TUBI CONTINUED… THE FALLEN VAMPIRE (2007) **

The Fallen Vampire is an uneven, frustrating, but fitfully engaging documentary on beloved horror icon Bela Lugosi.  Things kick off with Lugosi getting the lead in the Broadway production of Dracula.  Hot off the popularity of the play, Bela resorts to taking a drastic pay cut to ensure he'll be cast in the big screen adaptation from Universal Pictures.  

Then, the film backtracks to Lugosi’s early life.  Stories of his upbringing sometimes conflict as he often lied about his humble beginnings.  Even now, some details of Lugosi’s life pre-Hollywood are still up for debate.  I liked that though, because it adds to his overall sense of mystery.  

From there, it’s more or less the standard rags to riches to rags story.  After the success of Dracula, Lugosi turns down Frankenstein and is forced to look on as the man who played the role, Boris Karloff eclipses him in popularity as the screen’s top horror star.  Eventually, he becomes typecast in unsatisfying horror roles, the size of the parts grows smaller, and he spends much of his later life struggling with addiction.  

There aren’t any real major revelations here, so much of this will feel like an old hat for fans of Lugosi.  The overuse of public domain interview clips (which have turned up in countless similar documentaries) gets to be a bit much too.  The new interviews aren’t particularly earth-shattering either, but I did get a kick out of seeing Lugosi’s Mark of the Vampire leading lady, Carol Borland attesting to his ladies’ man status.  

The film also gets sidetracked when it starts to detour into the historical context of the Dracula legend.  There’s a bit about Transylvania burial customs that just seems like filler.  I mean, this stuff would be okay if we were watching a Dracula documentary, but this is supposed to be about Bela Lugosi.  I could’ve also done without the cheap shots that were made at the expense of the movies Bela made with Ed Wood.  (The narrator calls Glen or Glenda “an artistic failure”, which couldn’t be any further from the truth.)

Now that I got that off my chest, there’s still some good stuff here.  I liked seeing the stills from the old Broadway version of Dracula where Lugosi’s make-up is much more pronounced than what wound up in the film version.  We also get a funny bit where Bela stalks Betty Boop (“You have booped your last boop!”) and an amusing snippet from a newsreel where Lugosi donates blood for the war effort.  (The narrator says, “It’s time to give back some of that blood you’ve taken!”)

AKA:  Bela Lugosi:  The Fallen Vampire.  

TUBI CONTINUED… NIGHTFALL: 100 YEARS OF VAMPIRE FILMS (2010) ** ½

From Nosferatu to Twilight, Nightfall:  100 Years of Vampire Films takes us on a century-long journey of bloodsucker cinema.  Things kick off with a brief history lesson of the vampire as the real-life Vlad the Impaler, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, and the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula are discussed.  Then, we plunge headlong into the movies.

Clips from such silent era films as The Vampire, Les Vampires, and (of course) Nosferatu are shown.  The ‘30s are represented by Dracula, The Vampyre, and Mark of the Vampire, and the ‘40s give us Son of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and Scared to Death.  There are also segments on the Mexican film, El Vampiro, Hammer horror movies (including Horror of Dracula, The Brides of Dracula, and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), Sci-Fi bloodsuckers (Queen of Blood, Planet of the Vampires, and Last Man on Earth), comedies (The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Vampire Happening, and Dracula the Dirty Old Man), and adaptations of Carmilla/lesbian vampire flicks (Blood and Roses, Vampyres, and Vampyros Lesbos).  There are even clips from a few movies I had never heard of before (like Sodium Babies).

While some of this is kind of fun, the documentary overall looks pretty cheap and ragged, especially when covering the historical aspects of vampires.  There are also odd detours that don’t really add much to the film, like the interview with a blogger who recreates Stoker’s novel in blog format.  In fact, the only “name” who is interviewed is Lifeforce director Tobe Hooper, but he’s only in it for about fifteen seconds.  It’s also odd that there’s a section devoted to Frankenstein in a vampire documentary.

Sure, it’s easy to pick apart everything that’s “wrong” with Nightfall:  100 Years of Vampire Films.  The nudity is blurred out, many shots are repeated, and most of the footage comes directly from trailers.  That said, it makes for a breezy, hour-long jaunt through decades of vampire moviemaking.  It’s ultimately inessential, but it’s definitely watchable and (mostly) entertaining.

AKA:  Nightfall.

MITCH GUESTS ON THE DTV CONNOISSEUR PODCAST

Matt from the DTV Connoisseur had me on the podcast once again.  This time, we chatted about the documentary Mail Order Murder:  The Story of W.A.V.E. Productions and Eaten Alive!  A Tasteful Revenge.  If you’ve never seen a W.A.V.E. Production, what are you waiting for? But before you do, you should definitely listen to our conversation:  DTVC Podcast 129, "W.A.V.E. Productions" by DTVC Podcast (spotify.com)

TUBI CONTINUED… BLONDE SAVAGE (1947) ** ½

Steve (Leif Erickson) is a pilot who gets hired to come to Africa and map out an uncharted jungle area so his crooked employer Harper (Douglass Dumbrille) can find a mysterious tribe.  Problems arise when Harper learns Steve is the ex-lover of his trophy wife (Veda Ann Borg).  When Steve’s plane crashes in the jungle, he and his pal Hoppy (Frank Jenks) are taken prisoner by the tribe who force them to face their leader, the beautiful blonde bombshell Meelah (Gale Sherwood).  Naturally, Meelah and Steve fall in love, and he helps her get revenge on the man who murdered her parents years ago.  (SPOILER FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NEVER SEEN A JUNGLE MOVIE FROM THE ‘40S:  It’s Harper.)

Blonde Savage starts out with a terrific hook.  Steve enters a lawyer’s office and announces he needs someone to defend him on murder charges.  The only thing is:  The murder hasn’t been committed yet.  If the police let Harper go free, Steve will gun him down in cold blood.  Then, we go into a flashback that takes up the bulk of the movie that explains Steve’s hatred towards Harper.  It’s a neat little device that helps separate the movie from the glut of similarly themed genre pictures of the era.  Honestly it was probably only there to pad out the running time to feature length.  

Heck, even though the film is only an hour long, it still has a tendency to drag here and there.  The print is jumpy too, which can be annoying, but I enjoyed it for what it was:  A (slightly) better than average jungle picture.  As such, it won’t win over any new fans, and it doesn’t have as much stock footage as you might expect.  That said, if you’re old enough to remember the days when crap like this played on TV non-stop (like me), you may get a kick out of it.

BIRDEMIC 3 – SEA EAGLE (2022) ***

Birdemic 3 – Sea Eagle has a new leading man in Evan (Ryan Lord), but it’s the same old story.  He walks around aimlessly before awkwardly hitting on a girl (Julia Culbert) who instantly accepts a date with him.  On the date, he talks incessantly about himself and his job (he sells anti-aging skin cream) and how he routinely makes multi-million-dollar sales.  Together, they have long romantic interludes where they walk around and talk to strangers, most of whom spout off about global warning (and for a change of pace for the series, wildfires).  Eventually, the happy couple dance for the longest time imaginable.  Naturally, their bliss is ruined when more birds attack.  Then, it’s time to randomly find some guns, grab some coat hangers, and battle killer birds.  

Yes, everything that happened before in Birdemic:  Shock and Terror and Birdemic 2:  The Resurrection happens again in Birdemic 3 – Sea Eagle, and I for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.  I will say that some of the bloom is off the rose now.  Part of the reason this one doesn’t quite match its predecessors is that the birds don’t attack until the last twenty-five minutes or so of the movie.  Previously, writer/director James Nguyen gave us a 50/50 split of cheesy romance and bad bird effects.  This one is more like 70/30.

That said, Nguyen delivers what we’ve come to expect from a Birdemic movie.  The acting is still as wooden as ever.  The dialogue seems like it was cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia’s global warming page.  The CGI is just as shitty as you’d hope it to be.  However, it just isn’t quite as good as the others.  Or bad.  You know what I mean.  

At first, I was a little upset that my favorite character “The Tree Hugger” was absent from this entry.  I’m happy to report that in his place, we have a guy named “Dr. Extinction” who carries on the tradition of crazy, rambling nutbar who spouts unending amounts of environmentalism propaganda.  He does such a fine job that I found myself forgiving the movie for not including Tree Hugger this time around.  Dr. Extinction gets a particularly great scene where he forces our heroes to pull off to the side of the road so they can listen to his incoherent gobbledygook about global warming that culminates with him giving them some truly priceless advice:  “HAVE LOTS OF SEX!”  This scene alone is worth the price of admission, even if the rest of the film doesn’t quite (ahem) fly as high as its predecessors. 

AGFA MYSTERY MIXTAPE #2: LATER IN L.A. (2020) **

The second volume of Mystery Mixtapes from the American Genre Film Archive kicks off with that “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” anti-piracy PSA that used to play on DVDs back in the ‘00s.  Some younger folks may have nostalgia for this PSA, but as someone who worked at a video store during this era, I always found it to be grating and annoying.  That was the first sign that Later in L.A. wasn’t exactly going to be my cup of tea.  

As with the first installment, most of the sequences come from the same four or five sources, which takes some of the fun out of it.  Segments include Bob Costas interviewing Tim Burton just before the release of Batman Returns (he asks about Sean Young’s unorthodox campaign to play Catwoman, but Burton unfortunately dodges the question), a documentary on the making of Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, snippets from Gorgon Video Magazine (including Lloyd Kaufman being interviewed at Troma Studios, KNB doing effects for The Horror Show, and the making of Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout), an ad for VHS horror releases (including Howling 2 and Dawn of the Dead), a behind the scenes look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Coming Out of Their Shells” Tour, and the making of Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.  It all ends with Tom Snyder interviewing Peter Cushing, Forrest J. Ackerman, and a “Professor of Monsters”.  Along the way, the tape is interspersed with local news bumpers as well as Vincent Price doing commercials for cheesesteaks and videotapes.  

As someone who enjoys these things for nostalgic purposes, AGFA Mystery Mixtape #2:  Later in L.A. kinda fell flat.  I guess ‘90s kids will dig it, but since I am a child of the ‘80s, it didn’t do a whole lot for me.  (The Ninja Turtles shit goes on way too long.)  At any rate, the random bit of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig cutting up at the Golden Globes seemed like a rather useless inclusion for something like this.

AGFA MYSTERY MIXTAPE #1 (2020) ** ½

The good folks at the American Genre Film Archive put together this uneven but mostly amusing mixtape that collects bits and pieces from retro television broadcasts and old horror-related videos.  The snippets come from USA Up All Night’s B- Movie Awards Show where hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear hand out awards to Scream Queens like Linnea Quigley.  Also featured are the interview with Stuart Gordon, some behind the scenes footage of Bride of Re-Animator, and the profile on F/X artist Screaming Mad George that originally appeared in Gorgon Video Magazine Vol. 2.  Robert Englund, Wes Craven, Rick Baker, and Walter Koenig also appear in clips from Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors tape.  

Lesser-known bits are taken from a documentary on The Exorcist called Didn’t You Used to Be Satan?  We also get scenes from The Making of a Horror Film, a profile on producer Dick Randall made during the production of Don’t Open Till Christmas.  Randall is a real character and is a lot of fun to watch.  The scene where he watches dailies of the film and makes Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary on the action is pretty funny.  It all ends oddly enough with Scatman Crothers rapping about Stanley Kubrick.

Maybe I would’ve given this a higher rating if I hadn’t already been so familiar with a lot of the footage.  Because of that, there wasn’t really any sense of discovery for me.  I also wish they had culled more snippets from other sources instead of just using bits from the same four or five tapes.  In fact, you’re probably better off just watching Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors, Gorgon Video Magazine Vol. 2, or the Up All Night special in their entirety.  

That said, they do use some choice clips.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to see Bill Moseley give an award to The Toxic Avenger?  That alone is worth ** ½ in my book.