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Decadent Evil A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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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. 

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Vampire Journals A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Vampire Journals (1997) – A Movie A Day 2021 #34

Vampire Journals DVD cover

Continuing my linked-movie journey I began a couple days ago with Dead Space, today I watched a movie from the same director as yesterday’s movie, Subspecies. Ted Nicolau directed all the movies in the Subspecies series, but instead of one of those, today I picked a spinoff of the series titled Vampire Journals. If Subspecies felt like it drew its inspirations from classical gothic vampire movies including Nosferatu, then Vampire Journals draws most heavily on the moody, tortured souls of Interview with the Vampire. You might even go so far as to call Vampire Journals a bit of a rip-off of the film version of Anne Rice’s tale, but I’ll be nice just say it feels very much like an homage in a lot of ways.

Vampire Journals follows Zachary, a vampire “with the heart of a mortal.” Zachary, with his chiseled features and long hair not dissimilar to Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire, is a vampire hunter of sorts. Zachary is currently on the hunt for Ash, a powerful vampire who has doomed/gifted many people with eternal life. It is Zachary’s mission to end Ash and his entire bloodline, but as Zachary stalks Ash’s extravagant lair in New York, he takes pity on a woman, Sofia, who has become the target of Ash’s “affections.” Zachary does his best to protect Sofia while still attempting to find a way to kill Ash, but Ash is powerful and has many allies. Plus, Zachary struggles daily (or rather, nightly) with his more sinister vampiric urges. What follows a dark and moody story with a lot of highly dramatic vampire dialogue and dreamy, Victorian-esque imagery.

Like Subspecies, I was a little surprised with how serious the focus of Vampire Journals is considering it’s a Full Moon production. I usually think of campy, silly horror movies when I think of Full Moon, but maybe I just haven’t seen enough of their library. Vampire Journals can verge on being campy with how it unabashedly adopts many of the vampire genre’s clichés, but its approach to every scene is so serious that I feel like the filmmakers really just wanted to make a good, pure vampire movie. Scenes can be overly dramatic at times, but that just seems to come with the package. The tortured-soul vampire kind of has to be overly dramatic, doesn’t it?

As for how I enjoyed the movie, I liked it fine. This isn’t the style of vampire movie I’ll usually pick as a first choice, but the characters were interesting and the movie was well made. I enjoyed how the filmmakers made the most of what I assume was a fairly small budget. There are some beheadings and other bloody moments, and they all look good. My favorite part was how they represented the vampire’s ability to “fly” though. There would be a shot of a real shadow moving against the background of the scene, then the vampire would “materialize” in a jump cut. I’m pretty sure it was all done practically, and it looked really good. It’s some great ingenuity that I absolutely appreciated.

And yeah, I appreciate the movie as a whole. I doubt I’ll revisit it again any time soon, but I’m glad I watched it. I will get back to the Subspecies movies after a while, and I understand one of the characters from Vampire Journals appears in the fourth installment of that series. I do hope the rest of the Subspecies movies are more about classical vampire ambiance rather than tortured-soul vampire drama though. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the movies either way, but I’ll enjoy them more if they’re more like the first Subspecies.

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Subspecies A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Subspecies (1991) – A Movie A Day 2021 #33

Subspecies poster

For today’s movie I decided to try something a little different. Rather than just pick some random movie based on little more than a whim, I thought I’d pick something to watch based on what I watched yesterday. So yesterday I watched Dead Space, and today I decided to watch a movie featuring one of the main actors from that movie. No, I didn’t go with the obvious and choose another Bryan Cranston film even though he was the only actor I really wrote about yesterday. Instead, I picked something starring Laura Tate who, in Dead Space, stars as Dr. Salinger, the level-headed love interest of the space cowboy main character. In today’s movie of the day Laura Tate plays Michele, the mostly level-headed love interest of a friendly vampire. The movie I chose is the Full Moon cult-classic vampire tale, Subspecies. 

I’ve heard about Subspecies for years and have its home-video cover artwork set in my memory, but I’ve never actually watched it. That is, until now. Subspecies is a gothic-inspired vampire movie that seems to borrow its aesthetic from some of the classic Hammer horror films with a bit of 1922’s Nosferatu thrown in. The movie focuses on a trio of young women, Michele, Mara, and Lillian, who travel to Romania to study local folklore. Meanwhile, Radu, an evil vampire with fangs and extra-long fingers reminiscent of Count Orlok, has traveled to the same Romanian village to kill his vampiric father (played by Angus Scrimm of Phantasm) and steal the legendary Bloodstone. The young women inevitably cross paths with Radu during their explorations, and what follows is a fun and familiar vampire story with skittish villagers, secretive vampire attacks, and a buildup to a final showdown in an ancient castle.

The first thing that struck me about Subspecies is how good it looks. It was shot on location in Romania, so the visuals are fantastic. The special effects can be somewhat hit and miss, but even some of the lesser effects are charming in a b-movie way. The cheesiest effects are easily Radu’s tiny stop-motion minions, but I think they give the movie a classic feel. Radu is the only vampire that is ever made up to look inhuman, and he looks and acts convincing in the role. His long fingers seem to be an annoyance for him and make it look kind of silly when he tries to hold things (especially when he attempts to sword fight), but the neat visual effect his fingers give when he’s vamping through the scenery is a valid trade-off. Also, his fingers help make his shadowy entrances and exits from rooms that much more fun in a German-expressionism-esque way. 

While Radu is definitely the most fun and memorable character in Subspecies, everyone else does a good job as well. Michele becomes the focus of Radu’s benevolent brother Stefan (who is also trying to get his hands on the Bloodstone), and Stefan’s interest in Michele makes her a target for Radu. There’s a bit of cat and mouse chase throughout the movie that climaxes with a fun final battle and a satisfying ending. The love story between Michele and Stefan feels a bit light, but the ambiance of the movie as a whole made me not care about that so much. I just had fun with the classic feeling of the movie and the plot that felt so familiar that I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen well before it actually happened. 

There are four total Subspecies movies and one spinoff. I’m probably going to pick tomorrow’s movie in a similar way to how I picked today’s, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll pick the next Subspecies movie in the series. I definitely do want to watch them all at some point, but I might space them out a little. 

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Climate of the Hunter A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Climate of the Hunter (2019) – A Movie A Day 2021 #25

Climate of the Hunter poster

I was looking for another newly released horror movie to watch when I came across the trailer for Climate of the Hunter, and it intrigued me the most out of the handful of new horror movies released this month. With its strong 1970s vibes, its fullscreen/1.33 aspect ratio, and its promise of some arthouse indie weirdness with vampires, the trailer sold me on a VOD rental. After watching Climate of the Hunter I would debate its categorization as a horror movie, but it did turn out to be an enjoyably quirky and darkly comedic psychological thriller. 

So what is Climate of the Hunter about? That might be difficult to pin that down exactly, but I’ll give it shot. A large part of the movie is about family. The story focuses on sisters Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) and their strained relationship. The sisters are staying together in a vacation cabin owned by their family, and the two of them range from passive aggressive to downright hostile in their interactions throughout the film. Their relationship is further tested when a charming and worldly writer named Wesley (Ben Hall) comes to stay in the cabin next door. Alma and Elizabeth are both attracted to Wesley, and Wesley is content to accept affections from them both which, of course, exacerbates their sibling rivalry. 

Through multiple dinner conversations (usually involving immaculately prepared 1970s-era dinners, the contents of which are narrated to us, the audience) we learn that Wesley has his own struggles with family, specifically his wife who was recently committed to a mental institution and his son who blames Wesley for his mother’s condition. Add to all of this the fact that Alma’s daughter Rose visits after being somewhat estranged from her mother for years, and you have all the makings of a tense family drama. 

Climate of the Hunter is also about mental instability. The very first thing we see in the movie is a typed report describing the mental condition of one of the characters. The prognosis isn’t good, and with delusions, psychotic episodes, and more being planted in our brains right away, it sets us up to expect a difficult time for the people we’re soon to meet. So in a way, Climate of the Hunter is about experiencing the mental decline of one of our main characters. But with the way the story is told, there is a lot of room for us to wonder if that character is sane and has just been put in an insane situation. Why? Because Wesley might be a vampire. 

Now don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler. We see vampiric images in the trailer, and every writeup for the movie explicitly states that Wesley might or might not be a vampire. Throughout the many conversations, hints are dropped about his possible blood-sucking proclivities. We also see certain things that would make us believe he is, in fact, a vampire, but there is still some doubt because of how the movie is constructed.

There is a lyrical nature to many scenes throughout Climate of the Hunter. Wesley has an eloquent way of speaking even when he’s talking about some of the most crude things imaginable. Also, Wesley likes to talk a lot. I’ve already mentioned the conversations in the movie a few times, and that’s because most of the movie is centered on long conversations with highly stylized dialogue. The dialogue and deliveries from the actors give the movie a sense of a heightened reality, and that leads into the visuals. Stars shine brighter than they should, lights appear where they shouldn’t, thoughts are represented visually, and dreams blend with reality. Visuals like that aren’t used excessively, but they’re used often enough to keep the audience a bit off balance. But is what we’re seeing simply meant to evoke certain emotions, of are we sharing the delusions of one or more of the characters? Or maybe both? No clear answers are given, and your willingness to accept ambiguity is going to be one of the deciding factors for if you will enjoy Climate of the Hunter or not.

I enjoyed Climate of the Hunter, but it’s definitely going to be an acquired taste for many people. It’s quirky in ways that reminded me slightly of a dark, alternate-universe version of a Wes Anderson movie. Maybe I kept thinking of Wes Anderson because of how the movie is shot (very symmetrical, straight-on shots of characters, quick zooms, etc.), but I do think it’s a valid comparison as far as the aesthetic goes. And really, the 1970s aesthetic is one of the things I really love about the movie. It’s convincing in a way that most modern filmmakers just can’t pull off. 

The comedy in Climate of the Hunter is dark, and for the most part it’s very, very dry. It’s more of a smirking movie than a laugh out loud movie, though I did chuckle a few times when a situation caught me off guard. The biggest takeaway as far as a recommendation goes is that the movie is dialogue-heavy. If you enjoy a talky indie movie that gets weird and slightly uncomfortable, then Climate of the Hunter might be for you.

You know, the more I think about it as I’m writing this, the more I’m finding to love about the movie. My initial reaction when finishing it was, “yeah, that was fun,” but now I kind of want to watch it again. I’m sure I will at some point.

So did I answer my question from earlier? What is Climate of the Hunter about? On the surface, it’s not about much. The characters’ fates seem as inevitable as the typed mental report shown to us at the beginning of the film. It’s about a brief moment in the lives of a handful of people whose personal problems begin to become each other’s problems as they discuss life and philosophy over some colorful and not-terribly-appetizing food. But is it about vampires? Maybe. 

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