Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Director Zelda Williams and Diablo Cody’s “Lisa Frankenstein” doesn’t just wear its influences on its sleeves, it bedazzles those influences and flashes its sleeves around proudly. “Lisa Frankenstein” watches as if Diablo Cody pitched: “Remember “Edward Scissorhands”? What if “Edward Scissorhands” but in the 80’s?” All the cards are set up from minute one, from the Gothic animated opening sequence, and the pastel photography, while Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse do their very best Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp impersonations.

Mix in “Heathers,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” and “Warm Bodies” and we’re given what is essentially a ton of talent with no place to go.

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The Monster Squad (1987) [4K UHD/Blu-Ray]

I’ve written in great length about director Fred Dekker’s “The Monster Squad” over and over. I love it. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, and I love it now. I wore out the VHS when I was a wee lad, I had a bootleg DVD in my collection when it was out of print for many years, and ever since I love to re-visit it whenever I can. “The Monster Squad” is a drastic departure from director Fred Dekker’s other cult classic “Night of the Creeps,” but like it, “The Monster Squad” is an unabashed love letter to horror movies, and the horror genre in general.

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Ranking the Classic Movie Monster Reboots from Best to Worst

DRACULA WEEK

 With “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” coming to theaters on Friday, we’re going to see a pretty interesting interpretation of Dracula. I am quite excited to see what it has to offer horror fans and have re-visited a lot of the classic movie monsters and the studios’ efforts to reboot and re-imagine a lot of their classic IP’s. While I’m hoping “The Last Voyage of Demeter” makes Dracula horrifying again, I ranked all of the attempts at Rebooting Classic Movie Monsters from Best to Worst.

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The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023)

Bomani J. Story’s horror film is one part family drama, one part Frankenstein, and one part Re-Animator. Deep down beneath its grue and gore is a very relatable and heartbreaking tale of a family divided by death and a girl determined to beat it. Much of “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” is centered around young Vicaria, a literal mad genius who is convinced that she can cure death, and like most mad geniuses, she finds out along the way that what is dead should stay dead, and that her madness might be symptomatic of the world she lives in.

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Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022) [Digital]

After four “Hotel Transylvania” movies it’s pretty obvious that by now, even Genndy Tartakovsky. I think despite his name being plastered all over this new sequel that he probably didn’t have much to do with its creation. Now that the series is four movies deep, along with a short lived TV series, “Transformania” feels so much less like a high stakes sequel, and a lot more like an extension of the TV series. Watching it, it felt like the studios merely took four scripts for the cancelled series, and stapled them together to create this hodgepodge adventure.

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Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958): The Film Detective Special Edition [Blu-Ray]

The Z Movie to end all Z movies, “Frankenstein’s Daughter” is both a cult classic and a classic piece of cinematic trash. It’s a god awful attempt to take the Frankenstein tale and retro-fit it in to a teen horror drama about coming of age, legacy, and uncomfortable scenes of men aggressively hitting on high school girls. In either case, “Frankenstein’s Daughter” is something of an anomaly, it’s a movie that’s been widely accepted within the genre, but it’s just so painfully bad when you finally experience it.

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Frank & Zed (2020)

I wish there were more movies like Jesse Blanchard’s “Frank & Zed” in theaters and midnight movie showings. It’s a movie that promises to become a cult classic and for good reason. Not only is it wildly inventive, and absolutely charming, but I was completely sucked in to everything from the story, the gruesome gore, and the shockingly incredible production values (40 Handmade puppets!). While the movie is low budget, Blanchard’s ability to make every single element of his film feel epic in scope, keeps “Frank & Zed” consistently brilliant and absolutely entertaining.

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