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.
After twenty years of working in the makeup and FX department on various projects, racking up well over 100 film credits, Tom Devlin made his feature directorial debut with the 2023 slasher Teddy Told Me To – and quickly followed that up with his second directorial effort, Las Vegas Frankenstein. Devlin also crafted the story for this one, which was then fleshed out into a screenplay by Teddy Told Me To co-writer Vincent Cusimano – who also stars in this film, taking on a role that allows him to go shirtless for a large percentage of the running time.
That role is Victor Van Pelt, a Vegas performer who some may refer to as a magician, but he’s actually a hypnotist. While doing his act, he’s accompanied on stage by his significant other, Victoria Strange as Tabitha, and backstage the couple is assisted by Gary (John Karyus), a dimwitted middle-aged man who is older than both of them, but they treat him like he’s their son. Victor’s great-aunt has recently passed away and left him the journal of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley – and this journal reveals that Shelley’s novel was based on true events. She had a torrid affair with a surgeon named Roland, who was obsessed with death and reanimation and acquired a collar that was said to have the power to bring the dead back to life. This collar was carved from the wood of caskets and baptized with the ashes of witches that were burned at the stake... and if it’s placed on a corpse while attached to a source of electricity, the corpse will be re-animated. So Victor has Gary retrieve the collar from a House of Oddities in Reno, they hook it up to the power source of the Stratosphere, and they set out to bring dead things back to life.
But, of course, rather than just scoring a cadaver and placing the collar on it, Victor and Gary (who only knows the story of Frankenstein through The Munsters and The Rocky Horror Picture Show) decide they need to go on a killing spree so they can harvest a variety of body parts, taking the best parts of each human victim so they can assemble Victor’s masterpiece, “the ultimate human.”
The basic concept of Las Vegas Frankenstein is great, but the execution is a bit lacking, mainly due to pacing issues. The film starts with a lengthy dialogue sequence in which Victor tells Tabitha and Gary about the journal and his plan to liven up his show by resurrecting the dead – and even though we see silent film-style clips of the Mary Shelley / Roland back story, those don’t do much to break up the fact that we’re really just sitting and listening to Victor ramble on for 15 minutes or so. Then there’s scenes of people wandering around in locations, and we’re more than 50 minutes in before there’s a murder, and there’s not even 15 minutes left to go before the end credits by the time Victor has re-animated a corpse. I have to admit that Devlin did stay true to the idea’s grindhouse / exploitation roots with this pacing, as it’s reminiscent of something like the 1971 Al Adamson film Dracula vs. Frankenstein, but it can still get frustrating. At least the movie gains some good production value in sequences where characters leave Victor’s backstage area to make their way through Vegas locations.
The actors do good work in their roles, with Victoria Strange proving to have an intriguing screen presence, even though she isn’t given quite enough to do in the movie. She appears to be just getting her screen acting career started, and I hope to see her go on to bigger, better roles. When the monster rises, it’s played by Steve Hansen, and there are also appearances by the likes of Daniel Roebuck, Eileen Dietz, Kiki D’Aire, Tabitha Stevens, and Daisy Ducati.
Las Vegas Frankenstein wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped it would be, but still, if I had to choose between the two, I would rather watch Las Vegas Frankenstein again instead of taking in another viewing of Dracula vs. Frankenstein.
DEXTER: SEASON ONE (2006)
I have seen a few of the popular TV shows that have aired over the last thirty years or so... but I haven’t seen many of them. Chances are high that if something started airing after the turn of the century, I haven’t seen much or any of it. For example, Dexter. A show that pulled in a lot of enthusiastic viewers when it started airing on Showtime in 2006... and yet, even though Showtime was available to watch in my household and a show about a serial killer who targets murderers sounded like it was right up my alley, I never saw a single episode of any of its seasons. But I’m trying to make up for my oversight now.
Blog contributor Priscilla and I were inspired to finally get around to watching Dexter after making our way through the HBO series Six Feet Under, which had Michael C. Hall in a lead role. When Six Feet Under wrapped up, Hall headed over to Dexter. So we figured the best way to follow up our Six Feet Under viewing experience was to start watching Dexter... and I was quickly drawn in to this new show. Well, it’s a new show to me, even if it’s actually eighteen years old.
Hall plays Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department. He is a serial killer, but he was raised by his foster father, the late Detective Harry Morgan (played by James Remar in flashbacks) to direct his homicidal urges not toward innocent people, but toward the deserving: murderers who don’t live by this code of not harming the innocent. We see him take out several victims over the course of the first season’s twelve episodes, and viewers aren’t likely to feel sorry for a single one of them. In his voiceover narration, Dexter claims to be devoid of emotions, and yet he clearly does care about Harry, his foster sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), who also works for the Miami police, and his girlfriend Rita (Julie Benz), who was damaged by her abusive relationship with her ex Paul (Mark Pellegrino), and her damage and the fact that she’s not interested in sex (at first) is a big reason why Dexter was drawn to her.
While there are episodic elements to the show, as Dexter goes on his serial killing side adventures, the over-arcing story of the first season involves Dexter, Debra, and their co-workers LaGuerta (Lauren Velez), Doakes (Erik King), Angel Batista (David Zayas), and Vince Masuka (C.S. Lee) investigating the crimes of a serial killer that comes to be known as the Ice Truck Killer, as they drain their victims of blood and keep their bodies frozen before dumping them in pieces. Early in the season, the Ice Truck Killer reveals that they know who Dexter is and know he’s also a serial killer, as they break into his apartment and leave clues – like a dismembered Barbie doll in his freezer and smiley face smudge on one of the blood slides Dexter keeps as souvenirs from his victims. Dexter dumps his victims in the ocean – and at one point, the Ice Truck Killer even dives down to retrieve one of them. This brings an interesting cat and mouse element into the season and becomes more and more interesting as the killer is revealed to know more about Dexter’s past, before he was adopted by the Morgan family at a young age, than even Dexter knows.
Fully engaged as these episodes played out, and satisfied with the resolution of the story, I could finally understand why Dexter became so popular. I look forward to watching the rest of the seasons.
THE BRICKLAYER (2023)
After getting his start working in ‘80s horror, Renny Harlin went on to make some of the coolest action movies of the ‘90s – Die Hard 2, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight... and I can’t speak for the 1995 box office failure Cutthroat Island, because I still haven’t gotten around to it – before swinging back into thriller territory with the very cool shark movie Deep Blue Sea. So it’s a shame that he hasn’t been hired to make any bigger budgeted action movies in a while, because he could still give us some awesome blockbuster level films. Instead, the director who was once offered high profile projects like Alien 3 and a James Bond movie (the one that ended up being GoldenEye) is working in the lower budget world, delivering movies like The Bricklayer – which is shockingly good for a lower budgeted action movie that didn’t get much of a release.
Aaron Eckhart stars as the title character, former CIA agent Steve Vail, who has given up the spy life to focus on masonry. His retirement is disrupted when an old friend and fellow agent – Radek, played by Clifton Collins Jr. - who was believed to have been murdered (along with his family), resurfaces and starts framing the CIA for a series of assassinations, as he blames the agency for what happened to his family. When CIA Director O’Malley (Tim Blake Nelson) and agent Kate (Nina Dobrev) try to convince Vail to come back to work and go after Radek, he passes... but then Radek sends some hired killers after him, so Vail accepts the job after all.
Vail is sort of a working class Bond. He sets up a fancy cover for himself and Kate when they go out into the field, but he also carries his bricklaying tools around with him and finds ways, both violent and non-violent, to put them to use during his mission. Despite having a lower budget to work with, Harlin packs a good number of well-shot action sequences into the film, having Vail and Kate take part in physical altercations, a shootout, a car chase... there’s even at least one explosion. There were only a couple moments when it became clear that this movie didn’t have as much money to work with as Harlin would have had access to thirty years ago, and many viewers might not even pick up on them. The action in this is surprisingly big at times.
Based on a novel by former FBI agent Paul Lindsay (writing as Noah Boyd), The Bricklayer was first announced back in 2011, at which time it had Gerard Butler attached to star. It took a while for the film, which was scripted by Hanna Weg and Matt Johnson, to come together and it lost Butler along the way, but it was worth the wait. This is a solid addition to the Renny Harlin filmography and well worth checking out if you’re an action fan.
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