Shocktober Revisited: The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman

 Review originally appeared in 2010

After two successive Horror Fests of promising to screen The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman and not delivering, I decided it was at least time to give you, the reader, some idea of what it was you were missing out on, and to promise you that it WILL play during the Greensboro Summerfest Massacre Part IV, because it deserves a full fest audience to be properly appreciated. In the meantime, please enjoy a taste of werewolf on vampire action. Kind of.

Fair warning: the Cap'n and the Cranpire deliberately chose to watch the edited, re-titled, dubbed version of Werewolf Shadow (La Noche de Walpurgis), in part because of the ludicrous American trailer that promised more than any movie could deliver, which (of course) was the case. To be fair, we did check out the actual film (also credited to director León Klimovsky), and aside from 9 additional minutes of footage and slightly better color timing (more on this later), I sincerely believe the difference would be negligible.

Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) is a reputed werewolf killed in a small village in the north of France. During his autopsy, the coroners remove the silver bullets from his heart, bringing Daninsky back to life, free to roam the night in search of new victims. Meanwhile, college student Elvira (Gaby Fuchs) and her friend Genevieve (Barbara Capell) are searching for the burial place of Countess Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy (Patty Shepard), a reputed witch and / or vampire from the 15th century. When their car runs out of gas near a country estate, Genevieve and Elvira meet Waldemar and his sister Elizabeth (Yelena Samarina), who suffered a mental breakdown after the death of their parents. Waldemar has also been seeking the tomb of de Nadasdy, because the silver crossed used to kill her can end his lycanthropy once and for all. But when Genevieve accidentally awakens the Countess and falls victim to her bloodlust, can Waldemar and Elvira stop the vampire from killing again before Walpurgis, when the Devil rises to claim the Earth?

As you might have noticed, that's quite a lot of plot for an 85 minute movie, especially one with so much down time before serious plot advancement. Unless the moon has some magical properties in the north of France, at least three months pass between when Waldemar first rises and when the title characters battle. As a non-werewolf, Waldemar chases off the Countess twice, but if you're expecting an epic showdown like the trailer promises, don't hold your breath.

From the moment that Genevieve cuts herself and accidentally drips blood into the Countess's corpse mouth to the point that Walpurgis apparently occurs, two months of story time passes. In fact, other than doing a cursory search of the graveyard where the Countess is hiding, Elvira and Waldemar do nothing to try to stop her until Walpurgis. It isn't until Elvira's boyfriend Inspector Marcel (Andrés Resino) arrives that anything happens involving the Countess at all in the second half of the film. Most of the time, vampire Genevieve is stalking around, until a non-wolf Waldemar kills her.

At this point, I'm going to drift away from the plot, which drags considerably in the second half of the film. There's some reasonably nice set-up involving Elvira and Genevieve realizing something amiss at the Daninsky estate, even if lapses in logic about why they can't leave or how isolated they are from the village compound to an almost laughable degree. The problem is less with story gaffes than it is with the day-for-night photography, a normally half-effective movie technique that fails miserably in The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman.

From the beginning of the film, it's almost impossible to tell whether it's supposed to be day or night time unless someone says so directly. Unfortunately, when it's clear the sun is shining an a coroner says "It's very dark out tonight," you're going to laugh. The producers of this American version didn't bother to tint the "night" scenes, so most of the time spent watching The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman is devoted to figuring out what time of day it's supposed to be. Usually you won't know until a) they cut to a shot of the moon, b) you see the vampires, or c) someone is holding a lamp / lantern or car lights are on. All or most of the film was made in broad daylight, which adds an unintentionally comic tone to the "horror."

(It is fair to note that Werewolf Shadow, which is a remastered version of the film - unlike the heavily scratched, frame jumping Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman - addresses the day for night by tinting the scenes blue, but it still isn't terribly convincing.)

For entertainment value, I would recommend watching The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman with a crowd; despite the overly languid pace of the film in actually delivering the supernatural smackdown, the over-serious tone of the film is rendered into comedy gold because of the cost-cutting of the American version, including the dubbing of characters, even in cases where it seems clear they're speaking English (like Genevieve). Paul Naschy (who co-wrote the film) is trying to make Waldemar Daninsky a tortured, Larry Talbot-esque character, but the dubbing, coupled with a physical similarity to Marlon Brando, rob him of any pathos.

For a film that promises witchcraft, vampires, a werewolf, and the Devil, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman is surprisingly tame. The violence is limited to light gore as a result of Waldemar scratching his victims or some blood dripping from Elvira's neck. The film cautiously hints at nudity, only to pull back before exposing any flesh (and if you're thinking "well, maybe in the Werewolf Shadow cut," I'm afraid not. Those 9 minutes are devoted to Marcel's search for Elvira in the village).

On top of all of this, I have to point out the English title cards, which are so clearly not part of the film that it hardly surprised me when the score cut out abruptly, replaced by what sounded like the sound of a projector running. The title cards appear over artificially frozen images from the film that were inserted over the actual titles. The effect is jarring, intrusive, and ultimately lends a cheap, exploitative tone to an otherwise marginal horror film, despite the claim on the DVD that Werewolf Shadow is "now recognized as a milestone film in international horror history." It's certainly a fun movie to have on, but in any incarnation, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman works best in a party atmosphere.

Horror Fest VIII (Day Three): The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and John Dies at the End

 "Even a man who is pure of heart
     and says his prayers by night
         may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
            and the autumn moon is bright"

 That's the poem uttered three times in the first twenty minutes of The Wolf Man, so that audiences won't forget that the movie they came to see (The Wolf Man) is about a man who becomes a wolf. The man in question is Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) although you wouldn't know that from the opening credits, which bill Chaney as "The Wolf Man." I must imagine that when The Wolf Man ran on television during the 1950s and 60s that its opening looked familiar to children: title cards introducing the characters play over a brief clip of them from some point in the film, a template of sorts for most TV sitcoms and many dramas.

 Back to the poem for a moment, because the one takeaway I had from watching The Wolf Man this time is that Lawrence Talbot isn't really a man who is "pure of heart" at all. In fact, he's kind of sleazy: not only does he use his father's telescope to spy on Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), but he then uses that information while in her father's pawn shop to put the moves on her. He gives her some business about being psychic, but even when he eventually comes clean about how he knew about her earrings, it's still in an unrepentantly smarmy fashion. It's no wonder that she doesn't want to go with him to the gypsy camp and brings along her friend Jenny (Fay Helm).

 It's a good thing that Talbot buys a cane with a silver wolf's head, because the gypsy woman Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) is hiding a secret: her son, Bela (Bela Lugosi) is a Dracula... no, wait. That's not right. He's also a wolf man, and while reading Jenny's fortune, Bela realizes she's his next victim. He sends Jenny away, but she can't run fast enough and he attacks her in wolf form (more like German Shepherd form, but you get the idea) and Talbot is injured while killing said wolf with his cane.

 I'm being a little unkind to The Wolf Man, one of the Universal Classic Monster movies that I was always the fondest of, and I do feel bad about that. I had always remembered Lawrence Talbot as something of a tragic figure, something that continued as long as Chaney reprises the role in various quasi-sequels (House of Frankenstein, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein), but it's hard to feel too sympathetic about a guy who clearly doesn't care that Gwen already has a boyfriend and who behaves in such an underhanded way when he meets her. Perhaps it's supposed to be charming, but when he reveals that he has a telescope and she says "from now on I'll be sure to draw the curtains" and he tells her not to, that's just creepy.

 Talbot is more sympathetic in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, to be sure; after having been killed by his father (Claude Rains, the Invisible Man himself), Lawrence is placed in the family mausoleum, where he at least has peace (as promised by Maleva upon his death). That is, until the two graverobbers show up and break in, looking for jewels. They open Lawrence's coffin and move some of the wolfsbane so they can take his ring (but not before saying the poem for people who might not remember) but seeing as it is a full moon, after all, it's hard to keep a dead werewolf down...

 Revived and apparently immortal, Talbot is found in Cardiff and taken to a nearby hospital with head trauma (the cane wound that killed him) and he's patched up by Dr. Mannering (Patric Knowles) while the authorities try to figure out who their mystery man is. Lawrence Talbot has been dead for four years, so the man in the hospital can't possibly be who he claims he is. And the following night a police officer is murdered by a wolf, something that Talbot seems to know about.

 In The Wolf Man, Sir John Talbot and the authorities regard Lawrence's claims of being "dangerous" as an illness of the mind, but Dr. Mannering seems much more willing to accept his "affliction," although there's quite a while between when they are together in the story. Lawrence leaves the hospital (and Wales) to track down Maleva and find a way to die. He has no interest in being cured, only in no longer living - which is fair, considering that he was dead.

 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man opens the scope of the first film considerably, and by necessity. Maleva is not only somewhere in Europe, but she's also nowhere near where the two of them need to be in order to help Lawrence. Maleva has heard of a man, named Frankenstein, who might be able to help Talbot, so they travel to Vasaria, the (fictional) home nation of the Frankenstein family, only to find that Ludwig Frankenstein is dead and that the burnt down castle has been abandoned.

 The person I was watching Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man with had not seen Ghost of Frankenstein, which caused a bit of a conundrum here, because until Baroness Elsa Frankenstein (Illona Massey) mentions that the experiments killed her father AND her grandfather, it's not stated in the film which Frankenstein is dead when Talbot arrives. As this is a sequel to both The Wolf Man and Ghost of Frankenstein, it's a good idea to be caught up on both series. (They do play it a bit fast and loose with chronology, though: in The Wolf Man you can clearly see cars driving around town, but by Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man either there are no cars in Eastern Europe and Cardiff or Lawrence was dead for four years and traveled backwards in time. By the same token they have a hydroelectric dam in Vasaria - they mention that it powers the equipment in the castle - so it's anybody's guess)

 At any rate, Talbot finds Frankenstein's monster (Bela Lugosi) frozen in ice and thaws him / it out in the hopes of finding some way to end his existence, and ultimately decides to contact the only surviving Frankenstein (Massey) to see if she can help him. The Baroness is not a scientist and wants nothing to do with the family, but during the Vasarian equivalent of Oktoberfest, Dr. Mannering finds Talbot and the merry band settle in at the castle to see if energy can be drained from Talbot and the monster, finally killing both of them.

 The villagers are, understandably, weary of any activity involving a Frankenstein. They have good reason to be, as Mannering can't help but try to bring the monster back to full strength. Lucky for him (and us), they choose to experiment during a full moon. Well, that's a little fuzzy. I'm not sure if it's a full moon or if the experiment causes Talbot to turn into the Wolf Man (which Chaney is again billed as), but what's important is that the monster smackdown ensues to close out the film. How the Baroness and Dr. Mannering (and, I'm hoping, Maleva) manage to escape the exploding dam above the castle is a manner of movie convenience, but the two monsters presumably perish in the ensuing flood - as would everyone in the village below.

 Interesting tidbit time: Bela Lugosi and Patric Knowles appear in both The Wolf Man and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, albeit playing different roles each time. Ilona Massey, who plays Elsa Frankenstein, replaces Evelyn Ankers, who played Elsa in Ghost of Frankenstein, because it might be a little weird for the woman who played Gwen Conliffe to also be Baroness Frankenstein. All of the monster (Lugosi)'s dialogue was cut from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which makes it tricky to understand why it walks arms outstretched. The reason? In Ghost of Frankenstein, the monster is blind as a result of receiving Ygor (Lugosi again)'s brain. Vasaria, is, by the way, a post-World War II replacement for Germany, where the original Frankenstein was set, created by writer Curt Siodmak.

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 Finally we come to John Dies at the End, the best possible adaptation of David Wong's novel that Don Coscarelli could make with the budget he had. That's not a knock on the movie, because I can't imagine it would be easy to faithfully adapt that book considering how many crazy, outlandish, and disgusting moments are on nearly every page. Without the money to clear the many songs mentioned in the book, or to include Fred Durst, or to even be able to include the section in Vegas (it should happen instead of going straight to the mall, for those who have only seen the movie), let alone what happens AFTER David and John come back from the dimension Korrok originates from, it's impressive how close to the book John Dies at the End is. The first hour or so picks up all of the major beats with only a few omissions (where David works, Amy's brother, and some of the names of characters in the film).

 As much as I want to resist the temptation to compare the book to the movie, it tends to happen without trying. So many people I know read John Dies at the End (how can you not when someone describes it as "GrossBusters"?) and while I'm glad that the movie works for audiences who haven't read it, I have no idea how it would play if I didn't know where the story was going. It's a collection of some of the stranger moments you'll ever see onscreen. I am impressed that Coscarelli turned what is an episodic structure in the book and made it more streamlined (mostly by dropping some of the detours) even if the ending is... abrupt.

 I would imagine even if you hadn't read the book, the sudden leap from "things from another dimension that invade people and cause them to explode" to "welcome to the dimension of Korrok" must be a little jarring, even in a film where a guy's mustache flies off and attacks our hero. The last section of the film happens so quickly and is so packed with exposition that I'm kind of impressed it works at all. The coda during the credits eases things a bit, and the resolution to Arnie's frame story is surprisingly bittersweet for a movie so ready to shrug off the bizarre with "what's next?"

 And yes, it still plays well the third time. I suspect it will the fourth, fifth, and so on, to boot. John Dies at the End may not be the level of "cult" film of Coscarelli's Phantasm series or as beloved as Bubba Ho-Tep, but I suspect that it will grow an audience for a long time on home video. It's just a shame that Coscarelli killed one major character, making a This Book is Full of Spiders adaptation very, very difficult, if not out right impossible. Then again, if they ran out of money for the spiders scene in John Dies at the End and had to animate it, there's probably no chance you could make This Book is Full of Spiders into a movie (the scope is considerably larger). But read both books, if you haven't. It isn't going to hurt the movie one bit.

 Horror Fest VIII has come to a close, and I'll tell you it's been a good year for the Cap'n and Fests. Bad Movie Night was a blast, Summer Fest 5 had some great moments, and Horror Fest VIII may be my favorite to date, rivaling only III and V. I'm looking forward to next year - I hope you are too.

Horror Fest VIII (Day Two): Curse of Chucky and Trick 'r Treat

  After an episode of Tales from the Crypt ("Beauty Rest," for those curious) and waiting for some attendees to run to get some food, it was time for the double feature "main event," the unveiling of Curse of Chucky for audiences who barely knew it existed and the return of Trick 'r Treat for the first time since Horror Fest IV: The Final Chapter! As I expected, neither disappointed, but other than Demons, Horror Fest VIII has (to this point) been quite the success.

 Like All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, attentive readers are no doubt aware that I already reviewed Curse of Chucky to kick off Shocktober. Unfortunately for those of you reading this, I don't have much to add to that review (feel free to click on that link, I'll be here when you get back), but as it's been a few weeks since the beginning of the month, I'm comfortable spoiling a little bit of the movie and describing how it plays with a larger crowd.

 As the Cap'n suspected, Curse of Chucky works very well with fans and relative newbies to the Child's Play series alike. Some long time fans came in with trepidation, but Don Mancini's willingness to play with expectations goes a long way towards easing any doubts about Curse's "direct to video" stigma. The misdirect about who the nanny was "shtupping," about how Nica's family fits into the Charles Lee Ray back story (and how that retcons into Child's Play), and the kills in particular were big hits, but the cameos that close out the film really sealed the deal. Aside from having to explain why Jennifer Tilly appeared as Tiffany (again, if you haven't seen the ending of Seed of Chucky in a while, you might want to jog your memory), that was the most welcome of the two.

 It was a little trickier with the post-credits Alex Vincent reprising Andy Barclay, mostly because you don't immediately recognize him (for obvious reasons). They do a pretty good job of catching you up quickly, but the interaction between Chucky and Andy is so brief and the final cut so abrupt that I almost with Mancini had left it out. Yes, it helps set up an inevitable Child's Play 7 or Chucky 4 or however you like to keep track of them, but the actual, post-Jennifer Tilly ending with the "hide the soul" and grandma is a more effective way to close out the film. It also leaves you with the question about whether Chucky did transfer his soul or not, because there's no way that little girl would know who Andy was.

 But I'm picking nits, here, folks; Curse of Chucky is not only a better movie than any of us thought we'd get, but probably up there in the Child's Play series overall.

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 While several people had to split after Curse of Chucky (it was getting late and we're getting old and boring, what can I say?), I had the distinct pleasure of watching Trick 'r Treat with one person who had seen the film and one person who hadn't. The nice thing is that both of them still saw the movie a new way.

 Looking back at my Horror Fest IV coverage, I noticed something: the recaps were a LOT shorter. Take a look at this and see if you can come away with much of anything about Trick 'r Treat of substance. I couldn't, and I wrote it. And that was four years ago, when I had the stamina to watch all of those movies and get reviews together before going to bed (oops... *SPOILER*). Well, it's been four years and the Cap'n is nothing if not long winded these days, so let's give you a more "proper" look at Michael Dougherty's excellent addition to the Horror Anthology pantheon.

 I still contend it's better not to know all of the twists and turns of Trick 'r Treat going in, because the construction of the anthology is such that it rewards the uninitiated. Watching it a second, third, or fourth time, even when you know how the chronology works (SPOILER: the movie isn't told sequentially, and the overlapping stories aren't always intercut to reflect that), you're going to catch things in the background that give you some idea of where the beginning of the movie fits in with the school bus story, the Principal's story, Mr. Kreeg's story, and the girls' night out story.

 The trickiest editing is actually right after the prologue, where two stories (not going to spoil which ones) cut back and forth when a major character overlaps between the two and they seem to take place hours apart. In fact, I'm only a little fuzzy about how early in the story Principal Wilkins' story is supposed to take place (it has to happen before the prologue and during Kreeg's fight with Sam), but it also has to take place well before the pumpkin collectors take Rhonda (Samm Todd) to the quarry. Why? Because there's a direct spoiler to the "twist" in the Laurie (Anna Paquin) / "vampire" story - while they're in the elevator going into the quarry, Rhonda identifies the howling well before we cut back to Sheep's Grove (as is evidenced by the fact that Sam made it back from the quarry and is watching the girls party). It makes sense in a fashion, but Wilkins (Dylan Baker) and his son (Connor Christopher Levins) must have taken care of Charlie well before the news report about the Halloween parade downtown.

 Every time I watch Trick 'r Treat (and I try to every year near Halloween), I pick up on some other detail in Dougherty's insanely planned narrative. It's quite a draw to revisit the film, even if it weren't already a fun, suspenseful, and at times downright creepy experience to begin with. Some day, I'd love to see this in a theatre with a really big audience; I bet it plays like gangbusters.

 One final note that came up during a post-movie discussion: both of the guys who stayed late to watch Trick 'r Treat have kids, so we ended up talking about what a shame it is that parts are so violent / disturbing, because the movie does a great job of explaining why Halloween / Samhain is important culturally, but also why there are "rules." There may be no better demonstration of why you should always check your candy than the beginning of the Principal Wilkins story, why we decorate our yards and dress up, or why respecting the dead is important. They're packaged in a supernaturally charged fashion that is, almost without fail, exceptional, but underneath everything is a celebration of why Halloween continues to be such an instrumental holiday, and why October is the best month of the year for a lot of people, the Cap'n included.

 Up Next: Why am I still awake? Oh, right, because Day Two closed out with The Haunting and The Woman in Black! I may never get to sleep...

Cap'n Howdy Presents: The Five Worst Movies I Saw in 2012

 For a change, I saw more good movies than terrible movies in 2012. I know, this must come as a shock to you, but it's true. Looking back, there are several movies I saw that were "okay" to "meh," but very few that outright stank. Well, that were made in 2012 anyway: Horror Fest and Summer Fest entries don't count this year, with one exception.

 The very bottom and the very top lists for 2012 aren't going to be too long, but while I try to put together some kind of notion of how I want to organize the "Best Of"'s, there's not much question in my mind how the bottom of the barrel stacks up. (The middle is going to take me a little while...)

 In the interest of fairness, I didn't see many of what people tell me are the very worst of this year, including: That's My Boy, Battleship, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Total Recall, The Watch, Guilt Trip, For A Good Time Call, Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, Parental Guidance, or The Apparition. Unfortunately, I can't be of any help to you in that respect, but I can promise you that this list serves as one last So You Won't Have To for last year.

 So without further ado, let's count down from 5 to 1 of the Worst Movies of 2012.
 

 5.Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies - So of the three films about Abraham Lincoln released this year, I saw two of them, and instead of picking the one with the vampires from the director of Wanted, the Cap'n wisely(?) chose the knock-off instead. From what I hear, The Asylum's cash-in / rip-off is arguably the better of the two, and if that's the case then I'm glad I didn't watch Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This movie was terrible, and only became watchable as the anachronisms began to pile up, along with the shoehorning in of a young Theodore Roosevelt, who helps Lincoln, his secret prostitute mistress, Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth (a member of the Secret Service... yeah, I know) to protect Fort Pulaski from zombies.

 And trust me, while that last sentence may have you intrigued, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies in no way deserves your attention.


 4. (tie) Underworld: Awakening and Resident Evil: Retribution - Here we have the case of two sequels, well into their franchise lives (four and five, respectively) that serve no purpose other than to set up the next sequel. While it's true that I've given up on the Resident Evil series, I held out just a sliver of hope that the return of Kate Beckinsale to the Underworld universe might up the trashy factor, but it was not to be. Underworld 4 was a lot of moping, Scott Speedman body-doubling, more pointless philosophical debate about what it means to be a vampire when Lycans control the world, and just a smidgen of Stephen Rea chewing scenery. If there's a fifth film (and Awakening is going to look awfully silly if there isn't), I can't say I'm all that enthused that we'll ever get back to the campy tone of the first flick.


 As for Retribution, well, there isn't much I would add to the review linked above. It's not really a movie, but a series of extended (read: boring) fight sequences peppered with pointless dialogue designed to reset the story (again) so that we can get to a "more interesting" movie next time. Since it looks like the next film is going to have even less of a plot, it's hard to imagine how hard Paul W.S. Anderson is going to have to work to screw it up. Then again, he lives to disappoint, so he'll find a way...

 3. (tie) Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance -  Speaking of disappointing, what the hell happened with these two totally unnecessary sequels? They were primed to be very necessary, very schlocky, audiovisual overload based solely on the combination of source material and director. On the one hand, you have John Gulager, director of the hyper-ridiculous gorefest Feast, directing the sequel to Alexadre Aja's T&A meets Blood & Guts remake of Piranha. And on the other hand, you have Nicolas Cage returning as Ghost Rider and behind the camera are the directors of Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, two of the most ridiculous movies in Jason Statham's already ridiculous action movie career. Oh, and both movies were shot in 3-D! They couldn't lose! It was impossible!

 Somehow, both films end up being complete and total wastes of time. Not only are Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance not the anarchic clusterfucks you would hope for, but they're something even worse: Boring.

  Yes, boring: neither film is remotely fun to watch, in a trashy way or in a "what the hell was that?" way, which is a cardinal sin when making sequels to two absurd movies. Gulager not only doesn't deliver on the DD's his title promises (unless you count the first and last five minutes of the film), but all of the energy of Feast is replaced by the worst tendencies on display in Feast II and III. Instead of kinetic camerawork and editing, he instead falls back on a love of flatulence and cameos for the sake of having cameos, so that while he can't make a baby piranha swimming up a girl's va-jay-jay and biting her boyfriend's pecker interesting, he sure can give us three different montages devoted to David Hasselhoff running in slow motion.

 Far be it from me to point this out, but when the Spongebob Squarepants Movie finds a better way to use a superfluous cameo by David Hasselhoff, then you're doing something wrong.

 Meanwhile, Neveldine and Taylor not only don't add to the gonzo stupidity that was the first Ghost Rider, but they dial back the insanity and Mega-Acting / Neo-Shamanism by Cage and give us the tamest possible version of Spirits of Vengeance. We get less Ghost Rider, more mumble-cage, a supernatural knock-off of Terminator 2, and to top it off they find a way to waste Anthony Stewart Head, Ciarán Hinds, and Idris Elba. Thanks, assholes. Now we'll never get a properly stupid Ghost Rider movie.

 2. Taken 2 - Can we just agree not to let Olivier Megaton make movies anymore? While I didn't see Columbiana and maybe it's actually good, Megaton has now ruined not one, but two franchises with shitty sequels. First he stripped the absurdity from the Transporter films, giving the world the first boring Jason Statham action film, and then in 2012 he took Taken and drained everything good out of that with his awful sequel.

 Taken was a pretty simple concept: sex slave traders take Liam Neeson's daughter. Liam Neeson kills everyone standing between him and his daughter, in increasingly brutal ways, because that's what he does. He has a very particular set of skills, skills that make him a nightmare for people like you. Presuming that you are Eastern European sex slave traders, of course. It's a stripped down action film that delivered simple, no frills beat downs and torture.

 So logically you'd follow that up by having the families of everyone Liam Neeson murdered (yes, he has a name, and it's Brian Whogivesashit) want revenge on him and his family. In his infinite wisdom - well, really to nail Famke Janssen now that Xander Berkley wasn't asked to come back - he invites his wife and daughter to join him in Istanbul, where Neeson and Janssen are promptly kidnapped. So okay, that means Maggie Grace is going to have to do the inverted version of Taken, right? She'll save her father and mother than maybe kill Rade Serbedzija, because who else would be playing the father of the guy Neeson electrocuted to death?

 Nope. Liam Neeson gets out, crashes into the American Embassy and somehow doesn't end up being shot or prosecuted for property damage (because he calls Leland Orser, returning along with John Gries and D.B. Sweeney who is reprising someone else's role for a quick cameo paycheck). We then don't see Maggie Grace (sorry, Kim Whogivesashit) until after Neeson goes back to rescue Lenore Whogivesashit and kill all of the bad guys. Because that's what he does. Also she passes her driving test, which is somehow integral to the plot. (Not kidding)

 Only this time you can't tell that's what he does because Olivier Megaton doesn't know how to shoot a comprehensible action sequence to save his life. I literally ended up with headaches during the three (the ONLY three) fight scenes in Taken 2. It's virtually impossible to tell what's going on, who is hitting who, or where anyone is in relation to the person they're in combat with because Megaton and his editor throw rapid cuts of extreme close-ups on the screen to guarantee that nobody has the slightest idea what they're seeing. So not only is Taken 2 a LOT of setup for very little payoff, but when the time comes for Liam Neeson to use his particular set of skills, you don't even know what the hell is going on, and it hurts your brain.

 I HATED Taken 2, and there's no possible way that an "Unrated" version could be an improvement, because unless they hired a competent director and editor to reshoot the entire movie, it's a total waste of time.

 But Taken 2 isn't the worst movie I saw this year. It's not even the worst Luc Besson produced movie I saw this year, because that distinction goes to:


1. Lockout - Here's the deal: I'm willing to be veeeerrrrrry forgiving when it comes to cheesy science fiction. There are a lot of things I'll put up with if a movie can easily be summed up as "Escape from New York in Space," so even if Lockout was rocking a 17% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes the night we went to see it, I was prepared for that. I knew we wouldn't be watching high art, but instead a goofy, illogical, dumbed-down crowd-pleaser that catered to the cheap seats. As long as I got Guy Pearce as a bad-ass for ninety minutes, I figured we'd be okay. Besides, after that we'd be seeing The Cabin in the Woods. Surely it couldn't be that bad.

 And sure enough, it starts out promising. In fact, the opening of the film is the European Trailer, which is Guy Pearce making wisecracks and being punched while Peter Stormare interrogates him. And then we flashback to why he's being interrogated, and there's a clever joke involving jumping out of one window and into another gone wrong.

 And then there's the high speed unicycle chase that looks like a Playstation (One) cut-scene.

 Okay, that's really bad, but let's keep going, right? It'll get schlocky soon.

 And then Lockout fell apart. As I said, I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to movies like this, so I'll let things like repeatedly putting up a title card to let us know what we're looking at even if we've seen it five times. It's like watching a TV movie without the commercial breaks, I guess. It supports the theory that Lockout is "a series of movie-like images taped together." But then it gives up on the laws of physics while still trying to use said laws of physics as critical plot points. Then your brain begins to melt a little bit, then you start laughing. Not at what's going on in Lockout, because that ceased to make sense a long time ago, but because it's the only way to express what the movie is doing to your brain.

 Do yourself a favor and click on the link embedded in the title. It's called "Four Reasons You Might Be Drunk Enough to Watch Lockout," and while I don't recommend watching Lockout, especially not while drunk - as you are likely to do harm to your television for subjecting you to Lockout - it may give you some idea why, try as I may, I couldn't find a worse movie to watch in 2012.



 (Dis)Honorable Mention: Men in Black III, American Reunion, The Campaign - All of which were okay, I guess, but not movies I'm probably going to watch again.

 Extra (Dis)Honorable Mention to The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot so pointless and so tedious that I couldn't even talk myself into finishing it.

The Return of Cranpire Movies: Underworld - Awakening

 (If you don't think there are SPOILERS in this review, by all means read on and try to be surprised when there are.)

 I don't actually know if Cranpire ever watched any of the Underworld movies. I know Professor Murder did, and that he liked the first one enough to insist that I at least watch the scene where a vampire with silver whips fights a werewolf (sorry, Lycan). The way he described it was more entertaining than the actual scene (for the record, that Korn song isn't actually playing during the movie but you work with what you can find), but I found the first Underworld film to be agreeably stupid.

  For those of you that somehow missed out on the REAL "werewolves vs. vampires love story saga for the new millennium," I can happily recap it for you. Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is a Death Dealer, which is the vampire equivalent of "Blade Runner". She hunts Lycans (a fancier way of saying "werewolves" so the movie doesn't sound so stupid) while both warring factions avoid being seen by humans. It's kind of like the Blade movies, except that there are a bunch of Blades and they all take themselves very seriously and so do the Lycans. The leader of the Lycans is Michael Sheen, and the leader of the Vampires is Bill Nighy. Selene falls for Michael (Scott Speedman), who is a Lycan that becomes a hybrid, which means he turns all black and has super vamp-can powers, and the two of them kill Viktor (Nighy - see why I saved that for now?) and then go into hiding because they betrayed blah blah blah. You get the idea.

 The only really distinguishing factor between the Blade and Underworld series is in my opinion the fact that Kate Beckinsale is in skintight leather instead of Wesley Snipes in slightly less skintight leather. It's certainly what 99.9999% of Underworld fans talk about on the internet and why there are now more Underworld movies than Blade movies (and you thought it was because of the tax evasion...) despite the fact that Blade Trinity is arguably just a collection of the worst series of decisions ever committed to film.

 Since the second one was coming out soon, I did what you would expect the Cap'n would do - waited for it to come out on DVD and then rent it from the used book store I worked at. Underworld Evolution was also stupid, but more bombastic and with less story. More importantly, it didn't have the "this is a very serious story we're telling, thank you" that made the first film so hilarious. Underworld: Evolution did have the benefit of having Bill Nighy come back (in flashbacks? I don't remember) plus returning Michael Sheen, and then on top of the Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius) as an ancestor of Michael's. The story gets more complicated, yadda yadda, super vampire bats or something.

 I did not see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, a prequel that brought back Sheen and Nighy and added Rhona Mitra (The Descent) when Kate Beckinsale decided that skintight leather was too much of a bother. I have no idea what it was about, although if I had to guess I'd say it centered around the feud between vampires and Lycans in the middle ages because they seem to be holding swords on the cover.

 This brings us to Underworld: Awakening, which is the fourth film in the series (and is in 3-D!!!). Kate Beckinsale, who clearly had so much fun making Whiteout and Everybody's Fine that she decided it was time to be miserable in skintight leather again, returns as Selene. She and Michael are on the run (again), but this time because between Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Awakening, the humans noticed that people in skintight leather outfits were running around cities, shooting at each other, and that when some of them died they exploded. One of the people who seems to be organizing this is Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea), who joins the inexplicably quality supporting cast for movies this silly.

 Somebody brielfy plays Michael, but it sure didn't look like Scott Speedman and the character isn't listed in the credits or IMDB. In fact, he isn't mentioned at all anywhere except IN the film. He's killed and then Selene is frozen for twelve years until she's rescued by "Subject Two" (India Eisley), a twelve-year-old girl who has the same powers that Michael does. Hrm...

 I know what you were thinking, but she's not a twelve-year-old female clone of Michael: she's their DAUGHTER!!!! Selene was almost as surprised as you were, because to her twelve years didn't pass. It was like she went to sleep underwater across from a guy who kinda looked like Scott Speedman but not really and then woke up the next day with a preteen vamp-can. In fact, Selene says something very much like that later in the film, in case we were too confused by the plot to remember that.

 Unfortunately for Underworld: Awakening, its plot isn't nearly as convoluted as the first two films (and, what the hell, let's assume the third one too), so it's actually not that hard to keep up. See, Dr. Lane works for Antigen, a company trying to cure the "disease" of vampirism and lycanthropy (I guess separately, they don't address this until THE TWIST!), and the hybrid-daughter is the key to cracking the code. Since she escaped, they let Selene escape to track them, and send some Lycans after them. Selene, in the meantime, finds a hidden coven of vampires led by Thomas (Charles Dance), who is hiding to keep his people alive. His idiot son, David (Theo James), wants to fight the Lycans and they all get their asses kicked when a super-Lycan that's immune to silver shows up (in normal form he looks like Coldplay's Chris Martin).

 Anyway they all go back to Antigen and Selene gets Detective Sebastian (Michael Ealy) to help her break in, just in time for THE TWIST! See, Jacob and the rest of the Antigen team are Lycans, and they used the whole "exposure to humans" angle as a way to get vampires on the run while they researched a way be immune to silver. That's it! That's the extent of this movie - the master plan of the Lycans is to be immune to silver and kill the rest of the vampires while still being closely monitored by humans. Well, that last part clearly isn't important because they'd be invincible, right?

 But if that's the case then how did Selene kill the Coldplay Lycan by putting a silver grenade in his stomach? And her daughter just clawed Stephen Rea's face off, so that works too.

 Then again, I don't watch an Underworld movie for the story. I watch it because the deadly serious tone coupled with the absurd action scenes and gaping plot holes are a potent combination, the end result being incredulous laughter. Underworld: Awakening is not a good movie, not by any standard. That's fine, because I wasn't expecting it to be a good movie. I was expecting something stupid and I got it, and I chuckled for most of the film. Adding children used to be the touch of death for television shows, and sure enough it's a sign of desperation in Awakening, designed to cover up the fact that Scott Speedman / Michael don't factor into the story much (oh, did I mention he isn't actually dead and that Selene unfreezes him so he can escape?). The daughter fills that role and is half-hardheartedly designed to give Selene some depth, but it largely fails.

 Underworld: Awakening has some fun, if imbecilic, action sequences, although I can't imagine they would be necessary in the third dimension. The color palette is (unsurprisingly) dark blues, blacks, and greys. The dialogue is stilted and designed to get us to the next fight scene, where at least the gore is pretty good. To be fair, it's probably more watchable - if not as staggeringly dumb - than Blade Trinity, and it's definitely better than the fourth Resident Evil film.

 I know, I know; when I'm comparing Underworld: Awakening to Resident Evil: Afterlife and Blade Trinity, most of you are politely nodding your head and slowly backing away towards the door. That's fine, but this is a Cranpire Movie, and compared to most of the Syfy Channel Originals he prefers, Underworld: Awakening is a minor masterpiece.

Spoiler for the Day: Ginger Snaps Back

 In a fairytale retelling of the first Ginger Snaps, Brigitte and Ginger are alone in the woods, bleeding. They press their hands together, mingling infected blood and ensuring both will be werewolves. Brigette's voice closes out the film, saying "The day of reckoning; the day the curse grew stronger in the Red and the Black. Sisters united in blood, together forever."


 Tomorrow's Spoiler for the Day: Pieces

Spoiler for the Day: Ginger Snaps 2 - Unleashed

 Ghost helps Brigitte escape from the treatment center / psych-ward, only to trap the fully transformed Brigitte in her basement. Ghost creates a story about a powerful warrior (herself) and her werewolf pet, who will one day be unleashed on her enemies.


 Tomorrow's Spoiler for the Day: Ginger Snaps Back

Spoiler for the Day: Ginger Snaps

 Ginger goes full on werewolf, and Brigitte has the option to save her or kill her. She decides to kill Ginger, but mixes her sister's blood with her own, ensuring that she too will become a lycanthrope.



Tomorrow's Spoiler for the Day: Ginger Snaps 2 - Unleashed

Blogorium Review: The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman

After two successive Horror Fests of promising to screen The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman and not delivering, I decided it was at least time to give you, the reader, some idea of what it was you were missing out on, and to promise you that it WILL play during the Greensboro Summerfest Massacre Part IV, because it deserves a full fest audience to be properly appreciated. In the meantime, please enjoy a taste of werewolf on vampire action. Kind of.

Fair warning: the Cap'n and the Cranpire deliberately chose to watch the edited, re-titled, dubbed version of Werewolf Shadow (La Noche de Walpurgis), in part because of the ludicrous American trailer that promised more than any movie could deliver, which (of course) was the case. To be fair, we did check out the actual film (also credited to director León Klimovsky), and aside from 9 additional minutes of footage and slightly better color timing (more on this later), I sincerely believe the difference would be negligible.

Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) is a reputed werewolf killed in a small village in the north of France. During his autopsy, the coroners remove the silver bullets from his heart, bringing Daninsky back to life, free to roam the night in search of new victims. Meanwhile, college student Elvira (Gaby Fuchs) and her friend Genevieve (Barbara Capell) are searching for the burial place of Countess Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy (Patty Shepard), a reputed witch and / or vampire from the 15th century. When their car runs out of gas near a country estate, Genevieve and Elvira meet Waldemar and his sister Elizabeth (Yelena Samarina), who suffered a mental breakdown after the death of their parents. Waldemar has also been seeking the tomb of de Nadasdy, because the silver crossed used to kill her can end his lycanthropy once and for all. But when Genevieve accidentally awakens the Countess and falls victim to her bloodlust, can Waldemar and Elvira stop the vampire from killing again before Walpurgis, when the Devil rises to claim the Earth?

As you might have noticed, that's quite a lot of plot for an 85 minute movie, especially one with so much down time before serious plot advancement. Unless the moon has some magical properties in the north of France, at least three months pass between when Waldemar first rises and when the title characters battle. As a non-werewolf, Waldemar chases off the Countess twice, but if you're expecting an epic showdown like the trailer promises, don't hold your breath.

From the moment that Genevieve cuts herself and accidentally drips blood into the Countess's corpse mouth to the point that Walpurgis apparently occurs, two months of story time passes. In fact, other than doing a cursory search of the graveyard where the Countess is hiding, Elvira and Waldemar do nothing to try to stop her until Walpurgis. It isn't until Elvira's boyfriend Inspector Marcel (Andrés Resino) arrives that anything happens involving the Countess at all in the second half of the film. Most of the time, vampire Genevieve is stalking around, until a non-wolf Waldemar kills her.

At this point, I'm going to drift away from the plot, which drags considerably in the second half of the film. There's some reasonably nice set-up involving Elvira and Genevieve realizing something amiss at the Daninsky estate, even if lapses in logic about why they can't leave or how isolated they are from the village compound to an almost laughable degree. The problem is less with story gaffes than it is with the day-for-night photography, a normally half-effective movie technique that fails miserably in The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman.

From the beginning of the film, it's almost impossible to tell whether it's supposed to be day or night time unless someone says so directly. Unfortunately, when it's clear the sun is shining an a coroner says "It's very dark out tonight," you're going to laugh. The producers of this American version didn't bother to tint the "night" scenes, so most of the time spent watching The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman is devoted to figuring out what time of day it's supposed to be. Usually you won't know until a) they cut to a shot of the moon, b) you see the vampires, or c) someone is holding a lamp / lantern or car lights are on. All or most of the film was made in broad daylight, which adds an unintentionally comic tone to the "horror."

(It is fair to note that Werewolf Shadow, which is a remastered version of the film - unlike the heavily scratched, frame jumping Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman - addresses the day for night by tinting the scenes blue, but it still isn't terribly convincing.)

For entertainment value, I would recommend watching The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman with a crowd; despite the overly languid pace of the film in actually delivering the supernatural smackdown, the over-serious tone of the film is rendered into comedy gold because of the cost-cutting of the American version, including the dubbing of characters, even in cases where it seems clear they're speaking English (like Genevieve). Paul Naschy (who co-wrote the film) is trying to make Waldemar Daninsky a tortured, Larry Talbot-esque character, but the dubbing, coupled with a physical similarity to Marlon Brando, rob him of any pathos.

For a film that promises witchcraft, vampires, a werewolf, and the Devil, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman is surprisingly tame. The violence is limited to light gore as a result of Waldemar scratching his victims or some blood dripping from Elvira's neck. The film cautiously hints at nudity, only to pull back before exposing any flesh (and if you're thinking "well, maybe in the Werewolf Shadow cut," I'm afraid not. Those 9 minutes are devoted to Marcel's search for Elvira in the village).

On top of all of this, I have to point out the English title cards, which are so clearly not part of the film that it hardly surprised me when the score cut out abruptly, replaced by what sounded like the sound of a projector running. The title cards appear over artificially frozen images from the film that were inserted over the actual titles. The effect is jarring, intrusive, and ultimately lends a cheap, exploitative tone to an otherwise marginal horror film, despite the claim on the DVD that Werewolf Shadow is "now recognized as a milestone film in international horror history." It's certainly a fun movie to have on, but in any incarnation, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman works best in a party atmosphere.

Four Reasons the Cap'n neither loves nor hates The Wolfman

Gang, here's the thing about Joe Johnston's The Wolfman; it's a mess. Not an unwatchable mess, but not exactly an enjoyable mess either. It just kind of "is," which may actually be worse. There's not a lot to recommend here, and at the same time I just can't bring myself to slap a "So You Won't Have To" on the movie. I'm not even positive I'd call it an "unnecessary remake," despite my fondness for the Lon Chaney Jr. version. Adam has pointed out to me that for a movie called "The WOLF MAN," that it's just the right kind of stupid, and he's gone so far as to say it "rules!"

Okay, I can understand that to a point (and we'll get to that in sections 2 and 3), but the Unrated Cut I watched apparently put the focus back on character beats - particularly giving the audience a better grasp of Lawrence Talbot in the beginning of the film - and unfortunately that diminishes what little cheap thrills are to be had by the goofy third act. By trying to restore some of the psychological drama to the film (and doing so awkwardly, as you'll see in point 1), the rest of the movie sticks out like a sore thumb, not to mention that the haphazard way the "Unrated" footage is reinserted creates plot holes.

For example, the extended cut (which runs an extra sixteen minutes) brings Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) to London in order to personally appeal to Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) after his brother - and her fiance's - disappearance. I know this wasn't the case in the theatrical cut because the editor(s) left in a line here or there about how Talbot came back to Blackmoor because of "her letter." Yes, it's still in the movie. They didn't bother to fix that, so the Unrated cut has a slapped together quality that muddles an already unnecessarily messy narrative. I have no idea how the silver wolf's-head cane actually figured into the theatrical cut since the Max Von Sydow cameo that establishes how Lawrence is given cane is only in the Unrated version, but I digress.

Let's take a closer look at four points that simultaneously work for and against The Wolfman.

1. The Wolfman is not successful trying to appeal to the intellectual and the gorehound - The screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self is all over the map. At times, The Wolfman wants to be about the curse of family legacy and about fate. Some times it wants to be a serious horror movie that builds up suspenseful (and violent) set pieces like the gypsy camp massacre. At other times, it wants to suggest that Talbot is already so psychologically damaged that... well, actually the entire subplot is a red herring, considering the "slaughtering the psychiatrist in the observation room scene."

But what hampers the film the most is that when Del Toro transforms from man to wolf, while the film gives audiences gore-aplenty, it's hard to know whether we should feel bad for him the morning after or not. The movie doesn't really seem to know either; so much time is spent with Talbot moping around in human form, kinda-flirting with Gwen and basically standing around creepy patriarch Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) that when he finally cuts loose in wolf form it's a sigh of relief. We're then immediately stripped of that the following scene and subjected to more moping and grousing, this time with the added suspicions of Inspector Aberline (Hugo Weaving), and suddenly the Cap'n was hoping for more howling at the moon.

Part of this falls on Benicio Del Toro's shoulders; his Lawrence Talbot is essentially a blank slate, barely reacting to anything. I never got the sense of horror in Talbot that one finds in Lon Chaney Jr.'s portrayal (one that he was so devoted to that it persisted in much sillier films like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). Chaney's transformation was a curse, and he played the burden on his face and in the way he carried himself. Del Toro, a normally gripping presence onscreen, has nothing to work with here. When Talbot is needed to react to something, the scene is either robbed of its emotional arc or Del Toro simply doesn't convey the suffering. Only when he's packed into Rick Baker's wolf man makeup does Del Toro seem to come to life and really be invested in the action. The lack of pathos in the human Talbot is crippling for the story.

2. On the other hand, it's nice to see a major studio film this unabashedly violent - For all the various permutations The Wolfman was in (and do yourself a favor and look up the strange production history behind the film; eventually it could make quite the book), the one thing I'm impressed that they managed to keep was the insistence that Universal release the movie as a hard "R." And it is. This is easily one of the most violent horror movies I've seen come out of a major studio in a long time. A Nightmare on Elm Street's remake has nothing on the creative carnage of The Wolfman. Half eaten bodies, severed limbs, decapitations, people (and wolves) burning alive, huge gash marks, and intestines littering the ground. Oh, the intestines. There's a scene where Abberline is surveying the carnage and the ground is covered in human guts. I have to give credit where credit's due to the creative team that let Baker and the makeup department turn this film into a Fangoria centerfold. It's really one of the few things that kept me hanging in there.

3. Thankfully, the movie is also unintentionally stupid - You'd think this would be a bad thing, but actually the ridiculous plot points gave The Wolfman some unintentional levity and kept the movie out of dull, navel-gazing territory, especially towards the end.

For example, I haven't talked too much about the desperately undercooked "father / son" storyline in the film between Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro, partly with good reason. If you can't figure out almost immediately that Hopkins' John Talbot is also a werewolf, I don't know what I can do for you. I won't even slap a SPOILER on that because it's just that obvious from the first time you see him. All Hopkins does is wander around their derelict family estate behaving strangely, with periodic flashes of parental concern for Lawrence (mostly after he's bitten him... oh right, SPOILER). When he's not doing that, Hopkins is leering at Emily Blunt in a way that doesn't actually make sense considering the reason he actually wants her to stay at Talbot Manor (he killed his other son because he and Gwen were going to leave, and yet the elder Talbot makes no real effort to harm Gwen).

What all of this builds to is a werewolf on werewolf showdown, but because it's almost impossible to tell them apart in a dimly lit room, the Hopkins wolf man rips his shirt off. Then, for reasons that only made sense to the filmmakers, the movie turns into a Pro-Wrestling smackdown between two guys in wolf costumes, complete with flips and suplexes, culminating in (SPOILER) the Hopkins werewolf being thrown in the fireplace, burning alive, and then being decapitated by Del Toro. Since they're both wolves, there's no taunting or back and forth during the scene, just "growl, growl PUNCH!" with the occasional howl. It's totally inconsistent with the beginning of the film and also hilarious.

I mentioned in yesterday's Murder By Decree review that The Wolfman also has a tangential connection to Jack the Ripper, and its inclusion is chuckle-worthy in this film. During a bit of verbal back and forth between Lawrence Talbot and Inspector Abberline, Lawrence suggests that the Inspector is keen to catch the Blackmoor murderer because he failed an assignment in the "Ripper case." Abberline strikes back with what can only be described as a comparably stupid "You're a direct man. So I'll be equally direct with you. I am not your enemy, Mr. Talbot. You've been seen as Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, all with that same face. A prudent man would ask who else might be living inside that head of yours?" And I laughed out loud. Weaving's ultra serious Abberline is the source of many chuckles, particularly during a late night werewolf chase through London (that really serves no purpose in the movie) when he asks a fellow officer "I don't suppose we have any silver bullets, do we?" What movie am I watching here?

I'd like to touch briefly on the Gwen Conliffe subplot, one that boggles the mind at times in its use purely out of plot convenience. After consulting Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin, totally wasted in the movie), the gypsy expert, Lawrence is told that he can only be "set free by someone who loves" him. Unfortunately, there's nobody in that movie who really fits the bill, so Gwen gets stuck in the odd space between bereaved almost-widow and not-actually love interest for Lawrence. That way she can kill him at the end, which really doesn't work (and doesn't involve the wolf's head cane for some stupid reason) but it does set up the best unintentionally hilarious moment in The Wolfman: Gwen also talks to Maleva and then goes to the library to research Lawrence's condition. Of all the books she could possibly choose, Gwen finds a text that has "Lycanthropy" literally separated by one page from "Ancient Gypsy Lore," worded exactly in that fashion. I challenge you not to laugh at the dunderheaded decision to stick that together.

Oh yeah, I mentioned the ending, didn't I? That brings us to our final point...

4. Really? Sequel? - I've always given credit to The Wolf Man for being a self contained movie; even when they found a way to bring Lawrence Talbot back in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, it happens in such a way that he immediately regrets being resurrected. You can, however, put that aside because The Wolf Man doesn't indicate in any way that coming back to life is an option for Talbot. And I suppose, to its credit, neither does the remake. Instead, it does something far less logical. (Technically speaking, everything from here on out is a SPOILER).

After Abberline has finally seen were-Talbot in action and he believes in the supernatural etc, he goes into Talbot Manor to stop Lawrence from killing Gwen and is mauled. Now the movie's already established that if you're attacked by a werewolf and you live, you're going to become one, so when the bleeding Abberline picks up the wolf's head cane (which is, by the way, also a sword) and gives chase to Talbot and Gwen, we can only hope that he'll actually take out the werewolf and himself. But that's not what happens.

Instead, Gwen shoots Lawrence, who turns and thanks her for pumping a silver bullet into his heart and ending the curse we didn't really get much of an impression about. Meanwhile, Abberline is leaning against a tree with the cane / sword staring at the whole thing while his men are approaching in the distance. See, Abberline knows what's going to happen to him, so does he run that sword through his chest? Nope. He just stands there, gasping like a dope. The camera then cuts to a wide shot of the moors, bathed in full moon glow, and you hear another wolf howl. Credits.

I mean, really? Who thought teasing a sequel to this incarnation of The Wolfman was a good idea? Especially considering how much of a mess the movie is. There's no reason that that character would allow himself to become a werewolf, and all of the other werewolves are dead, so does anybody actually think that's what would happen next? Really?

So there you have it. I can't say that I'll ever watch The Wolfman again, and yet I don't necessarily regret having seen it. By the same token, I'd recommend a dozen movies to you before suggesting anyone even rent The Wolfman. It's too stupid to be taken serious and too serious to be enjoyable stupid. In the end I can't say that I loved or hated the film. It just was, and that's not quite enough for the Cap'n.