The Month of Terror: Dracula III: Legacy (2005)

Alright, I did the other two Dracula borefests with all their illogical plots and ridiculous acting, what’s one more? I might as well finish off this horrific waste of time series so I never have to deal with it ever again! Then I will be RID OF THIS CRAP FOREVER! Hallelujah! I cannot wait for the day! Let’s get this monkey excrement over with for good.

Director: Patrick Lussier

Starring: Jason Scott Lee, Jason London

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303929/

The film begins with superfluous and idiotic opening credits interspliced with flashbacks from the second film, which aren’t even in the chronological order the movie played them in. Amazing attention to detail there you goddamn idiotic mongrels. Then we get to see our two favorite characters ever, the wimpy guy from the last movie and the Slow Walking Priest! Wimpy Guy gets knocked over by a few vampires and pinned down when Slow Walker appears and…walks slowly.

At least his character is consistent. More than you can say for anything else in this damn series.

Seriously, man? YOUR PARTNER’S LIFE IS AT STAKE. RUN FASTER. HOW HARD IS IT? His flair for the dramatic is reaching parodic levels. He kills the vampires unfortunately before they kill Wimpy Guy. And I say unfortunately because Wimpy Guy’s dialogue in the rest of the movie is, shall we say, special. Not to mention his acting is about as convincing as a camel with syphilis.

Slow Walking Priest talks to Roy Scheider from Jaws, reprising his amazing role as the father of whatever random church they worship at, and is told he cannot be a priest any longer because he’s trying too hard to be Bruce Lee I guess. So now he’s not even a priest anymore. He’s just a slow walking idiot.

Then we get some witty banter from our two main piss-stains that basically amounts to this:

WIMPY GUY: Blah blah blah, I’m trying to lighten the mood but failing horribly!

SLOW WALKING IDIOT: Blah blah blah, having my sunglasses on all the time means I don’t actually have to emote at all, because I’m just that cool!

They start driving to the border of this military sanctioned area I guess, where they’re then told they have to wait for the captain. He pulls up in a jeep with some stuff obviously covered up for a reason, and so instead of doing the logical thing and talking to him like normal human beings, Slow Walking Idiot just walks right up and looks at the dead bodies in the jeep. Doesn’t that breach some kind of security protocol? To hell with that! Slow Walking Idiot does what he wants!

Some guy does try to stop them, but then the weirdest thing happens…Slow Walking Idiot turns around to face him and then the guy shoots himself in the head? I really don’t get what this is supposed to be, and since it’s never brought up again, I’ll just assume they needed to pad out the running time – because that’s what you’ll be seeing a lot of in the next few scenes too.

It's never explained, does he have psychic powers? Was the other guy just suicidal? Ugh forget it.

They come across some burning crosses with pumpkin heads on them, cool! Might as well have just put signs on ‘em saying ‘WE DIDN’T HAVE ANY IDEAS.’

Then they find a bunch of terrorists taking some people hostage and stop despite Slow Walking Idiot’s better judgment. Look at the leader; it’s like a combination between Harvey Keitel and Fabio by way of Gary Oldman:

And more slightly obscure pop culture/cinema references!

Some more pointless stuff happens and through a truly weird chain of events, their car gets blown up! And the terrorists get away…well, glad that was in the movie. Seriously, what was the purpose? They didn’t meet any new characters to take with them, the story wasn’t advanced in any way…it was totally pointless! Dracula III, you are a complete failure on every level.

After that, our two morons come across a circus that has been burnt to the ground and everyone in it slaughtered. They also meet this chick named Julia, who doesn’t really do anything and who the filmmakers apparently think is important. She’s a journalist, and her companion, who should probably be in a comedy flick instead of this. But sadly he ended up in Dracula III, so all we can do is have him kidnapped by vampires and turned.

While that boring garbage is going on, we see Slow Walking Idiot fighting against…

Vampire clowns. You’re seriously giving us VAMPIRE CLOWNS.

No! Don't kill Snooki!

My God that’s silly. I don’t even know what to say about it other than I’m glad we’ve finally returned to the ridiculous corniness from the last two movies. I was really getting bored. I’d talk about how stupid it is that he kills the first one by sheer luck when its stilt-leg gets caught in a sewer grate, but frankly I don’t want to complain too much right now. Beggars can’t be choosers.

But since the film actually catered to what any normal human being would want out of their entertainment – i.e. something entertaining – they decide to backpedal fully after that and deliver nothing of worth. Like the very next scene of the characters trying to act romantic and coming off more like a bunch of socially awkward Big Bang Theory rejects.

Actually Big Bang Theory is miles better than this tripe even at its most pandering and low-brow comedy...

Seriously, it’s bad. I love how Julia goes back and forth between these two morons like the writers couldn’t decide whose love interest she was. I love how she tells Slow Walking Idiot off for saying good morning (because the previous night was so hellish) but then is perfectly fine with Wimpy Guy’s terrible horse-spewing jokes that sound like lines even Dane Cook would fine puerile. I love how they kiss and then she takes off his sunglasses and just says sorry. Then he should have said, “Whoops, forgot to mention if we kiss then you turn into a vampire too!” It didn’t happen. And the movie was all the duller for it.

So they split up. Then we get another wonderfully plot-advancing scene where Slow Walking Idiot lets Wimpy Guy drive and – surprise – he stops at the side of the road to help a woman with a baby. God, this guy is stupid. You might as well just staple ‘IT’S A TRAP’ in bright red lettering to the top of that woman’s head. And whaddya know, it IS a trap, as she throws him the baby and it turns out to be a bomb. Slow Walking Idiot knocks it away just in time and mercifully, Wimpy Guy’s life is saved. I’m so glad…oh wait no I’m not. Then they both get kidnapped by the terrorists from earlier! Oh the humanity!

So this is what happens to toys rejected from the Toy Story series for malfunctions...they get put in crap Z-grade horror flicks with bombs strapped to them. What a shame.

Because explosions always make a movie good!

But seriously, what was the idea behind this plan? Did they…anticipate him knocking the bomb away in time to save his friend, or was the kidnapping just plan B? This makes no sense! They try to kill them first and it fails, so they kidnap them? It’s like a plan hatched by people in different rooms.

Anyway they get taken to some ridiculous underground lair that looks more like something you’d see on a Looney Tunes Halloween special or something. Some stuff happens but frankly, it’s not that exciting. We find out that Julia betrayed them to get a story, although this will never be brought up again and has no relevance to the actual plot. Must be more of that padding this movie is so good at! And by good at, I mean terrible at.

Our lovely main characters all escape unharmed. God! Does anything in this movie have any connection to anything else? I mean, at least they managed to keep the basic plot consistent with the previous film this time, unlike the transition from the first to the second movie, but in doing that they’ve uncovered a whole new level of sucking! This whole movie is just a collection of random scenes that have nothing to do with the previous ones. It’s a new record for padding! Half of the movie is just filler!

Oh, and don’t you just love how we’re an HOUR INTO THIS DAMN MOVIE AND WE HAVEN’T SEEN HIDE NOR HAIR OF DRACULA??? I mean it’s in the title! How would you feel if in the new Avengers movie, you don’t get to see any of the Avengers until the 45-minute mark, spending most of the runtime with accountants and lawyers? Yeah, ripped off, right?

We do eventually see that Dracula is played by Rutger Hauer in this movie…what a waste of talent. Some more stupid long drawn-out bullshit happens, and the movie even manages to make an orgy of half-naked vampire chicks uninteresting with its very poor editing and writing:

That takes TALENT man.

Then we get the end of the movie where they cut Dracula’s head off unceremoniously (because the best way to end a trilogy is killing off your main bad guy in an unimpressive and anti-climactic one-second death scene) and the Slow Walking Idiot becomes the new Lord of Evil, through more poorly explained plotlines.

And that’s it, the LAST Dracula movie in the series. It leaves the ending open for more sequels, but I’m going to go ahead and speak for the world when I say PLEASE don’t make another one of these! This movie is horrible. It’s not even funny like the other two were at times; it’s just horrible. It’s trash-cinema, people; the kind of scum you only find in the lowest, most despicable nether regions of SyFy. It’s seriously up there with movies like Croc and Bear for purely low-rate garbage with nothing redeemable. The only legacy Dracula III will leave behind is one of shame and disgrace to mankind’s creative powers!

REVIEW: The Hitcher (1986)

Director: Robert Harmon

Starring: C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091209/

“Stop me.”

-John Ryder

Oh hell yeah. This is The Hitcher from the 80s and it’s pretty much awesomeness personified. How can you get cooler than this movie? This is basically an amalgamation of several great genre tropes – horror, Western, action – into a triumvirate of mindblowing coolness. True, it’s none of those genres exclusively, making it a sort of mutt of the movie world, but then, that’s part of the reason why I like it so much. It’s its own thing, and it hails from a time period when that kind of genre-blending made movies into a unique concoction that can only be described as ‘the 1980s.’ True, there was a lot of crap from that time too, but this isn’t one of them; oh boy, it isn’t. Let’s dive right in.

First off, just…the actors. This whole movie is basically just Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell duking it out. The Hitcher is not a film with a boatload of characters, and these guys pretty much carry the movie all by themselves, even if there are a few cops and Jennifer Jason Leigh along for the ride as well – it’s still Hauer and Howell in the driver’s seat all the way, and both actors give a powerhouse performance. Howell, who plays a young guy named Jim Halsey, is a bit of a typical 80s guy, with big hair and a cocky if earnest personality. He had the whole slightly-bad-boy thing going for him that so many 80s thriller and horror characters often had – he might be a bit of a daredevil, but he’s also nice and pretty much harmless in the long run. He does a good job just by virtue of how tough his character is. He’s also smart, which helps out in the film as he must constantly dodge the cops AND Hauer at the same time.

And Hauer, playing the devilish John Ryder, is just great, too. He plays the villain of the film as a mysterious and sadistic hitchhiker with a smile on his face, completely confident in whatever he’s doing. He does a number of completely impossible things and seems to have no goal but to screw with Howell, framing him for several things and just generally pushing him to the edge, the total brink of his sanity. Hauer doesn’t actually have many lines in this movie, but when he does speak, as in the chilling first scene where he threatens very calmly to dismember and kill Howell, he’s just terrifying. What a great performance.

Jennifer Jason Leigh also does a good job as Nash, the humble but tough waitress who Howell befriends on his madcap rush through the desert. She’s cool because she’s so atypical for a female character in these kinds of movies. Usually they’d be all over-sexed and demure and giggly, but Leigh plays the character here as very cool-headed and reserved. She isn’t afraid to fight, she doesn’t wear skimpy clothes and she’s willing to stand up for what she believes in. She just seems like the kind of chick you could be friends with and talk to as well as have a relationship with – if she wanted to, that is; this is not a girl you’ll be dominating any time soon. Oh, and she doesn’t scream in a manner that makes me want to go deaf. Until her tragic last scene at least…but I’m not spoiling anything.

The action is all top notch here. Tons of cool scenes like one where Ryder plows through a gas station in this big truck and sets everything on fire, causing it to explode, or the chase scene where the cops all think Jim and Nash are the real bad guys. This is a very fast paced and exciting film that will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way, and I love it for that. There is not a dull moment. The film ricochets flawlessly from careening action scenes to blood-chilling suspense and horror, and it all kind of muddles together into a coalescence of cool, cool stuff that you won't want to miss if you like either genre at all.

The theme of the film is pure, primal battle, almost animalistic in its feral nature. Jim and Ryder tear across the countryside in an epic, explosion-fueled chase that brings them both to their worst. Ryder is more of a force of nature than a man. Look at the scene where Jim wakes up in jail and finds his cell door open, along with every cop in the building brutally murdered. That is just chilling. No normal human being could do this so mechanically, so thoroughly destructively. It’s more like a tornado of violence swept through than like a man killed these guys one by one.

One of the other scenes that always gets to me is Nash’s death scene. Tied and gagged between two large trucks and threatened to be pulled apart, her life is hanging in the balance and all Howell and the cops can do is watch. By the red and blue lights of the cop cars, Howell and Hauer have one final scene together inside the truck Ryder has hijacked. Jim cannot stop him. It is tragic, affecting and bitter. This is the point where Jim really goes over the edge and is prepared to kill Ryder – you can see it on his face, and in every inch of his stiff and rigid body movements.

And again, how about that opening scene? I briefly mentioned it above, but it really does bear a more elaborate review. Jim, being the earnest 80s guy he is, lets Ryder into his car on the middle of a rainy road. They talk for a bit, but even before anything happens, you can sense something is wrong, as it just feels off. Then they pass a car and Ryder mentions, very casually, that he killed everyone in it, after they picked him up too. “And I’m going to do the same to you,” he says, still quiet and calm. He puts a knife to Jim’s eye. “Stop me,” he says – a challenge.

This pretty much sums up the theme of the movie in a nutshell. Hauer is a destructive and malicious force playing a weird sort of game with Jim all throughout the film. “Stop me” – a challenge that he knows is futile, as he can’t be stopped. Or can he? This whole movie is about Jim’s character getting pushed around more and more until he just can’t take it anymore and snaps at the end. I get the idea that Ryder, this entire time, was just looking for someone worthy to play his twisted ‘game.’ He killed the other people who picked him up off the road because they didn’t have it in them to fight back. Jim did.

Really this is just a classic. The action scenes are awesome, the suspense is racked up high and the whole thing is supremely enjoyable and powerful on every level. It’s an epic thrill ride the way only the 80s could do it. This is a dark, punchy film for people who love tension and grit in their movies, and for those who can’t get enough of that old 80s-style brilliance. One of the best you’ll get. Highly, highly recommended!