Michael Headley: Dude this will be our big break!
Todd Kaufman: How do you figure?
Michael: Everyone loves vampire movies right now, so we could make our own!
Todd: Genius, dude!
Michael: But while the audience is watching the horror movie, we can perform some songs during the movie.
Todd: Geniuser, dude!
Michael: I mean they have to watch us perform, what else are they going to do? Press the forward button?
Part of the “Withered World” web short series, director Jon Davis offers his own harrowing tale of humanity and horror with “Vows.” A short that pictures two people trying to gain a year’s worth of marriage in only a day, director Davis sets down on a young couple anxious to seal their vows. Only because someday soon it won’t mean much.
Director Patrick Rea’s latest short film for “Withered World” is a unique and interesting take on the revenge film and the consequences of the act that affect literally everyone. While most films would glorify the act of vengeance, “Vindicate” takes a step back and ponders on the ripple effect is for avenging one’s family.
Like the first “V/H/S,” the sequel to the acclaimed anthology surely won’t re-invent the wheel, but it still manages to be a very good horror film with a killer series of stories. Meshing the found footage sub-genre with the anthology film. “V/H/S 2” learns from the mistakes of the first film by reducing the number of stories and lengthening them for more exposition. There are still inherent flaws and plot holes injected in to this sequel, but for this outing there’s a better sense of coherency, and a lot less filler. Rather than the more confusing premises from the first film, this time around the four stories are much easier to follow. To wit, they’re much more entertaining.
The goddess Ingrid Pitt roams the European Countryside spreading lesbianism–er–vampirism to hapless farms and mansions as the dreaded Mircalla. Pitt is at her absolute sexiest in one of the most erotic Hammer films ever made. Pitt stars as the buxom and desirable Mircalla who masquerades as damsels and maidens thanks to her handler. Left at the manors of her hosts for weekends, she insinuates herself in to the family, and eventually seduces the innocent taut daughters of the owners of the house, engaging in affairs, eventually transforming them in to her own vampiric minions. Pitt absolutely glows on screen as the irresistible Mircalla who worms her way in to households across the countryside, and takes every chance to romance young daughters whose lives are filled with monotony and suppression.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a really good anthology film. Not since “Trick r Treat” have we had the horror fans had an anthology horror film that not only changed the game for the sub-genre, but made waves as a horror film, period. The Collective of indie filmmakers that team to create “V/H/S” really do resort to the found footage genre for the sake of some sense of believability. That and the format is pretty cost effective, when you think about it. In either case, The Collective is allowed to be very creative and unusual in a film about a series of short vignettes viewed through old V/H/S tapes.
Oddly enough “Vamp U” (formerly titled “Dr. Limptooth”) works much better as a horror movie than it does a comedy. Deep down it possesses the tone of one of those raucous horror comedies from the eighties that should rightfully star someone like Eddie Deezen or Linnea Quigley, and as a horror movie it’s a very effective tongue in cheek vampire film. As a comedy it’s a pretty decent riot, and one that may not inspire laughter, but will garner various giggles and chortles. When “Vamp U” decides it wants to be a straight up vampire movie, it’s a pretty wicked little throwback to the eighties, especially with Julie Gonzalo having a blast as the alpha vampire queen Chris, who begins sleeping with her vampire professor and turns in to a vampire mid-way.