Saturday, October 31, 2009

Carroll Borland and Barbara Steele




I rate Mark of the Vampire higher than most films of the era, it is not a great film and it is a mess but it has some nice sounds and images in it. Unfortunately a lot of the film was cut,, you can see some intriguing scenes in the trailer that were not in the film. Carroll Borland is the highlight of the movie and if only the movie studios were crazy enough to forget about the story and just devote the screen to her wandering about.
I recently watched a good Shaun Tan interview and I was glad he shared my thinking that you dont need stories shoehorned into a series of compelling images. I'll be happy when there is a group of horror film makers who dont bother with stories and just film a series of scary incidents, or a series of lovely images.
You know I've always believed that every comic artist should have their own comic where they can go crazy with any order or mixture of pinups, text, comics and sequences. Some people just dont have enough stories to go with the images, so they shouldnt have to force it out.

4 comments:

Malsonus said...

Nice post. "Mark of the Vampire" is a great film and I find both these ladies quite captivating myself.

Two less serious dark ladies I would personally throw in are Elvira (back in the early 80's not so much now) and Morticia Adams.

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

It has been said that Morticia was inspired by Carroll Borland. I've searched around and it seems that on screen Theda Bara(who I posted about a few weeks ago), Carroll Borland, Barabara Steele, Vampira and Morticia were the foundations of female goth look,, a damn good look.

Uland said...

eh, she's a little cartoony for my tastes. Her fatures are SO exaggerated it's hard form me to imagine her as existing off the screen.

Anonymous said...

talking to Jim Morton (Incredibly Strange Films and Trashola) we came to a conclusion that Mark of the Vampire was going to be some big follow up to Dracula, but they ran out of money. still, impressive shots throughout.