DVD Zone: February 2007

Broken Bridges
Paramount

A few things are well known about Toby Keith. He wears his redneck street cred like a badge, has a fetish for the troops, and above all . . . he’s a Ford® truck man. All of these traits are in full bloom in the extended Ford® infomercial, Broken Bridges.

Keith plays Bo Price, a country singer whose career has gone down the toilet thanks to his love of the bottle. Bo returns to his home town for the funeral of his brother, killed in a military training accident. As fate (or a hackneyed script) would have it, the brother of his high-school flame, Angela, was also killed in the incident.

See, the awkward part is that Bo knocked Angela up 16 years earlier, then skipped town. As a result, Angela had to raise their Avril Lavigne lookalike daughter Dixie (natch) all by her lonesome. Luckily, the difficulties of being a single mother from a backwoods Tennessee town didn’t keep her from becoming a star reporter at a Miami TV station.

Will the two reconnect and the fractured family ties be restored? Will Bo quit the drinkin’ and restore his career? Will Dixie loose the ‘tude and become a model citizen? C’mon. The film is a joint production with Country Music Television, and everyone who knows how many beans make five knows a life of bucolic splendor with the ex that left you alone with a child and his redneck buddies is far more enticing than a wealthy and prestigious career in the big ole city.

While Keith is billed as the film’s star, the producer and director have the good sense to keep his scenes to a minimum. He basically shows up to mumble a few lines and throw in a song here and there. He does, however, break through with a surprisingly good scene where he helps Dixie finish writing a song she has been working on.

What almost saves the film is the work of Kelly Preston as Angela, as she gives her performance much more thought and seriousness than it deserves. However, the lameness of the story and the constant Ford® product placement is just too much to overcome. As if we didn’t get it from the repeated closeups of the Ford® logo, we have a scene in which Dixie asks the dreamy boy behind the drugstore counter what they do for fun in this town. Why . . . funny you should ask little lady . . . you drive your Ford® truck in the mud!

Extras include a making-of feature, a salute to the boys in uniform, and a commercial for some sort of motorized vehicle I can’t remember.

By that point, my brain had turned to cheese and everything had become a blur.

Film: ** Features: *1/2

Jess Franco’s Count Dracula
Dark Sky Films

If there’s one thing the film industry has learned over the years, it’s that Transylvania’s most famous native son is money in the bank.

From F.W. Murnau’s 1922 German classic Nosferatu, the 1931 Bela Lugosi standard, on through the bodice ripping Hammer Films potboilers of the ’50s, and Francis Ford Coppola’s disastrous 1992 version, Dracula emerged as the most oft’ told tale in screen history.

You knew it was only a matter of time before the Italians got in on the fun.

After starring as the good Count in several of the Hammer versions, Christopher Lee rents himself out to the big boot to don the cape again in 1970’s Jess Franco’s Count Dracula — one of the better screen treatments of the story.

Franco’s version plays it pretty straight, with the campy exploitation of the Hammer versions excised and the basics of Bram Stoker’s original story reinstated.

A good cast certainly doesn’t hurt matters, with Lee giving one of his best performances, and screen heavyweight Herbert Lom tackling the Van Helsing role. We also get the delightfully mad Klaus Kinski, who himself would go on to play the count in perhaps the best screen version of the tale, Werner Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu, as a surprisingly understated Renfield.

Extras include a feature on director Franco, Christopher Lee reading from Stoker’s original story, and a still photo gallery.

Film: *** Features: **1/2

— Timothy Hiatt

Category: Columns, Monthly