Dracula and Frankenstein (1931) Panic! at the Paramount

 

Panic! at The Paramount this year is actually Panic! at the State Theater since our beloved Paramount is undergoing renovations for a year.  That does not mean that there's been a fall off in the programming however, and although the State Theater is not as magnificent as the Paramount, when the lights are off and the screen is lit up with a classic film, and you are surrounded by people who love those kinds of movies the way you do, it is still a great experience.

Both “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” came out 95 years ago. A Century Of Horror was established with these films, and even though they weren't the first horror films they created the template on which most of the films we see as being fright movies have followed.  Warner Brothers was famous for its gangster pictures, and MGM had musicals but in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Universal is where you went to if you wanted a scary movie.

“Dracula” is based more on the stage play than on the book from Bram Stroker. There's plenty of overlap, but the movie plays very much like a theatrical production. The actors have long bits of dialogue that they take turns saying in dramatic ways, with frequent pauses for the audience to process. It's true that some of the storytelling here is a little creaky. Rubber bats bouncing up and down on a string are not particularly convincing, but in 1931 that's how you did it, and I'm perfectly willing to go along with it.

The elaborate sets of Carfax Abby, are a nice in camera effect, that relies less on filters and backgrounds or animation, and more on production design with some spooky atmosphere provided by both the actors and the scenery. Speaking of scenery, I still think some of the painted backdrops used to create the roads and passes of Transylvania, are pretty impressive. The matte work of the castle in the mountains is equally strong. 

The most lasting physical contribution that Dracula has made to the cinema is the portrayal of the dark count by Bela Lugosi, who starred in the original stage production, and his look is forever imprinted  in our minds, this is what Count Dracula looks and acts like. I went as Dracula trick or treating as a kid, with the widow's peak, the cape and The Medallion around my neck. They all reinforced the look, but it's the fake accent that makes it work the best.

The other night I did notice an editing mistake in the film, or at least somebody screwed up on continuity. We learned that the lady in white who's been terrorizing the children in London was in fact the deceased Lucy Weston. However we never see a resolution to that situation. I suppose it's assumed that once Dracula himself has been disposed of his acolytes or Brides would fall by the wayside. In the Coppola version of Dracula, we got a gruesome resolution of that story. Maybe the audience is of 1931 we're not ready to have a young woman be decapitated on screen.

 

 As terrific as “Dracula” is, when it comes to production design, “Frankenstein" is how you really do it. The laboratory equipment sparks, snaps and flares with electricity. The interior of the abandoned watchtower, which serves as Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, , is matched by the exterior Matte shots, which make the local scenery into one of those Universal Staples. A dark mountain side with a castle located on the top and a foreboding Forest around it. 

Just as “Dracula” had Bella Lugosi to anchor the story and give us an indelible villain, “Frankenstein” has Boris Karloff, playing a monster that is sometimes frightening and sometimes pitiful. The sequel does a much better job of building empathy for the monster, but in the moments where the monster is fearful of fire, all of us can relate to being intimidated by something scary.

The reels we saw the other night included the long missing segments with young Maria. She was always in the film, but the scene where she is flung into the lake by the monster, had been edited out back in the 1930s. The restored film stock is noticeably different in the film( although I'm pretty sure we saw a digital presentation).

Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein, is certainly an example of screen acting styles of the era. He is frequently melodramatic and his voice exaggerates the emotional beats. Still, as I was watching it, I felt much more engaged with his character than I had in some of the previous screenings that I have attended. 

It's been more than 50 years since the movie “Young Frankenstein" came into my life, and I am still influenced by the fidelity to the production design of that movie, and the scenes from the original film that it parodies. The graveyard sequences and the bit about the brain being abnormal, only barely deviate from the original tone. Once again the style of the era has to be forgiven, but doing so is easy. 

If ever you get a chance to see either of these films in a real theater with other patrons don't miss out. They are fantastic time capsules that reflect how audiences could be shocked a century ago, but they also show how we are not that different from those audiences.  This was another terrific evening of Classic Cinema from the Austin theater group who managed both the Paramount and state theaters. 

Resident Evil (2026)

 

Here is a revelation that I didn't see coming, had no expectations for, and caught up with simply because it was convenient to do so. I may have seen the original film version of “Resident Evil” at some point, but I couldn't tell you anything about it. I've never been a gamer so I have no clue as to how the video game works and whether or not the premise was sustained through all of the iterations that came with the previous films. This appears to be a reboot, and from what I've seen online it doesn't sound like it's particularly faithful to the previous films or to the game. For me that is perfectly fine. This movie was a blast and I was entertained the whole time I was in my seat at a theater.

I have frequently complained about horror films that overuse CGI to produce the images that are supposed to terrify us. Too often the reveal of a monster at the end of a movie is the most disappointing part of the story instead of the most exciting part. And this film seems to set up that kind of disappointment. It starts off with a very creepy vibe, and practical makeup effects, and some great sequences shot in the snowy Woods and Fields. For almost the first hour of the film, we have one character, struggling against the unknown, and being felled by mishaps at every turn.  

The film takes its dramatic shift at a farmhouse that is more secured than most banks, and this is where the special effects start to be a part of the story. It is a great surprise that they don't screw up the goodwill created so far, instead they extend it.  Our protagonist continues to struggle, but with an even bigger slack Jawwed look than before. I'm not sure I've heard the “F”word used as much in a film since Scarface in 1983. Martin Scorsese and Samuel Jackson could take this a lesson from this character in the effectiveness of a brief ejaculation of that word, without any adjectives to go with it.

I won't understate the horror aspects of this film, but I do want to make sure that people understand, this is primarily a comedy. The character of Bryan, is played with a combination of Innocence and ineptitude and strength by Austin Abrams. This guy carries the movie on his back, although there are other characters in the film, they exist only in relationship to Bryan,  and he seems like a good guy just trying to do the right thing, but never being able to make the right thing work.

When the film setting reaches the big city, and we start to get an explanation of what the heck the plot is all about, the tone of the film doesn't really change, it's just the scale that changes. Horrible things continue to happen to poor Bryan,  but now they feel overwhelming, and you begin to get a sense of futility. These events make the second part of the film slightly less enjoyable, although it is still filled with a lot of laughs.

The director Zach Cregger, made the film "Weapons" last year and that seems to be a critical breakthrough. His previous film "Barbarian" was 2/3 of a great movie, and this one is more like 7/8 of a good movie. The very end of the film is all set up for additional episodes rather than a conclusion that is satisfying to the story. Maybe that's all for the best, because I'm sure I could continue to enjoy it if they find some way out of the CGI manifestation and the steps on all the stuff that came before. It was still gross and interesting, that suddenly the film feels a little more conventional as a result. 

As Bryan would say, "F*#k".  I enjoyed this movie enough to do it again  immediately. 

Vote for My Franchises in the Lambcast Draft

 

Ernie & Emma (2026)

 

Unfortunately I missed the four screenings at our local Alamo Drafthouse where Bruce Campbell appeared and talked about the movie in person.  They were all sold out and I was disappointed believing that I would never get a chance to see the film in a theater. Lucky for us our local Alamo chose to screen the film a couple of more times without Bruce and those screenings were not sold out. 

Ernie and Emma is a mediation on Grief, but done with the typical Bruce Campbell wit. Bruce wrote and directed this film, and has been promoting it by appearing at screenings throughout the Alamo franchises. The movie is really going to appeal to a specific audience. It is designed for an aging demographic, and it approaches one of the most difficult dilemmas elderly people face, through humor and honesty.

I won't pretend that the film is anything more than a slightly racier version of a Hallmark movie, but it wears its sincerity on its sleeve, and Bruce is giving it his all. The premise gives away the tone of the film immediately. The deceased Emma, has left a series of instructions for her husband, to distribute her ashes and bring closure to some of the events in their life. Along the way there are minor complications, a couple of reveals, and Bruce narrates as he drives through the idyllic town in Oregon where Ernie and Emma lived.

This is a self-financed film so we're not all surprised that the locations may in fact be Campbell's residence. The movie is shot well and edited competently, but it definitely feels like a modestly budgeted television production. Story is more important in the long run, and performances help sell the story quite a bit. 

I think everyone will quite enjoy the art studio owner who accompanies Ernie on some of his ventures in the second half of the movie. You can see what's coming a mile away but that doesn't make it any less pleasant. There are also a couple of security guards that appear in the film, and rather than having them be a*# holes, they instead are interesting characters that you appreciate for having sensitivity to Ernie in his journey.

One of the ways that you can tell that this is a homegrown project is that when you get the credits at the end of the movie, you not only get a photo of the actors who appeared on the screen but there are images of the production designer, the cinematographer, the best boy and the key grip, and a whole bunch of other behind the scenes contributors to the film. 

I wish Bruce all the luck in the world with this project, I know for him it is a labor of love. He is facing an unfortunate prognosis with his health , but he continues to be the shemp we have known him for over the past 50 years. If you get a chance to see Ernie and Emma, take it. It won't change your life but it will make you enjoy your life a little bit more.

It-Chapter 1 (2017) Revisit-Panic! at the Paramount

 

I remember when this film first came out, the trailer consisted primarily of those moments when little Georgie meets Pennywise in the sewer. It's a bold choice to take the best moment from your film and make it the trailer, but it certainly succeeded in getting people hyped for the movie and into Cinemas. I know I had a fairly positive reaction to the movie back when it came out and you can read about that here.

Our experience with "It" this last week was at the Bullock theater which is an IMAX screen, and claims to be the largest screen in the state of Texas. It's not hard for me to believe, having been seated in that theater a number of times this last summer. This is another film that is part of the Paramount Theaters programming which has had to move for the year while they are under renovation. Seeing the movie in IMAX doesn't hurt it at all, in fact I think it added quite a bit to my experience.

Of course I remembered the key scene that I mentioned above, but I was pleased to be reminded that it was not the only moment in the movie that “It” is effective. There are disturbing visualizations, a couple of very effective jump scares, and a sense of dread that runs throughout the movie. The sense of dread is not just dependent on our Supernatural monster, it is also present through human characters that threaten our group of young protagonists.

This film is only chapter 1 of the two part "It"  movie series. I do remember that this was the more effective of the two. I plan on following up, but that will be a home screening rather than a theatrical presentation. I was quite pleased to be able to experience this film again in a theater and this time when I say on the big screen, I mean on a big screen.

The Social Reckoning (2026)

 

16 years after the brilliant “The Social Network”,  Aaron Sorkin returns to the target rich field of social media to once again take on Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. This time he also takes on the responsibility of directing the film as well as writing it, and that may have just been a little out of his reach. This is not a bad film, in fact in some ways it's quite good, but for all of the supposed political impact that the subject matter is supposed to have,  Aaron Sorkin takes a swing, and misses. 

The whole point of this movie is to gin up outrage about the algorithms that lead to promoting hateful clickbait on the social media sites. Sorkin really wants to tie this into the January 6th riot at the Capitol. The problem is, for all of the work that goes into explaining the technical aspects of data analytics, there's almost no demonstration that the algorithm under criticism had anything to do with the events of that day. The only connection seems to be that  President Trump had a video available and that  Facebook took it down, but we never see what was in the video, and there's plenty of evidence to indicate that Trump kept advocating for a peaceful protest not the insurrection that the credentialed class keeps trying to validate.Opinions being treated like facts is the very thing that this movie is supposed to be about. 

“The Social Network” was a film about the origins of the most powerful social media platform in the world., that there was deception and betrayal along the way was what made it a fascinating story. Let's face it, origin stories can be quite interesting. “The Social Reckoning” on the other hand, takes us into an existing world and tries to show that that view of the world that is so negative is partially the fault of this new medium. That's a conclusion that probably everybody accepts before we even think about the film's content. I doubt that you will find many people who deny that the influence of social media can be extremely harmful, duh. That takes a lot of suspense out of the story even though it is a procedural about a whistleblower and a journalist trying to reveal insider knowledge about the mechanisms of Facebook.

Mickey Madison plays the part of a data engineer, Frances Haugen, at Facebook who is responsible for monitoring civic engagement. She's prompted to investigate after seeing a video shared online of a woman speaking extremist views and behaving abrasively while believing that she is in the right. The data that she pursues suggests a strong link between Facebook's meaningful social interaction index and attraction to extremist views. Of course nobody at the company listens to her, and Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as an even more robotic automaton than he was in the previous film. 

I have not studied extensive film of Zuckerberg, so I can't say authoritatively that this portrayal is inaccurate, it just feels a little over the top. Jeremy Strong replaces Jesse Eisenberg as the CEO of Meta. His main strength as an actor in this film is an inability to express anything on his face. So that is apparently a characteristic of the real Zuckerberg. We see several scenes where PR experts are trying to turn Zuckerberg into a human being for public hearings. The idea that they are struggling to make him appear human is funny, but it's a sidetrack from the main purpose of the film which is to explain how Facebook's algorithm is screwing up the world, oh and it's Zuckerberg's fault.

Jeremy Allen White plays the journalist from The Wall Street Journal who is working on the story, but is not really a tech writer. Regardless of whether it is true in real life, this does allow our two main protagonists to engage in frequent exposition which explains things to those of us in the audience who are not used to doing a deep data dive online. This is also an old trick of Sorkin from his days on The West Wing, where a character would plead ignorance in regard to a subject, typically it was CJ the character played by Alison Janney, who then has to have somebody explain what the hell is happening. You don't really get the walk and talk in this film like we got in the TV series, we just get the talk.

One of the things that's missing from this film that made its predecessor so effective is a score from Trent Reznor. The music of “The Social Network" was designed to set a mood and it was nearly another character in the film. Alexandre Desplat , has created a score that feels like it's transition material between exposition rather than setting the mood for the exposition. There's nothing wrong with the music, it's just that it doesn't work in the same way, and it's noticeable.

I think there are certainly issues with how social media works that deserves attention, but our screenwriter here is so concerned with the political ramifications that he ignores the everyday consequences of this sort of negative reinforcement. There are a couple of times when those effects are mentioned, but we never follow up on them, we just keep coming back to the same statistical point that our whistleblower character has been emphasizing from the beginning. We could use a little bit more context for that 64% figure that she keeps throwing around. And does anybody really find it surprising that people who watch a media post that is hate based follow up by looking at hate based groups? Here's a big reveal, water is wet.

The movie plays like a detective story told out of sequence and that structure is so ubiquitous nowadays I'm not sure it helped with this story. For example there are several references made to misinformation or outright lies being told during covid period.  But because of the agenda of the screenwriter, we ignore the fact that the checks that were in place largely suppressed not bad information, but valid criticisms covid policy. Outright lies were told by the medical establishment in order to get people to comply with what they thought was the best advice, and then we were ignoring criticism of that advice. 

The movie wants to have it both ways, it wants to defend free speech but it wants to do so by suggesting that somebody should be regulating that speech. There is an analogy concerning a crossing guard in the story, but this is a weak comparison. Information on Facebook is not like a traffic pattern that threatens to run over kids, it's more like a form of consumer reports being used by shoppers as they make their choices in the grocery store.  The hyperbole suggests that somebody's going to die because of this misinformation, but that's not where the story is. Where is the data that proves that?  Instead we get scenes of the melee at the Capitol back in 2021, without any connection to a media post or group which were the things that this film was criticizing in the first place. 

This is a well-made piece of agitprop, but since it contains misleading information itself, it feels a little bit hypocritical. As an example, the film passes on an apocryphal story about changing the rugs in the capital because of blood stains from Capital police officers who were injured on January 6th. That story has been debunked, but apparently it makes a good point for the plot, so we're going to ignore the fact that it is as dubious as the things that are suggested by the screenwriter. I'm not buying it, and it doesn't look like anybody else is either.

Heart of the Beast (2026)

 

Let me be upfront with you, I'm pretty much going to enjoy a movie where the co-star is a dog. It's my plan to do an episode of the Lambcast featuring movies where the leading character is a canine. “Heart of the Beast”, starring Brad Pitt, is an example of one of those stories about soldiers and their canine partners. “Dog” , that movie from a couple of years ago with Channing Tatum, working with the dog who had PTSD, is a good example of these films. This one however is working on the survival story, and that gives us a chance for a lot more suspense and action.

About 93% of the film consists of Brad Pitt and the dog. There are a couple of other characters that appear on screen and have some dialogue, but those are very small components of the movie. The story is about how this special combat operations officer and the dog that has retired with him, are facing their future by visiting the wilderness, and accidentally getting stranded. 

As a wilderness survival story, “Heart of the Beast” checks a lot of boxes when it comes to action and suspense.  There are confrontations with wildlife which are life-threatening, there are insurmountable physical obstacles the two have to overcome. And there is the fact that Odie, the German Shepherd named Odin, has an artificial paw so he is already handicapped, and Brad Pitt's character is suffering from severe heart problems which led to their crash in the wilderness in the first place.

The survival moments are fine, but it is the relationship between man and Beast which makes up the most important part of the story. We get some of the backstory of our special operations Soldier, and we learned that he has suffered plenty when it comes to loss. Odin may be the one thing that is holding him together, which helps account for the extreme measures that he goes through to make sure that the dog stays with him. A variety of things will make you  think that the dog is incredibly loyal to the man as well. You would expect nothing less than that in a movie like this.

I wouldn't say that the movie is by the numbers, but it does seem that it is checking off a variety of events that the two are faced with. Even the encounter with a character played by JK Simmons, feels a little conventional, in spite of the fact that it is nicely written and performed. Everything is shot in a way that emphasizes the beauty of the environment but also its hazards. As I said before, I'm a sucker for dog stories, and this one was just fine, it's just not the best one I've seen.