The Dracula Story, Take 25

Film: Dracula A.D. 1972
Format: DVD from Mokena Community Public Library through interlibrary loan on basement television.

There are a lot of basic stories that crop up on this blog over and over. It seems like there’s a Holocaust movie every year, for instance. Nothing shows up here more than Dracula, though, although there may be more zombie films overall. Dracula is probably the most frequently mentioned character, though, and that’s especially the case if you include Count Orlock as essentially the same character. With Dracula A.D. 1972 we are once again diving into the Dracula story, with the only real difference being the setting. If you have to have something to separate your Dracula movie from all of the rest, having cars and 1970s technology is at least a start.

After the original Dracula story where the Count goes ham on Mina Harker, all of the Dracula stories are essentially variations on a theme. Dracula, who was killed in the previous film (or in this case, simply killed in the past) is resurrected in one way or another. He hyper-fixates on a young woman, kills a few others to gain strength, makes a few lesser vampires to assist him, and generally speaking dies just as he is about to turn his obsession into his newest vampiric creation.

ChatGPT

Film: The Artifice Girl
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I like science fiction and I always have. Sci-fi and fantasy were more or less my introductory genres to reading beyond children’s books. I got Ray Bradbury collections for Christmas when I was 8 and I was hooked. One of the reasons I love science fiction is that the best of it asks a great existential question that really isn’t answered by other genres: what makes us human? The advent of AI has given us this theme more and more, and The Artifice Girl explores it in a way that is interesting and worth the time to consider.

This is a question that has been asked for a long time. It’s come up regarding aliens (The Man Who Fell to Earth, for instance, or Spock’s funeral in Wrath of Khan where Kirk says that Spock was truly human), but it comes up more commonly with robots, androids, and artificial intelligence. Sometimes those intelligences are benign (Her), amoral (Ex Machina), or actively evil (Upgrade), but the question is best asked by presenting us with an intelligence that seems to walk that tightrope between human intelligence and uncanny valley. If we start with the premise that the AI in question can pass the Turing test, then the question of its humanity becomes a real one.

Out for a Bite

Film: Maggie
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

Maggie is a movie that is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it’s very much a zombie movie, but there are only a couple of zombies that appear in it. It’s slow and contemplative, the sort of zombie movie that a horror fan could legitimately show to a non-horror fan with the hope that they might actually enjoy it. The second thing about Maggie is that it’s evidence that Arnold Schwarzenegger can act.

Yeah, I know. Up to this point, Arnie’s best performances were in the first two Terminator movies and a mindless killing machine and then as a mindful killing machine. In Maggie, he’s asked to play a truly emotional role, one that would be difficult for any actor, and he pulls it of surprisingly well. Arnie has some chops, and that’s kind of surprising.

Do I Make You Horny?

Film: Death of a Unicorn
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Remember The Cabin in the Woods? The elevator sequence is one of the better parts of the film. When all of the monsters are released and storm the compound, we get to see a whole bunch of them on the warpath. The one that didn’t really seem to fit was the unicorn, but it’s a great moment when we see it ram someone through the chest with its horn. Well, Death of a Unicorn is sort of what that movie would have looked like if our heroes had dialed up the unicorn instead of the zombie redneck torture family.

It's a fun idea, and clearly one that is going to divert into comedy for at least some of what we’re going to see. A horror movie with unicorns as the creature is, at least on the surface, going to be as scary as the rabbits in Night of the Lepus. What this means is that the film is going to depend on the comedy to work. And, for the most part, it kind of doesn’t. A24 tends to have a better reputation than this, but they can’t all be winners, can they?

A Bird in the Hand

Film: Cuckoo
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

There are times when I’m not sure what to think about a movie going in. Cuckoo is such a film. This is a movie with a positive review score from critics and a negative review score from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s below the 3.0 Mendoza line on Letterboxd. But, while that’s true, I heard a lot good about it. It’s a real part of my life now that I find it almost impossible to talk movies with a lot of other people. Most of the time, they have no idea what the movies are that I’m talking about. “What the hell is Cuckoo?” I hear 99% of the people I know in real life saying.

Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) has just lost her mother, and as a teen, cannot really be alone, so she is forced to move to Bavaria with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), hrer stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their daughter Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute. The family has arrived there to help build a new hotel, which is run by a man named König (Dan Stevens). Needing something to do, Gretchen takes a job at the front desk, but strange things start happening immediately, including women wandering around half-clothed, multiple female guests vomiting, Alma suffering a seizure that appeared to be triggered by a strange noise, and more. Most terrifying, one night riding her bike home, Gretchen is pursued by a woman wearing a hood, an event that is passed off as a prank by the local police.

I Put a Spell on You

Film: The Love Witch
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Camp, when it’s good camp, is almost always unintentional. Quality camp is something that happens, not something that is specifically created, although there are certainly some exceptions. The Love Witch, from 2016 is possibly an exception to that basic idea, but it may not be. This is a film that is very much an homage to horror films from the 1970s. There’s a lot of The Stepford Wives lurking here, and a good amount of giallo in the mix. As a part of that, a lot of the acting is very stilted, and I can only think this is intentional. While most of the film looks like it’s taking place in that era (including some antique cars and a lot of retro furniture), everyone seems to have a cell phone, so the confusion is clearly intended.

We’re going to be spending most of the movie in the company of Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson), a witch who is both remarkably lucky and remarkably unlucky in love. Recently widowed, and the more we see the more she is clearly implicated in the death of her husband, Elaine moves to the town of Aracata, CA, a place that accepts witchcraft. Elaine is going to set up shop, looking for a new man. She meets Trish (Laura Waddell), who is happily married, which causes some jealousy in Elaine, and yes, that’s eventually going to pay off.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2025 Part 2

While I slacked off with movies in the second half of the month, I watched a ton of television, focusing on shorter shows in general. I finished the rebooted Battlestar Galactica right at the start of the month, and while it’s good, it’s also one of the bleakest shows I have ever seen. I finished The Irrational, a show that really should have gotten a third season, and also completed the fourth and final season of The Righteous Gemstones—the end of this feels like a step down, but it's a solid series all the way through. At the end of the month, I went on a huge TV kick, watching the second season of The Last of Us, finishing the NetFlix series Derry Girls, and watching both seasons of the animated Star Trek cartoons. I’m recommitting to the MCU and watched Agent Carter. Finally, I watched the first season of High Potential, and I’m looking forward to season 2.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2025 Part 1

July was a month of two halves for me. The first half of the month, I watched a lot of movies, but I hit a wall and watched almost nothing in the second half. In fact, I barely looked at this blog (I’ll catch up on comments, I promise). I won’t bore anyone with reasons for this. Ultimately, I just never felt in the mood to spend that much time watching something. I’m at just under 200 movies on the year, which is off the pace I wanted, but I’m deciding that’s okay and I’m not going to pressure myself to catch up.