A Frank Review of Marvel's The Avengers (Assemble, 2012)

The Short Version? A redhead in black leather and a dapper fellow save the world amidst lighting and thunder. Plus a Hulk.
What Is It? Super-Hero Action/Comedy
Who Is In It? Derek Lutz, Harvard Hottie, Braddock the Nannie Diarist, Detective Giovanni A. Malloy, George Kirk, Sergeant Doyle, Richard Campbell, Robin Scherbatsky, Martin Vanger & Mister Señor Love Daddy
Should I See It? Yes.



Marvel's The Avengers (as opposed to the U.K.'s spy-fi TV series starring John Steed & various female partners) debuted last weekend, after already making a bazillion dollars overseas, thus doubling it to a kajillion. Pity the latest Batman and Spider-Man entries, sure to come in a half decade late and a GDP short by comparison (barring perhaps the autoerotic suicide of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and even then it would probably have to be half a pact with Gary Oldman.) Quality cannot be accurately measured by financial success, but co-screenwriter/director has delivered a lot of former for little latter, so this is his karmic due. Perhaps as a consequence, despite some serious innovations, there's also some unfortunate Whedoncentricities that diminish my appreciation somewhat. The Avengers is the best super-team film ever made, but there's yet to be a great one, so this will have to settle for good.

The flick begins with a bunch of peripheral characters from other Marvel movies hanging out at that lab Simon Tam broke River out of, until that villain already defeated in Thor shows up to kill S.H.I.E.L.D. redshirts. A girl with no discernible personality then has an extended action sequence before she fades into the background for the rest of the running time. Feminism! Then, Scarlett Johansson has an obligatory action sequence, because Joss Whedon created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If he could convince people Sarah Michelle Gellar was formidable at 5'4" & 115 pounds, he can also force Scar-Jo to starve herself into a reasonable facsimile Milla Jovovich after inheriting the miscasting. The Black Widow then leads us to Mark Ruffalo, the third actor stuck playing Bruce Banner in nine years, but the first to wisely say "fuck it" and just channel Bill Bixby like everyone wanted from the beginning. Steve Rogers gets in there at some point, but it's just a lengthened version of the post-credit sequence from his movie. What's interesting is these these are all sketches like those add-ons, connected by a plot thread but disjointed and inorganic. The movie doesn't actually start until Tony Stark shows up, followed by Pepper Potts and Agent Coulson. These are familiar characters (aside from the unsettling sight of Gwyneth Paltrow in denim shorts) you already like who have chemistry together, so it feels like Jon Favreau popped in to guest direct.

The super-team movie like for real this time finally starts coming together with the help of Captain America and Iron Man sharing space on a screen (alongside Loki, who throws things off a bit by being Loki in a knife fight with Captain America.) This leads to Thor showing up, which let me tell you, is Thor's role in a nutshell. We all knew Cap, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Fury would be around, and we're cool with them wading into the movie at their own pace. Iron Man is the only star attraction as a franchise player though, which is why his arrival marks an uptick. Thor literally drops in unannounced, and his entry is only an element of the plot and a counterpoint to other characters. Aside from moments here and there, that's all Thor does. He's Loki's brother. He's Hulk's sparring partner. Basically, he's the female member of the team. It's a sort of progress, I suppose, but Thor fans feast on scraps here.

In movies like Fantastic Four, everybody in the team gets introduced in quick succession and gains powers at the same time. In Watchmen and Sky High, everybody was already part of a community that kind of knew each other. Often, other heroes pop up in answer to the debut of the lead protagonist, as seen in Kick-Ass. One of this film's innovations is that it recognizes that there is a preexisting universe of heroes, but they have not met one another, and would not necessarily immediately embrace one another. It's a dynamic the Marvel Universe was built upon, and while somewhat pointless and juvenile, Whedon carries the tradition into film for the first time in a way that works. From there on, the heroes personalities and powers bounce off one another in ways that affirm each individual's appeal while creating an invigorating dynamic as a group. This is especially true for the Hulk, who desperately needed something more interesting to play off than army men and mute monsters. It even helps Thor a little bit.

However you felt about the characters coming into this movie is how you'll leave it. While a bit more brooding and pig-headed, Chris Evans' Captain America is still the same guy as featured in his solo movie. His costume looks a bit goofier, but he gets to do more comic book style CGI-enabled acrobatics. Chris Hemsworth's Thor remembers the lessons he learned, and comes across as a more mature being, even though that also seems to mean he has the least room to grow here. Depending on whom you root for, Robert Downey Jr. is either a bit douchier here than in the Iron Man movies, or he's being perceived as such through the stoicism of Cap. I only have vague memories of Eric Bana's Hulk, and never saw all of Ed Norton's, but Mark Ruffalo is certainly the more personable of the lot. It never hurts to have a lengthy, slightly surreal aside with Harry Dean Stanton, either. Scarlett Johansson looks and acts the part of Black Widow far better here than in Iron Man 2, so I'll try not to whine about her as much. Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye gets some interesting usage in the first half of the movie, but the character seems defined by his lack of perceptible human emotions or charm. If he wasn't constantly decompressing his bow like a fratboy working a Borat quote, he could be mistaken for the Vision. Cobie Smulders does her best to compete in the realm of "why are you in this thing" as Maria Hill, and Stellan Skarsgård's reprisal of Dr. Erik Selvig is pretty thankless. Tom Hiddleston is a fun Loki, who hasn't grown an inch, and Nick Fury continues to be the name under which Samuel L. Jackson guest stars as Samuel L. Jackson. Clark Gregg steals his every scene as Agent Phil Coulson, and I hope he continues to have a strong presence in the Marvel movies.

Joss Whedon (along with Zak Penn on the writing end) does an incredible, previously presumed impossible job of pulling together four franchises under one roof, ironing out or contrasting their differences with the help of foundational bridging (the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) plus his own new additions (expanding Natasha Romanov's character to be remotely comparable to her male teammates developmentally while feeding on the corpse of Hawkeye's non-role,) while also offering a satisfying self-contained story. It's rare in an action movie, but especially a super-hero one, for the narrative to be so propulsive. Everything happens for a reason, incidents building on incidents, culminating in a tour de force finale. Cap doesn't spar with Red Skull, they become separated, and then Cap goes back to battling Hydra until he gets to battle Red Skull again. The movie just keeps moving forward, upping the stakes and the scale. One shot in particular comes to mind, in which the camera pans through various city views as our heroes battle the forces of evil with their diverse abilities from different locations. In comics, that would be a dense double page spread, and its like has never been captured on film. Not only does the action work, but the dialogue is smart throughout, witty and funny and mindful of the established voice of each character. That said, the dialogue is sometimes too calculatedly funny for its own good, undercutting serious intentions. There's the trademark Whedon surprise character death, right up to the method and target recalling his only other feature film Serenity, coming across as cheap and arbitrary. The villains are an empty throng, and a intra-credit cameo walks a precarious fan service tightrope. An understated anticlimax in the post-credit coda makes up for any misgivings, though.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the swell moments in The Avengers. As a Cap fan, it was awesome seeing my guy lay down strategy and live up to his legend. I often laughed at Tony's quips, could feel the itching under Banner's skin, and so on. While a few characters get short shrift, the film remains an ensemble, and it does so in the midst of cosmic stakes that alone would suffocate a lesser piece. I was impressed with how Whedon brought and kept it all together, and with his original contributions to the visual language of these films. It is so wonderful to see a director convey ferocious speed and a multitude of combat elements while maintaining a clear eye so that the audience can comprehend and marvel at all the happenings. At the same time, there was an awful lot of retreading ground covered elsewhere by other directors and Whedon himself. It reminded me of Sam Raimi aping scenes from Evil Dead on a bigger budget in Spider-Man. I went in with high expectations, and they were mostly met, but I think I'll prefer the movie more on successive viewings with my mental bar set just a mite lower.

Mister X: Condemned (2009)

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things."

Given that I'm writing a review for a "graphic novel," none of that really applies to me. However, when I was a child, I tried reading comics like Swamp Thing and The One, and was in way over my head. Not only didn't I really understand the books at the time, but their edgy sophistication unnerved me. Getting into my teens, my mind expanded, but I still needed transitional mediums between the super-hero world and an adult one. These included the anti-heroic likes of Batman (The Dark Knight Returns, The Cult,) the Punisher, Grimjack, and Marshal Law. These led me to characters still further estranged from the funny book mainstream, like Morpheus, until I finally became comfortable with mature reading completely divorced from the genre fantastic. By that point, I could look back on books like Watchmen and Brat Pack not only unafraid, but unimpressed.

My first encounter with Mister X was a random issue in a quarter box. In the early '80s, there was a sea change as new independent creators entered the field with no delusions about the nature of work for hire comics and a desire to expand the medium from the edges of the frontier. However, my exposure to this avant-garde was mostly limited to ads in books like Heavy Metal back when I couldn't rely on living anywhere long enough to chance paying for something that would come to a mailing address. Besides, I wasn't digging through the discounted castoffs because I was flush enough to pay inflated low print run cover prices or shipping charges. I tossed through the issue, with interiors that surely didn't match the sleek new wave covers, lacking color, involving people in normal clothes having discussions, with no supporting issues to reference or progress toward. I simply was not prepared to take that plunge.

In the decades that followed, occasional Mister X material was released, and though I felt pangs of interest and guilt, I always passed. The book was revered, but I had no clear point of entry, at least not at a reasonable price. Finally, a few years ago, Dark Horse announced that Dean Motter would be rebooting and reintroducing his creation in an accessible mini-series. I ordered the trade, which collected a thin four issues and was produced in dimensions from that netherworld between standard comics and digests. For some reason, I have a tendency to shove those types of books on a shelf and forget about them for years, as I did with Mister X: Condemned. Only recently did I stuff it into my work bag for lunchtime reading.

Radiant City is an art deco, rigorously calculated creation of a team of architects, intending to work directly on the psyche of its inhabitants. The concept was successful, but not the ultimate result. Rather than being healthy, happy and productive, the city's citizens were driven to bleak neurosis by the design of the metropolis mockingly nicknamed "Somnopolis." A penitent but unbalanced architect dubbed "Mister X" attempts to correct his mistakes by helping to deal with the impact of his creation, including a rogues gallery of creeps straight out of German expressionist filmmaking. Mister X haunted the city like the title haunted the '80s, producing a couple dozen or so issues and influencing filmmakers like Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton and Alex Proyas. It is a compelling premise both perfect for and distinct from standard comics.

Unfortunately, it's also problematic in execution. While conceived by Motter, the early issues were created by Los Bros Hernandez, who quit over payment issues. Motter began doing the actual writing with the fifth issue, but had Seth as a hired hand on art. Other writers and artists produced later issues, making Mister X an early model for the Image Comics studios system of basically pulling the same freelancing contract crap they'd left Marvel over when it was theirs to sign. Condemned appears to be one of the few times Motter has written and drawn his owned damned creation, and the result is tepid. The retro-futurism of modern life filtered through a 1930s aesthetic is now passe. The plot and characters are also very much of that era, meaning an overcooked but under-seasoned plot involving bland, flat subjects. There's a murder mystery and rampant conspiracies, but they're all of the type seen elsewhere, across decades, handled better. What may have been innovative thirty years ago is now rote, and frankly, I suspect the book's reputation had more to do with "helpers" like Paul Rivoche than its credited author, anyway.

I still very much want to read the Mister X guys like Howard Chaykin and Warren Ellis rave over, but this effort only served to diminish my curiosity rather than inflame it. It's a book that tells you it has an interesting premise in the first panels, then neglects to show anything nearly as intriguing as what was suggested. The sluggish narrative manned with interchangeable characters is then sloppily wrapped up in the last few pages, once again through people holding guns while telling you their motivations and prior actions rather than demonstrating them with subtlety. The floorboards are loose, the pipes are rusted, and the whole construct looks ready to fall in on its foundation. This project was at least honest in its title, as it should rightly be condemned.

nurghophonic jukebox: "Feeling Without Touching" by Glass Candy

Written By: Glass Candy
Released: 2008
Album: Deep Gems
Single?: Not Charted.

Lyrics:

Feeling without touching
Oh, feel us, we're all laughing
With the angel clowns
Oh see me, see me laugh
Laugh, laugh myself away
Away, away from doubt

My crown is tipped up
My world is zipped up tight
That's how I'm sane and sound
With touchable ornaments placed around
Like eyes, and teeth
We shine like gold and diamonds, oh
We smile, we smile
We smile, we can't be ruined, no

Feeling without touching
Oh, feel us, we're all laughing
With the angel clowns
My crown is tipped up
My world is zipped up tight
That's how I'm sane and sound
With touchable ornaments place around
Like eyes, and teeth
We shine like gold and diamonds, oh
We smile, we smile
We smile, we can't be ruined, no

Feeling without touching
Oh oh, oh oh
Feeling without touching
Oh oh, oh oh
Feeling without touching
Oh oh

Bonus Track: "Digital Versicolor" from 2007's B/E/A/T/B/O/X

Lyrics:

This is red, red, red, red, red
This is orange, orange, orange, orange, orange, orange
This is red, red, red, red, red
This is orange, orange, orange, orange, orange, orange
This is yellow
This is yellow
This is yellow
This is yellow
This is yellow
This is yellow
This is yellow

This is green, green, green, green, green
This is blue, blue, bluuuuue
Green, green, green, green, green
Bluuuuuuue
This is violet
This is violet
This is violet
This is violet
This is violet
This is violet
This is violet

This is the brilliance of white light
White light
It shines on roses and gardenias
White light
It shines on stars and houses
White light
The brilliance of white
White light
White light
White light

A Frank Review of "The Cabin in the Woods" and "The Hunger Games" (2012)

The Short Version? Evil Dead 4: Buffy by Dawn
What Is It? Horror-Comedy
Who Is In It? Thor
Should I See It? Yes

I saw two movies last weekend, one on Friday, and the other Saturday. The Cabin in the Woods was filmed three years ago, and then shelved during the MGM bankruptcy. It's a thirty million dollar horror-comedy by the makers of Cloverfield and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that skewers slasher movies and the (now largely past) trend toward "torture porn." The Hunger Games is the hotly anticipated film adaptation of a teener science fiction book series that cost 2½ times as much while targeting the Harry Potter and Twilight audiences.

They're kind of the same movie. Both were ultimately released by Lionsgate, and feature a slew of trailers for the distributor (or in Cabin's case, every single trailer screened.) Both involve female protagonists left in a wooded battleground to kill or be killed by stalking antagonists with the help of weaker male counterparts. Both involve a conspiracy in which young adults are doomed to die for the greater good in order to satisfy the demands of a sinister power. Each includes a lottery system to determine who and in what ways the people will perish. Both involve jaded, almost inhuman facilitators in a high tech bunker manipulating the subjects and triggering automated attacks. Both films feature a healthy amount of cameos, a Hemsworth brother apiece, and involve massive stakes. Both involve impromptu murder/suicide pacts. Nobody wins these types of games-- they only survive, as long as they are able. Of course, the devil is in the details, and where their core premisses are surprisingly similar, the executions (pardon the pun) are anything but.

The Cabin in the Woods, despite being co-written and directed by Drew Goddard, is very much the fruit of co-writer/producer Joss Whedon's loins. It is cynical, satirical, and self-aware to a metatextual degree. It mashes up The Evil Dead with Scream, and stars the Scooby Gang without Scooby. It is a great deal of fun to watch, especially for horror flick aficionados who will appreciate the tweaking of tropes and the very many in-jokes. On the other hand, Goddard doesn't have Whedon's heart or eye for casting. There's a real TV quality to the performances. It's hard to divorce Chris Hemsworth's dubious American accent from his (later) star turn in Thor, or ignore Fran Kranz's perfect/painful Shaggy Rogers impersonation. Given that this is a Mutant Enemy Production, it's weird how flat Kristen Connolly's character is, as is her "nerdy" hardbody beau Jesse Williams. Sexpot Kristen Connolly steals her scenes, but I'm guessing everyone's favorites when the lights come up are Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as the chief engineers behind the madness.

Cabin has a brain and a wicked sense of humor, but it takes part of its glee from playing fair with the audience. All of its jokes are telegraphed, especially to a knowledgeable audience. I saw the film on opening day because I was afraid its twists would be spoiled for me secondhand, but the truth is that there are no twists. There is a central conceit that is laid out in the opening minutes of the flick that plays out throughout its running time in a natural progression. You won't know everything going in, but if you spare half a thought, you'll figure everything out well before the movie blatantly reveals it for the slower audience members. Further, while the characters are nice enough, I didn't find myself rooting for anyone specifically. I was excited and I got my kicks, but everyone in this movie was a disposable pieces in service to circumstances and the games the filmmakers are playing. The whole thing feels like a bit of a joke, and it pays off, but it doesn't really linger in the mind after its telling. Great horror movies challenge and haunt. Others are bizarre in their construction and choices, with the Tobe Hooper one-two punch of Lifeforce and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 coming to mind, and their genre aberration causes then to linger in your thoughts. They go where angels and common sense fear to tread, while this movie is comparatively conventional, even in its final act bids for the outré. The movie clearly wants to make a statement about the sadistic voyeurism inherent in watching horror movies, but despite its gore, the movie isn't remotely horrifying, and doesn't take itself seriously enough for anyone else to be bothered. Cabin is crooked like the Rubik's Cube its poster references, holding your attention fiercely for a time, but ultimately cast into the drunk drawer as an occasional novelty to revisit.



The Short Version? The Running Girl
What Is It? Action-Drama
Who Is In It? Mystique and an all-star cameo cast
Should I See It? Maybe

The Most Dangerous Game is probably the earliest incarnation of The Hunger Games formula of a relative innocent forced to fight for survival as game in a hunting contest, but the film adaptation of The Running Man is its most obvious influence. Totalitarian government, forced participation in a televised death match, commentary on class strife, a pervasive and increasingly immoral media "reality," blah blah blah. Nothing you haven't seen somewhere else better. Even the teen lit angle had been thoroughly played, from Koushun Takami's Battle Royale to elements of O. T. Nelson's The Girl Who Owned a City, or hell, even friggin' Lord of the Flies. The wheel is safely in its garage under the original schematics.

That having been said, and not to damn with faint praise, but I'd much rather watch The Hunger Games than its teen-and-like-minded-baiting contemporaries. For starters, it's an actual film. Gary Ross' direction is practically avant-garde when compared to the likes of Chris Columbus and Catherine Hardwicke. Lead heroine Katniss Everdeen has flashbacks that are full of emotion and imagery that convey enough of her experiences for audiences to understand without being fully, properly told. When Katniss is poisoned, you feel her disorientation without being nauseated or literally confused. When she walks on a stage and is surrounded by a grotesque menagerie of overly painted aristocrats, you comprehend her stage fright and the necessity of pleasing the lot. The movie is worth seeing for Ross' sure hand at telling a story intelligently and with the necessary affect. In direct opposition to Cabin, this is a movie that you feel first, then process intellectually.

The performances are also much more confident and potent. While a bit... maturely developed for an underfed adolescent, legal drinker Jennifer Lawrence possesses the conviction and earnestness to sell herself as Katniss. Josh Hutcherson manages to balance nobility and weaseling well as her partner, Peeta. Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley, Toby Jones, Paula Malcomson, and Donald Sutherland are all swell in supporting roles of various sizes and sides. Elizabeth Banks is completely unrecognizable as tool of the state Effie Trinket. The kids are all alright. The sets and costumes are well realized, and most of the special effects are solid. Getting to know these people and their environment is the best part of the movie.

Things devolve once the actual games begin. One problem I had with both movies was the effect of video games on the narrative. Each features an indefatigable array of deadly threats appearing from out of nowhere to plague our heroes, as though they were ascending levels to a big boss. It's especially true in Hunger Games, which following several hours in a relatively low tech future allowed designers to manifest critters from out of the electronic aether for the final (and very arbitrary) battle. You feel every bit of the movie's 142 minute running time, and while I didn't particularly want it extended nor saw anything that could be taken out without detriment, the finale was deeply unnatural and abrupt. Key characters come and go too quickly, and there's an inescapable feeling of having viewed an outline rather than a completed journey into this world. While I'm happy to see an action movie with a female lead performing well, with all the racial controversy surrounding this movie, I can't help but notice how white everybody ends up being in the end. I also can't help but notice how dependent Katniss is on help, in ways her male counterparts in similar roles would never be. Kind of queers any feminism in the message, and recalls some of Twilight's throwback sexual politics.

I suppose the movie is an excellent trailer for the novel, but when Katniss is forced to consider her love triangle with young David Boreanaz (Liam Hemsworth,) I realize my y-chromosome prevents me from exploring it any further. I won't whine too much when the girlfriend drags me to the sequel, but I still wouldn't get there of my own accord.

Bad Covers: "Eleanor Rigby" by Godhead

You have a song that's literally revered. It's a watershed moment in popular music, as its lyrics about depressing lives lived by rote in isolation somehow made it as a #1 single. Some feel it transcends pop music altogether with its symphonic backing. There have been dozens of faithful, feeling covers recorded, and it has been cited as one of the greatest somgs in modern music history.

So why not a soulless, clueless, emotionally blunted industrial rock cover? This is why not. This right here is exactly why not. And the worst part is how pathetically, obviously cynical the spectacle is. The band was after all signed to Marilyn Manson's Posthuman Records, who rocketed to fame covering the Eurythmics, Soft Cell, and Depeche Mode. Actually, there are so many worsts, I'm not sure which to choose. The grunge guitar riff at the chorus? The isolated "ahhh" toward the end, as the band appears for the final rawking? The distorted spoken word finale? The overwhelming narcissism of the singer only acknowledging his surroundings when confronted by his own self manifested in a "straight" body? Each deserves someone getting a whack somewhere tender with a tire iron.

A Frank Review of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (2011)

The Short Version? Men Who Hate Women
What Is It? Thriller
Who Is In It? James Bond, Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp, the Princess Bride, Alex Skarsgård's dad, the Exorcist, Warlock
Should I See It? Maybe



The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was produced by an award-winning creative team that includes the screenwriter of Schindler's List and the director of Seven, all based on the international best-selling series of novels that got a Swede racked at Wall*Mart. The acting is strong, with an exceptional turn by the previously unknown Rooney Mara as the otherworldly Lisbeth Salander. Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography demands the attention of the audience's eyes, the score by Trent Reznor is potent, and the credit sequence is fascinating.

It's a fucking cartoon.

Mikael Blomkvist has pussy flying at him, but have you seen Daniel Craig? Someone somewhere thinks he's handsome, I guess, but I don't know those women. Guy's face looks like a clenched sphincter. I don't think the dude who edits your local left-wing newspaper is a hit at the clubs either, especially if he's broke from losing a libel lawsuit. Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander is crazy and violent, but despite trying her best to look like a punk rock Ziggy Stardust thirty years late (because of it?) everybody notices and wishes to have crazy violent non-consensual relations with her. We get to see that happen, because this is one of those Japanese cartoons, or a '70s rape-revenge exploitation flick, except with way too much money invested.

The two lead characters don't even meet in the first (second?) act. They just go through episodes in a parallel, connected narrative. When they do finally get together, it's to investigate a decades old Father Dowling Mystery with the modest CSI twist of shoving Biblical crap up fifties girls coochies. Aside from all the gross, creepy elements, it's kind of a quaint, Agatha Christie, locked island whodunit. By the way, spoiler, the guy you think did it totally did it, except the part he didn't. Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson, Max von Sydow, Stellan Skarsgård, and Robin Wright are people you've heard of that are in this movie, with Plummer being the most noteworthy.

You can tell this is an adaptation, because there are oodles of characters and plot elements introduced without being properly developed, and the economics of storytelling dictate their relevancy, so there's a good chance you'll figure the whole damned this out an hour before the investigators (unless you apply too much logic, because the resolution requires for a moronic development where a character leads the dicks in a direction they never should have been allowed near.) The movie is too long, especially since most of the fun stuff is front-loaded, and things degenerate to ridiculous extremes of perversion and hobby room decor by the fourth act. Yes indeed, you did read that right. Everything comes to a head an act after it should conventionally, and then there's a fifth act where Lisbeth Salander breaks into a prison, tortures Bernie Madoff to death, then hacks Bin Laden's internet carrier to guide SEAL Team Six to ultimate victory. The movie ends on a dour note though, when Lex Luthor weakens Salander with kryptonite and traps her in the Bottle City of Kandor with Frodo and Samwise.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a solid enough movie if you're hankering for Murder, She Wrote mashed-up with super-heroine torture porn, but don't try to tell me this was more than a mass of talented people putting great artistic effort into cashing phat residual checks.

A Frank Review of "Blood of Dracula's Castle" (1969)

The Short Version? How dare you evict the Count Dracula?
What Is It? "Horror"
Who Is In It? John Carradine, Alex D'Arcy, Paula Raymond, Robert Dix, Ray Young, Barbara Bishop
Should I See It? No.

Some old guy dies and wills his Arizona desert castle to a young relative and his new wife. The pair are selfish and I suppose independently wealthy enough to decide to live in the castle while evicting its tenants of the last sixty years. Turns out the tenants are much younger than expected, because they're vampires. Not just any vampires mind, but the laziest, lushiest, most George and Marion Kerbyest of vampires. Poor old John Carradine takes care of the house and human sacrifices, while a hulking deformed creature named Mango procures for them the finest source of blood, nubile girls. The vampires don't have fangs and are far too couth to actually bite anyone, but even though no one can resist the Mango, the Mango is indiscreet. That's why the vamps paid a whole five thousand dollars to help their former assistant, a serial killer, break out of prison to renew his employment... starting with the asshole couple trying to evict everyone.

By no stretch is Blood of Dracula's Castle a good movie, but it isn't really a terrible one, either. It's this inoffensive thing that can play in the background until your attention is temporarily drawn by the antics of Gomez and Morticia or the attractive half-naked girls who peek in from time to time. At full attention though, it is boring, cheap, and lame-brained.

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