hannibal lecter once said:

How do we begin to covet, Clarice?
Do we seek out things to covet?
No, we begin by coveting what we see every day.

i humbly disagree. the only thing i can see from where i'm sitting right now is a half full cherry coke bottle and an empty tape dispenser. those aren't really the kinds of things i'm aching to possess... so i usually need to go out looking for objects of envy. like all genre fans, i collect dvds and books... but one of the more frivolous pursuits most of us horror fans have in common is the love of horror-related toys. i love movie collectibles -- my desk and home are littered with things like posable michael myers action figures, a plastic hellraiser puzzle box (or 'lament configuration,' if you want to sound all knowledgeable and stuff) and a giant jason voorhees that screeches "ch-ch-ch ah-ah-ah" when you push a button on his back. like all obsessive collectors though, there is always room for more and i often find myself searching ebay and online toy stores for the latest horror chotchke to place on my desk at work or around my tiny apartment. i rarely actually order anything, but i almost always find cool and interesting things that i just can't quite justify spending so much money on but would buy in a second if there was no longer a need for things like food, shelter, dog biscuits or socks. so, that's what i'm going to share with you today... some of the bitchin'-est models, action figures, replicas and horror-related odds & ends i've recently run across, so that we may collectively salivate over them together.

the exorcist spider walk regan action figure
price: $16.99

those who haven't seen the exorcist: the version you've never seen (and really, with a name like that there's likely to be a few) will probably wonder why you have a doll of a 12-year old girl in a night-gown doing a back-bend in your room... but screw it. that scene was freakin' creepy and so is this figurine.

cloverfield movie monster
price: $99.99

a bit pricey at $100, but damn this toy version of clover is cool. it stands 14" tall, comes with 10 parasites, the head of the statue of liberty and features 'authentic sounds.' i only hope those sounds aren't what makes up most of the dialogue in the film, which would just be a constant loop of "rob, dude. dude. rob, hey. rob. we gotta go. rob. dude."

alien pile statue
price: $234.99

ok, like many of items listed here -- this defies any description other than "awesome!"

and they're so cute... i imagine if these guys were your pets, they'd sit in front of the door just like this while you were at work... waiting anxiously for you to come home.

alien 400% kubrick figure
price: $67.49

i'm not sure why these lego-type versions of characters are called 'kubricks' (i assume it has nothing to do with stanley), but they sure are adorable. most are rather small, but this one stands almost a foot high and is based off the original giger designs for alien. this would make a terrific present for any adult sci-fi/horror fan... or a really crappy one for your five-year old nephew.

alien 18-inch classic figure
price: $49.99

ok, i'm completely getting one of these when they're released. so few of the alien toys feature the clear dome skull (most go for the crinkly, less interesting heads used in cameron's film). at 18-inches tall, this guy will be able to do mock-battles with my giant new blood jason voorhees, which is a big plus.

alien warrior life size replica
price: $4500.00

ok, i'm completely not getting one of these... but not for a lack of desire. the price is a bit out of my range, but holy god... when people came over to your place they'd either think you were the coolest guy in all the land... or the creepiest.

movable lament configuration
price: $419.00

one of the disappointments of owning a hellraiser puzzle box is that it's never going to move around and make all the crazy shapes it does in the movie, nor will it open a doorway to hell. the latter is probably ok, but the former would be frickin' awesome... well, this box comes the closest in that it will actually make the first two moves of the puzzle. hand-crafted from mahogany and etched in brass, it's rather amazing looking as well.

puzzle box signed
price: $129.99

i'm quite fond of this box because while it may not move, it does come in the nifty display case... which would really be the only way to display it in your home. get a couple of them like dr. channard did in the film and display them next to a bloody mattress for added creepiness.

hellraiser paperweight
price: $19.99

for the budget-minded or those looking for a more modern take on the classic lament configuration, here's a clear version. it seems to have the words 'hellraiser' printed on it though, which i'd prefer it didn't.

frank figure
price: $13.99

who wouldn't want a tiny skinnless frank in a suit, and it appears to come with frank's trademark cigarette and switchblade as well. now if they'd only make a 'frank strung up on hooks & chains emanating from the depths of hell' christmas tree ornament, i'd be set.

dr. channard statue
price: $239.99

i don't know that dr. channard was one of my favorite characters, but those tentacles coming out of his hands making flowers and razors and stuff were pretty cool. as far as mobility, he's sorta limited by this tentacle thing attached to his head leading him around which sorta makes him hell's yo-yo, i guess -- but he's still pretty cool.

brundle-fly statue
price: $194.99

of all the tiny statues of jeff goldblum that are out there... this is the one to have.

american werewolf 2-pack
price: $22.49

i have wanted this toy for over 20 years now... i absolutely love the design of the werewolf in an american werewolf in london, but he's never been in toy form before. i was so disappointed when i heard years ago they'd released a figure from the film and it just ended up being one of those nazi guys from the dream sequence -- what were they thinking? anyway, they finally did it right and created a werewolf/meatloaf jack two-pack, which i promptly accidentally let my fiancée know was something i couldn't live without. inspired by pure love, i'm fairly certain that she rushed out and pre-ordered it for my birthday... over a year ago. the release date has been pushed back more times than i can remember, but i am certain that it will arrive in time for one of my birthdays in the coming years.

american werewolf life-size prop
price: $5500.00

if i won a million dollars, this would be the first thing i'd buy. not a car, house or speedboat... this. i'd sit it next to the couch and use it as an arm rest and sit my soda in its mouth... and see how many years it'd be before my dogs (and possibly my fiancée) came out from hiding under the bed.

dog soldiers figure
price: $6.93

while not as cool as the above werewolves, i quite liked the dog soldiers design as well. and at 5,493 dollars and 7 cents cheaper than the previous item... it's quite the bargain.

trilogy of terror zuni figure
price: $88.00

while most toys are a pale imitation of what they're based on, it's not all that hard to make a doll version of a doll... so this is an almost perfect version of the tiny, angry dude from the 70s made-for-tv-movie. if this was sitting on my bookcase i'd have to install motion sensors in the living room to be able to sleep. just in case.

the new blood scream scene statue
price: $179.99

jason in friday the 13th part 7 has always been my favorite incarnation of the crystal lake killer. i have two figures based on him already, but i'd be happy to have another showing how he begins the film... still trapped at the bottom of crystal lake, bobbing around like a fish aquarium treasure chest.

bag head jason figure
price: $14.99

scary bag-head jason is scary. i really need to pick one of these up sometime so that i have a itty bitty version of the creepiest version of jason voorhees.

jason plush
price: $27.99

plush jason is just way too cool for school. i actually couldn't resist and ordered one of these while working on this article.... he's just so cute!

jason animated maquette
price: $80.99

friday the 13th: the animated series is just too fabulous of an idea to ever actually exist in our reality. this statue is likely as close as we'll come to seeing it.

silver shampain final chapter mask
price: $110.00

these masks seem to be the best compromise between quality and price that i've found. this site offers versions of jason's mask from every film... i'm seriously considering getting a final chapter or new blood one from this site or the next one.

ruste dowg new blood mask
price: $170.00-$200.00

this site also offers masks from every film and more variations as well. these seem to be higher quality than those on the previous site, and the price reflects that. another option is ordering a mask from frightstuff.com and painting it yourself... or hiring one of the artists in their forums to paint it for you, which is where i found ruste dowg's site.

ultra cthulhu statue
price: $224.99

who wouldn't want a statue of one of 'the great old ones' on their mantle? standing 14" tall, this is probably significantly smaller than the actual cthulhu, but looks fantastic regardless.

freddy krueger glove replica
price: $134.99

i've never loved freddy quite as much as jason or michael, but i have to admit that the glove is rather stylin'. far more realistic and menacing than the golf glove/plastic knife/duct tape combo i created in middle-school, this thing would look great in the living room or stuffed in your basement furnace.

texas chainsawmassacre: the beginning set
price: $24.74

you would not want this out when the in-laws stopped by. few of these toys are truly grotesque, but this one breaks that trend by being just as disturbing as the scene it was based on. i'm not sure i'd actually want to own this, but i have to admit it makes an impression and is making me want to go back and revisit the film.

day of the dead dr. tongue figure
price: $16.18

apart from the american werewolf, this is the toy i always dreamed of... but never thought would actually get made. dr. tongue is my favorite zombie of all time, but he's only on-screen in day of the dead for five or six seconds. based on some of savini's most imaginative work, this is the next action figure i'll end up ordering... just as soon as it's released later this year (or, if it follows the release schedule of the american werewolf figure, sometime around 2014).

i watched the american remake of one missed call this week, and i'm a little scared to share my feelings on it. from the get-go, this film had the cards stacked against it. the cast is largely unremarkable and the director has done nothing you're likely to have seen. more importantly, one missed call is yet another j-horror american remake... and frankly, even people who loved the ring and the grudge (like me) are getting a little sick of these things. furthermore, the original version of one missed call was directed by takishi miike, which sets some pretty high expectations for anyone trying to redo it. perhaps most tellingly, this remake was rushed through production and quickly dumped rather unceremoniously into theaters which shows that the studio had little faith in it.

add all of that together and you're almost guaranteed to get a box office flop that's largely ignored by audiences and universally panned by critics. and that's exactly what happened. with a truly stunning 0% rottentomatoes rating, it seems that all the signs were correct and this is one crappy movie. to put that rottentomatoes score into perspective... both fear dot com and uwe boll's the house of the dead managed a respectable 4% rating, while my personal favorite for worst film of all time, alone in the dark (also from boll), scored 1%.

that means that, at least from a critical point of view, one missed call is somewhere between four and infinite times worse than fear dot com... wow.

which brings me to the point where i'm a bit ashamed to share my personal opinion on this film. at the risk of losing the respect of horror fans everywhere, i have to stay... i kind of liked it. it's not that i disagree with any of the chief complaints i've seen raised against the film. the acting is mediocre at best, the plot is illogical and often self-contradictory and the writing takes what was an amazingly clear storyline in the original film (particularly for a j-horror piece) and makes such a muddled mess of it that the big twist at the end is basically incomprehensible unless you've seen the source material. for example, it's clearly established throughout the film that the ghost can only kill those that it calls and leaves ominous cell phone messages for... then what are we to make of a scene where the ghost kills a cat? did fluffy have his own cell phone? that and several other scenes serve no purpose other than to create cheap scares, often at the expense of the narrative. which brings me back to why i liked it...

structurally, the film may be a mess and i'm a little irritated that portions of the original that i really liked (in particular, the ring tone and the ending) are handled so poorly... but i have to say that the movie is entertaining. the whole piece has a very creepy mood that i quite enjoyed and most of the scares really worked for me. i've always enjoyed those scares where a character is looking at a backdrop of normalcy and then sees one little thing is really off (like a passerby has a demonic, distorted face) and no else notices it (e.g., jacob's ladder or the eight or ten seconds of the exorcism of emily rose worth watching -- see super-creepy animated gif here). this film is filled with moments like that, and almost every one of them got me. i've learned that different things scare different people and it's a little unfair to call a horror film bad just because it didn't scare you -- some people don't understand what the big deal is about a dark-haired girl with bad posture, but for other people the ring made them spend the night hiding in the dryer. one missed call is not a good film... but i found it atmospheric and creepy enough that i thoroughly enjoyed watching it. i would recommend it to fans of the original series, people with a moderate-to-high tolerance for j-horror nonsense or those that just don't feel like thinking too hard for an hour and a half.

it's a bit shocking that its taken hollywood almost a full decade to successfully rip-off the highly effective 'found footage' structure from the blair witch project, but that seems to be the case. the long wait for more nausea-inducing shaky-cam footage is over though, as this year gives us both cloverfield (rowr!) and the upcoming quarantine. the latter is the american remake of the spanish film rec, a blair witch-esque take on zombies. quarantine is a bit strange in that it's the only remake i know of that was already planned before the original film had even been released. i don't know if quarantine will be any good, but i do think it's kind of sad that most american horror fans won't be exposed to rec simply because it has subtitles. i have heard that the trailers for quarantine blatantly give away the ending to rec, so i have avoided watching them thus far...

i imagine rec will eventually find its way to a region 1 dvd release, but in the meantime the best way to see it is to either a) live in a different country or b) peruse the back alleys and darker corners of the interwebs and find a bootleg. i won't tell you which of these options i chose, however i have now successfully viewed rec in its entirety, and i have to say that i'm fairly impressed. i don't know that it's the scariest movie ever (as many bloggers have claimed) but it's entertaining and inventive, particularly for such a low budget film. these shaky-cam, first-person horror films are most effective in a theater surrounded by a screaming audience... so this may explain why i wasn't as completely blown away as some (similar to the way many found blair witch rather dull when watched on dvd, while i found it terrifying opening night in a sold-out screening). however, regardless of how you see it, it is an unsettling and effective picture with engaging characters and an interesting story that unfolds at a quick, steady pace. ultimately for me, though, it didn't fully live up to the expectations set by the trailer (see below).

i'm interested to hear other's thoughts that have seen it. i loved the final scene which utterly creeped me out, but i couldn't stop thinking about one minor scene early on that bugged me because it broke the rules of the "found footage" framework. it's a little hard to describe, but for those that have seen cloverfield... do you remember right after the statue of liberty scene where they decide to rewind the tape and rewatch what had been recorded? what happened from the audience viewpoint is the tape stops then restarts with the people discussing their reviewing of the footage. a similar scene occurs in rec... but what you see is the movie actually rewind and replay itself so that the characters in the film can rewatch it. from a "we're actually watching the video tape recovered from the camera" point of view, that makes no sense. however, that's a minor complaint and likely something i should have just ignored given i'd already suspended my disbelief enough to accept, without question, the existence of the living dead.

this post was written for the final girl film club... read a lot more about near dark there.

corey's thoughts...

released just weeks apart, near dark and the lost boys are my two favorite vampire films. 1987 was a fantastic year for bloodsuckers. it had never occurred to me until i began writing this post, but the films are remarkably similar. in terms of plot, they are nearly identical.

a naive young man is seduced by a beautiful woman and unwillingly turned into a vampire. the man struggles with what he is becoming versus what he was, as well as deciding between his new nocturnal family and his original one. ultimately, humanity wins out and our hero kills everyone in the girl's family (except for her) and finds a way to cure vampirism, saving the day and winning the girl.

structurally they may be similar, but their tones are very different. near dark is far more serious and introspective than the goofy antics present in the lost boys. their treatment of vampire mythology also differs greatly, with near dark essentially writing its own rules as opposed to the highly traditional treatment of vampires in the lost boys.

some may prefer the light tone and mystical attributes of the antagonists in the lost boys, while others may be partial to the darker tone and more biologically based villains of near dark. personally, i'm not entirely sure which i prefer, as i love them both. luckily though, these are not the dark ages and, using the scientific method, we may be able to objectively determine which is the greater of the two. below i will compare/contrast near dark and the lost boys on several important aspects. at the end, we shall tally up the scores and determine which is truly deserving of the title "the greatest vampire film ever made."

caleb

michael

hero

the hero is an important part of any monster story, as he/she usually represents the viewpoint of the audience. here we have michael and caleb, who look remarkably alike. michael takes more to his newly found vampiric abilities and actually ends up using them to defeat his adversaries. caleb rarely uses his vampire strengths at all, instead just vomiting a lot. however, caleb does defeat a whole family of vampires without any special abilities at all, using only his cunning and horseback riding/truck driving abilities. caleb is mostly pro-active and deals with a strange situation as best he can while michael spends most of his screen time whining, running doe-eyed after the girl and arguing with his younger brother. a close call, but i'd have to give this one to caleb, despite the fact he essentially starts the movie off as a date rapist.

winner: near dark

mae

star

love interest

neither mae nor star are a particularly strong character. they both are there simply to serve as first the seductress and later the damsel in distress. both have tendencies to ramble on about nothing and occasionally sound insane. mae, however, seems a little more knowledgeable, stands up for caleb quite a bit and actually pushes the story forward. she also works the short, blond hair better than most, so i'll give this one to her.

winner: near dark

severen

david

apprentice villain

while neither david nor severen are the true 'head' of their respective vampire families, they are the most colorful and active villains. keifer sutherland is incredibly intimidating as david, and despite a bad haircut manages to be cool as all hell. severen has the best dialogue from either film ("first, you're gonna give me back my spur, then i'm gonna knock your tonsils out your asshole. what do you think of them apples?") and plays the charismatic psycho so well, i consider this bill paxton's finest role. this one is too close to call...

winner: tie

jesse

max

master villain

max isn't revealed to be the head vampire until the last act of the film, but he's entertaining thoughout the entire picture as the bumbling suitor to michael's mother, making his turn to the dark side even more shocking. jesse is known to be the leader throughout all of near dark, and seems to do a pretty good job of it (except for a few odd calls to launch large attacks very close to dawn). max is never terribly threatening while jesse is almost as cool as severen from the get-go... plus jesse can spit out bullets, is barely phased by a knife in the mouth and gets to say things like "you're not gonna look so good... with your face ripped off." i gotta say jesse wins this one by a landslide.

winner: near dark

homer

laddie

child vampire

it's never stated exactly how old homer is, but we know he's an adult trapped in a child's body. he still reverts to child-like behaviors occasionally (e.g., running to diamondback when he realizes the sun has risen and they're trapped), but for the most part he's quite the bad-ass, shooting and killing alongside everyone else. as for laddie... does anyone remember him at all? except for the "it's the attack of eddie munster!" scene near the finale, he seems to have nothing to do in the lost boys. this one goes to homer, all the way.

winner: near dark

fashion

both families of vampires have nailed the white trash vampire look, but in slightly different ways. near dark goes more towards the redneck side of things with cowboy hats, spurs and civil war era jackets. the lost boys are more punk, with their excessive jewlerly and leather outfits. it's a close call, but i have to side on the lost boys here... david's black coat is just too cool for school.

winner: the lost boys

hair

this one is a no-brainer. jesse and the gang seem completely unaware of what conditioner is while the lost boys obviously spend hours each day taking care of their 80s hair band perms and carefully gelled spikes and curls.

winner: the lost boys

abilities

the vampires of near dark don't seem to have a whole lot of the perks normally associated with their condition. sure they're super strong, immortal and heal quickly from almost any wound... but the lost boys have all that and a bag of chips. they can fly, sorta turn into bats and, of course, have retractable fangs. no contest here...

winner: the lost boys

vulnerability

while the near dark gang might not get all the bells and whistles of vampirism, they also don't receive most of the drawbacks associated with becoming a creature of the night. they're vulnerable to daylight and exploding trucks it seems, but religious artifacts/wood don't do diddly. the lost boys, on the other hand, can be taken down with a water gun or an antler through the chest.

winner: near dark

cure

if you're going to turn your hero into a monster, you need a feasible way to revert them back to normal before the credits roll. in the lost boys this involves killing the "head" vampire, which reverts everyone below him back to normal. in near dark the easiest way to rid yourself of being undead is a blood transfusion. neither of these really seem to naturally follow from what we know of the creatures, and both seem a little silly... however, watching max get nailed by giant stakes thrown off a truck is far more fun to watch than a veterinarian performing a blood transfusion -- so the lost boys wins.

winner: the lost boys

kathryn bigelow

joel schumacher

director

other than point break, kathryn bigelow hasn't given us a whole lot beyond writing/directing near dark... however, she is in no way responsible for batman & robin -- so she wins by default.

winner: near dark

number of coreys

even if i didn't share the name, i think any film benefits from having one of the coreys in it. the fact that the lost boys features both of them while near dark lacks any coreys at all... well, the lost boys win in a shut out performance.

winner: the lost boys

number of creepy, oily, half-naked saxophone players

one thing i've always remembered from the lost boys is the bizarre performance of the enthusiastic, lip-syncing naked guy playing saxophone at the opening of the film. i know this was the 80s, but i remember the 80s, and this was not the kind of thing the young kids found entertaining. when assessing the final number of dancing, greasy nude saxophone players that should be in your movie... the answer should always be 'zero.' so near dark wins this one without contest.

winner: near dark

by my math, that means that near dark narrowly edges out the lost boys, 6-5. i had always suspected that near dark was slightly better, but had never put it through the rigors of an objective comparison before. thusly, it is with the certainty that only science can give us that i claim the following:

near dark is the greatest vampire film EVAR.

Jon's Thoughts...

Long before Anne Rice turned vampires into foppish French aristocrats or moody, goth-glam crooners, 80s vampires were pure badass. Written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, 1987's Near Dark is as carefully cool as it is scary.

Near Dark was released the same year as The Lost Boys, which makes 1987 the best year ever for vampire films. Both films use the vampire myth to explore the allure of gangs, and all the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll that presumably derive from that lifestyle. This was something of a national obsession in the just-say-no Reagan decade.

In Near Dark, Caleb Colton, a young and doe-eyed country bumpkin, meets Mae at his town's local watering hole. Mae appears to be a cute, but down-on-her luck stranger. It's the sort of combination that wholesome boys like Caleb find impossible to ignore. Of course, she's not the naïf that she seems, and he soon finds out that he's in over his head when he meets her rough-and-tumble family of violent outlaws, led by Jesse Hooker and his wife, Diamondback. And they're all vampires, which makes them far more dangerous, and far more appealing. Young Caleb is soon on the road with them, much to the dismay of his straight-laced father, a ranch veterinarian, who, like any good cowboy, saddles up and gives chase.

It's impossible to miss the morality tale implicit in the narrative of Near Dark. Can Caleb and his wholesome family rescue young Mae and save her from a violent, dysfunctional family? Of course they can, and with a little elbow grease, old-fashioned gumption, and a homemade blood transfusion machine, she's as right as rain by the film's end. The purity of the American heartland is a redemptive force. In fact, even though the subtext for Near Dark involves 80s drug and gang culture, the vampires in the film could be replaced with, say, Apaches and you'd have a Western nearly identical to John Ford's The Searchers, in which a civil-war veteran spends years scouring the American southwest looking for his nieces after they're kidnapped and eventually acculturated by Comanche Indians.

However, the strength of the American myth is not the real point of this film. The film's heart belongs to the vampires, and no amount of 80s-style moralizing can drive a proverbial stake through it. For example, the film's most memorable scene, by far, is Caleb's barroom initiation into the vampire lifestyle. It's the one scene that I most vividly remembered years after I saw Near Dark in 1987, and it's the scene that still has the most resonance and appeal twenty years later. It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking that is as subversive as it is just plain fun to watch.

Take, for instance, the vampires' entrance into what Severen, the real badass of the family, calls "shit kicker heaven," a roadhouse on the edge of town. Severen and his family are brazen and fearless, and there's something thrilling about the way they storm into a bar so seedy the toilet seats are likely to give you hepatitis c and the patrons would ordinarily be the meanest sob's in town. I suppose this is why young Caleb can't seem to say no to their influence, and why audiences always find vampires so attractive as well. Sure, they symbolize a rock n' roll fun, but more than that, they symbolize the kind of pure, unfettered libertine lifestyle that we all dream about from time to time. For instance, there's just something irresistible about the "turn-the-tables-on-the-bar-thugs dynamic" at work in this scene. I find it hard not to enjoy the way Severen takes on the toughest looking dude in the bar by first spilling his drink, then spitting in his face.

If this weren't enough, the bar scene is brilliantly punctuated by some really great rock-n-roll gems from the 80s. Severen and his family make their entrance to the tune of John Parr's power-chord anthem "Naughty, Naughty." The song's playful, albeit seedy, depiction of risqué and deviant sexual predation is perfect for this film. The song makes you want to dance, even if you just know you're gonna feel really guilty about it later. The scene also includes the brilliant cover of Little Willie John's "Fever" by The Cramps. With songs such as "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," "The Creature From the Black Leather Lagoon," and "The Surfing Dead," the Cramps are no strangers to horror films. Their contribution to this scene gives it an appropriate mood of low-key, slithering cool that you know will soon turn downright ugly.

And it does turn ugly, which is partly what makes this scene to gripping and so subversive. In a grotesque parody of a sit-down family meal, Jessse, Razorback, Mae, and the man-child Homer, murder the waitress and then fill a beer mug with blood. Severen dances around the bar before brutally killing a patron and then the bartender with his sharpened spurs. Even little Homer does his part by shooting a victim in the back. When the killing spree ends, Mae slow dances with the last victim, an unfortunate yokel who's been selected for Caleb's first kill. This is perhaps the creepiest part of the entire scene. It's part cheesy prom-night dance, part solemn ceremony for his impending human sacrifice. It's an unexpected change of pace in a scene that consists of one unexpected reversal after another. The scene is deliberately cool, then barbarically violent, then somber.

At the end of this scene, Caleb fails his initiation. He simply can't commit murder, and he eventually gives it all up to go back home to his wholesome family and farm. It's the decent thing to do, and, of course, we all want him to do the decent thing. America's heartland is saved from the vampires, just as every Western features the triumph of American civilization over savagery. In this one aspect, Near Dark departs from John Ford's The Searchers. At its conclusion, John Wayne discovers to his horror and shame that his niece has no intention of being rescued. She's not only a part of Comanche society, but also happily married, so he ultimately fails to bring her back home. It's a thoroughly ambivalent conclusion that's missing from Near Dark. Caleb escapes the savages. Still, I'll wager that most of us who watch this film wish that Caleb could have stayed with Severen for at least a little while longer.

i've recently become addicted to old movie trailers (e.g., the 42nd street forever dvd collections) and i found a site i thought i'd pass along. trailers from hell features old trailers with commentary by modern horror directors like john landis, edgar wright, eli roth, joe dante, and others. trailers can be viewed with or without the commentary, but hearing directors discuss the influence of these films is usually the most interesting part. the trailers themselves run the gamut from absolute classics (psycho, peeping tom, night of the living dead) to schlocky trash (squirm, creature from the haunted sea, exorcist 2). i haven't seen them all, but i've included four that i particularly liked below... see the rest at trailersfromhell.com.