Our scare tactics are failing! Isn't there some way we can ratchet up the frights, Video Knight!?
Perhaps! The next entry is a triple feature.
No. 48 (TIE)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Points: 65 | Lists: Vaeran (#19); Teg (#24); Jbear (#3)
“My goal in life was to be prepared...and I WAS.”
10 Cloverfield Lane is a 2016 American science fiction psychological thriller film directed by Dan Trachtenberg in his directorial debut, produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber and written by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher, Jr. It is the second installment in the Cloverfield franchise. The story follows a young woman who, after a car crash, wakes up in an underground bunker with two men who insist that an event has left the surface of Earth uninhabitable.
Dracula (1931)
Points: 65 | Lists: Dracula (#13); Issun (#13); Shakewell (#20)
“The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.”
Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The film stars Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.
Re-Animator (1985)
Points: 65 | Lists: YangusKhan (#21); Dr. Nerd (#12); Shakewell (#13)
“Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.”
Re-Animator (also known as H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator) is a 1985 American horror comedy film loosely based on the 1922 H. P. Lovecraft serial novelette "Herbert West–Reanimator". Directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna, the film stars Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, a medical student who has invented a reagent which can re-animate deceased bodies. He and his classmate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) begin to test the serum on dead human bodies, and conflict with Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), who is infatuated with Cain's fiancée (Barbara Crampton) and wants to claim the invention as his own.
Drac’s Notes: Well we have our first, but NOT OUR LAST, three-way tie on this list. These are all movies I’ve seen and love, even though only one of them was on my personal list.
10 Cloverfield Lane I saw in theaters, and I think it’s a film that’s gotten even better and more relevant as we progressed through the tumultuous Trump years that followed its release. It’s hard to believe the movie was released prior to the Trump era, frankly.
Dracula, of course, is a movie that’s near and dear to me for reasons that are probably obvious. It’s actually a very rough film, and certainly one of the weakest in the Universal lineup - it’s an early talkie, with lots of dead space and frankly sloppy direction (there’s one scene where you can see a piece of paper stapled to a lamp that they must have used for light balancing). But it’s carried on the otherworldly and unforgettable performance by Bela Lugosi, who makes it all worth watching. Finally,
Re-Animator is a cult 80s film which is yet another maximalist horror-comedy. Usually these types of films are my faves, but this one is just a little too unpleasant in certain areas to land on my list. It's essentially a variation on the
Frankenstein model, and it's carried on the frenetic performance of the inimitable Jeffrey Combs and a host of re-animated corpses. And lots of gore.
Wait, what’s Dracula doing on the TV? Is he famous? What’s happening? Did he have a movie career he never told me about? Now I’m really scared!!
