You know, the month of May started out pretty strong. It’s spring, temps are getting high again, the sun’s out. We already know the world is a hellscape, but it seemed to have pause for a bit. Then, the second half of May plummeted off a cliff, hit a couple of rocks along the way, dropped to the bottom of the ocean, and the best part is I’m still not so sure we’ve hit the bottom yet.
This month has been wrought with personal and large scale political tragedy and oh boy. I would love to keep fighting, but I’m emotionally tapped. Drained, I tell you. I need a minute. I need some deep intensive self-care with goofy movies by our pals at Full Moon Features. Maybe Charles Band has left us some important life lessons to discover, deep in his vault of schlock.
1) Subspecies (1991, dir. Ted Nicolau)
The Subspecies series is rather infamous for Anders Hove’s miraculously campy turn as tortured vampire Radu and the complete lack of a subspecies in all future entries of the movie, but did you know that the first entry is rather… good? Okay to decent even?
Look, Anders was the best Danish representation we had on film until Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Watching Michelle (Laura Tate) fail upwards and eventually outsmart Radu is pure entertainment. The shots of the Romanian country side are beautiful. But what really helps this movie stand the test of time is its core warning of an extremely corrupt educational system that willingly sends grad students to lands infested by witchcraft and vampires in the name of student debt.
2) Blood Dolls (1999, dir. Charles Band)
Charles Band loved his Puppetmaster series so much that he ripped himself off multiple times. Or maybe someone just had a surplus of puppets. Who knows. Either way, Blood Dolls is the superior Puppetmaster knock off.
It’s intentionally funny and plays silly comedy with gory horror pretty well. And there’s even a love story! Yes, even a villain as wretched and wicked as Virgil Travis is able to find love. Even though it’s probably a survival tactic. It worked for Coffin Joe. Speaking of, Blood Dolls does stop to drop a message to the kids that you can be twisted and even look twisted and still demand a measure of respect no matter how forced!
3) Doctor Mordrid (1992, dir. Albert & Charles Band)
Was Marvel’s ho-hum 2016 inevitable blockbuster Dr. Strange not… strange enough for you? Did you need a little more Cthulhu? A little more B-movie flair? Then we have just the thing for you, brought to you by the Brothers Band and the master of the Old Gods himself: Jeffrey Combs!
Yes, while Marvel’s film was perhaps more accurate to the source material in teaching us a lesson in humility and putting the greater good ahead of oneself, Jeffrey Combs’ turn as the totally different Doctor Mordrid teaches us to do that, but also to take no isht from villainy and to keep your friends close and your enemies on the astral plane. Now, you tell me which is the more timely moral.
4) Trancers (1984, dir. Charles Band)
This hurts me because Trancers is actually a great franchise and worth a watch. A hard-boiled dystopian cyberpunk noir movie? Sign me up! Move on out of the way, Ridley Scott.
Trancers is equal parts Bladerunner and Quantum Leap in the best way and handles time travel more realistically than Avengers: Endgame. Sorry, but these are the facts. But while warning us of the perils of mind control (which is bad, by the way) and why eliminating generations of a family so you can commit crimes is immoral at best, Trancers actually enforces the idea that time travel should only be used as a last resort because it’s terrible. Because then everyone wants to do it. Oh, and you can’t function in the past. Poor Jack Deth has to go through it in his fish-out-of-temporal-water turn and it seems like he’s too late for his own life at every turn. Then he gets stuck there. Sounds great until you remember he’s several centuries behind his own. That would be like dropping someone from 2019 into the 1800s! Hahaha, haha… oh wait, maybe we’re already there again.
5) Cryptz (2002, dir. Danny Draven)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm0NVC1v7UI
You know, Cryptz may appear to be an unassuming vampire movie walking on the ground work that Eddie Murphy laid for us in Vampire in Brooklyn. But it’s so much more. So, so much more.
What is it? A black feminist vampire film! How can I prove that? Because all the tragedy in this movie could have been avoided by simply respecting black women! Don’t harass sex workers, or you’ll end up in a vampire strip club as their next meal! Don’t respect black mamas, which is also another fast ticket to vampire time. And last of all, listen to your black female elders, for only they hold the secrets to defeating the vampires that have now vexed your life. And… the key may be decapitation or something, but the real secret was: respect black women and femmes! Wow, Danny Draven obtained levels of “wokeness” that I wish we could pump in the water. Maybe then I wouldn’t have white women on Twitter asking me what to do about X problem. Hmmm.