Most audiences today won’t have heard of the name John Landis. They would have heard of “Coming To America” and “The Blues Brothers” but it’s unlikely they recognise the talent behind the lens. That’s because Landis has become one of Hollywood’s forgotten star directors. Legal troubles and a decade of poor work has put the director out in the wilderness. Forgettable films from a forgotten filmmaker.

Yet, you ask anyone if they’ve seen Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and most will reply “Damn right I have – best music video ever made!” Well, that was the brainchild of Jackson and John Landis.

The vampire: that harbinger of everlasting life and eternal damnation. From the cloaked gothic majesty of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” to the down and dirty night-crawlers of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark”, vampire’s have formed the basis for more literary and cinematic horror than any other fictional creature.
Early cinematic incarnations of the blood-sucking sun-haters were based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Infamously, Friedrich Murnau made “Nosferatu” in Germany without acquiring the rights to film the novel. After a lawsuit, all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed. The film …