DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN: Why I Love It Even Though You Probably Don't

First, an admission, not a confession: There are lots of valid reasons to hate Al Adamson's 1971 monster mash and condemn it to b-movie hell. It features appalling make-up, it exploits struggling actors like Lon Chaney Jr. and J. Carrol Naish, it consigns once proud Universal monsters to a boardwalk setting, and it just looks plain ugly. So, hate away if you will, but I find it eternally charming. Want to distract me? Start this going on the DVD player, and I get lost in its sleazy, grindhouse world. The horror blogosphere has had its fair share of debate lately regarding critical standards, and I'm afraid I just won't offer anything here to allay the impression that some horror viewers will watch anything. This film is like a sticky, greasy plate of fries: it ain't great cuisine, and nobody needs to go to culinary school to learn how to make them, but I like them anyway.



Nostalgia has a lot to do with it. I first saw this film at a rather young age, already full-on versed in Universal lore, but coming across this film on a Saturday morning both enthralled me and upset my sensibilities. Its use of color looked garish and ill-fitting, much like the characters themselves and their counter-culture clothing and attitudes. Without knowing anything about grindhouse cinema, though, I'm somehow got it and realized that the film HAD to look this way to work.



Now, the film seems almost quaint, and despite his incompetence, Adamson directs with a sense of assurance that all this somehow works. And, in fact, on some inane level it does. Of course, Dracula has big hair and barely functioning make-up. The important thing is that he a ring that can fry anything, even the character who we have accepted as the hero for much of the narrative. Yes, the Frankenstein monster has a rubbery face that barely resembles anything human, but look at how Dracula so easily tears him apart in the film's climactic battle (over a sexy, bosomy blond tart no less!). Yes, Lon Chaney looks like a bloated alcoholic shadow of his former self, but he gets to terrorize people with that ax!



Placed in the context of its grindhouse brethren, DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN comes across as the cleanest sleaze movie of all time, a porn film with no pornography and only the slimmest hint of any nudity. Despite its inadequacies, I'd take it over almost any feature currently making its way through the multiplexes. How's that for standards?

A Lament for Shocklines (and a Bit of Shameless Self-Promotion)

I haven't stopped lamenting the slow demise of Shocklines, which for a few years stood as THE one-stop place to shop for horror literature. Most of all, I spent a small fortune buying a number of chapbooks and smaller 'zines featuring the likes Christine Sng, Michael A. Arnzen, and Bruce Boston. Not only has Shocklines been gradually closing shop, but the kind of publications it offered seem harder to find than ever, a symptom no doubt of a struggling economy and a culture that seems to value less than ever the written word. In particular, I always sprung for POE LITTLE THING, a small press publication that featured some of the best examples of contemporary "horrific" poetry. Recently, POE LITTLE THING made the leap to an electronic format, which means you can access its contents easily, though I miss the experience of being able to hold a copy in my grimy little hands. You can find the Spring 2009 issue here, and be on the look-out for "Better Than a Virgin Birth," one of my recent works of flash fiction.

C. Michael Cook's "Unspeakable" Story

Yeah, I know we're not supposed to evaluate a book based on its cover, but how can anyone resist that above image of UNSPEAKABLE HORROR, an anthology of gay-themed horror edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder? Looking beyond the cover, the book contains excellent stories by well-known names within contemporary horror literature, including Scott Nicholson, Sarah Langan, and Kealan Patrick Burke. The story that stopped me dead in my tracks, however, was "The Boys of Bald Hill" by C. Michael Cook, which alone makes the anthology worth picking up. The story involves a boy who explores his sexual identity with a friend in a fenced-off cave, resulting in some devastatingly gruesome events. I have not renewed my membership in the HWA in a few years, but I sincerely hope that someone gives Cook a Stoker nod.

UPDATE: According to Vince Liaguno's blog, Slasherspeak, the book was in fact nominated for a Stoker in the anthology category. Congratulations Vince!

Chilling Kaiju Image: WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS

The image above comes from WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, and after watching Classic Media's recent DVD, I found that this moment still manages to unsettle me. Kaiju films tend to inspire more "wonder" than "horror," but director Ishiro Honda no doubt hoped to rattle our psyches with this film, especially when this creature gazes hungrily up at a fisherman from the depths of the ocean. The still image arguably does not do justice to the way this moment plays on film, as the ripples of the water further distort the monster's grotesque appearance. Having previously only seen the American cut of the film, I found the film even more satisfying as a sequel to FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, as the Japanese cut plainly presents itself. This is a film we can continue to savor, as it adds further layers to Frankenstein lore by imagining creatures spawned from the original's fragmented cells. The passage of time seems to have served this film especially well as we see our current advances in science and medicine reflected back to us in the form of this kaiju nightmare.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Controversy

I've kept rather mum about my feelings regarding LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, one of the most celebrated vampire films in recent memory. Although I missed the film's limited US theatrical run, I read the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist and found it be one of the most pleasurable reading experiences in recent memory; simply put, it stands as one of the most richly textured vampire novels I've ever read, joining Le Fanu's CARMILLA, Stoker's DRACULA, Matheson's I AM LEGEND, and King's SALEM'S LOT in the upper echelon of blood-sucking literature.

Hence, I had very high expectations for the film, having read nothing but positive reviews. However, the DVD left me cold; in part because it left out so many crucial narrative arcs that made the novel so deeply felt, the movie felt hollow. In particular, Lindqvist depicts one of the most chilling vampire-human symbiotic relationships since Dracula put the bite on Renfield, and while it should come as no surprise that time limitations forced the film-makers to make some tough decisions, I felt that the movie adaptation really needed this element, if for no other reason than to give the title gravity and weight.

With that said, I learned of some controversy regarding the film's subtitles. Apparently, the DVD manufacturer substituted less nuanced subtitles for ones that graced the theatrical version. According to one reviewer, this substitution made the film virtually unwatchable, causing me to wonder if some of my resistance to the film might be due to this flub. Apparently, a new DVD is in the works, one that restores the original subtitles. When that version becomes available, I'll need to revisit the film. To be clear, the film is still very good; I just advise the curious to seek out the book.

Earning Some Love

Mermaid Heather blew me a kiss recently in the form of the Premio Dardos Award, which "is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web." Needless to say, I'm extremely flattered by the attention, especially since it comes from a much more prolific blogger like Heather. Hopefully, you have had a chance to read her insightful reflections on horror cinema, and if not, you will do so soon. I always enjoy her reviews.

As per tradition, I now pass the award on to at least five other blogs that I have enjoyed and think you should too. Some of these might be repeat winners (but hopefully that's ok):

Sexy Witch
Taliesin Meets the Vampires
Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience
Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire
Frankensteinia
Groovy Age of Horror

Thanks again, Heather!

TOKOYO GORE POLICE and the End of Nature

The natural world has come undone in Yoshihiro Nishimura's TOKOYO GORE POLICE, a film that posits a world in which bodily ripping, tearing, and evisceration creates the possibility for perverse, grotesque modification. These modifications blur the organic with the technological to the point where the two seemingly can't exist without one another. The natural world as we are accustomed to knowing it no longer exists, and appropriately, the filmmakers place the action in blighted, industrialized landscapes--dead buildings, dead concrete, dead industries.



These settings seem to suggest that our familiar technologies have played themselves out and that we have nowhere left to go but into the human body itself. Pain no longer truly exists--at least not entirely--as characters can survive terrific wounds, using them as opportunities to modify their bodies, coming back more lethal than ever. Paradoxically, these new bodily technologies make us more primitive, the film seems to tell us. The film's protagonist, Ruka, serves on a privatized police force that battles "Engineers," criminals whose use of these technologies make them all the more psychopathic and enraged.



The sexualized imagery of the film becomes particularly striking because human reproduction, as a part of nature, does not seem to have a place in this world. Rather, Engineers "reproduce" by passing on a small, phallic tumor that opens the organic body like a key. Once implanted, transformation takes place, and people find themselves reborn in grotesque fashion. One minor character exists as nothing more than stretched skin whose sexual organs spray orgiastic party-goers with fluid--presumably urine, though in this film, one can never feel too sure. In fact, TOKOYO GORE POLICE shows us bodies that have shocking capacities for spraying fluids, mostly blood. These absurd scenes (too many to count) appear strangely beautiful, as when Ruka cuts off the hands of a subway pervert and walks away with an umbrella shielding her from the blood that rains down on her.



As a whole, the movie comes across as (most of the time) an inspired nightmare right out of Donna Haraway's now seminal "Cyborg Manifesto." At other times, it seems to fall into goofy, Troma-styled splatstick. Apparently, there is a companion feature, MACHINE GIRL, which I have not seen but seems to promise more of the same.