Monday, August 03, 2009

Vampires Suck: 5 Movies EW Forgot

America is having a love affair with vampires, or so Entertainment Weekly claims with their cover story in this week's issue. Ever since that Tom Cruise movie came out like 15 years ago you could see this obsession with vampires bubbling up in the female movie going public. Everyone is crazy about this Twilight school for vampires movie, and I couldn't be more sick about everyone talking about True Blood. Entertainment Weekly has already devoted countless covers to Twilight and an endless amount of articles on True Blood. Now they've gone and killed two birds with one stake through the heart and featured both the depressed goth vampire from Twilight and the vampire with dime store Dracula teeth from True Blood on the same cover to announce their multi-page All Star Salute to Vampires!


I don't give a crap about vampires, but EW did do a nice job in a sidebar giving props to such legendary vampires as Grandpa Munster, Count Von Count from Sesame Street, Elvira and even the all-puppet Dracula spectacular at the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Well played EW....well played! They also have a list of 20 Greatest Vampires. But would you believe that in all this hype about vampires they forgot to mention a few great blood-sucking movies from my home video collection!?! So now we present WWoB's list of 5 Best Vampire Movies:

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) EW lists Count Dooku as the best on screen Dracula of all time, but for my money you can't do better than Leslie Nielsen. Actually, when you're doing a spoof movie it's kind of lazy casting to put Leslie Nielsen in your lead role - but who's complaining!? Mel Brooks gave us this funny take on the Dracula legend almost 15 years ago...and he hasn't make another movie since! It's a shame, even though Dracula isn't anywhere near Mel Brooks' funniest pictures - it's still a good film with some really solid laughs. This film also has one of Harvey Korman's last big screen performances.


Once Bitten (1985) Before Ace Ventura, even before In Living Color Jim Carey stared in this very good film about a high school student who gets seduced by an older woman (played by Lauren Hutton) who turns out to be a vampire. At one point in time, I probably considered this one of the best movies of all time. It's really good. Also, the late great Cleavon Little appears in one of his last big screen roles.


The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone (1979) The Flintstones and the Rubbles go on a game show and win a trip to Rocksylvania. Once there, they stay at Rockula's castle where, just as the title suggests, they meet Rockula and Frankenstone. It turns out that Rockula has a thing for Wilma, but when Wilma's not interested Rockula and Frankenstone try to kill Fred in the hopes of changing Wilma's mind. OK...this isn't really a movie, it's a TV special! But of course I'm going to squeeze the Flintstones into the list if I can!


Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) No matter what the subject, you just can't go wrong with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. This film started off a string of hits for the boys where they "meet" several of the monsters from Universal Pictures' popular stable of horror film characters. Here, Bud and Lou are baggage clerks who must deliver the remains of Count Dracula and Frankenstein's monster to a horror museum. Dracula is played by none other than Bela Lugosi, who played the role several years earlier in the 1931 film version of Dracula. EW ranks his performance in the original film as #3 on their list of 20 Greatest Vampires. Lugosi became so associated with the role that he had a hard time finding work. He took the role in Abbott and Costello strictly for the paycheck and found the film to be an insult to his talents. Whatever, Bela! This great movie remains, to this day, one of the more popular Abbott and Costello movies.

Tales From The Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996) This is a fantastic movie, light on the gore - heavy on the laughs. Dennis Miller stars as a private investigator who ends up at a whore house populated by vampires...and then the fun begins! Miller is out of place as the lead in an action/horror movie, but he makes it work for himself and ends up being really hilarious. There's alot of great supporting talent in this film such as Erika Eleniak, Corey Feldman and yes, the Crypt Keeper! I'm proud to say I'm one of a small handful of people who went as saw this unblockbuster in the theatre. Thank you very much!

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