BEFORE: There's one of the big banks here in NYC that, according to their commercials, has now transformed into a chain of coffee shops where people can also do their banking. This seems weird at first, but the more I think about it, the more it feels like genius. More people are doing their banking online, they're even taking pictures of their checks with their phones to deposit them, and people hardly even need to use the ATMs when they can just buy everything with their cards or phones. So the people who run this bank probably noticed that there was less and less foot traffic, and here they are, taking up all this real estate with fewer people going to the bank. So yeah, instead of closing branches or laying off tellers, let's combine coffee shops and banks, we've already proven that this town can take a Starbucks on nearly every corner, so you might as well sell coffee in all those nearly empty banks, or give coffee-drinkers a chance to bank online while they drink their java, or whatever new combination of banking and coffee-drinking works for people going forward.
This got me thinking, there are probably a lot of things we do today that seemed a little weird at first, like the first person who proposed putting a kitchen on a train probably got a few funny looks, from people who said "I don't get it..." but it really worked - I can jump on an Amtrak to go visit my parents, and if I don't have time for a bite to eat first, I know I can get a burger and a beer from the café car. Same goes for food trucks - not too long ago it was probably a very strange idea, but now they're commonplace. Which leads me to wonder - what other businesses could be combined? If I could think of the next great combination and that becomes a million-dollar idea, I could quit my job.
People already watch TV when they're working out at the gym - but would they watch a movie while exercising? Instead of putting comfier recliner chairs in a movie theater, could you just put a row of treadmills or exercise bikes? If we could combine movie theaters and fitness centers, could that be a thing? If so, I've got the perfect name - Net-Flex. OK, maybe that's a little cutesy - but on long subway rides, this is the stuff I think about, when I daydream about owning my own business of some kind.
What about a homeless shelter and, say, a telemarketing company? I think they tried this with prison inmates making calls before, but that led to some bad people getting the personal information of strangers, or perhaps having convicts calling people at home just creeped people out. But people in shelters are just there all day, sitting on cots, doing nothing, it's an untapped resource. Give them some phones and an auto-dialer, and as long as companies are ignoring the "Do not call" lists anyway, why not give these people a new purpose, and maybe they can also earn a few bucks?
Not every combination of business would work, of course, but some might make a little sense - what about restaurant valet parking, combined with an auto service center? You go to a fancy restaurant, some guy drives your car away and you won't need it for the next couple hours, why not get the oil changed at the same time? Alternately, I would settle for a decent restaurant placed inside a car service center, because when my wife brings in her Nissan for something, all we really get is vending-machine snacks, along with some K-cup coffee. But if they put a DINER in there, they might really be on to something.
Or just put an auto service center right inside a large parking garage, so your tires can be rotated while you're at work, you won't need your car anyway in the middle of the day, it's just sitting idle. Similarly, nail salons can be set up inside doctors' offices, so you can get a manicure or pedicure while you wait for your test results. I've got a million ideas for ways to save people's time, only most of them are going to sound weird - but remember, every innovative idea sounds a bit weird at first, we just need to get used to them. (Hmm, that's what they said about "Soylent Green", right?)
Then there are organizations like City Harvest, which take donations of food that can't be sold in restaurants or leftover from events, and deliver those items to soup kitchens and places that feed the homeless. I also saw a piece on "60 Minutes" the other night about an Italian chef, Massimo Bottura, who has opened several "community kitchens" that feed the homeless, free of charge, using scraps of food from other restaurants, and this is financially supported by his other restaurants, which of course charge top dollar. It's possible, the right combination of things can be successful, cut down on wasted resources and time, and also do some good in the world. I just want to think up something like that, is that too much to ask of myself?
I guess in Dracula's world, you'd need to combine a vampire café with a human blood bank or something. But that's probably been portrayed already in vampire fiction somewhere. Peter Cushing carries over from "Horror of Dracula", and so does at least one other actor.
THE PLOT: Vampire hunter Van Helsing returns to Transylvania to destroy handsome bloodsucker Baron Meinster, who has designs on beautiful young schoolteacher Marianne.
AFTER: At first thought, this movie seems to be poorly named, because Dracula is NOT in this movie, and for that matter, neither is Christopher Lee. And a voiceover at the beginning says, "Dracula is dead..." but was he ever really alive in the first movie, to begin with? So I have a feeling we'll be seeing him again, despite the ending of "Horror of Dracula". That guy's got more lives than a freakin' cat. But on second thought, we're not promised Dracula in this film, the title only mentions his brides, so they could easily appear without him, right? I remember there were those three women in the original Bela Lugosi film that seduced Jonathan Harker, and then were never seen again in the film. WTF? They're sometimes called the "Weird Sisters", and some call them the "Brides of Dracula" but their absence in the latter part of the film is very strange. Why introduce three characters like that and then never follow up with them, especially when they imply that Dracula is a polyamorous vampire, or is that polygamous? That makes him a very interesting character, though again, it also pushes old "love 'em, bite 'em and leave 'em" Drac a little bit more into the realm of a sex offender.
(Last night's film reduced the three "Weird Sisters" to just one, who pleaded with Harker for help, before trying to bite his neck. Budget concerns, I guess.)
Instead of Dracula, we're presented here with the strange case of Baron Meinster, who's something of a Dracula wanna-be - is he a real vampire, or just part of some strange cult that follows Dracula's teachings? Yeah, the three women seen here definitely come off as vampires, but I'm not so sure about the Baron himself. If you look closely, his fangs aren't even the same color as his other teeth, so he looks like he's wearing falsies. (I know, all of the actors are wearing false teeth, but on him it's just so flaming obvious...) Did he stick two metal teeth on to his real ones, just to try to bite people like Dracula would? Because that's not how vampires work. He's a sham-pire, if you ask me.
The story starts with a French woman, Marianne, taking a coach to Transylvania, where she's got a new job as a teacher. The people at the local pub think she's crazy to be traveling by herself through Transylvania, because it's so dangerous. The Baroness Meinster arrives at the pub, drinks wine with her and offers her a place to stay for the night, because she's just a lonely old woman with nobody to talk to, except her servants and her son who's chained up in the East Wing. Wait, what? Yep, that's right, he's by himself in a sealed-off part of the castle, chained by his leg to a large table - nope, nothing weird about that at all. So she tells Marianne to avoid that part of the castle with all the enthusiasm that Willy Wonka mustered up when he told naughty kids not to do something in his factory.
Clearly, the Baroness is used to trolling the pubs in the area to find young women to lure back to her castle, and by telling them NOT to go visit her poor, lonely, sick and misunderstood son in the East Wing, well, they probably all just can't resist that, now, can they? Each girl wants to be the one who's going to visit this lonely soul and redeem him, or at least cheer him up, but they have no idea that he's got this vampire fetish where he bites them with his fake metal teeth and watches them bleed out. That's my take on the situation, anyway. He plays up his poor, confused vampire act just to get more attention from the ladies, but hey, whatever gets him laid, I guess. And he doesn't have a problem with consent like Dracula did, because the women broke the rules, and went to visit HIM when they were told not to. It's very sneaky how he makes himself irresistible.
But just like in the original "Dracula" film, there's an extremely unconvincing model bat here. Note to filmmakers, if your special effects look like crap and a close-up would reveal that your bat is just a puppet on a string, for God's sake, don't have so many close-up shots of it.
Spoiler Alert, Van Helsing gets bit in this film - but he's OK, he disinfects the evil bite with a searing hot iron, then follows that up with a holy water dousing, and within seconds, he's not even burned. Good to know, even if they're just making up the rules as they go along. I seem to recall a rule about if you kill the vampire that bit you before you turn into a vampire yourself, you might be OK. I guess Van Helsing just lives by his own impulses. Or maybe the guy that bit him was never a true vampire to begin with, just saying.
Also starring Martita Hunt (last seen in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown"), Yvonne Monlaur, Freda Jackson (last seen in "Henry V"), David Peel, Miles Malleson (also carrying over from "Horror of Dracula"), Henry Oscar (last seen in "The Man Who Knew Too Much"), Mona Washbourne, Andree Melly, Victor Brooks (last seen in "Goldfinger"), Fred Johnson (last seen in "The Curse of Frankenstein"), Michael Ripper (last seen in "The Curse of the Werewolf"), Norman Pierce, Vera Cook, Marie Devereux (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Michael Mulcaster (last seen in "The Revenge of Frankenstein"), Harold Scott.
RATING: 4 out of 10 locks on the coffin (that bit was really confusing)
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