Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

A typical frame of Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl

This is another film from the director of Tokyo Gore Police, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and if you've seen that film (or even read the title) then you've probably got a pretty good idea of what to expect from this one. Here he teams up with Naoyuki Tomomatsu (the director of high-school satire/zombie flick Stacy) to create a supernatural high-school romance that is refreshingly free of sparkling vampires and abstinence propaganda. Indeed Stephenie Meyer's naive Mormon bubble-head would pop like a balloon if she saw this film, and as entertaining a sight as that would be it still wouldn't be as gory as this film. Make no mistake: this film is bloody.

Here in the West, Valentine's Day is just another excuse for mega-corporations to suck money from the pockets of men everywhere. In Japan, however, it's a special day where girls give chocolates to the guys they like. Consequently hunky dreamboat Mizushima (Takumi Saito) is given a chocolate by the shy new girl Monami (Yukie Kawamura). It has a special ingredient however, and when he eats it he starts tripping balls and sees people as walking circulatory systems. When he wakes up later in the school nurse's office he disovers that Monami is a vampire and the chocolate, which was filled with her own blood, has turned him into a half-vampire so they can live together for all eternity.

Unfortunately he is also being wooed by the spoiled, popular Keiko (Eri Otoguro), daughter of the meek and wimpy Vice Principal. What Keiko doesn't know is that her father is actually a Kabuki Dr. Frankenstein in his spare time, running a mad science laboratory in the basement of the school with the help of the sexy school nurse. His experiments on kidnapped students produce nothing but grotesque failures until he discovers the secret ingredient, a drop of Monami's vampire blood. After Keiko is murdered by Monami in a rooftop accident, he uses the opportunity to bring her back to life as a Frankenstein's monster, setting the stage for a bloody final battle on top of Tokyo Tower.

I did like the way this film turned the typical high-school love triangle on it's head. The titular fight may be over Mizushima's love, but he wants nothing to do with either of these girls. As he narrates later in the film: "And this is how the battle over love began between Vampire Girl and Frankenstein Girl. By the way, has anyone considered my feelings?" Although we end up siding with Monami by default, she's also completely insane, cheerfully murdering her rivals and anyone else who crosses her. She is also helped by her hunchbacked assistant Igor, posing as the school janitor (I don't know why he's the vampire's assistant and not Dr. Frankenstein's) and his existence is acknowledged as the sad fate of Monami's past boyfriends. It's like Let the Right One In by way of early Peter Jackson.

Although there's nothing that matches the pissing chair from Tokyo Gore Police, the film features a lot of entertaining grotesqueries. Dr. Frankenstein's vampire-powered surgery enables him to create freaks with oddities such as head-mounted propellers made from severed limbs. The school nurse gets the Bride of Frankenstein treatment, with each breast adorned by eyeballs and severed fingers. Even Igor shows up during the final battle wearing Samurai armour made from human bones and swinging a skull-crushing rib-cage like the Master of the Flying Guillotine. There's also a great fight during a flashback sequence, between Monami's mother (played by Eihi Shiina from Tokyo Gore Police) and St Francis Xavier with his "sumo from hell" armed with with blades for arms and a helmet-mounted cannon.

There's probably more of a focus on comedy here than inTokyo Gore Police or even Machine Girl. High school romance cliches are mocked with some nicely ironic use of terrible Japanese pop songs, especially during a blood-shower scene that makes the one in Tokyo Gore Police look tame and realistic. Japanese high school subcultures are also ridiculed in tasteless, Troma-esque fashion, such as the emo wrist-cutting girls (a subject already tackled in Tokyo Gore Police) who participate in the 13th Nationwide High School Student Wrist Cut Rally, the reigning champ disqualified after she accidentally cuts off her own arm.

The most uncomfortable part of the film for me was the Ganguro girls (a peculiar Japanese subculture in which girls get dark tans and wear extravagant makeup as a way rebelling against conformity), which have been exaggerated into Afro-American obsessed, Obama-quoting, spear-carrying Sambo caricatures in blackface makeup. Oh, Japan. You so crazy. Also, Ju-On director Takashi Shimizu makes an appearance as a Chinese teacher (managing to work in a plug for his film series) whose exposure to auto-emissions and factory pollution has given him super-powered lungs.

Some of the comedy may have been a little squirm-inducing, but I still liked this one. It wasn't as meandering as Tokyo Gore Police and had a shorter length that seemed just about right. Obviously you have to be in a very specific mindset to enjoy these films and willing to forgive a multitude of sins, but they seem to be getting a little better with each iteration. I'm not sure how much longer it will be until they run out of steam or I lose interest, but I'm looking forward to the next one.

Twilight (2008)

"Bella, how many times to I have to walk right up to you
and tell you to stay away from me before you'll listen?"

I was shocked at how bad Twilight was. It was poorly written and it's characters were vile, but for me it's biggest crime was that it was so boring. I don't think I've ever read a book that's so determined to avoid exploring any of the concepts it raises. It dodges interesting ideas and plot hooks like Neo dodges bullets. I don't need a book to have lots of sex and violence or even a complex plot (although they could have only helped) but at least give me some conflict or tension. There were parts in the book where I could tell that something dramatic was supposed to be happening, but it was written with all the urgency and emotion of two people deciding where to eat for dinner.

So why watch the movie if I hated the novel so much? Well, mostly I was curious to see how it was possible to extract a 122 minute (!) movie out of a 500 page novel where barely anything happens except the same half a dozen thoughts bouncing around inside the protagonist's empty head. To it's credit the movie resorts to voiceover narration far less often than I was expecting, but the flipside of that is that there is a ridiculous amount of instense staring. Several of the actors could have been replaced by bobbleheads without losing anything in the process. In many cases it would have been an improvement.

I don't have a lot to say about Kristen Stewart as Bella. How can you fault an actor for a dull performance when they are playing a character with no personality whatsoever? Like in the book everybody seems to love her and grovel for her approval for no discernable reason. Even Edward's incestuous-but-not-really family welcome Bella with open arms. It's pretty strange because it seems like the story would work a lot better if she was more of an outcast and a loner. As it stands she just seems maddeningly passive and enormously self-absorbed. I guess it captures that part of the teenage experience pretty well, but it doesn't make for thrilling cinema.

Secondly there's Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen. I haven't seen this guy in anything else but he doesn't seem like much of an actor here. When he meets Bella for the first time he's supposed to be cold and distant due to his uncontrollable thirst for her blood. This seems like it should work but wow, this guy overacts something fierce. When she first walks into the classroom he spasms and grimaces like he just shit his pants, then for the rest of the class he scowls and twitches like a heroin junkie. He should be cool like Jimmy Dean, but instead he looks like a fucking nutcase. This is some comedy gold, right here. The rest of the time he's just boring, but occassionally he'll seem utterly creepy and psychotic and thus faithful to the source material.

At over two hours (including at least half an hour of Edward scowling in slow motion), the film seems ridiculously overlong. In the book the plot doesn't really pick up until the last hundred or so pages, so here they've inserted a few short scenes to show the main antagonists attacking people, drinking blood (off-screen) and generally making me wish the movie was about them instead. A game of super-powered baseball is what passes for the main action sequence in this movie. I kind of liked it, reminded me of Shaolin Soccer. After the final confrontation the bad guy is dealt with off-screen, and not in a cool way like in Let The Right One In, Bella just passes out and misses the whole thing. Way to go, dipshit.

The main problem with Twilight is that for all his brooding and scowling and "stay away from me baby, I'm bad for you", you never really buy Edward as dangerous. There's a hilarious part where he scowls at some would-be rapists and they leap back in fear. They don't even CG his face to make him look like a monster, he just looks kind of angry and they react like he's the scariest motherfucker on the planet. It's almost pathetic how shocked Edward is at Bella's nonplussed reaction to his vampire sparkliness. Without any menace to Edward there is a complete lack of conflict in their relationship. Bella's desire to become a vampire should seem tragic, but why wouldn't she want that? Being a vampire seems totally awesome.

If you were to replicate the experience of reading Stephanie Meyer's prose on the big screen you would need to hire Uwe Boll to direct, but I think they closed that German tax loop that let him write off his film losses so they hired Catherine Hardwicke instead. I can't really fault her for the job she does here. She was saddled with an impossible task from the very beginning, stuck between terrible source material and a screaming fanbase who would have lynched her if every plot hole and laugh-out-stupidity wasn't replicated on screen in souless, exacting detail. She hasn't quite made a silk purse from a sow's ear, but she's made a sow's ear from a sow's ear, and that's pretty much all you could ask from her.

Thirst (1979)

Dame Edna... nooo!

Here is another Australian horror film that I liked. I don't know how much longer this hot streak can last. It starts with a great opening scene: A woman suddenly wakes up in a Gothic crypt straight out of a Hammer movie. As she screams and pounds on the door, begging to be let out, some mysterious voices discuss her "conditioning", one of them stressing that her "sanity is close to breaking point". Flashback to a week ago and we discover her name is Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) a successful ad executive with an awesome 70s pad who spends her time rolling around in front of her big open fireplace with her hairy boyfriend. After discovering a mysterious cartoon of blood in her fridge she is kidnapped by an international secret society and taken to a remote compound called The Farm.

There she is confronted by the sinister Mrs Barker (the great Shirley Cameron) and Mr Hodge (Max Phipps). They tell her that she is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Bathory and thus part of a royal vampire bloodline. Naturally they can't kill her, all they can do is try to get her to accept her destiny. Mr Hodge wants to marry her and merge their bloodlines but I don't know how he can hope to compete against the 70s machismo of Kate's boyfriend. He doesn't even have an awesome mustache.

Not only that, The Farm is actually a blood processing plant, like a dairy. The "blood-cows" wander around in a drug-induced stupor, occasionally corralled into a factory where their blood is drained, processed, packaged and shipped around the world. It's a great and really creepy idea. There's even a funny part where a tour guide cheerfully touts the factory's high levels of hygiene and blood purity to some vampire tourists, who snap away with their cameras happily. You know vampires would be pulling this shit if they were around today, the fuckers. Obviously Kate doesn't respond well to this information, so after a failed escape attempt they begin a process of systematically toying with her and breaking her down mentally so she succumbs to her instincts.

They begin by locking her in a crypt and when that doesn't work they drug her into a hallucinogenic state and try to brainwash her. Some really good dream sequences follow. A romantic picnic with her boyfriend is spoiled by a blood-filled chicken drumstick. She tries to have a drink only to find the mug filled with blood. She tries to relax with a hot shower at home and what do you think comes out? Blood, and lots of it. Soon she finds herself locked in a library while an enormous beast (the "thirst") tries to get in from outside, shaking the walls and knocking over furniture. This seems to do the trick and they think their conditioning has taken, but when they release her to the outside world she immediately chows down on a co-worker and tries to bite her boyfriend. Dang, time for some more conditioning.

I'm not sure exactly what powers the vampires in this movie have, except for extreme assholishness. They make some vague references to power and eternal youth but the vampires in this film seem just as susceptible to fatal injury and the ravages of age as normal humans. Blood drinking for them just seems to be, as they put it, "the ultimate aristocratic act". They don't have any of the traditional vampire weaknesses either and sunlight doesn't do shit, they don't even sparkle. They don't have fangs and have to wear falsies, but even then it's only for special ceremonial occasions. I loved this grounded, realistic approach but then they have to ruin it by giving the vampires a cheesy red-eye effect whenever they are about to feed.

The movie runs out of steam a little towards the end and the plot gets a bit muddled but it's a great concept with some really good scenes. Performances are generally good and there's a few notable actors I haven't mentioned such as David Hemmings who is a sympathiser to Kate's predicament and Henry Silva who's spectacular death is a highlight of the film. Even Patrick (Robert Thompson) appears as one of the senior vampires, and like that film this one was produced by Antony Ginnane. He financed quite a few low budget Australian horror films in the 70s and 80s. It's directed by TV veteran Rod Hardy who does a good job here and it's got a soundtrack by Brian May who scored every Australian film ever and is not the guy from Queen.

Thirst mixes Gothic atmosphere with a grounded and scientific approach to the vampire myth, resulting in a solid film that works on multiple levels. Also you get to see Chantal Contouri's boobs in one scene. I thought it was pretty good.

Against the Dark (2007)

I wonder how many cows had to die to make
Seagal that leather jacket?

Seagal is... Against the Dark. And by "dark" they mean vampires. Yes, that's right: Seagal vs vampires. Kind of sells itself doesn't it? However, it's not the first time Seagal has attempted to dip his feet into the realm of the supernatural. In Attack Force and Submerged Seagal was supposed to be fighting aliens and biological mutants respectively, but whether the result of cold feet or studio meddling they pussed out and switched it over to terrorists at the last minute. This time however, the film promises Seagal versus vampires and it delivers. Sort of.

You see, these vampires are treated more like biological mutants than immortal bloodsuckers. It's more of a 28 Days Later kind of thing where it's a highly contagious virus and while the infected do drink blood they also tear people up and eat their flesh like zombies. Sometimes they are mindless zombies, other times they are smart enough to set traps or string people up and drain their blood (into an "Allergic to Mondays" mug, nice touch). Although it's repeatedly mentioned that it's more dangerous to go out at night they never explain why or even if daylight has any effect on them at all. For all we know they glitter in the sun like Twilight emo vampires. No crosses, no garlic, nothing like that. They get killed by swords and guns just like normal humans. Fuck, I don't know why they are called vampires at all, now that I think about it. They don't even have fangs, they have to file their teeth down manually.

So in this film Seagal plays Tao, leader of a group of bad-ass vampire hunters. They seem to work for the military, but they are rugged individualists so they all wear leather trenchcoats, carry swords, walk in slo-mo, etc. The sort of thing that would have been pretty awesome about ten years ago but now looks pretty cheesy. Seagal kills a few vampires here and there but his role is mainly to slur military orders and occasionally interject with some nonsense like "We're not here to decide who's right or wrong... we're here to decide who lives or dies", which makes even less sense in context. In one scene he rescues a kid who asks who he is and he replies "My name is Tao" and turns away as some rockin' guitars kick in, as if we are supposed to be blown away by his badassery. I don't know man, I don't think you've earned those guitars just yet. Maybe start with a kazoo and work your way up. The rest of his team aren't much more interesting, although there's one beefy guy named Tanoai Reed who is pretty cool. Apparently he's the Rock's stunt double so he's pretty imposing physically and he gets to jump around with some wrist blades and throw vampires around. I reckon he could have pulled off the guitars.

The problem is that we don't see Seagal and his team that much at all. Nintey percent of the time is spent with a large group of survivors who are wandering around in an abandoned hospital. They were all so uninteresting that I couldn't keep their names straight or remember what they were doing or why. Apparently they have to find the hospital exit before the generator runs out and the security doors get locked permanently, but they don't seem to be in any rush to do so. They keep getting separated and splitting up into groups for no reason. When they come across a locked door they just shrug and move on instead of finding something to bash it open. They don't even carry any weapons. Eventually they meet with Seagal and his team, but until then you are stuck watching these dipshits wandering around like a flock of fucking sheep. Protip: If a woman or a child is curled up crying in the corner with their back to you he/she is probably a vampire.

I'm struggling for things to say here because this is one of those shot-in-Romania Sci-Fi-channel-caliber movies that dissolves from your brain immediately after viewing. There was something about an evil scientist who kidnapped one of them to feed to his infected daughter I believe. He says something about her having the capacity for reason and being the next step in evolution but Seagal puts an abrupt end to that plot point by impaling her head with a sword (offscreen unfortunately). They also stuck in a few scattered pieces of I Am Legend style "we are the real monsters" introspection from both the survivors and the monsters, but they didn't go anywhere either. There's a fair bit of blood and gore if you're into that, but nothing special.

The great Keith David and Linden Ashby turn up for a day of shooting as military officers who are trying to get Seagal and his team out before they level the building in an air strike. It's never explained why this air strike is necessary and Seagal never shares screen time or interacts with them in any way so it's largely pointless. They already have a time limitation with the security doors, so all this impending air strike adds is a few minutes of padding and an utterly wasted character actor.

The proceedings are directed with a minimum of flair by first-and-likely-only-time director Richard Crudo, who was cinematographer on Pistol Whipped, Out of Reach and a bunch of other films that don't star Steven Seagal. If I had to say anything good about this film it's that I could usually see everything that was going on even though it was in darkness a lot of the time. You know, cause it's him Against the Dark. Other than that, I can't recommend anything about it. Kind of like Hasselhoff versus giant snakes, this is another one that's much better in theory than execution. I was hoping for vampires in a Seagal film but I got Seagal in a pseudo-vampire film. Oh well. At least he threw a vampire through a window.

Book Review - Twilight

Look, I know. This is for research purposes I swear. Normally I wouldn't read something like this. I prefer books about giant crabs or aging action stars. However, the phenomenon of Twilight is getting harder and harder to ignore, with friends and relatives of mine - women who are intelligent and responsible human beings - having read and loved this book. And for the straw that broke the camel's back, my wife saw a grown man reading this book on the train. Pubescent girls I can understand. I certainly had some dubious choices of reading material at that age. But grown adults? Surely this book must have some sort of Dracula-like hypnotic allure. Naturally I had to read it and find out for myself. Vampire/human star-crossed lovers, with blood-drinking as a none-too-subtle metaphor for teenage sex. Buffy pulled it off pretty well, maybe lightning can strike twice.

Bella is a teenage girl who is forced to move in with her dad in Forks, Washington (apparently the rainiest city in America) after her mother shacks up with another guy. Upon arrival at her new school, Bella finds herself the object of attention for several boys. This comes at a surprise to her and especially me, since Bella is one of the most vapid characters ever committed to the printed page. She is immediately transfixed by a group of aloof, beautiful teens, the Cullens. In the real world they'd probably be the most popular kids in school, but in the Twilight-verse, this makes them social outcasts. She is particularly attracted to Edward, the most non-threatening of the group, but she is coldly rebuffed. Eventually she discovers that Edward is actually incredibly attracted to her, but he's got a few internal struggles of his own (spoiler: he's a vampire). Then, over the next couple of hundred pages, we discover what happens when an dimwitted force meets an idiotic object (spoiler: nothing).

Edward's attraction to Bella is utterly mystifying. She is not particularly beautiful, with a sucking void where her personality should be. I think she's supposed to be mildly intelligent, since there are a few references to advanced classes though they make sure she hates math so as not to alienate her from her target audience. There's certainly nothing else in the book to indicate she's above average intelligence. Her singular trait is that she is outrageously clumsy and wanders obliviously into dangerous situations, like a lemming. This is trotted out again and again so Edward can swoop in and rescue her. Bella's hobbies, interests and life goals begin and end with Edward. Everything else in her life is a background murmur. Especially her friends, whom she drops like a hot potato whenever Edward is around.

As for Edward, well, he is such a fucking pussy he makes the foppish dandies of Anne Rice novels look like Blade. Sure, Dracula seduced countless maidens, but at least he had the courtesy to rip their fucking throats out once in a while. You've probably heard that these vampires sparkle in the sun instead of bursting into flames, and I think that gives you a good idea of how castrated these poor vampires are. I kept hoping that his infatuation with Bella was all an elaborate ruse, and any moment he was going to brutally murder her. But it never happened.

He's also a psycho stalker, something common in the romance genre but here taken to new extremes. He watches her while she sleeps and spies on her phone calls. He's jealous, possessive, manipulative and condescending. Worst of all, he likes 50s and 80s music and hates the music of the 60s and 70s. Really, Edward? Really? Okay, so maybe you associate the 70s with disco, but how could anyone hate the music of the 60s, one of the most vibrantly creative periods in music history? The Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan. Johnny Cash. The Who. Jimi Henrix. The motherfucking Beatles. Any of these ring a bell, you glittery closet-case?

You may be wondering what a vampire is doing attending high school. Well, it's his self-imposed purgatory, his penance for becoming a monster. It's a good punishment, I can't imagine anything worse than an eternity of high school. Also, apparently the family can blend in better if the "kids" attend four years of high school before they move on to another location. This doesn't make sense on any level, but it gives him an excuse to be preying on high school chicks, like a reverse Matt McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.

There's an inherent creepiness in a guy who is, for all intents and purposes, over 100 years old and attracted to teenage girls. Sure, the book makes repeated claims that she is more mature than most girls her age, but it runs contrary to everything she thinks or does. Edward finds her fascinating because her mind is particularly hard for him to read. This has something to do with her being more introverted than her peers, but by my estimation it's because there's nothing there to read. Needless to say, Edwards glaring faults are swallowed up by Bella's all-consuming starry-eyed infatuation. It's utterly pathetic. She makes it clear that she would rather die than stay away from him. In fact, she uses exactly those words. And this is before they've even kissed. This is a really sick and twisted relationship. Edward's 107 years old, he should know better.

Then there's the Cullen household itself, where an older man sucks the blood of beautiful teenagers - and lest we forget, blood-drinking is a metaphor for sex - and then lives with them as their surrogate father. Ew. The sex metaphor gets even more hilarious when you consider that in order to stave off their hunger, they drink the blood of wild animals. Edward's favourite is bears. No comment. Naturally they all live together in a huge mansion, because Edward couldn't be a perfect dreamboat if he wasn't filthy rich.

I don't know what else to say because I'm not kidding when I say that nothing happens in this book. It's like listening to teenage girls mindlessly babble on their cell phones. How anyone can get emotionally invested with these paper cut-outs is a mystery to me. I've seen finger puppets with more characterisation. If there was a plot of any description I might be swept along for the ride, but this like watching paint dry.

I never really got into Harry Potter, but I read the first book and I could recognise that it was nicely written and a well-constructed fantasy world. But this, this is something else entirely. This book is horribly written. It's like bad fan fiction. The prose is torturous and Meyer can't write a single noun about Edward (and there are a lot) without cramming it full of adjectives. There isn't a single page that doesn't make reference to his "beautiful, ochre eyes" or his "smooth, sensuous voice". Every. Single. Fucking. Page. Jesus! We get it! He's hot! Several times the book hilariously describes his hair "gelled to perfection". When I saw the poster for the movie I thought it was pretty funny that a vampire would use half a tub of hair product every day, but apparently it's just being faithful to the text. How does he do that without a reflection?

I went into this half-expecting to like it a little in spite of myself. If anything it's galvanised my dislike of it. It's turned a mild annoyance into a full-blown hatred. Even the clumsy "forbidden fruit" metaphor on the cover makes me grit my teeth. I hope Stephanie Meyer enjoys the mountain of blood-money she's received from loosing this literary abomination on the world, and may God have mercy on her soul. If you're ever tempted to experience this book/movie for yourself (no, I haven't seen the movie but I can't imagine it being any better) just go and read/watch Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire movie that has more genuine emotion, characterisation, atmosphere and horror in any single scene than Twilight has is it's interminable 400 pages.