Blast From The Past Movie Review: VAN HELSING (2004)

I first saw Van Helsing back when I was in college. I don't remember too clearly how much I liked it then--I think I liked it broadly but didn't like the end. I did use a GIF of Richard Roxburgh's Dracula as an AOL Instant Messenger avatar, at least for awhile.

The film podcast Myopia Movies dedicated October as vampire-movie month, with Van Helsing originally planned as the Patreon special. Although I wasn't slated to participate, I'd rented the movie already and so watched it anyway. Here's a free snippet and instructions how to get whole episode FREE. And now my review..

The Plot

Amnesiac Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a monster-hunter working for a Vatican knightly order. Owing to how many of the creatures he kills revert to human form upon death and how close-mouthed the Vatican is about supernatural threats like vampires, werewolves, etc. he's viewed by the general public as a serial killer and is the most wanted criminal in Europe. After dispatching Mr. Hyde in Paris when we first meet him, the Vatican sends him to Transylvania to assist the Valerious family in their centuries-long battle with none other than Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh).

Upon arrival he allies with Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsdale), the last living member of the family after the presumed death of her brother Velkan (Will Kemp), and does battle with Dracula and his three brides. Things get complicated...Dracula seems to have some kind of prior history with Van Helsing and the vampire king has a very dangerous and complex plan involving none other than Frankenstein's Monster (Shuler Hensley) and werewolves.

The Good

*For starters, the movie is pretty exciting and never dull. That's why, even though there's so much to criticize about it, I'm going to give it a good review. It's just plain fun. I watched about 1/3 of it on the elliptical at the gym and it made the time go by so much faster.

*The acting works. Hugh Jackman is good as Van Helsing, while David Wenham is fine as the inventor-friar Carl. Kate Beckinsdale does a decent job as Anna. Hensley, who won the Tony Award for his role as the pitiable but dangerous Jud Frye in Oklahoma!, puts a lot of pathos into his portrayal of Frankenstein's Monster. But the one who's clearly having the most fun is Richard Roxburgh, who plays Dracula himself. He chews the scenery like he's chewing on somebody's neck and it's always entertaining. In particular he plays Dracula incredibly snarky and I liked that.

*One innovation Van Helsing brings to vampire films is the characterization of Dracula's vampire brides. Rather than just being residents of the Count's house of horrors in Transylvania without individual characterization (this fanfic even depicts them as a sort of hive mind), they play a major role in driving the plot and have personalities.

*I also liked the characterization of Frankenstein's Monster. Rather than some freak with the mind of a toddler (or in the original film an executed murderer) in the body of a professional wrestler, he's very intelligent, has some very pointed things to say about monster-hunting, reveres Dr. Frankenstein as his father, and is even a devout Catholic despite being, well, the parts of seven men strung together and reanimated with electricity. I think this is more heavily tied in with the novel where the creature was more intelligent.

*There's a lot of humor in this movie. I laughed out loud several times.

*The Valerious patriarch who goes missing before the story begins is referred to as "the King of the Gypsies." Given how in the original Dracula novel and the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula his minions are explicitly depicted as being Gypsies (or Romani as they prefer to be called), this seems like a deliberate choice to deconstruct the old story. Rarely does one put "thoughtful" and this film together in one sentence, but it looks like they put some thinking into it.

The Bad

*For all its spectacle and fun, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense. For starters, when Anna tells the villagers that Van Helsing is the first man to kill a vampire in over 100 years, that raises some questions as to what exactly the Valerious family has been doing in all the centuries they've been fighting Dracula. Have they been keeping the vampires contained as much as possible to keep them from harming others, but avoiding killing them outright because that might provoke revenge attacks? Given how they don't initially know where Castle Dracula even is, that seems unlikely. Does Dracula primarily use werewolves and human minions, with the vampires only coming out to fight occasionally? It would've been better if Anna had lectured the villagers about their ingratitude for Van Helsing saving their lives.

*The action goes back and forth from Transylvania to Rome, often by carriage. Does distance mean anything? If Dracula has a townhouse, it'd probably be in a much closer big city like Bucharest.

*Also, why does Van Helsing try to kill Dracula with methods that don't work (in this universe) like the silver stake? If the Valerious family has been fighting Dracula for centuries and tried various means of killing him (Anna talks about burning, stabbing, clubbing etc., which means they've gone hand-to-hand with him repeatedly), why aren't they sharing this with the Vatican? And why didn't the Vatican share this with Van Helsing? Someone has blundered.

*Does being a vampire mean lack of volume control? Dracula and his brides sure like to yell and scream overdramatically, especially the shrieking-prone brides. Roxburgh's hammy Dracula is fun, but the brides can get pretty annoying.

*For a world in which Catholicism is factually true, their take on Catholic theology is...dubious. For starters, Valerious the Elder making a vow to God (and apparently some kind of deal with the leadership of the Church) that nobody in his family would go to Heaven until Dracula was dead and the cardinal's worrying the entire Valerious family would end up in Purgatory if the family were killed before Dracula's death. Firstly, even if Valerious the Elder was foolish enough to make such a vow in the first place (see the Hebrew judge Jephthah), the cardinal has no reason to think God would honor it. The only way for this to make sense theologically is if the most extreme version of the apostles' authority to bind and loose (see Matthew 16:19) and that the Catholic leadership and in particular the Pope are the successors to the apostles in authority are both correct. If Catholicism is factually true the latter works, but the former is really pushing it. On a lesser note, Purgatory is temporary, even if it is unpleasant, so the Valerious family will enter Heaven eventually. When dealing with a timeframe of eternity, even a century or two matters little. Also the film implies that Van Helsing is actually the Archangel Gabriel, who has taken human form but lost his memory. Angels do not work that way.

It would have been much better if the Valerious family has been keeping Dracula contained in Romania, but they've recently suffered a series of reverses like the disappearance of Anna and Velkan's father. Van Helsing is sent in as reinforcements, since if the family is wiped out, Dracula will be free to spread his dark influence across Europe. And give Van Helsing a more conventional origin story. He's just a monster-hunter working for the Vatican and that's it.

*Also, Van Helsing's knightly order is pretty multi-faith...there are Muslim mullahs, Sikhs, and Buddhist monks present at its headquarters in the Vatican and Dracula comments that Van Helsing has been trained by "monks and mullahs from Tibet to Istanbul." That kind of ecumenism isn't something that would happen in that era. Leo XIII was Pope at the time and although he was more left-wing politically and economically, he wouldn't acknowledge salvation outside the Catholic Church (that didn't happen until Vatican II), let alone outside of Christianity. Furthermore, when faced with evidence that the Cross and other specifically Christian holy items have supernatural power against evil, I imagine non-Christian witnesses would convert relatively quickly. This is empirically factual evidence of the truth of Christianity, and Catholicism specifically. Better to have it all Catholics, but multiple ethnicities. The Japanese Christians would have just come out of hiding, there's the Eastern Rite drawn from the Greek world, the Middle Eastern Maronites (whom ignorant Westerners might assume were Muslims), etc. 

Hmm...Van Helsing trained in ninjutsu by one of the Hidden Christians? That'd be cool. Such a character could've even been a replacement for Friar Carl if they wanted to go with "martial arts" over "steampunk technology"--a man who'd secretly practiced Christianity as an instructor in the genocidally anti-Christian Shogunate's official ninja academy would do a very good job in training VH in sneaking around and assassination.

*Valerious the Elder's vow is also a missed opportunity for when Dracula attempts to seduce Anna. He can play up the idea that she'll never go to Heaven, so she might as well live forever on Earth. And owing to the people's ingratitude toward the family for protecting them from supernatural threats, might as well eat them too. Even if theologically that's all nonsense, Anna might not know that and Dracula can use it to manipulate her.

*Although the brides do more than just perv on Jonathan Harker (who isn't even in the film), they could have been better developed as characters. Per the almighty TVTropes, in interviews the actresses revealed a lot about their back-stories...one is Dracula's favorite and primary wife, another was a Gypsy in her mortal life, and one hates Anna because she thinks that Dracula will try to make her one of his vampire brides. Some of that stuff is hinted at in the film (Anna and vampire bride Aleera seem to be on a first-name basis with each other), but not enough.

*A "king of the Gypsies" with a bad-Latin name? The Gypsies/Romani originally came from India. Depending on how assimilated they are (this one even became a Romanian prince), they might have Hungarian or Slavic names. The only way this works is if Anna and Velkan's father was elected to the position, as a sort of liaison to the non-Romani. Also, Valerious was the ancestor's first name, not his family name. I don't really have an issue with the first names--being Christians a Biblical name like Anna makes sense and Velkan sounds appropriately Eastern European, but their ancestor's first name becoming their last name? How did that happen?

The Verdict

Fun, but don't think about it too much. 8.0 out of 10. If you want to listen to my colleagues--who were much less merciful--make fun of the movie, sign up for the Patreon here.

Abraham Van Helsing...Marriage Counselor? Or What Happened After BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

In late October, I watched the 1992 horror-romance classic Bram Stoker's Dracula for the film podcast Myopia Movies. After having watched the film, done the podcast, and reviewed a lot of discussion on TVTropes, I wondered what happens next? 

The film ends on ambiguous note--Dracula is mortally wounded by Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell) and Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), but the latter's wife, the rapidly-vampirizing Mina (Winona Ryder), prevents them from finishing him at gunpoint. This is after having gone so far as to attempt to use sorcery (an ability she gained after drinking his blood far more willingly than in the novel) to prevent them from catching Dracula during daylight. She takes the dying vampire to Castle Dracula's long-disused chapel where he seems to repent of his wickedness, the light of God restores him to his human form, and Mina finishes him off. The scene is accompanied by voice-over narration that sounds like Mina's account written in her journal after the fact, so she survives the experience. 

However, there's still the awkward situation that she's married to Jonathan, whom she has all but cuckolded with a monster. TVTropes users point out that at minimum their relationship is on the rocks and less optimistic ones think it might never recover. This rather grim fan-fic depicts Mina coming out of the castle a sadder but wiser woman and then leaving Jonathan. Jonathan is left mourning the wreckage of his life, hoping Mina will return but privately doubting it.

(This could be Poor Communication Kills--Mina apparently left a note that he couldn't bear to read. For all we know, she was just letting him know she needed a week or two to ponder what had happened and she'll be back. She's got a lot to process, after all--her fiancé mysteriously disappears, her best friend Lucy sickens, Dracula in the guise of a handsome foreigner attempts to seduce her and half-convinces her she's his reincarnated wife, she breaks off a budding affair to quickly marry said fiancé when it turns out he's still alive, Lucy is killed by Dracula in a jealous rage and rises again as a monster, and then Dracula partially transforms her into a monster too. She flip-flops on helping her husband and friends kill Dracula to save her from darkness and ultimately it's her who redeems--and then kills--the vampire king after holding her husband and friends at gunpoint. At minimum, things are going to be really, really awkward.)

However, there's a much more cheerful alternative--marriage counseling with Abraham Van Helsing. After all, he's a doctor, he's eyewitness to the whole situation, and he's apparently very knowledgeable about vampirism (and theoretically what responsibility, if any, both parties have for their actions under the vampire's influence). Here's the relevant scene:

Note his extreme insensitivity, both toward Mina for Lucy's death and vampirism and Jonathan for his abuse by Dracula's brides. Jonathan was held captive for weeks and repeatedly fed upon (in an extraordinarily sexual fashion) to keep him from escaping, but he discusses this as though Jonathan had been unfaithful. This is not "infidelity" (Van Helsing's words), this is straight-up rape. Although in my rarely humble opinion Dracula set Mina up--using some kind of psychic ability (the memories of a past life she only remembers when he shows up and plies her with absinthe) on top of the simpler expedient of keeping her fiancé from her and feeding off her best friend to make her sexually frustrated and stressed out and vulnerable to his attentions--she still chooses poorly, whereas Jonathan has no choice at all. If he thinks Jonathan is an adulterer rather than a rape victim, he'd probably view Mina even less sympathetically, especially given how she turns on everybody at the movie's climax.

So...your fanfic plot, should you choose to accept it, is to tell the tale of Van Helsing providing marriage counseling to Jonathan and Mina after the events of the film. And using Van Helsing's extreme insensitivity and manic tendencies (seriously, watch the scene where he discusses Lucy's possible transformation into a vampire with her suitor Quincy Morris and humps Quincy's leg while referring to Lucy as "a bitch of the devil"), it should be as hilariously horrible (or horribly hilarious) as possible.

Blast From The Past Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Myopia Movies, the film podcast I'm a regular participant in, did Bram Stoker's Dracula for our October-themed month on vampires. I remember when the movie came out in 1992 (I wasn't allowed to see it, being in elementary school at the time), although I do remember reading about one of the video-game versions in my friend John's Nintendo Power magazine. I finally got to see the film in high school, when I had my own membership at Blockbuster Video.

However, high school was many, many years ago and the original premise of the podcast was re-watching childhood favorites to see if they were still good. So when the time came to brainstorm for the current season, this one of the movies I really pushed for. Here's the episode. And now for the review.

The Plot

British lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent by his law firm to make the final arrangements for an Eastern European nobleman to purchase some land in London. There's just one small problem--said nobleman is none other than Vlad Dracul (Gary Oldman), the infamous impaler of history and a vampire to boot. He sees Jonathan's locket with an image of his fiancée Mina Murray (Winona Ryder) and becomes infatuated because she reminds him of his dead wife.

So, being evil, he leaves Jonathan for his vampire brides to consume and sets off to London. He feeds off Mina's friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) and attempts to woo Mina, who begins remembering a previous life as Dracula's wife the Princess Elisabeta (also played by Ryder). However, one of Lucy's suitors contacts Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) to deal with Lucy's mysterious "illness" and Jonathan escapes, marrying Mina in an Orthodox ceremony at the nunnery where he's recovering. Dracula as you can imagine is a bit angry and now the war is on. And Mina finds herself surprisingly conflicted...

The Good

*The film is simply beautiful, even though now with improved camera technology it looks a bit aged. The sets are good, the costumes are good, etc. The clothes are well-designed. For example, I get serious Byzantine vibes off Dracula's brides and the robes Dracula wears in one scene, which make sense considering historically Vlad the Impaler was Eastern Orthodox for most of his life. And they use the costumes to make subtle character points--Mina's clothes are a bit out of fashion because she's a schoolteacher wearing her rich friend Lucy's hand-me-downs. It deserved the Academy Awards it got for costuming and makeup.

*I liked some of the characterization. They made Mina a great deal hornier than I recall from the book--she's eager to get married to Jonathan right away and they have a make-out session right before he leaves for Transylvania and she and Lucy at one point kiss (!) in the garden of Lucy's estate. Add Jonathan's prolonged absence and Lucy's "illness" and it's a lot more understandable that Mina might be tempted by the Count. And Dracula is more sympathetic than one would expect of an explicitly Satanic predator. He was a Christian knight victorious in war against the invading Muslim Ottomans--who to spite him tricked his devoted young wife Elisabeta into committing suicide by convincing her he'd been killed in battle. The priests told Vlad that because she'd committed suicide she automatically went to Hell and Vlad proceeded to totally lose it, railing against God and desecrating the church to become a vampire.

(From a Christian POV this is a warning against idolatrous devotion to a romantic partner, self-absorption, and false doctrine. Had Elisabeta not been so unhealthily devoted to Vlad she wouldn't have committed suicide and had Vlad not been so self-absorbed and possessive--he acts more like God had wronged him than wronged Elisabeta--and valued her more than God, he wouldn't have lashed out like he did. And had the priests not incorrectly claimed suicides were automatically damned at the worst possible time, his grieving might have proceeded along more normal channels rather than leading him to become a Satan-worshiping mass murderer.)

*The soundtrack is good too--the film got another Oscar for Best Sound Editing. The credits song "Love Song For a Vampire" is sad and beautiful and the instrumental stuff does well for setting an ominous tone.

*It's got a very high-quality cast. Winona Ryder does a good job as Mina--much like Alien Resurrection, I think she's the best performer in the film. (And per a well-documented Wikipedia article, she was the one who brought the script for what was supposed to be a TV movie to Francis Ford Coppola, so there's even more credit to go around.) Gary Oldman does a good job as Dracula. Anthony Hopkins might be a little too manic as Van Helsing, but he's entertaining. Although Reeves' accent is inconsistent and sometimes he comes off as a bit monotone, I didn't have a problem with his acting per se.

*The film puts Vlad the Impaler's actions in the context of the Fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman invasion of Eastern Europe. Yes, he was a monster (even if there's some speculation that his horrors were exaggerated by his German enemies), but there's a reason he's a national hero in Romania.

The Bad

*My single biggest problem with the movie is how incredibly boring it was. Part of it is that it mimics the original novel, which is written in an epistolary format (letters, diary entries, etc) and so there's a lot of what Nic calls "talky-talk," but there's also the long draggy second fifth or so of the movie in which Dracula comes to Britain to try to seduce Mina. Someone on the almighty TVTropes mentioned a fan-edit that removed the romantic plot that cut around an hour. Seriously, one of the podcast regulars actually fell asleep with a drink in his hand while watching the movie. I got my phone out around 1/3 of the way into the movie, probably during the sequence where Dracula in his guise as a foreign prince visiting Britain is taking Mina out on various dates while, unbeknownst to her, his vampire brides are keeping her fiancé captive and feeding on him.

*Speaking of that, surely Jonathan told Mina about where he'd been and what happened to him after she came to Eastern Europe after getting the letter he was alive and recovering in a convent. She has a lot more reason to hate Dracula beyond what he did to Lucy and yet that's what she seems most angry about when he comes to her and she knows what he is. She should also be angry he had held her fiancé captive and let monsters feed on him for weeks. Taking it a step further, she might have realized that Dracula was keeping Jonathan captive (and thus away from her) and causing Lucy's illness to make her emotionally vulnerable to his seduction. Watching it now I see just how manipulative and predatory Dracula is, and not just in the "drinks blood" sense. Even if Dracula is super good-looking and charismatic, even if she finds his occult nature intriguing or pities his unhappy back-story, even if she's somehow channeling the long-dead soul of his wife and isn't fully herself, why doesn't she realize just how much of a creep he is? In one of their scenes together she seriously Does Not Get It and things just get worse from there.

*Per the above, Mina and Jonathan's relationship doesn't get built up well. Building up Dracula is necessary to realistically show why Mina would be tempted into an adulterous relationship, but what is so special about Jonathan? He's certainly a decent person by any standard, but is he interesting? If they wanted to contrast him with Dracula's physicality and animal magnetism, emphasize that as a lawyer he's schoolteacher Mina's intellectual/career peer? The book does describe him as "uncommonly clever" and "full of energy" and apparently he can speak multiple languages and that's something she might admire. In the episode Nic theorized that they wanted to minimize Reeves' role to avoid accent problems, but that was less of an issue than Mina's actual husband and the original novel's protagonist getting minimized. Even if Dracula and Mina are the real protagonists of this version of the story, Jonathan is underdeveloped even as one of two romantic choices for Mina, let alone a major character. Better a character with a badly-done accent than no character at all.

*What's with Van Helsing getting so excited that Lucy is getting victimized by a vampire? At one point he tells Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell) that Lucy is going to become "a bitch of the devil" and starts humping his leg. Remember, dear reader, that Quincy is one of three men vying to be Lucy's husband. Quincy is right to call him "a sick old buzzard." Hopkins is appropriately zany, but jeez. Someone theorized that he's excited that he's been proven right that vampires exist, but this is at the price of Lucy's safety and ultimately life. There's feeling vindicated and then there's being an ass. Are we supposed to like him?

*The film strongly implies that the historical Vlad's crimes were after he became a vampire, as a consequence of his rage against God. I'd thought that his realization that Elisabeta was not in Hell (because she's been reincarnated as Mina or her soul has somehow become attached to Mina in the present day--never mind that reincarnation is not part of orthodox Christianity, period, and "possessed by the dead" is actually more like the Jewish concept of a dibbuk or ibbur) was making him reconsider his path of destruction. That's what I was referring to when I brought up Calvinism in the episode, although I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about how this would relate to predestination for spoiler reasons. That doesn't seem to be the case here, or at least it's very subtle. Given Dracula's arc in the film, that could have been highlighted more.

*Keanu Reeves' accent is inconsistent. He tries to sound British and sometimes it works, but Ted Logan from the Bill and Ted films comes through quite often. From my understanding, this got mocked a whole heck of a lot when the film came out.

*Sadie Frost doesn't really stick out much as Lucy. Per TVTropes Laura Dern was considered for the part and given her performances in the Jurassic Park films (I don't recall having seen her in anything else), I imagine she'd have been an improvement.

*Dracula was already buying up property in Britain when he noticed how much Jonathan's picture of Mina resembled his dead wife and Renfield--who has no idea Harker has gone to Transylvania--is eagerly awaiting Dracula's coming. So what was he planning on doing in Britain before he got the idea to try to get his hands on Mina?

The Verdict

Much like Blade Runner 2049, a beautiful bore. If you watch it for the acting and visuals, don't forget you have a fast-forward button. 6.5 out of 10.

Missed Opportunities For The Women In FROM DUSK TIL DAWN

As part of our Halloween vampire month, the merry crew of misfits at Myopia Movies decided to do From Dusk Til Dawn, a Quentin Tarantino hybrid of Natural Born Killers and a Mexican vampire movie. Here's the episode itself. The following discussion elaborates on some thoughts I had during the podcast. Spoilers for the canonical film coming...

Although I hadn't seen the movie before, I'd seen some discussion online that made vampire stripper Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) seem much more important than she turned out to be in the film. At least one person claimed the vampires at the strip club Titty Twister were a matriarchal society that preys on the vices of men, the television series based on the film develops this whole mythology about the vampires and other evil supernatural forces, and Pandemonium herself even had a prequel movie dedicated to her origin. However, Pandemonium and the other major vampire characters get killed off three-fourths of the way through the movie and the rest of the film consists of the surviving humans trying to survive against the zombie-horde of vampire reinforcements gathered outside.

Meanwhile, although we see preacher's daughter Kate Fuller (Juliette Lewis) grow from being this nice, timid girl who can't bring herself to stake a corpse to being a hard-core vampire fighter willing to kill her vampirized adopted brother Scott (Ernest Liu), the film ends with her out of nowhere asking to stay with the other survivor, bank robber Seth Gecko (George Clooney) in Mexico. To his credit, he turns her down, saying he's not that bad, and flat-out tells her to go home. He goes off to retirement in El Rey with the proceeds from his last robbery, while it's implied Kate takes the money that Seth gives her and returns to the United States in the family RV.

Put these two together and there's some serious missed opportunities for both Santanico and Kate.

*Kate and Scott are on a road trip with their father Jacob (Harvey Keitel), a pastor who is losing his faith after the prolonged and ugly death of his wife in a car accident. Although Kate does love her father and brother, she's also a teenage girl who's realistically going to want more independence from her family. This would especially be the case if her father and brother default to relying on her to fulfill her late mother's responsibilities. We see her going swimming by herself at the hotel pool rather than hanging out with the folks and perhaps we could throw in that she really doesn't want to be on the trip in the first place. If we see friction before the Fullers get taken hostage by the Gecko brothers, well, that's a thread that can be followed.

*Seth's brother Richie (Quentin Tarantino), who broke him out of prison before the story begins, is mentally unstable and sexually perverse. He kills several people unnecessarily, rapes a bank teller he and his brother had taken hostage before killing her, and he clearly lusts after Kate. He hallucinates that she'd propositioned him and later he leers at her (particularly her feet). Seth uses the possibility he might try to rape Kate to intimidate her father, but he has enough moral sense that when Jacob tells him that he'll kill Richie if he touches Kate, Seth's response is "fair enough." Kate manages to deflect an early attempt by Richie to perv on her, but she has to be aware he's dangerous beyond the fact he's a twitchy kidnapper. Even though she likely doesn't know about the bank teller, the man reeks of creepy.

*Kate's alienation from her family can be combined with improving Santanico's role if, rather than being killed by Seth during the vampires' opening attack that kills most of the Titty Twister's patrons and all but a few of the original vampires, Santanico leads the survivors in a retreat deeper into the club (which the credits reveal is actually the top of an enormous Aztec-style temple). The vampire reinforcements massing outside break in earlier, forcing the human survivors to retreat in the same direction. Santanico, seeing Kate as the lone woman among the survivors, tries to cultivate her as a traitor. At this point Richie is dead, but since she knew he was Seth's brother (got his memories by drinking his blood?), she might know about his creeping on Kate. 

She could use this as a lever to get her to betray the others and join Santanico's matriarchal vampire society that preys on immoral men rather than living in fear of them. Christopher Moore's vampire trilogy, although it's primarily comic, very seriously touches on the same theme with the character Jody. She comes to enjoy being a vampire because she realizes that as a woman she'd lived in a low-level state of fear her entire life before becoming a vampire--now she can effortlessly annihilate any man who bothers her. Although Kate is too nice and too Christian (despite his perversity, she warns Richie about an attacking vampire and later uses her cross necklace to kill another) to fall for it, she might be tempted. This would especially be the case if the human survivors include another male character who'd behaved sexually aggressively toward her. Per TVTropes in the television version the sleazy Sex Machine (Tom Savini) hit on her, so he might be an option.

(To get this to work, the film would have to depict those killed by vampires as staying dead rather than rising again as new vampires as the canonical film does. Perhaps only Santanico, being the vampire queen, can make new vampires. You could also emphasize the Christ-perverting nature of the vampires by emphasizing becoming a vampire as a parody of Communion--like in Interview With A Vampire, "drink from me and live forever." As a Christian, Kate might take particular offense at that.)

*Although she might have offered to join Seth in Mexico because her whole family is dead and she's vulnerable in a foreign country without a strong protector (when the Geckos bring the Fullers into the club, the comically-gross hype man says some very ungentlemanly things), as I said earlier that came out of nowhere. It would make more sense if she had some idea--even if it's a completely wrongheaded one--that Seth would be interested in having her around. That Kate has any friendly feeling toward Seth could be chalked up to Stockholm Syndrome (he's a gentleman in comparison to his sicko brother and has some, in TVTropes terms, Pet The Dog moments), his notion that vampires existing means there must be a God and therefore her father has spiritual power as a preacher she might interpret as a conversion to (or at least interest in) Christianity, the two are the last ones standing against the vampires, and she might further sympathize with him upon seeing the demonic Santanico's infamous threat to enslave him, but what's going on with Seth?

*Well here's an idea. When Santanico threatens to enslave Seth and make him "lick the dog shit from my boot heel," his response in the canonical film is to tell her he's been married before. Perhaps he has a daughter Kate's age and when Richie starts getting pervy, he tells Richie that he wouldn't act that way toward his niece (Seth's daughter) and shouldn't act that way toward Kate. Given how Seth had been in prison for years before Richie broke him out (and was likely divorced before that, given how he compares marriage to slavery), he probably hasn't seen his daughter in some time and might start using Kate as a substitute.

(Per the almighty TVTropes, in the TV series when Kate tells her father that Sex Machine hit on her, Seth pulls a gun on him as well. I would expect a father to be protective of his daughter, but why does a career criminal like Seth care?)

This could especially apply once Jacob is vampirized, since now her actual father is out of the way. Psychologically there's also something called Lima Syndrome, where a captor starts to feel sorry for their prisoner and that can be a factor too. The fact the robbers and the hostages both have a common enemy in the vampires likely helps.

*This all comes to a head in the final battle where the humans realize dawn is near and try to make a break for the exit, fighting both the vampires between them and the sun and a counterattack by Santanico and her minions. One by one the human survivors fall until only Seth and Kate are left to face Santanico and the last vampires. Santanico makes another recruitment pitch aimed at Kate, who when faced with the alternative of simply being killed, is tempted again, but it's Seth who convinces her it's better to die fighting. Then Seth's criminal friend Carlos arrives, smashing open the doors and frying the vampires en masse with the sun. Santanico, stronger than her minions, manages to make one last attack on Kate and Seth, but together they finish her off and meet with Carlos in the parking lot. After all this, it makes a lot more sense that Kate would want to stay with Seth, but Seth knows how bad an idea this is and sends her home.

If you liked what you just read, check out the Patreon feed. That way you'll have access to a bunch of newsletter featuring my ideas on how I would have done many Myopia films.

Book Review: Blood Street (2018)

My Lovecraftian horror novel The Thing in the Woods was published by Digital Fiction Publishing, a small press headquartered in Canada. Although DFP ultimately closed its doors, it released a number of other books, one of which was Carl Alves' Blood Street.

I checked the novel out via Kindle Unlimited and burned through it pretty quickly. How did I like it? Well, here's the review. 

The Plot

A member of a Philadelphia crime family is killed (not just killed, but straight-up butchered) and his mob boss starts hunting for the killer in order to make them pay. There's one small problem--the killer isn't human. The killer is in fact the reckless and arrogant vampire Alexei, part of a clique of bloodsuckers who've taken up residence in Philadelphia. Soon the FBI gets involved, as do other vampires who don't want Alexei's idiocy to jeopardize their secret existence.

Shenanigans ensue (as author Mary SanGiovanni's cosmic horror podcast would put it) as blood runs in the streets and alliances are formed and broken. Who will live and who will die?

The Good

*I like the overall concept. I'm only aware of one vampire story involving the Mob--the film Innocent Blood, which I've never seen. This story, however, is much more complex, with Mafia, federal, and vampire factions all pursuing their own agendas and working with and against in each other in different combinations of alliance and betrayal.

*The book is a quick and entertaining read. I definitely enjoyed it. And there's room for more stories set in this universe if Mr. Alves chooses to go that route.

The Bad

*Since Alves holds to a tight third-person POV, other characters are well-described in terms of their appearance but the POV characters themselves are much less so. I'm not sure what a lot of them look like.

*The ruler of the vampire brood and the Mafia boss both don't seem particularly decisive in dealing with dangerous or idiotic subordinates. A lot of trouble could be avoided if they were a bit more ruthless with their underlings.

*A character makes a fairly drastic decision toward the end of the book, but it's not well-foreshadowed. And there's another character involved in said decision--their role in this decision doesn't really gel well with his characterization earlier.

*Per the above, the ending felt a little bit rushed.

The Verdict

A fun Kindle Unlimited read. Very absorbing. 9.0 out of 10. I would definitely recommend it.

Movie Review: Priest (2011)

Back in 2011, a movie called Priest came out. It looked pretty cool--in a Judge Dredd looking future, humanity has defeated the vampire menace under the leadership of the Catholic Church, but it turns out the enemy isn't quite defeated--but I must've been very busy at the time or dissuaded by negative reviews, so I never saw it.

Well, I've recently suffered a back injury that's necessitated lot of rest to help it heal. I've filled in this free time by watching a lot of movies, and guess which one was one of the ones I decided to see if it was any good?

The Plot

Vampires are real, and over the long years humanity has waged war against them. Humans have technology, but the vampires are faster and stronger and slowly but surely, humans are losing. The survivors retreat into fortified cities ruled by the Catholic Church, which discovers how to create "priests"--superhuman warriors able to match the vampires' physical ability.

The vampires are ultimately defeated and the survivors herded into reservations where they're tended by disease-ridden vampire-worshiping "familiars." The warrior-priests have been discharged from service and seek to reintegrate into a society that fears and shuns them. Most people remain in the cities under the control of the totalitarian Church, but some have filtered back out into the wilderness beyond and established an Old West frontier lifestyle.

One such family is that of Owen Pace (Stephen Moyer), his wife Shannon (Mädchen Amick), and daughter Lucy (Lily Collins). One night they're attacked by vampires, who kill Shannon, abduct Lucy, and leave Owen wounded but able to summon his brother, the titular Priest (Paul Bettany) for help. Priest defies the leadership of the Church, which claims the vampire threat has been defeated and fears any attempt to undermine the social order. Priest sets off accompanied by Hicks (Cam Gigandet), the sheriff of the small town of Augustine his brother and family called home, to rescue Lucy, pursued by several other reactivated priests sent to arrest him.

Only it turns out it wasn't the dregs of the defeated vampires or common bandits pretending to be vampires that attacked the town, but a new and far more dangerous threat commanded by an all-too-familiar face.

The Good

*The world the filmmakers created is really quite fascinating. Vampires have coexisted with mankind since the beginning apparently, creating an entirely different history (although there're still recognizable medieval knights, the Catholic Church, WWI-style artillery, and nuclear weapons are implied). There's definitely room for lots of stories to be told in this world.

*The aesthetics are all really cool. We've got Blade Runner like urban hellscapes where most people live in the totalitarian safety provided by the Church, you've got the Old West type environments (complete with lowlifes peddling worthless patent medicines) where those who are willing to risk their safety for freedom try to rebuild the ruined world, you've got the in-between of the "overlap zones" like the bigger towns that apparently trade with the cities (they're connected by functioning rail lines), and the totally alien aesthetic of the vampire hives.

*The vampires' biology is really interesting. They're eyeless subterranean creatures resembling to some degree naked mole rats, which makes sense since naked mole rats are mammals who have evolved along a path more akin to that of insects. They're a completely different life-form rather than mutated humans (The Strain) or supernaturally-affected individuals (most other vampire lore) and its clear the film's creators put a lot of thought into it.

*Although I'm usually kind of anal about faithfulness to the source material, I looked into the Korean graphic novel the film is based on and the movie is a lot more interesting. It reflects well on the filmmakers that they included the comic-book creator in the film production, consulting him on the visuals and the like, but the only thing the film and the comic seem to have in common is the name and some of the aesthetics. The movie to me is a heck of a lot more interesting.

*It's made explicit that the Priest and his allies' rejection of the authority of the Church leadership does not mean they're rejecting Christianity, belief in God, or even specifically Catholicism. Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, etc. did not immediately decide that since the Church was wrong on some things that it must be wrong on everything and the Christian God doesn't exist.

*Karl Urban plays the villain, who is never named but often referred to as "Black Hat." I'm not going to go into a lot about him for reasons of spoilers, but the character is quite interesting and Urban does a good job playing him. Not only is he clearly physically powerful and strategically clever, but he's very good with people and uses that to his advantage.

*There's an obvious Sequel Hook, although given how the movie didn't make a profit (at least in theaters), it doesn't seem like there'll be one. A pity--this is an incredibly cool world with characters that had a lot of potential (more on that later) and I'd have loved to see the story continue.

The Bad

*Most of the performances are mediocre except for that of Karl Urban. I've never heard of Paul Bettany and (others) to be particularly bad actors, so I imagine it's probably the director's fault. A pity, as there's so much potential in the characters. The Priest and Priestess are veterans who don't fit back into society, the Church leadership is self-serving and corrupt (but could made grayer if they honestly think keeping order even if it means hiding the revived vampire threat as the lesser evil than potentially causing a mass panic or causing people to doubt the Church), and Karl Urban had the potential to be a Dark Messiah transcending humans and vampires. However, this isn't touched on enough and could have been developed more.

*The problem with vampires overrunning and annihilating humanity is that they're destroying their own food source. The film does imply they can survive on non-human blood--a familiar is seen draining blood from chickens--but it would have been more interesting if the vampires had enslaved and farmed humans, with the familiars as their enforcers, rather than the implication the vampires in the process of exterminating their own food supply. The Church-ruled territories and the vampire-ruled territories could have, at the end of the day, looked awfully similar--just with a different ruling caste and different justifications for their actions.

*The priests' not having names makes it hard to differentiate them as characters, especially the lesser male priests. It might be better if they kept their first names but abandoned their last names, as the Church is now their family. After all, although I'm not Catholic, it's my understanding priests are referred to as "Father (FIRST NAME)" and these are supposed to be Catholic priests who've undergone some kind of advanced training or augmentation.

*Much is made of the priests' vows, but if the priests have been discharged from service, would they still apply? The titular priest isn't working as a mundane Catholic clergyman, but seems to be just another proletarian. So his vows of celibacy, obedience to the hierarchy, etc. would no longer be binding, correct? Owen at one point suggests Priest could have returned to Augustine and Priests states that it wouldn't have been right, which given some things that get revealed later in the film makes a lot of sense.

It would make more sense if the warrior-priests were all serving as ordinary clergy--still bound by their religious vows--and simply not fitting in, as is often the case with veterans returning to ordinary lives after service in war. Priest seeks permission to abandon his religious duties rather than simply to leave the city and search for his niece.

*Some of the dialogue in Lily's argument with her father when we first meet her doesn't sound like something actual people--especially rebellious teenage girls--would actually say. This negative review here accurately describes a lot of the problems with the film, beginning with the dialogue, but be ye warned, there are spoilers.

*There's a lot of stuff that's revealed but not adequately foreshadowed.

The Verdict

So much potential not developed enough. It's worth seeing once. It could've been so much better and it's a pity it didn't make enough to spawn a sequel, given how cool the world they've created is. Maybe the story could be remade as a television series? The events of the movie could be the first season and then things could go from there.

7.5 out of 10. It's worth seeing once and I might see if I could snag the DVD used (especially since it turns out there's an unrated special edition) so I could learn about how it was made. Also check out this podcast I'm on about the film.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Interview with the Vampire (1994)

I vaguely remember when the film Interview with the Vampire, based on the novel by Anne Rice, came out, but I don't remember whether I wanted to see it. Although I've read the werewolf novels of Rice's sister Alice Borchardt (I strongly recommend The Silver Wolf), I never really had much interest in Rice's vampire novels or seeing the movies based on them.

Well, thanks to Myopia, I'm seeing a lot of movies I'd never otherwise watch, so here we go. Here's the podcast. And now for the review...

The Plot

In the modern day, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt) takes aside Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater) and reveals to him that he's an immortal vampire. He begins telling his story, taking the viewer back to when he was a planter in French Louisiana in the late 18th Century. After the death of his wife and child he sought death, only to encounter Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise), a French vampire. With Louis's permission Lestat transforms him into a vampire and the two of them form a hunting pair, eventually adding transformed pre-adolescent Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) to their crew as they live through the centuries and have various adventures.

The Good

*The acting is very, very good. Brad Pitt does a great job as the tormented Louis, who has to kill others to survive but hates himself for doing it. When we first meet him, he gets his unnatural nature across very subtly and without unnecessary drama (i.e. popping out fangs and hissing). Kirsten Dunst is good as Claudia, who grows frustrated that she's stuck in the body of a child for eternity and will never become a woman and acts quite like a teenager for much of the film. She eventually manages to pull off acting like an adult woman even though she's physically around 10.

*Tom Cruise as Lestat merits his own entry. He's appropriately obnoxious as the arrogant elder vampire, who soon after transforming Louis moves into his house and discusses his home and property as though it's "ours" and not "yours." Per some of the on-screen commentary that comes with Amazon Instant Video, Cruise watched videos of lions hunting gazelles to get the predatory aspect right. He's even more overtly creepy and predatory than Louis and seeing the brunette Cruise as a blonde is even more off-putting. Although at least some of Louis's slaves care about him, they're all quite justifiably terrified of Lestat. Cruise provides both slyness and manipulation (as this article points out, it resembles an abusive heterosexual relationship with Louis as the battered wife) and manic energy that's often quite funny (his training of Claudia in how to be a vampire). Whatever you might say about Scientology and Cruise's other...eccentricities (the above link, among other things, compares Lestat's relationship with Louis to Tom Cruise's relationship with Katie Holmes)...he's probably the best actor in the film.

*There's some stuff in the film that's legitimately funny. In addition to how funny Lestat can be, Louis's "poodle massacre" is timed so well that it's hilarious.

*In the credits Anne Rice is listed as writing the screenplay. Although writing for film and writing for books are two vastly different skill-sets--with a novel you can throw in everything but in a screenplay everything must be explicitly on-screen or at least strongly implied on-screen--if a novelist can write a good script, having them at least involved in the script is a great idea. They'll know what's most important, they won't get stuff wrong about their own work, etc.

*It functions well as a period piece--in the 1990s frame story there's a lot of smoking, people are recording stuff on analog tape, etc. It also works well as a period piece for antebellum Louisiana, although there are some historical problems with the 1870 visit to Paris. Paris at that point was under siege during the Franco-Prussian War and nobody's going to be having balls, high culture, etc. there. The costumes are great and the filmmakers even gets into the subtle details of slave culture--in Catholic Louisiana, the slave religion is a lot more likely to have elements of voodoo (you see slaves sticking pins into dolls, some of the dances and ceremonies resemble stuff I've seen in documentaries about the Caribbean, etc) than in the Protestant U.S.

*The makeup crew got the vampires' unnatural nature done with great subtlety. The veins in the vampires' faces stand out and their eyes are strange--no need for elaborate special effects.

*There's also a nice bit of social commentary in making Louis a slave-owner. He's already a parasite--making him a vampire just makes it more overt. And as I noted above, Lestat is even more blatant--while Louis feeds on animals and hates himself, Lestat feeds on Louis's slaves.

*Since Louis cannot go out in daylight, there are certain colors he simply can't see anymore, like the blue of oceans. He's grateful for the advent of movies so he can see these things again. That's something I've never thought of and it's pretty clever.

The Bad

*The movie is a little slow in places. Louis is, after all, telling the story of his entire life, and it's not always going to be interesting. I'm not totally sure what the actual storyline is--Louis manages to escape from the need to have a quasi-boyfriend (Lestat, Armand), Louis figures out how to live as a vampire while maintaining his morality (okay they don't really do this, but he could feed only on criminals or work out a behind-the-scenes deal with the military or state government to serve as a soldier or executioner), etc.

*My Myopia co-hosts really liked Armand, but he felt kind of meh to me. Louis has his Catholic guilt thing and Lestat is over-the-top and often hilarious, but what makes Armand interesting?

*Even though the vampires can move so quickly people can't see them and heal wounds very quickly and Lestat seems to pay at least lip service to their need to hide their activities, one wonders how nobody notices Louis and especially Lestat are killing so many people. Louis remarks that Lestat kills two or three people per night and in one scene, they kill people at a high-class party. In another scene they wipe out a whole family coming to see Claudia play the piano, while Claudia herself kills people in public. There's also all the bloody clothes that presumably are getting laundered somehow. Louis's slaves seem to figure out something is going on pretty quickly (and at one point descend on "the big house" with torches), but Louis and Lestat never seem to need to get out of town quickly. Given how slaves in the antebellum South had a plantation-to-plantation gossip network that came in really handy for the Underground Railroad and Union forces during the Civil War, I imagine rumors would have spread of Louis and Lestat's behavior very quickly rather than being restricted to the slaves of Louis's estate. And that says nothing of their killing people in New Orleans, especially upper-class people who'll be missed.

*It's not clear whether being bitten by a vampire instantly kills or not. Lestat feeds on Louis once before transforming him and that renders him sickly but not dead, while the tavern girl Lestat kills when first teaching Louis to hunt doesn't seem to lose any blood at all. Claudia's bites seem to kill people pretty quickly, faster than Louis and Lestat's attacks, while another vampire we meet later in the film has a mortal child servant whom he seems to be nibbling on fairly often without killing him. In none of these situations do people seem to lose much blood. Dracula and the television series True Blood seem more realistic--people have quite a lot of blood and it would take multiple feedings to kill a person. That could have been an opportunity to contrast Lestat and Louis--Lestat demands blood from the slaves to the point it kills them (when he simply doesn't kill them immediately), while Louis (who is depicted as a relatively benign slave-master) tries to minimize Lestat's predations on them?

*As a brief conversation on the podcast alludes to, the film's depiction of slavery has some...problems. Louis's house slave Yvette (Thandie Newton) says the slaves are worried about newly-vampirized Louis because he's not going out into the fields (i.e. supervising them at work, which would require him to go out in the sunlight) or visiting the slave quarter? She asks him if he's still their master, which one can read as either her wondering if he's still the same person he was before (it's later revealed the slaves think he's turned into the Devil) or that she's upset that he's not supervising them and micromanaging their lives. You can see it in the script here and make your own judgments. Now, one could read visiting the slave quarter as him simply checking on them rather than something more sinister, but most slave-owners were NOT benign father-figures no matter what the Lost Cause nonsense teaches, and their visits to slave quarters might have had more sinister purposes. I initially thought the visits to the slave quarter she referenced were sexual in nature; it would be pretty screwed up if Yvette acts like him not doing that anymore is a bad thing. In Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana 1718-1868, which I read for graduate school, it depicts the racial environment of French Louisiana as less strict and cruel than the Anglo-American order that came with the Louisiana Purchase, but still.

I'm not going to criticize without offering suggestions for improvement, so perhaps the reactions to Louis's strange behavior among his slaves could be depicted as being more mixed? Yvette might be concerned for Louis's well-being and want Lestat gone because she was hoping to take the place of his deceased wife (in French Louisiana there was this whole legal institution in which slaves and free women of color could advance their positions by romantic relationships with white men) and is actually jealous of Lestat. That's what I meant when I commented in the podcast about how Yvette being jealous of Lestat would further emphasize the homoerotic nature of Lestat and Louis's relationship--she would view Lestat as a romantic rival. This would still allow for the dialogue between Yvette and Louis without suggesting that the slaves in general actually miss their master and would show Yvette exercising agency despite her not really having a lot of choices.

Meanwhile, other slaves are glad Louis isn't bothering them and perhaps take advantage of the fact he's drinking the blood of livestock rather than eating actual meat to improve their diets? Much African-American cuisine is based on parts of animals the slave-owners didn't want, and some accounts I've read of slavery involve slaves taking food from "the big house" to supplement their crappy rations and getting punished. Given how we see slaves mourning friends and relatives killed by Lestat, perhaps there could have been a scene where we see slaves sneaking around with dead chickens and other birds killed by Louis (and commenting on Louis's behavior as they do so), only for Lestat to ambush them? Then we see the slave voodoo rituals and the like, culminating in them marching on Louis's mansion with torches. One doesn't need to spend a whole lot of time on this issue--it would only need the tweaking of some of Yvette's and Louis's dialogue and maybe an additional scene of Lestat being a predatory scumbag.

*Later in the film, some other characters do Louis a great wrong (not going to go into detail for reasons of spoilers) and he gets away from them and they know he's gotten away from them, but they take no precautions. Then he comes back for revenge. How stupid are these people?

The Verdict

A little slow in places, but overall a very well-done film. 8.0 out of 10

A Warhammer Fantasy Vampire in Westeros?

The alternate history forum I've been a member of since high school has gone and done it again. There's a new A Song of Ice and Fire fan-fic out there. In this one, entitled "A Game of Fangs," a Warhammer Fantasy vampire (an original-character named Sybelle Von Carstein, specifically) and her immediate entourage due to a magical mishap end up in Westeros as the War of the Five Kings breaks out. I'm guessing in terms of the story timeline, it'd be early in A Clash of Kings.

Highlights:

*The vampire and her entourage materialize in the vicinity of Harrenhal and the first major character to encounter them is Arya Stark. The relationship between Sybelle and Arya is nice to read and sets an interesting path before Arya later on.

*Sybelle herself is an interesting character. She's undeniably ruthless and dangerous, but she's not malicious or sadistic. Yes, she's a magic-wielding vampire with imperial ambitions, but she's not gratuitously mean.

*Sybelle's arrival in the world and the magic she invokes to return to her full power causes all sorts of portents and freak occurrences to happen. Including some unpleasantness with Ned Stark's skeleton. :)

*Melisandre views Sybelle as an agent of the Great Other and things proceed accordingly. She's one of the few actual sorcerers in Westeros, so this is going to be fun.

*Sybelle's arrival causes enemies to become allies, but Sybelle herself becomes a cunning player in the Game of Thrones. This has some interesting consequences...

*We get POVs from characters who never got any in the ASOIAF canon, including Robb Stark and Sandor Clegane.

*Speaking of Sandor Clegane, he gets a very surprising Crowning Moment of Awesome.

The story is still ongoing, so hopefully it'll continue to be fun. Enjoy!

"The Strain" Season Finale Review and Recap (Spoilers)

Just got done watching the season finale of The Strain. No more icky medical vampires until 2015. A pity.

This episode was quite a lot of fun. It starts out with elderly billionaire Palmer (who's looking surprisingly healthy) and his minion Fitzwilliam entering Setrakian's shop, where Palmer confiscates Setrakian's collection of vampire lore and even his late wife's infested heart. He meets Eichhorst there, overjoyed to think he's received the ultimate blessing of vampiric immortality and wondering when he's going to get a stinger--only to find out he hasn't. Being transformed into a thinking vampire like Eichhorst is not for him yet. Next we have a rather telling flashback in which Kelly gives Zack a birthday bike and films him riding it to send to Eph while he's at a CDC conference in Atlanta. Yep, we know who the good and involved parent actually was here. It turns out it was a dream and Zack is with the rest of them at another home Setrakian owns. They're plotting to go after the Master again and Eph and Setrakian get into a fight about just what to let him know. Then Eph and exterminator Vasiley Fet are off to do some reconnaissance.

Meanwhile, Palmer is not happy to know about Eph's broadcast, especially since the secretary of health and human services is considering shutting down Manhattan. He orders Fitzwilliam to bring around the car to take him and Eichhorst to see her, but Fitzwilliam refuses. Palmer gets rather PO'd at him and they fight. Fitzwilliam resigns from Palmer's employ, but refuses to kill him as a tribute to the help he'd provided him over the years. You know, honor is all good most of the time, but now it's not.

And Gus is captive of the mysterious vampire commando who hasn't been named yet, but I know who he is so I'll say it--Mr. Quinlan. Quinlan unties him and wants to show him something, parrying every attempt Gus makes to attack him.

Eph and Fet sneak into the theater that "Goth douche-bag" Gabriel Bolivar rented, since it's close to where they faced the Master the first time. They find the coffin being partially reassembled and bail when the vampires start sensing intruders. On the way out, Fet pops a manhole open to flood the sewers with sunlight and keep vampire reinforcements out.

Next we see Palmer and Eichhorst confronting the secretary of health and human services and Eph and Nora's boss Everett Barnes. Palmer tries to talk her out of canceling her planned quarantine and when that doesn't work, he throws her off a ledge. He and Eichhorst bully Barnes into agreeing to go along with their plan.

Eph and Fet return and we find Nora smoking and mourning her mother, whom she had to kill last week after vampire-Bolivar took a drink out of her. Eph initially quails at going after the Master again (he wants to protect Zack from vampirized Kelly), but Nora rants about people disappearing in Argentina and so Eph agrees to take Zack to war with them. Setrakian gives him his very own silver blade and he and Eph give him some pointers on how to use it.

And so they're off to fight the vampires. Oh boy, things are fun. Fet blows up a bunch of vampire reinforcements momentarily stalled by the open sewer with dynamite and then they're into the theater. They blow through the minion vampires until Eichhorst arrives, promising to drink Dutch first. She shoots him, but is only able to wound him. He and Fet go hand-to-hand while Dutch can't get a clear shot and Nora vents some of her rage into strigoi-slaying. Bolivar shows up and loses a big chunk of his stinger for his pains. Setrakian, Eph, and Zack ascend into the upper floors, where Eph kills a vampire that looks an awful lot like Kelly. There Setrakian and the Master face off, with Eph and Zack smashing windows to expose the Master to sunlight. The wounded Master knocks Setrakian aside and leaps through the window into the sun, where he starts to burn. The other vampires, including the wounded Eichhorst, retreat in a creepy reverse-VCR kind of way. Darn. Fet had pumped at least one silver nail into his face and Dutch had already hit him twice with silver bullets. The old Nazi was one or two more hits away from a long-delayed meeting with his Maker...

Finally, Setrakian and Eph have the Master at their mercy. Setrakian is all, "IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!" and is going to deliver a silver shanking when the Master rolls over (using his cloak to protect himself from the sun) and flees down the side of the building. We can see his skeleton through burnt-away flesh, but he's not dead yet.

Damn it! Setrakian really should have learned not to Call His Attacks like that. If he hadn't had that dramatic pause and struck right then, he might've speared the bastard to the ground with the gigantic silver wolf-sword he carries and then Eph could have used his own weapon. They can gloat once they've taken off his limbs or transfixed him butterfly-style so he can't get away. He bugs off and Setrakian admits he doesn't know how to actually kill the Master. Umm...he was burning alive in the sunlight and bugged out rather than try to finish his decades-long enemy Setrakian and his new apprentice Eph. Sunlight isn't an instant-killer for any strigoi--they all saw the bunch in the sewer step into the sun, start smoking, and recoil--so why is it such a problem to think that a being that is around nine feet tall, weighs probably 400+ pounds, and covers most of his flesh in a big heavy cloak might take awhile to cook?

Afterward, Zack is having an asthma attack, so they detour by the Goodweather house to retrieve his inhaler and medication. Only it turns out he was faking the attack in order to retrieve a family photo album! That idiot kid. He and Eph talk about a particularly well-remembered birthday party (!) when a shadow with long hair falls. Zack immediately thinks it's Mom, whom Eph had repeatedly neglected to tell him has been turned. She calls for him and Zack nearly runs for her, but Eph shoots her in the shoulder and she retreats. She's going to be a problem later. Eph (a recovering alcoholic) for the first time takes a drink, as Nora pleads for him not to. Bad move, old bean.

Meanwhile, Gus manages to apparently escape from Quinlan and runs into an empty room. The lights go on and we see a bunch of emaciated naked creatures very similar to the Master (except not so huge). They're all asleep and Quinlan says he speaks for them in a well-delivered monologue about how these Ancients are creatures of great dignity, honor, etc. If they were to be woken up, they'd be hungry and Gus wouldn't like that. Quinlan offers "revenge and a rich payday" to Gus to be their daytime warrior against the Master and Gus accepts his role in the vampire turf war. Let the games begin.

The episode ends with our heroes heading out of the city toward Fet's place, with some fires burning amid the buildings. This was a good episode overall. I knew the Master would survive, but I was hoping Eichhorst would bite it. He so nearly did too! Oh well. Onto 2015...

Some Thoughts on "The Strain" Episode #9: "The Disappeared" (SPOILERS)

I just watched my recorded episode of the most recent episode of the first season of the television series The Strain. Here are some thoughts:

*Like I suspected, this episode ended the Holocaust arc. The young Sertrakian confronts the Master in a manner somewhat different from what I remember in the first book and escapes with crippled hands. In the book it was much clearer the Master spared him out of sadism--with his hands crippled, he wouldn't be of use to the Nazis anymore and they'd kill him. This lack of Evil Gloating has prompted at least one reviewer to accuse the Master of not being particularly Genre Savvy about sparing his enemies' lives. He's Genre Savvy enough to know that Sertrakian has been watching him though...

The next morning, the previously weirdly friendly Nazi Thomas Eichhorst discovers Sertrakian's crippled hands and sends him off to be killed. Fortunately an Allied air raid allows him and a bunch of other prisoners to escape. Eichhorst flees soon afterward, pursued by presumably Soviet troops or partisans with hunting dogs, and hides in a bunker in the woods where he's stashed the Master's coffin. He drinks and whines about how the Master has forsaken him when, well, the Master shows up. Here we see the Master with glowing eyes under his hood, which is cool, and then he pulls back his hood to reveal his horrible face.

Which isn't cool. He looks too much like Count Orlock from Nosferatu,complete with the pointed ears. And a double chin--apparently the vampire overlord needs some more cardio. Another reviewer compared him to some critter that failed an audition for a Lord of the Rings orc. Were I making this, I'd have left his face unrevealed for now, but still allowed the glimpse of the evil glowing eyes. And when the time for the reveal comes, here's a much better version of the Master. Oh well, too late now.

In any event, Eichhorst bows before the Master, who slits open the Nazi's arm with one of his talons. He then cuts open his own flesh to allow one of his parasitic worms to emerge. The Master allows the worm to slither into Eichhorst's open wound and now we know how one makes a sentient vampire with a personality as opposed to a zombie minion.

Am I the only one who got a distinctly blasphemous vibe off that? It came off to me like a parody of the sacrament of communion--this is my body and this is my blood, eat of my flesh and drink of my blood and have eternal life, etc. Between that and the whole "where is your God" exchange with Sertrakian, it seems the Master is kind of a jerk where religion is concerned.

On the other hand, there was that exchange in an earlier episode where Eichhorst claimed to have infected Sertrakian's wife and Sertrakian claimed to have killed a vampire buddy of his, so maybe we'll see more of the Tom and Abe show in the near future.

*We get a bit of back-story for Nora. She's apparently from Argentina and references the infamous disappearances when Ephraim's ex-wife Kelly's goes missing. I suspect that the vampirized Matt came after her first (the whole "dear ones" thing) and now she's on her way to becoming a monster. Next week's episode looks like it'll deal with that issue--there's a scene showing vampire-Matt attacking her, Eph tracking her cell phone, etc.

*I did like Eph's obliteration of vampire-Matt. Silver dagger and repeated blows with a shovel, followed by foot-aided decapitation. And I like how Zach (Kelly and Eph's son) was quick enough on his feet to fend off Matt with a shovel for a few minutes before Eph could come take care of business.

*And Eph and Nora go at it in Eph's house, avoiding sullying the marital bed by having sex on the floor. And then Kelly's friend, the one who referred to Nora as Eph's "spicy side dish" in a previous episode, just happens to come in. She'd dropped off Zach earlier and was apparently worried enough to come check on him. Awkward...

*I found Nora's Alzheimer's-afflicted mother's response to the vampire hunters returning to the pawn shop where they'd left her amusing.

"The Strain" Review and Recap: Episode Three "Gone Smooth"

The most recent episode of "The Strain" was on Sunday. I had a lot going on Monday, so this review and recap is a little bit late...

The episode begins with a mysterious figure getting dressed. We see a being that looks remarkably like Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies applying makeup, fake ears, etc. until we have the Eichhorst we all know and loathe. See this here for a comparison. He says the time for charades is over soon and victory is near. We'll see about that, you glorified tick. :)

Meanwhile, while Eph and Nora's CDC boss is being less than helpful as usual, survivor Ansel (the nerdy-looking one who I thought was a bit creepy) is at home with the wife and kids and getting sicker. Bloodshot eyes, ringing in the ears. He won't go to the doctor. And Jim Kent disappears from the CDC to get answers at the Stoneheart Group HQ. There he encounters Eichhorst and is brought back into line when the Nazi vampire offers to ensure his cancer-stricken wife Sylvia is admitted to a drug trial. "You have two bosses now," he warns. Uh oh.

And Sertrakian goes before a judge who cannot pronounce his name properly. Nora, who earlier told Eph Sertrakian knew things, comes in to watch the proceeding. Sertrakian plays the Holocaust-survivor card and the bereaved-widower card. The judge calls him out on the silver sword-cane, which he claims is an illegal concealed weapon. Sertrakian BSes him by promising to have it melted down and replaced with a normal cane. The judge lets him off. Nora tries to speak to him afterward, but when she balks at the idea of killing anyone who has been in contact with the dead passengers and survivors of the plane, he blows her off. Tsk, tsk.

Meanwhile, Eph is at a family court hearing. The judge asks Zach what sort of custodial arrangement he'd like. After himming and hawwing about how he knows his parents want what's best for him, he said he'd rather Eph visit him a few weekends a month. This way, he's not stressed out on top of his stressful job like joint custody would supposedly do. Eph is upset and tries to say that Zach really meant "joint custody" and the judge shoots him down. After the hearing, Eph is really upset. Kelly (his wife) tells him that regardless of what the judge rules, he can visit Zach any time he wants if he just gives her the heads-up first. When Eph insists Zach is the most important thing in his world, Kelly says he should show that with "little things" rather than just saying it. Although there's this stereotype of vindictive ex-wives trying to excise fathers from their children's lives, Kelly is coming off as far more sympathetic and reasonable than the grouchy Eph. Many bloggers have complained about this bit of family drama, but it was actually helpful in humanizing Kelly and painting Eph with some major shades of gray.

Cut to Gabriel Bolivar (who I kept referring to in my notes as "Marilyn Manson"). He's sick. Meanwhile, Eph visits the Frenchman's house and finds a tub full of blood and hair. Something is stalking him. Nora calls him away and we see a vampiric form (probably the daughter) watching him.

Meanwhile, Vasily Fet is making a house call on some influential yuppie whose daughter was bitten by a rat. He catches the rat and exhorts the daughter not to eat in bed (since rats are attracted by the smell of food). While smoking outside the yuppie's building, he sees many rats on the streets. He follows to find them swarming out of a pipe. Something's down there...

Next we see Jim coming home and meeting his wife Sylvia, who's bald from chemotherapy and wearing a head-scarf. She got into the trial. The devil is holding up his end of the bargain so far. Back at the nerdy survivor's house, he's still sick and now his dog is barking at him. He goes into the kitchen and sees a thawing steak--and drinks the blood from it. In front of his horrified wife. Uh oh. And I'm not the only one who noticed something unusual about his tongue...

Bolivar is having a house call from a doctor. He describes ringing in his ears and a voice calling his name. The doctor offers him various prescriptions. Then Bolivar gets up and opens his robe. We don't see what the doctor sees, but said doctor immediately advises him to go to the hospital. Bolivar doesn't want the paparazzi troubles, so the doctor instead offers to get him in touch with a "discreet" urologist who makes house calls.

Back at the pawn shop, Sertrakian hangs up the cane he'd promised to destroy and gets the passenger manifest for the airplane from this hacker girl. He's going to "visit their families" and "pay his respects." Uh oh.

And back at the hospital, Captain Redfern really isn't doing well. Under UV light, his body is alive with the worms. He announces, "He is here."

Back at Eph's former home, Zach is reading about his father's CDC exploits on an iPad. He hears a noise downstairs. It's Kelly, reading through a photo album from happier times. Much sadness and cuddling.

Late at night at Regis Air's headquarters, Eichhorst pays the CEO a visit and kills him, making it look like a suicide. It looks like the "it was carbon monoxide poisoning" charade is going to go on for a little while longer.

And Bolivar isn't looking too good. His eyes are bleeding and even without his Goth makeup, he's looking pale and veiny. Then he goes to urinate and his member falls off. He flushes it down the toilet without a care and then does that creepy eye-blink thing the fully-infected do. And then he turns around and we see full frontal no-genitalia vampire. According to an interview from Del Toro, under that robe he's developed a full-blown cloaca to excrete as he feeds like a tick, so certain parts are rather superfluous now.

The episode ends with Redfern disappearing from the hospital just before they're going to open him up to see what's going on with him. Jim finds him in the basement feeding on blood samples. Redfern attacks him, but the Voice of Evil recognizes him as "Jim" and Redfern backs down. Nora and Eph arrive and Redfern attacks them, revealing the mouth stinger for the first time. Eph beats him down with a fire extinguisher but he gets up to try again--until Eph proceeds to totally destroy his head with the fire extinguisher in the same way the Master did with the man he killed at the airport.

The Verdict: Good episode. Awaiting the next one.