Dario Argento's Dracula Movie

I've always watched Dario Argento's movies because the first horror or X film I ever got into the cinema to watch, was Suspiria - a great Argento movie. I loved the film Suspiria and have watched it so many times. In my view it is his best. Therefore, I keep watching Argento films hoping he will get the right ingredients, as he did in Suspiria.

However, to date, I've yet to come across an Argento movie that even comes close to the atmospheric suspense that Suspiria had for me. When I saw the title in my supermarket; Argento's Dracula, I thought, 'Wow! maybe good old Dario has pulled another one out of the bag. It would be about time too, since 1977.

The front cover boasted good actors: Thomas Kretschmann and Rutger Hauer. Therefore, with ill deserved confidence, I bought the DVD and that evening, with arrogant aplomb, I sat down to watch the Argento version of Dracula.

Oh dear! I waisted a couple of hours of my life. I felt robbed and cheated and begin to wonder when Argento will make another movie that could even compare with Suspiria. I can't help thinking that actors of Kretschmann and Hauer's mold might be a little disappointed by the finished product too.

I'll keep watching Argento movies because of the one good one I have seen - Suspiria. I will keep living in hope, but everything he has done since can't begin to compare. In my humble opinion, Argento's Dracula did not flick any switches for me. It is not important that it drifted from the original story because there are so many good adaptations of Dracula. So a different slant is fine and I expected such. It's just that the presentation of the whole thing was dreadful. The acting and all. It just did not work. It was worse then a bad Hammer House horror.

Keep trying Dario and look at all the grand suspense you created in Suspiria. You got it all right in that. You just never seemed to be able to build upon it it.

Sven Hassel 1917 to 2012 - Danish Pulp War Fiction Writer?

When John Wayne died, everyone was shocked. No one thought he would die. For people who read Sven Hassel; well they could be forgiven for thinking likewise. I could not believe Sven Hassel was dead, yet unlike the actor; the Danish writer's fame had a certain anonymity.

Being a Brit and growing up in the sixties, I had a diet of British heroic stands against National Socialist Germany. Our grandparents fought against them, our shops were full of weekly comics that told stories of brave Brit, Canadian, Ozzie or Kiwi soldiers gritting their teeth and confronting the faceless enemy of autonomous entities in jack boots. This faceless enemy seemed so inhuman and unfeeling to me. Then one day, around my friends house, I came across a grubby paperback called SS General by Sven Hassel. The picture was that of a high ranking officer in an open topped car while the steepes of Russia were in flames. I was allowed to have this book and started to read it. I was about twelve or thirteen years of age and got totally sucked in by this group of soldiers like Porta, Tiny, the Old Man and of course Sven watching them. I suddenly realised that the enemy was very human and they too, had a sense of humour and morality as they tried to survive their Hell on Earth in a world gone mad.

Sven Hassel 1917 - 2012

I was shocked to learn that Sven Hassel had passed away aged 95 in Spain on September of 2012. This was with regret because I read so many of his stories in my youth. I thought them graphically compelling. I went from horror to laughter because of Porta and Tiny plus many more of Sven Hassel's wonderful friends.

Sven Hassel as a young soldier

Sven Hassel was a Dane who is believed to have fought in a penal battalion of the German Army during World War II. There is some controversy surrounding such claims and there are people that dispute him being in the Panzer battalions. Some of these people claim he got his notion for stories from veterans who fought upon the Russian Front. Some think he was in a collaborating Danish Nazi police force. There are all sorts of things said and claimed and no one seems to really know for sure. 

Most believe that Sven Hassel joined the German Army in 1937 and tried to go AWOL after a time. He was caught and put into a penal battalion and saw action in many parts of Europe during World War II. He was captured in Berlin in 1945 and interned where he began writing of the war.

From a movie of his book
Wheels of Terror

He wrote a story called Legion of the Damned which won international recognition. After this he began to write more with the same characters in different theatres of the war. After release from internment, Sven Hassel was considering joining the French Foreign Legion, but he met a lady who became his wife and she encouraged him in his writing. They moved to Spain after Sven recovered from a long spell of ill health.

Perhaps he found a winning formula with his  friends from Legion of the Damned because they become much more developed in other stories and we all come to love the same collection of the roguish characters of his books, which were believed to be based on real friends he knew during the war. Again some dispute this, but writers do use people they know, to develop characters in fiction. In Legion of the Damned we go through the war with terrible outcomes for many of Sven's much loved characters. In the other stories; they are set at events between the time of beginning and end of Legion of the Damned.

Indeed, Sven has his friends fighting in so many theatres of war that they could not have gone to all places from Russia to Western Front to Italy. However, his pulp war stories are very good with horror and brutality of war plus fabulous humour of his friends. Sven Hassel is among these soldiers writing in first person singular. He is not the main character but just an observer in the background running about with them most of the time. He also interacts with them, so his stories come across as memoirs.

The formula of writing that Sven Hassel uses makes for excellent reading and one does become immersed with this group of misfit soldiers that try to survive the Hell of a world gone mad. You feel for them and like them despite the wicked and cruel things they must do to survive. They are often governed by ruthless officers and on occasion do not hesitate to eliminate them if they are out in the wilderness. They also make wonderful friends who have tragic demises. The stories are very good and if his friends are real, and I like to believe they are; then I hope they are all living the laughter times somewhere else.

Web Site Value Calculation for

Web Site Value Calculation for

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Days-Thunder-Child/dp/1907140050

Tony Robinson Reflects British Taxpayer's Anger About the UK Banks

In the UK, there is a new scandal that has blown up concerning British banks. This threatens to rock the core of the British banking establishment and may cause criminal investigations into unlawful interest rate fixing. The consequences of this will anger the British public who have seen tax payers foot the bill for these failing banks. Above Tony Robinson reflects the angry mood of the British nation in Question Time.

Ghoulish Remains of Vampires Found by Archaelogists.

Bulgarian Archaeologists dig up Vampire remains

Since fictional knowledge of supernatural creatures, such as vampires, came into our minds through stories, etc; many of us have wanted to believe in such beings. Over time we have even twisted and re-fashioned them into anti-heroes, convincing ourselves they live among us secretly and preserve some strange good. We re-invent them as beautiful Gothic type creatures that we might want to fall in love with. I think some of these strange Goth dressed teenagers, of today, would run headlong into the path of a vampire to be bitten into the supernatural world of such beings. We even have loads of tv, books and film series based on such things. However, this is all fantasy, but the original folklore comes from rural Balkan people and their belief of such things. Vampires were very real, to these people, at one time, and because of such beliefs; they often did things from hysteria and panic concerning their conviction of vampires. 

In remote areas of Eastern Europe, the people have always harboured a fear and belief of vampires. Such creatures were not so pretty to the small perspective of peasant villagers and the remote type of world they lived in. Even up to a few decades past. Often people, believed to be vampires, were buried with stakes through their heart to stop them returning as undead supernatural beings. Often they were visualised as the rotting flesh of dead people walking about, but sometimes possessing abilities to portray an image of allurement to deceive a victim into thinking they were an image of love.

Recently in Bulgaria, archaeologists found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires. The discovery highlights the dreadful belief and practise common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.

People suspected of becoming undead (vampires) had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on living humans' blood.

Many such archaeological sites get unearthed in countries throughout the Balkan region as this area is home to a great number of vampire burial grounds.

In the photo at the very top of the blog, searchers came by two specimens in their graves, dating back to the Middle Ages, in the Black Sea town of Sozopol. The skeletons were stabbed with rods betraying a practise which was common in many Bulgarian villages up until around 1910 of the 20th Century. This is according to Bozhidar Dimitrov who is based at the National History Museum in the Bulgaria's capital city, Sofia.

People believed the stake would impale the undead to their graves thus preventing the 'believed' vampire  from leaving the grave at night to roam and terrorise the living.

In 2004, archaeologists discovered another six nailed-down skeletons at a site near the eastern Bulgarian town of Debelt. These ghoulish religious rites were also practised in neighbouring Serbia and too.

Vampire legends form an important part of the region's folklore. The most famous tale is that of Romanian count Vlad the Impaler, known as Dracula, who staked his war enemies and drank their blood.  Also a Hungarian Countess that was tried for such things concerning bathing in virgin blood.

The myth inspired Irish writer, Bram Stoker, to create his legendary Gothic horror novel, Dracula, which was first published in 1897 and has since been turned into numerous film versions.

Shocking Blue - Venus - retro 1969

The late Mariska Veres was from Belgium and here she is in 1969 singing Venus with her band Shocking Blue. The song has been done by other bands since, but Mariska is still my favourite for this particular track. Good old sound of the retro sixties and I'm sure there are many of you out there that can go back and remember these times of a rather rummy decade. Click and enjoy...  :)

Vampire - good or bad you decide.

There seems to be a big market in Vampire stories at the moment and this, of course, has happened before. It will pass go full circle and come back again. These supernatural beings are becoming more like anti-heroes in some sagas as opposed to the demonic blood sucking beings that usually have been. They are cropping up in teenage stories, being good guys that still need to drink blood but take it in other ways. There have been police detective TV series where vampires help solve crimes, fall in love with humans - the list goes on. I think the public will never tire of vampires - good or bad - you decide.