Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) and Adding Monsters to Established Stories

Since the inception of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, or near enough to the beginning for it to count as the beginning, I have been a large proponent of retelling stories in a new fashion.  Most stories end up being a retelling of something already covered in a movie or book previously.  The effort and originality at this point in time mainly comes from changing the story up in a way that makes it feel new again.  If an unoriginal story can be told in an original way, the person behind making it so deserves recognition and praise.  It takes courage and talent to pull it off in a successful way.

More recently, a trend in updating stories has begun that is not a simple modernization of old material, or a change of setting.  This trend changes large elements of the original story to create something almost wholly new.  Something is added into the story to make it more rambunctious, more kinetic, more frenetic.  Action is infused into a story that does not necessarily involve action, and this action revolves around the concept of monsters.  That’s right, many writers in the movie industry are trying to find ways in which to bring classic stories into the limelight again by tossing some monsters into them.

The first of these films that comes to mind is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter which is based on the book by Seth Grahame-Smith.  It tells a story about Abraham Lincoln’s secret life as a vampire hunter, which was still going on while he was president.  I haven’t read the book or seen the movie so I can’t go into too much detail on what happens in the new version of Lincoln’s life.  I can tell you for a fact that in reality, Abraham Lincoln was not actually killing vampires while campaigning for presidency or while he was president.  That’s because vampires do not exist.  What I can do for you is go into some sort of detail about a movie that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter inspired.

The Asylum is a movie company that always jumps on the chance to make money off of what seems like a big ticket property.  When the movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was nearing its release, The Asylum released a movie on home video titled Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.  It retold Abraham Lincoln’s secret monster-hunting life, except this time it had zombies instead of vampires.  It ended up being one of the better Asylum movies that I have seen.  But it wasn’t exactly true to the life of Abraham Lincoln.  There were characters in the movie such as a child Theodore Roosevelt who surely never met Abraham Lincoln while hiding from zombies.  The closest that those two ever came to meeting was Teddy Roosevelt watching Lincoln’s funeral procession.  Of course, a movie about a zombie-hunting president is not about the historical accuracy.  It is about the fun, and boy, this movie was fun to watch.  It’s been a while since I saw it, but I had a good time with it.

Another movie I had a good time with that uses this same monster addition to an old tale is this week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.  Released in the year 2001, the movie takes the popular biblical figure and places him in present day Canada.  It does not really tell the same story as the Bible; instead, the movie shows Jesus Christ saving the lesbians of Ottawa from the vampires that are out to kill them.  That’s right.  You read that correctly.  Jesus Christ takes down some lesbian-hating vampires.  He uses his martial arts skills to do it, and gets help from a motorcycle riding Mary Magnum and a wrestler named Santos.  The movie is a mixture of martial arts, music, and farce.  It also takes a very old tale and puts a fun new spin on it.

Finally, we come to a movie that takes a story that originally had monsters and only amped up the action to make a dark children’s tale into an all-out action film.  The movie that I’m talking about in this case is Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.  The original Hansel and Gretel story is about two children who end up lost in the woods and almost eaten by a witch.  In this re-imagining of the childhood classic, the two siblings become hunters who want to take down every witch that they discover.  They have guns and other weapons to help them in their quest.  It is an amped up version of the classic tale made for the short attention span of today’s audiences.  It’s more energetic to keep people interested in what is happening on screen.

There is also another Hansel and Gretel movie released by The Asylum with the subtitle Warriors of Witchcraft.  I haven’t seen the movie and it is not as big a name as some of these other movies so the most I am going to touch on it is to say that it exists.  I cannot go into detail about it because having not seen it leaves me at a loss of what the movie actually is.

Each of these movies has one thing in common.  They tried to freshen up an old tale, whether historical or fictional, by adding action and/or monsters.  Sometimes this melding worked and sometimes it didn’t.  But it always made for an interesting watch.  Seeing a new interpretation of a story that has been told numerous times throughout the history of literature and film is always interesting.  Even if the movie turns out to be bad, the fact that the idea was attempted is interesting in itself.

The concept of adding monsters into classic stories or historical events is one that excites me.  It gives a new way to tell a tale that has been told many times before.  I am a big fan of finding new ways to tell stories and think that a lot of originality in this day and age comes from the ability to do that.  Each of the movies that I wrote about in this post found a way to retell a well-known story in a new way, with monsters.  Some were more successful than others, but that’s how movies work.  And it’s the magic of movies that keeps me going.

There are some notes I have to give here:

• Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter was suggested for the Sunday "Bad" Movies by @filmslikedreams.
• In my post for Rise of the Zombies, I wrote about The Asylum and the “rules” to their movies.  In my post for Snakes on a Train, I wrote about my history with watching movies from The Asylum.
• I wrote about retelling stories in different settings and how that shows originality in my post for Jonah: A Veggietales Movie.
• My post for April Fools was about stories being repeated in different films.
• I watched a Hansel and Gretel movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that was titled Hansel and Gretel Get Baked.  It was one of four Hansel and Gretel movies released in 2013.
• Can you think of any other movies that take an old story and add monsters to make it more interesting?  Discuss them in the comments.
• If you have any suggestions for future movies to be included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, feel free to suggest them below.  Or you can contact me on Twitter to give me movie ideas.

Tokusatsu and Infra-Man (1975)

Every story has a beginning.  A love story begins with the meeting of two people who will eventually be together.  A sports story begins with the introduction of the team and players.  An adventure story begins with the hero setting off on their journey into the unknown.  Much in the same way, trends have a beginning to them that can be determined in some way or another.  There is the first time that something is made.  Yet, the true beginning of the trend is when that something gets done in a way that it becomes popular.

This brings me to this week’s story.  In Japan, one of the most popular forms of entertainment is something called tokusatsu.  Technically speaking, tokusatsu means live-action dramas that feature lots of special effects work.  That said, it generally means kaiju, superhero, and mecha dramas.  These are the shows and movies with giant monsters, robots, or people who fight each other. All of these beings are really people in suits kicking and punching each other.  But it makes for great entertainment and that’s the whole point of it.

The kaiju side of tokusatsu became popular through Godzilla and the movies in the Godzilla franchise.  People enjoyed watching a monster destroy Japan, even if the monster was a man in a suit.  Audiences ate it up.  They wanted to see more, and the studio obliged.  Toho created a giant franchise with many more monsters so that people could watch more destruction by men in suits.  Mothra, Ghidorah, and many other monsters would come into the franchise to give more variation in the monsters adding to the destruction in Japan.  Other studios also pushed out their own franchises of kaiju films.  Godzilla began it all though.

Superheroes were another bunch of movies in the tokusatsu films that have become quite popular.  Shows like Kamen Rider and Metal Hero helped to solidify this side of the subgenre in Japanese popular culture.  A single hero fighting humanoid monsters and saving the world from destruction is something that the Japanese latched onto and adored.  They launched a kaiju wave on television that is still happening.  They also helped spawn an international adoration of superheroes versus monsters that would last just as long as the Japanese wave.

Mecha dramas are an interesting group of productions.  The dramas center on people controlling large robots in order to stop monsters and other robots from destroying places.  They are the same sort of shows as many kaiju or superhero shows in Japan.  Giant Robo is one of the shows that used this particular offshoot of tokusatsu to find their place in Japanese culture.

Of course, many shows and movies did not stick to one segment of tokusatsu.  There were shows that mixed the kaiju, superhero, and mecha elements to make a blended product that could capitalize on all of the possible audiences.  The Super Sentai series was one of these shows.  There were teams of superheroes that would band together to fight of the kaiju attacking their homes.  They would be aided by robots and would use these mechanical elements to battle the larger kaiju.  In the Godzilla films, Mechagodzilla was introduced as a robot used to fight against Godzilla.  The different sides of tokusatsu blended together all the time.  There were also a bunch of Japanese series such as Dinosaur War Izenborg that added animation into the mix.  It was a subgenre that mixed many different subgenres.

Tokusatsu as a genre has also helped to inspire movies and television shows around the world.  Godzilla has spawned two American remakes.  VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs were both based upon different incarnations of Metal Hero.  And there were English dubs of various different shows and movies that attempted to get American interest in the style.  It didn’t always work.  When it did, it did though.

One of the movies I’ve already covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies was based on a tokusatsu property.  The aforementioned Dinosaur War Izenborg was adapted into film format in 1982’s Attack of the Super Monsters.  To call that an adaptation is not completely true.  The movie was a compilation of a few episodes of the television series, dubbed into the English language.  The basic concept of the series was that dinosaurs were not really dead and returned to attack Earth.  The Gemini Force, a team of four teenagers with superpowers, uses their skills and mechanical aids to stop the dinosaurs from succeeding in ending mankind.  It’s the blend of animation and tokusatsu style men in suits that makes for an interesting, though not all that entertaining watch.  That was my first foray into tokusatsu in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, but it wouldn’t be my last.

A few years prior to Attack of the Super Monsters or its basis of Dinosaur War Izenborg, there was a movie called The Super Infra-Man that was released.  Most people in North America that know of it know it as Infra-Man.  The movie was made in China in 1975 and took many of the elements of tokusatsu as its inspiration.  Infra-Man is a superhero who fights a bunch of monsters led by Princess Dragon Mom.  These monsters come in various sizes at different times in the movie.  The fighting is mostly martial arts, but also includes some effects for lasers and stuff.  It’s a well done non-Japanese tokusatsu movie that makes me wish they were still internationally popular today.

Yet neither of these compare to the popularity of the Power Rangers franchise, an American adaptation of the Super Sentai series.  Like VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs, Power Rangers uses the footage from the series that it is based on and puts American stories around it.  Much of the action is the Japanese footage, from the robots fighting the monsters to many of the scenes where the Power Rangers fight the minions of the antagonist.  The show has been around for twenty years and has spawned two movies, with a third currently in the works.

Tokusatsu has had a big influence upon the film world since its inception and rise to prominence.  The influence can still be felt in Hollywood today, with Godzilla and Pacific Rim recently being released, and each of those movies getting sequels in the future.  It is a style that found its place in the entertainment culture and managed to remain there.  Through the many things it inspired, it has continued to breathe life into movies and television alike.

And with that, I give you notes:

• Here’s the post for Attack of the Super Monsters, since I wrote about it in this post as well.
• Two other superhero movies I watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies were Superbabies and Metal Man.
• I’ve been watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on my other blog and thought I would link to that here.
• Have you seen any of the Japanese movies using the tokusatsu style?  Have you seen adaptations of the style from other countries?  How do you feel about them?  Tell me in the comments.
• If you have suggestions for movies that I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, put them in the comments or contact me on Twitter.  I’m going to be getting the next part of the schedule together pretty soon.

Second Viewings and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

As somebody who watches a lot of movies, I know that opinions can change over time.  Expectations going into a movie can make a difference on how a person feels while watching it.  The excitement that based upon watching a movie for the first time can cause them to forgive problems in the movie.  It could also go in the opposite direction and make them more critical of what is playing out before them.  Then there is the rewatch, an action that can drastically alter an opinion since many of the illusions of a first time watch are gone.

In order to fully dissect what makes the rewatch such an important part of movie watching culture, we must first examine the different ways in which a first time viewing can be affected.  The mindset of a person as they go into a movie for the first time can be greatly manipulated through many factors.  Some of the factors have a much larger influence than others.  The smaller factors might seem very minor; however, they still have an effect on a person prior to seeing a movie.  Thus, to understand how a rewatch can remove a lot of these factors, the factors must be known.

Major Factors

Media/Hype

Modern culture has become a barrage of advertisements pushing the capitalist ideals upon society.  That may sound obnoxious, but let me ask a question.  Do you know that Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out?  Sure you do.  The marketing team of Marvel studios has made it so that you know.  Through the announcement of the movie, the hiring of a director and cast, the trailers, and the name of Marvel, you have gained knowledge of the movie.  Many of you are excited for it.  All of these bits of information being released have built up the hype and rabid fervor for it.  Seeing a commercial for the movie while watching Big Brother or driving past a billboard on your way to work have also added into the cultural buzz for the movie.

The whole point of the media purchases, social media coverage, and news updates by studios about things that aren’t really news is to create hype around their movies.  They use the hype to create awareness and get people excited about their output.  They are heightening the expectations of their audience and hoping that the excitement will result in an influx of people going to the theater to watch their movie, and more people liking what they see.  How many people have already declared their love for Guardians of the Galaxy?  This proclamation was already being stated following the teaser trailer’s original release.  The sound of the “ooga-chaka” in Hooked on a Feeling managed to hook people in like a fish on a rod.  The first viewing for anyone within the first year of the film’s release will be drastically altered by this media assault.

Word of Mouth

You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can’t always pick a good movie based on the recommendations of your friends.  Hearing about a movie from a friend is a way to discover a movie you may not have known about.  Depending on their outlook on the movie, your expectations could get higher or lower than they would have been otherwise.  These expectations are a large part of what affects a first time viewing.  If the movie does not meet the expectations, it is a disappointment.  If it surpasses the expectations, the viewing goes well.  Either way, a person is greatly influenced by their friends’ opinions.

Word of mouth is an exceptionally large factor in creating the schedule for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Many of the choices made in the scheduling of films has to do with what the general consensus is.  If a movie has a bad reputation, I will watch it to see whether or not I agree.  People suggest movies, saying they are bad.  If I have not seen a movie, there are very few factors upon which I can base my choices.  Word of mouth seems like one of the better ways to choose because other people say it is bad.  And the reputation that the movies garner affects my first time viewing.  I go in expecting the worst of a movie.  I hope for the best though.  But my expectations of a movie are lowered simply by being told that the movie is bad.  Sometimes I end up agreeing that the movie is bad.  Other times, my expectations are lowered so much that I end up enjoying the movie and thinking it really isn’t bad at all.  Word of mouth in this day and age tends to be much more extreme than it was in prior times.  Movies are either great or terrible.  Many of the bad movie suggestions end up being alright and perfectly watchable.  The only reason they get suggested is the hyperbole.  The hyperbole affected my scheduling and affected my first watch.

Reviews

Much in the same way as word of mouth, reviews of movies that come out prior to a film’s release can leave impressions on the potential audience that could drastically change how the film is received.  Yet, the impressions that reviewers leave upon their own audience is greater than hearing about a movie from a friend.  A reviewer watches movies professionally, whether for print, websites, or audio formats.  The general population will take their opinion on a film much more seriously than they will Bob from three houses down who says that the new Uwe Boll movie kicks butt.

Spoilers

I am a big fan of knowing as little as possible when watching a film for the first time.  I like to let a film play out the way it is intended to, allowing the twists and turns to come to me unknown.  I like to discover the end of the movie at the end of the movie, and not before I’ve even sat down to watch the movie.  The reasoning behind this is that if I know the ending, I spend the whole movie trying to piece together how the movie gets from Point A to Point B.  It takes me out of the movie.  A movie is meant to be watched as a story, not dissected before the story has had a chance to play out.  Suspense and tension are ruined by knowing the results beforehand.  Twists and turns are no longer surprising.  If a main character dies, you don’t pull for them in the same way that you would not knowing about the death.

A first viewing is supposed to be about seeing something fresh.  Having a movie spoiled for you can greatly affect your mindset while watching a movie.  It kills anything that the movie is trying to build in terms of a tone or feelings.  Because you know the ending, you don’t get as invested in what is going on.  It makes that first time watch have less of an impact than if there was no foreknowledge.  Since you don’t know the entire story, you cannot re-experience what you already know.  You can only wonder when the bit that has been spoiled will happen.  It ruins the experience.

Known Property

Is a movie a remake, reboot, prequel, or sequel?  Is it based on a tv show, book, toy, game, or reality?  All of these things can affect how a person perceives a movie going into it.  Some of the issues of movies being a known property are that the story is already known and nostalgia may take over the viewers’ senses while watching the movie.  The nostalgia is the bigger factor in changing a viewer’s impressions of a film.  They remember something from their past and feel the desire to relive that moment in time.  Sometimes it makes them more forgiving because they get to feel like they did upon first experiencing the property.  Other times, if the property is changed too much from what they loved, they claim that someone is trying to insult their memories.  This outlook is because it brings back the feelings of those memories prior to seeing the movie, and thus a viewer will go into the movie with unrealistic expectations about what it will be.

There are also the opposite instances in which the audience goes into a movie expecting the worst because what the property is based on is not something that they liked in the first place.  That does not mean that they hated the source.  It only means that they expect the worst out of the new addition to the property.  Sometimes the movies end up being exactly what was expected.  Other times, they far surpass the expectations and end up being beloved movies.

Minor Factors

There are a few smaller factors when it comes to a first time watch.  Many of these minor factors are things that would still exist in a second watch and not be changed at all after watching a movie for the first time.  I’ll quickly list some of them and give a brief description of how they affect a first time watch, second time watch, or any watch thereafter.

• Time of Year – For theatrical releases, people have different expectations at different times of the year.  They expect the good, meaty, dramatic stuff and the large scope adventures to be near the end of the year.  They expect mindless, fun, action-based stuff to be during the summer.  And they expect bad movies to be in the winter.  Having a movie not fitting that loose framework can drastically change how a theatrical audience perceives a film.
• Mood – How a person feels when they watch a movie is important to what their outlook on a movie will be.  If you are sick, it will have an impact on your joy in watching something.  If you are depressed, you might not feel up for a raunchy comedy.  Your emotional state at the time of going into a movie can have a deep impact on how the movie affects you.
• Alertness – Much like with mood, how tired you are can change your feelings on a movie.  If you are wide awake, you can focus more on the movie and get a better understanding of the material.  If you are tired, important plot points and subtlety may fly right over your head and go unnoticed.
• Similar Movies – Having seen similar movies around the same time as the movie you are watching can make you feel burnt out on that kind of material.  You can only watch so many action movies where Bruce Willis saves the world before feeling like you don’t want to watch A Good Day to Die Hard.
• Title – You can’t judge a book by its cover, as much as you may want to.  In a similar vein, you can’t judge a movie by its title, but you do.  Hansel and Gretel Get Baked sounds like a ridiculous name.  The movie is still good.  You might think it won’t be because of the title.
• How You See It – The size of the screen, the people you are watching it with, the temperature of the room you are in, how comfortable the seating is… All of these things involved in how you watch a movie have an impact on the viewing itself.  They are things that can both distract and enhance the viewing of the movie.

Now that I have highlighted a lot of the factors that can have an effect upon a first viewing of a film, we can begin to look at how a second viewing can be much more effective in discovering whether or not you truly like something.  Most of it has to do with those major factors.  Why does a lot of it have to do with those things?  It’s simple.  Those major factors that I outlined in some detail all have an impact on the expectations of a viewer going into a movie.  Upon a second viewing, these expectations have been removed from the equation.

Going into a second viewing takes away the expectations that are put upon a viewer as a result of the factors I listed above.  Many of the minor factors remain.  Your mood will always affect how you view something.  The movies you watched around that time will always influence how much you appreciate the movie, especially if you’ve seen a bunch of similar movies.  How alert you are will always matter when it comes to your focus on the movie in front of you.  These factors can never be removed from the equation.

However, the media hype, the word of mouth, reviews, and spoilers no longer matter when you are rewatching a movie.  You know what the movie is from experience and can better appreciate the good or bad aspects of it.  No longer are you a victim of outside influence upon how much you should or should not like a movie.  The only influence remaining is your own influence based upon your first viewing.  With this in mind, a second viewing is an easier way to discover how much you actually like a movie.

It is easier to change your own opinion on something than to make up your mind based upon the outside sources telling you what you should or should not believe about a piece of art.  You are more willing to tell yourself that you were wrong about liking or disliking something than you are to toss aside the opinions of the masses.

I have learned this lesson a few times throughout the history of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Most recently, Jason Goes to Hell is a movie that I have grown to appreciate a little bit more upon a second viewing.  During the first viewing, I found it to be a strange bastardization of the slasher subgenre, melding science fiction into the horror in a way that didn’t seem right for the Friday the 13^th franchise.  The idea of Jason Voorhees switching bodies after being brutally murdered, only to find a way to come back into his own body seemed like a dumb idea.  I absolutely detested the movie.  On a rewatch, I still found most of the story dumb.  But I found that I could appreciate the fun of the craziness in the movie and I had a good time watching it.  The movie goes out of its way to become unrealistic ludicrousness.  It was a viewing that changed my outlook into liking the film.

The magic of rewatching something is discovering that your opinion on it can drastically change without having the influences of other people tickling at your brain.  It’s similar to when you stop caring what other people think about you.  You can begin enjoying what you enjoy without taking into consideration what everyone else thinks about it.  You can find those things that you missed the first time and love the movie for those bits and pieces.  Or you could discover that it doesn’t work on a second viewing because you know the twist ending.  Who knows?

In the end, the second viewing is the viewing where you can truly find your feelings about the movie.  Yet, with the amount of new movies being released every year, and the desire to watch these movies, it is sometimes difficult to find time to rewatch movies that you don’t immediately love.  The most significant viewing of a movie has seemingly been eliminated for the most part because of an oversaturation in the film market.  That’s another discussion for another day, though.

Yes, this was long.  I still have some notes:

• I mentioned the movie Hansel and Gretel Get Baked in the post, so I thought I should link to its post.
• I also mentioned Uwe Boll who directed House of the Dead, which was covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies a while back.
• Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is the second Friday the 13^th film to be covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The first was Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
• An actor named Richard Gant was in Jason Goes to Hell.  He was also in a movie called Ed.
• What are your thoughts on second viewings?  Do you only give movies you like a second watch?  Does your opinion of a movie ever change during a second viewing?  Comment below with your thoughts.
• Jason Goes to Hell was suggested by @ThatStevenC.
• If you have a movie you would like to see me cover for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, leave the title in the comments, or tell me about it on Twitter.