Let me tell you an untold story: a bunch of studio execs crowd in a room. The air is thick with the fumes of aged (pronounce age-ed) scotch, the carpet stamped in the cookie cutout of a Louis Vuitton heel. The unpaid Lambo payments and hefty beachside mortgages are palpable. “How can we play the franchise game without shelling royalties to a greedy parent company?” The question all kids dream of answering someday. The words hang. Their answer is a lightbulb: unlicensed public property characters. Like Hercules! Or Frankenstein! Pump out films about characters that’ve been around for infinity because easy money. There’s literally no one in that Wolfman family tree coming forward to claim a check when Benicio dons a hairy mask. “I know! What about Dracula?” Penny saved, penny earned. This seems about the extent of thought that birthed this (dis)passion project that is Dracula Untold. In the petri dish that is the studio system though, this revisionist take on a monster movie classic actually (amazingly) transformed into something half-worthwhile; an appropriately enjoyable bad movie. Read More