Thursday, April 27, 2006

William Shatner’s Full Moon Fright Night – Vampire Journals – 1997

     You know, Charles Band is a genius. Here’s his great idea. William Shatner as a horror host. I guess these must have run on the SciFi Channel at some point, because he keeps saying “On SciFi”. But Will as a horror host is inspired genius!  He is the perfect combination of ham and comedian. With his standard delivery. And giant headed straight man, its perfect.

And the movie is just right, too. It’s a vampire flick shot in Budapest, like the Subspecies series. They were cheap when they were made, and are perfect fare to be interrupted by Shatner turning into a vampire every fifteen minutes.

But I don’t know how this could have been shown on the SciFi channel. There’s boobage and a decapitation within the first 15 minutes. As we used to say on the sub “Tit in the first reel!” But that doesn’t seem like a standard cable offering. Well, maybe it was late at night, or maybe they added the scenes for the DVD. In either case, this is better than what you usually see on SciFi.

There’s no subtitles or commentary on the disc, but there are some featurettes. A behind the scenes Video Zone, an interview with Stan Lee (not sure how it fits into a vampire movie), and a program about the 2005 Full Moon Road Show. There are plenty of scenes from the Dallas stop. And speaking of stop, if you freeze frame at 2:23, you are looking at the lobby of the Lakewood. The guy with an arm outstretched in the upper right is me. My wife Laurel is below me about mid screen, heading in get us our seats while I pick up the adult refreshment. So now I’m on a DVD. For all of a second. Whee!

Four beers out of five. I hope they release more of these.