TheRetroCritic

In this (late, sorry!) Halloween-themed 19th episode, fellow film buff Jamie and I discuss movie news, review a recent release ( Captain Phillips , this time), and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics. Guess what film was being referenced in this week's brand new segment  "Kneel Before Zog"  segment and get a shout-out in the next episode! You can email your answer here:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on  iTunes  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic #VampireMonth retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

Thanks for all your support during Vampire Month! I'll try and post a few more vampire reviews on weekends this month but it's time to let Anime Month do its thing and say goodbye to Vampire Month... for now. (and let's not forget that vampire anime does exist :P) Here are all of this month's reviews: Master Of Darkness (Game Review) Dracula In London (Game Review) Castlevania: Bloodlines (Game Review) Dracula III: Legacy Dracula II: Ascension From Dusk Till Dawn Fright Night (1985) Shadow Of The Vampire BloodRayne Kid Dracula (Game Review) Sucker The Vampire The Last Man On Earth Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula Escape From Vampire Island Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula (Video Review) Dracula: Dead And Loving It Blood (Game Review) Queen Of The Damned Thirst Scars Of Dracula   Rockabilly Vampire Bram Stoker's Dracula Dracula 2000

Check out my review of DOS board game Dracula In London and text game Vampire's Castle Adventure  over at retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle !

Check out my review of Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis over at retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle !

Read the review HERE .

And so a franchise that died soon after it started continues and ends with an instalment that may not be the worst of the bunch but which is still hardly impressive or necessary. Luckily, it learns a little bit from Dracula II: Ascension 's mistakes. For one thing, the main characters this time are Jason Scott Lee's badass priest and Jason London's jokey sidekick. That's a good thing. We follow these two as they fight off vampires on stilts and say unintentionally hilarious things like "You don't bless babies.". It's not great art but it just about kinda works. At least the film is trying to be somewhat fun and entertaining, which is more than I can say about its predecessor. Unfortunately, way too much time is spent waiting for the vampires to come out. So many scenes take place during the day when all our heroes can really do is spout out exposition and prepare for whatever's going to take place later. It's not terribly interesting and j

Well that franchise died quickly... Now I'm not going to pretend that Dracula 2000 was a masterpiece that reinvented the entire horror genre but it was certainly much better than this! The first film was pretty trashy but it had its charm: you had Christopher Plummer as Van Helsing, Dracula checking out Virgin Megastores, it was ludicrous but kinda fun. Dracula II: Ascension is not so much ludicrous, although it most definitely is, as it is altogether poorly conceived. The main problem with this sequel, for me, was the plot. Why would you make a Dracula film called Dracula II and have the iconic vampire strapped helpless by a net for 99% of it?! Really, the film should have just been about Jason Scott Lee's badass priest going around the world killing vampires, and you can tell it wanted to be. Unfortunately, it had to also somehow link itself with the first film AND prompt a sequel so what we're left with is a film which is nothing more than a bridge between somet

Written by none other than Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn was Robert Rodriguez's follow-up to Desperado and was further proof that the director was indeed one the most fun, rock n' roll filmmakers around. The film is one of two halves. The first hour is dedicated to George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino, who play two brothers, criminals on their way to Mexico. After leaving carnage behind them, they take a family hostage in a winnebago and finally make it through the border. The goal was to spend the night in some dodgy trucker bar beautifully called "The Titty Twister", wait for Cheech Marin (who plays like 3 roles in this) and go their separate ways come dawn. Unfortunately, and this is a pretty big spoiler if you've never seen the movie and you're planning to watch it, the bar turns out to be packed full of blood-thirsty vampires. The second half of the film is basically all about our heroes (and anti-heroes) fighting off vampires in the blo

Yes the Fright Night remake was surprisingly decent. But what of the original? Released a couple of years before The Lost Boys , it already took a more tongue-in-cheek, nostalgic approach to vampire films and put a geeky character in the middle of a full-blown nightmare. "Fright Night" refers to a TV show within the film in which an ageing actor playing a vampire hunter (a perfect Roddy McDowall) introduces classic horror films Vampira-style. McDowall's Peter Vincent is an obvious homage to iconic actor Peter Cushing, known for playing vampire hunter Van Helsing in countless Hammer films. His character is dragged kicking and screaming into a real life vampire problem and his disbelief at the events unfolding before him is tons of fun throughout. The film sees a vampire amusingly called Jerry (Chris Sarandon) move in next door to some high school kid (William Ragsdale) who soon becomes aware of what his neighbour really is and, of course, becomes his primary targe

From the vampire movie Sleepless Nights , review coming up next week ;)

Here's a weird little movie you might have missed. Following German film director F. W. Murnau and his crew as they set out to make the iconic classic Nosferatu , Shadow Of The Vampire suggests that actor Max Schreck, who played the main role in the film, might have been a real vampire. Which, as you can imagine, would have made for a bizarre shoot to say the least. We follow the making of the film as crew members start going missing mysteriously and an overall sense of terror starts taking over the entire production. It's a genius premise and the film lives up to it. Luckily, it never takes itself too seriously, always keeping a nicely dark sense of humour around to lighten things up a bit. John Malkovitch is perfect as Murnau, a man so obsessed with putting together this unique film that he is willing to turn a blind eye to Schreck's vampiric nature and even bargain with him. A virtually unrecognisable Willem Dafoe plays the role of Schreck and evokes not only Schre

That's exactly what video game movies needed: another kick in the balls. Uwe Boll's BloodRayne is now, of course, somewhat infamous for being one of his own most consistently flawed films and yet it somehow spawned not one but two sequels. A typical B-movie cast is assembled as the likes of Ben "way too good for this" Kingsley, Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez walk around wearing bad wigs, goofy make-up and silly costumes either over-acting or under-acting their asses off. The plot follows Rayne (Kristanna Loken), a half-vampire half-human out for revenge against Kagan (Kingsley), the king of the vampires, for what he did to her family. While on her quest she meets a positively drunk Michael Madsen, a moody Michelle Rodriguez, not to mention Meat Loaf, Billy Zane and Udo Kier. It's like someone stole the Big 2000's B-Movie Rolodex and called everyone on there. The movie goes for Resident Evil / Underworld -style action cool (except set in the 18th c

Check out my review of classic Game Boy game Kid Dracula  over at retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle !

Here's another Troma Entertainment vampire film for y'all. Unlike Rockabilly Vampire , though, this is one of those Troma movies that's much more concerned with getting as many boobs on show as possible as it is with telling a humorous little story as cheaply as possible. Now, don't get me wrong, Sucker: The Vampire is, indeed, humorous and incredibly cheap! Just not as enjoyably so as the aforementioned flick. As titillating as you might find the more erotic scenes that this movie has to offer, you'll soon just want to skip to the more plot-driven moments as at least 50% of the film is basically filler. Its look is completely inconsistent in that sometimes it's over-stylised with funky lighting, red filters and dutch angles and sometimes it's just not. It's when the film does resemble a legitimate vampire film somewhat and feels like the usual tongue-in-cheek Troma style you expect that it's at its strongest, of course. Unfortunately, the firs

Based on Richard Matheson's classic novel "I Am Legend", The Last Man On Earth was an early adaptation which starred Vincent Price as a man living in a post-apocalyptic world taken over by vampires. Although the title and Price's presence may suggest an over-the-top sci-fi monster movie, this is in fact a much more serious and surprisingly well thought-out effort which still makes the recent I Am Legend movie look like crap. The vampires in this film are more like zombies with a blood problem than straight-up vampires but the main iconography is, indeed, there so you can either see it as a precursor to Night Of The Living Dead or a completely different type of vampire film. Vincent Price's character is completely isolated and lonely as he spends his days burning vampire bodies and his nights locked up at home, battling monsters who get too close. You're told in an appropriately depressing flashback that, early on, his family fell victim to the vampire &

Don't you just love living in a world where a film called Bonnie And Clyde Vs. Dracula exists? I know I do! Some crossovers are just uncalled for and some are so uncalled for that they become intriguing. The game then becomes to see how the film brings these two completely different worlds together, sit back and judge how clever it was at doing that. Whether the film itself is good or not, that's almost irrelevant. If you call your film something this absurd, you can't be too picky with it as that's missing the point entirely. Technically, no, Bonnie And Clyde Vs Dracula isn't that good. The acting can be wooden from the supporting cast and the budget is near non existent. That said, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have a ball with this one. I like films that know exactly what they are, what they need to be and do that without breaking your balls. Yes, Escape From Vampire Island , I'm talking about what you didn't do. As cheap as this mov

Based on a manga, Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island sounded awesome. I mean, first of all that's a great title, second of all the concept of a vampire island is so delightfully trashy that it could have only been good. Well... If you forget that Uwe Boll's House Of The Dead existed and also took place on an island. The bad news is that Escape From Vampire Island isn't good and most definitely doesn't live up to its premise. The film is surprisingly joyless considering that its key idea was so inherently entertaining. That's like calling a film "Look Out! The Dogs Are Taking Over The Planet!" and then taking it seriously. Why would you do that?! After a promising opening scene set on the titular island, we're soon introduced to our main characters who turn out to be a truly one-dimensional bunch: stereotypes you'd find in a manga or an anime series minus the fun. The smart one with glasses, the fat one who eats a lot, the stupid but h

The first in the classic series of Universal monsters/Abbott & Costello crossover comedies, Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein was the duo's first attempt at making a respectful homage to classic horror films while putting together a good, original comedy AND not taking the piss too much of the source material. I mean, this is a film in which Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi reprise their respective roles of The Wolfman and Dracula so making a straight-up spoof would have been a faux-pas to say the least. Somehow I don't see Lugosi making a mockery of Dracula... without Ed Wood, that is. This movie is certainly a crowd-pleaser in that both fans of the old monster movies can enjoy it and fans of Abbott and Costello as well. It walks a fine line between homage and parody but makes it work both ways admirably. Unfortunately, the title is a bit of a lie: they never meet Frankenstein. They meet Frankenstein's Monster, played by Glenn Strange, but never Doctor Frankens

In case you missed it, here's my old review of Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula . Expect a written review of the film this week!