Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, DVD, Horror, Werewolf

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, JR Bourne, Tom McCamus
screenplay by Christina Ray and Stephen Massicotte
directed by Grant Harvey

by Walter Chaw Ravenous but not funny, the clumsily-titled Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning takes the venerable Canadian she-wolf franchise and, in Canuck fashion, de-sexualizes it by suggesting that the appearance of two relatively nubile lasses at an isolated fort populated entirely by men rouses no passions beyond a metaphorical anxiety of invasion from without. The females in horror films tend to be the consumptive dank underground–in slashers specifically, they're the avatar for teen-boy fantasies of revenge. But in Ginger Snaps Back, they're neither avatar nor holy object, really, just catalysts for the interpersonal dramas of male settlers. The implications are many, most strident among them the unavoidable one that in Canadian cinema, sex is either perfunctory, ugly, forced, or involves a dead person. We've come a long way from the budding sexuality of the first Ginger Snaps film–all the way to an almost complete evasion of both the Orientalism in a medium-hot near-tryst wet dream with a Native American warrior and subsumed homosexual buddy lust. This despite the menstrual implications so cannily established by the franchise.

Van Helsing (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, DVD, Romania, Vampire, Werewolf

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham
written and directed by Stephen Sommers

Vanhelsingcapby Walter Chaw There are times now and again over the course of Stephen Sommers's unspeakable Van Helsing when the film is so brazenly bad that it threatens to be satirical–so bad that one is left to scramble to pull some sort of gestalt sense from the carnage. But it's just a mess, a cesspool of half-formed ideas and images ripped off whole from The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Hugh Jackman reprising Wolverine from X-Men and Kate Beckinsale essentially reprising her role from Underworld. All of it's wrapped up in a cacophonous jumble of dour mattes, really (really) bad CGI, and an Alan Silvestri score that is itself a rip-off of everything that made John Williams famous (that is, Holst's "The Planets"). Way too long at just over two hours with no story to speak of justifying its length, the piece is stolen by David Wenham as a deadpan 19th century Q, Friar Carl, and grinds to a dead standstill whenever Jackman delivers one of his twenty lines, Beckinsale chimes in with a jarring non sequitur ("There's a bright side to death in Transylvania"), Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein's monster threatens to cry out "Puttin' on the Riiiitz," or Richard Roxburgh as Count Dracula vamps around like a diva in a John Waters film. If only Van Helsing were campy.

Dracula: The Legacy Collection – DVD

Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Vampire, Werewolf

DRACULA (1931)
***/**** Image C Sound C|A (with Glass score) Extras A+
starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the novel by Bram Stoker and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston
directed by Tod Browning

DRÁCULA (1931)
***/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Carlos Villarias, Lupita Taylor, Pablo Alvarez Rubio, Barry Norton
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the novel by Bram Stoker and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston; adapted in Spanish by B. Fernandez Cue
directed by George Melford

DRACULA’S DAUGHTER (1936)
***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Edward Van Sloan
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker
directed by Lambert Hillyer

SON OF DRACULA (1943)
*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Lon Chaney Jr., Robert Paige, Louise Allbritton, Evelyn Ankers
screenplay by Eric Taylor
directed by Robert Siodmak

HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)
½*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, Lionel Atwill
screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr.
directed by Erle C. Kenton

by Walter Chaw Tod Browning’s Dracula finds its way to the DVD format for the second time as part of a handsome “Legacy Collection” heralding the theatrical bow of the studio’s lead balloon Van Helsing, possibly denoting the first time that a cynically-timed archival video release was announced with pride and fanfare instead of slipped surreptitiously into the marketplace. Never mind that a purchase of the Legacy collection whole (essaying Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein) proves to be far better for the soul than shelling out a few bones to catch Stephen Sommers’s latest assault on sense and cinema, even if doing so feels a little like letting Universal have its cake and eat it, too: There are worse things in the world than a mainstream shipwreck inspiring a vital resurrection.

The Wolf Man: The Legacy Collection – DVD

Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Werewolf

THE WOLF MAN (1941)
**/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy
screenplay by Curt Siodmak
directed by George Waggner

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943)
**½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Ilona Massey, Patric Knowles
screenplay by Curt Siodmak
directed by Roy William Neill

SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946)
*/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Don Porter, June Lockhart, Sara Haden, Jan Wiley
screenplay by George Bricker
directed by Jean Yarbrough

WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935)
*½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews
screenplay by John Colton
directed by Stuart Walker

Extras A-

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Pity the poor Wolf Man. In ranking the unholy trinity of Universal monsters, he's the ugly stepchild, lacking both the popularity and iconic weight loaded onto stablemates Dracula and Frankenstein. As far as I know, no teenage outsider ever acted out by pretending to be a werewolf, nor does anyone make a metaphor of lycanthropy the way they do with Frankenstein's Monster. The Wolf Man is a beast without home or purpose, a welcome addition to monster tag teams but otherwise a second-tier entity who failed to capture the public's imagination as something to be taken beyond face value.

Underworld (2003)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Germany, Horror, Hungary, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, Vampire, Werewolf

*½/****
starring Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Shane Brolly, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Danny McBride
directed by Len Wiseman

Underworldby Walter Chaw Appearing to be based on two White Wolf role-playing games–"Vampire: The Masquerade" and "Werewolf: The Apocalypse"–introduced a while back (and indeed, the games company is suing Sony, Screen Gems, and Lakeshore for copyright infringement, citing no fewer than sixty points of unique similarity), Len Wiseman's Underworld may prove to be less "Romeo and Juliet" than much ado about nothing. The picture looks fantastic, Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman look fantastic, and that's pretty much all there is recommend about the piece, which is so boring, lifeless, and humourless that White Wolf would do well to distance itself from the thing toot sweet. This is gravid filmmaking at its worst, indulging in its twin cults' puerile wish-fulfillment fantasies with a sexless lust: the life of an immortal rock star in period garb thirsting for the blood of bullies for the one, of a raging man-beast thirsting for the blood of bullies for the other. In between are tons of rip-offs of everything from The Crow to The Matrix to the leather fetish and arms of Blade to the sweaty bodice-ripping of Anne Rice to the Alien3 wall-crawling monster views of David Fincher. Wiseman, in his hyphenate debut (he co-concocted the story), has scored big with a real-life engagement to the ethereally beautiful–and undernourished and anaemic–Kate Beckinsale, enough to take the sting out of the blah of Underworld, I'd surmise. And why not? Many would fail worse for less, but as a writer and director he proves himself to be a pretty good set designer.

Darkwolf (2003) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Werewolf, ZERO STARS

Dark Wolf
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C
starring Samaire Armstrong, Ryan Alosio, Andrea Bogart, Jaime Bergman
screenplay by Geoffrey Alan Holliday
directed by Richard Friedman

by Walter Chaw Something to do with hybrid werewolves and full-breed werewolves and how one hybrid biker werewolf is interested in mating with the last full-bred matriarch bitch in order to preserve the line of the pure-blood werewolves, the direct-to-video DarkWolf at least has the decency to open in a strip club and continue into a fairly decent gore set-piece before launching into its incomprehensible lore. Tied to the creatures of the id-horror subgenre (the best example of which is probably Neil Jordan’s psychosexual A Company of Wolves), a recent glut of lycanthropic fare (Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers) holds a curious candle to the idea that, despite Arab belief to the contrary, Western civilization seems to be regressing into a puritanical sexual hysteria that proves fertile ground for horror films about the cycle of sexual repression/aggression. It’s possible, also, that guys (and dolls) in fur suits are just cool again.

Film Freak Central Does San Franciso’s 2002 Dark Wave Film Festival

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Spain, Thriller, UK, Werewolf

Darkwavelogoby Walter Chaw The question, and it's a question with currency, is why anyone in their right mind would subject themselves (and their long-suffering editors) to coverage of two concurrent film festivals. A pair of answers: the obvious is that I'm not in my right mind, but as obvious is the fact that San Francisco's Dark Wave, which ran from October 18-20, is one of the most exciting "small" film festivals in the United States. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about it, in other words–ulcers be damned. Presented by the hale San Francisco Film Society evenings and midnights at the historic Roxie, last year's presentation included one of this year's best films (Larry Fessenden's superb Wendigo) as well as the finest example of retro euro-horror (Lionel Delplanque's Deep in the Woods) since Dario Argento lost his marbles.

Wolfen (1981) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Werewolf

**½/**** Image A- Sound B-
starring Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan
screenplay by David Eyre and Michael Wadleigh, based on the novel by Whitley Strieber
directed by Michael Wadleigh

by Bill Chambers Wolfen goes through the paces of a typical detective thriller, but it’s far from conventional. I crave to understand this picture’s somewhat literal bleeding heart better and thought the DVD would be of more assistance–unfortunately, the advertised commentary track with actors Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos and director/co-writer Michael Wadleigh is AWOL. My mother calls Wolfen “a werewolf movie from the werewolf’s point of view,” and that’s not a bad take on it, since the homicidal title creatures are in essence the good guys of the piece. Certainly, the film’s preponderance of “wolf P.O.V.” shots make it less than figuratively so.

Ginger Snaps (2001) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, DVD, Horror, Teen, Werewolf

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche, Mimi Rogers
screenplay by Karen Walton
directed by John Fawcett

by Bill Chambers Ginger Snaps is so eager to have its double meanings understood, like a kid with a secret, that the text upon its subtext becomes transparent–and when you can see through a film, it's just not as much fun. About a month ago, I watched John Landis's An American Werewolf in London for the first time in years and gradually came to understand how and why I'd identified with it as an adolescent: After being inflicted with the werewolf's curse, David, the hero, goes through a second adolescence. Ginger Snaps makes David into a literal teenager–and a girl, a Carrie White-esque late-bloomer named Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) who survives a werewolf attack only to misinterpret the next 30 days as a particularly harsh growth spurt.