TheRetroCritic

Based on the 2004 The Batman  series, this feature-length animated movie sees the Dark Knight come face to face with Dracula himself in a potentially really fun, if probably quite silly, crossover. When The Penguin and The Joker get a tip from a fellow patient in Arkham Asylum that there is a hidden treasure beneath a specific grave in the cemetery, they both escape and compete to recover it. Batman soon shows up to fight The Joker and the latter, surprisingly, falls to his death as he electrocutes himself with his own weapon. The death of The Joker could have been its own film, to be honest, as Bruce Wayne's reaction to this event clearly affects him but this is only used to set the darker tone and give us a vampire Joker later on in the film. Meanwhile, The Penguin accidentally revives Dracula who promptly starts to feast on random people in order to regain his strength. Batman is not very smart in this as he struggles to guess that creepy-looking Dr Alucard is in fact Dracu

Gothamized  is a completely unofficial guide to new series  Gotham  and a debate arena for all things Batman. DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE HERE In this 35th episode, I discuss episodes 7, 8 and 9 of  Gotham  Season 3 and review The Batman Vs Dracula . (for my written review of the Gotham Pilot,  click here! ) Hope you enjoy it! You can also find us on podcast  The Big Rewind  (available on  Soundcloud , iTunes, Stitcher and Player FM) and send us emails with your Bat-questions, Six Degrees challenges and riddles here:  gothamized@gmail.com (for the pilot episode  CLICK HERE )

I crawl through the last couple of tough bosses in this final chapter of my Castlevania playthrough.

Upon hearing that we'd be getting a new Dracula movie this Halloween and that it would star the usually reliable Luke Evans in the title role, I was definitely looking forward to it. It had been a while since the last Dracula movie and an epic period piece sounded like a good idea. Then the trailer happened. Then the movie happened. And then I started missing Dracula 2000 . As it turns out, this Dracula story was "untold" for a reason: it's mostly rubbish. The film is kind of a prequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula in that you see a fuller version of how Vlad The Impaler became a vampire but, of course, minus the style and poetic approach of Francis Ford Coppola's film (or Bram Stoker's novel for that matter). What we're left with is a by-numbers epic movie with some unlikely vampire theme thrown in. Dracula Untold , much like Man Of Steel , is a reboot for the sake of being a reboot: it serves a functional purpose, nothing more. Essentially, a

Check out my review of DOS board game Dracula In London and text game Vampire's Castle Adventure  over at retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle !

And so a franchise that died soon after it started continues and ends with an instalment that may not be the worst of the bunch but which is still hardly impressive or necessary. Luckily, it learns a little bit from Dracula II: Ascension 's mistakes. For one thing, the main characters this time are Jason Scott Lee's badass priest and Jason London's jokey sidekick. That's a good thing. We follow these two as they fight off vampires on stilts and say unintentionally hilarious things like "You don't bless babies.". It's not great art but it just about kinda works. At least the film is trying to be somewhat fun and entertaining, which is more than I can say about its predecessor. Unfortunately, way too much time is spent waiting for the vampires to come out. So many scenes take place during the day when all our heroes can really do is spout out exposition and prepare for whatever's going to take place later. It's not terribly interesting and j

Well that franchise died quickly... Now I'm not going to pretend that Dracula 2000 was a masterpiece that reinvented the entire horror genre but it was certainly much better than this! The first film was pretty trashy but it had its charm: you had Christopher Plummer as Van Helsing, Dracula checking out Virgin Megastores, it was ludicrous but kinda fun. Dracula II: Ascension is not so much ludicrous, although it most definitely is, as it is altogether poorly conceived. The main problem with this sequel, for me, was the plot. Why would you make a Dracula film called Dracula II and have the iconic vampire strapped helpless by a net for 99% of it?! Really, the film should have just been about Jason Scott Lee's badass priest going around the world killing vampires, and you can tell it wanted to be. Unfortunately, it had to also somehow link itself with the first film AND prompt a sequel so what we're left with is a film which is nothing more than a bridge between somet

Check out my review of classic Game Boy game Kid Dracula  over at retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle !

Don't you just love living in a world where a film called Bonnie And Clyde Vs. Dracula exists? I know I do! Some crossovers are just uncalled for and some are so uncalled for that they become intriguing. The game then becomes to see how the film brings these two completely different worlds together, sit back and judge how clever it was at doing that. Whether the film itself is good or not, that's almost irrelevant. If you call your film something this absurd, you can't be too picky with it as that's missing the point entirely. Technically, no, Bonnie And Clyde Vs Dracula isn't that good. The acting can be wooden from the supporting cast and the budget is near non existent. That said, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have a ball with this one. I like films that know exactly what they are, what they need to be and do that without breaking your balls. Yes, Escape From Vampire Island , I'm talking about what you didn't do. As cheap as this mov

The first in the classic series of Universal monsters/Abbott & Costello crossover comedies, Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein was the duo's first attempt at making a respectful homage to classic horror films while putting together a good, original comedy AND not taking the piss too much of the source material. I mean, this is a film in which Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi reprise their respective roles of The Wolfman and Dracula so making a straight-up spoof would have been a faux-pas to say the least. Somehow I don't see Lugosi making a mockery of Dracula... without Ed Wood, that is. This movie is certainly a crowd-pleaser in that both fans of the old monster movies can enjoy it and fans of Abbott and Costello as well. It walks a fine line between homage and parody but makes it work both ways admirably. Unfortunately, the title is a bit of a lie: they never meet Frankenstein. They meet Frankenstein's Monster, played by Glenn Strange, but never Doctor Frankens

In case you missed it, here's my old review of Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula . Expect a written review of the film this week!

Mel Brooks takes on Bram Stoker's Dracula in this cartoonish 1995 spoof starring the late, great Leslie Nielsen as Dracula and the director himself as vampire hunter Van Helsing. It's very dumb, very silly but is it any good? Hard one to review this one since I do have a soft spot for it. On the one hand, technically the film looks a bit cheap and often feels more like a filmed play than it does a fully put-together movie. Part of the joke is that it does look so trashy, though, so it's hard to fault the film for that. As a straight-up piss-take of Francis Ford Coppola's film, it's pretty spot-on and, in fact, actually misses out on a few more easy jokes it could have made about certain parts of that movie. The idea of Leslie Nielsen as Dracula is hilarious in itself and Nielsen sure doesn't disappoint, clearly having a ball putting on the silliest Transylvanian accent he could come up with and joking around with Brooks, Peter MacNichol and the rest of t

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a weird one. Thinking back to it after having not seen it in a while, I always remember really awesome visual stuff and isolated iconic moments crossed with key silly things like Keanu Reeves' entire performance. Having finally re-watched it, it's just as "varied" as I recalled: stylish and inventive yet wacky and flawed. I probably shouldn't like this movie as much as I do but... There's a charm to it that's almost impossible to ignore. For one thing, director Francis Ford Coppola really went for it, never sugar-coating anything and, in the process, brought to the screen a bold version of Bram Stoker's classic novel no-one else could have possibly made and which certainly leaves its mark when you first see it. The film's main arc involves Vlad The Impaler's (a genial Gary Oldman) undying love for his late bride who happens to have a descendant/lookalike (played by Winona Ryder) in 1897, which is when mos

I remember when this movie came out. The title was so silly that even I, someone who actually likes that type of goofy flick, didn't feel like going to see it. I just didn't see the point of bringing back Dracula as a character and placing him in a modern setting. Why not just make a movie about a new vampire? Now I'm a little older and wiser, I get it. I had it all wrong. The question was not "why bring back Dracula?" but "why NOT bring back Dracula?". And why not indeed! If the film came out today, I'm sure more people would get behind the idea. I mean, in a time where Abraham Lincoln can be a vampire hunter and Pride & Prejudice can be about zombies and shit, Dracula 2000 would have easily been received a little better than it originally was. Not that the Wes Craven-produced film is all that amazing or perfect, far, very far from it, but if there's one thing it's not: it's boring. I had a lot of fun with this movie.

You can check out my Bram Stoker's Dracula (Sega Master System) review over at retro gaming super-site 1MoreCastle :) Happy Vampire Month!

Man the critics were rough on this one... Now I'm one of the first to bash whatever new tired kid-friendly animated flicks come out these days: Madagascar 3 , Ice Age 4 , The Lorax ... not for me. That said, there are the occasional ones that slip through the cracks and actually end up being pretty good ( ParaNorman , The Pirates ). Hotel Transylvania I found to be in-between. On the one hand you've got its gorgeous animation, its clever premise, its fun winks to old horror movies, its colorful characters and on the other you have... ...the singing. Actually you have an Adam Sandler Dracula RAP. I'll let that sink in. ... Theeeere it is. Ok, so that sounds like hell but trust me: Hotel Transylvania is worth a go. For one thing it's a lot of fun. It's pretty darn relentless and certainly never wastes any of its time: it's fast, punchy and nuts going for a Tex Avery-style random toon-craziness we haven't seen achieved quite this well sinc