The Count

We had Dracula auditions here at the Cavalcade this afternoon, for the all-cat rendition. It will be a musical, of course. Who wore it better?


Tuna


Deniro



Or Moochie

You decide!

James River Film Festival Highlights

Richmond holds an annual film festival each April. The festival doesn't tend to focus on any theme or genre - they'll have a night of short films from local universities, or some independent work, maybe a reading or two thrown in. Once every couple of years, however, they'll screen a thing or two that peaks my interest and this year I was delighted to find out they were screening the Spanish language version of DRACULA with a live soundtrack AND a rare 35mm print of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. On the same night! Yay!

Movie the first - DRACULA. The introduction wasn't anything I didn't already know - the film was shot at night on the same stage as Tod Browning's film, the long shots of Dracula aren't Carlos Villar, but Bela Lugosi, a money-saving maneuver - but the highlights included seeing this old film on a big screen in a theatre with an audience AND musical accompaniment by guitar whiz Gary Lucas.

On the musical aspect. Lucas, looking cool in a purple fedora and loose fitting grey suit, took the stage after being briefly introduced as a performer with Captain Beefheart. He said a couple of words and the film started rolling. He played along with the DRACULA theme song at a little too high a volume, so I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to concentrate on subtitles. It really was that loud. But after the credits, he toned it down and I was immediately sucked in to watching the movie, almost tuning out Lucas as he played along. He's that good. You don't even realize you're hearing something performed live.

The only time I was sentient I was watching a live performance along with the film is that some of the music is slightly anachronistic. There's a Spanish feel to some it, a rock n roll feel to other parts, with softer notes played with women are conversing on screen. He also switches between acoustic and electric depending on the action, which is pretty cool. It updates the film in some ways, but you are still aware you're watching a movie from the Thirties. It's a weird feeling, but not a bad one.



On seeing DRACULA with an audience. I've seen this version of the film many times and often pair it as a double feature with Bela Lugosi's version. But this was my first time with a theatre full of other film fans and it was a little annoying, even though it is interesting to see how different people react to certain films I myself am very familiar with. Yes, the movie is stagey and akin to a stage performance, because it originated as such. Yes, it's eight decades removed from our current movie watching brains. And yes, sometimes it's hokey. But it ain't all that fucking funny. You would think people were watching stand up or something the way they were guffawing at Dracula's facial expressions. I think a lot of times people don't know what to do with themselves when they watch something old or removed from what they are used to. Laughter is their way of dealing with it. I've seen it happen with all sorts of films, usually films that are a lot more 'shocking' than this one. Overall, it was cool to see this on a big screen, stupid laughter from stupid people aside.

And, I never realized how much I love Renfield. It really is his movie in a lot of ways, at least this version. I love watching him go nuts. It's easily one of the best performances throughout the movie. And he gets so much more screen time than Dracula. It would seem he upstages the cloaked one in many ways.



Movie the second - NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Charles Laughton's first and only feature, the wonderful melodrama starring Robert Mitchum, is easily one of my favorite noir pictures. I was delighted to be able to see this on a big screen in 35mm! This feature kicked off with a reading from the novel by Minnesotan author and film fan, Peter Schilling, Jr., appearing with fake LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos. It was a cute gesture, but kinda weak. This is a dude wearing a navy blue blazer and those little wire-rimmed glasses. Oh well. I'm like, shut up, get to the movie.

On seeing this with an audience. The audience here was more reserved. Everyone was respectful of the film and there was the occasional giggle, but overall, this was a more somber affair than most. Preacher Harry Powell is just so damn evil! You can't take your eyes off him. And Pearl is just so darn cute. I don't like kids, but I would cuddle Pearl in a second.



On the movie itself. It's been years since I've seen this and only ever on VHS. I feel like I paid a lot of attention this time (I was also stone cold sober, hehe). You know how it is. You can see something over and over and then like the tenth time you see it, you pick up on stuff you might have missed. This time I was hyper-aware of the kids and their mistrust of the adults. I'm not saying I missed this entirely before, since it is overt, but I really felt for those kids this time around. They loose their dad, which they get to watch, they loose their mom, the other adults are drunk or unbelieving - there's no one they can trust. And while Mitchum's Preacher is what the film is most memorable for, the kids are really what carry the movie and who you feel for. It's just such a painful movie, in that you feel the same pain and really, really want to see Preacher get what's coming to him. I need to read the novel. I could only love it.

It was so fantastic to be able to see these two old films in a festival environment. To go to two different amazing venues in my city on the same night and watch two of my favorite films is what I want every day to be like. Richmond isn't the roaring metropolis it should be and these things just don't happen on the regular around here. I'm glad I got to be a part of it this year. Here's to more genre offerings in years to come! Yay!

Cool-Ass Halloween Cookies

Check out these cool cookies I found at the grocery store! The top one is supposedly a werewolf, but really, doesn't it look more like a sasquatch? Or some sort of retarded bear? I kinda don't even want to eat the poor guy, but you know all that icing is going to be damn delicious.

Then I found this dude - a gingerbread pumpkin guy and I've already eaten most of his legs. Which were really, really tasty. In fact, my mouth is watering for his torso. Literally. And he goes really good with pino noir. Pleasant surprise.

Finally, here's the cookie incarnation of Dracula. There was an unfortunate accident in transport, seems like he wasn't traveling in his own earth or whatever, and his side got mostly squished. I guess I'm just going to have to help him shuffle off his immortal coil and gobble him up.

I'm totally the Queen of Halloween today - I got these literal cookie monsters, baked two pumpkin pies, bought a pumpkin, am currently in the process of carving it, and am also roasting the seeds. I'm also having a werewolf movie marathon and just finished THE HOWLING. Gonna follow that up with Hammer's CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF and drink more pino noir and hopefully get this jack o'lantern carved without anyone requiring medical attention. Something about me and knives and carving up squash, I just get stabby. Happy Halloween Eve, ya'll!

Mr. Vampire

Hello, everyone, this is Aaron from The Death Rattle doing a guest review here on Jenn's blog. This review is for a surprisingly hilarious movie we watched yesterday: MR. VAMPIRE.

In Mr. VAMPIRE, a martial artist/mortician and his two bumbling students/assistants battle zombies, hopping vampires, non-hopping zombie vampires, and a succubus. The film is a horror comedy directed by HK horror film-maker Ricky Lau, and there's a huge emphasis on the "comedy" part here in MR. VAMPIRE. Trust me when I say that this movie is hilarious, and not necessarily in a "you have to understand the Asian sense of humor to think it's funny" kinda way (which is common to a lot of Japanese comedy/horror comedy that I've seen), but in a universal, almost American style of comedy with the exception of a couple of scenes involving some actual cultural aspects.

Going into the movie I knew pretty much nothing about it and neither did Jenn, so we were both surprised to see how "all over the place" this movie was in terms of what it had to offer (and don't forget Vivi's and my horrible hangover confusing things either - Ed.). The lead character Master Gau (played by HK action star/stunt man Ching-Ying Lam) is your typical, hard-assed martial arts instructor, and I guess you could say that he's also the titular Mr. Vampire character. His character, in a way, reminded me of a more comedic version of Rupert Everett's Francesco Dellamorte character from CEMETERY MAN. The similarities of the two characters weren't so much in personality but because of the obstacles they faced in their respective movies. Both men oversaw dead bodies and had to deal with the occasional corpse who absolutely refused to die. More so in Dellamorte's case, but you know what I mean. And while Dellamorte only had the companionship of his bizarre assistant Gnaghi, Master Gau had two much younger goofballs assistants who provided the comic relief of the film.

There are a few different things about the plot that keep it moving along and, more importantly, keep it interesting. One of Master Gau's assistants is being seduced by a succubus and the other is slowly turning into a vampire, all while a demonic vampire zombie creature is on the loose. Gau's role in the film is to keep his two young apprentices in line and keep them focused on the bigger picture, which is the destruction of the demonic vampire zombie thing. I think. I won't lie, the plot was a little confusing, but that's pretty much the gist of it. Quite honestly, it doesn't even really matter. This movie has martial arts, slapstick comedy and violence, zombies, vampires, and a succubus, so who gives a shit about the plot? MR. VAMPIRE brings a lot of different things to the table, but it nails pretty much everything that it tries to throw at you and never does a half assed job of anything, especially the comedy.

One thing you can definitely expect from MR. VAMPIRE is bad dubbing, but in this case I'm pretty sure that the dubbing was awful on purpose. There's a female character (a Chinese character... duh) with a British accent and another female character with what sounds like an Irish accent. Neither make any sense and the accents hav

e absolutely nothing to do with the characters. Randomness, people. Randomness is always the key to victory. Master Gau's voice is that of the whitest man you could ever imagine. Well, not like Napoleon Dynamite white, but Clark Kent white, I guess.

The funniest thing about the movie, in my opinion, was the fact that the characters in the movie, mainly Master Gau, broke the fourth wall on a few occasions and acknowledged the fact that they were in a low budget movie. The most hilarious of which was a scene where Gau commanded that his newly-infected vampire assistant "break dance" on a table covered with white rice (pure white rice apparently sucks out toxins and is somewhat of a home remedy for a vampire cure). When his assistant asked "why", Gau nonchalantly replied "I don't know, it's in the script".

Ultimately, MR. VAMPIRE is more of a comedy than it is a horror movie and it's definitely worth checking out. It got rave reviews from everyone in the room that saw it (ViVi says it's super number one!) and even Jenn's cats loved it (actually they didn't, but this wouldn't be a proper Cavalcade of Perversions post without mentioning one of her cats at least once). That's about it, people. If you dig martial arts flicks, comedy that borders on parody, and unconventional approaches on the vampire lore, then MR. VAMPIRE is your huckleberry. Now go follow my blog, you scum.

Mom

Having bought this movie several months ago on ebay and not getting a moment to watch it until now, I had to refresh my memory by checking out the description. From the back of the box: Most moms are wonderful cooks, this one, likes it raw. Okay, that sounds a little suggestive. Reading on: Something's been eating Clay Dwyer - his mom. Wow, hmm, things are getting a kinda awkward in here. *Stammering* I, I guess I owe it to Clay Dwyer to read on.

Once a sweet lovable old lady, she has been bitten by and transformed into a Flesheater, turning her into a hungry creature with a knack for good ol' homestyle cooking. Due to Mom's insatiable appetite, Clay is reluctant to introduce her to his pregnant girlfriend. Okay, well, Mom already knows Clay's GF and the last time I checked eating homeless people didn't necessarily qualify as homestyle cooking, especially since Mom likes it, ahem, raw anyway. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.

But family friction is far from Clay's major concern. Mom is on the loose, terrorizing the town, and sinking her teeth into groceries not found at the corner market. What is Clay to do? (Yes, it actually says this.) To everyone else she's a monster that must be destroyed but to him...she's still MOM. Aw, isn't that sweet? What would you do if your mommy was turned into a ravenous skin eater? We can ponder that one later. First....

Anyway, this sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds fairly interesting, kinda original, maybe. Sounds like it would be over the top in a campy good way. Well, folks, it ain't. In fact, it's a pretty big snooze and more about the degredation of the family, with maybe an attack at addiction thrown in, rather than an all out vampire movie. As Clay struggles to deal with his mother's mounting hunger, he develops a thirst for alcohol and codependency, loosing his job and his woman in the process. Now, I'm all for subtlety and subtext and what have you in my horror movies, even those ambitious ones that look like they were made for TV in 1990, but when your commentary is right there in my face I get a little offended. I mean, come on, I'm a recognized scholar here. Anystupidsocialcommentary, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Mom begins with a young lady down on her luck in the middle of the desert, swilling whiskey from a pint and wearing some pretty goddamn fabulous over-the-knee leopard boots. She sees a mysterious looking gent at the busstop, which mind you, is in the middle of freakin' nowhere, and it being Christmas Eve and all, she offers him a nip of her booze. He takes more than that, when he rips the fetus that's growing inside her straight outta her belly and feasts upon it. Sounds cool, right? It's all off camera.

Cut to Christmas morning, Emily Dwyer, our titular character, is decorating her home for the holiday. She sits down to watch her son, Clay, deliver the nightly news, and her daughter, Carla, who she hasn't seen in years, phones to tell inform Emily she won't be coming home from Christmas again this year. Em's disappointed, but the next thing you know, Clay and his charming thin-lipped artist girlfriend with very unflattering taste in clothing announce they are expecting their first child. Emily's thrilled, but ever old fashioned, wants to know when they're getting married. There's some conversation and then it's decided that Emily will rent out Clay's old room in the house.

The next day or sometime later (the Xmas decorations have been removed), a tall figure wearing sunglasses and wielding a blind man's cane appears at Emily's door inquiring about the room for rent. His name is Nester and he's the same weirdo from the opening sequence that killed and ate that fetus. Nester is weird as shit, to be sure, he's very tall, wears bolo ties, speaks in a gruff, monotone, almost Southern accent, and prefers to eat his meals out, or so he tells his good landlady. Hearing none of it, Emily prepares a pot roast and tries to force feed it to Nester. He does the only thing a self respecting ghoul could do when faced with such an obstacle - he bites Emily on the neck and turns her into flesh hungry ghoul. The word vampire is only mentioned once. Nester himself says, 'Vampire, werewolf, ghoul, it's all the same.' Cool with me, he's not gonna put up with labels. Very punk, Nester.

So after Em gets bitten, she feigns illness so Clay'll leave her alone, and her and Nester go out a'huntin'. Clay happens to be driving by the exact spot where he sees Nester and Emily exit a cab (Los Angeles being a really small town, mind), and decides to lurk and see what they're up to. He doesn't have to wait long, they quickly procure themselves a homeless man, and after buying him a cup of coffee at a restaurant, they lead him into an alley and eat his guts. Clay witnesses all this and vomits on a homeless woman, who in turn, laughs maniacally in his face.

Clay waits for them to finish their meal and then pulls up and orders Mom to get in the car. Nester they'll see at home. Clay, trying to come to terms with what he's just seen, freaks out and tells Emily he'll get her all the help she needs, doctors and hospitals, whatever. She tries to explain what has happened to her, but Clay's hearing none of it and they return to Emily's house to discuss the situation with Nester. And by discuss, I mean they burn Nester to ashes by lighting his hand on fire on stove and throwing a pot convienently labeled 'grease' on him.

Even with Nester out of the picture, bodies around the LA area keep piling up, all with the same apparent bite wounds and so forth. Clay figures the best he can do to protect the citizens of Los Angeles is to strap his Mom to her bed and lock and bar the doors and windows. But she's hungry as hell and jonesing for a fix, so Clay does what any good son would do and goes out and gets a hooker for Mama's supper.

The hooker is easily the campiest best part of this. She's totally downtown LA in the late 80's (think Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers or Brain Damage), and you've got it. Clay picks her up in a seedy bar and offers her twenty five bucks plus cab fare to go up to his mom's room and pretend she's Carla, the daughter Emily hasn't seen in years. Bev agrees and gets herself munched on in the process.

Clay's sanity is on the wane, as he's not sleeping trying to protect his mother, as well as the citizens of LA County, and it's only a matter of time before he looses both fancy reporter job and pregnant artist girlfriend. He's got nothing left to do but get drunk and return to vampire mom's house, to cry and drown his sorrows in more hooch. It's agonizing to watch really, not because it strikes a chord with me or anything, but just because it's so boring.

It all comes to a head when Mom decides the world is better off with out and she offs herself in a somehow flame-filled kitchen. Now, like I said, this coulda been cool. It is kinda neat to see an old lady covered in blood off herself in a very violent way, because we don't see that that often. But the whole movies just smacks of PG rated after school special, it's hard to get excited about anything going on. Just as there's about to be some grue, there's a cut away. And ya'll know I'm not a diehard gorehound, but this one was too tame. There's some nice practical makeup for when Mom's in vamp form, and a little blood thrown around here and there, but not enough to warrant any gross outs or anything.

This could have also been played for laughs, but it's somehow not funny at all. The camp value is completely absent. It's not nearly as gritty as it should be either. It totally misses its mark. Emily and Clay are too 'regular' acting, there's nothing interesting about either one of them. Alice either. And she's supposed to be the artist. And then there's the whole thing about Emily being so damn hungry, she'll eat anybody, but then there's never the desire to eat Clay. She almost even eats a girl scout. Even when the long lost Carla shows up, Emily has no qualms devouring her and placing her severed head in the garbage, but she shows special mercy for Clay. He's the favorite, I guess. There's always the favorite child.

It's such a shame that this whole mess just winds up loosing its focus. I think this actually could have been an uproarious good time. Instead, it winds up as this loose metaphor for addiction, family codependency, dementia, and even menopause. But like I mentioned, it's still kinda cool to see a kindly elderly old lady covered in gallons of blood and then burnt to a blood pulp. I'm just saying.

Yes, I've been drinking.

And apologies for the small pic - do have any idea how difficult it is to google image art for something called 'Mom?' Insanely.

The Living Dead Girl

Perhaps Jean Rollin's most commercial (?), accessible (?), well-known (?) film, 1982's The Living Dead Girl, is a gory combination of vampirism, lesbianism, and zombie-ism. While pre-dating Dan O'Bannon's punk zombie epic, Return of the Living Dead, perhaps Mr. O'Bannon culled a bit from this when writing his opus. Christian and I both couldn't help but be like, damn, this seems like Return of the Living Dead, although Christian got Part I and II confused. Quick to always be right, as is my way, I corrected him thusly. EEEEEnnnnyway....what we have here is a slow moving, kinda boring and annoying, bloody, tragedy on a grand scale. Yes, something can be boring and grand at the same time, if you're Jean Rollin.

The Living Dead Girl (try to say this title without lapsing into the Rob Zombie song of the same title, although since most of Zombie's songs all sound the freakin' same, I'll find myself starting out humming Living Dead Girl but wind up humming Dragula) begins with three dudes dumping some toxic waste in a cemetery vault. They know of a corpse or two buried there and decide to do a little grave robbing on the side. Leaving one guy out by the van, two descend into the vault, put the chemicals in a corner and spy two coffins. They each grab one and get to work. One coffin holds the remains of Catherine Valmont, a young blond who died only two years ago, the other houses the remains of her mother, dead some time now. The bodies are quite remarkably preserved, which Christian noted could be due to budget constraints involving procuring believable looking fake corpses. Just use real people!

An earthquake and some bats disrupt the chemical barrels resulting in Catherine's reanimation, chemical burns to one grave robbers face, and Catherine's subsequent eye gouging of the other guy and fingernails to the throat of the one outside by the van. Then cut to an American couple, Barbara and Greg, well, Barbara has a bit of an accent, but they both speak English, Greg is undoubtedly American as they refer to his American-ness throughout, who are on holiday in the village where Catherine has been reanimated. They try to eat at their inn but when told the earthquake upset things and they'll have to wait, they go to a field where Greg draws some stuff and encourages Barbara to take up photography. They have a bit of spat and Barbara wanders off and runs into Catherine wandering the field barefoot and in white and takes her picture.

Catherine then wanders back to her childhood castle, in a ramshackle state, but elaborately furnished inside, where a real estate agent is showing the house to another American couple. They narrowly miss each other and the couple leaves to take some time to think about purchasing the home. Meanwhile, the real estate agent gets a phone call from her lov-ah and leaves to engage in sexy times. Catherine continues wandering about and has some bittersweet flashbacks of when she was a child and she and her best friend Helene would romp throughout the castle playing with a music box. The two young girls become blood sisters and tell each other, oh, I love you, oh, I'll never leave you, then play with the music box some more. You would think that living in a castle and all, Catherine could afford more interesting playthings. I'm sure the music box is a symbol of a young girl's innocence captured or memories held onto because remember, tragedy of epic proportions, ya'll.

Cut to Helene, the young friend of Catherine, now all grown up. She's kinda hot in an eighties way but has really big hands, and she randomly decides to call the castle. Catherine answers, but having been mute up until this point, just plays the music box music for Helene, which causes her to make quick passage to the castle. While she's on her way, the real estate agent brings her boy toy back to the castle for some more of the el sexo. They waste no time and quickly get down to it, when Catherine begins playing the piano creepily so lover man goes off to investigate. One quick crunching sound later and his throat's ripped out. He gives the real estate agent a blood facial when Catherine comes in and rips her throat out as well, and dines upon their blood. Real estate lady runs outside and expires on the steps. Helene drives up and this point, doesn't seem at all disturbed by the dead girl on the steps, and proceeds inside to find dude dead in the floor and Catherine dead yet playing the piano. Helene is more incredulous at Catherine's being alive than the dead bodies and there are some intimations of lesbianism here. Let it be said that intimations of lesbianism is all you will receive as far as lesbianism goes here. Helene gives Catherine a sponge bath in the moonlight, puts her to bed, and puts the dead bodies in the vault.

Catherine basically figures out that she has an insatiable bloodlust that she may or may not really enjoy. She seems to like drinking the blood while she's doing it, especially if she's feeding off Helene's wrist (Helene is in no danger, seemingly from Catherine killing her), but that may be in that it only eases the pain of being dead, the fact that she must consciously kill likely bothers her a bit. Helene, realizing Catherine cannot be fed on her blood or the blood of dead doves alone, takes on the role of familiar and lackey, providing Catherine with fresh, mostly female, victims. Helene is a natural in this role, we know nothing of her previous life, although by her business suits and professional apartment interior we see when we first meet her, she's likely a successful normal person. However, once back in the arms of Catherine, she becomes just as bloodthirsty and ruthless, stopping at little to procure victims for Catherine. Yet, upon pushing one lovely lady down into the vaults to sate Catherine, Helene has a hard time hearing the actual screams that accompany the feeding. At one point, dissatisfied with herself as an undead blood drinker, Catherine swears off blood, only to have Helene bring home another girl and slice her herself to entice Catherine. Catherine sets the girl free and tells her to expose the secret of the vampire living in the castle to the village and goes off to the inevitable - she feeds on Helene in the grossest, goriest vampire feeding I've seen in a long time.

There's another whole deal concerning Barbara and Greg and their subsequent ends, but I'll let you discover those death scenes on your own. They're pretty funny, do nothing to satisfy Catherine, which is the point of most of the killing in the movies, and say a lot about what sort of woman Helene has become over the course of having to deal with Catherine's vampirism.

Get over the weird pace, plot holes, lack of softcore lesbian sex, and no real rules for vampirism or zombie-ism, and what you have is a melancholy, almost Shakespearean portrayal, of a dead girl's attempt at making sense of her floundering station in un-life. Catherine and Helene are beautiful and their love for each other seems genuine. Sorry, if I walked in and my BFF was nakey, covered in blood, and playing the piano having just murdered two unsuspecting lovers to drink their blood, my first reaction would not be to give her a moonlight sponge bath. My second reaction would also not be to lure unsuspecting victims to the burial vault underneath my chateau for my BFF to feed upon. I just don't have a connection like that with anyone, which is likely my problem.