Todd’s Serial Blog

If you are a fan of the original Green Hornet radio show, the Univeral serials, or the 60’s TV show, then the new version by Seth Rogen is not the movie for you, less a superhero movie than a buddy cop comedy with lots of car chases and shootouts while the two heroes bicker with each other in the best bromance tradition.  If on the other hand you are a fan of such cult favorites like Big Trouble in Little China and the Evil Dead series, or Rogen’s Pineapple Express, then you might like it.

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There was a big splash on the message boards last month about the redesign of VCI’s website, Gravy over at the Balcony thought it was great.  Me, not so much.  Looking at it from Gravy’s viewpoint it is a nice redesign with a bigger selection of genre’s. Where before you had three, Westerns, Serials, and the rest; it would have been a chore going through the catalog to find what you are looking for.  Now you have a quicker method if you are looking for Science Fiction or Animation.  For the overall film fan this is a true improvement.

But the one type of fan that has gotten screwed is the Serial fan.  There isn’t a section of serials.  If you want to find a serial you have to know what category it fits into, some are easy like Buck Rogers and Adventures of Red Ryder, obviously Science Fiction and Westerns, but the others seem to be put in arbitrarily, all of the Zorro titles are in Action/Adventure and Return of Chandu is in Mystery/Suspense.  For someone looking for just a serial, you have to know exactly what you are looking for and where VCI decided the category that it fits.

I also haven’t been able to check out all of the catergories, my computer is a netbook and the site’s pages don’t fit, and there are no bars to scroll over to the left or right, so shorter words on their navigation are cut off and impossible for me to access.  So for me the redesign is a big disappointment.

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For my last selection for Halloween, I’m going to go with a real action packed extravaganza, Santo and the Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolf Man, a fun and action packed Luchadores enmascarado film for lovers of cheesy horror and wrestling.  I know I had another film high lighted a couple of weeks ago that starred a masked wrestler, but since The Batwoman didn’t star a real wrestler and there was almost no actual wrestling in it, I don’t count it.

In this film when Count Dracula rises from his grave, Santo is contacted by a family who have been targeted by the king of the vampires due to an ancestor being responsible for his last staking. Santo immediately comes to their aid along with The Blue Demon (on screen friends, off screen rivals). After his minions have an unsuccessful encounter with the famous Luchadores, Dracula calls up his own tag team partner, Rufus Rex, the Wolf Man.

Getting crafty, Rex, in his human guise, manages to seduce a mmber of the family and get her into the woods on the night of the full moon.  After she is killed, Dracula raises her as an undead slave and uses her to lure her ten year old daughter to him so that he can sacrifice her to Satan and damn her soul forever.  In between wrestling matches and games of chess, Santo and Blue manage to track Dracula to his lair where they take on a score of vampires and werewolves, showing that they are no match for Santo’s Camel Clutch and Blue’s Octopus Hold.  In the final showdown, Blue defeats Rex and Santo throws Dracula into a stake filled pit saving the little girl and the rest of her family with enough time left over to get to the arena for that all important tag team match (shades of Phantom Empire anyone?).

This is the kind of film where you dn’t think too hard about what is really going on, you just sit back an enjoy the action as you see masked superheroes fighting monsters.  What more do you really need?

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