The Movies

CANDYMAN

SCOOBY-DOO ON ZOMBIE ISLAND

QUEENS OF THE DEAD

Vampires can't be confined to just one day! Buffy may be the vampire slayer, but Count Dracula is the vampire layer. We're talking Christopher Lee in Terence Fisher's DRACULA, released in 1958.
This is part of Hammer Studios' revitalizing of the classic Universal Monsters. But now, we have color popping, we have blood spurting, cleavage bursting. In the words of Wooderson: "Alright, alright, alright." This is a more lurid, sensual take on the Universal Monsters; I must imagine audiences at the time responded to these takes as their own kind of exploitation films.
But when you've got powerhouse actors such as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the mix, there's no way you can dismiss these movies as mere "exploitation." This movie, streamlined by Jimmy Sangster's adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, carries itself lean and mean, full of vampires and hunters who don't fuck around. It's a classic for a reason.
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When the calendar flips to October 1st, I feel a tingle in my sweet tooth. The 31 Days of Halloween have arrived! That means a whole month dedicated to horror (as if this podcast were deprived of it).
As I started last year's series with DRACULA (1931), I figured I'd keep the vampire theme and kick off 2026 with 1992's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui.
This predates Sarah Michelle Gellar, Willow and Spike, writer Joss Whedon's first bite at the apple. While the series would adopt a darker blend of horror, comedy and teenage drama, the movie is more decidedly a comedy, a choice Kuzui made to both Whedon and 20th Century Fox's chagrin.
However, this approach, for me, works. Kristy Swanson's Valley Girl Buffy clashes hilariously with Donald Sutherland's devoted, if still a tad unhinged, vampire-slaying mentor Merrick. Gimme the neon highlighter costuming blended with saturated Hammer-style gothic vampirism. Gimme montages where Buffy clumsily, yet passionately learns how to spar, climb ropes, flip and kick. (The amount of tumbling in this joint puts GYMKATA to shame.)
Add in Rutger Hauer as a violin-playing mustachioed vampire king and Paul Ruebens (deliberately resembling his mugshot after an incident of indecent exposure at a Sarasota movie theater) delivering the greatest mockery of a death scene ever put to film and I get a movie that's difficult to take seriously but never as so to love.
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