Marc Coppola | Through the Shattered Lens

Since we are looking at and reviewing each and every episode of Twin Peaks, every movie-a-day this month has a Twin Peaks connection. Today’s entry, Dracula’s Widow, stars Lenny von Dohlen, who played reclusive shut-in Harold Smith on Twin Peaks.

Von Dohlen plays Raymond, the nerdy owner of a Los Angeles wax museum. When he receives six antique chests from Romania, he does not realize that one of them contains, Vanessa (Sylvia Kristel). Vanessa is a vampire and soon, she is killing the usual collection of perverts, muggers, and occultists. She also bites Raymond and turns him into her Renfield. Under her influence, Raymond even dumps his girlfriend, Jenny Harker (Rachel Jones).

However, Vanessa is not just a vampire. Vanessa is the wife of Dracula, himself. When she demands that Raymond take her to her husband, Raymond tells her that Dracula was killed nearly a hundred years ago by Prof. Van Helsing. (How did Vanessa not already know this?) Vanessa hunts down and kills Van Helsing’s grandson (Stefan Schnabel) but this brings both her and Raymond to the attention of Inspector Lannon (Josef Sommer).

In the 1990s, Dracula’s Widow was a late night HBO mainstay and it still has a cult following. I could sit here and count out all the ways that Dracula’s Widow does not make any sense but I’ve got a deadline. For all of this low-budget movie’s flaws, Dracula’s Widow is saved by the sexy presence of Sylvia Kristel and the atmosphere that can only be provided by neon lighting and a fog machine. Josef Sommer’s hard-boiled narration, in which he refers to Los Angeles as being Tinsel Town, is another highlight. As for Lenny von Dohlen, his performance as Raymond feels like a dry run for his turn as Harold Smith.

Dracula’s Widow was the directorial debut by Christopher Coppola, whose uncle Francis would later make Bram Stoker’s Dracula and whose brother, Nicolas Cage, ate a cockroach while making Vampire’s Kiss.

The Bling Ring was one of the more divisive films of 2013. As often seems to happen with the work of Sofia Coppola, viewers either loved it as a stylish look at America’s self-destructive love affair with fame or else they felt that it was a shallow celebration of the very lifestyle that it claimed to be satirizing. Personally, I felt it was both, which is one reason why I enjoyed The Bling Ring.

The Bling Ring is based on the true story of a bunch of California teenagers who made headlines by breaking into the mansions of their idols. Over the course of several months, they burglarized everyone from Paris Hilton to Lindsay Lohan to Orlando Bloom. While they may have been smart enough to use social media to discover when their targets would be out of town, they weren’t smart enough to not use social media to brag about their crimes. Eventually, they were arrested and, for a brief period of time, they were as famous as the people they robbed. One of them even got her own reality show out of the whole thing. I watched an episode or two. It wasn’t very good.

Though the names have been changed, Coppola pretty much tells the story as it happened. New kid in school Marc (Israel Broussard) meets Rebecca (Kate Chang), who is obsessed with celebrities. Rebecca is also something of an obsessive thief and soon, she and Marc are breaking into the houses of their rich neighbors and acquaintances, stealing money, and going on shopping sprees. Their thievery allows them to leave a lifestyle where every day is just another makeover montage from a romantic comedy. Eventually, they are joined by Nicki (Emma Watson), Sam (Taissa Farmiga), and Chloe (Claire Julien).

One thing that quickly becomes clear is that the members of the Bling Ring are not exactly the smartest group of thieves around. Along with getting increasingly reckless while committing their crimes, they also make the mistake of showing off stolen jewelry at parties and posting pictures of Facebook. When the police eventually do track them down, Marc is a convenient scapegoat, Rebecca is hiding out in Las Vegas with her father, and Nicki becomes a minor celebrity as she and her mother exploit her newfound notoriety for all the publicity that they can get.

I liked The Bling Ring. It’s stylish, all of the actors look good and they’re all wearing beautiful outfits, and I loved seeing all of the houses that they broke into. (Some of the film was shot in the actual residences that were burglarized.) On the one hand, it doesn’t really dig too deeply into the nature of fame in America but, on the other hand, does it really need to? We all know the culture that we live in and, at its best, The Bling Ring forces us to ask whether we would rather be one of the people on the outside looking in or if we would want to be one of the people who broke in by any means necessary.

Add to that, it has a great soundtrack!

(Now, as I said, not everyone agrees with me about The Bling Ring. For an opposite reaction to The Bling Ring, check out Ryan The Trash Film Guru’s review.)