TheRetroCritic

I talk about the adaptation of an Anne Rice classic: Interview With The Vampire .

Hotel Transylvania being the box-office success that it was, a sequel was pretty much inevitable. The first film was your typical Romeo & Juliet type of scenario except silly and... about a human and a vampire. This sequel continues the story as Mavis and Jonathan welcome their first child. Once again, plot-wise this isn't exactly the most original thing out there but it works as Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) tries to encourage his grandson to become a monster just so his daughter will have to stay at the hotel instead of starting a new life somewhere else. When animated sequels start to bring babies into the mix, you know it's probably the end of that franchise being good ( Shrek Forever After , Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs ) but Hotel Transylvania 2 actually does a decent job at keeping afloat. The animation is, once again, fantastic with all the larger-than-life Tex Avery-style characters constantly doing something random and funny, the voice cast clearly havin

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

I talk about the first season of Castlevania  on Netflix.

Playing delightfully gruesome first-person shooter Blood .

I get to the Medusa boss in Castlevania . Damn Medusa heads...

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

In this (late, sorry!) Halloween-themed 19th episode, fellow film buff Jamie and I discuss movie news, review a recent release ( Captain Phillips , this time), and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics. Guess what film was being referenced in this week's brand new segment  "Kneel Before Zog"  segment and get a shout-out in the next episode! You can email your answer here:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on  iTunes  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic #VampireMonth retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

Thanks for all your support during Vampire Month! I'll try and post a few more vampire reviews on weekends this month but it's time to let Anime Month do its thing and say goodbye to Vampire Month... for now. (and let's not forget that vampire anime does exist :P) Here are all of this month's reviews: Master Of Darkness (Game Review) Dracula In London (Game Review) Castlevania: Bloodlines (Game Review) Dracula III: Legacy Dracula II: Ascension From Dusk Till Dawn Fright Night (1985) Shadow Of The Vampire BloodRayne Kid Dracula (Game Review) Sucker The Vampire The Last Man On Earth Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula Escape From Vampire Island Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula (Video Review) Dracula: Dead And Loving It Blood (Game Review) Queen Of The Damned Thirst Scars Of Dracula   Rockabilly Vampire Bram Stoker's Dracula Dracula 2000

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 !

Check out my review of Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis over at retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle !

Read the review HERE .

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

Written by none other than Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn was Robert Rodriguez's follow-up to Desperado and was further proof that the director was indeed one the most fun, rock n' roll filmmakers around. The film is one of two halves. The first hour is dedicated to George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino, who play two brothers, criminals on their way to Mexico. After leaving carnage behind them, they take a family hostage in a winnebago and finally make it through the border. The goal was to spend the night in some dodgy trucker bar beautifully called "The Titty Twister", wait for Cheech Marin (who plays like 3 roles in this) and go their separate ways come dawn. Unfortunately, and this is a pretty big spoiler if you've never seen the movie and you're planning to watch it, the bar turns out to be packed full of blood-thirsty vampires. The second half of the film is basically all about our heroes (and anti-heroes) fighting off vampires in the blo

Yes the Fright Night remake was surprisingly decent. But what of the original? Released a couple of years before The Lost Boys , it already took a more tongue-in-cheek, nostalgic approach to vampire films and put a geeky character in the middle of a full-blown nightmare. "Fright Night" refers to a TV show within the film in which an ageing actor playing a vampire hunter (a perfect Roddy McDowall) introduces classic horror films Vampira-style. McDowall's Peter Vincent is an obvious homage to iconic actor Peter Cushing, known for playing vampire hunter Van Helsing in countless Hammer films. His character is dragged kicking and screaming into a real life vampire problem and his disbelief at the events unfolding before him is tons of fun throughout. The film sees a vampire amusingly called Jerry (Chris Sarandon) move in next door to some high school kid (William Ragsdale) who soon becomes aware of what his neighbour really is and, of course, becomes his primary targe

From the vampire movie Sleepless Nights , review coming up next week ;)

Here's a weird little movie you might have missed. Following German film director F. W. Murnau and his crew as they set out to make the iconic classic Nosferatu , Shadow Of The Vampire suggests that actor Max Schreck, who played the main role in the film, might have been a real vampire. Which, as you can imagine, would have made for a bizarre shoot to say the least. We follow the making of the film as crew members start going missing mysteriously and an overall sense of terror starts taking over the entire production. It's a genius premise and the film lives up to it. Luckily, it never takes itself too seriously, always keeping a nicely dark sense of humour around to lighten things up a bit. John Malkovitch is perfect as Murnau, a man so obsessed with putting together this unique film that he is willing to turn a blind eye to Schreck's vampiric nature and even bargain with him. A virtually unrecognisable Willem Dafoe plays the role of Schreck and evokes not only Schre

That's exactly what video game movies needed: another kick in the balls. Uwe Boll's BloodRayne is now, of course, somewhat infamous for being one of his own most consistently flawed films and yet it somehow spawned not one but two sequels. A typical B-movie cast is assembled as the likes of Ben "way too good for this" Kingsley, Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez walk around wearing bad wigs, goofy make-up and silly costumes either over-acting or under-acting their asses off. The plot follows Rayne (Kristanna Loken), a half-vampire half-human out for revenge against Kagan (Kingsley), the king of the vampires, for what he did to her family. While on her quest she meets a positively drunk Michael Madsen, a moody Michelle Rodriguez, not to mention Meat Loaf, Billy Zane and Udo Kier. It's like someone stole the Big 2000's B-Movie Rolodex and called everyone on there. The movie goes for Resident Evil / Underworld -style action cool (except set in the 18th c