Modern Vampires (1998)

Probably seen by most on the after-dark Cinemax circuit of the late 90's, (most likely wedged between an "Emmanuelle in Space" episode and something starring Gary Daniels) the 1998 direct-to-video flick "Modern Vampires" surely amassed some sort of cult following. Directed by Danny Elfman's brother Richard, ("Forbidden Zone") and honing an eclectic cast featuring Casper Van Dien, Craig Ferguson, Kim Cattrall, and the legendary Rod Steiger, this is definitely a unique film in its blend of wild comedy, pop culture, horror and spoof.

Talented screenwriter Matthew Bright ("Freeway," "Gun Crazy") continues his themes of troubled urban youth and the moral perversion of mainstream America with a story about a band of vampires living in L.A., who are carefully trying to protect the secrecy and dignity of their breed. They hunt down reckless prostitute Nico, (Natasha Gregson-Wagner) who has been using her profession to wantonly lure nightly blood feasts, and is consequently calling dangerous attention to the vampire community. The gang is led by the youthfully handsome Dallas, (Van Dien) who falls for Nico and tries to protect her from his contemporaries.

Things get interesting when Rod Steiger's Dr. Van Hellsing comes to town to find Count Dracula among the city's growing vamp population. The best scenes of the movie rise from a sub-plot where Hellsing hires South-Central Crips to help him with the vampire slaying. The comedic contrast between the stubborn, culture-clashed Steiger and the joint-sucking, gangsta-rap blasting thugs is a stroke of genius, and Elfman uses enough restraint to keep the running gag amusing throughout the entire movie.

In similar ways, Richard Elfman allows the campiness of his own direction, and the natural disparity of the cast, to keep each scene entertaining with an appropriately silly tone. Think of the carefully balanced spoofery of "Fright Night," the teenage wit of "Scream," and the schlock of 90's B-movies like "Jack Frost" and you have "Modern Vampires," a send-up of vampire lore that doesn't take a frame seriously. The fun of this movie is that it feels completely aware of its own badness, and seems to string many of its laughs around the kitschy acting and production values.

However, one of the problems Elfman has with balancing spoof and horror is that he mistakenly allows a certain amount of laziness to be taken towards the material. To fully make fun of something, a director needs to have complete control over the things s/he is spoofing. "Modern Vampires" has very little establishment of its own mythological rules, its action sequences are dull, the special effects are half-baked, and the flashy, frequently used editing trick of inserting quick B-roll shots for dramatic effect is annoying. It's too easy to make a slapdash spoof with the excuse that it's "supposed to be bad." Great send-ups know how to poke fun at the subject matter, but give you what you want out of the genre anyway - like what Spielberg did with adventure serials in"Raiders" or what Tarantino did with kung fu movies in "Kill Bill," etc. This film is just a contentedly bad one, with a few laughs scattered around the camp.

The problems don't end there, either. There seem to be whole expositional scenes missing, the cinematography is bland and the sound design consists of obnoxiously artificial stock effects. There is also some needless, jarringly dramatic material, like when Nico returns to the trailer she grew up in to confront her abusive father. While going along nicely with Bright's body of work, the heaviness is simply unwarranted. The movie is oddly unbalanced, and towards the middle it starts to feel like Elfman didn't have a clue about where to take it.

If one can accept "Modern Vampires," on its own terms, there is still plenty to enjoy. The cast is vibrant and clearly having a good time and there are some genuinely funny moments. The under-appreciated Natasha Gregson-Wagner is a great fit, even making lines like "You're a card that needs to be dealt with" seem purposefully funny. "Modern Vampires" is pure, straight-forward cheap thrills that still deserves a watch - even if you're not just watching it to kill time between Cinemax After Dark flicks.

Chappaqua (Conrad Rooks, 1966)

Who is Conrad Rooks? His only other film credit, besides "Chappaqua," is an early 70's adapatation of "Siddhartha," which was probably more revered for its cinematography by Ingmar Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist than anything else. The question is asked in "Chappaqua," Rooks' autobiographical depiction of the wonderland of narcotics, which attempts to assess the identity of a man who has relied on consciousness-altering substances since his early teens, as well as the identity of a culture which surrounded his addiction. An informative card in the opening credits tells the audience all of the background information, and it is assumed that Rooks is just a former addict with a story to tell.

As "Chappaqua" gets going, one sees that it is not really a story at all, but a pastiche of beautiful and haunting images, themes, and visual ideas. Conrad Rooks apparently stars as himself, veiled as a character named Russell Harwick, and his tale begins in New York city - where debauchery has made a monster out of him. He lies on the floor of a nightclub munching crushed fragments of LSD and avoiding people's dancing feet. Infused around this sequence are various vibrant shots of urban glitter, ferociously edited together using blended opacities and Godardian fast cuts. The film follows Harwick into a rehabilitation clinic, where he is promised a "sleeping cure" for his drug addictions. What follows is a series of unconnected sequences, featuring visions of Native-American, Indian and American cultures.

The clinic immediately seems fashioned after the one in William S. Burroughs' "Junkie," and when Burroghs himself appears as Harwick's doctor it feels all the more appropriate. There is another appearance by Allen Ginsberg, and, considering the bodies of work of the two authors, the story is actually enrichened by their presences throughout the movie. "Chappaqua" is deeply inspired by the stylish, deeply personal works of the beatnik era, and its surreal, Dadaist realism takes on an interesting life of its own, especially considering the surrounding hippie movement of the time.

The film's many elusive, hallucinatory sequences are undoubtedly disjointed, but they quickly perculate into a trippy meditation on drugs and their corresponding cultures. Some of these scenes show drugs as cerominal or transcendental agents, having a spiritual purity in certain rituals. Others are nightmarish, like the unforgettable ode to American horror movies, where Harwick walks around the streets of New York City in a Nosferatu-like cloak. The film's title comes from Rooks' hometown, which is an American-Indian word meaning sacred burial ground. One of the film's prominent themes is purity in itself, whether as being devoid of controlling substances like drugs or of widespread cultural confusion. Rooks seeing 1965 New York City as a place of excess was a rare perspective for its time, but it now feels all the more astute. He explores the cultural roots of drug use to comment on the cultures in themselves, and one of the most important messages of the film is found in its pursuit for clarity of self. Irony is shown in how Native Americans and Indians once used drugs like peyote and marijuana as a means of spiritual identification, contrasted with its use as an instrument of excess in 1960's America.

Rooks seemed to channel the French New Wave in his visual and editing aesthetics, and it's not hard to connect directors like Godard and Truffaut with the visual motifs presented in the film. Rooks uses the liberating new teqhniques of the Nouvelle Vague to convey an unhinged vision of altered consciousness, and in certain ways pushes them forward. The beautiful cinematography by Robert Franks alternates between crisp B&W, washed-out B&W and grainy color in a style that may have never been used before in a feature film, and certainly wasn't used much until Oliver Stone's "JFK". Rooks' experimentation also owes some of its inspiration to a fellow American, Dr. Kenneth Anger. The cross-dissolves and occult-like imagery seem to come straight from "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome," and the teenage motorcycle iconography of Harwick seems to be taken directly from "Scorpio Rising."

While making these connections, it is important not to thoughtlessly rank Rooks with his contemporaries. This being his first film, it is far from a realized vision. Its sequences, while impressive, are sloppily connected with way too wide of an array of themes. The frequent experimentation undermines the film's thematic strength, and the sequences only seem to add up to hopeless ambiguity by the conclusion. The locations of France, India and the the U.K. (even Stonehenge where a wizard in a white cloak waves a wand on top of the world wonder) are impressive for an independently-financed film in any era, but seem like pointless frivolousness in relation to the truly important elements of the film. Nevertheless, the arresting images and counter-cultural observations should make the movie relevant in historical and social contexts and, at very least, make it a terrific watch. Where else are you going to see a dancing wizard on top of the real Stonehenge?

**Thanks Chase for bringing this home!

Cyborg (1989)

Directed by: Albert Pyun
Produced by: Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan
Starring: Jean Claude Van Damme, Deborah Richter, and Ralf Moeller.
Cinematography by: Phillip Alan Waters




(By Guest Critic/Twin Brother to Nick, A.J. Detisch)

I asked Scott, the guy I rent movies from, what the best Van Damme movie is. Without any hesitation he said Cyborg so I went over to his sci-fi section and picked it up . He said it would be a lot better than the crap I usually rent and after watching the movie with my brother, I could see what he meant. At the time of writing this review, I admit I am not very familiar with Jean Claude's work, but I found Cyborg lacking in storytelling but superfluous with quality action.

I'm a fan of the film's director Albert Pyun (Mean Guns, Nemesis, Captain America). A student of Akira Kurosawa, he incorporated a zen style into his filmmaking in the B-Action genre. He does not storyboard and shoots with a wide array of unpredictable angles and camera maneuvers, which make most of his films very visually stimulating. If Goddard had an influence on action film aesthetics, it is evident through Pyun. This movie incorporates steadicam, good intraframe slow-motion shots, and lots of good kicks and knife throwing by J.C. himself.

As much as I hate to criticize Pyun in such a general way, his films all get pretty scatterbrained at times (see Nick's review for Ticker). The plot is simple enough: Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean Claude) must stop a team of post-apocalyptic cyborg rogues from destroying a team of scientists who may have a cure for a deadly virus. But Pyun has no unity in production design or costumes, which make certain aspects of the film generic. It seems like he's trying to create a backwoods Mad Max without the cars (Van Damme's character's name is Gibson after all), but he undermines the effort by too much genre bending. He tries to incorporate Western, Pirate, Post-Apocalyptic, and Sci-Fi elements into one story that has not the depth to justify it.

However, Pyun creates a very hilarious scene in which he envisions an action-movie alternative to getting crucified. Gibson gets crucified and left on a T-shaped cross for a whole night and instead of shouting "Why have you forsaken me?!" he kicks his way off the cross! What would J.C. do?

The movie is a lot of fun, but I'd like to think Van Damme's glossier work (Time Cop, The Quest) would offer better production values and characters. I'll have to take it up with Scott. Fun fact: Jean Claude Van Damme did some ghost editing on the film.