PENNY DREADFUL SEASON 2

Harry Treadaway, Patti LuPone, Reeve Carney

PENNY DREADFUL. Season 2. 2015. Showtime.

During the first season of Penny Dreadful, the group of weird individuals banded together to fight a horde of vampires. In this season, their antagonists are a coven of really nasty witches. Alternately fascinating and a little bit silly (without being campy), the show still manages to be quite entertaining and watchable. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway of The Disappeared) has been importuned, to put it mildly, by his creation, "John Clare" (Rory Kinnear), to create a mate for him, and he chooses to revive the dead woman (now called Lily) whom once was the lover of Ethan Chandler/Lawrence Talbot (Josh Hartnett). Alas, Lily (Billie Piper), has little interest in John, but she does have a hankering for Victor, although even he is dismissed when her evil side becomes ascendant and she hooks up with Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), whose transsexual lover, Angelique (Jonny Beauchamp of Stonewall), comes to a sad end, no thanks to Dorian. Meanwhile Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) nearly pays for his sins thanks to the manipulations of head witch, Mrs. Poole (Helen McCrory of the BBC's Frankenstein). Vanessa Ives (Eve Green), who has become like a daughter to Malcolm, deals with her own inner demons and relates how she became a witch herself at the tutoring of a "cut-wife" played superbly by a highly-deglamorized Patti Lupone [Parker]. .

This was a fine season for the show, but there were some disappointments. Ethan never runs into Broma/Lily, which certainly would have been an interesting interlude as she's supposed to be dead, and he also never encounters Dorian Gray, with whom he had a sexual encounter in season one, either. While the character of Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale) is admittedly likable and Beale's performance is excellent, one wishes they didn't make him such a relentlessly stereotypical homosexual; he even pronounces his "r"s like "w"s as if he were a little girl! Lyle and Ethan have a lot of semi-amusing banter, but one wonders what the self-described "old queen" would think if he knew about Ethan and Dorian! The LGBT aspects of the show seem added more for spice than veracity or open-mindedness. Penny Dreadful is influenced by everything from Mary Shelley to Dark Shadows.

Verdict: Imperfect, but very well-acted by a great cast, and highly entertaining. ***.

PENNY DREADFUL SEASON 1

PENNY DREADFUL Season One. 2014.

"No one in this room is kind -- that's why you're here." -- Sir Malcolm Murray.

This Showtime series takes place in 19th century London and throws together some classic characters from horror fiction -- Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway of The Disappeared), Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), Professor Van Helsing (David Warner), etc. -- and combines them into a new storyline. The protagonist -- if you can call him that -- is an American cowboy-entertainer named Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett of The Black Dahlia). He is hired by Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) and family friend Vanessa Ives (Eva Green of Casino Royale) to retrieve Murray's daughter, Mina (Oliva Llewellyn), who has been kidnapped by vampires. Frankenstein's monster (Rory Kinnear), the first of two "unliving" beings that Victor has cobbled together, hates his creator and, as in Mary Shelly's great novel, wants Victor  to make him a mate. A series of gruesome mutilation murders are occurring all over London but the killer doesn't seem to be Jack the Ripper. All we need is Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and we're ready to go ...  Penny Dreadful for the most part is a literate, handsomely produced, well-written, and very well-acted Gothic soap opera that mercifully eschews camp (American Horror Story for instance), but the series goes completely awry when it suddenly turns into The Exorcist with its very contemporary-type scenes of demonic possession -- complete with spitting, cursing, useless priests, and so on -- that smack more of the 1970's than the 19th century. The show also throws in a fairly unexpected homoerotic sequence in the episode Demimonde, that is hot but hardly ever mentioned again, and has more to do with "shock" value and snaring some gay fans than with good story-telling -- although the scene certainly plays. [Internet trolls railed that the series turned into gay porn, which is hilarious as the two men are never actually seen in bed together, and the frequent male-female couplings in the show are much, much more explicit.] There's a final twist at the end of the first season that I should have seen coming but didn't, for shame. Let's just say that it summons up images of the tormented Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man. The show has just begun its third season but I have mixed emotions about watching season two -- will it retain the classy aura it exhibited in the earlier episodes or just descend into silliness? Eva Green is especially superb in this and Billie Piper also scores as Ethan's tubercular girlfriend, Brona, but everyone in this, down to the smallest role (including Alex Price as Proteus), is wonderful. Abel Korzeniowski composed the rather lush score and excellent theme music.

Verdict: Interesting, with many fascinating and clever facets, but ... **1/2.

DARK SHADOWS (2012)

Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins

DARK SHADOWS (2012). Director: Tim Burton.

"I don't think people take meetings at the bottom of the ocean."

If you were hoping that Tim Burton's big screen retake of the old horror soap opera Dark Shadows would be another entertaining horror-dark comedy romp like Sleepy Hollow, or just entertaining like Ed Wood, be advised that Dark Shadows, unlike those two films, is a real stinker. A prologue that takes place in 1760 is promising as it details what happens when witch Angelique (Eva Green) puts a curse of vampirism on Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) because he spurned her love. The action then switches to 1971 Collinsport where Barnabas is accidentally disinterred from his grave and rejoins the family, consisting of Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), her daughter Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz), Dr. Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), the handyman Willie (Jackie Earle Haley), among others, and new arrival Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote), who is governess to little David (Gulliver McGrath) and the spitting image of Barnabas' old love, Josette. Who cares? 

Even fans of the old show will be disappointed in this very silly updating that consists mostly of empty (if well-done) pyrotechnics. There is the occasional funny line and clever moment -- Barnabas and Angelique have disco sex and a bit with laughing portraits-come-alive -- but all that really holds this together is Bruno Delbonnel's stunning cinematography, which deserves a better script to showcase it. Depp also gives a very good performance, as do Pfeiffer, Carter and especially Eva Green [Casino Royale], but they all take a back seat to the formidable Christopher Lee in a cameo as a sea captain. (Some of the original cast members of the TV show supposedly appear in a party scene but they are impossible to spot.) This is a blatant misfire -- too bad.

Verdict: Is this Dark Shadows -- or The Munsters?" *1/2.

CASINO ROYALE (2006)

CASINO ROYALE (2006). Directed by Martin Campbell. NOTE: On occasion Great Old Movies will review a more recent film of interest to our readers.

This excellent OO7 adventure takes Ian Fleming’s original story and updates it to contemporary times, although it is still presented as Bond’s first major case (as it was in the books; it was the first Bond novel) and as such can be considered a "prequel." Bond is already considered a maverick by M (played, incongruously, by the wonderful Judi Dench, as if the male "M" never existed), when he’s assigned to beat a man known as Le Chiffre at cards at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. Le Chiffre has already lost a lot of money owed to terrorist employers and desperately needs to win it back. Vesper Lynd, who is not a field agent, accompanies Bond to Montenegro to keep track of how he spends his funds allocated for gambling. There’s a splendid action scene at an airport when Bond tries to prevent a terrorist from blowing up a new-fangled kind of plane, a suspenseful torture scene between Bond and Le Chiffre involving a chair with the bottom cut out as well as Bond’s bare bottom, and an exciting climax that takes place in Venice inside a collapsing Palazzo and features the moving, dramatic death of a major character.

As for Daniel Craig, he’s terrific. He takes some getting used to, admittedly. At first he seems a bit too thug-like, devoid of the elegance and class that has always been part of the 007 mystique. He’s not really an especially handsome bloke, his face a bit blunt and battered (as if he’s been on a lot more than one mission, frankly), but one can see how he could appeal to certain ladies. He looks more like Fleming’s original concept for Bond than Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton, and especially, Roger Moore. And more like 007 even than George Lazenby. Craig is probably a better actor than most of those guys to boot, handling the more sensitive scenes as well as the obligatory fisticuffs and gunplay. Eva Green is also excellent as Vesper Lynd, unconventionally beautiful, glamorous yet real, undeniably tragic. Mads Mikkelsen scores as Le Chiffre and there are other fine supporting performances as well. Felix Leiter, not for the first time, is portrayed by an African-American actor (Jeffrey Wright) although in the novels his character was Caucasian. As Leiter, regrettably, has never been that dimensional a character in this or any other Bond movie, it scarcely makes a difference.

This is possibly the only Bond film that approaches the more literate level of Fleming’s novels and -- even more than the Timothy Dalton features -- dares to present Bond a bit more as a realistic human being instead of a cartoon super-hero (not that we don’t have the usual improbable but enjoyable feats of derring do). One of the best scenes is a quiet moment when Bond comforts Vesper in the shower (both are dressed) after her first exposure to extreme violence leaves her depressed and rattled., The beautiful settings and exquisite cinematography by Phil Meheux give the picture a glossy, romantic sheen and the stunt work is as gutsy as ever. Not to quibble, but the film ends a little too abruptly for my taste. Still, Casino Royale is the best James Bond movie in years. One debit: The opening theme music is pretty awful., but you can't have everything. Screenplay by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis. NOTE: To read a review of the first film version of Casino Royale, click here.

Verdict: Excellent Bond adventure. ***1/2.