Parts: The Clonus Horror -- 1979 -- R

Since The Island borrowed a lot from this film, I opted to watch it again. This one didn't play out as well as The Island did, but it did have that similar premise. We get a lot of information from the get-go here explaining practically everything so everything I've said is not even much of any spoiler.

Believability issues abound here, though. This clone, while having average intelligence, is able to do a lot of things that he could now have learned and really can't be done unless taught. There was a sheet of paper he managed to identify as a map and that he used constantly within a multi-floor facility to find his way around. So not only does he have impeccable map-reading skills, but a multi-floor facility fit on a little sheet of paper. Wow. He also knew about the elevator maintenance hatch...not bad for someone who couldn't possibly have been told this or seen one used. He even knew how to use a VCR. Didn't fit the training programs, nor did they have TV's in their rooms. This clone knew too much for what he would have been taught according to the film.

The music used was cliche and one scene was 70's action sequence all the way. The alarm used in a facility was the "red alert" from Star Trek. The way the clone ended up being tracked reminded me heavily of Mr. Big's network in Live and Let Die (book and movie). And how'd he get out? He avoided being shot by a sharpshooter(?!).

And the ending wasn't much better. Stepford Wives, anyone?

The Amityville Horror -- 1979 -- R

The Amityville Horror is one of those movies that the filmmakers claimed was based on a true story, but snopes.com lets you know that's a bunch of nonsense. Regardless, this film is about a family that moves into a house a year after a guy killed his parents and four siblings while they slept, claiming that voices in the house told him to do it. During their short stay, which the film says was 28 days at the beginning, weird things happen in the house such as voices, flies, black goo in the toilets, the daughter having an imaginary "friend" that actually (and freakishly) exists, and the father slowly losing his mind.

The overall package here is pretty good. Since they wanted the feeling of it to be based in reality, you really don't see much in the way of monsters or anything. Everything is implied or just heard. It makes for the whole thing to be very creepy and certainly makes you question the odd noises you hear in your own house at night.

However, we're not without some question marks. I have barely started and already odd things happen. 

The father who comes to bless the house and is run out. That's cool. Why didn't he tell the family then? Sure, they weren't there, but wouldn't that be worth waiting around for?

Then the thing in the basement. He goes downstairs and acts like he's never been there before. To top that, there's a cobweb in the way he has to duck under. A realtor would not have left that.

Then the kid decides to knock out the light bulb and fall down the stairs. Weird. It would have been something more interesting if the popped bulb came into play later, but it didn't. The whole thing was a non-incident.

Meeting of the priests: there's a big argument as to what's really out at the house. I have a suggestion: go there. If they turned him down; I'd be ok, but he never even suggested it. He should have insisted on it. But no. Like so many things, he kept silent at the opportune time.

His friend says to get away from thehouse for a couple of hours...but he's been out all day. I can get the reason why the friends really came over, but they could have found a better reason. Oh yeah, where'd the motorcycle come from>

I don't think I'd've made it to the 17th day. The night before day 17 was one of the freakiest, and I think that would have been it for me. Beyond this, we get labels for days 18 & 19 and then it's "The Last Day". No nothing significant happened between day 19 and day 28? Maybe it was the trailer that said 28 days, but I know that was established as an overall time frame somewhere.

Dang, that is one freakin' long drive from town. The sun was lower in the sky when she left and it's pitch black when she gets home. As I recall, they aren't too far from a main city unless she went a long way for a headline making news story.

The good points really out weight the question marks, though. That's me being nitpicky. The male lead was well developed enough for me as well as his wife. The kids are gone for most of the film, which weakens it only marginally. The stuff that happens in the house makes the house a character of its own. The line "houses don't have memories" couldn't have been more inaccurate than in this film.

Truly a freakish addition to the haunted house canon where the bad guy is a demon possessed house that not even a priest can escape the wrath of (which granted loses a point of believability in my book since Jesus is stronger than a demon and his followers have the power to withstand its influence. A man of God should make the demon flee, not the other way around. Satan doesn't have that type of power over God's people). But for a good scare and one to make you question those bumps in the night, it works very well. It also makes you wnat to bless your own house once you get home.

Nosferatu -- 1979 -- PG

Despite what the critics may think of this remake of the 1922 classic, to call this film an adaptation of Dracula is an insult to Mr. Stoker's work. I have sort of a two fold review to go into here: one is a criticism on how much of Dracula was actually used; the second is how the film plays by itself.

When it comes to an adapatation (which this most surely is due to the use of names and rough characters), this barely uses the story. It spends a huge amount of time getting to the castle -- an even that in the novel happens almost immediately. Mina is no longer Jonathan Harker's fiancee/wife, but not its Lucy. Renfield goes from Harker's boss to the madman (I've noticed several adaptations dropping characters and swapping roles all over the place). No one except Harker is turned into a Vampire. Van Helsing is a sniveling weenie, and no where close to the authority he was in the novel. The black plague doesn't even exist in the novel; or at least not as overtly as it is here. Lucy does most of the final footwork. What remains is Dracula as a vampire, and Jonathan going to his crib to sign a contract for a house in London. Beyond that are pieces of the original plot, but none of the compelling story that Bram Stoker laid down.

As for this film as a presentation, it was boring. Just like that. The pacing was non-existant. A lot of time was devoted to scenery rather than plot or character. Jonathan Harker supposely rode a horse from London to Eastern Romania. I'm sorry, but my geography tells me that a trip like tht on a single horse is highly improbable, not to mention would give his saddle sores beyond reckoning. He later says the trip took 4 weeks. No wonder his horse was tired.

He decides to walk up the mountain and instead of taking the road, he goes cross country, until the coach that refused to take him before just shows up to take him that last few yards to Dracula's California vacation ho-...er...castle, yeah, that's it. That's what it looked like. A castle. Sure.

Now, what did this trip look like on film? I think we spent a good five to ten minutes watching Jonathan travel. He rode his horse for a while, stopped off in the town to get some exposition...er...rations, and then we spend more time watching him walk. He walks down the road, past a river, across some rocks...it was ready for this part to end. Unfortunately, most of the film consisted of long, long, long scenes just like this where we stare at veritably nothing for long periods of time.

Much of the film was silent, likely due to it bein an adaptation, and since I haven't seen the 1922 version (that's what I was hoping to get when I snagged this one), I'm not sure whether this is intentional to copy the earlier version or, he just didn't want to double up too many scenes (since he shot it in English AND German). Whatever it was, it didn't work. Very little of this film was explained, and a lot of stuff happened that I only (barely) followed because I've read Dracula. Without that knowledge, I would be completely lost in this movie.

Jonathan was originally the hero of this story, but after he was bitten, he took a secondary role shifting the lead role to Lucy, of all people. She decided she needed to destroy the black coffins, and so she entered Dracula's house, and sprinkled what I can only presume is a communion wafer on the dirt in ONE coffin, and then left (again, using my prior knowledge of the Dracula novel which didn't actually do this -- they set the house on fire). She runs into this big celebration of people who feel they're going to die anyway, so they're making the most of their time. I was lost in this whole scene until one of them explained it.

As for the star of the Dracula novel, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing...well, he was a wuss. He whined and complained about doing things scientifically, tried to debunk everything Lucy had seen with Dracula, and generally wandered around doing nothing until he staked Dracula in a useless denouement scene before he's arrested. He was no where near the confident powerhouse he is in the novel or in most adaptations.

The climax made a little bit of sense, and it was mostly setup in prior expositional scenes. It wasn't a satifying conclusion by any stretch of the imagination, and played off as kind of dumb. Then, we don't even get satisfaction from Jonathan being restored. No, he remains a vampire, and rides off into the distance across a desert (?!), which the camera fixates on for a good minute or two after he disappears in the distance.

Bottom line, whatever his was supposed to be, it didn't make it. Whatever the critics loved about it, I didn't see it. To me, this was a film that tried to capitalize on a previous film's success. It failed in pacing, in plot, and in character. If this is, as the DVD case suggests, "the definitive version of the Dracula legend as will as one of the most extraordinarily haunting films ever made," then making an extraordinary film must be quite an easy mark to hit, and Bram Stoker is rolling in his grave.