p e n g u i n d e v i l

George Melford’s Dracula. Well? It’s an odd combination of being very like Dracula, but then going off in weird directions. Seemingly filmed on the same sets as Dracula, concurrently, but at night?

It’s Renfield who goes (secretly this time?) to meet the count at his castle and Harker is a very minor character. The Count is played much different. Especially once in England, where he is very public and social… Even socializing with Dr Seward and Professor Von Helsing? Kind of odd.

But Dracula has some great expressions, well, a number of the characters hold some pretty dramatic expressions here and there, especially Renfield.

But all in all it was enjoyable, and strangely different and strangely similar.

Ah, The Tower from Guillaume Nicloux. To be honest, I didn’t see much point to this. It is a rather bleak, dark, and slow film about what happens when an apartment building becomes completely cut off from the outside world because it is enveloped in a blackness that just seems to disintegrate anything that enters it.

People are in a panic, at first. As times goes on through, they just band into opposing groups of terrible people (of course). And they are rather pointless power struggles and violence, and dogs become a hot commodity, and, as the years go on, the thug element becomes just more and brutal, and just nothing good (or particularly interesting) happens at all.

The Old Dark House! James Whale and Boris Karloff and more! And I’d never even heard of it… But I quite enjoyed it. From the terrible car ride at the beginning, especially with Melvyn Douglas’ droll responses to the endless complaints of his snotty companions, to the dramatic goings on at the house that they find shelter in.

When the weather disrupts the travel plans of this threesome, they take shelter in the Old Dark House, alone with the eccentric family that lives there, it gets some comical old fashioned drama as it feels like there is some kind of threat around, but it isn’t clear what (or who) that might be. I thought that the characters were all pretty fun, and it just entertaining in general. And then old Saul gets out and the troubles really begin…

A great documentary about a man who seems to be clearly wrongly convicted of a murder and the processes of Texas “Justice” around how that happened. many people bandy about the “thin blue line” shtick as some sort showing of blind loyalty to the police. But, sadly, many times the law isn’t worthy of blind loyalty and this movie shows a classic (and terrible) case of that. Once in which the only loyalty that the police have is to railroading their lies tot he finish line, regardless of the cost to innocence.

A terrible situation all around and some terrible people, on both sides of the law. But a great, and unsettling, movie.