David Vining's Blog

I was disappointed in this. The first Hammer tale of Dracula felt caught between the two worlds of stately early English film and later, destined to come, salaciousness. I knew that the tipping point would come, and probably soon, into something that understood Hammer’s place in horror as one of gore and titillation, especially with a title like The Brides of Dracula. And what I got was a step backwards into stateliness. Which clashes horribly with the text of the film while providing none o...

Cowboys and Indians, bruh.

Ireland, bruh.

Edward G. Robinson and Jean Arthur, bruh.

Like, subscribe, cult, bruh.

I never know what these movies are when I start them. I read nothing about them beyond their titles, and just let them wash over me. Seeing a title like Hell is a City, well, this is a noir, isn’t it? And those opening titles, well, this is definitely a noir. All night in the city, car passing through, jazzy music. It’s a noir. And then the film is more of a straight police procedural. It still has the attitude, especially from its protagonist, but it misses the look and even the narrative s...

This was apparently producer Michael Carreras’ only attempt at a serious film as a producer. It failed at the box office, and he never tried again. I mean, I get it. It’s more of a legal procedural than a thriller, and the ending is…unpleasant. It’s not a surprise that it didn’t light the box office on fire. Hammer was in the business of chasing trends, and if an attempt to chase a trend failed, well, they weren’t going to do a whole lot more of it.

Jean (Janina Faye) and Lucille (Frances...

Terence Fisher movies have developed this affinity for ending quite excitingly but not really having the meat leading up to that ending to make a full package of entertainment. That was my central complaint of his The Mummy, and it’s more evident here in this tale of British colonial India. I think it works less well, Fisher and the script by David Z. Goodman can’t create a clean story to follow in this mystery without a mystery, and we just end up jerked around instead of propelled.

Capt...

This feels like three episodes of a television comedy show. The pilot episode, a random episode in the middle of the season, and the season finale. It’s actually based on a radio play by Ronald Holroyd and Michael Corston, though. I mean, it’s mildly entertaining as it does it, but the comedy and drama is all just straight up sitcom stuff. It’s a light affair with no strong laughs, nothing to say about war or human nature. It’s a very mild entertainment of a genre of zany antics in the army ...

America, bruh.

Sacrifice, bruh.

Movies, bruh.

Like, subscribe, cult, bruh.

The Mummy franchise is one of the worst horror franchises. There’s the first Brendan Fraser movie, the Abbott and Costello send up, a thousand feet of crap, and then the rest, so when Hammer decides it can take a swing at it, I’m open to it. The franchise is far from sacred to me, mostly seen by myself as a series of lost opportunities and terrible monsters mixed in with overcomplicated lore, so a fresh take from the overly prim but primed for mayhem boys at Hammer feels appropriate. Terence...

Bruh.

This sudden uptick of WWII movies from Hammer was unexpected, but it’s honestly something of a delight. The Steel Bayonet didn’t quite come together, but The Camp on Blood Island, Ten Seconds to Hell and now Yesterday’s Enemy are hard-edged, focused pieces about violence in the hearts of men in (and immediately after) wartime that seem to come from a very genuine place within people like Val Guest, who directed this. Controversial at the time for having its main, British character commit a w...