Dkish

I have been wanting to see a huge blockbuster FLASH film since I was a little boy. I went on the journey with Barry Allen through the eyes of Carmine Infantino. I witnessed his death in Crisis. I saw the rise of Wally West in his own series. The Flash was a comic I loved the most.

Why the Flash? Because he was a normal guy got chosen with that lightning strike to make the world a better place. He wasn't a millionaire, amazon, alien or god. He was just a guy racing to catch up. He wasn't perfect either. Wally West the character was deeply flawed.

Flash forward past the 1990s TV series and the Grant Gustin series to the Snyderverse and the insanity that was Zack Snyder being unleashed onto the DCU.

This version of the FLASH kind of reminds me of what Ben Affleck's Daredevil tried to do with that character. It jumped right into the hero's biggest story without warning. Since the Gustin series had been going strong for 9 years, the film relied on that public knowledge to go big or go home.

Put aside Ezra Miller's controversial public life, he does a great job here playing his version of Barry stuck in two different times in their life. The effects on The Flash, the suit and humor were all great. The now controversial "ChronoBowl" was an interesting choice but also seemed doom for failure. (To be honest, The Arrowverse did a better job of explaining the multiverse and including legacies) In this cut of the film, Sasha Calle and Michael Keaton are completely wasted. Ezra Miller's performance is the best part of the film. This is by far THE FLASH film I dreamed of but they did their best with the insanely crowded and oversaturated superhero world we are now in.

Based on the classic 1873 gothic novel, CARMILLA, this Hammer vampire film features an aristocratic female vampiress and her family seducing traveling nobles. Peter Cushing returns to Hammer as The General and once more finds himself fighting to forces of darkness. It has that quaint yet Hammer horror style. Titillating but reserved and always focused more on the story than being than trying to overtly steamy or sadistic. I think this was the first obvious mainstream lesbian vampire film. And like other films of the period, lesbianism is treated as a sick perversion. Vampirism was often used as a metaphor for hiding a deviant behavior. This is a great sister film for HAMMER's DRACULA films even if it's based on other subject matter. I am a huge fan of HAMMER and even favor their DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN series over the more popular UNIVERSAL MONSTERS. I just wish they had made better werewolf films.

A beautiful newlywed couple are seduced by a vampiress and her companion during the off-season at the Dutch coast. Both parties hold deep dark secrets and as their connection intensifies so does the dread. It kind of reminds me of the underrated Paul Schrader film, Comfort of Strangers, where a couple see perfection and only seek to possess it or destroy it. It stays that course until the midpoint of the film. Then it turns into a whole other animal. The performance of star Delphine Seyrig is mesmerizing as she channels the enigmatic screen presence of legend Cathetine Deneuve. You also get strong performances from Canadian beauty Danielle Ouimet and creepy John Karlen (who looks like the son of Joe Pantliano and Klaus Kinski). It's a weird erotic multi-layered French horror film.