connections to her unknown past.

As the show progressed though, other Collins family members returned home with their own spooky and mysterious dramas of blackmail, revenge, and murder. Then in the spring of 1967, the show introduced the most famous of these, the vampire Barnabas Collins, and finally brought a supernatural aspect to the already gothic setting and tone of the series. Eventually, it would also add ghosts, werewolves, witches, and all sorts of other monsters, solidifying its spot as the coolest soap opera of all time. There was also time travel to Barnabas' past, letting the show have a period setting for extended runs of episodes.





By the time the show ended in 1971, it was a bona fide phenomenon with Dark Shadows comic books, a series of novels, joke books, board games, coloring books, View-Master reels, and a couple of feature films: House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows.













There have been three attempts at revivals since '71. In 1991, NBC tried to bring it back as a primetime series run by the show's original creator Dan Curtis. It premiered as a four-hour mini-series and did well in that format, but the ratings fell off when it was put into a Friday night time slot. It was cancelled after 12 episodes.



In 2004, the WB commissioned a pilot for a potential relaunch series, but the show wasn't picked up and the pilot never aired.



Most recently, there was the 2012 feature film directed by Tim Burton. By this time, everyone was pretty tired of Burton's casting cartoon versions of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp in everything, but Dark Shadows is a fun movie. It's a silly, campy version of what should have been a cool, spooky story, but taken for what it is, I quite enjoy it. But it would still be another handful of years before we got a legitimate gothic romance revival at the movie theater.

10 Movies from 2015 That I Liked a Lot

11. Creed



Fantastic. Hard to see the final fight through my tears, though.

Actually, I could say that about most of the Rocky movies anymore. Something about where I am in my life right now helps these movies hit me hard. Exceptions are III and IV; not that I don't love III, but it's not as emotional for me as the others. I rewatched all the numbered ones and finally saw Rocky Balboa for the first time shortly before watching Creed and loved the whole experience, but I wonder if I wouldn't have liked Creed even more if I didn't have all the others in such close proximity to compare it to. Especially Rocky Balboa which was pretty much perfect and a bigger surprise.

Still, wonderful movie.

12. The Martian



I have a knee-jerk, negative response to survival films, mostly because I dread spending two hours with just one character. I know that that's almost never the actual case in these movies, but it's a Pavlovian reaction by this point. Many reviews told me that The Martian spends a lot of time with the people who are trying to rescue Matt Damon, but I still had to push myself into the theater. And of course I'm glad I did.

Damon's character faces his problems with intelligence and humor. That's true of all the characters, really, so the whole movie is refreshingly positive and inspirational. It's the movie that Tomorrowland was trying so hard to be. The drawback is that its lightness dilutes the tension and suspense somewhat, but The Martian is inspirational science fiction first and survival thriller second. It totally succeeds at that primary purpose.

13. Trainwreck



A drawback to seeing this later than a lot of people is that it couldn't possibly live up to the hype I was hearing. It's a funny movie and I cared about the characters, but I wanted to be laughing harder than I was, not just chuckling quietly. A very good romantic comedy, but not one I'll be revisiting a lot.

14. Ant-Man



Another very good superhero movie from Marvel. I love that it has its own tone and stands apart from the other Marvel films, while totally fitting in with them at the same time. I had a lot of fun with it, but the bar on Marvel movies has been raised so high at this point that I'm sort of disappointed if I'm not losing my mind over how awesome they are. Not fair, but that's where I am.

15. SPECTRE



As huge a Bond fan as I am, I was frankly unexcited to see SPECTRE. The trailers emphasized themes that have been thoroughly explored in the previous three Bond films: distrust, Bond's going rogue, etc. And the lackluster theme song did nothing to draw me to the theater on opening night. That said, once I saw it, I immediately went back the following night.

The first time, I spent the movie trying to figure out the plot. It felt lighter in tone than the trailers suggested, but was that a decoy? How much could I trust Madeleine Swann? Was Christoph Waltz playing Blofeld or not? I ended up being satisfied with the answers to those questions and looking forward to seeing the movie again the next day.

And I liked it even better the second time. Knowing what to expect plot- and tone-wise, I was able to focus on the themes and characters. I love what it says about Bond and how he's grown since Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. His final confrontation with Waltz' character - the self-styled "author of all your pain" - is remarkable and wonderful. Waltz wants to be so consumingly important in Bond's life, but Bond's not having it. I love that he's matured to that point, even though I absolutely dread the potential repercussions in the next movie.

The reason it's not higher on my list is that not only is it nowhere near my favorite Bond movie, it's not even the best spy movie I saw this year. If you're interested in more detailed thoughts about it, I wrote those up, too.

16. Pitch Perfect 2



Might even like it better than the first one. The humor is still uneven and I really don't care for the way it resets the group's success to zero so that they can repeat their climb to the top again, but the addition of Hailee Steinfeld, Keegan-Michael Key, and for the love of God: Das Sound Machine...

Look, sometimes a sequel just needs to do what the first one did and do it a bigger. I don't say that often, because it doesn't work that often, but it sure works in this case.

17. What We Do in the Shadows



My expectations were too high. The concept is hilarious and the trailer had me rolling, but the movie never made me fall out of my chair in laughter and - fair or not - that's what I thought I was going to get. Still, super funny and highly recommended. Looking forward to the just announced sequel: We're Wolves.

18. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials



Don't know if the Maze Runner movies are getting lost in the mass of other YA dystopia adaptations or if I'm just reading the wrong film coverage. It feels like no one's talking about these, though, and that's a shame. They're solid adventure stories with interesting characters who have complex motivations and are played by appealing actors. Ready for the next one.

19. Spy



Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy do it again. This time, they made a great spy spoof that also became one of my favorite Jason Statham movies. What keeps it from being higher on the list is the amount of time it spends on McCarthy in sad, cat lady disguises. It does that so that she can break free of them and be awesome - and once she does, it's great and I love it whole-heartedly - but I had to get through that stuff to get to the great stuff, so that keeps me from loving it.

It also doesn't help that all the US marketing for the movie focused on cat lady. I had to go to Korea to find a poster of McCarthy looking cool. It makes me very sad that US marketers didn't think anyone wanted to see that.

20. Black Sea



An excellent, undersea heist thriller. Not nearly as much about the tension between the English and Russian halves of the team that the trailer would have you believe, but that stuff is certainly in there. My issue with it has nothing to do with the movie itself and everything to do with what I wanted it to be. The thriller stuff is totally in there and it's very good, but ultimately the movie is more interested in the emotional journey of Jude Law's character and that takes the story in a specific direction I was sorry to see it go. If this list were about objective quality and not about my personal reactions, Black Sea would be in a different spot.

Happy Bram Stoker Day!

He would'a been 168 today.

My 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2015

I haven't done this before, but I've seen some other people do it and it's a fun idea. Here are the 10 movies I'm most looking forward to seeing in 2015. It'll be interesting to look back at the end of the year and see which were worth the wait.

I had a hard time not making this a Top 20, because there are several other films I'm looking forward to, but I'll just include them as Honorable Mentions. Black Sea and In the Heart of the Sea are both sea adventures, so I'll be wanting to see them. And I'm a big fan of the Fast and Furious movies, so Furious 7 is something I'm looking forward to, but the death of Paul Walker looms over it. That and Justin Lin's not directing it makes me uneasy about how it's going to hold together. I hope it's great, but I have enough worry around it that it didn't crack the Top 10. Mad Max: Fury Road also promises to be great, as does Match starring Patrick Stewart, Carla Gugino, and Matthew Lillard. They just got nudged out by the following:

10. Victor Frankenstein



James McAvoy plays Victor Frankenstein and Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, through whose eyes the story is told. It's my favorite monster story with a couple of actors I really like. 20th Century Fox is distributing it, so it's not part of Universal's coming set of interconnected monster movies, but I think that makes me even more interested. I'm looking forward to the Universal flicks, but strictly as fun, B-movie fare. I'm hoping that Victor Frankenstein is able to transcend that.

9. Jupiter Ascending



I still have a lot of faith in the Wachowski Siblings. Like everyone else, I didn't enjoy how the Matrix trilogy ended, but I absolutely love Speed Racer. I haven't seen Cloud Atlas yet, but even so I admire its ambition. And I admire the ambition of starting a whole new space opera series from scratch. I'm hoping it's really awesome and am heartened that Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum are involved. I dig both of those guys.

8. Ant-Man



This wasn't going to make my Top 10 until I saw the trailer. Before that, I figured it was going to be a disposable, fringe entry in the Marvel catalog, but the trailer totally found my Marvel Kid switch and flipped it on.



7. What We Do in the Shadows



It's MTV's Real World with vampires by the folks behind Flight of the Conchords. Looks hilarious and I'll let the trailer speak for itself.



6. Crimson Peak



Guillermo del Toro and I obviously love the same stuff, so it's no surprise that he's also a fan of gothic romance. Crimson Peak is set in a crumbling castle in the mountains of northern England and features Mia Wasikowska as a 19th century author who marries a charming, but darkly mysterious man played by Tom Hiddleston. And there's Jessica Chastain. Could not be more in my wheelhouse.

5. Jurassic World



I like them Jurassic Park movies almost as much as I like Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. But I also love theme parks and I think I'm most excited about finally seeing this one open and functioning on screen.

4. Avengers: Age of Ultron



Cannot wait to see these characters back together again.

Can

not

wait.

3. SPECTRE



Starting next week, this blog is going to be getting a lot more Bondy and it's all leading up to this movie. I'm a little nervous that my expectations for it are too high, but it's in the right hands.

2. Tomorrowland



I recently saw The Iron Giant again and it reminded me how much I love Brad Bird. He's my favorite writer/director and he's all I need to know about this thing.

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens



I have lots of nerves about this movie. I tend to like JJ Abrams, but he's disappointed me about as often as he's thrilled me. Some of the trailer looked really awesome, but some of it reminded me of the prequels. I'm trying very hard to avoid spoilers, so I don't expect my anxiousness to go away until I actually see the movie, but I've been waiting for the post-Jedi story to continue on screen for 32 years. It's not just my most anticipated movie of the year, it's my most anticipated movie of probably my lifetime.

But enough about me. What are you looking forward to?