#dracula seems like the type who would enjoy creating as well as destroying

[asotin]

what're your thoughts on castlevania (the netflix show, not the game, ive never played the game) what do you like, what don't you like? make it as long as you want. i don't care if i have to scroll for 5 minutes. go feral (personally trevor is extremely hot and i would like to date sypha. i'm not really into alucard's whole sickly victorian child aesthetic, yknow?)

oh god this is way too long, but you did say to make it as long as i want, and i have a lot of thoughts that i need to inflict on the world

i played two castlevania games, both from the nintendo gameboy era, so please don’t get mad at me, gamers

details below the cut, but since i’ll be talking about season three, i need to preface this with content warnings for mentions of: graphic violence, rape and sexual violence, racism, and the holocaust

before i get into it, i usually don’t go for alucard-type characters either, but knowing that he was redesigned to be bishounen sexy specifically because the boring, middle aged man look he originally had in the games wasn’t appealing makes me enjoy him. and he’s fun with trevor and sypha

do like:

the voice acting

it’s all good. i can’t think of any characters whose voices were awkward or fit poorly. they don't make sypha’s va use the standard flat affect or false high voice women tend to be assigned, trevor sounds suitably worn out but not monotone, and alucard sounds exhausted but in a sexy way

and the spanish dub is killer, arguably superior

the animation & design

it isn’t full-on artsy, but it’s definitely got a distinctive style that’s easy to look at. the color use and effects are gorgeous. it’s a story set in the medieval era, and the mixture of desaturated and oversaturated elements works so well with that

dracula’s castle and the belmont bunker aren't revolutionary in design, but they didn't need to be. they're suitably creepy and empty, and i enjoyed them

the monsters were unique enough to have obvious different types, and the scene where a monster commits blasphemy in a church by accusing a priest of committing blasphemy was good writing

lisa

she shows up to a stranger’s spooky home and scolds him for being rude. she really looked an ancient vampire in the face, told him he had no manners, then had a kid with him. what a phenomenal woman. 11/10, no notes

“start with me, and i’ll start with you.” you know what? i’d fall in love, too

dracula

this ancient, unfriendly vampire let a human woman walk into his home and tell him he’s got no manners. and that made him fall in love with her. just like that. lisa walked in and handed him his ass, and dracula thought “oh i love her”. and when she was killed (more on this in the bad section), he raised literal hell to destroy the world for doing it

speaking of lisa being killed, it fucks me up that it happened because she convinced him to leave the castle and experience the world. he left her alone to see what she loved so much, only to come back and find that the people he’d come to like- the people lisa had loved so much it drove her to help in a way that got her killed- had burned her at the stake. i love a good tragedy, and that’s good tragedy

the way he weeps when he has to fight alucard?? during a showdown in their home?? the “i must already be dead” moment in alucard’s childhood bedroom??? when he speaks to lisa about killing their boy, her greatest gift to him??? poetic cinema.

the trio’s dynamic

three bisexuals with two total brain cells and only alucard bothers using them. incredible

i went so hard for this ot3. it's right there and so good

sypha

she initially seems to be assigned the role of the adult™️ ie she's the only woman and gets stuck being responsible, but surprise! she’s just as annoying and dumb as alucard and trevor. she dropped a castle she didn’t understand on the ground and didn’t think too hard about it. then she argued about breaking it. i love her

if we don’t get an ot3, then she needs to have a dumb gf

alucard

he's got a stupidly low neckline and lower pants. they really leaned into ayami kojima’s redesign, as they should have. his little curl annoys me, though. why the fuck does he have a random section of hair that’s like three inches long when the rest is shoulder length or longer? love that he really looks like lisa

if you say he's canonically bisexual and polyamorous, no he isn't. yes he is. no he isn't :)

trevor

disgusting. a nasty man whose appearance mirrors his state of mind. he's 50 mental illnesses in a dirty jacket and his coping mechanism is… alcohol? maybe? he’s a mess, and i dig it

him trying his trick of kneeing alucard in the balls during their fight? and finding out it doesn't work? (which…… why doesn't it……?) juvenile but suitable

hector

his love of animals makes him my favorite. normally, i won’t touch anything with this much animal death, but i’m willing to set that aside because hector loves them so much. he’s so sweet and kind, and he loves his monster pets

yes he sided with dracula and has some really fucked up ideas about what constitutes humane treatment of people, and yet i love him. 11/10, but i have a lot of notes

isaac

i support him, including his murdering and his decision to support dracula. dracula throwing him out of the castle to save him was so cruel in that it was an attempt at kindness from a man who hated the whole world, but it was against isaac’s wishes

his time with the captain was great

idk enough about islam to know if he's portrayed correctly and haven’t seen any complaints, but given the show’s track record……… i wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not great

the forging

very cool. fresh and interesting! hector creating pet friends is cute and heartbreaking. love isaac for his dedication to reducing, reusing, and recycling

season 2’s big battle with all those vampires

the new version of “bloody tears” is phenomenal

this goes back to the animation, but listen……. it's so good. i loved the smoke vampire, and alucard’s fluid wolf transformations. his flying sword looked really good, and incorporating them together? super good to watch. and trevor’s whip?

the type and level of violence are suitable for what it is. it would be weird for a gritty show like this to be bloodless, but i don't think it would work if it were bloody to the extent of a slasher. it's also more clean violence, if that makes sense. you don’t linger just to look at gore; you see it because stabbing someone spills blood. the games weren't about extended, gritty scenes of realistic murder, so the show sticking with quick, slice and dice type fights fit with what i remembered of them

please watch this fight if you don’t remember it or haven’t seen it (part 1, part 2)

trevor’s whips

trevor’s weapons don’t follow the physics of normal whips, and they shouldn't. they’re heavily stylized and clearly a fantasy weapon, but they still have rules that they (mostly) have to obey. his morning star-whip hybrid in particular is so good 

it’s easy to follow, too. a lot of times, speedy weapons disappear, which is an understandable effect but one i find boring because there’s nothing for me to do. i’m just sitting on my ass with nothing to do

trevor’s whips don’t disappear. they’re fast, but you can always see them. and they have weight! you can see them slow down and gain speed. i don’t need physics to be real; i want movement to be pleasing, and that’s exactly what i get with the whips

don’t like:

fridging lisa

she could have been kidnapped (possibly make dracula think she was dead bc people want to lure out her scary demon husband, idk), then s2 could have ended with her and dracula reuniting as he died. she and alucard go on a trip together to attempt to make amends for the pain dracula wrought in lisa’s name. orrrr she dies a tragic death with him and we’re left to hope that they find each other in the afterlife. do vampires get to go to the afterlife? can alucard reintegrate? can he be happy with his new friends? or will he go back to his crypt and sleep again? will he ever be rediscovered? if so, what will he do? deep questions. i would prefer to cogitate on these instead of experiencing the shitshow that is s3

season 3

they should have ended it with dracula’s death. the quality of storytelling goes down immediately. just plummets. i’m sure there were problems in the first two seasons, but this one is so bad, i genuinely can’t remember

but i may as well get specific, so here we go:

abandoning alucard

trevor and sypha leave their friend alone in his childhood home where he just killed his father. where they helped him kill his father who, as i’ve said too many times, raised literal hell to get revenge for people burning alucard’s mother to death

yt they don’t talk about alucard. they don’t make any plans to touch base ever again. trevor’s entire family got killed. sypha’s culture, from which she’s now estranged, is family-centric. if ever two people should give a shit about alucard and know why alucard shouldn’t be left on his own, it's them

so what the hell is going on?

trevor and sypha’s relationship

look. it could be good. it would be better with alucard but they could be together and it could work fine

but this……….

trevor hates what they're doing. he hates traveling around and fighting. he's clearly tired and deeply depressed

sypha not only doesn't care enough to address it (did they forget the first two seasons?? sypha is annoying partly because she doesn't stop poking people) she might not even notice? yes, she's having fun, but trevor is basically dead on his feet in front of her

racism

hector, sumi, and taka all got done dirty 

sumi and taka

i hate the way they died. i hate that i’m certain that the plot won’t bring japan back into the narrative (or if it does, i don’t trust it not to be shitty). i hate the fact that by killing them off, i’m not going to get any more of them. they were interesting!!

speaking of the japanese vampire: the biphobia, arguably, given what happens with alucard

the addition of sexual violence

i don’t need or want lenore. if all she’d done was manipulate hector, i could have lived with that. she’s a villain, so she does bad things. that’s the point. but what she did was a massive escalation. we hadn’t had any sexual violence, and then the last few episodes gave us 

tumblr feminists who love her for how she treated hector need to be quarantined until their brain worms have been cured

everything that happens to hector

what was this shit? why did i open my netflix app and tap castlevania and find them making this man walk around naked in the cold to torture him? and starving him? he got manipulated, degraded, chained up, collared like an animal, and raped. and why? to show us how bad lenore is? that the other vampires are bad because they let her do it? i didn’t sign up for this

the holocaust reference

the imagery at the end of s3 when it’s revealed that the judge has been killing people he’s decided are undeserving to live and collecting their shoes in that barn was chillingly close to images of shoes taken from victims of the holocaust. there's no reason to invoke the holocaust here. it’s unnecessary and in bad taste

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

Psycho: Legacy and Impact

Horror, as a genre, has been with the film world longer than sound.  As far back as Nosferatu, audiences have always loved going to the movies to be scared.

Universal had been churning out monster films since the dawn of the talkies, with classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man and The Mummy providing legendary scares for audiences for over thirty years.  Movies like The Tingler, The Fly, and The Blob showed us that unexplained creatures of science were terrors.  Horror classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and War of the Worlds demonstrated that aliens were to fear.

You may have noticed something about all of the aforementioned styles of horror films.

In the years from the thirties through the fifties, there was one thing very clear when it came to horror films: Monsters were things that weren’t human.  They were creatures, alien invaders, legendary beasts or people that had been transformed.  They weren’t like you or me.  They were other.  Different.

While there were occasional exceptions, for the most part, people watched horror films to watch ordinary people overcome terrifying monsters, perhaps dying at the end, but certainly living long enough to stop the creature, be it vampire, alien, or blob monster.

Until a little, low-budget film called Psycho came along and broke all the rules.  (Spoilers below!)

In the year 1960, horror/thriller director Alfred Hitchcock decided to create a cheap, black-and-white horror film that flew in the face of precedent, by creating a screenplay almost as twisted as the villain of the piece.  There were no otherworldly creatures to be found here, fly-monsters, extra-terrestrial invaders, or werewolves, just a perfectly average, nice young man named Norman Bates.

And instantly, the world of horror changed forever.

How?

Simple.

The monster of Psycho, the horrific creature that must be overcome, the evil beast that must be destroyed is no mummy, no science experiment gone wrong, no army of extra-terrestrial invaders.  No, Psycho’s villain is far more horrible.  Psycho told audiences something that hadn’t really been considered before: that any one of us could be a ‘monster’.  Even nice, quiet, boy-next-door-types.

This is not to say that the moviemakers before 1960 didn’t believe that humans could be bad.  Bad people were, of course, the villains in dramas, action films and comedies.  But the idea that a human could be a horror monster?  That was a somewhat new idea.

Adapted from the 1959 novel of the same name (based on the real case of Ed Gein, the serial killer who would later inspire The Texas Chainssaw Massaccre), Psycho turned the world of horror on its head by introducing the idea that humanity could be just as terrible as the creatures we come up with.  In the process, it created the genre that would become popular eighteen years later with the film Halloween: the slasher genre.  With its building sense of suspense, constant twists, and blending of psychological horror and film-noir, Hitchcock created not only a horror classic, but one of the greatest films of all time, remembered to this day for its brilliance.

And a classic it is.

From the moment protagonist Marion Crane gets stabbed to death fifty minutes into a movie that had seemed to be about her, Psycho was cemented as one of the most shocking and daring horror films of all time.  Nominated for four Oscars (Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Director, Best Cinematography for Black and White and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for Black-and-White) but winning none, Psycho would nevertheless go on to live in infamy as one of the greatest movies ever made.  It has the honor of being the first film released on home video, and remains well-known fifty years after it’s original release.  From the eerie, shrieking ‘Psycho Strings’ to it’s spine-tingling ending, Psycho has become anything but forgotten.

As a matter of fact, it’s iconic.

Even people who have never seen it instantly recognize the screeching violins over the brutal stabbing of a screaming woman in a shower, and know what’s being referenced when they see blood (or a blood-like-substance) drizzle down a drain.  Despite being released twenty-nine years after Dracula, Psycho has managed to obtain almost equal status, routinely ranked as a landmark of film by audiences and critics alike.

Ironically, it wasn’t always so.

Like many classics before it, Psycho wasn’t loved by the critics when it first hit theaters, but it wasn’t hated, either.  Nobody really knew what to make of it.  Some critics appreciated the twists and enjoyed the cinematography.  Others complained that it wasn’t subtle enough, and that the film was melodramatic.

One thing was for sure: audiences loved it.

The lines outside of the theaters to go see this controversial, daring film, (tantalizingly advertised with a policy that refused to admit late tickets into showings, so as not to be upset that the movie’s star had been killed already) turned out to be the deciding factor.  Seeing the audience reactions, the critics went back and revised their own thoughts, and soon enough, came back with the verdict: It was a modern classic.  Psycho went on to break box-office records around the world, and remains the most profitable black-and-white sound film ever made.  It was so popular that it spawned three sequels made over twenty years later, followed by an unpopular remake, a made-for-TV spinoff film, and a prequel television show, none of which have surpassed the original in popularity or quality.

In the fifty years since Psycho first hit the big screen, it has become one of the most recognizable films ever made, and certainly Hitchcock’s most well-known.  From the infamous shower murder (often dubbed the scariest scene in movie history) to the equally well-known plot twists, there’s a reason this film revolutionized how movies were structured and filmed.

The question is, why?

Why was Psycho such a huge deal?  

Was it just the shock of the plot twists?  The unprecedented violence?  The simple fact that the protagonist was killed halfway through the film?  Or was there something buried a little deeper in this groundbreaker that caused it to be so well-remembered?  Is this film, which borrowed the styles of cheap, exploitation films in order to tell the first slasher story, really deserving of the title of ‘masterpiece’, or is it an exaggeration applied to a movie that was just violent and disturbing enough to shock the audiences of its time?

Like Norman Bates himself, there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Why do audiences keep returning to this movie?  After more than fifty years for horror films to up the ante in its wake, how is it that audiences are still so disturbed by this one?  

That’s what we’re going to be finding out in the weeks ahead.  Stay tuned, and thanks so much for reading.