TONITE’S BET: The ‘Citizen Kane’ of Presidential Vampire Killer Movies Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter/Президент Линкольн: Охотник на вампиров (Historical fantasy. USA, 2012)(Channel 1, 00:30) --> Before Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov got this toe-curling, bloodsucker-fest of a movie onto mall screens around the world, few moviegoers anywhere realized that Abe Lincoln, arguably America’s greatest president, was unarguably the greatest vampire killer ever to occupy the White House. (Whether that would still be true if W. had woken up sane one morning and put an axe through Cheney’s head over lunch in the War Room is one of those theoretical arguments that serious historians entertain only after 4 or 6 beers.) In any case, while nobody really went for this film bigtime – it rates a Sort Of Okay (6/10) on both IMDb and Russia’s KinoPoisk, and only made back half its budget in US release (which means it probably *just* covered in the end, after worldwide box, DVD and rentals) – there is still something to be said for the chutzpah behind it: putting Russian director TB (Night Watch, Day Watch), a Seth Grahame-Smith mash-up novel (мэшап-роман, heh) and professional Tinsel Town weirdo Tim Burton (as producer) into the cement mixer and hitting the HIGH button is not the kind of thing risk-averse Hollywood studios and distributors like to do. Nice guts, so to speak. The plot? Ahahaha! Okay-okay: Abe, vampires, axe – and whaddayaknow, it turns out all that rail splitting really pays off! There. So tune in tonite (or watch online below) and gitcha-seff a nice chilly spine as you wonder why Channel 1, the nation’s principal America-bashing outlet, decided to air this film just now. I know what you’re thinking – and it follows directly from the IMDb tagline “Vampires are planning to take over the United States...” doesn’t it? – but c’mon, no way…
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 06:32:18 +0000
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