Blood Sucking Cinema

Movie: 3.5 out of 5
Produced in 2007 for the STARZ cable channel, Barry Gray’s documentary on “the origin and evolution of the vampire movie” sounds like an intriguing movie, especially when you consider the interviewed participants (John Carpenter, John Landis, Leonard Maltin, Joel Schumacher, the late Stan Winston, etc). Although the movie does trace the history of the vampire movie from F.W Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu through Underworld: Evolution, it really only focuses on the resurgence of the genre in the late 1980s to the present. The documentary glosses over the first 70 years of vampire films, devoting no more than 15 minutes to discuss and show clips from Nosferatu, Dracula (1931) and its many sequels, Mexican vampire movies, and the Hammer Studios series. Most of the interviewers have a lot of interesting things to say, but I would have preferred if this documentary spent a little more time on the Universal Monsters from the 1930s and 1950s, as well as the Hammer films, rather than just scratching the surface. Pardon the pun, but I wanted a bit more bite from this documentary. One thing to note regarding the film clips used in this documentary: much of the original music has been replaced, most likely due to rights issues.

Video: 4 out of 5
The 16:9 anamorphic widescreen presentation on this DVD was very impressive. Granted, the video quality of the film clips will vary, as expected, but the interview segments and the feature overall was crisp, clear, with little to no color bleed and really had to strain to see any compression artifacts.

Audio: 3 out of 5
The audio is on this DVD is a run of the mill stereo mix, which is adequate for a documentary of this type. Dialogue is clear, and the music is not overpowering.

Special Features: 1 out of 5
There are no special features listed for this DVD per se, but Anchor Bay did include the following trailers that will play automatically when the disc spins up: Dead Space: The Animated Movie, Dead Space: The Video Game, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, and Brutal Massacre. All except for Dead Space: The Video Game are presented in 16:9 widescreen, and Anchor Bay was generous to allow you to skip over by pressing the MENU button on your remote.

Overall: 3.5 out of 5 (not an average)
Although not quite as detailed as I had hoped for, Bloodsucking Cinema is not necessarily a bad documentary on vampire movies. This DVD would make a nice way to kick off your Halloween Fright Fest, or a good way to take a breather.