Trailer of the Day: Dracula (1931)

I've recently decided that I need to brush up on my classic horror. I haven't really watched any of the Universal horror classics since I was a kid, and back then I remembered them being amazingly boring. It appears young me was correct in thinking this, at least in Dracula's case.

While it did have some good parts, most of the movie was about as engrossing as watching dirt. To be fair though, I feel like a lot of that was due to knowing the story so well. In being a classic, it defeats itself by having no surprises. Not to mention its pretty dated, but I think that goes with out saying.

However, the movie definitely has some high points. Bela Lugosi deserves every bit of praise he's ever gotten for this because he makes the movie. I just wish there were more scenes where he did... I don't know, anything! Most of his screen time consisted of him staring, but, considering how much his performance still shined, it says a lot about Lugosi's acting ability!

Dwight Fry as Renfield was also pretty great. I love his rant about the rats! Much like Lugosi, I wish we had more been able to spend more time with his character. His shift from uptight real estate agent to raving madman happens suddenly and it would have been nice to see a transitional scene in between. 

Acting aside, the film also had great atmosphere. The locations and backgrounds were the creepiest thing about it.

I've heard there's a Spanish re-edit that's scarier and a little edgier. Maybe ill have to track that down next. I just hope all the Universal horror films aren't this dull.

Trailer of the Day: Crawlspace

This movie is the definition of an underated classic.

Crawlspace is a totally bizare movie from the 80's that feels sort of like Saw with less lessons in morality and more death traps.
The basic plot is that a weird old ex-nazi owns an apartment building in which he only rents rooms to young, attractive women. This is becasue he likes to move through the crawlspace and spy on them. He also has numerous deathtraps set up and likes to sit by himself and play russian roulette.

Are you sold yet?

I love how nuts this movie is! It doesn't try and explain anything. It doesn't give any real motivation for the characters. It just sort of exists. In other movies this might be a problem, Crawlspace  has so much weird stuff going on that you don't really care.

I would say the trailer does a great job selling it except it doesn't have any parts with Klaus Kinski speaking and his oddball depressing monolouges really makes the movie. 

Trailer of the Day: The Conjuring

A friend of mine described this movie as follows:

"Not only is it a generic haunted house movie, but it's SO generic that it must be the template which all haunted house movies come from."

While I think he's pretty much dead on, I wasn't as down on it as he was. It has a couple good scares but it's still just too predictable. If you've seen a haunted house or possession movie, then you've seen this. In fact I feel like there are too many parts where it primes you for a scare then nothing happens.

On a side note, I'm amused that the trailer states: "It's not a haunting. It's not a possession". SPOILER ALERT, it's actually both! I guess since they've already shown pretty much every scare in the trailers they figured that they had to do something to draw people in. Why not just pretend the movie still has surprises!

*SIGH*

P.S. While looking up this trailer on you tube, I found this German trailer for Ghost Movie.



I don't know why, but I find this really funny. Marlon Wayans German dub is especially ridiculous.