HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

[Update 09/20/2021: Need to redo this review completely.]

HORROR OF DRACULA opens with Dracula winning a break dancing contest at a nudist colony...what?! Oh, sorry wrong film. A guy, posing as a librarian, comes to work for Dracula cataloging his books, but in reality, the dude is a vampire hunter! He fails completely and by the time Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) shows up, Dracula is long gone and actually off stalking the fake librarian's fiancee. Van Helsing begins looking for clues that will lead him to Dracula.

Some modern audiences with short attention spans might find the story slow, but I was entertained throughout and found Christopher Lee to be probably the most awesome vampire I've ever seen...besides Angel and Edward and Spike and Jerry Dandrige, of course. Overall, it was a solid vampire film.

Part 2 -The Brides of Dracula (1960) 

Part 3 -Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) 

Part 4 - Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) 

Part 5 - Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) 

Part 6 - Scars of Dracula (1970) 

Part 7 - Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) 

Part 8 - The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) 

Part 9 - The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

THE THIN MAN GOES HOME (1945)

This 5th THIN MAN film is a fun outing. My favorite part is they left the kid out completely!  Hahaha. He sucked.

Nick and Nora take a train trip to Nick's hometown to visit his folks.  He's just there to relax, but when word quickly gets around the small town that the great detective Nick Charles on the scene everybody with something to hide starts acting like they got ants in their pants. Including somebody who wants something hidden so well they'll commit murder! That's not a bad decision if you can do it secretly, but it's downright foolish to do it while the victim is talking face-to-face with Nick!

Anyway, Nick is now on the prowl for clues and it's fun to see him in a small town instead of the big city. As usual at the end he gathers all of the players into a room before laying down some heavy duty facts on them. One thing I didn't care for though was Nora's character was written to be an know-it-all dimwit. Before she was always sweet and cute, but now she kept butting in and annoying everybody. I didn't care for that at all.

One interesting thing I read online was that the producers thought about replacing Myrna Loy with Irene Dunne!  Now that would have been crazy to see, but interesting.

Part 1 - The Thin Man (1934)
Part 2 - After the Thin Man (1936)
Part 3- Another Thin Man (1939)
Part 4 - Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
Part 6 - Song of the Thin Man (1947)

HEATWAVE! (1974)

It got up to 107 in Austin this afternoon, so what better time to stay indoors in the air condition and watch a movie about a heatwave! Luckily for me, I still had electricity and water unlike the unfortunate folks in this movie. Holly McClane from DIE HARD is pregnant as fuck, hot as fuck and irritated as fuck: the electricity is out, the tap water is brown and her husband is a whiny bitch. Finally they say screw it and decide to go out to their cabin in the woods, but that's easier said than done. All the electricity is out and gasoline is hard to come by. Then, to make matters even worse, they get carjacked and are forced to walk the last eight miles through the woods. Remember it's 120 degrees and she's pregnant. Once they get to the cabin, they discover that the electricity is out there as well and now the baby is ready to bust out of this hot motherfucker!

As far as early 70's made-for-TV movies go, this one is entertaining, but the story was too small. Instead of going to the woods and just standing around a cabin sweating I would have rather they remained in the big city and experience everything going to Hell. Also there really needed to be a villain of some kind or a bigger struggle than just trying to cool off.

If you can find a copy it's worth watching, but nothing to go out of your way for. HEATWAVE! originally aired on January 26, 1974 as part of ABC's "Movie of the Week" series.