TWILIGHT 4&5: BREAKING DAWN 1(2011) AND BREAKING DAWN 2 (2012). REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

**TWILIGHT 4&5: BREAKING DAWN 1 (2011) AND BREAKING DAWN 2 (2012).**
**BOTH DIRECTED BY BILL CONDON AND BOTH SCREENPLAYS BY MELISSA ROSENBERG.**
**STARRING KRISTEN STEWART, ROBERT PATTINSON, TAYLOR LAUTNER, PETER FACINELLI AND BILLY BURKE.**
**BASED ON THE BOOKS BY STEPHENIE MEYER.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these instalments of the *TWILIGHT* movie franchise. Who doesn’t love a comically mismatched wedding *(a human female and a vampire male)*, an hilarious honeymoon where sex with the groom nearly cripples the bride, a pregnancy that makes itself known after just two weeks and a baby that’s practically walking and talking unaided by the time the loved-up couple exit the plane at the end of the honeymoon? And I’m only exaggerating, like, a teensy tiny little bit, you’ll see.

So, to elaborate a tad, Bella Swan, human female of Forks, Washington, recently graduated from high school, is marrying Edward Cullen, local vampire, nicknamed Sparkles by me for What He Does In The Sunlight, the big wuss, lol.

Their families and friends are out in full force to support them, even though Bella’s lovely kind father Charlie, the Sheriff of Forks, has his misgivings, and he doesn’t even know yet that the Cullens are bleedin’ vampires to a man…!

The wedding is a fairy-tale one, with rose petals everywhere and Bella in a beautiful white dress, because she really is still a virgin. The honeymoon is on a gorgeous paradise island which they’ll have to themselves, except for the caretakers. Edward and Bella finally do on the island what they’ve been threatening to do all franchise… have sex…

It seems to go well, but next morning their bedroom is completely trashed and there are big bruises all over Bella, because she’s still only a puny human and Edward is a powerful vampire who, believe it or not, was holding back when he made love to Bella so that he didn’t crush her to death in his manly kung-fu grip or something.

Two weeks later, Bella and Edward have had to dash home because Bella is seemingly pregnant, which all the vampires seem to be shocked at for some reason. Can’t vampires get human females pregnant if they have sex? It’s what seems to have happened, nonetheless, and the Cullen family now have to deal with it.

Giving birth to a vampire’s baby when you’re still a human is a dangerous business and it very nearly kills Bella. Her father Charlie is terrified for **her health in general, though he doesn’t know about the baby yet,** and her other true love, part-time werewolf Jacob Black- the wolves are the mortal enemies of the vampires- wants to murder Edward for putting the love of both their lives in such mortal danger.

Sparkles has caused this entire ridiculous hoo-ha with his big sparkly willy. Yep, willies- sparkly or not- will do that. Ah, willies, is it? ***(Read in the style of a grizzly old frontiers-man!)*** Came across a-couple of ‘em in mah time, up there on Bear Mountain. Mostly bears up there most of the year, don’t usually get no willies no-how, but that one summer, oh, how I seen ‘em…! **So many darn willies.** **The one that got away, even bigger that the two I catched…!**

The CGI and special effects around Bella’s physical deterioration are actually superb, although it’s uncomfortable to see her looking like a concentration camp victim. The baby is taking all of Bella’s nutrition- yep, they’ll do that!- and it looks like Bella might genuinely die of starvation when Carlisle, the Cullen family paterfamilias *and* a doctor of medicine, steps in and feeds Bella a load of human blood just to stop her from dying of hunger.

A sort of Uma-Thurman-in-*PULP FICTION* situation occurs very dramatically, however, and Edward Cullen’s instantaneous John Travolta-style reaction results in the one thing that Bella has wanted all along, apart from her precious baby… Bella becomes a vampire, and, boy, is there going to be a lot of explaining to do in the Christmas newsletter this year…!

*BREAKING DAWN 2* sees the Cullens and the Blacks getting acclimatised to having the new baby around. Bella has named the little girl ‘Renesmee’ in honour of both their mothers. Jacob Black, the part werewolf, has ‘imprinted’ on the baby, which means that he is honour-bound to protect her from all harm for the rest of both their lives. **I think it also means that he has to marry her when she’s of an age, which is quite creepy…!**

The baby has grown at an unnatural rate, and is practically getting ready to go off to college when word comes that the vampire police, the Volturi, are coming from Italy to kill the baby, as they believe her to be an ‘Immortal’ baby, one that could be a threat to them. She’s not what they think, however, so the Cullens go about amassing ‘witnesses,’ ie, other vampires, to put in a good word for them. For all the good it might do…

The battle itself is great fun. Dakota Fanning as the bitchy Jane, Volturi Queen of Pain, gets knocked on her ass, as does Michael Sheen as Aro, the highly camp leader of this very camp conglomeration of vampires. Bella, the newborn vampire, acquits herself well in her first skirmish and is a fiercely loving and loyal mother to Renesmee.

Rami Malek, who stars as Freddie Mercury in the superb *BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY* (2018), weighs in on the side of the Cullens, as do the werewolves, while Jacob Black heroically guards Renesmee. But, when the dust settles, where will Bella, Edward and Renesmee stand?

I assume the Cullens will continue to stand where they always have, in their beautiful glasshouse in the forest, in a straight line as usual, fully dressed at all times in smart-casual designer clobber. **They’re never caught short or taken by surprise or doing anything when Alice has one of her ‘visions,’ which always require immediate action.**

No-one’s ever in the toilet, or fiddling around with the fuseboard or doing a Sudoku or anything. I really think they must stand around in a state of suspended animation until Alice comes in and tersely delivers one of her pronouncements, which are never good news. They all look like dolls, action figures that have to be moved into position by the child who owns them. Maybe a child *does* own them! It would explain a lot.

The entire cast get a shout-out in the end credits while the viewers are free to bawl their eyes out from the very opening bars of Christina Perri’s song, *A Thousand Years*, which even I, a relative newbie to the franchise, will always now associate with the *TWILIGHT* movies.

I’ve put the cart before the horse a bit, I know, by watching the films first, but I now intend to read the books as well. I don’t do owt by halves, me. Does that make me a *Twilight* mom, albeit ten years too late? If it does, it does. Sparkle on, *Twilight* fans. Sparkle on…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

TWILIGHT 2: NEW MOON. (2009) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

**THE TWILIGHT SAGA 2: NEW MOON. (2009) DIRECTED BY CHRIS WEITZ. BASED ON THE BOOKS BY STEPHENIE MEYER.**
**STARRING KRISTEN STEWART, ROBERT PATTINSON, TAYLOR LAUTNER, BILLY BURKE AND PETER FACINELLI.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

Well, here we are again. The second instalment of the *TWILIGHT* saga, that had teenage girls all over the world sobbing uncontrollably at the doomed romance element of it all and longing for their very own sparkly handsome vampire to fly in through their bedroom window and whisk them away to a glamorous new life beyond the clouds, or wherever.

Here we see the intensely miserable and introspective Edward Cullen actually leaving Bella for her own good, and moving somewhere far away from Forks with his vampire family. Not so far that they can’t return en masse at a second’s notice, however, as we see later in the film.

After seeing his wimpy relative Jasper Cullen try to maul Bella for her delicious blood when she gets a paper cut *(a paper cut, how lame-o is that!)*, Edward decides he must leave Bella for her own safety, even though Bella is adamant to the point of downright rudeness that she wants him to stay. And not just stay, but turn her into a vampire as well, so that they can be together forever.

She has an unhealthy level of dependence on him, which the ‘woke’ attitudes of today would frown on. Also, Edward’s not super-keen on the idea of ‘turning’ his little human girlfriend into a vampire.

He says it’s because he wouldn’t wish that kind of soulless existence upon her, but I reckon he just doesn’t want her hanging out of him morning, noon and night, which she certainly would do if she were a vampire like him and could do vampire magic and stuff.

The state of Bella after Edward’s done his runner reminds me of every bad break-up I’ve ever been through, and one bad one in particular. She walks alone in the dangerous, isolated woods where ‘they’ used to walk, no doubt replaying every word he’s ever said to her in her mind. She mopes in her bedroom and stares out her window, literally watching the seasons pass her by, much to her father Charlie’s consternation.

She ignores her school friends and turns herself into a loner. She reminds me of Mrs. Doyle from *FATHER TED* when she’s being told how much less miserable her tea-making experience can be if she accepts the Tea-Master machine into her life. She doesn’t even need to think about her answer. *‘Maybe I like the misery…!’*

When Edward returns to her briefly in order to save her from a dangerous situation, Bella gets a brainwave. So, he’ll come back if she’s in danger, eh? Well then, she’ll put herself in as much danger as she can, then! The stuff she does is highly inadvisable for anyone to copy or try at home.

Not content with accepting a helmet-less ride on the back of a total stranger’s motorbike, she brings some busted-up old motorbikes over to the home of her childhood friend, Jacob Black, and suggests they ‘fix them up together as a project.’

She completely uses Jacob, whom she knows perfectly well is in love with her. When the bikes are ride-able at last, she takes one for a spin, falls off and wallops her unprotected noggin off a rock. I felt sick to my stomach when that happened. All this for a guy, who doesn’t care enough about her to bring him with her when he leaves town! **Is he worth dying for then, Bella? Oh wait… yeah, lol.**

And the way she strings that poor Jacob Black along is disgraceful. She definitely gets a thrill from his wet shirtlessness, and is delighted to have a handsome black-haired half-naked Native American and part-time werewolf dancing attendance on her now Edward’s fecked off.

However, she has no intention of letting the poor besotted Jacob get past that big sparkly chastity belt round her nether regions, the one that clicked into place without her knowing it and which will only come off when Edward himself removes it.

Naturally, women and girls will approve of Jacob and his half-nekkid gang of lads who run together in a pack and can turn into werewolves at will. I call them ‘The Men who Run Without Shirts.’ Their abdominals are certainly criminally well-defined.

Still, the target audience for the film is teenage girls; it’s only their boyfriends who’ll consider the wolf pack to be as gay as feck. A load of nudie men cavorting in the forest in the rain? Seems kinda gay to me, lol. But Taylor Lautner as Jacob sure is buff; he and the Sparkly One will no doubt exchange a few shots across each other’s bows in due course as rivals for Bella, and won’t she just love that?

My main takeaway from this film is the worry I feel that any real-life girls or women would be tempted to be as stupidly reckless as Bella is in this movie. She even jumps off an actual effing cliff in the wild hope that Edward’s ghost will jump in and save her.

Moping, ugly-crying, writing bad love poetry and sending endless texts to the errant boyfriend is all perfectly permissible and, indeed, expected, when you break up with your first love, but putting yourself in actual danger for no good reason is a big fat no-no.

I wonder if you could make a film like that today, or would the ‘woke’ brigade put the kybosh on it. I don’t think I need to worry, really. Women and girls today are much too sensible to lose their heads over a few glue-on sparkles and a handful of glitter. Aren’t they…?

PS, this one ends on a big sparkly cliffhanger, but there’s no way on earth that mopey, possessive Bella is going to say no to this. There’ll surely be a big fat sparkler on her ring finger before long…

**AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.**

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
**Her new book, *THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER,* is out now from Poolbeg Books:**
https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv
**Her debut romantic fiction novel, *‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’* is out now from Poolbeg Books:**
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
**The sequel, *‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’* is out now from Poolbeg Books:**
***https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thirteen-Stops-Later-Book-ebook/dp/B091J75WNB/***

THE REVENGE OF ROBERT THE DOLL (2018) and WEREWOLVES OF THE THIRD REICH (2017): TWO NAZI HORROR FILMS REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE REVENGE OF ROBERT THE DOLL (2018) AND WEREWOLVES OF THE THIRD REICH (2017): A DOUBLE BILL OF TRULY WOEFUL NAZI HORROR FILMS REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I received both of these films as a birthday present recently and I had great craic watching them, despite the fact that they’re both awful, lol. THE REVENGE OF ROBERT THE DOLL is apparently the third film in a trilogy, so somewhere out there, knocking around merrily as if they haven’t got a care in the world, are the two other films that spawned this unholy hell-child.

Based on a real doll, a doll that exists in real life and is said to be possessed of supernatural powers, it’s by far the worst film of my two birthday gifts. It’s a film of two halves. The first half actually promises to be good, believe it or not.

An obviously abused wife is fleeing from her sadistic husband in Nazi Germany. She’s bringing with her an old book said to possess the power to grant life to inanimate objects. Hitler has sent some of his most high-ranking Nazis to retrieve the book at all costs.

What does Hitler want it for anyway, the cheeky beggar? If he was hoping to use it to revive his floppy pecker, well, I don’t think the book performs actual freakin’ miracles, lol. From what I’ve read, he wasn’t exactly a sensation in the bedroom. Eva Braun must have died a very frustrated woman. Good job there were so many hot Nazis around…

Anyway, the abused wife, Eva von Hammersmark, is charming and feisty and the film might have been a bit better if it had concentrated more on Eva and her nasty hubby Joseph. However, we lose Eva at the end of the first half of the film when her car is hijacked by another nasty piece of work (she certainly seems to attract that type!) and she and her abductor end up at the isolated farmhouse of a very strange man indeed…

The second half of the film doesn’t seem to have anything at all to do with the first, and it’s virtually incomprehensible to boot. The ancient German toymaker responsible for creating Robert the Doll is aboard a train for some reason, fighting off Nazis with the help of his ventriloquist’s dummy, Robert. I think they’re all fighting for possession of the mystical book but don’t quote me on that. They could be doing anything at all, this bit’s such a mess.

WEREWOLVES OF THE THIRD REICH has garnered a number of truly stinking reviews, but I liked it much better than THE REVENGE OF ROBERT THE STUPID WOODEN DOLL WHO LOOKS LIKE THE EVIL DUMMY FROM THE GOOSEBUMPS BOOKS.

A group of four painfully American soldiers escape from the Nazis while they’re being carted off to military prison in Germany in World War Two. They wander deep into rural Germany, Hitler’s Third Reich, and end up stumbling upon something rather out of the ordinary.

It’s an SS medical experiment camp run by the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele and his, um, wife, Ilse Koch. She’s a big show-off cow who’s very anxious for the four (yes, four, maybe it was all they could afford, lol) prisoners at the camp to know her terrifying nickname, the Bitch of Buchenwald…

Here at the camp, Mengele, played by an actor who could easily double as Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s personal toady and Minister for Propaganda, is taking time out from experimenting on twins and making his infamous ‘selections’ on the arrivals ramp at Auschwitz.

He’s engaged on a top-secret mission for the Fuhrer, played by a man who looks like Scottish actor Robert Carlyle with ‘a perfectly square bit of black dirt’ painted onto him between his schnozz and his kisser. Mengele is perfecting a method that will turn regular Nazis into werewolf Nazis, so they’ll be just as vicious and bloodthirsty but just not quite as blonde, lol.

The Nazi chosen to go first in this terrifying experiment is the handsome young fella who’s been giving the horny, frustrated Ilse Koch the ride while Mengele’s been occupied trying to turn straw into gold, I mean Nazis into werewolves. Yes, Ilse is a passionate woman who needs to be loved and she’s been playing hide-the-salami with the film’s one good-looking Nazi, the clever girl.

Mengele has found out about his wife’s unwise infidelity and he’s deliberately chosen her lover for the furry face and scratchy fingernails out of spite and jealousy. And the lover can’t even refuse to do it because it’s for Hitler, haha, for Hitler and the Third Reich and you know how fanatical these guys were about doing stuff for Hitler and his precious Reich, lol.

Can Ilse save her sexy blonde lover from a fate pretty much worse than death? (Is being a werewolf worse than being a Nazi? I can’t even tell…!) Can ‘the Fabulous Four’ (those ‘Murican soldiers I mentioned earlier) manage to break into the camp and foil Mengele’s dastardly plan to win the war for Hitler with his unholy army of savage werewolf soldiers?

If you still actually care at this point, you might enjoy the fun ending and the promise of more films to come. Oh, and the end of the ROBERT THE DOLL movie promises, well, another ROBERT THE DOLL movie sometime in the future too, God help us all.

Maybe by then they’ll have a few more Nazi uniforms to go round and they might even have had time to iron out the plotholes in their concept. Who am I kidding? Even the mystical book couldn’t reanimate these turkeys, but I still enjoyed them- well, WEREWOLVES, anyway- and they’re only meant to be a bit of fun. Don’t y’all go taking ’em seriously now…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

FIFTY REALLY RANDOM HORROR FILM REVIEWS TO DIE FOR… BY SANDRA HARRIS.

A veritable lucky dip of horror movie reviews, covering everything from old favourites and iconic titles to obscure and forgotten horror films and cult classics. Do you dare dip YOUR hand into this mystery bag of evil, demonic possession and bone-chilling terror…? You do…? Then on your own head be it… MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OV9EKG6

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based performance poet, novelist, film blogger, sex blogger and short story writer. She has given more than 200 performances of her comedy sex-and-relationship poems in different venues around Dublin, including The Irish Writers’ Centre, The International Bar, Toners’ Pub (Ireland’s Most Literary Pub), the Ha’penny Inn, Le Dernier Paradis at the Trinity Inn and The Strokestown Poetry Festival.

Her articles, short stories and poems have appeared in The Metro-Herald newspaper, Ireland’s Big Issues magazine, The Irish Daily Star, The Irish Daily Sun and The Boyne Berries literary journal. In August 2014, she won the ONE LOVELY BLOG award for her (lovely!) horror film review blog. She is addicted to buying books and has been known to bring home rain-washed tomes she finds on the street and give them a home.

She is the proud possessor of a pair of unfeasibly large bosoms. They have given her- and the people around her- infinite pleasure over the years. She adores the horror genre in all its forms and will swap you anything you like for Hammer Horror or JAWS memorabilia. She would also be a great person to chat to about the differences between the Director’s Cut and the Theatrical Cut of The Wicker Man. You can contact her at: