Wednesday Horror: Blade

Films: Blade
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I remember when it was first announced that Ant Man was going to be turned into a movie, allegedly with Edgar Wright directing. I’ve since seen Ant Man and it was okay, but hardly the movie it could have been, since it was tied into the Marvel Comics Universe. The reason for my initial excitement was that Marvel had previously made a few movies based on properties that they really didn’t care much about. One of those was Blade.

Blade isn’t a great movie. It might honestly not even be a good movie, and it’s certainly a case where the first sequel was better than the original film. What it is, though, is a really fun and entertaining movie. Blade is only marginally a horror movie in that there are a couple of gory moments and the main antagonists are vampires. What it really is is an action movie where Wesley Snipes gets to kill a shit-ton of vampires with a variety of weapons. Oh, there’s plenty of stuff that doesn’t work in the movie and a lot of things that defy all sorts of logic. But it’s hard not to be entertained by martial arts battles with swords and general ass-kicking.

Off Script: Death Machine

Film: Death Machine
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop

When you watch films off a planned list, you start to realize particular things. One things that you realize pretty quickly is that any list—even the AFI’s top 100—on some level reflects the tastes, opinions, and ideas of the list creator(s). Sometimes that’s easier to hide, and longer lists, since they include more, are less prone to personal bias. I say all of this because I’m starting to learn things about the editors of Fangoria Magazine and about their personal tastes in films beyond the basic “We like ‘em splattery!”

Death Machine is an odd choice for the Fangoria list. At least I found it an odd choice because I really don’t know what to make of it. It feels very much like a film created by a very talented and clever amateur. There are certainly some aspects of this film that really work and others that fall about as flat as a typical SyFy Original.