It's Day 281 of the year and project, which means it's Day 7 of the 31 Days of Hallowe'en themed movie challenges. I'm starting as always with my own 31 Days of Hallowe'en challenge. I talked about it back in August. And my mini theme today is Vampire Comedy. I picked Love At First Bite.
It's 1979 and Count Dracula has been forced out of his castle by the locals. He and Renfield decide to go to New York in search of his reincarnated love, who is currently working as a fashion model. When they arrive, they find she's already in a relationship with her shrink, who just happens to be a Van Helsing.
What makes this such a great movie, is that it is very typical of the time it was made. Comedies from the late 70's and very early 80's had this slapstick quality that verged on spoofiness, but didn't lean into that. For a lack of a better word, they took them selves seriously. The jokes still work, the weird love triangle between our three leads also is a statement of the time this movie was made. As this was at the height of people starting to openly seeing shrinks. Here we have a man in a power position in Van Helsing, who manipulates the character of Cindy by making her think his insecurities are actually hers. That is until Dracula arrives and he beings to win her over. For most of the movie, Van Helsing is trying to kill Dracula, and it's mostly because of his jealousy at the idea of Cindy picking Dracula over him.
And the 31 Day Horror Challenge being hosted by Nightmare on Film Street. Their mini theme today was Samara Weaving. I picked Guns Akimbo.
A computer tech pisses off the wrong guy online, and ends up getting himself kidnapped and tossed against his will into a battle to the death. All broadcast live online.
Okay, so to be honest, I had no idea who Samara Weaving is. I thought since we've already had two mini challenges on day 2 and day 5 of producers and directors, I honestly thought that this was another one. I put her name into my roku search and this was the first movie that appeared. To me it sounded like a body horror given the main character ends up getting guns bolted to his hands and the violence does get over the top at times. The idea of being kidnapped and having your hands mutilated and then forced to fight to the death, nightmare fuel for sure. Weaving plays the character of Nix, who is the one hunting him throughout the movie. It is listed as a dark comedy and action thriller, which when I was younger meant horror. So with all that said, did I like this movie? Yes and no. It's horrific to someone like me who just doesn't understand the appeal of guns, but the writing is so good. Every element in this makes sense. The dialog is perfect, the look of this makes you want to gag or shower or both, the way they got the absolute grunge of the inner cities. The scene where he's trying to pick up an old piece of hot dog from the ground and there is a used condom right beside it. Gross but so perfect in that visual.
If you want to follow along to my daily list on Letterboxd, I'm doing a few movie challenges this month. One of which is the #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge.
Come back tomorrow to see what I've picked for the next round.
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