38.-40. Death Line (1972), Therapy for a Vampire (2014), The Invitation (2022)
38. Death Line (1972), dir. Gary Sherman
This is a firm favourite which I've written about in detail before ( LJ / DW). I still very much stand by that previous review and indeed can only add minor points to it. One is a nice piece of narrative construction which I don't think I'd previously noticed. At the start of the film, the reason there is a policeman around in the underground station at all to approach for help when the young couple find James Manfred, OBE, unconscious on the platform is precisely because of his actions in the previous scene, as the copper is talking to the sex worker whom Manfred had propositioned before being attacked. Another is that the last surviving tunnel-dweller only says the words "mind the doors" to surface-dwellers, not for example his fellow tunnel-dweller who dies part-way through the story. So it's not just that that is the only English-language phrase he knows how to say, and which he uses in all situations - he specifically thinks of it as 'their' language, and is trying to use it in the appropriate context to communicate with them. It's another example of the very thoughtful and humanising characterisation used to create him.
The only small plot issue which niggles at me with this film is the question of when exactly the survivors of the original roof-fall broke back through the blockage, allowing the man we see in the present day to get through to the platforms and attack his victims. You would assume that if it had happened while any of the original generation of construction workers were still alive, they would have wanted to come out and return to normal life rather than stay underground, but it's also rather hard to believe that digging their way out would have taken that long, as it really doesn't appear to be a very large roof-fall in the film. The best explanation I can come up with is that they had been there long enough to have become so disillusioned with the society which had caused the fall and then abandoned them that they chose not to return to it. In that scenario, the main motivation for digging through the roof-fall would have been (or become if it wasn't initially) simply to reach a food source, rather than to escape.
39. Therapy for a Vampire (2014), dir. David Ruehm
I'd never heard of this film until Joel suggested watching it, but it's really lovely and was well worthwhile. It's a horror comedy about a vampire in 1930s Vienna who goes to Sigmund Freud for therapy. He's unhappy with his marriage, largely because his wife is driven mad by her inability to see her own face in the mirror and desperate for any kind of reassurance that she is still beautiful. Sigmund offers the services of a struggling young artist to paint her portrait, but the vampire is more interested in the painter's girlfriend. This is for a reason which I often find annoying, in that she is the reincarnation of his lost love, Nadilla, who died centuries earlier. However, in this context it's a trope which is knowingly undermined, so it was all part of the film's lightly-satirical approach to its subject matter. The story overall is quite touching, and it's very nicely shot, with a slightly fantastical style achieved via strong colours and contrasts and well designed sets. Some scenes even struck me as not just coincidentally being set in the same city, but deliberately designed to recall The Third Man, such as the cafe where the girlfriend works and a street fountain.
40. The Invitation (2022), dir. Jessica M. Thompson
Seen with Joel at The Light, using some free Vue cinema vouchers which are one of a choice of perks you can get with the bank account I have. Briefly, the heroine, Evie, is American, and working in temporary catering placements when the story begins. She discovers via a DNA test that she has English relatives, who prove to be an aristocratic family and invite her over to their mansion at their expense for a wedding. There, she meets the supposedly extremely attractive (but actually hugely skeevy) head of the household, Walter De Ville, but soon also begins having scary and unexplained experiences. It turns out he's a vampire, and she has been brought over to be converted into a vampire herself and complete his coven of three brides.
It's supposedly 'inspired by Dracula', which was why we went to see it, and in fairness there are plenty of references to Stoker's novel. One branch of the family is called the Billingtons and are lawyers from Whitby; the name De Ville is used by Dracula as a pseudonym; he also mentions that he was once known as Son of the Dragon; and lines from the novel (or close paraphrases of them) crop up periodically (e.g. "Tonight is mine, tomorrow is yours"). The basic set-up in which a mixed-race, working-class American woman gets to defeat a load of literally and metaphorically vampiric British aristocrats is obviously also good fun.
However, it spends rather too much time lingering over the rom-com it's initially supposed to appear to be rather than getting on to the vampirism. The plot set-up means it kind of has to, because if Evie really understood her true situation at any time before the wedding feast where it is finally revealed, she would obviously never have agreed to go into the room. So to preserve that big moment of revelation, as the producers obviously wanted to, she can only experience a few relatively minor doubts and concerns before that point - hence being stuck in boring rom-com mode for too long before going from zero to full blast on the horror. It's also just extremely unsubtle in almost every respect. The Dracula references are all repeated multiple times, Walter De Ville is blatantly villain-coded from his very first appearance, and it's full of jump scares rather than tension and atmosphere.
But what all that comes down to saying is that it was not produced for us, seasoned horror-viewers and massive Dracula geeks. It was made for the other people who were there in the cinema auditorium with us - c. twenty-year-olds with no particularly strong adherence to the horror genre. Whether it actually worked for them, I don't really know, but I guess for us it did at least assuage our curiosity about the latest entry in the ever-expanding universe of Dracula-inspired narratives. Lord knows, I have seen plenty of shitty films in my time in pursuit of that goal!
This is a firm favourite which I've written about in detail before ( LJ / DW). I still very much stand by that previous review and indeed can only add minor points to it. One is a nice piece of narrative construction which I don't think I'd previously noticed. At the start of the film, the reason there is a policeman around in the underground station at all to approach for help when the young couple find James Manfred, OBE, unconscious on the platform is precisely because of his actions in the previous scene, as the copper is talking to the sex worker whom Manfred had propositioned before being attacked. Another is that the last surviving tunnel-dweller only says the words "mind the doors" to surface-dwellers, not for example his fellow tunnel-dweller who dies part-way through the story. So it's not just that that is the only English-language phrase he knows how to say, and which he uses in all situations - he specifically thinks of it as 'their' language, and is trying to use it in the appropriate context to communicate with them. It's another example of the very thoughtful and humanising characterisation used to create him.
The only small plot issue which niggles at me with this film is the question of when exactly the survivors of the original roof-fall broke back through the blockage, allowing the man we see in the present day to get through to the platforms and attack his victims. You would assume that if it had happened while any of the original generation of construction workers were still alive, they would have wanted to come out and return to normal life rather than stay underground, but it's also rather hard to believe that digging their way out would have taken that long, as it really doesn't appear to be a very large roof-fall in the film. The best explanation I can come up with is that they had been there long enough to have become so disillusioned with the society which had caused the fall and then abandoned them that they chose not to return to it. In that scenario, the main motivation for digging through the roof-fall would have been (or become if it wasn't initially) simply to reach a food source, rather than to escape.
39. Therapy for a Vampire (2014), dir. David Ruehm
I'd never heard of this film until Joel suggested watching it, but it's really lovely and was well worthwhile. It's a horror comedy about a vampire in 1930s Vienna who goes to Sigmund Freud for therapy. He's unhappy with his marriage, largely because his wife is driven mad by her inability to see her own face in the mirror and desperate for any kind of reassurance that she is still beautiful. Sigmund offers the services of a struggling young artist to paint her portrait, but the vampire is more interested in the painter's girlfriend. This is for a reason which I often find annoying, in that she is the reincarnation of his lost love, Nadilla, who died centuries earlier. However, in this context it's a trope which is knowingly undermined, so it was all part of the film's lightly-satirical approach to its subject matter. The story overall is quite touching, and it's very nicely shot, with a slightly fantastical style achieved via strong colours and contrasts and well designed sets. Some scenes even struck me as not just coincidentally being set in the same city, but deliberately designed to recall The Third Man, such as the cafe where the girlfriend works and a street fountain.
40. The Invitation (2022), dir. Jessica M. Thompson
Seen with Joel at The Light, using some free Vue cinema vouchers which are one of a choice of perks you can get with the bank account I have. Briefly, the heroine, Evie, is American, and working in temporary catering placements when the story begins. She discovers via a DNA test that she has English relatives, who prove to be an aristocratic family and invite her over to their mansion at their expense for a wedding. There, she meets the supposedly extremely attractive (but actually hugely skeevy) head of the household, Walter De Ville, but soon also begins having scary and unexplained experiences. It turns out he's a vampire, and she has been brought over to be converted into a vampire herself and complete his coven of three brides.
It's supposedly 'inspired by Dracula', which was why we went to see it, and in fairness there are plenty of references to Stoker's novel. One branch of the family is called the Billingtons and are lawyers from Whitby; the name De Ville is used by Dracula as a pseudonym; he also mentions that he was once known as Son of the Dragon; and lines from the novel (or close paraphrases of them) crop up periodically (e.g. "Tonight is mine, tomorrow is yours"). The basic set-up in which a mixed-race, working-class American woman gets to defeat a load of literally and metaphorically vampiric British aristocrats is obviously also good fun.
However, it spends rather too much time lingering over the rom-com it's initially supposed to appear to be rather than getting on to the vampirism. The plot set-up means it kind of has to, because if Evie really understood her true situation at any time before the wedding feast where it is finally revealed, she would obviously never have agreed to go into the room. So to preserve that big moment of revelation, as the producers obviously wanted to, she can only experience a few relatively minor doubts and concerns before that point - hence being stuck in boring rom-com mode for too long before going from zero to full blast on the horror. It's also just extremely unsubtle in almost every respect. The Dracula references are all repeated multiple times, Walter De Ville is blatantly villain-coded from his very first appearance, and it's full of jump scares rather than tension and atmosphere.
But what all that comes down to saying is that it was not produced for us, seasoned horror-viewers and massive Dracula geeks. It was made for the other people who were there in the cinema auditorium with us - c. twenty-year-olds with no particularly strong adherence to the horror genre. Whether it actually worked for them, I don't really know, but I guess for us it did at least assuage our curiosity about the latest entry in the ever-expanding universe of Dracula-inspired narratives. Lord knows, I have seen plenty of shitty films in my time in pursuit of that goal!