Screenwriting Movie Reviews

Polish-born actress Ingrid Pitt's erotically supercharged presence is the highlight of this double bill of vampire chills from Hammer Films. In Countess Dracula, Pitt stars as an aging noblewoman (inspired by the real-life Erzebeth Bathory) who discovers the secret to eternal youth in the veins of young virgins, while in The Vampire Lovers (based on J. Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla"), Pitt's sensuous bloodsucker seduces Hammer starlets Madeleine Smith and Kate O'Mara and incurs the vengeful wrath of Peter Cushing. Countess is the more sober of the two films, with Jeremy Paul's script and Peter Sadsy's direction playing out more like an Old Dark House mystery than Hammer horror, while Lovers' aims for comic-book thrills with plenty of nudity and violence (much of which was trimmed from the American version, but reinstated here); in both cases, Pitt's sexy/scary performances make this DVD a memorably viewing experience for vintage and new-school horror fans alike. --Paul Gaita

Minnie Driver stars as an impoverished Jewish woman, Mary, living in an emphatically anti-Semitic England in the mid-19th century. Following the murder of her beloved father--who leaves his survivors strapped with his debts--she camouflages her identity as a Protestant of Italian descent and takes a job as governess to an unorthodox Scottish family. In this film by Sandra Goldbacher, sundry conventions from Victorian novels mix with a contemporary, feminist take on Mary's subsequent adventures. Mary asserts, with some effort, her authority over her willful charge (Florence Hoath); she dodges the insults of a vaguely ghoulish matriarch (Harriet Walter); and she becomes an aide, confidante, and lover to the man of the house (Tom Wilkinson), a naturalist dabbling with early experiments in photography. Goldbacher fails to make it all feel as fully realized as it could be (much of the detail and soul of Mary's life in London is too telescoped and impressionistic to sink in). But the film's middle section, in which the heroine's complicity with Wilkinson's married character engages her keen intelligence as well as her untapped sensuality, is deeply felt. It's nice to see Driver prove she can carry a film, though the dreamy, exotic photography by Ashley Rowe certainly pulls a viewer along as well. --Tom Keogh

Charlie Chaplin's last film is the cinematic equivalent of Willie Mays staying too long in baseball--a sad farewell from someone who has clearly lost his touch. Marlon Brando (who famously did not get along with Chaplin and initiated, with this film, his curious habit of undermining his directors' best intentions) plays an American millionaire leaving Hong Kong to assume an ambassadorship. He discovers Sophia Loren--playing a daughter of Russian aristocrats and a former gangster moll--concealed in his closet onboard the outbound ship, hoping to gain passage to the States. Brando, looking none too pleased, agrees to help her, with not terribly comic or romantic results. Chaplin's one modestly clever touch is to have the camera rock gently and slowly back and forth, ostensibly emulating the movement of the luxury liner. The humor falls flat, Brando and Loren have no chemistry, and the story isn't terribly engaging. The former Little Tramp appears, mercifully briefly, as a seasick steward who opens and closes a door, swooning in between. Appropriately enough, in silence. --David Kronke