TheRetroCritic

The fourth part of my Blood Let's Play.

The third part of my Blood Let's Play. Get off. My. Train!

I play some more of PC horror game Blood .

Playing delightfully gruesome first-person shooter Blood .

Upon hearing that we'd be getting a new Dracula movie this Halloween and that it would star the usually reliable Luke Evans in the title role, I was definitely looking forward to it. It had been a while since the last Dracula movie and an epic period piece sounded like a good idea. Then the trailer happened. Then the movie happened. And then I started missing Dracula 2000 . As it turns out, this Dracula story was "untold" for a reason: it's mostly rubbish. The film is kind of a prequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula in that you see a fuller version of how Vlad The Impaler became a vampire but, of course, minus the style and poetic approach of Francis Ford Coppola's film (or Bram Stoker's novel for that matter). What we're left with is a by-numbers epic movie with some unlikely vampire theme thrown in. Dracula Untold , much like Man Of Steel , is a reboot for the sake of being a reboot: it serves a functional purpose, nothing more. Essentially, a

Check out my review of kickass PC game Blood over at retro gaming super-site 1MoreCastle ! 

In 1970, Hammer wanted to continue making Dracula movies yet reboot somewhat their franchise, so they made Scars Of Dracula . A sort-of follow-up to Taste The Blood Of Dracula and a sort-of re-adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel, this movie means well but unfortunately falls pretty flat as a whole. It opens with a plastic bat inexplicably vomiting blood onto Dracula's ashes, thereby resurrecting him once again. I guess it makes more sense a bit later, when you know that Dracula has bats working for him, but if he's nothing but ashes, how can he still have any power over them? Never mind, it's a Hammer film, we're just gonna have to accept it. The plot follows a young couple who are about to be married and a guy called Paul (Christopher Matthews), a cheeky playboy who tries to escape a girl's father when he finds himself being dragged to some creepy village and, ultimately, Dracula's castle. The second scene of the film is actually really good: vi

It's crazy to think that True Blood came out the same year as Twilight . It's just nuts. I mean, Twilight is the bad Disney movie take on vampire lore! True Blood is just... Good. The show sees that modernized Twilightness and gives it a very welcome, and very clever, tongue-in-cheek anything-goes rock-n-roll attitude combined with an effortless Near Dark cool you certainly haven't seen in a while when it comes to vamp flicks/series. The first season takes a familiar route with random murders being committed by a mysterious killer, typical TV plot ( Twin Peaks , anyone?), the whole thing being a whodunit that just happens to also be about vampires and a whole hidden world humans have no idea about. The show is set in a time where humans and vampires have learned to live side by side with vampires settling on a blood substitute, a drink conveniently called "Tru Blood", but obviously unspoken tensions between both still exist. As the season goes on, wh

So you've got Lucy Liu and vampires... In other words: you've got a film. It should have been so straight-forward: Liu in Underworld -style leather catsuits battling vampires as a rebellious blood-sucker herself. Nothing too original, granted, but hell, I would have been happy with that. Alas it's all up to the iconic writer of Snakes On A Plane (and director of Elektra Luxx ) to handle that challenging premise and things are not looking good... The film starts fine with ominous goings-on, the THREAT (*gasp*) of lesbian sexual interaction and Liu's prompt transformation into the vamp we all wanted to see. Then, I'm sad to say, the rest is a blur. It really is criminal that a vampire film starring Lucy Liu would mostly involve the actress walking around badly-lit rooms and following a plot that, frankly, is about as memorable as The Monkees' drummer. It's a mess and Liu's revenge quest never feels urgent or involving. Basically there is no act

Whether you like it or not: Twilight is a big deal. Not in terms of quality or artistic value of course but in terms of what an impact it's had on our teen culture. It was inevitable, then, that ripoffs would arise trying to cash in on the money-sucking saga. Obvious attempts that suddenly spring to mind include Red Riding Hood , Beastly and the subject of this here review: Blood & Chocolate . Pretend the title's less terrible than it is, it'll make this way easier. So why can Blood & Chocolate be called a Twilight ripoff/B movie? Well, lets see. You've got a young human/werewolf relationship, sparkly supernatural beings running around in forests, LOTS of walking and talking, copious amounts of cheese and... topless werewolves. Need I say more? The good news is that it's not Twilight. The bad news? It's worse. I'd say it's on a par with Eclipse but no: it's worse. I'll let that sink in. And it's not just the Twilig