Black Gate

Only Lovers Left Alive (Sony Pictures Classics, April 11, 2014)

Last week as I did research for my article about the upcoming reimagining of The Bride of Frankenstein, I stumbled across a vampire movie I had not only never seen but had never heard of, and the rarity of this occurrence cannot be understated. Vampires are my favs and though my crappy memory for names and dates means I’ll never consider myself an expert in the genre, I am proud to say that my experience of them in literature, movies, and folklore is pretty darn comprehensive. So, when I found the movie Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), there was nothing for it but to cancel all plans for the evening, order Door Dash, and tuck in to stream this title which had somehow eluded me for ten years.

The first thing to love is that the film cast was comprised of some incredible actors. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston play the two main characters Eve and Adam. But then there is Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland), the late great Anton Yelchin (Star Trek and Fright Night), Jeffrey Wright (Westworld), and the extraordinary John Hurt. The writer/director is Jim Jarmusch, who was also responsible for the zombie spoof movie The Dead Don’t Die (2019), which also starred Swinton, and who according to Jarmusch’s bio, is a bit of a muse of his.

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Much like fashion, movie themes come in repeatable waves, and if you wait long enough everything that was called “classic” will eventually come back around. Such seems to be the case with the classic movie monsters, originally made famous in the 1930’s and 40’s by Universal Studios. Recently we’ve seen The Invitation and The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Dracula), The Cursed (werewolf), and Birth/Rebirth (Frankenstein), but frankly, there are a whole list of projects currently in production which pay homage to the originals. Of late there have been industry announcements around titles such as Frankenstein vs Dracula, This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, and Feed to name a few. So, if you’re wondering if the bride of Frankenstein’s monster is going to get any love in the modern age, I’m here to tell you that she is.

A couple weeks back MovieWeb announced that Maggie Gyllenhaal was set to step behind the camera as the director of a remake of Bride of Frankenstein. Christian Bale was announced to be playing Victor Frankenstein, alongside Peter Sarsgaard (Gyllenhaal’s hubby) in a yet-to-be named starring role. There are rumors that in addition to directing, Gyllenhaal herself might play Elsa Lanchester’s iconic character, but I can’t find anything to substantiate this. The project, which is said to be titled The Bride, is set up at Netflix.

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If you’ve hung around here for a while, then you know how I feel about tampering with classics. We’ve had some close calls in the past. For instance, around 2014 and then again in December of last year, there was a lot of buzz around remaking Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Frankly I’m still holding my breath hoping this one doesn’t actually happen, since as late as January of this year there was still Hollywood scuttle that Michael Bay would direct Scarlett Johansson in a reboot. 2016 saw remake rumors for, wait for it… Gone with the Wind, which were thankfully also gone just as quickly. I mean, some things just need to be left alone, I don’t care how desperate the entertainment industry is for material.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to classic horror. I cut my tiny goth girl fangs on Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney who starred in the most classic of classic monster movies. But revisiting Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man in contemporary times has usually been done in films I’ve looked forward to. I guess it is because the monsters themselves have been ingrained in our collective conscience for so long, that it seems okay to update their stories for new generations of audiences. Which is why I’m on the fence about the news I am about to share.

When The Exorcist first hit screens in December 1973, it was late and over budget. No one, not even the studio, expected it to be successful. Instead, it became the first official horror blockbuster, driven by not only its shock-value, but by the stories of audience members going screaming out of theaters, or being sick in the aisles. In fact, there is a fascinating short film available on YouTube which documents the audience reactions.

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Forgive me if I’m a bit jaded when it comes to writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s announcements. Sometime back I stopped talking about the numerous horror-related projects he announced over the years including a scary adult-version of The Haunted Mansion, a sequel to Pan’s Labyrinth, and a film adaptation of Dan Simmons’ novel Drood. Why? Because almost as soon as the news hits, it is followed by a retraction. There is even a Wikipedia page dedicated to del Toro’s “unrealized projects,” (30 by the way) which is a nice way of listing out all the times he ghosted us.

But here I am again, about to give you details on an upcoming del Toro project I am too excited about to keep to myself. And the reason I’m going out on this limb one more time is that there are reasons to believe this one might happen.

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I’m not sure what to think about this, so I’m asking all of you.

To begin, let’s base this discussion on two facts. First, with the 2019 acquisition of Fox, Disney became the owners of the long-running Alien sci-fi franchise. Second, in 2012 Ridley Scott, who created the original masterpiece that was Alien (1979), decided to leap back in after five other directors had a go at some portion of the story. This effectively scuttled the planned Alien movie we all deserved, which would have been a sequel to Aliens directed by Neill Blomkamp and would have ignored the movies which followed Aliens. This story would have reunited Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Hicks (Michael Biehn), and probably would have been awesome.

Instead, what we got was Sigourney Weaver permanently bowing out from the franchise, and two prequels from Scott, which were anything but awesome. Though nostalgia and eternal optimism caused die-hard fans to make Prometheus (2012) a technical box office hit ($130M budget against a $403M take), we’d learned our lesson by the time Alien: Covenant came around in 2017. It was considered a disappointment by Hollywood standards, bringing in less than half the ticket sales as its predecessor. Personally, I wished Scott would have kept his hands to himself.

Now, with this in mind, we have the news I’m about to share.

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