Originally posted on RVANews.

Here's the review I wrote on Sunday evening:

Who'd have thought fifty years ago that there would be a day when a major film studio uses the bargain basement price tag of a film as a marketing tool? As special effects technology improves and all those ghosts and explosions and zombies look more and more "real," our ability to be shocked and impressed has changed dramatically.

But you knew that already. Remember when Jurassic Park hit the theaters and everyone went nuts? I remember hungrily reading a Newsweek article about computer animation, astounded that those lifelike beasts were simply drawn on a computer. For weeks afterwards, I imagined waking up to a giant T. rex eyeball at my window. Only 16 short years later, we sit through the trailer for 2012, (whose tagline should be "This can't possibly end well,") and don't bat an eyelash as we are shown real-as-hell images of our entire world literally falling apart. The other day, in fact, I'm pretty sure we spent our time during that trailer teaching our friends how to eat popcorn without using their hands.

Now that realistic looks false, we gotta move forwards by moving backwards, so the way to make things seem hyper-real is to make it look awful. Even as early as 1999, The Blair Witch Project scared the crap out of me and everyone else I knew. One of the reasons horror movies are satisfying is that you're able to remove yourself (hopefully) and appreciate your snug surroundings for what they are, i.e. cheerful, pleasant, and above all, not haunted. During Blair Witch, you're sitting there thinking, "I, too, have held a camcorder, and I, too, have gone camping, and I, too, will almost certainly meet a spooky and gruesome end the next time I set foot out of my house."

Instead of a camera in the woods, Paranormal Activity sets up shop in the average comfort of average couple Katie and Micah's average home. Katie's been relatively cheerfully dealing with some sort of demon in her life since she was eight years old. Lately, though, the bumps in the night have been getting a little more distressing, so Micah decides to bring in a camera and a microphone to try to catch evidence. His reasons aren't entirely clear -- he's either trying to prove her wrong or prove her right, and at some point, as evidence does begin to pile up, he seems to think that the more he films, the faster a solution will present itself.*

Katie has the opposite view. Supported by the recommendations of a psychic, she feels keenly that the entity whose noise-making shenanigans disturb their sleep most nights will only ramp up its efforts if they continue to try to toy with it. Considering what sorts of things they view on their own tapes in the morning (and I'm not going to elaborate - go see it for yourself), they are surprisingly cavalier about the fact that something supernatural and clearly malevolent is dogging Katie's steps. If Blair Witch tapped into our fear and guilt of wandering through the older, wilder parts of nature, Paranormal Activity attempts to top that by bringing evil into our own home.

And that's where the truly tense moments in this film lie -- the quiet hours in the middle of the night, hours in which we all have looked down that dark hallway between our bedroom and our bathroom and thought, "Do I really have to go that badly?" That snug sense of satisfaction other horror movies allow us evaporates as we realize that we are going home to that exact same house to have those same relationship arguments. As the tension builds with the couple's obvious terror night after night, we brace ourselves against the ending of all endings.

But luckily for me and my sleep patterns, it's the ending that doesn't come. Anti-climactic and disappointing, the film's ending wasn't even worth closing my eyes over (although I did admit I missed a little of it, squeezing my eyes shut and substituting a mental image of a cartoon demon strutting into the bedroom and doing a little dance -- a defense mechanism that I highly recommend). For I'm the sort of person that firmly and boringly believes in nothing. My only personal demon limits itself to putting on pinstripes and creaming the Phillies, yet I continue to be infuriated by the toll that horror movies take on my nerves. This movie, despite its claims of unprecedented fearmongering, failed to scare me. Sure, I was startled a little and generally creeped out, but the underwhelming resolution couldn't hack it for me. After my viewing, and this will mean something if you've seen the movie, I unabashedly charged up a ladder into our tiny attic to peer around at our hundred-year-old roof beams with their creepy old nails looking for a leak. I didn't even flinch when, alerted by my husband's screams, I ran into the hallway to see his legs dangling and flailing from said attic as if a demon were dragging him upwards. Nice try, buster, but I'm still pretty sure those thumps in our hallway at night are our cats.'

...And here is the review I wrote in my head this morning at 4:30am:

HOLY SHIT THERE IS DEFINITELY AN EFFING DEMON IN OUR HOUSE.

*This was pretty scary, actually. An asshole boyfriend who ignores your frantic pleas and instead invites the scariest thing you can imagine to torture you further.

No complaints thus far. Of the movies I've seen lately, I've only got nitpicking to do. John Dillinger puts the sexy in sexism in Public Enemies. I was angry at myself for rooting for a chauvenist with a fairly inconsistent regard for human life, but it wasn't my fault. Michael Mann threw Johnny Depp at me, who was able to complete a movie without indulging in any delightfully spooky makeup or characterization. I wouldn't have even recognized him if I hadn't seen his face in my dreams every night. Have I said too much.

He robs banks and orders women to be his life partners! Yet I am smitten!

Last week I finally caught Away We Go, which I'd heard was only meh. Sure, it was typically over the top with tiny emotional climaxes, as Sam Mendes is wont to do, but brush all that painful poignancy aside, and you've got a funny couple with that charming tousled-and-a-little-lost look, who are refreshingly devoid of relationship problems. It's not that they're better than you, it's that they are you. In some ways it's the opposite of his last picture, Revolutionary Road. Solid couple with a really imperfect life that turns out to be perfect anyway. Just reverse all those meanings and you've got ol' Leo and Kate, chasing each other through the woods and having awkward affairs.

I'm not sure I could find much fault with Drag Me to Hell, however. Adorable, deliciously scary (as opposed to the kind of scary that keeps you up at night. Maliciously scary?), and impeccably timed are things I would say. But no matter how much I try, I can't get anyone to believe me. "It's campy and great!" I say. "The trailer is terrifying. I'm not into being scared," they say before not sharing their chips. Bitchez! I'm not into being scared either. What's wrong with my guarantee that you will not wake up in the middle of the night terrified that the corpse of an old woman will spew embalming fluid on you?

On DVD, I've had some good finds lately as well. I don't know why it took me so long to watch Mystery Train, having warmly embraced most of Jim Jarmusch's other films long ago. I think a girl in a class I had once gave a long boring presentation about it, so in my mind the poor movie would be tedious and involve a lot of Xeroxed handouts. It's Jarmusch in Memphis, only more colorful than usual, and a little more precious than most of his older films. Other than that, it's been a lot of True Blood and The Wire lately, as I just moved house, and our energy at night isn't what it used to be. I mean, like, a month ago.

While packing I re-re-rediscovered some brilliant Mr. Show moments. Discover Josh Fenderman, won't you?

With all the right, what the public didn\'t see coming were all the wrongs

Of course, I will tell you why. Michael Haneke is an Austrian director who made this exact film (in German) ten years ago. When I say exact, I mean shot-for-shot exactly the same, so if you’ve seen the original, you already know the deal and it’s probably not worth your time, dollars, or sanity to sit through it again. The fact that the guy makes the exact same movie twice just to be able to show it in a fully appreciable manner to multiple audiences is a perfect example of both the scientific manner in which Haneke is performing experiments on filmgoers but also the smug, self-satisfying, filmmaking that caused Roger Ebert to turn red, shriek like a train whistle, and smash his glass coffee table with his bare hands in a fit of rage.*

The funny game, you see, is not only the psychopathic torture game that two young men in pristine white golf clothes play with a wealthy, vacationing family, it’s a game that Haneke plays with US! This is where Ebert gets feisty. He resents the fact that he is the lab rat in this situation. And who wouldn’t? Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, of whom clean-cut torturers Peter (Brady Corbet ) and Paul (Michael Pitt) are certainly reminiscent, we’re being punished for our own sick fascination with violence by having our eyes pried open to view scenes of painfully tense anticipation of horror, with very little actual payoff. Sure, dastardly deeds happen, but they are almost completely off-screen. Haneke instead lingers endlessly on the faces of Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, who go from obstinate to angry to terrified to determined to defeated and back again. If you get uncomfortable, you can always ruminate on the fact that only excellent actors could have pulled this off, and thank goodness Naomi Watts was having one of her good days (let’s not talk about The Ring), because facial expressiveness drives this film. As a result, we spend a good amount of our viewing time aware of ourselves as watchers, wondering why we are disappointed when people die at times we don’t expect.

This is just what Haneke wants. The huge Ebert-enraging flaw, though, is that HE KEEPS TELLING YOU ABOUT IT. It’s like looking at a beautiful painting and wondering what it’s about and forming your own connotations and opinions and interpretations, until you notice that written across the bottom of the canvas is “IT’S ABOUT MY MOTHER.” It’s called telling instead of showing, and it separates good art from bad art a lot of the time. Unfortunately, Haneke chooses to tell us all about his plans via Paul, who looks directly into the camera and tell us how we want the film to end. Well, jeez, I was coming to that conclusion myself, you don’t need to spell it out for me. The worst part about this ridiculous device, besides the fact that without it the film would be near-perfect, is that not only did he do it once…the guy had ten years to mull over the film before making the same mistake twice. That’s double obnoxious.

Anyway, I believe these flaws can be swept aside. At least, the rest of the film is powerful enough that I think you’ll be able to forget about these moments as soon as they happen and dwell instead on the effect that Funny Games will most certainly be having on you. I sure as hell have double-checked my apartment’s deadbolts about fifty times since I saw this film, because the worst part of it all is that this sort of unsolicited, unmotivated, illogical violence seems the most realistic.

NOTE: After a closer look at rogerebert.com, it appears Ebert’s editor, Jim Emerson, is writing his reviews while he is recuperating from some surgery. I tried and tried to make this review work without my hilarious Ebert Going Insane theme, but I couldn’t give it up. So I left it there, but let’s assume that as Ebert’s official representative, Emerson would reflect his views. But hopefully not his fashion sense.

*Conjecture, but my new favorite mental video.

Francis Lawrence, 2007

(from my review at RVAnews!)

2/5

I am writing this to you while the one thousand skinny fingers of contagion scrape against my windows and infected faces press against the glass.

JK, I’m fine. It’s the wind blowing branches against my house. And luckily for me, any terror that I Am Legend instilled was easily eradicated after I watched just one episode of HBO’s Big Love. I say “luckily” because I don’t actual handle scary movies very well, especially ones involving infectious diseases, mass anarchy, and zombie/vampire hybrids. So it was with a heavy heart that I took my seat for I Am Legend, a film about a guy stuck alone in Manhattan after an infectious disease caused mass anarchy before zombie/vampire hybrids wiped everyone out. But, as my options were limited, I chose to face my fears and just accept the fact that those nightmares that plagued me after 28 Days Later were going to make their triumphant return.

Imagine my relief when I discovered that in the future, Emma Thompson will create a well-meaning virus that turns everybody into angry, sickly characters from Castlevania. Now THAT I can handle.

I had been poised to jump out of my seat and flee the premises, because this highly anticipated* Will Smith vehicle began with brilliance, terror, and despair. Director Francis Lawrence seemed to understand perfectly how to manipulate our horror of the unknown. We’re not sure why Dr. Robert Neville is stalking moodily around a desolate Manhattan with only a dog for company, although through his dreams we pick up bits and pieces of the traumatic events that led to his current isolation. We figure out that a virus has ripped through the city and that Neville stayed behind to discover a cure. We begin to realize that not only is he alone on that island, he’s quite possibly alone in the entire world. But one part of his daily routine doesn’t exactly fit in with your average plague-takes-New-York plot. Why does he methodically fortify his house every day at sunset, sleep in the bathtub with a gun, and who or what is causing the ghoulish screams that surround his house at night?

OK, even remembering that part makes me feel weak with fear. What could possibly be worse than being alone in a world that is now populated with things that make that horrible sound? Things that require iron plates across your windows and giant bolts on your door. Turns out the virus doesn’t just kill people. Nope, it sometimes causes them to turn into monsters that come out at night and eat human flesh.

It’s no wonder Neville is clearly consumed by grief and despair, which Will Smith actually pulls off rather well. He’s immune, so not only is he unable to “just join them,” which is what I always tell myself to do in case of a zombie attack**, but he has to trudge through each day, fighting for his existence, with little to no hope that he will ever find a cure.

This frustration comes to a point in the last scary scene in the film, in which Neville’s forced to go into a dark abandoned warehouse in the middle of the day to search for his dog. He’s so nervous that he can barely breathe, and the silence is suffocating. This guy is a seasoned veteran of scary stuff, and even he is afraid to find out what the darkness hides. It’s one of the best-directed horror scenes I’ve seen in a good while, and I feared for my own cardiovascular health as my pulse skyrocketed and everyone in the theater simultaneously hid behind their hands.

Thank you, CGI professionals. I was honestly worried that I would never sleep again, but your completely unrealistic, video-game-reminiscent monsters couldn’t scare even me. The tension broke, my nerves were restored to their proper places, and suddenly I was able to focus on the simplistic symbolism and over the top religious imagery that infected the latter half of the movie. What had started out a smart and grim portrait of a horror humankind could very likely face (not to mention a thrilling exercise in pacing and suspense) dissolved into a predictable, prepackaged ending worthy of the soulless summer blockbusters in which Smith typically excels.

I keep trying to search my emotions for disappointment, but instead I only come up with sweet relief. I would have been in agony afterwards if this movie had been as terrifying as it wanted to be. Instead, aside from a little wistfulness at lost potential and wasted celluloid, I’m able to brush aside the questions it almost asked about human nature in the five minutes it takes to watch twin baby pandas on YouTube. I’d like to believe that the filmmakers in this instance bowed to what the studios would have felt would make an easier movie to digest and, if given the chance, would have further explored the terrors upon which they initially touched. However…I’m the one who went to a Will Smith movie made by the director of Constantine. It’s almost scarier to think I expected more.

*”Anticipated” in that my boyfriend who lives in NYC complained about all the hay that littered the streets while it was being filmed.

**Think about it, why bother spending your whole life being terrified that these zombies are going to get you. Zombies don’t know they’re zombies! They seem pretty content! Join your mom and your friends! Get zombified!

(Guest Review by Cam DiNunzio - Editor's Note: I am so determined that this film will be terrible that I actually bitterly disagreed with this review to poor Cam, WITHOUT HAVING ACTUALLY SEEN THE FILM, because that is how strongly I feel that 28 Days Later should not have been cheapened with a big budget sequel. But really I have no idea what I'm talking about, I just like stomping and shouting, so maybe you're better off trusting Cam on this one. - SH)

Never mind that I would have paid admission solely to see the trailer for Transformers, but even as I sit here writing this spontaneous guest review for the Review, I cannot believe that I voluntarily subjected myself to the relentless stress-inducing torture that the latest 28 Increments Later installment inflicted on my already gnarled and knotted neck muscles. My friend Marty and I left the theater feeling like we’d just spent the last ninety minutes trying to pull our mothers from a plane wreck, only to have failed.

28 Weeks Later shows us what happens next, once the original zombie-spawning “rage virus” that broke out (the name of which I somehow missed in the first movie, and now explains why these zombies sprint unnervingly at you*) in England is contained, and NATO forces have stabilized the island of Britain. Children sent to refugee camps during the outbreak are slowly being reunited with their parents, and the reconstruction of the country is underway. Through flashbacks we learn how Don (Robert Carlyle - who reportedly turned down a part in the original, not that I heard any of my female friends complaining about the subsequent hiring of Cillian Murphy) was able to escape the original infestation and start his new life in the disinfected green zone, where he’s been given a title and unlimited access to all areas of the compound - something that the zombies eventually manage to use to their advantage.**

Other than Carlyle, one of the few other recognizable faces in this mostly UK/undead*** cast is that of Harold Parrineau as military chopper pilot whose character is almost as thwarted and testy as his portrayal of Michael in Lost. I took comfort, however, in knowing that regardless of any parallels that may exist between the Lost island and the desolate, unpopulated city he now patrols, at least in London he probably had access to a proper bathroom.

I really must say that this film succeeded on all fronts, and
one of the many reasons writer Rowan Joffe’s story is worth cowering through, in spite of the bludgeoning, running, deafening screams, more running, and dizzying camerawork, is the relative complexity of his characters. Not just relative to the mindless infected, but also to those that have faced them in other films, too! There's a father who may or may not have left his wife to die and who is faced with explaining to his repatriated kids what
really happened. There are military agents who show conscientiousness behind the crosshairs. There are even those infected who seem to grasp the concept of revenge. It’s depth of character in a film full of killing machines, and that’s kinda rare.****

What’s also amazing is how director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo tweaks the genre-familiar patterns of tension and release, replacing them with tension, then more tension, then quickening the pace. Don’t believe me? Sit through six minutes of utter blackness in a subway tunnel littered with bloodied corpses and even hearing your Rihanna***** ringtone could give you a heart attack.

If there is any fault to be found, it is the absence of a main character. The focus is at first on the father, shifting eventually to the children, then back to the father,jumping to an Army sniper, and then back again to the kids. As briskly as the story moves, and as liberating as this focus-shift-frenzy might be for the director, there still tend to be moments where I’m not sure who to look to for reassurance that everything is going to be OK. Then again, after witnessing the virus's truly gruesome effects, I'm really not all that sure I would have taken anyone's word for it anyway.

*[Editor's Note: I will probably never see this movie for this reason. Regular zombies are bad enough, and I seriously have an automatic reflex to panic and think "OMG ZOMBIE!" whenever I see a drunk person stumbling around, they are that scary to me. The idea of a running zombie is almost too much to handle.]
**[Editor's Note again: OK, seriously, zombies that run and plot and use things to their advantage? Are they still zombies in that case? I am never sleeping again.]
***[Obnoxious Note: Let's call a spade a spade, here. They're not undead, they're diseased.]
****[I'm sorry, Maverick and Goose. I am so so sorry. His words, not mine!]
*****[I don't know who or what Rihanna is.]

I promise you that as soon as distance permits, I will get on that Pirates of the Caribbean thing, but for now, this is more on my mind.

Gods and Monsters is a biopic, sorta, about the last few weeks of legendary director James Whale (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man), who rocked Hollywood in the Thirties by subtlely exploring the theme of the horror monster and by blatantly exploring the theme of being “light in the loafers,” as they say.*

"Whale" on the set of Bride of Frankenstein.

This film won an Oscar for best screenplay (Bill Condon) and was nominated for a couple acting awards. Not surprisingly, the Academy misses the point a little. Gods and Monsters is a beautifully filmed and well edited – let me go out on a limb here – monster. The construction of the film is much more seamless than the consciously stitched-up Frankenstein monster, and did a lot of angling and focusing and fenagling to really drive the title’s theme home (you know, “I’m a god, you’re a monster, and it’s funny because I DIRECTED movies about monsters,” that sort of thing.) But it’s not the actual cinematics of the film itself that got any attention, unfortunately, it was the screenplay.

The image searches for pictures of this movie are very, very sad, considering how pretty the film is.

This is where I go into my “the Academy clearly consists of people who have never before seen a film and must be replenished with new Academicians every year” spiel. Either that or they honestly think that the more films a picture resembles, the better it must be. Or, and this might be the case, they just decided to be “into film” after watching a biography on A&E about M. Night Shyamalan**, and every time they can spot a theme in a film, they pump their fists in the air and yell, “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!” and pin a blue ribbon to the DVD case.

Basically, Gods and Monsters absolutely beats you over the head with the god/monster relationship. As if we couldn’t figure it out by the very title of the film, a reference to a line in Bride of Frankenstein. The Frankenstein films wrestle with the culpability of a monster who had no choice in its creation and whose repulsive differences can be instead attributed to the twisted ambitions of a creator trying to play God. The inversion causes Frankenstein (i.e. Doctor Frankenstein) to really be the monster, instead of the flatheaded screwneck we’re used to fearing. In fact, during the Frankenstein movies, Whale creates a really amazing amount of sympathy on the part of the viewer for Boris Karloff’s Monster. We find ourselves rooting for the poor misunderstood brute, whose very existence is pre-determined to be that of an outcast. The Monster’s infantile helplessness (not to mention taste for fine music) contrasts with the Dr. Frankenstein’s snooty, aristocratic background: money and power aren’t enough for him, he requires immortality.

From Frankenstein (1931). Who could hate that lovable mug??

So! James Whale’s creation of all of this puts him in the God position, and Clay Boone (Brendan Fraser), due to his over-the-top flatheaded, musclely, simple-nature, gets to be Frankenstein’s monster (his name’s Clay, get it? Like, for molding?), but in case you didn’t pick up on it yourself, he breaks it down for ya, actually saying, “I AM NOT YOUR MONSTER” while at the same time throttling poor old Whale. This follows some dreams Clay has of him assuming the roles of both Dr. Frankenstein and the monster. And that’s not all, the film closes on a long shot of Clay walking through the rain, stiffly and with his arms out. Guess what! We are all monsters, even if we’re gods, and probably vice versa. I don’t know. I’m through with it.

God, Monster, Monster, God, Panama Hat.

At the very least, Gods and Monsters is an enlightening film about Whale while going a little bit deeper into humanity’s core and all that, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Whale’s own work. But I guess it’s not trying to, and the film probably did a lot of good to moviegoing audiences who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to any sort of exploration into these themes. I give the film four stars (it really is excellent to watch) and the guy who plays Karloff seventeen.

*You’ll hear about five hundred more euphemisms for homosexuality in the film. Also, the phrase “hard, arrogant pr*cks” coming out of Ian McKellan’s mouth is truly a delight.
**Does he go by M? Does he go by Night? Does he ever go away?

Axe, shotgun, chainsaw...ladies, beware.

By the release of the third film, Army of Darkness, the horrific nature of the original Evil Dead is almost completely nonexistent, as Ash regains his phallus (the chainsaw) and battles the evil version of himself, a male monster, easily overcoming the female monster. Removing the threat of the monstrous-feminine and, subsequently, male castration from the Evil Dead equation changes the entire tone of the trilogy as it progresses, and with the absence of that emasculating fear, the films easily shift into comedy.

I'd say more but that officially goes into the realm of "paper-writing" instead of "blogging" and it's a psychological block that I find very sturdy. I'll just let you sit there and rethink what the gaping hole at the end of ED2 might just represent.

*I lifted it from Barbara Creed.

Axe, shotgun, chainsaw...ladies, beware.

By the release of the third film, Army of Darkness, the horrific nature of the original Evil Dead is almost completely nonexistent, as Ash regains his phallus (the chainsaw) and battles the evil version of himself, a male monster, easily overcoming the female monster. Removing the threat of the monstrous-feminine and, subsequently, male castration from the Evil Dead equation changes the entire tone of the trilogy as it progresses, and with the absence of that emasculating fear, the films easily shift into comedy.

I'd say more but that officially goes into the realm of "paper-writing" instead of "blogging" and it's a psychological block that I find very sturdy. I'll just let you sit there and rethink what the gaping hole at the end of ED2 might just represent.

*I lifted it from Barbara Creed.

I’m not going to lie to you, I’m writing this just because I wanted to use that title. But also, I’m really busy these days learning about horror films, so I’m going to cheat and review a film that I had to watch in class.

Vampires and zombies are all very good and duly represent our repressed desires come back to the surface etc etc. Universal Studios figured out how much money they could make with these sorts of films and, beginning with Dracula, spat out a series of monster-driven horror films over the next ten years. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man…all these movies were creepy and groundbreaking, but it didn’t last, and eventually horror went into a dormant period, giving way to parody until the wave of sci-fi stuff began in the Fifties.

Dracula, 1931, you should stop reading and put this on your queue.

And what, pray, what was the movie that heralded the death of the Universal monster? Have you ever heard tell of the 1941 film that features what appears to be John Goodman in too-tight overalls, hiding behind trees and growling at passersby? Well, stranger, pull up a chair and pop in the DVD of the worst horror movie ever, The Wolf Man!

Lon Chaney, Jr.* plays a giant, rotund dude who bounds around the feudal lands surrounding his (inexplicably British) family’s estate. He’s returned to Talbot Castle, the home of his childhood, because his older brother has fortunately been offed in a hunting accident**, making him the heir to the vast Talbot riches. Daddy Talbot (Claude Rains, who is about four feet shorter than his gigantic “son”) is a little bit skeptical that this guy, who uses a telescope to peer in the windows of the humdrum townsfolkwomen, will be able to handle his new position as Talbot heir.

He’s not wrong, of course. Larry (Chaney, Jr.) becomes a werewolf, yikes! He kills people left and right, sporting hairy feet and too much facial hair. There’s more to this, like a gypsy woman and a boring heroine and some hunting dogs, but in the end, Larry finally bites the dust at the hand of his own father, who beats him to death with a silver-headed cane. This scene, which is the most interesting in the entire film, parallels an earlier scene in which Larry beats a wolf to death with the same cane. Little does he know that this wolf is actually the poor lycanthropic-afflicted, gypsy fortune-teller Bela (played by Bela Lugosi), and the bite he suffers in the process launches his own transformation into the humongous, bumbling werewolf that everyone fears.

Something you should know: Bela Lugosi played Dracula (really really well) in the first Universal monster flick.*** It's not too much of a stretch to see that Larry beats the older and more talented Bela (coincidentally (?) playing a character of the same name) to death just as The Wolf Man beats the older and better Universal horror movies to death, ushering moviegoers into an age in which horror becomes parody. His filmic father beating him to death is a punishment for this crime, but it happens too late. Bela is already dead and The Wolf Man has already eaten up 70 minutes of screen time.

Yes, I know, this doesn't help you decide whether or not to go see Superman Returns, but I'm off to see it today, so stay tuned and remove The Wolf Man from your queue in the meantime.

*Son of legendary horror movie star Lon Chaney, who played the phantom in Phantom of the Opera.
**That old chestnut.
***That role was supposed to go to Lon Chaney Sr., but he died before it could all go down.

Sorry, can we just look at this again?