CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER

                                               

STATS:

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER
1974
Written and Directed by Brian Clemens
Starring Horst Janson (seriously)
                   

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A rich family goes around sucking the life out of pretty, young girls in order to stay youthful forever. Our titular captain (What is he the captain of? No idea.) comes to the rescue, defeating these age-sucking jerkwads with his fencing skills, luck with the ladies, and obscure vampire knowledge. (Fun fact: vampires can bring dead toads back to life just by walking by.)
                 

                       

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I’ve always been a Hammer fan, and I knew this entry in their mid-70s output is particularly strange. Not oppressively strange in a kung-fu-vampires kind of way, but strange enough to catch my interest on a lazy Saturday morning.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Kronos is shirtless a good 40% of the movie. He has one dimly lit sex scene, and a bunch of innocent bromantic scenes with another male character that turn slightly more homoerotic because hes shirtless. (In one memorable exchange, his buddy touches the captain's torso scar and says that he knows he has guts, because he’s already seen his insides.) The actor playing Kronos isn’t exactly someone to write home about, but hey.
                 

                           

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Mostly slight trickles of mouth blood and glumpy old-age make-up. Hammer has done a lot better in the past.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I enjoyed the wonky mythos that this film built around its vampire characters. Specifically, each vampire can only be killed in specific ways. Some have to be staked, some have to be burnt, and some have to get a crucifix to sink into their embarrassingly vulnerable chest. It must suck to be the vampire that dies via garlic pizza.
                    

                           

OK. IS IT GAY?

Yeah. The film builds a strange rhythm where it has a bromance scene with Kronos and the doctor who summoned him (the scar-caressing one), followed very quickly by Kronos making sexy-time with his female companion. Either hes bi, or he needs to sort through some issues fast. That, coupled with a particularly androgynous son-of-a-vampire, makes for some pleasant 70s escapism with a slight queer bent. Fun times all around.
                          

SCREAMTIME

SCREAMTIME is a presumably British horror anthology from the 80s that should have been cheesy and forgettable, but somehow rises above its ambitions by interesting plot twists, good acting, and lots of respect for the target audience. The last point is illustrated by the fact that the framing devise involves people hanging out and watching rented VHS videos from a random mom-and-pop store. Brownie points right there!

Just the word CASSETTES makes me happy.

The stories are not particularly revolutionary, especially the killer puppeteer segment that opens the movie. But holy crap did I find myself wrapped up in the story. I thought the old man was very sympathetic, the accents were charming, and the puppet was the requisite amount of creepy.

The level of blood and violence was also way up, so points for that. But by far my favorite moment in the film was the twist ending to the haunted house story. Brutal, unexpected, and so so good. You can check this one out on Netflix Instant. Be patient, though, because each of the three stories (puppets, haunted houses, elves) has something new to offer.

A body. Of course.

THE COTTAGE

STATS:

THE COTTAGE

2008

Directed by Paul Andrew Williams

Written by Paul Andrew Williams

Starring Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith and Jennifer Ellison

Gollum.

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A crime drama turns into a comedy which turns into a straight up slasher film. Half the fun of this movie is watching the plot go in random directions, so I won't give anything away. But I would just say that it definitely satisfies as a horror movie by the end. And it has a final scene that is brilliant.

WHAT YOU SAY?

"That’s chlorophyll for you."

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

There is nothing special about this movie. I have no idea how I heard about it. It was probably just recommended to me by the internet robots working behind the scenes at Netflix. Either way, I had no expectations going in, and was shocked by pretty much everything that happened.

Emma Bunton, aka Baby Spice, aka a British person

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Plenty of gore scenes, some funny, some really really nasty. But whenever a knife or bear trap comes out, it hurts the characters in ways that you don't see coming. Like this scene, where the main character slowly puts his face closer and closer to the keyhole. Just try to guess what happens...

Seriously. Guess. I'll wait.

Nope. That is incorrect.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

No nudity to speak of. This film is strictly about the slapstick violence.

And sexual chemistry

RANDOM THOUGHTS:
Some people might have heard about this film because of the cameo by Pinhead himself, looking particularly less Gothic. In that case, great. He is a fine actor. If that piques your interest enough to rent the movie, go for it. But don't expect him to do anything pivotal to the plot. It's sort of like that Robert Englund cameo at the beginning of Hatchet.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
This movie was a joy to watch, start to finish, possibly because it starts going in one direction and makes at least three hilarious and gruesome left turns throughout its quick, breezy run-time. Thank you, Netfix robots, for turning me on to such a fun movie, and for also telling me absolutely nothing about what happens. That makes the journey even more special.

DOCTOR WHO: The Television Movie

STATS:

DOCTOR WHO: The Television Movie

1996

Directed by Geoffrey Sax

Written by Matthew Jacobs

Starring Paul McGann, Eric Roberts(!), Daphne Ashbrook, and Sylvester McCoy

WHA’ HAPPENED?

The previous Doctor comes back for a quick, nearly wordless cameo before he gets gunned down and replaced by this guy...

...who is fancy and British in all sorts of ways. He has to battle his arch nemesis The Master, played by Eric Roberts in a role that basically spells out why he isn't as famous as his sister.  There's also some romantic tension going on, which is a new thing for the Doctor, though it isn't taken to the same degree as in later seasons.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?
Well, 'tis the holiday season, so what better time to pay tribute to a show that consistently busts out sappy Christmas specials every year. It must be a British thing. This episode in particular has nothing to do with the holidays aside from a little fireworks show at the end, but it does seem properly wintery throughout.

On a side note, I have become a recent fan of Doctor Who, particularly the latest incarnation, Matt Smith. I've seen a little bit from each of the Doctors, even the awful ones...

...but I never got the chance to check out this lone entry from the Eighth Doctor. It's sort of remembered as a footnote in the Whoniverse. Not late-80s-awful, but also not quite modern enough to relaunch the franchise for the nineties. I was genuinely curious about this one.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

While having some major flaws in tone and melodrama ("WHO. AM. I?!"), it does seem to pave the way toward the later series. It definitely has some of the campy appeal of the earlier, kid-oriented seasons, particularly when the Master is on screen dressed like Ming the Merciless.

But it does feel darker in a way that the other serials never did. (Except for that time the Sixth Doctor tried to strangle his companion for no reason. But let's ignore that.) The stakes seem genuine, even if the time-heavy climax made no sense to me. And like I noted before, the added romance was a nice touch, and an inevitable change for modern audiences.

I also liked the redesigned TARDIS, which is similar to the later seasons, but slightly cheesier. I assume it looked more realistic before they started filming, and then Eric Roberts got too close and brushed up against it.

OK. IS IT GAY?

Not really. Campy, sure. But not enough to push it over the edge into a definite recommend. Now that I've seen it, I understand why it's a footnote. I also understand why it's not exactly reviled by Who fans. Check it out if you're interested in the character. It's a TV movie through and through.