Thus concludes an unusually busy year for reviewing first-run films– and thus also concludes my coverage of the Hammer Dracula series, which I’ve been writing about intermittently for an incredible 25 years:
Appointment with Fear (1985), in which there’s no appointment, with fear or anything else, but I do get the astral-projecting serial killer whose absence so annoyed me in The Astral Factor a few months ago…
Bad Moon (1996), in which man’s best friend is werewolf’s worst enemy…
Blood Tide (1982), in which treasure hunters on an Aegean island unwittingly resurrect the gill man which the locals used to worship as a god until about A.D. 500, but the results have more in common with The Wicker Man than with Creature from the Black Lagoon…
Dracula, A.D. 1972 (1972), in which Hammer tries to get hip, but ends up proving instead how square it had really become…
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), in which they try again by keeping the modern setting, but pivoting to a faintly Bond-flavored conspiracy thriller format…
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), in which the studio’s last and strangest hail-Mary gambit entails teaming up with Shaw Brothers to make a kung fu horror film…
Frankenstein (2025), in which the passion project of a lifetime yields disappointingly good-enough results…
and…
The Running Man (2025), in which what ought to have been the perfect dystopia for the present era of tacky malevolence turns out even more disappointingly good enough.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
#1 by supersonic man on January 1, 2026 - 9:43 am
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Good solid reviewmanship. Your writing seems to be on a bit higher level lately.
#2 by Kurt on January 1, 2026 - 12:13 pm
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Thank you for your thoughtful review of the new “Frankenstein” — and for continuing to post reviews at all. I always look forward to them.
I saw another dimension to Elizabeth’s relationship with the creature. In the moments they spent together she seemed not only entranced: she was nurturing to him. Nurturing in a way that Frankenstein’s mother had been and that Elizabeth would never be to Frankenstein himself. Together with Frankenstein’s own treatment of his creation, I think this was supposed to mirror Frankenstein’s family dynamic: loving mother and punishing father with sky-high expectations…particularly since Mia Goth played both Elizabeth and Claire. Could Frankenstein’s resentment have stemmed in part from Elizabeth forcing him to recognize how much he was like his father?
On balance I think I liked the movie, but del Toro tends to do things with CGI that take me out of the action. In “Crimson Peak” it was the ghosts that were grotesque to the point of hilarity, paired with the non-reactions of the human characters interacting with them. In “Frankenstein” it was partly the CGI wolves that reminded me of nothing so much as the Bumpus dogs from “A Christmas Story”, with the old blind man playing the turkey.
“The Satanic Rites of Dracula”: what can I say? I like the idea and ambition behind it. But for Dracula to be killed at the end by a *hedge*…no wonder Christopher Lee was done after that.
Against all odds, I hope that you and all the B-Masters have a rewarding 2026.
#3 by Killer Meteor on January 3, 2026 - 6:32 am
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Great stuff! BTW, do you know if Lyz Kingsley is OK? She hasn’t updated her site in over a year.