We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Blade disappoints, but a couple other movies were pleasant surprises.
BLADE: TRINITY (2004)
The filmmakers behind the Blade trilogy were really keen on a sequel idea that never ended up happening. They wanted to drop the vampire hunter Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) into a post-apocalyptic scenario where the world had been taken over by vampires and humans were kept in concentration camps. That's an idea screenwriter David S. Goyer had for Blade II early on. The story changed for Blade II, but that film's director Guillermo del Toro said that he wanted to do the apocalypse idea if he returned for the third film. Well, del Toro didn't end up making part 3 - in fact, it was revealed that Oliver Hirschbiegel was in talks to direct the next movie just three months after Blade II was released. At that time, Hirschbiegel was getting attention for a movie he had made called The Experiment, which I watched when news of his involvement with Blade hit the internet. I liked the movie and was intrigued to see what Hirschbiegel would do with Blade... but he couldn't commit to the film because he was already signed on to direct the World War II movie Downfall. Which gave the world the "angry Hitler" meme, so that worked out. When Hirschbiegel finally did make a Hollywood movie with The Invasion years later, the studio ended up bringing in a different director to helm substantial reshoots, so maybe he would have had bad luck on Blade as well.
With Hirschbiegel unable to sit in the director's chair, writer/producer Goyer got the chance to direct the film himself. And that's when the trouble really began. Judging by the special features on the home video releases, Goyer had some strong collaborators on the first two Blade movies. He took notes from David Fincher, directors Steven Norrington and Guillermo del Toro, and executives at New Line Cinema. On Blade II especially, it seems like del Toro managed to block some bad scenes and ideas from making it from the script to the screen. Even then, del Toro spends parts of his commentary making fun of lines that did make it from script to screen. With Goyer taking the helm, you would assume Blade: Trinity is "unfiltered Goyer", or at least "less filtered". Whatever the case, he clearly could have used someone to bounce ideas off of, because the movie is packed with bad ideas.
Which isn't to say the basic concept is bad. Goyer put off the apocalyptic idea again to tell a story that sounds perfect for the third film in a Blade trilogy. Blade was introduced in the pages of a Marvel comic book called Tomb of Dracula, so of course you have to have Dracula show up in a Blade movie. Other characters from Tomb of Dracula included the heroic vampire Hannibal King and Frank Drake, a human descendant of Dracula, and when I was a kid the three of them were the stars of a comic book series called Nightstalkers. So when Goyer decided to bring Hannibal King and Frank Drake into Blade: Trinity to form the Nightstalkers with Blade, yes, that's an idea I'm all for. (Goyer then decided to change Frank Drake into a female character named Frankie Drake, then changed the character's name entirely.) The third Blade movie should involve Dracula and the Nightstalkers. Unfortunately, the execution of the story is atrocious.
The blame for this lackluster sequel can't be put entirely on Goyer's shoulders, as there has been a lot of talk about Wesley Snipes being difficult on set. Snipes has denied some of the accusations of bad behavior, but they go all the way back to the audio commentary on the DVD, where one of the contributors almost flat-out says Snipes was "phoning it in". It has been said that Snipes didn't like the script and wasn't happy that Goyer was directing the movie, and if he already knew during production that Blade: Trinity was going to end up being as bad as it is, it's tough to blame him for wanting to just sleepwalk through this mess and collect the paycheck.
Blade II had showed that the vampires had put together a special team called the Bloodpack to exterminate Blade, but then the "Reaper virus" got in the way of their plans. This time around, the vampires have a more clever way of taking Blade down: they destroy his reputation by having him kill one of their human familiars in public, on video. This brings the authorities after Blade, and leads to the first terrible part of the movie. Within the first 30 minutes, Blade's hideout has been raided by the FBI and his mentor Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) has been killed again. We were led to believe that Whistler died in the first movie, shooting himself after being bitten by a vampire. Blade II revealed that Whistler was still alive, having still become a vampire after shooting himself. Blade was able to cure him of his vampirism, but the question of whether or not Whistler could still be trusted lingered over most of the movie. Now Blade: Trinity comes along and makes Whistler's resurrection in Blade II and the whole "is Whistler good or bad?" thing pointless, since he's right back out the window.
Blade is taken into custody by the FBI, but quickly rescued by former vampire Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and the bow and arrow-wielding Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel). Whistler's daughter. You may remember Whistler telling the story of his family being murdered by a vampire in the first movie, but he had Abigail "out of wedlock" some time after that, and when she grew up she tracked him down and told him she wanted to get into the vampire hunting business. Hannibal and Abigail are two members of a group called the Nightstalkers, which also includes blind scientist Sommerfield (Natasha Lyonne), armorer Hedges (Patton Oswalt), and transpo guy Dex (Ron Selmour). Sommerfield's young daughter Zoe (Haili Ginger Page) also hangs out in their headquarters.
You might find it tough to care about Sommerfield, Hedges, or Dex, unless you're a fan of the actor playing them, but Reynolds and Biel steal the film out from under Snipes as Hannibal and Abigail. Abigail proves to be a skilled vampire hunter, and while Snipes was phoning in his performance and refusing to participate in scenes that Blade was supposed to be present for, Reynolds showed the opposite level of dedication. He is clearly trying very hard in every moment of this movie. This was his first action movie, he was known for comedy, and he chose to prove he was worthy not only by getting ripped, but also by putting maximum effort into every scene. He's throwing out a constant stream of wisecracks, most of which are unnecessary. Some of them don't even make sense. It's like the script Reynolds was handed was filled with blank spaces that he filled in like he was playing a vulgar game of Mad Libs. I feel that he went too far with it and Goyer should have pulled back on the reins a bit.
So these are our heroes, and they're pitted against villains who come off like a bunch of clownshoes. The Nightstalkers inform Blade that the legendary Dracula, the first vampire, who has been around for six or seven thousand years, has been awoken from his slumber in the Syrian Desert by a group of vampires headed up by Danica Talos (Parker Posey), her brother Asher (Callum Keith Rennie), and henchman Jarko Grimwood (wrestler Triple H). These vampires are goofballs who are played for comedy more than anything else, hamming it up every chance they get. The Dracula they have brought back into the world... he goes by Drake, and he's in the running for the worst Dracula ever put on film. Played by Dominic Purcell, he looks ridiculous walking around with his beefed-up muscles, necklaces, and exposed chest. Any hope of getting a threatening-but-charismatic Dracula is dashed as soon as we see this guy interacting with Danica and Grimwood. These villains are cringe-inducing, and the monstrous form Dracula takes from time to time doesn't help.
Nor does it help that Goyer drops vampire dogs into the mix. He mentions on the commentary that the studio wasn't sure about this vampire dog idea, especially once Goyer informed them that one of the dogs was going to be a Pomeranian. New Line Cinema was right to doubt the idea. The vampire dogs shouldn't be in here.
You might hope that it will be satisfying to watch Blade and the Nightstalkers pummel these terrible villains, but the action in the film is also a step down from what was on display in its predecessors.
There's talk of a vampire apocalypse again, and Goyer returns to something from a scene that was deleted from the first Blade movie when we see that vampires have set up blood farms in major cities where brain dead humans are kept in storage to be fed off of. But once again, the apocalypse is avoided.
Blade: Trinity is really disappointing. While I have watched the first two movies many times, I haven't watched this one nearly as much. Returning to it years after my last viewing, I was hoping it would be better than I remembered. But no, it's still a letdown. A movie about Blade battling Dracula with the Nightstalkers could have been great, but this didn't work.
OUT OF THE DARK (1988)
I expected director Michael Schroeder's Out of the Dark to be a lot trashier and sleazier than it turned out to be, given the fact that it's about a serial killer in a clown mask targeting the women who work for a phone sex line. I figured there would be a lot more late night Skinemax sort of shenanigans, but this actually turned out to be a rather straightforward thriller. There are sex scenes and gratuitous nudity, sure, but a reasonable amount, and the script by J. Greg De Felice and Zane W. Levitt actually has respect for the sex workers - while also having fun with how ridiculous the phone sex job is.
The film stars Cameron Dye as Kevin, a photographer who's in a relationship with Kristi (Lynn Danielson), who works at the Suite Nothings phone fantasy business run by Ruth (Karen Black). Lately the Suite Nothings girls have been getting creepy calls from a guy who turns violent and then hangs up on them... and soon enough, that caller is showing up in a clown mask, calling himself Bobo, and knocking them off one-by-one. Some of the more prominent Suite Nothings employees include Karen Witter as Jo Ann, Karen Mayo-Chandler as Barbara, and Starr Andreeff as Camille, who makes such an impression in her scenes that I thought she would be much more important in the long run than she turned out to be.
Who's doing the killing? Detective Frank Meyers (Tracey Walter) is on the case, and suspects include Ruth's drunk ex Dennis (Geoffrey Lewis) and Stringer (Bud Cort), the strange tax man whose office is in the same building as Suite Nothings HQ. It's an intriguing mystery, with some great sequences of suspense and slashing along the way.
In addition to being a solid thriller that's a lot better and more interesting than I would have predicted, Out of the Dark also features fun cameos from Paul Bartel as a hotel clerk with a bad toupee and Divine as a detective. I've been missing out on this movie for thirty-three years, but I'm glad I finally saw it.
PROPHECY (1979)
Director John Frankenheimer made some highly respected movies in his day, so when you hear that he directed a horror film that stars Talia Shire and boasts a screenplay by The Omen's David Seltzer, it sounds like you're in for a genre classic. And yet Frankenheimer's 1979 film Prophecy has a pretty bad reputation. For decades, I only saw this movie referenced in mocking ways, and since I had seen some unimpressive bits and pieces of it on TV, I let those bad reviews keep me away from Prophecy for way too long. Finally giving it a fair chance, I found that this is actually a decent flick. It does have a rampaging mutant bear (Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI director Tom McLoughlin and Predator's Kevin Peter Hall took turns wearing the costume during production) that looks silly from time to time, viewers are always making fun of that thing, but that bear has its cool moments, and when the bear's not around to maul people and smash things Prophecy also has moments where it manages to be intensely creepy.
The story centers on Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth), who is hired by the EPA to go into the Maine wilderness and report on a dispute between a paper mill and a local Native American tribe. Verne is accompanied on this trip by his wife Maggie (Shire), who is keeping the fact that she's pregnant a secret because she's afraid of how her husband will react to the news. He does not want to be a father. Once in Maine, Verne and Maggie find out that the Native Americans are right to be concerned about the paper mill's activities; something the mill is doing is causing mutations in the animals and plant life around the area. Some of the animals are growing much larger than normal, some have become extremely aggressive. Like that mutant bear I mentioned earlier.
The most unnerving thing about Prophecy is the knowledge that Maggie is pregnant, and it's very clear that no one who ever intends to have children should be anywhere in the vicinity of this paper mill - and yet, here Maggie is, with a baby already growing inside her. How much damage is going to be done to this fetus before she gets away from this place? That's all I could think of during every scene where Maggie crosses paths with a mutant or helps her husband check out the paper mill. Even when the bear started tearing into people, my primary concern was the health of Maggie's unborn child.
Prophecy gets a lot of grief, but not from me. I liked it, and found it to be appropriately troubling.
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