What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

What We Do In The Shadows: written and directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi; starring Jemaine Clement (Vladislav), Taika Waititi (Viago), Jonny Brugh (Deacon), Cori Gonzalez-Macuer (Nick), Stu Rutherford (Stu), Ben Fransham (Petyr), and Jackie van Beek (Jackie) (2014): Hilarious fake documentary from the people who brought you Flight of the Conchords centered on the exploits of four vampires rooming together in the Greater Wellington Area of New Zealand. There are jarring moments of violence throughout, but the movie overall is surprisingly genial in its portrayal of the vampires and their kith and kin. 

One of the things that makes the movie so enjoyable is its rigorous attention to the details of living as a vampire, spun at most points for maximum hilarity. It's hard to groom when you can't see yourself in a mirror, for instance, and for a young vampire, learning to fly can be a real hassle. The vampires are aware of fictional constructions of their habits -- they even crib one bit of hypnotic shenanigans from The Lost Boys, all the while mispronouncing 'spaghetti' as 'basgetti.' 

The laugh-out-loud moments are often truly gross -- Dandy vamp Viago's problems with tapping the vein of a victim lead to an awful lot of spurting blood, while new vamp Nick learns the hard way why vampires shouldn't eat chips. Meanwhile, 8000-year-old Petyr lurks in the basement listening to his headphones and refusing to attend house meetings. But he's a good listener!

I mean, really one wishes a 'serious' vampire movie would be this well-thought-out. The writers know their vampire mythology. But they also work some ridiculous changes on their sources, whether it's through Vlad's problems with shape-shifting or the eternal war between vampires and werewolves. What We Do In The Shadows is a sheer delight. Leave your reflection at the door. Highly recommended.

Hungry Like The Wolf, Man

The Wolf Man, written by Curt Siodmak, directed by George Waggner, starring Lon Chaney Jr. (Larry Talbot), Claude Rains (Sir John Talbot), Bela Lugosi (Bela), Maria Ouspenskaya (Maleva), Evelyn Ankers (Gwen), and Ralph Bellamy (Colonel Montford) (1941): One of the high points of the Universal monster movies of the 1930's and 1940's. Trimmed to the bone (70 minutes of running time) and smartly suggestive rather than explicit, The Wolf Man follows Lawrence Talbot,an affable Americanized second son returning to the family estate somewhere in England after 18 years away because of the death of his brother at the paws of...a werewolf!

Shape-changing hilarity soon ensues as Talbot gets bitten by a Gypsy werewolf named Bela, played by Bela Lugosi. Soon, Talbot is turning into a werewolf and threatening new gal pal Gwen and pretty much anyone else who goes outside during a full moon. For the purposes of the movie, a full moon lasts three days. Werewolfery isn't super-precise.

The Wolf Man pretty much invented many of the werewolf tropes that writers and film-makers now treat as myth-based, including the bipedal, clothes-wearing version of the werewolf, which bears no resemblance to any man-wolf of the past. We also get the famous werewolf rhyme, and an iconic performance by Maria Ouspenskaya as an old Gypsy woman who knows a lot about werewolves.

Lon Chaney Jr. wasn't a great actor, and he was always overshadowed by the achievements of his 'Man of a 1000 Faces' father, Lon Chaney Sr.. He's a bulky, affable presence, though, and the film plays to that, making him a bewildered innocent doomed by chance. Well, sort of doomed. There were still a lot of sequels to be made. Claude Rains is nifty as always playing Larry Talbot's father, whose telescope gives us a comedy scene that's probably a lot funnier and creepier now than it was in 1941. Recommended.