We all know that vampire movies just like vampires never die.
Whenever it seems that vampirism has gone down for the count, someone pops up with a new twist. "The Lost Boys," featuring laid-back teen vampires, was a surprise commercial success in 1987 that has also done very well on video. The most noteworthy vampire of recent years was Frank Langella, who brought a suave sexuality to the role in John Badham's "Dracula" (1979). Seated at a lavish dinner party, Langella came up with a hall-of-fame vampire line when he refused his host's offer of a drink. His polite disclaimer? "I never drink . . . wine."The last camp Dracula was played by George Hamilton in the dreadful "Love at First Bite" (1979), a picture that gave the world a lot of awful jokes, and the first tanned vampire.
Now, the latest passenger to alight on the platform at Transylvania Station is someone whose career has been on the critical list for years.
Bo Derek, joining a row of caskets that stretches all the way back to Max Schreck in "Nosferatu" (1922) and Bela Lugosi in "Dracula" (1931), is going to make "Countess Dracula." Derek hasn't done much in movies since she made "10," 10 years ago, and the least you can say for this project is that it strikes a blow for equal rights. Women usually show up in Dracula movies as victims or junior vampires who stand around like dental assistants while the count has his supper.
Derek, 33, who has just finished a comedy called "Ghosts," with her husband, John Derek, as producer, says their approach to the tale will not be comic. "It's not a spoof," she said. "It's very romantic. It'll be sexy, I hope."
(BU) In bringing his remake, "Always," to the screen, Steven Spielberg did more than just change the setting of 1943's "A Guy Named Joe" from wartime to the peacetime world of daredevil pilots who fight forest fires.
You may be wondering why a character as feisty as the flier played by Holly Hunter was saddled with the Victorian schoolmarm name of Dorinda Durston. That was the name of the character played by Irene Dunne in the original, which was directed by Victor Fleming. Spencer Tracy's pilot was named Pete Sandidge. Spielberg altered that to Pete Sandich for Richard Dreyfuss. The handsome young pilot in the original was named Ted Randall. That's been changed to Ted Baker. Go figure.
As for the title of the original film, a character explains that "in the Army Air Corps, any fellow who is a right fellow is called a Joe."
(BU) We (critics included) tend to pay so much attention to the words and images in movies that some very good music doesn't get the attention it deserves. A belated salute then to my two top soundtracks of the year - the scores for "Henry V" and "Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser."
The music for the Shakespearean history is by Patrick Doyle, a composer and actor who plays a small role in the film. Lavishly performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony under conductor Simon Rattle, the music has many echoes of William Walton's scores for Laurence Olivier's great Shakespeare films (including "Henry V"). But Doyle is a composer with his own voice, using dissonant harmonies to suggest the tragedy that underlies Henry's triumph and to echo director Kenneth Branagh's antiwar reading of the piece.
The Monk film makes one painfully aware of the private suffering that went into the pianist's influential art. The soundtrack offers some of his most celebrated compositions in refurbished sonics that only heighten one's appreciation.