Tag: 2005

Decadent Evil A Movie A Day Journal Entry

by chrisA Movie A Day / Journal EntryLeave a Comment on Decadent Evil A Movie A Day Journal Entry

Decadent Evil (2005) – A Movie A Day 2021 #35

The Decadent Evil DVD cover.

Today’s movie of the day is a strange one. Still continuing my linked-movie choices, the movie I watched technically contains a lot of the actors from yesterday’s movie, Vampire Journals. That’s because today’s movie, Decadent Evil, uses a whole lot of footage from Vampire Journals to set up an entirely new and almost completely unrelated story. It’s weird.

I actually bought the DVD for Decadent Evil sometime last year, probably in the dollar bin of my local used movie store. I got it because the DVD cover looks kind of dumb, and I like dumb horror movies. I started watching it soon after purchase, but I stopped once I realized that it might be a sequel or a spinoff or something. It’s kind of neither of those things though, and the use of the footage from Vampire Journals feels like the filmmakers were just padding the movie to make it over an hour long. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to watching Vampire Journals, it made sense to pick Decadent Evil next. Was it worth the wait? Not really.

Decadent Evil starts out with a digest version of the entire plot of Vampire Journals. The stories of Ash, Zachary, and Sofia are told pretty much in their entirety as we watch ten minutes of clips from the movie. Towards the end of the recap, we are told that one of Ash’s underlings, the vampiric Cassandra, left the country after the events of Vampire Journals and started her own vampire clan in America. The thing is, Cassandra isn’t in Decadent Evil at all, and unless I missed something she’s not even mentioned. The movie focuses on a trio of female vampires, and I assume the insinuation is that they are descended from Cassandra, but now that I think about, that doesn’t make sense time-wise. So yeah, it’s already a rough start and the real movie hasn’t even started yet. 

Oh, but I forgot to mention the narrator for the opening recap that has nothing to do with the movie. The first shot of Decadent Evil is of a homunculus, a tiny red humanoid thing. He’s a creepy-looking puppet in a cage, and we don’t get an explanation of who or what he is until well into the the movie. But anyway, the beginning of the movie goes from the shot of the homunculus right into the recap, and there is someone narrating the events we’re watching. Naturally, since the only humanoid thing I’d seen so far was the tiny red puppet, I assumed he was the one narrating the story. Like, maybe he’s actually really smart, or maybe he was once a human and got mixed up in some dangerous magical scenario. But despite one of those things being sort of true, we don’t find out any of that until way later. And it’s not like they’re big reveals that have meaning for the story. They’re just things the filmmaker decided not to mention. 

So, if you watch Decadent Evil just skip the first ten minutes. You don’t need any of the information from it, and it might actually be distracting because you might make a bunch of incorrect and pointless assumptions like I did. While you’re at it, just skip ahead to the thirteen-minute mark. There are about three minutes of credits that feel like they go on for another ten. I appreciate the use of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer font for the credits, but they were just too long. So now, once the ensuing establishing shots are done, the movie begins for real about fourteen minutes in. With the movie being only 74 minutes long, that’s one-fifth of the run time wasted. 

You know, you might as well skip the first real sequence of the movie too. The first two characters we really get to meet are a pushy scumbag of a guy and his reluctant girlfriend (or wife or something, I’m not sure). The guy begs and pushes his girlfriend into going to a strip club. Then he pleads with her to go with him when one of the dancers invites them over to her house for a more hands-on encounter. Then he guilts her into having a ménage à trois which she clearly doesn’t want to do. But finally, well over twenty minutes into the movie, the guy is mercifully killed by a vampire that we haven’t gotten to know yet. The girlfriend is also slaughtered, and about twenty-five minutes into the movie we finally start to learn what’s going on. 

Three female vampires live together in a mansion somewhere in or near Los Angeles. Morella is the master of the house. Morella has lived for an unknown yet very long amount of time, and she is on the verge of maybe becoming invincible because of some blood thing they explain in the movie (it’s not important enough for this journal entry or really even for the movie for me to explain it here). Morella acts like a domineering mother to Sugar and Spyce, two younger and less experienced vampires. It was Spyce who brought the guy and girlfriend home, and it was Morella who killed them. Morella and Spyce are your typical evil seductresses, but Sugar is a nice vampire. Sugar has a boyfriend named Dex, and when Dex is visited by a vampire hunter named Ivan, Dex puts his life on the line to save Sugar, and Sugar puts her life on the line to save Dex. It all builds up to a tepid vampire-slaying session with more discussion than action. Oh yeah, and the homunculus’s name is Marvin, and he doesn’t really even play much of a role in the movie despite being in the gross final shot. Then we get about eight minutes of credits and the movie is over. 

In case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t care much for Decadent Evil. Without all the padding at the beginning and end, the actual story part of the movie is about 45 minutes long. I enjoyed the laughable effects such as when the guy at the beginning of the movie gets his throat slashed, but it’s 100% clear that the ensuing blood comes not from his neck, but from someone squirting it on his cheek from off camera. I kind of liked the idea of the forbidden love between Dex and Sugar, but I never truly felt like they were in much danger. And I had to laugh when a certain connection was revealed between the vampire hunter and Marvin the homunculus. So I guess you could say I enjoyed Decadent Evil for what it is, but I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again. I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to movies though, and I know Decadent Evil II exists, so look for that in a future installment of A Movie A Day. It won’t be any time soon though. 

Tagged : / / / / / / / / / / / / /

An American Haunting A Movie A Day Journal Entry

by chrisA Movie A Day / Journal EntryLeave a Comment on An American Haunting A Movie A Day Journal Entry

An American Haunting (2005) – A Movie A Day 2021 #20

An American Haunting poster

As big of a fan of horror movies as I am, years of exposure to silver-screen scares seem to have desensitized me somewhat. Great horrors movies can still scare me in the moment, but few of those scares stick with me after the credits have rolled. Of all the genres and sub-genres of horror movies that exist, films about ghosts and hauntings can often be a big exception to my quickly-fading-fright rule. A well-made ghost movie will often stick with me, maybe for the night or maybe even for a few days or longer. Obviously not every movie about ghosts will have the same effect, and there are plenty of average and below average haunting movies out there, but every time I watch a ghost movie I get a little excited about the possibility of a truly creepy and effective story. So, knowing that An American Haunting is based on the supposedly true story of the Bell Witch haunting, I was cautiously looking forward to a few good scares when I picked it for my daily movie. I was cautious not only because of the potential for a nervous night’s sleep, but also because I’d known about it for a while and had sort of avoided it because I didn’t want it to be bad. Well, after seeing An American Haunting I slept just fine, but the movie was a bit better than I was expecting.

My expectations about the quality of the movie likely had a lot to do with the awful experience I had with a movie from 2013 titled The Bell Witch Haunting. I don’t like to bash movies, but that thing was awful. And yeah, I know the filmmakers behind An American Haunting have nothing to do with The Bell Witch Haunting, but the association in my brain was hard to shake. Plus, I’ve seen plenty of not-great haunted house movies, and the trailer for An American Haunting was giving me strong not-great vibes. An American Haunting certainly isn’t great, but it’s good for what it is. That’s hardly a resounding endorsement, so allow me to elaborate. 

An American Haunting tells the story of the Bells, a family living in Tennessee in the early 1800s. The family consists of father John Bell (Donald Sutherland), mother Lucy Bell (Sissy Spacek), and their children Betsy, John Jr., Richard, and Joel. After John gets on the wrong side of neighbor Kate Batts in a land deal gone bad, the Bell family begins to experience an increasingly violent haunting. The focus of the haunting is young Betsy Bell. Betsy is tormented night after night not just with sounds and moving objects, but she is eventually physically assaulted by the unseen force. Betsy is dragged across the floor, lifted into the air, and slapped repeatedly as the force steadily increases its tortures. The local preacher and the community school teacher join the Bell family to try to figure out how to stop the haunting, but things only get worse when John becomes a target of assault as well. 

Eventually certain things come to light and the reasons behind the haunting become more or less clear, but the resolution of the movie leaves a lot to be desired. The plot is largely based on the “true” accounts of the Bell Witch, but some very generous liberties are taken with the story, especially in the later stages. Creative license is great, but I didn’t really enjoy how things were wrapped up. It made sense from a high-level look at things, but when you really get into what happened throughout the movie, it doesn’t all come together super well. There is also an unnecessary framing device where the whole story about the Bell family is being read from a letter found in what I think is supposed to be the same house in the present day. So the main bulk of the movie is a flashback for some reason, and the final scene feels pointless. I can’t say what happens without spoiling the whole movie, but basically it’s a thing where you’re meant to feel something for a few characters that you know absolutely nothing about and haven’t even seen for about an hour and a half. I would have very much preferred if the story had only taken place in the past.

The stuff surrounding the Bell family is better than I was expecting though. I didn’t know Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek were in the movie until they both showed up on screen, so that was a very nice surprise. They added some much-needed weight to the scenes involving the Bells. 

As for the haunting itself, even though it was done pretty well, it’s approached in a way that I’m not always crazy about. I prefer quiet and creepy over loud and scary, and the haunting of Betsy Bell was often very, very loud. Screams, crying, slapping, and slamming were a constant accompaniment to the presence of the entity in the Bell house. To me, that’s not as unnerving as quiet moments where I wonder along with the characters, “did I really just see what I thought I saw?”

There is no ambiguity about what is happening when we see Betsy being suspended in mid-air and smacked around by invisible hands. Despite there clearly being something supernatural in the house, there is an agonizingly long sequence where the Bell family tries to convince the school teacher that his rational explanations aren’t sufficient. Thankfully he is eventually convinced that something supernatural is going on, and we then can finally move on with the story. That whole section of disbelief felt like it put the movie on pause though, because we (the audience and the characters) all knew what was happening except for this one guy who we apparently need on-board before we can move on. 

Other people may enjoy the loud and obvious approach to the scares though. They’re not my favorite thing, but they didn’t prevent me from enjoying the movie fine. Like I said, I didn’t care for the wrap-up, but up to that point I enjoyed seeing John, Lucy, and Betsy deal with their situation. I probably won’t ever watch An American Haunting again, but I’m glad I finally saw it. I’m still looking for a really great Bell Witch movie though. I know it can be done.

Tagged : / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Frankenstein Reborn (2005) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

by chrisA Movie A Day / Journal EntryLeave a Comment on Frankenstein Reborn (2005) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

Frankenstein Reborn (2005) – A Movie A Day 2021 #11

Frankenstein Reborn DVD cover

After watching The Curse of Frankenstein, I felt like I might be getting on a Frankenstein movie kick. After watching Frankenstein Reborn, I might be off that kick.

Frankenstein Reborn is a low-budget take on the Mary Shelley’s classic tale. Writer/Director Leigh Scott not only took inspiration from the original novel, but he seems to have drawn upon other adaptations as well as other horror movies in general. That’s all well and good, but the resulting movie isn’t that great. There are some positives here and there, but overall I got kind of bored. 

Let’s focus on the positives though. I mostly enjoyed this new version of Dr. Frankenstein (Victor Franks as played by Rhett Giles). When we first meet Dr. Franks, he is being questioned about a series of murders in an evaluation to see if he’s sane enough to stand trial. I also enjoy the framing of the story with Franks telling us what happened so what we see might not be 100% accurate to what really happened (just like the novel and just like The Curse of Frankenstein).

I also enjoyed a lot of the practical makeup and gore effects. There are some very gruesome and bloody murders in Frankenstein Reborn, and even though the effects look relatively cheap, they’re also a lot of fun. The approach to the gore was to just add more and more blood to cover up any deficiencies in the makeup, and I approve of that mentality. Plus, the creature wasn’t bad to look at. Well, his face was good, but no attention was paid to the rest of his body, so that felt a little odd. But overall, yeah, I enjoyed the effects.

What I didn’t care about so much was the story or how it was told. It starts with Dr. Franks and his assistants using biological nanotechnology (or something) in an attempt to cure a man with a degenerative condition that will leave him completely paralyzed sooner than later. Stuff happens, and the patient is eventually killed and turned into a monstrous creature. And okay, I’ll admit to tuning out at times and probably missing some story bits, but I really don’t think I missed too much. The story is not very deep, and in the end it turns into the creature murdering a few women and then going after Dr. Franks himself. It’s a superficial reworking of the source material that ends up focusing more on stalking and killing than tryig to tackle themes regarding the human condition. Certainly, Frankenstein Reborn is no Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

The editing of the movie was also somewhat off-putting, especially in the beginning. Victor Franks’ tale is told out of sequence for a while, so I was having to think about what happened when while I was still trying to figure out how all of these characters related to each other. That kind of storytelling can work well, but here it just wasn’t grabbing my attention well enough for me to put in much effort to keep up. Maybe that’s my fault, but regardless, that was also a big reason why I started checking out mentally. 

I might give Frankenstein Reborn another shot at some point, but it probably won’t be for a long while. For anyone else vaguely interested, I’d recommend maybe trying out some other Frankenstein movies before venturing into this one. 

Tagged : / / / / / / /