Movies
The Great Nacho Cerda Returns for WWII Vampire Flick ‘I Am Legion’!!
Remember Nacho Cerda? No? Well then, let me refresh your memory. The Spanish director put together the creepy compilation of shorts infamously known as The Awakening/Genesis/Aftermath. They’re so popular that it’s available on Blu-ray (and also highly recommended). But soon after, Cerda delivered the disappointing The Abandoned, a Filmax production released by an infant After Dark Films. It’s been roughly five years since Abandoned, and those familiar with Cerda have been clamoring for more.
Thank the gods of (the original) Clash of the Titans, as Cerda is attached to direct I Am Legion, an English-language vampire movie set during WWII (no, not connected with the Will Smith CGI-massacre). It will be the first project of a 4-picture deal between Gallic comicbook publisher Les Humanoides Associes and Paris-based Full House.
Even more insane is that Cerda will be directing from a screenplay by mother effin’ Richard Stanley, director of Hardware (as seen in last week’s “Office”)!
Revamping a 2006-07 comicbook series, “Legion” pits British Special Ops commandos and Romanian resistance fighters against Nazis, who use a 12-year-old vampire girl to spawn an army of evil.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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