Beginning immediately where the events of Dracula left off, Dracula’s daughter Gloria Holden steals her father’s body and begins her quest to remove the vampiric curse from her person. Most of the acting and writing holds up to 1930s B-film standards, including two bungling British detectives and a weird romance between the doctor Holden hires to help her and his shrill secretary. But it has great atmosphere and Holden is a sight to behold. She’s equal parts vulnerable and tortured while also maintaining a completely commanding presence. Attempts to reign in her sexuality, too overt even by Pre-Code standards, were incapable of smothering her raw sensuality or Sapphic undertones.    

Three strangers, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Geraldine Fitzgerald, meet on the night of Chinese New Year and make a pact to share a sweepstakes ticket under the watchful eye of Kwan Yin. The three go their own ways, separately awaiting the result of their compact. I was looking forward to another pairing of Lorre and Greenstreet. The parts where any of the three conspirators are together in any form are quite compelling. The rest of the film drags quite a bit as each of the players’ stories unwind, the various predicaments they find themselves in and how winning the sweepstakes could help them achieve their goals.

Overwhelmed with his workload, landscape architect to Alan Rickman’s King Louis XIV Matthias Schoenaerts hires Kate Winslet to design one section of the Versailles gardens, despite the fact that her chaotic designs are at odds with his orderly sensibilities. It’s a perfectly serviceable period piece with gorgeous costumes and sets. There’s something about Winslet’s character that doesn’t feel right for the time period neither her costumes nor actions. The chemistry between the leads is lacking and the modernized statements feel out of place.

After their pensions are cancelled, long-time friends Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin decide to rob a bank. I enjoy a good heist movie and with this cast, it seems like it’d have to be great. Unfortunately it’s not. The little characterization that is given is nothing but the worst of clichés. The guys look like they’re having fun, but they don’t put that energy into their roles. The reveal of their alibi setup is more interesting than the heist itself. It’s all mildly entertaining, but entirely forgettable. I plan to check out the original soon. I hope it’s better than this one. 

Based on real events, Los Angeles police detectives John Savage and Ted Danson are held hostage and taken to a Bakersfield onion field by criminals James Woods and Franklyn Seales. Danson is shot and killed while his partner barely escapes. The criminals are punished for their crimes, but Savage is also held responsible for somehow not doing enough during that night. James Woods is his usual sleazy self and it’s interesting to see Danson in his first film role, looking the same as in his Cheers days. The story is a frustrating one as those around him turn on Savage, ignoring the very real PTSD he suffers in the aftermath.  

After driving his solicitor mad, Count Dracula travels from his castle in Transylvania to London where he might meet his match in Professor Van Helsing. It’s the most famous vampire story featuring Bela Lugosi in his most famous role and while it has plenty of atmospheric goodness, it’s not nearly my favorite of the Universal horror films. Some of the acting is stilted in a very 1930s way and the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I think I’ve been too spoiled by Anne Rice’s vampires that I expect a little more sex appeal in my biting. An interesting note is that as talkies first started up, studios would film different language versions on the same sets to sell to foreign audiences. Some feel that the Spanish-language Dracula is superior to this English-version. The director obviously took advantage of being able to see the English dailies to film some shots in vastly improved way, but Carlos Villarías’s Count is definitely inferior. Regardless, it makes for an interesting artifact of the time and it’s an intriguing exercise to compare the two versions.