Animated Vampires, Christmas Movies and more!

• May 3, 2007 03:04 AM ET
• by Maitland McDonagh

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!

Question: Are there any animated, feature-length vampire movies? - Josh

FlickChick: Yes, there are, but ery few of them are American. Overall, the U.S. animation industry is geared toward making movies for kids, and undead bloodsuckers aren't really Disney's cup of tea. That said, Warner Animation's The Batman vs. Dracula (2005) is a great idea and a pretty good little picture that, as you might have deduced, pits the haunted crimefighter in creature-of-the-night drag against the real, honest-to-goodness lord of the vampires. And Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007), a sequel to Guillermo del Toro's live-action feature featuring the same cast in voice roles, pits the good demon ( Ron Perlman) against a vampire inspired by real-life "bloody countess" Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614).

But most of the animated vampire features are Japanese, including the stunning Blood: The Last Vampire and the sci-fi/action/horror hybrid Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (both 2000), plus Vampire Wars (1991) and a 1985 version of Vampire Hunter D, neither of which I've seen. There's also a TV series called Hellsing (2001-2002) that's available on DVD; strictly speaking, it's not a movie, but it's long-form, animated vampire fiction that doesn't pull its punches. And then there's the Cuban Vampires in Havana (1985), a broad political comedy that was briefly released in the U.S. and spawned a sequel, Mas Vampiros en La Habana (2003), which wasn't.

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.

Question: Can you tell me when and why movie previews started including scenes that aren't in the movie? Isn't this a form of false advertising? - Jen

FlickChick: Around the same time that trailers started showing you every single thing you might have been willing to go to the movie to see, including the "surprise" plot twists - which I'd say was in the early 1990s. And while in practice that does work out to a sort of false advertising, it's not deliberate.

This is something a friend who owns a well-known trailer company and I have talked about, and the trouble is that long lead trailers, which appear months before the movie opens, are made before the final cut of the film is locked down. (Teaser trailers, which appear as much as a year in advance, often have no footage from the film at all, just a catchy image, a tagline or even a specially staged snippet of footage designed to give an idea of the film's mood or hook.)

So the filmmakers turn over footage they think will definitely make it into the final cut and let the professionals take it from there. When a studio isn't sure how to sell a particular movie, they'll sometimes bid it out to multiple companies. The contenders read the script, figure out how they'd entice moviegoers to see the movie they think the filmmakers are going to deliver, and then cut together a rough version of the trailer they'd make using footage from other movies.

(There was an amazing feature about the process called "The 150-Second Sell, Take 34" in the New York Times Magazine from July 28, 2002. The Times has successfully locked it up in its pay-only archive, but if you're a Times Select subscriber I strongly recommend checking it out.)

The salient point is this: Sometimes the scene that seemed a sure thing while the movie was in production doesn't make it into the movie you pay $11 to see. I personally think that nervous studio executives' ever-greater reliance on focus groups and test screenings is the reason films are tinkered with more than ever after the filmmakers have delivered what they consider a finished film. The previewing process is deeply flawed, but it gives executives an out: "We tested it and everybody hated the ending, so we had it reshot so the mom doesn't die," or "Audiences said they loved the romance but hated the funny stuff at work, so we cut it out. See, here are the notes." Thank God for special-edition DVDs.

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Question: I know that for a lot of people It's a Wonderful Life is the movie for the holiday season, but for me it's Loretta Young's Christmas Eve. I used to watch it every year, and now they never show it anymore and I can't figure out why. I've seen it for sale on tape, but for a really high price. Was it her last movie, is that why the tapes are so (to me, unreasonably) expensive? - Dorothy

FlickChick: The award-winning, made-for-TV Christmas Eve (1986) wasn't Loretta Young's last movie, but it was one of her last and it has a devoted fan following. But the fact that it's either out of holiday-season TV rotation or relegated to specialty stations that most households don't get isn't as unusual as you might think. I can't tell you how many e-mails I've gotten from people wondering why the 1972 remake of Miracle on 34th Street with Burl Ives as Kris Kringle or the acclaimed House Without a Christmas Tree (1972) or It Happened One Christmas (1977), a remake of It's a Wonderful Life with Marlo Thomas playing a female version of Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey have all vanished or all-but vanished from the holiday-TV lineup. And it's mostly because where made-for-TV movies are concerned, the new drives out the old, and there are more original holiday-themed movies being made than ever. Networks and cable channels alike are churning out literally dozens of them every year, and something like It Happened One Christmas is lucky to find a slot on Pax. I don't get Pax and neither does anyone I know, so if I'd wanted to see It Happened One Christmas last year, I'd have been out of luck. And apparently it was cut, too, but that's another story.

As to the price of Christmas Eve tapes, even if it had been Young's swan song, that's not the kind of thing that factors into price. Anna Nicole Smith's Illegal Aliens, which came out on DVD on the heels of her death, lists for $19.95, just like the average new DVD. But Christmas Eve has never been on DVD and it's out of print on VHS; Goodtimes Video put it out 10 years ago and it's never been reissued. So my advice is to suck it up and pay the $20 or $30 that used tapes are going for on eBay, Amazon.com and other respectable online sites. Amortize that over the number of times you're going to watch it over the next 10 years and the price doesn't seem so bad, does it?

Send your movie questions to FlickChick.


Question: I saw a movie where a gargoyle turned into this beautiful black lady. She was with a white guy and he promised not to tell anyone her secret; when he did, she killed him and went back to the gargoyles with their child. I'd like to see it again: Do you know the title? emdash; Noel

FlickChick: You know, Noel, when I saw the subject line on your e-mail emdash; "Gaygoyles" emdash; I was pretty intrigued. A gay gargoyle movie emdash; now that would be something different. But even though your question turned out to be about plain old vanilla gargoyles, I can help. You want Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), a multi-segment horror picture inspired by the syndicated TV series Tales from the Darkside (1984-1988), which was produced by George Romero and aimed to be a modern-day version of anthology horror shows like Rod Serling's Night Gallery , Thriller (hosted by Boris Karloff), One Step Beyond and the like. The gargoyle story, which starred the beautiful Rae Dawn Chong and James Remar as her artist husband, was the third and last segment and the only original screenplay, penned by Romero himself. (The other two were adapted from existing stories by Stephen King and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.) It's readily available on DVD. Thank you, S.Z.!