{"id":40304,"date":"2023-10-03T03:57:10","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T07:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=40304"},"modified":"2023-09-13T10:59:18","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T14:59:18","slug":"the-spine-of-night-2021-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/03\/the-spine-of-night-2021-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spine of Night (2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What I loved about \u201cThe Spine of Night\u201d is that directors Philip Gelatt, and Morgan Galen King don\u2019t shy away from the fact that their movie is meant to be a modern \u201cHeavy Metal.\u201d It\u2019s an unabashed celebration of Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta, steam punk, and heavy metal right down to the rotoscoping animation that is used to bring the film\u2019s vision to life. The animation is right on par with what you\u2019d expect from the master Ralph Bakshi but I was happy that the pair of directors who write the film kept true to the story that they were telling through the very end.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The film follows Tzod (Lucy Lawless), a witch who presides over a village of swamp people that hold the key to the secrets of the sacred flower, The Bloom. Her village and people are raided by local soldiers and slaughtered, while Tzod is taken prisoner and brought to the kingdom of Lord Pyrantin (Patton Oswalt) and the warlord Mongrel (Joe Manganiello) in order to expel its secrets. When she refuses she\u2019s imprisoned with Ghal-Sur (Jordan Douglas Smith), a wizard who garners the powers of The Bloom and rises to take over the kingdoms. Spanning centuries, Ghal-Sur becomes a tyrant, and Tzod watches in wait, protecting the precious resource.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Spine of Night\u201d is a dark fantasy, the kind of dark fantasy that died when the eighties ended, and it\u2019s a classic tale of dark magic mixed with technology and an evil wizard that rises to power. The blue magic that the wizard clings to is shockingly similar to the ball that becomes the reoccurring story element in \u201cHeavy Metal\u201d and it plays a huge role in the unfolding of the mythology. Mid-way \u201cThe Spine of Night\u201d works as a pseudo-anthology not just exploring the rise of the villainous Ghal-Sur, but also in how his rise affected the world in and around his empire. There are some stories of monsters and battles and some brief ones including that of a young couple struggling to stay alive in the harsh winter, who fall victim to his evil.<\/p>\n

The stories have one consistent backdrop and theme, but sadly they don\u2019t really click together to form one unifying theme. The characters are disconnected which in turn makes \u201cThe Spine of Night\u201d feel somewhat disconnected and random. The screenplay thankfully compensates with a ton of stunning backdrops and fascinating characters, all of whom are heroes or villains working within shades of grey. There\u2019s also massive violence in the spirit of Bakshi with severed limbs, torn hearts, melting faces, dismemberment, and broken bones. The icing on the cake is the utilization of skulls, all of which are featured in almost every scene and play a crucial role in the gory climax.<\/p>\n

I also appreciated how the directors don\u2019t adhere to the common dark fantasy tropes, drawing male characters that are more vulnerable and rotten while the females are much bolder. Even the primary protagonist Tzod is much more in the tradition of Frank Frazetta\u2019s curvier women and is often very cunning and strong willed. If you can appreciate what \u201cThe Spine of Night\u201d is trying to pull off, it\u2019s a fantastic animated movie. All that was missing was the heavy metal soundtrack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I loved about \u201cThe Spine of Night\u201d is that directors Philip Gelatt, and Morgan Galen King don\u2019t shy away from the fact that their movie is meant to be a modern \u201cHeavy Metal.\u201d It\u2019s an unabashed celebration of Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta, steam punk, and heavy metal right down to the rotoscoping animation that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[58,99,349,477,622,1008,1087,1221],"class_list":["post-40304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-animation","tag-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-magic","tag-supernatural","tag-thriller","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40306,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40304\/revisions\/40306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}