Rhapsodies

Well after the dead serious batch from last week I decided to take the a slightly different direction in the next week of halloween with some vampire Comedies. I sort of found two ones… One that definitely on it’s way to being a cult classic, the other that is already nearly forgotten.

The first on my list, What We Do in the Shadows, a mocumentary about vampire roommates living in Wellington New Zealand (by Flight of the Concords alumni Jemaine Clement and  Taika Waitit ), was one that I’d been looking forward to seeing, but at the same I wasn’t completely sure of what I’d think of it. Certainly the MTV style roommate reality show deserves to be mocked, but I’d seen plenty of parodies of the genre before of with heavy differences of quality…. But this one was about vampires so everything was all right.

Viago, Deacon, Vladislav and the ancient Petyr (who lives in the basement rarely interacting with the other three) “Live” ordinary lives. Hunting for fresh blood every night, banging heads with the local werewolf pack (who act more like a men’s tharapy group)  and prepare for an upcoming masquerade ball.

All of this changes when they accidentally turn their latest victim, Nick into a vampire. He introduces them to the modern world, something they are more than a little clueless about and wrecking their status quo in the process.

This was a really fun film. It’s intentionally silly, something I normally have problems with but they pulled it off quite well. I like how a lot of the completely fantastic is treated as completely mundane (things like arguing over chores that include vacuuming the ceiling and washing the blood off the dishes). It was all the little things like a perfectly articulate zombie at the masquerade complaining about all of the “brains” cliches, while his two inarticulate companions are filling it to a T.

I think my favorite bits consisted of their long suffering human servant whose responsibilities include everything from shopping for victims to washing the blood out of silk blouses. All the while treating it like just another job.

The next film on my list Innocent Blood by John Landis was described to me as doing what American Werewolf in London did for werewolves for Vampires. This was something I had mixed feelings about this. An American Werewolf in London is one of my favorite werewolf films and while it’s certainly humorous, I’ve never considered it a comedy. Based on that I wasn’t sure if Innocent Blood would count as a comedy either. Happily as far as I could tell after watching it, I’m pretty sure it is… albeit not a very good one.

Our story tells the story of Marie, played (by Anne Parillaud)  a beautiful French pixie of a vampire who has very strict rules about her hunting practices.. Her number one rule is to never feed on “innocent blood”. To get around this she only feeds on criminals and a ongoing mob war gives her plenty of opportunities.

Regrettably due to a series of unfortunate events she accidentally turns a mob boss into a vampire (They’re ridiculously easy to create in this film to the point if Marie doesn’t blow a victim’s heads off with a shot gun they’ll be up and undead in an hour) Now he’s transforming his gang into an army of vampires to take of over the underworld and Marie has to team up with a cowboy cop (played by (Anthony LaPaglia ) to stop him… really.

For the most part this felt more like a spoof on vigilante cop movies then it is on vampire movies. (Though considering a lot of this films from that time period it’s really hard to tell.) It throws a whole lot of stereotypes around (one of the reasons Marie wasn’t able to finish the mobster, was because he was eating a lot of garlic.) A completely gratuitous love story that had nothing to do with the rest of the story, and way to many plot points that are dependent on being idiots. (The one that really sticks out is LaPagilia  (having supposedly deep under cover for three years) blows his cover talking to his superior at a crime scene)

Still there were a few fun moments the bestsellers being the newly turned Mob Boss running out of town hall chased by the corronors and the pathologist.