While Franco's relatively faithful adaptation has its faults, Lee's portrayal of a greying and weary Boyar is possibly my favourite Dracula. You really get the sense that he's been there, seen it, done it and left a trail of impaled corpses in his wake.
Also of note is the unique and ghostly way that Franco shows Dracula's brides rising from their coffins, Kinski's quietly insane Renfield, Soledad Miranda's child-murdering Lucy and some pretty effective, no-budget effects consisting of a few shadows and silhouettes.
An unusually restrained outing from Franco but one I thoroughly enjoyed.
Great stuff. Contains more rare photos, footage, recordings and anecdotes than you could shake a stick at. It does use that annoying, fake 3D, moving photo shit but so does every other doc nowadays. Also, the Killer organ and Hyde footage are way over used! Loved the old Earwigs and Spiders stuff. The talking heads were relevant rather than just wacking in the usual suspects who may have once seen Alice on TOTP.
Loved it.
Favourite anecdote: Elton John talking…
From the opening scene of the rain covered, neon-lit streets of the city, superimposed over Chow Yun-Fat sweating, drinking a slammer and playing clarinet in a dark jazz club, we can see that this film matches its title perfectly. This is a Hard-Boiled police story in the grand tradition of Harry Callaghan, Popeye Doyle and Frank Bullitt. Everything is black and white, the hero does what needs to be done to save the day and if the brass at City…
I know I've been absent for a few weeks but my wife has had another Multiple Sclerosis relapse and is due to go back into hospital for another course of treatment - it's the same chemotherapy as they give leukaemia patients. Plus I've had to do a load of construction/carpentry work on my daughters bedroom and other assorted shit. Anyway, I thought I should at least try to get back into the swing of things and what better than the…
