No way to kick-start a franchise - 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan'

This one's for Vance...

Popping Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982, Nicholas Meyer) into the PS3 the other day was an enjoyable reminder of what a truly terrific film this is. The phenomenon that is Star Trek has an interesting history - the original television series ran for three seasons before being cancelled due to poor ratings, despite a hardcore fanbase. It promptly rose from the dead as a huge hit in syndicated re-runs around the globe, leading to the production of an animated television series (with most of the cast from the live action show returning) which ran for a couple of seasons in the early 70s. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was involved in an attempt to launch a second television series in the late 70s. The project - called Star Trek: Phase II - was abandoned after the huge success of Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), with Paramount (the studio who own the property) deciding the time was right for a big screen version.

Many elements that were devised for the television project ended up being adapted for the first feature film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979, Robert Wise). At the time the most expensive motion picture ever produced, the film - which is ponderous, humourless, and dull - became one of the notable box office disasters of its time. Despite the poor reception of the film, Paramount were willing to give the franchise another shot. The makers of The Wrath of Khan were fully aware that they were being given one final spin of the wheel, and were determined to go out with a bang.

The bang was big enough to re-ignite the franchise, which is actually kind of unfortunate: Khan is a great space opera/revenge story, but also a wistful meditation on growing old and facing mortality. Which didn't really leave the story much place to go over further films: the age of the main cast, having already been used for maximum emotional impact, is reduced to increasingly cheap gags in the following sequels.

Khan also boldly left the world of Star Trek in disarray - Kirk (William Shatner) is re-united with an old flame, Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch), as well as meeting for the first time her son by him, David (Merritt Butrick), now a grown man who despises everything Kirk stands for. Not to mention having his closest friend Spock (Leonard Nimoy) sacrificing himself to save the USS Enterprise and her crew.

The following two films (which, with Khan, comprise a loose trilogy) are stuck attempting to create drama whilst restoring the status quo. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984, Leonard Nimoy) takes everything back, with Spock resurrected via plot devices which had been planted in Khan (you know, just in case), Carol Marcus inexplicably vanishing between films, and David killed off by the Klingons - his death would be promptly forgotten until it resurfaces in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991, Nicholas Meyer) to motivate Kirk's deeply felt hatred of the Klingons, here manifesting as resistance to the failing Klingon Empire's attempts to make peace with the Federation.

Search for Spock does destroy the starship Enterprise - surely the most fetishised spaceship in all science fiction cinema. The ship is regularly showcased in indulgent effects sequences, the camera lovingly gliding across its lines and curves as it leaves spacedock. Composers Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner even create passable orchestral renditions of the sound of the ship zooming off at warp speed. The destruction of the ship in Search for Spock promisingly turns her crew into a group of vagabonds cruising the galaxy in a stolen Klingon warship, but again, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986, Leonard Nimoy) demonstrates that no-one's playing for keeps.

The final scene of The Voyage Home has the crew (with Kirk demoted from Admiral to Captain, another step towards ensuring the status quo) presented with a brand new, identical Enterprise, this one with the letter A appended to the registration number. Similarly, potential romantic interest Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) - who travels with Kirk and co to the 23rd century from her native 1986 at the end of The Voyage Home - did not appear in any further films. Which is probably a good thing - my recent re-viewing of The Voyage Home revealed her to be a remarkably unhinged character, valuing her captive humpback whales over human relationships, offering Kirk and Spock a ride when all the evidence she's seen of them so far points to them being a pair of possibly dangerous lunatics, and finally abandoning her entire life to travel three centuries into the future at the drop of a hat.

The Voyage Home was the one true box-office smash out of the films featuring the original cast, but it seemed nothing could make Paramount executives forget the amount of money they had lost on the first film, as they kept applying pressure to keep costs on the films down - Khan reuses several visual effects sequences from the first film, and The Voyage Home keeps the Klingon warship cloaked (and hence cheaply invisible) for most of the running time.

The confident teaser poster for The Final Frontier had

people talking. Of course, no-one had yet seen the film.

Or perhaps their tight fist on the budget of the 1989 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was down to a lack of faith in debutante film director William Shatner. The completed film - an unmitigated disaster - is not helped by substandard visual effects work, the result of an unwise decision to look at more cost effective alternatives than Industrial Light & Magic, who had provided visual effects for the previous three films. In terms of narrative, The Final Frontier is the most negligible of the films - the series had jumped through hoops to essentially hit a huge RESET button on the story, and Shatner's film never even vaguely threatens to end in any manner other than the whole crew back together and sailing off in the Enterprise. More than any of the other films, it resembles a poor episode of the original show - it remains the only film which never even has aspirations to do anything grander for the big screen. Which in a strange way is kind of charming: the film may be shite, but it's affectionately made shite. With one blow the franchise had lost all the goodwill generated by The Voyage Home, which remained the only one of the films to appeal to an audience broader than the Star Trek fanbase.

By this time, the franchise had returned more successfully to television in the form of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), which would be followed by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999), Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) and finally (so far) Enterprise (2001-2005). The cinematic franchise, however, resembled a pull start motor that just wouldn't ignite - Khan was a reboot of sorts, throwing out most new elements that had been introduced in The Motion Picture, and the sixth film, The Undiscovered Country, was devised to give the cast a decent send-off and wash out the after-taste of The Final Frontier.

Khan director Nicholas Meyer returned for this film. Again, the studio applied downward pressure on the budget, forcing set pieces to be scaled back and mandating the use of existing sets from the then in production television shows. The character of Saavik - a Vulcan cadet introduced in Khan and played in that film by Kirstie Alley (Robin Curtis played the role in the following two films when Paramount was unwilling to meet Alley's asking price, and the character was left behind on Vulcan at the beginning of The Voyage Home) - was originally included in the script in an attempt to lure Alley back to the role. Alley was unwilling to return to the role, and the character was re-written as Valeris (Kim Cattrall), which made it pretty obvious that she was a member of a conspiracy to prevent the Federation and the Klingons making peace - anyone who appears on the bridge of the Enterprise and is not part of the main cast ultimately exists to die, or be a bad guy, or both. Had the character been Saavik, her betrayal would have perhaps carried more emotional weight - in any case, Nimoy and Cattrall make the most of the situation. Cattrall - who was a livewire presence in many films in the 80s (many of them silly comedies) before belatedly coming to superstardom as Samantha Jones in Sex and the City - certainly demonstrates a greater commitment to the idea of playing a Vulcan than Kirstie Alley ever did. Where Alley was unwilling to sacrifice glamour and feminine allure, retaining her own Brooke Shields eyebrows and long flowing hair, Cattrall presents with shaved temples, angled Vulcan eyebrows and a dark bob.

Kirstie Alley as Saavik in The Wrath of Khan

- unwilling to lose her glamour to play a Vulcan.

Kim Cattrall as Valeris in The Undiscovered Country

- showing a bit more commitment.

It was safe to break some things for good by this time - Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) is finally given the command of his own starship, an idea which had been considered as early as the third film but abandoned when William Shatner protested, wanting to remain Captain to the entire crew. It was, after all, intended as the final film to feature the original cast, and anyway the drama of the Klingons wanting to become part of the Federation was preempted by The Next Generation, which is set some 70 years after the original show (but had been running for a few years when The Undiscovered Country was released) and has a Klingon officer serving on the Enterprise D. Nevertheless, rather than acknowledging that the crew of the Enterprise might have at some stage retired, lived the rest of their lives, and died, The Undiscovered Country wraps up with them sailing off into the blinding sunlight in the starship, before the signatures of the main cast are animated on screen (signing their own names rather than that of the characters) to the fanfares of Cliff Eidelmen's score. The suggestion seems to be that they sailed straight into myth.

Three years later, The Next Generation also made the transition to the cinema - Star Trek: Generations (1994, David Carson) was the first of four films which went through a familiar cycle of destroying and promptly replacing the Enterprise, making empty promises to develop character relationships, giving the Captain - this time around, Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) - one-film-only special guest love interests, and giving cast members the chance to direct. The films played to an increasingly disinterested public and disappointed fanbase, with only one box office hit - Star Trek: First Contact (1996, Jonathan Frakes), another time travel story directed by a cast member which matches Jean Luc Picard with the appealing Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard, another potentially good addition to the cast who gets left behind at the end of the film). The advertising material kept promising that each film was bigger, better, and more action packed than the previous one, but the truth is Paramount was always a bit timid with the marketing of a new Trek film, at least until the currently screening J.J. Abrams reboot of the franchise, simply titled Star Trek (2009).

It is easy to imagine Paramount's marketing department breathing a huge sigh of relief that they are no longer saddled with trying to sell a cast mainly aged in their sixties to the much coveted youth demographic. This time around, those form fitting Starfleet uniforms adorn the hot young bodies of the likes of Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), and Zoe Saldana (replacing Nichelle Nichols as Uhura). As a reboot, it's a step in a promising direction, although it remains to be seen if the inevitable sequels will attain the sort of storytelling boldness which eluded the previous run of films.

On the bookshelf: The Stand, by Stephen King

I know some people who insist that Stephen King is a poor writer. I've often heard his work talked about as being the literary equivalent of a meal from McDonald's. It's a description the disarming author would probably not mind, indeed it's possible he may have used it himself in one of his hugely entertaining pieces of non-fiction. In many cases, these impressions have been based on the many cinematic adaptations of his work rather than from any first hand reading of the novels. Which is a shame, as the cinematic adaptations cross a wide spectrum, from low budget trash to glossy Oscar winners made by directors ranging from auteurs like Stanley Kubrick to journeyman-for-hire Lewis Teague.

But I think King has penned a few masterpieces in his time. For me, he even has a Holy Trinity of sorts in his work - 'Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining (1977), and The Stand (1978). The Stand was re-issued in 1990, this time with King being able to re-instate material that was edited out of the original publication to bring the hardcover price down to one the market could bear. It is this expanded edition that I recently finished reading. I had forgotten - until I came across the first one - that it had illustrations by long-time Stephen King collaborator Bernie Wrightson, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I love seeing how different film-makers have tackled the challenge of successfully translating a Stephen King novel to the screen. I've read a lot of the books and seen most of the adaptations, and it's fascinating to see the variations in fidelity to the source text, budget, director, and format - feature film or tv mini-series? - and how examples that have both worked and failed can be found across the whole spectrum of variables. And the fact that several novels have been adapted more than once, often in different formats, makes if even more informative.

I'm gonna digress for a moment here. I've just paused to wonder who would find this stuff informative, and why I find this stuff interesting. Which takes me to the purpose of this blog - an attempt to kickstart my own thought processes and get the rusty mental machinery of actually writing to work. So maybe it's the wanna-be-screenwriter like myself who could be interested. Or not, let's see where the hell I'm going with this...

Carrie was adapted into a feature film by director Brian DePalma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen in 1976. It was fairly faithful to the novel and captured the spirit of Stephen King's nasty schoolyard - if anything the film gave the material an even harsher edge. The film was a huge success, launching several careers - even Stephen King's, arguably - with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie both receiving Oscar nominations for their performances, no mean feat for a cheap horror movie in one of Hollywood's best ever decades. The novel was adapted again in 2002, this time as a 132 minute telemovie. It has an interesting cast and hews much closer to the novel than the DePalma version, yet is much less effective.

And even bigger contrast is demonstrated by the two versions of The Shining. Stanley Kubrick's film absolutely guts the source text - the shell of the narrative remains, turning Stephen King's crazy spookshow into an intimate look at three people cracking up. And the film is an all-time great, undervalued at the time of release but now receiving due recognition. It's an unsettling film, right down to its very form, with the opening titles scrolling up the screen in a manner usually used for end credits - nothing has happened yet and we're already thrown, not quite knowing what to make of the film.

In 1997, The Shining was adapted again as a three part television mini-series directed by Mick Garris from a teleplay - Christ, how I hate that word, it's still a screen, why can't they use screenplay or just written by - a teleplay, I say, by Stephen King. This one was slavishly faithful to the novel and fumbled every ball on the way to the screen, not helped by silly things like rocking chairs gently rocking by themselves to lead into commercial breaks, as if to remind the audience - before the messages from the sponsors - that something spooky is going on in the Overlook Hotel. Big set pieces like little Danny Torrence being stalked by the hedge animals (a large lion, rabbit, and dog) - which Kubrick wisely avoided completely in 1980, but could have been realised wonderfully in 1997 - are ineffective and flat. Stephen King writes in vivid images and contrasts the total silence of the sunny late Autumn day with the soft clump of snow falling off the animals as they move, unseen. It's all there - the pictures (and even the soundtrack) are so clear, and work so wonderfully. Yet the mini-series smothers the whole scene with "hey guys, this is a spooky bit" music, and is too eager to get to the (not that great) CGI hedge animals, leeching everything effective from the scene. If the money to write and record the music had gone into a smaller number of CG shots (which would be more effective for the extra budget per shot), the scene would have been terrific. A similar "less is more" approach would have improved the entire mini-series, which has a good cast and is technically proficient but misses King's moods and tones completely.

'Salem's Lot became an effective television mini-series in 1979, directed by Tobe Hooper from the teleplay - there's that word again - by Paul Monash. Monash, who had previously adapted Peyton Place (one of Stephen King's admitted influences on 'Salem's Lot) for television, plays fast and loose with King's narrative and characters, yet the end result is much more memorable than the more faithful 2004 mini-series.

The Stand made it to the screen as a four part mini-series for television in 1994, directed by Mick Garris from a script by King. It's a decent enough show, probably ranking as one of the better television adaptations of a Stephen King novel, and it had a sensational cast including Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Miguel Ferrer, Laura San Giacomo, and Rob Lowe, but it fails to capture the epic scope and sense of doom of the novel. Reading the novel again, it's so hard to decide which sort of adaptation I would like to see more - a HBO series running over three years to get every little detail in there, or a stripped-to-the-bone and bigger-than-life cinemascope spectacular, leanly racing through the narrative with vivid imagery? Not that it matters now that the ultimate adaptation of the novel has arrived.

Marvel Comics have embarked on a large scale comic book (or shall I say 'graphic novel'?) adaptation of King's novel. It comprises six books, each made up of five issues, and is everything a fan of the novel could want. One of King's goals when writing The Stand was to create an epic story that would play like a dark Americana version of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. If there are other fans of The Stand like me out there - and I suspect there are many - King succeeded. The Stand is, for me, a beloved story that is always a joy to dive into, the beats of the story as familiar as the back of my hand and pleasurably anticipated whenever I read the book. And the Marvel Comics adaptation is - so far - absolutely nailing the story.

New Blu-rays

It's common knowledge that the even numbered Star Trek films are - for the most part - superior to their odd numbered counterparts. Of these, I have three particular favourites - The Wrath of Khan (1982, Nicholas Meyer, #2), The Undiscovered Country (1991, Meyer, #6) and First Contact (1996, Jonathan Frakes, #8). It follows that these are the ones I got on DVD, although I recently caved and bought the first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, 1979).

All six films featuring the original series cast have been released as a Blu-ray box set (the individual films are being released next week), and when I saw it at JB Hi-fi with a price tag just under $200, I did the math and came out at a little over 30 bucks per film, thought 'what the hell', and picked it up.

Each of the films - even the poorer ones - has points of interest, either the scores (all six of them have terrific scores), the visual effects, the appearance of everyone from Miguel Ferrer to Christian Slater in bit parts, and main supporting cast including the likes of Kirstie Alley, Ricardo Montalban, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Cattrall, David Warner (who appeared in both #5 and #6, the second time under heavy Klingon makeup), and Christopher Plummer. Not to mention standout moments for the ageing main cast scattered throughout the films.

I haven't watched any of them yet, but I've done a bit of a chapter skip through Khan and The Search for Spock (1984, Leonard Nimoy, #3) and they look terrific. Those fabulous matte paintings of the underground Genesis Project in The Wrath of Khan just pop off the screen! This release also marks the debut - on a home digital format - of the theatrical versions of three of the films. The visual effects for the director's edition of the first film were only produced to NTSC video resolution, with an astounding lack of foresight, and The Undiscovered Country is presented for the first time ever in the correct aspect ratio on home video.

I'm gonna have to put my foot down in another month or so when the box set of the next four films - featuring the crew from the second show Star Trek: The Next Generation - comes out, as only one of them is worth watching. So I'll be waiting for the individual release of First Contact.

TVCs ripping off ideas

That expensive looking commercial for Cherry Ripe? The one where a sexy woman dazzles a sexy shaving man by shining reflections from the inside of her Cherry Ripe wrapper across a European looking courtyard into his bathroom?

Total rip-off of Brian DePalma's Femme Fatale (2002).

New Blu-rays

JB Hi-Fi (where I usually go shopping for DVDs and BDs) has an ongoing "buy 2 get 1 free" promotion for Blu-ray discs. Which is great if you want to buy The Transporter or Prince Caspian. However, if you're like me and hate the majority of Hollywood films these days, and what really gets you going is the release of 30 year old favourites in High Definition, then you're shit out of luck. That bright yellow sticker signaling a disc is part of the promotion never adorns the likes of The Thing or RoboCop.

And so it goes with my latest Blu-ray purchases, both old favourites that I was delighted to see appear on the format.

The stark one-sheet for Poltergeist.

Poltergeist (1982, Tobe Hooper) was never very well served on DVD, despite being released a couple of times. The first release - which I bought - had a good 16:9 transfer but seemed to have been sourced from inferior elements. It was re-released for its 25th anniversary, with a new transfer but still tellingly lacking any kind of special features which offer any real insight into the notoriously troubled production. The Blu-ray release also lacks any decent special features - the docos on the discs are about real life poltergeist phenomena rather than any behind the scenes looks at the making of the film. The HD transfers, however, are stunning.

The film is a top notch production all-round, never mind the ongoing dispute over who's responsible for directing it: the film clearly bears the strong stamp of co-writer/producer Steven Spielberg, who oversaw post-production (with his regular editor Michael Kahn) without Hooper's involvement. Nevertheless, I feel that Hooper's personality is evident in the film, partly in a couple of the more effective scare moments, but mainly in the heightened hysteria of the performances - Dominique Dunne's screams of 'what's happening? WHAT'S HAPPENING?!?' in the climax could only have been drawn out by the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

The film is a product of the very best Hollywood at the time had to offer. James H. Spencer's production design looks great in High Definition, as does Matthew F. Leonetti's rich anamorphic cinematography. The innovative visual effects by Industrial Light and Magic (under the supervision of Richard Edlund) are still striking today. And then there's the great sound-mix, put together by a talented team which included Alan Howarth, who was just beginning a fruitful collaboration writing scores with John Carpenter. And the sound on the Blu-ray disc makes the most of Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar nominated score. 1982 was a banner year for film scoring, with extraordinary works from James Horner (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Basil Poledouris (Conan the Barbarian), and John Williams (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, the Oscar winner that year), but Goldsmith's Poltergeist was a stand out even in this company. This is a score that can do anything - from evoking everyday suburbia to calling up forces from the other side that are wondrous, mystical, and terrifying by turns. It is strong both in melodic writing and jagged shocking rhythms. A truly wonderful score.

But what really makes Poltergeist endure is the cast. Everyone is great - from Spielbergian moppets Heather O'Rourke and Oliver Robins to Zelda Rubinstein's medium and Beatrice Straight's warm portrayal of the kindly Dr. Lesh. Holding the film together though are the gorgeous Craig T. Nelson and the beautiful JoBeth Williams, both delivering career best performances as Steve Freeling and his wife Diane. They bring credibility to even the most outlandish sequences with their thoroughly believable characterisations, completely selling every single moment. The (to my mind) unfairly maligned Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986, Brian Gibson) retained some of the spirit of this film by bringing back most of the cast and such key behind the scenes players as Richard Edlund (now heading up his own effects firm, Boss Film) and Jerry Goldsmith.

The one-sheet for Escape From New York - iconic.

Escape From New York (1981, John Carpenter) continued Carpenter's run of commercial hits which started with Halloween in 1978 and would screech to a halt in 1982 when he made The Thing, his first film for a major studio. It's a genuine "high concept" thriller - in the future world of 1997, Manhattan Island has been walled off to create the world's largest prison, and when the United States president (Donald Pleasence) is forced to make an emergency exit from Air Force One due to a hijacking and is trapped in New York, the authorities send in notorious vigilante Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell, in a role that would define his action film persona) in a desperate rescue attempt.

The film starts off strongly and then kind of runs out of steam once Russell (at his hottest in this film) lands in the streets of Manhattan. Here the main menace is provided by a pack of Mad Max cast-offs, the same kind of crazies in leather with punked up hair that would also appear - with a similar lack of effectiveness - in later Carpenter films such as Ghosts of Mars (2001). However, with a cast including Lee Van Cleef (throwing every bit of Kurt Russell's cynicism right back at him) Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine (at his hammiest), and Adrienne Barbeau (Carpenter's then wife, providing a splash of busty B-movie sleaze) and rounded out by Carpenter regulars like Tom Atkins and Charles Cyphers, it never gets boring.

As usual for an early John Carpenter film, the small budget is belied by the technical ingenuity, with ace production designer Joe Alves creating the dystopian world of 1997 New York in the then fire ravaged streets of St. Louis, aided by the typically bold widescreen camerawork of cinematographer Dean Cundey. The electronic score was the first collaboration between John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - a working relationship which would see a significant increase in the musical and technical sophistication of Carpenter's scores - and the inventive low budget visual effects were created by a team which included future uber-director James Cameron.

The towers of the World Trade Center were indeed still standing in 1997, when the film is set, and one can forgive Carpenter for failing to predict - in 1980 - that New York councils would take an increasingly effective zero tolerance policy towards crime. It's tricky stuff, this future speculation business - there are dozens and dozens of science fiction films which have, over the years, been transformed from amazing visions of the future to catalogues of anachronisms and wrong-headed speculations. Of course, the great films remain great films - 2001 wasn't how Stanley Kubrick saw it, and it's looking pretty likely that 2019 won't be how Ridley Scott saw it, but the issues touched upon in their films - Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Scott's Blade Runner (1982) - remain relevant and potent, no matter how many logos of now extinct businesses are featured. Sadly, that cannot really be said of Escape From New York, but it remains an entertaining and effective action film.

TVCs ripping off ideas

I'm sick and tired of seeing commercials blatantly stealing ideas from movies and music videos, and have decided to start running a column which I will add to whenever I see something that offends me on the television...

ANZ Bank is currently running a TVC advertising 'putting more ATMs in more convenient places'. The commercial features a couple of workers having problems with a vending machine (which has money in place of the usual chocolate bars and packs of chips), and end up being helped by a would-be cute ATM, which comes up and kicks the vending machine with its stumpy legs.

I'm gonna say the agency either showed the client or the production company clips from Douglas Trumball's 1972 science fiction film Silent Running.

It was all leading up to this: 'No Country For Old Men'

No Country For Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen) is a brilliant film with one of those maddening non-endings that can go either way with me: when John Sayles abruptly cut to black in Limbo (1999) it took my breath away, but the final scene of No Country felt unsatisfying. Perhaps I just didn't "get it". No matter - I love the film to bits, it's not like the ending ruined it for me. What I adored so much about the film was that, for the first time in what seemed liked forever, I was sitting in the theatre excitedly wondering "what happens next?" - happily twisted around the Coens' little fingers. After years of "plot developments" eliciting bored moans it was delightful to feel like I was really being told a story. The other thing I loved about the film was that it seemed the perfect distillation of everything that was once great about the Coen brothers before they really went Hollywood and started making films like Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and The Ladykillers (2004). Truth be told, I think the rot was setting in before these sell-out low points - I enjoy The Big Lebowski (1998) enough but certainly not as much as its fans do, and found the highly acclaimed The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) to be an empty experience.

No for me, the Coens are all about their first six films, each one perfect in its own way: Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Fargo (1996). I know I am a rare Coens fan who will put Hudsucker on the good list over Lebowski, but so be it. I've just always really dug The Hudsucker Proxy.

And so No Country For Old Men really felt like a return to form for me. It was like they'd made a new Blood Simple, only this time with the best technical team given enough money and a dream cast. Like Blood Simple, No Country For Old Men is a twisty thriller set in the wastelands of Texas, and the films have almost identical openings, with a world weary voice over (M. Emmet Walsh in Blood Simple, Tommy Lee Jones in No Country) speaking over desolate shots of Texan plains. The critical difference - one which is not immediately apparent to the viewer - is who is behind the laconic voice over. Walsh is a sleazy private investigator out to double cross his employer, Jones is a morally upstanding lawman who looks on with increasing disbelief at the violent crime scenes he is faced with. Both films concern bungled crimes, red herrings, and vital clues hidden away in cheap motel rooms. But where Blood Simple is an intricate clockwork mechanism that invites the audience to watch the characters scurry around like rats in a maze, No Country eschews explanations and takes the senseless violence of its world as a given. A deputy examining the aftermath of a drug deal turned shootout remarks "they even shot the dog!" and then a few scenes later we are shown Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) - at that stage the main audience identification figure - put into a situation where he has to do exactly that, in a climax of a terrific chase sequence which begins with him being pursued across the plains in the dead of night by two armed men in a truck and ends with the wounded Moss desperately swimming down a swiftly running stream by the pre-dawn light, the soon to be dead hound in hot pursuit.

No Country even manages to recall Raising Arizona - the famous scene where the murderous Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) challenges a gas station proprietor to a high stakes coin toss resembles the black flip side of the scene in Arizona where two bumbling prison escapees turned kidnappers hold up a small grocery store, with the classic dialogue exchange:

 EVELLE

(re: balloons) 

These blow up into funny shapes at all?

CASHIER

Well no. Unless round is funny.

But if No Country For Old Men has a true sibling in the Coens' body of work, it must surely be Fargo. Both films feature a canny, moral law enforcement officer tracking criminals across desolate landscapes by the frequently bloody aftermath of their crimes. The snowbound Minnesota of Fargo is as harsh and unforgiving as the dusty plains of No Country - Fargo discovers a beautiful contrast between the vast landscape and the warm places humans huddle inside, as well as making maximum usage of the clue concealing properties of snow. But the real connection between the films are the police officers played by Frances McDormand (Fargo's Marge Gunderson) and Tommy Lee Jones (No Country's Sheriff Bell). Marge and Sherrif Bell are not the focus at the beginning of the films, which both set up other protagonists and conflicts, allowing McDormand and Jones to slowly creep into the story (Marge Gunderson doesn't appear until about half an hour into Fargo) before they eventually become the emotional core of their respective films. The characters are also an interesting study in contrasts, from the most obvious difference (that of gender) to the fact that Marge eventually finds and overcomes her quarry, whereas Bell never comes face to face with Chigurh, and the film makes it pretty clear that he would be unlikely to emerge the victor from such a confrontation: Chigurh is as unknowable and implacable a force of evil as Michael Myers in Halloween (1978, John Carpenter).  Marge Gunderson also has a more optimistic outlook than Sheriff Bell - No Country ends with Bell looking forward (at least subconsciously) to being released from this world, where the heavily pregnant Marge is in the process of creating a new life herself.

The remarkable thing about how heavily No Country For Old Men draws from the Coens' earlier work is that it is adapted with extraordinary fidelity (to a fault - the last page of the novel is a great ending to a book, but I'd argue it doesn't work as the final scene to a film) from Cormac McCarthy's novel. All the elements discussed above come directly - and in many cases, just about word-for-word - from the novel. Was McCarthy watching Blood Simple and Raising Arizona when outlining his story, perhaps?

No Country For Old Men, I believe, marks the beginning of a true second wind for the Coens. They're no longer trying to fit in to Hollywood, rather Hollywood is giving them the resources to make films exactly how they want to, only now with the very best actors (and stars, even) and the sort of marketing campaigns which films like Miller's Crossing (still their most perfect film as far as I'm concerned) never got to benefit by. If No Country For Old Men is Blood Simple 2.0, I found that watching their next film, Burn After Reading (2008) expecting Raising Arizona 2.0 is a very good way to have expectations confounded. Which of course is what the Coens like to do best - confound expectations. I need to see Burn After Reading again, this time without looking for the patterns I saw in No Country For Old Men, to fully appreciate it, I think. And how heartening that the boys are still making films that are worth going back to see a second time - very rare these days.

On the sequels to 'The Exorcist'

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin) was a huge sensation when released - it was banned in places, discussed in talk shows and the media, and walked out on. It came along at a time when big theological questions were in the public eye, and as such almost inadvertently became a sensationalist phenomenon that was concerned with Big Issues. It is of course an entirely fabulous film, still riveting after all this time. Hollywood wasn't as prone to sequels back then, but the huge success, both artistically and commercially, of The Godfather II in 1974 had proved that a sequel needn't mean cheapening the storyline. And so in due course along came Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman) with Linda Blair joined by great actor/ham combos such as Richard Burton and Louise Fletcher. It was a troubled production that was fitfully released, hauled back to the edit suite, and finally abandoned by both Warner Bros and the director and dumped into theatres to the jeering of the crowds. The Razzies hadn't been invented then but you can be sure Exorcist II would have been a contender.

1983 saw the publication of William Peter Blatty's follow up to his original novel, Legion. It's weighty, meditative, and theological, and when production company Morgan Creek allowed Blatty to write and direct an adaptation for them, it should have come as no surprise that he delivered a weighty, meditative, and theological film. Shocked to discover - after the film was completed - that Legion did not contain any sequences of exorcism, Morgan Creek insisted on having one shot for the film. Although Blatty disagreed, he was a good enough sport to shoot the new sequences, hoping to still do the best job possible. The film, The Exorcist III: Legion (1990) is creepy and well made and leaves an impression despite the completely visible join between Blatty's story and the studio imposed exorcism. And it has one of the best shock scare moments of the last couple of decades.

The final sequel to date had the most torturous post production of all - fearing Paul Schrader's film Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist would be unsuccessful, Morgan Creek hired director Renny Harlin to completely reshoot the film. Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning was released to poor box office and negative reviews in 2004, and Schrader's film was eventually released as well in 2005, to a slightly better reaction.

Has there ever been a cinematic franchise with such a troubled production history? The fourth film especially being completely reshot, never mind Paul Schrader - a promising match for the material - being dumped in favour of Renny Harlin, of all people. A clear sign that the studio really had no idea what sort of film they really wanted.

Of course, the original film has not been without after the fact tinkering either. In this case, a long standing dispute between author/screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin was re-ignited when the film was re-released for a short theatrical run and then on DVD for its 25th anniversary. At that time Friedkin stood his ground, but a couple of years later he relented and the ridiculously yclept The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen was released in 2000. The new version re-instates some character material which Blatty had always missed, as well as the infamous "spider walk" scene which doesn't really fit - coming before the film has taken its shocks to that kind of level, it both steals the thunder from later scenes and disrupts the slow build of tension. Freidkin also adds a couple of ill-advised new visual effects, particularly an image of the demon's face appearing in the range-hood which is completely meaningless within the story. It ultimately doesn't matter, it's still pretty much the same film, and some of the extended sequences help what seem like big narrative leaps in the shorter version. My preference, however, is definitely for the original version, although truth be told, you can't even get that these days: the closest being the first (now out of circulation) DVD release, which replaces the startling and effective jump cut from Jason Miller playing Father Karras to the same actor in demon makeup with a more subtle digital morph, but is otherwise the same as the 1973 release.

Score of the week

The first film score I owned was the cassette of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Hooked on scores immediately, I quickly moved on to vinyl, and had a pretty decent collection by the mid 80s. At that time, CDs were only bought if I really, really loved the score. Once, I bought a soundtrack on LP - it was Willow by James Horner - and loved it so much that after one listen I took it back to the store and begged them to allow me to return the listened-to-once LP and exchange it for the CD. Of course, eventually I replaced most of my LPs with CDs, but I never got around to getting the CD of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and in my last house move (which came with a very severe cull of possessions) I got rid of all but a couple of my LPs, as I no longer owned a record player. There were some real gems in there, too - including a few scores which have since become rare and much sought after. Who knew that I would one day miss The Serpent and the Rainbow? Whenever I'm in a music store I fondle the CD of Willy Wonka, but always end up putting it back, thinking to myself 'It's a novelty item which would only be in your collection for nostalgic reasons.' Last week I decided to see if it was on iTunes, found it (bizarrely, it's title is censored to W***y Wonka... - I mean, wtf?), and seconds later was listening to it for the first time in years.

This score - which earned the film it's single Oscar nomination -  is a bit too musically straight forward and conventional to be counted amongst the great achievements in the history of film scores. And the film has a strange, scattershot approach to the use of songs - it's not quite a musical. Initially, the songs are connected to Charlie Bucket's story, through songs such as 'Cheer up Charlie' and 'I've Got a Golden Ticket'. Then, once Charlie and the other Golden Ticket holders are inside the factory, the songs are limited to a number by Willy Wonka (the wonderful and slightly unsettling 'Pure Imagination'), Veruca Salt's big tantrum in 'I Want it Now,' and the memorable Oompa-Loompa songs, one for each unfortunate child who ends up leaving the tour, with no big finale musical number and no musical continuation of songs about Charlie. It doesn't seem to matter - the film works whether the characters are singing or not, finding the right blend between being charming and scary, a balance which eluded Tim Burton. The album is only 37 minutes but it's a sheer delight, the music is gorgeous and the album is spiced up by the inclusion of a couple of dialogue snippets and some brief tracks featuring the bizarre and hilarious sound effects from the factory machinery. It's as much fun as watching the film again!

An obsessive phase...

I think I'm having one at the moment. They are periods in my life where I focus my viewing and reading on one particular thing. They vary from a more casual three or four week kind of thing before I move on (which is what the current one is) to a complete obsession that I spend months on. Previous subjects have included spending all my spare time re-reading my favourite Clive Barker novels (which means pretty much all of them), or re-watching my favourite Brian DePalma films one after the other. Yes, I'm a big re-watcher of films - I've seen a lot of my favourites dozens of times. Anyway, currently I'm going through a vampire phase. Sparked of course, by my re-reading of Dracula. Since picking that book up again, I've watched the 1979 film, the 1977 mini-series, and many clips from both 1922 and 1979 versions of Nosferatu as well as Francis Coppola's 1992 film on YouTube. I've also watched bits of Interview With the Vampire.

My reading was sent in a different direction - after Dracula, I've had a hankering for Victorian gothic, which had me re-reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and now H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Reading these could send me back to the early films of Angela Lansbury, 1930s Universal horror films, or Paul Verhoeven's film Hollow Man. Which will in turn, send my reading in another direction, and the circle of life keeps turning.

Anyway, my vampire phase intersected with my brief interest in James Mason and I inevitably ended up pulling out the DVD of Tobe Hooper's 1979 mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot. A theatrical cut down of the film was distributed to international territories in 1979, and I loved the look of it and wanted to go see it. Of course, I was nine years old and it would have scared the crap out of me and scarred me for life, so my mother quite sensibly did not allow me to go see it. I was, however, allowed to read the book. I remember finishing reading it and immediately turning back to page one and starting again. I devoured that book. It was funny, I gave it to mum to read when I was done and then my teacher at school, and no one really said anything about my tender brain being exposed to Stephen King at his very best.

I had two years of recurring vampire nightmares from reading 'Salem's Lot, but I was kind of hooked on the primal thrill of a really good scare by then. When the mini-series in it's complete form aired on Australian television in (I think) 1983, I loved it. It had all the kids at school talking about it - lots of "did you see?" and "what about..." 

It was a big ratings hit in Australia - the network broadcasting it ran a repeat screening the following year, and again the year after that. It was a period of two years where I was pleading with my parents to buy a VCR, as I wanted to start taping stuff. When our first VCR finally arrived (it's funny, I remember that VCR as clearly as if I'd seen it this morning) we were too late to miss the repeats of Salem's Lot. I had to wait until it became available to buy from Warner Home Video on VHS, which was sometime in the 1990s, before I got to see it again. I remember the first time I saw this film as an adult, I found it cheesy and dated. I never really watched it again until the price of the DVD dropped enough for to finally say "oh, alright". I blame the highbrow and dismissive company I was in when I first re-watched it for my former judgement, as this time I found Salem's Lot to be extremely effective. I used to dislike the lack of fidelity to the novel, but now I enjoy the way the screenplay by Paul Monash plays fast and loose with the novel, conflating characters and re-ordering events in a similar fashion to many of the various stage and screen adaptations of Dracula.

I won't go into comparing the mini-series and the novel even though I've done a bit of that sort of thing on this blog. I actually do believe a film should stand apart from any source text, and be judged on it's own merits. That said, this small town of 'Salem's Lot, with petty, grasping characters played by the likes of Kenneth McMillan, Fred Willard, and George Dzundza, is recognisably the world Stephen King created. I fell in love with Bonnie Bedelia, girl-next-door pretty until the final scene, where she is transformed into a vision of Gothic seduction. James Mason's sneering and disdainful Richard K. Straker and Reggie Nalder's growling Nosferatu faced monster leave strong impressions. And the sequences with the boy vampires floating outside the window, scratching at the glass and pleading to be let in, are unforgettable. It's strong stuff - I can't imagine anything being scarier than this for a 1979 television production. Special shoutouts to contact lens specialist Dr. Morton Greenspoon, Harry Sukman for his scary Emmy nominated score, and production designer Mort Rabinowitz for the Marsten house, represented by a Psycho inspired facade on location and a sensational interior set which easily gets my vote as the best ever decrepit old house of evil.

James Mason et al...

The other night I was doing some random internet searching - mainly on "living fossils" such as the Coelacanth - and ended up finding this superb page detailing scores of different designs for Captain Nemo's submarine the Nautilus from Jules Verne's prescient piece of speculative fiction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Inspired, I dug out my region 1 DVD of the 1954 Walt Disney film, looking forward to revisiting it. Unfortunately, our old DVD player is becoming a little tempermental and refused to load the disc.

In desperation, I put it in the PS3, knowing full well that it is locked to region 4 and wouldn't play the disc, as was indeed the case. What to do? I'd developed a craving for a 1950s adaptation of a Jules Verne novel, preferably starring James Mason.

Fortunately, I have a region 4 disc of Henry Levin's 1959 film Journey to the Center of the Earth, another childhood favourite. While still fun, it's a poor substitute for 20,000 Leagues..., that's for sure. On the plus side, it's colourful, James Mason and Arlene Dahl have a terrific love/hate relationship, much of the effects work was terrific for the time (they sure had some cojones to shoot daytime scenes on a beach and then stick matte paintings on the top to place the location footage inside a gigantic subterranean cavern), and Bernard Herrmann provides a typically wonderful score, all thundering timpani and moody church organs.

It would have taken balls to even attempt

an effects shot like this in 1959.

On the minus side, Henry Levin's direction is static, the film takes a little too long to get going, some of the sets and effects work have not dated well, and James Mason's Oliver Lindenbrook lacks the magnetism and sex appeal of his Captain Nemo. Not to mention the terrible songs shoe-horned in to the film due to the presence of Pat Boone. I might be being a little harsh, but I was really in the mood for James Mason with a beard, Kirk Douglas singing to a friendly seal, Peter Lorre's shiftiness, and a fight with a giant squid. Some iguanas with rubber appendages stuck on to turn them into Dimetrodons just didn't do it for me tonight.

I followed up with another favourite of my youth, Jack Arnold's 1955 giant-spider-run-amok flick Tarantula. This one's full of classic 1950s stiffness, with characters stopping still to deliver exposition to each other, and a bizarre mix of progressive feminism and sexism in the character of of Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (Mara Corday), a clever scientist in her own right who quips "beauty must come before science" as she absents herself from the lab to keep a hair appointment. The giant spider itself is superbly realised for the most part through high speed photography of a real tarantula matted into location photography (often the shadows of the spider were also matted in, providing an extra kiss of realism), and it would be remiss of me not to mentioned an early uncredited role for Clint Eastwood, playing one of the fighter pilots who come in at the end to napalm the beast to oblivion.

TV I'm watching...

I've got a mate who comes around to watch new episodes of Doctor Who as soon as I've got them - this year, with only four Doctor Who specials being produced, we've sought out other TV shows to keep us occupied. Craig has not seen Deadwood or Arrested Development, and so I'm taking great pleasure in watching those shows again with him. We're up to the start of Deadwood series 2, and about halfway through series 1 of Arrested Development. But these shows are not why I've taken to the keyboard to write a post...

Two years ago, several friends started telling me to watch Dexter. "You'll love it," they would assure me. I was unconvinced. A show about a serial killer? Sure, it was fun and naughty when Hannibal Lecter walked off into the sunset to audience applause in The Silence of the Lambs, but isn't it time we moved on from turning serial killers into cult heroes? My housemate watched series 1, which was given to me - almost forced on me in fact - by a mate, and said it was very good. Still I didn't watch it. I bought my housemate series 2 on DVD for his birthday, and I've been watching it with him.

Well, call me a convert. I think I imagined something more "funky" like NCIS, full of flash frames and jump cuts and obsessed with forensic work. Instead, it's a supremely engaging character drama with a terrific cast and compelling writing that never fails to draw me in. Michael C. Hall - so good in Six Feet Under - is equally good here in a completely different role. And pretty easy on the eyes, as well! I'll be checking out series 1 after I've finished the second series for sure.

And I've just seen the first episode of series 5 of Lost, a show which was so promising, so full of potential in the early days, potential that has been squandered and diminished in direct proportion to the amount of ideas the writers have been dragging in. Lost stopped being compelling a couple of years ago, usually due to the writers (I really hate these guys) seeming to believe their silly mysteries are more interesting than their characters. The cast are great, and the production values are top notch, but the contrived manner in which characters in the show don't reveal things to each other in order to keep secrets from the audience has gone beyond wearying. I've kept watching however - there have been individual stand out scenes and even episodes, and Michael Giacchino's music is so wonderful it usually helps carry me through the rest of it. Having just watched series 5, episode 1 however, I wonder if maybe it's not time to give up. The two words that kept coming to mind throughout the episode were "dull" and "senseless". The time travel shenanigans here seem as if the writers (those bastards again!) saw Stephen Moffat's episodes of Doctor Who and tried to appropriate the ideas without an understanding of how to make them work or how to make the audience care. I'll give it another episode or two but I doubt I'll make it through to the end of the series.

On the bookshelf: Dracula, by Bram Stoker

I'm re-reading Bram Stoker's classic Dracula for the umpteenth time - I read it at least once every few years, and it never fails to captivate me. I wouldn't have thought it possible - I've killed the impact of many of my favourite books through excessive re-reading (I have to rest 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and the Dune series for a goodly number of years before I pick them up again) - but I'm enjoying the Stoker novel more than ever. I own the hardcover edition of the book illustrated with the wonderful paintings of Greg Hildebrandt (see above) - and although on this reading I'm encountering an irritating number of editorial errors ('from' is frequently typed as 'form'), it's not detracting from my enjoyment. I love the contrast of the highly literary device of telling the story through journals and diary entries (a device which was old-hat even when Dracula was first published in 1897) with the almost hysterical alarm at wanton female sensuality. Of course, cinematic adaptations and derivations of Dracula are legion, and enjoying the book as much as I am prompts me to recall my favourites and thoughts on other major adaptations.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (F. W. Murnau, 1922) can seem badly dated - certainly it has no-hope of frightening a contemporary audience. But it's imagery, once seen, is indelible, especially the grotesque Count Orlok (the legendary Max Schreck), and many of the special camera effects are still arresting. All the characters in the film were given new names in the flimsiest of attempts to disguise the unlicensed adaptation, which didn't pull the wool over the widow Stoker's eyes. She was very nearly successful in having every print and negative of the film destroyed. I've never owned the DVD, due to the bewildering array of versions of this public domain film on the market, some of them lacking the colour tinting, some looking like the print was found in a trashcan, some with poorly translated intertitles, some with horrendous new scores... the list goes on. Rumours of a forthcoming Blu-ray release excite me - surely whoever is taking the trouble to create a High Definition disc will be trying to get it right. It's been some years since I last saw this film so I'm sure to enjoy it even more for the wait.

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) is not a particular favourite of mine, despite Bela Lugosi's cold, commanding Count. Like Nosferatu I haven't seen it in a while, but it always seemed stiff and stagey to me - perhaps the result of it being more directly adapted from the hit play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston than the novel. I'm probably due for another look at this one - Philip Glass wrote a score for it in 1999 which is available as an alterate audio track on the DVD, and that at least is worth checking out.

The 1958 Terence Fisher Dracula is another one which is a little lost on me. Hammer Films, the UK studio responsible for this, the 50s Frankenstein films, and scores of other horrors to keep Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price in work for years, brought brilliant Technicolor design, dollops of gore, and busty vampire brides the like of which would never have been allowed in the 1930s, but the waste of Christopher Lee's mellifluous voice - Stoker's verbose Count is given only a handful of lines in this film, and a couple of the later films give him no dialogue at all - is a major liability to me.

One of my favourite versions was made for British television by the BBC in 1977. The two part Count Dracula was the first time I'd seen Stoker's story accurately conveyed on screen. It's a strange beast, part po-faced BBC period drama (the props, locations, and costumes were no doubt staples of many a Jane Austin adaptation), part Doctor Who (the use of video-tape for interiors and what would have been at the time cutting edge video effects but are now quaint oddities). But for once, most of Stoker's vision hits the screen intact, and the cast is brilliant, particularly Jack Shepard's Renfield and Frank Finlay in the definitive interpretation of Van Helsing - so good he would play the role again as Dr. Hans Fallada in Tobe Hooper's terrible but highly entertaining 1985 sci-fi/zombie apocalypse fiasco Lifeforce.

John Badham's 1979 Dracula was based on a hugely successful revival of the Deane/Balderston play, and like the 1931 version the role of the Count was played by the same actor who had played him on stage. This time Frank Langella dons the cape, and it is one of my favourite versions, trumping the 1977 BBC version through lavish big budget production values. It's generally not as highly regarded as the Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee adaptations, although I don't understand why. Langella's magnetic Count is given terrific support by the likes of Donald Pleasance and Laurence Olivier (the latter positively hamming it up as Van Helsing), with Kate Nelligan a standout as the progressive Victorian Miss who comes under the vampire's spell. The photography and production design are gorgeous and the whole package is wrapped up in a lush score by John Williams which is equal parts horror, romance, and action - a score that would surely be as highly regarded as his work for films such as Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) but for the fact that this version of Dracula remains a barely remembered box office failure.

There's one last important adaptation of Stoker's novel which I'm going to discuss here, and of course it is Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Coppola, 1992). My excitement grew in the months leading up to the release of this film - were we to finally see a good version of the story that remained faithful to Stoker? It certainly seemed so - from his name in the title to the inclusion of all the main characters (most other adaptations usually collapse Lucy's three suitors into two characters, if not one, and Lucy and Mina swap names randomly at the whim of the screenwriters) it looked like Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart (riding high on Steven Speilberg's filming of his screenplay Hook, in that period of grace where no one had yet seen the film) were determined to bring Stoker's novel to the screen. And the cast was a terrific line-up, never mind the dubious casting of Keanu Reeves. The lurid mess which ended up on the screen saw an attempt at a faithful re-telling crowded out by an invented romance between Dracula and Mina, here depicted as the re-incarnation of his centuries dead sweetheart. The way James Hart crowed about this plot addition, you'd think he'd written Hamlet - no matter that exactly the same ploy was used by a 1973 television version starring Jack Palance as the Count. What is the point in trying to include all of Stoker's story and then having to rush through it to make room for a Count with a bleeding heart? Stoker's eroticism is as cold as the grave - Dracula refers to Mina as his "wine press" - but Gary Oldman's Count can hardly bear to bring himself to inflict the fatal bite upon Winona Ryder's Mina, so rent is he from his love for her. If you didn't need a sick bucket for the gore, you'd still want one handy for the romance. The performances from the aforementioned stellar line-up seem to come from ten different films, every actor encouraged by their indulgent Uncle Francis to find the histrionic madness in their character, with the result that Tom Waits as Renfield - the one bona fide madman of the text - seems sane beside the shrilling of everyone from Reeves and Ryder to Anthony Hopkins and Richard E. Grant. And the crying shame of it all is that so many good, even great, qualities are in this film, from Eiko Ishioka's stunning costumes and Greg Cannom's exceptional make up work to Sadie Frost's vampish (I'm sorry, there's no other word for it) Lucy and the darkness and power of Wojciech Kilar's score, by turns lyrical and brooding. With so much that is so right, it's amazing that the film as a whole is so wrong.