A Fanged Filled Time

More than a week ago the audiences saw a DVD release of the Blade TV series pilot titled “The House of Chthon.”

The name of it sounds something from H.P. Lovecraft. There are no mountainous creatures terrorizing the human mind here or shadows lurking, stalking from some Lovecraftian abyss.

But there are vampires.

Lots of them.

The film sets itself after the third Blade film as certain events were mentioned in the pilot’s dialogue. Where he is tracking down an outpost of fanged fiends in the wintry landscape of Russia. The beginning marks a cold, choking climate that makes an interesting background to the heart of the story. The House of Chthon. A cold place. It inhabits a powerful, gangster like vampire with blonde hair and a smug attitude who remains a threat.

Krista Starr comes back from her military duty in Iraq to find her family is still broken apart by her brother’s negligent lifestyle. She then later learns that her brother is killed in a middle of a cross-fire, supposedly a victim of gang warfare. As she digs deeper into the fabric of the mystery, she finds her late twin brother had been in a sting operation, working closely at Blade’s side, in efforts of taking down the House of Chthon. The House is hiding some kind of powerful virus that targets certain vampires, leaving them in the midsts of power.

Like kings struggling to regain their thrones.

However, Starr becomes a vampire through the doings of the House of Chthon. No longer able to live the life of a normal person, she is now the resident of night. A shadow stirring in the late hours. She forms an aggravated relationship with Blade and becomes his inside source. There are hopes that they will bring down the ring of power starting from the inside.

The series isn’t a bad one created by David Goyer, who wrote all of the original Blade films starring Wesley Snipes and also did the screenplay for Batman Begins. The series itself is filled with interesting ideas. Unfortunately the series runs far too short to give it a more fleshed-out story. It lasted for 12 episodes.

The series formed its niche on Spike TV where they’re more at liberty in tackling violence. Some of the scenes are gruesome, a bit melodramatic. The bloody scenes can be over-the-top. Which is fine for horror fans. The DVD release is an extended cut with nothing cut out. More gory bits.

The writing is decent and the woman actress Jill Wagner does a good job playing the disbelieving Krista Starr before she is dragged into a world she never knew existed. There are some true emotional scenes with her dealing with the fact that the supernatural forces are out there and it has already taken the life of her brother. That leaves her thirsting for revenge in no small way.

Sadly, there is no real star power in the TV series. The original intent was to bring Wesley Snipes back to reprise the role as the tough cracker, sword-wielding Blade. And he wears his sunglasses even at night. But none of it fell through. And neither did efforts to hire Jessica Beil come through either. So it left the series standing pretty much on its own.

Kirk Jones does a fine job in taking up the sword and playing the character of Blade with his sharp humor and formidable stature as the night-haunted warrior. But one does sorely miss Snipes in the part. And therefore the comparisons are going to be made.

It’s nice to see the series has a long-term villain Marcus Van Schiver who is a presence throughout the entire thing. Not before did Blade have a foe who often returns to spite him. His charmingly sly looks and piercing eyes set him apart from the groggy appearance that makes up Blade. They become opposites of the same coin here. And it makes for a very good conflict to keep the series going.

Despite a very good following and some extraordinary stories, the series did not get picked up for the following season. And it left everything open-ended. But it was a modest attempt in a different kind of storytelling on the TV landscape.

The clear evidence of the DVD release of the pilot episode bodes well for the rest of the series that is sure to follow. Perhaps the Blade series will finally hit the shelves in its own box set.

Blade is based on a Marvel comic book character which was created during the 1970s. He is one of the more interesting black characters who has a major role in the comic books history apart from other well-known favorites such as the Black Panther and Luke Cage. The black characters are far and between. But Blade has a spotlight all to himself when it comes to kicking some vampire ass.

Sweet. Bring on the rest of the series.

No Trick or Treat Here...

I make no apologies for the lateness of this article.

But I’m here. And I’m going to tell you about the Halloween movie making its debut already in the last weekend of August. Direct to you from the warped imagination and directing of a well-known rock star.

A friend of mine during that Labor Day weekend has suffered through the pains of a relationship, going down in the dumps… and I do mean, way down in the bottom. So I took care of her during that weekend, keeping a careful eye after her.

She wanted to see the Halloween movie.

So did I.

But coming away at the end of the movie on Sunday night, I feel a slight pinch of disappointment. There’s no doubt that the director Rob Zombie got his hands on a project that might have been better left alone.

Don’t screw with the classics.

Of course, there are some people who don’t listen. There’s already the object of lesson number one: the film Psycho has been given the updated treatment with new cast and a modern setting.

It was a pointless film.

The original 1960 film was a bona fide classic. Which still sends shivers down one’s spine every time the music cue from Bernard Hermann plays through the film. And the strangeness of Anthony Perkins, like a young schoolboy lost in the world. Having some unusual perks like looking at naked women in the showers through a hole in the wall.

There was nothing wrong with the original film. It was near perfection. Yet someone wanted to remake the film frame-for-frame. It’s a waste of time. Don’t bother updating then.

Director Rob Zombie might have learned from this mistake. But he went ahead with the film Halloween anyway. Farting around with the well-known horror film from 1979. There was no need for doing the film once again. No purpose.

It leaves a bad taste, sadly enough.

Perhaps because I’m so damn used to the original film. Again, it was so well done in its original incarnation.

Zombie has a lot of misfires in his directing career so far. I hated with a gut-wrenching awfulness the film House of a 1000 Corpses, a dreadful gore-fest with nothing else to offer. Though I loved the film Devil’s Rejects, a great injection of 1970s mayhem and horror that feels in place of its setting. The use of music was perfect.

But the remake of Halloween is another misfire.

The film is directed, written and produced by Zombie. He has total creative control over it. So the blame must solely rest on him. It’s a harsh complaint.

The first forty minutes of the film chronicling Michael Myers as a young boy is brilliant however. The youthful actor used in these scenes conveys a stark, hidden nature that sweeps with deep recession of darkness. His mind belongs to the abyss. And there is a calmness in that black sea that stirs with ugly violence.

The young boy actor shows evil in his eyes. He’s perfect for the part.

But the film drowns in a lot of gore and violence that was not really needed to paint the picture of the Halloween psychopath. It’s just a long, extended ante of bloodshed and desiccated bodies in a crimson-smeared trail everywhere. But we really don’t learn much more about the title character.

Had Zombie fixed the film to concentrate on just the boy actor Daeg Faerch in his adolescent years, he might’ve had something of a film to add to the mythos. That kid was pretty creepy.

The character Sam Loomis played by Malcolm McDowell: The British actor is very established and I think he’s very talented. But he comes across as a blatant wuss in the film. Moaning and complaining. In the original film of Halloween, what I liked about Donald Pleasance and his approach to the same role was that he was probably just as crazy as Myers was. Which made the original Loomis a more formidable opponent to the killer.

What was also lost in the modern updated version was the sense of the supernatural. There was no presence that loomed in Michael Myers, often referred to as the Bogeyman. There should be a hidden sense of horror that stalks the night, unseen, like an invisible force drifting between the moonlight. He’s the hunter that sets his sights on people. He’s a killer higher up on an evolutionary scale.

We didn’t get any of that in the remake. Instead, he feels like just another whacko which a penchant for knives, carrying on a glorified hatchet job on his victims. There should be a morbid feeling of terror when the lights in the theater flickers out as we watch a horror film. There should be mood. There should be tension. But I didn’t feel any of that.

There are a few good pointers. It’s good to see the original mask still cropping up in the remake, the old, grayish death mask that looked ghostly in its appearance. And John Carpenter’s original music score trickles throughout. Though it only reminds me of the original 1979 Halloween that I’ve come to admire so much.

And look out for the recognizable Sid Haig as Chester Chesterfield, the Haddonfield cemetery caretaker, in a small cameo. You might have seen him before as Captain Spaulding in the other films directed by Zombie. It’s a good enough part for him.

But there are plenty of other classics in the 1970s that draws to the horror landscape, carving out our imagination with their slick production. They put the mood into horror. You can say that about the films Jaws and the Exoricist earning places in the cinematic history as being scary.

Please, whatever you do, don’t touch those films. They’re already great forays into majestic theatrical beauty that rips a hole into your vulnerability. Those films encapsulate the horror genre. They don’t need another beating from would-be modern hacks looking for a way to update. Just stay at home and enjoy the classics as they were intended.