2021 Movie Watch List...

[someoldguy]

Drakula İstanbul'da (1953)
Dracula in Istanbul
B+W, 1.33 format
Turkish with English subtitles

There are several versions on YT. I recommend www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7tAWcm3EX0 which has the best print and audio of those I have checked out. There is another one I found that looks and sounds like it was recorded on early VHS from broadcast TV and the tape has aged.

The film was based on a 1928 novel written in Turkish, which was supposed to be a translation of Bram Stoker’s original but took a few liberties, including obviously changing the locale from London to Istanbul, although still beginning in Transylvania. The film also shows influences from the 1931 Dracula film especially in the visuals and atmosphere. The film also changes the timeframe to early 1950s. Love that 1952 (?) Chevy Bel Air!

A nice Dracula entry in old school style with a lot of recognizable elements from the original novel. Acting and (subtitled) dialog are good. Direction is good. (Mehmet Muhtar who directed 15 films in as many years, all before the age of 40 and then stopped although he lived much longer.) Camera work is good, with a nicely dark feeling to most of the film, even when well lit. Soundtrack sounds like they raided the music archives but not bad.

Recognizable characters from the Stoker original but given Turkish names of course: Harker (no Renfield character, that being a 1927 play invention), Lucy (the number of her suitors being reduced to one}, Mina (a dancer wearing somewhat less on stage than a fin de siècle British Mina Harker would have), Van Helsing and others. I will use the Stoker given names hereafter for recognition purposes. BTW we get to see Mina’s cleavage, navel and a lot of leg, but it is tamer than what one might see these days while shopping.

In one part of the movie - where the mother shouts from the castle courtyard for her stolen child - there are two brief edits. The screen goes blank for a few seconds but the audio continues with screams and loud growls. Harker is looking down from a window and the expression on his face tells the story. There is no explicit reference to a baby being given to the vampire woman (only one in this movie) but when she is told to leave Harker alone, she complains 'Am I to have nothing tonight?' Dracula points to something and she leaves the room with an unidentified bundle.

An interesting aspect of the film derives from Turkey being a mostly Muslim country. The peasant women in Transylvania make the Christian sign of the cross to ward off evil. Azmi (Harker) tells them that his religion will protect him and shows them his mishbaha prayer beads. No crosses are used to drive off Drac (or is it Drak?). Copious amounts of garlic are used instead. And although it is translated in the subtitles as ‘God willing’, I distinctly heard the Arabic Inshallah a few times. A surprise for me: When leaving the theater, Mina uses the phrase ‘May Allah grant you rest’ as a way of saying good night. (I cannot spell the Arabic) I recognized the phrase but I only ever heard it in reference to a recently deceased person.

Bottom line: Old fashioned horror fun, like a classic Universal that you never got around to seeing. Enough differences and creativity to come across as more of an original and not just a copy.

[silverbullet63]

Off the Beaten Path (2004)

Another group of Amateur Filmmakers.

Ignoring warnings and trespassing where they shouldn't.

[silverbullet63]

Archivo 253 (2015)

Basically a mexican remake of Grave Encounters.


Available on Amazon and YT.

[someoldguy]

Snow monster story continued.

Got 28 inches before it finally ended in late afternoon and the bad winds dropped off enough not to get blinded. I managed to get out the front door and off the front deck and partway to the generator. I can see from an upper floor window that the generator has been buried under a mountain of wind driven snow. If the power goes out and the generator automatically starts up, it could be a problem. The exhaust port is buried under a heck of a lot of snow and back pressure could cause some kind of damage. I will attack the monster again at first light.

There were no Yeti around. Probably they did not venture outside their burrows.

All of these DVDs I have not watched yet and all sorts of things keep interrupting me or wearing me out too much to watch them.

OK enough blowing off steam. Go back to your movies.

[someoldguy]

Got the generator clear this morning, did a bunch of housework, did bill paying (online of course), tracked down someone to plow the driveway but it will be a couple days before he gets to me (did I mention that the regular service had their snowplow go extinct?), caught up with the phone messages and emails from people wondering how much snow I got. Was there a pool on it? And now I am crashing. If nothing else happens (claws crossed) I might actually watch some movies tomorrow.

[silverbullet63]

Die Prasenz (2014)

aka The Presence


A tedious German Paranormal Activity knock off.

[ArcLight]

Made a RedBox run yesterday after work. (and once again forgot to use the coupon codes they send me...oh, well....)



Shadow in the Cloud (2020)

Back when I first saw the preview, my reaction was something like "this looks ridiculous. I have to watch it."

The preview - youtu.be/XjLnk8YriCQ

Not as ridiculous as Psycho Goreman, but still a bit out there and I dug almost every minute of it.

The World War II set film stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a young woman with a mysterious package and orders from the top brass that put her on a B-17 just as it's ready to take-off. The flight starts out rough with her having to endure some pretty crude reactions from the crew and gets worse as she realizes something else is on the plane.





Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021)

New animated movie.

70s-set film that crosses Batman with the martial arts and James Bond movies of the era, teaming the Dark Knight up with Richard Dragon, Lady Shiva, and Ben "Bronze Tiger" Turner, to face down the evil Kobra Kult.

Pretty fun if you like the influences (I do) with a great voice cast that includes personal faves Mark Dacascos, Kelly Hu, and Michael Jai White as Batman's partners, and James Hong as the group's sensei back in the early days of Bruce Wayne's martial arts training.

Rated R mainly for violence.

Preview: youtu.be/eHCAgSuLog4

[silverbullet63]

Lifeforce (1985)

An underappreciated scifi gem from the late Tobe Hooper.

[silverbullet63]

UFO: Es ist hier (2016)

aka It Is Here

Another Found Footage Horror film, from the same Director of Die Prasenz

[silverbullet63]

Raw: Der Fluch der Grete Muller (2013)

German knockoff of The Blair Witch Project


Night Shot (2018)

This French FFH is similar to Grave Encounters

Shot in one long continuous take.

[someoldguy]

Finally got the entire horseshoe driveway done. The guy with the plow never showed. Turns out he broke something in his Bearcat front loader. A neighbor with a snow blower finished all his jobs and the two of us got the job done. BTW it had snowed again since the last time I posted. Not as big but enough. Maybe I can finally see some movies without dozing off. Fangs crossed this time.

[silverbullet63]

Def By Temptation (1990)

[silverbullet63]

Hangman (2015)

[silverbullet63]

The Bell Witch Haunting (2013)

[silverbullet63]

Deadly Blessing (1981)

Don't watch this very often.

Features a then unknown Sharon Stone and Ernest Borgnine.

Also ABC's Battlestar Gallactica's Maren Jensen.

She left the biz after this film.



The Devil's Rain (1975)

Well, it ended up an Ernest Borgnine twin bill.