Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

Hey, you know that series of novels featuring impossibly gorgeous vampires that’s sold more copies than The DaVinci Code?

If you said “Twilight”, hang your head in shame and face the wall.

Hideyuki Kikuchi, as well as having a name that cheers you up when you say it, is the author of the Vampire Hunter D series, clocking in at a whopping 58 novels. The story tells the story of a “Dunpeal”, a half-human, half-vampire vampire hunter in the far, far distant future. It is also not, as I had assumed, a manga. I learned this when I ordered the first omnibus for research only to find myself holding a novel roughly the length of Lord of the Rings with four days before the review was due to go up.

My contribution to the male reading crisis notwithstanding today’s movie is the second anime adaptation of Vampire Hunter D; Bloodlust from 2000. The first was 1985’s Vampire Hunter D which I haven’t actually seen but sound off in the comments if you’d like me to cover it.

The reason I wanted to review Bloodlust (apart from needing something vaguely spooky for October) was that I’ve had the DVD for this sitting in my collection for around a quarter of a century and yet I’d only viewed it maybe once and I could remember precisely two things about it:

  1. It was one of the single most beautiful pieces of animation I’d ever seen.
  2. I didn’t really enjoy it.

But I’m older, wiser, greyer and more infused with a sense of apocalyptic dread now. Time for a reappraisal.

(more…)

Why I Love Playing: Fire Emblem

We.

Are.

So.

Fucking.

BACK.

Ha ha, you fools! This cute little blog series where I talk about under appreciated indie games was just a cunning ruse to lure you into a false sense of security. Now, you are trapped and I can reveal my true motive; evangelising for my favourite game series of all time; Fire Emblem.

Fortunately for me, we’re in one of those blessed periods of history where creator Intelligent Systems actually seem to know what they’re doing and I don’t really have to hard sell this. Fortune’s Weave has been out for a few weeks now and is good enough to make a body not regret dropping half a grand on a Switch 2 despite the fact that its technical improvements on the Switch 1 seem purely hypothetical.

Trust me, if I was trying to sell you on this series in the aftermath of Fire Emblem: Engage it would be much rougher sledding.

Jesus Christ. Were you designed to be viewed through 3D glasses?
(more…)

A Little Bit of Curry: Over the Garden Wall (2014)

And so we come to the end of Shortstember 2026 and we close out with a Tim Curry performance that we’ve actually already covered on the blog; his voicing of Aunty Whispers in 2014s Over the Garden Wall.

This role, obviously, has historic significance as it was Curry’s first role after his near fatal stroke in 2012. And, on the one hand it is definitely noticeable. Curry’s delivery has utterly changed and if you didn’t know it was him voicing the character you probably would never guess. All the more incredible then that we have yet another case of Grand Theft Curry, with Curry managing to be quite possibly the best element in the entire production, a production that absolutely bursting at the seams with fantastic actors giving fantastic performances.

Curry’s new voice, slower and weary sounding, perfectly brings to life the massive turtle-eating witch who may not be wicked exactly but has certainly found a way to turn this whole “girl lodger possessed by a man-eating demon” situation to her advantage.

What I find so heart-breakingly wonderful is that you can still hear the performance of a man who absolutely loves acting and who is having the time of his life. He knows how to wring just the right amount of camp menace out of each line. There is a wonderful sense of play with his deliver of “And no one shall be…devoured, tonight?”

He is relishing this role, as he relished every single role that ever crossed his agent’s desk.

I didn’t know Tim Curry and it’s always important to remember that, no matter how big a presence in our lives an actor has you never really know them. All I can give you is the impression that his work left me with.

That this was a man who loved his life. I cannot imagine Tim Curry getting up in the morning and saying “fuck, I have to act today”. This, I think, was a man who got to spend his life doing something that made him happy.

Good for him.

“Oh, God. That’s awful. That’s never gonna work.”

It’s actually quite hard to pin down when Supergirl first appeared as a character because, once you have Superman, the idea of Supergirl already exists in a conceptual form and it’s just a matter of time before someone puts pen to paper and actually draws her. There were several Supergirls and Superwomen before the one everyone is familiar with, and even more after her. Sometimes she’s the future daughter of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Sometimes she’s a fallen angel. Sometimes she’s an alien shapeshifter or a refugee from an alternate reality. And sometimes she’s Claire Kent, the identity Clark took on when he was changed into a woman by an alien witch as punishment for being sexist.

Man, those are some woke rural Kansans in the fifties. Good for them.

But the most famous and long-lasting version of the Maid of Steel debuted in Action Comics in 1959 drawn by Al Plastino and written by Otto Binder, who I don’t think gets enough credit for being a genuine trailblazer in terms of creating female superheroes. He also created Mary Marvel for Fawcett and Miss America for Marvel (confusing, I know).

This version, Kara Zor-El, the blonde teenage cousin of Superman, has endured as one of the most popular and iconic female superheroes in the medium probably second to only Wonder Woman (at least prior to the MCU). And, like most long-running superheroes she’s undergone many changes in her portrayal. Early on she was depicted as essentially her cousin with a higher hemline but modern stories have leaned into the interesting wrinkle of Kara actually being raised on Krypton and having a much more alien perspective on Earth than the All-American Clark.

She’s a fascinating character with a rich history who deserves a great movie.

What she got was one of the WORST MOVIES EVER MADE.

(more…)

A Little Bit of Curry: Peter Pan and the Pirates (1990)

I have, as regular readers of this blog know, strong feelings on JM Barrie’s seminal masterpiece Peter Pan and Wendy and its many adaptations.

Peter Pan and the Pirates was an animated series that ran on Fox Kids from 1990 to 1991 and, like all animated adaptations had to contend with comparisons to the Disney version of the nineteen fifties. This obvious comparison (and, I suspect, a desire to avoid leaving blood in the water for Disney’s lawyers) is why we get some of the most radical visual departures from how these characters are usually portrayed with the biggest change doubtless being the series’ depiction of one Jas. Hook.

Now, I’ll be honest I really don’t like this design. I get that the white hair and the black outfit is a deliberate subversion but the hook and crossbones on his his hat is goofy and his face looks more like a background henchman than a devious pirate king.

But, my God, none of that really matters because the creators got Tim Curry to voice him and we get probably the single best depiction of Captain Hook in any medium. I personally prefer Jason Isaacs because he looks perfect but Curry just eats this part alive.

And the great thing is, that for once the writers seemed to realise the gift they’d been given and they proceeded to give him Shakespeare. The writers delighted in giving Curry the most verbose, beautifully ornate dialogue and letting him go to town.

But for all the fun (and it’s is very, very fun), Curry gets at the darkness and majesty of the character in a way that very few actors have.

In the episode Ages of Pan, Peter succeeds in trapping Hook, tying him to a tree and threatening to kill him with a crossbow. And Hook faces him, entirely unflinching, and psychologically destroys him with words alone.

This? This is what Hook should always be.

Evil, Sexy, Evilly Sexy or Funny Accent?: Mostly evil, with a soupcon of Funny Accent given how he pronounces boy as “boi” like he’s on Total Request live circa 1998.

Get 25% of Help! I’m Being Eaten by a Bear!

Hello, hello! My next picture book, Help! I’m Being Eaten by a Bear! is going on sale 3rd of November and you (yes YOU!) can preorder it from Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/help-im-being-eaten-by-a-bear-neil-sharpson/1149062217?ean=9780593616703. Use the code PREORDER25 and tell ’em mouse sent ya. I’m really proud of this book which was illustrated by the amazing Dan Santat who also illustrated my last book, Don’t Trust Fish.

“Gee Mouse, isn’t that your picture book that has now spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list?”
“I know, I know, so humbing.”
“Gee Mouse, didn’t you once tell me that the New York Times bestseller list is an opaque elitist metric whose connection to either raw sales or artistic merit is tenuous in the extreme?”
“That was old, loser Mouse. His opinions mean nothing!”

Get Help! I’m Being Eaten by a Bear!

Sorry, I meant, get the book. I’m not actually being eaten by a bear and you don’t have to get help.

The Day the Earth Blew Up and Coyote Versus ACME

Since the nineteen sixties Warner Bros has had what must be a uniquely frustrating problem:

They own some of the most beloved and iconic cartoon characters in history but have no viable format with which to use them. The Looney Tunes were the absolute masters of the theatrical animated short, which these days is like being the world’s best court jester. Impressive, but how exactly does one make money from that?

Each one of these characters was honed by a process of rigorous cinematic evolution for one purpose; deliver as many fantastic gags as possible within a seven minute span. And, like any creature that evolved for a super-specific niche, they don’t handle changes to their environment well.

Part of the problem is that their style of comedy is primarily visual. Oh sure, there’s plenty of great verbal comedy but the bulk of the laughs come from Mel Blanc’s delivery and some of the most sublime animation ever put to film. And you’re just not going to get that on a TV animation budget. Especially not Mel Blanc.

As for movies, Warner Bros have tried to make the Tunes work in feature animation for decades. These were usually anthology films, taking several classic shorts united by a common theme (horror, sci-fi, show-biz) and weaving them into a loose narrative. At their best, these films are fine. But they are very obviously classic cartoons interspersed with visibly weaker animation and an audibly older and tireder Mel Blanc. They don’t really work as movies and that comes down, fundamentally, to just the different nature of how Warner Bros crfated these characters compared to, say, Disney.

(more…)

A Little Bit of Curry: Fern Gully (1992)

“Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them” said the great Christopher Lee and Tim Curry probably followed that advice better than any actor barring Lee himself.

Which is not to say that Fern Gully is terrible. It’s a well animated, tonally uneven, achingly sincere environmental parable suffering from a chronic case of Aladdin envy but there are worse things in this life.

EDIT: Well smack my buttocks and call me Susan, I had remembered this movie as coming out after Aladdin and assumed that it had been chasing its coattails with Robin Williams given free reign as a comedy sidekick (and also having Douglas Seale playing the female lead’s cuddly bearded father). But no, Fern Gully actually beat it to theatres by half a year. Thanks to Torchesandaardvarks, Ian David and Abigail Kane for pointing this out.

But this movie (Curry’s first animated feature role) is a great showcase of Grand Theft Curry, the phenomenon of Tim Curry walking into a project and just running away with it. He is the best thing in this movie and it’s not even close.

Fern Gully takes place in the titular Australian rainforest which is ruled over by lovely fairies living in harmony with nature. But a logging company starts cutting down trees including one which just happens to contain Hexxus, the imprisoned spirit of destruction voiced by one Timothy James Curry.

The joy here is that Curry gets to play all his greatest hits. Hexxus starts off as a little, almost cute goo creature, transitions to a lantern jawed, breathy-voiced smoke monster and ends as an absolutely terrifying burning black skeleton. It’s an escalating rollercoaster of comedy, sensuality and menace. It’s basically a speed-run of his entire career in one movie.

Oh, and he gets the best song in the whole movie and audibly orgasms twice.

If they didn’t want him to, they shouldn’t have hired him.

Evil, Sexy, Evilly Sexy or Funny Accent?: Yes.

A Little Bit of Curry: The Greatest Adventure (1985)

So how did Tim Curry, camp icon and transgressive titan of pop culture get his start in animated voicework? Where did he begin? Voicing a drag queen serial killer in some seedy Ralph Bakshi picture?

No, he got his break in straight-to-video Christian media.

Don’t try to put him in your little boxes.

The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible was a series animated by Hanna Barbera which had three children from the modern day travelling back in time and meeting various figures from the Bible. And holy shit, this thing had a STACKED cast! Rob Paulsen, Alan Oppenheimer, Ed Asner, Jeffrey Tambor, Helen Hunt, Helen Slater…TONY JAY AS CAIPHAS?!

EDWARD FUCKING JAMES FUCKING OLMOS AS PHAROAH!?

YES! AND IT IS AS PERFECT AS IT SOUNDS!

But, anyway, you knew as soon as I said it who Curry ended up playing. Come on. You knew.

“Plaaaaay me the best soooooong in the world. Or I’ll eat your souls.”

It’s often been said that Morgan Freeman is the Voice of God. As in, he’s just how people naturally assume God sounds like. I would like to propose Tim Curry as the Voice of Satan. There’s not really that much I can say about his performance as the serpent, suttlest beast in all the field.

“Do you have any…tattoos?”

I don’t know if I was expecting some sign of inexperience or roughness given this was his first voice role. But, no, he gives exactly the performance you’d expect and it’s pretty much perfect. No notes. I also do like that they gave him limbs. In Genesis, the serpent only became legless as punishment for tempting Adam and Eve which almost every depiction forgets, so kudos.

Apparently, Curry had such a nice time working with Hanna-Barbera that he decided that voicework was definitely his bag. Hallelujah.

Now, all that’s left is to categorise this in one of the four categories of Tim Curry performance.

Evil, Sexy, Evilly Sexy or Funny Accent?: Very much Evilly Sexy.