30 Days Of Night - Dark Days (2010): By sloughing off all the best, original bits of
30 Days Of Night, the sequel is rendered simply just a.n.other vampire flick.
With
Lost's Kiele Sanchez replacing Melissa George (
due to scheduling conflicts apparently) as the lead character, Stella, and the action relocating from the long-night of Barrow, Alaska, to Los Angeles, you rather suspect the wheels are going to come off this vehicle quite rapidly.
And while it never exactly hits rock bottom, there is nothing in
30 Days Of Night: Dark Days that even comes close to the genius of the original, and even the feral vampires themselves seem slightly reserved and underwhelming compared to their predecessors.
It's 10 months after the Barrow massacre and Stella is doing the lecture circuit, preaching to incredulous audiences about the threat of vampires, when she is recruited by a vampire-hunting collective - led a mysterious contact of hers called Dane (Ben Cotton) who, unsurprisingly, turns out to be the stereotypical 'vampire-with-a-conscience' (
although his exact motives are rather vague and never really explained).
These vampire-hunters have tracked the Queen Vampire Lilith (Mia Kirshner) to LA and need an extra pair of hands to take her down (
not that they actually have a plan anyway).
Along the way there are some nice touches - particularly the criminally-underused 'mobile base' of the vampire gang, which is a subtle nod to
Dracula - but the connections to
30 Days Of Night are so tenuous, especially as none of the original actors appear in this flawed, straight-to-DVD, sequel, that you have to wonder why it wasn't just written as a standalone horror movie.
Even the slightly jumbled denouement, which could have been a half-decent twist if it wasn't so obvious, is undermined by this lack of continuity.
For once it's probably best to go into this movie without any knowledge of its prequel as it is the comparisons that are its undoing.
Eragon (2006): In a magical world where dragons are the suppressed symbol of a better age, why does no one spot that the name of a simple farm boy (Ed Speleers) is simply "dragon" with the first letter bumped to the next in the alphabet:
Eragon?
It also manages to sound as close as possible to Aragorn (
the most famous of fantasy heroes?) without risking a lawsuit from the Tolkien Estate.
Although I'd imagine it would be the Lucasfilm lawyers knocking at the door first as the script is pretty much a reskinning of
Star Wars with Eragon as Luke, Brom (Jeremy Irons) as Obi-Wan, Uncle Garrow (Alun Armstrong) as Uncle Owen, the evil king Galbatorix (John Malkovich) and his wizard Durza (Robert Carlyse) as The Emperor and Vader, the captured Princess Arya (Sienna Guillory) as Leia, the rebel Varden as... well, The Rebels;
I think you get the picture by now!Even the supernatural power of The Force is personified by Eragon's CGI dragon Saphira (
voiced by Rachel Weisz) - and Eragon's innate dragon-magic (
plot-wise, Saphira also doubles as the Millennium Falcon and the plans to the Death Star!)
There are places where some of the less abysmal dialogue and scenes feel like they are lifted directly from George Lucas' Original Trilogy, with just a few minor tweaks - from magic that "flows through" and "unites" a dragon and its rider to Durza killing an unsuccessful 'boss' minion then promoting one its colleagues into its place.
As there is no Han Solo analogue in the movie at this stage (
don't worry, Garrett Hedlund's roguish Murtagh - who has a very Star Wars-y secret of his own - reveals himself a short time later), Durza tortures the Princess to send a 'false' telepathic 'distress call' to trick Eragon into facing him - think Vader on Cloud City in
The Empire Strikes Back - even though Brom (
now in Yoda mode) tells the young farm boy he's not yet ready to face Durza.
And when Eragon busts the Princess out of the Death Star holding cell... er.. Durza's castle, naturally Obi-Brom has to give his life so that the others can escape (
although his death scene is more drawn out).
Not only is
Eragon unoriginal, it is badly written (
for instance, about half an hour in, Jeremy Irons makes an expositional speech that repeats the useful infodump delivered in the movie's stilted voice-over introduction) and the acting that ranges from scene-chewingly hammy (
by the established names in the cast - collecting their pay cheques and getting out as soon as possible) to simply bad (
by everyone else, particularly from young Eragon himself).
Rather oddly, very early on, talk is made of there being elves and dwarves in the kingdom - but they never actually appear on screen, so you have to wonder why they were brought up in the first place?
On a positive note, the film looks great - the Eastern European scenery is spectacular, the costumes and weaponry are well crafted and the critters are suitably
Dungeons & Dragons-y - but such little effort has been made to conceal the source material being plagiarised that the film's best use is as a "spot the
Star Wars analogy" drinking game.
And like so many fantasy modern films that have tried to emulate the success of
Star Wars, but failed to learn how to do it properly,
Eragon finishes mid-story, expecting a sequel to be guaranteed.
Of course none was forthcoming, leaving many plot threads dangling and certain characters totally superfluous!
Brides Of Dracula (1960): Dracula is dead, but his cult lives on in late 19th Century Transylvania. Young Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) is heading to the Lady's Academy at Bachstadt, where she is to be a student-teacher, but she gets diverted to the home of Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt), little realising that the kindly old eccentric wants to feed her to her imprisoned vampiric son, the Baron (David Peel).
The naive Marianne frees the Baron from his bondage, then flees the castle only to be found unconscious in the woods by Dr Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) who has been called to the village by the local priest.
Marianne eventually makes it to the girls school, but then the Baron shows up and proposes marriage - before turning turning one of her co-workers into a vampire.
Shown as part of BBC4's Horror Season,
Brides Of Dracula is fun but forgettable. Cushing is, naturally, the star but Freda Jackson as the Baron's insane nanny - in a Renfield role - is the most striking character, while Peel's Baron has an effete streak about him that makes Edward Cullen look positively macho.
A jolly romp from the Hammer production line, this 85-minute piece of frippery adds nothing to the vampire mythos, ends with the inevitable giant conflagration (
as seems de rigeur in Hammer horrors) and includes possibly the most ridiculous use of an object to form a vampire-destroying crucifix: the shadow of the sails of a windmill... the very windmill the vampire was using at its nest!