Dracula Presents: The Fourteenth Annual Golden Stake Awards

Not anymore.  Those motherfuckers like to act hardcore but the second you try to sacrifice just one goat around them they turn into a bunch of pussies. 

Say what you will about Kirk Cameron, if he thinks God wants a sacrifice Kirk is sure as fuck gonna give him one.

The use of blank space outside the frame is really astounding in your winner

Villain of the Year
The category dedicated to the worst of the worst in film characters this year. As always I’m limiting this to characters who were active antagonists rather than any character that was evil and am also limiting it to characters who were essentially human. With the downturn in action movies and the like this year I’ve had to focus on villains that are perhaps a bit less grandiose and more human for my current crop of great movie villains, but I think my choices work well. I didn’t do it intentionally but something of a theme emerged this year as four of the five nominees to make the list are rather conspicuously wealthy which may say something about where people’s minds were this year when it came to the subject of evil.

Black Mask - Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn): A lot of the villains nominated this year are very human figures that seek to represent very real negative forces in society, sometimes in fairly subtle ways. Black Mask is not one of those villains. This iteration of the Black Mask comic book character is just the most over the top embodiment of wacky evil imaginable. A dude who really goes over the top in being this hyperactive force for unpleasantness in the world and is played scenery devouring over-the-topness by Ewan McGregor.

Enid Nora Devlin – Blow the Man Down: Enid is an interesting figure in that she’s a wolf in… I wouldn’t even say sheep’s clothing, more like a wolf hiding under a bush not seen by anyone. She looks from the outside like an average frumpy middle aged woman but in actuality she’s something of a local gangster as she runs the local brothel and has her finger in all the small town illegality that the film revolves around. She’s not pure evil though and you see in Margo Martindale that the years have worn her down and that she’s conflicted about the world she’s created.

The Chief Factor – First Cow: I don’t believe we ever learn the chief factor’s real name in First Cow. A “factor” is a type of merchant who acts as an agent selling goods on commission (or something, I had to look it up) and in this case the factor in question is played by Toby Jones and kind of kicks the plot into gear by hording the only cow in the territory and then protecting this violently. He’s like a living symbol of greed and the worst kind of capitalism moving in to untamed lands and acts as quite the contrast to the more modest enterprise the main characters are trying to operate.

Adrian Griffin - The Invisible Man: Adrian Griffin is an interesting villain as you don’t see him for most of the film’s running time… I mean, not just because he’s frequently invisible. Even if you count all the moments when he may or may not be in the room with Elisabeth Moss there’s still a lot of time he’s not a physical presence at all in the movie and yet you still feel you really know a lot about him both because of the things you hear about him and because of how much Moss’ character is haunted by him even before she’s literally haunted by him.

Andrei Sator – Tenet: When I first saw Tenet I thought Kenneth Branagh’s Andrei Sator was one of the weaker elements and while I still don’t think the character is perfect I have warmed up to it quite a bit. The guy is essentially meant to be something of an avatar of pure nihilistic greed, especially once you find out how unabashedly selfish his ultimate endgame is. But beyond what he may or may not represent he’s just a wonderfully slimy individual who manages to be an imposing threat throughout the film despite not exactly being someone who could personally fight the hero if he came to that.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Best Cameo
I’ve always gone back and forth with the category as to how big a role still qualifies as a cameo and how famous someone can be to really make their presence count as a cameo. Often it’s been closer to simply being “best performance in a limited capacity” while at other times it’s been more about the novelty of certain castings. This year I’ve opted to focus more clearly on appearances that don’t venture too far into just being smallish supporting roles (sorry Michael Keaton and Mathieu Amalric) but don’t strictly require the viewer to immediately know who the performer is.

Dave Grohl – Bill and Ted Face the Music: In this amusing scene from Bill and Ted Face the Music our duo think they’re in their future selves’ home but right as they’re leaving they run into Foo Fighters lead singer Dave Grohl, who actually owns this house and is pretty pissed to see these trespassers. Grohl was perhaps the only person who could have done this cameo as he’s kind of one of the last really huge recognizable names in rock, or at least the kinds of rock these guys embody and aspire to.

Tom Hanks – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: This would be one of the most plainly cameo-like cameos nominated here as it’s a moment that takes up something like ten seconds of screen time and yet it feels like a really outlandish “get” just the same. As the film winds down we get this Usual Suspect spoof where we find out that Borat was actually the carrier who sparked the entire pandemic that was going on as the film got made and part of this was aparantly bumping into Tom Hanks in Australia (where in real life he was one of the first celebrities to get the virus). Hanks’ role as one of the preeminent movie stars makes his willing to play along with this weird joke about his own painful experience feels shocking and subversive.

Bill Nye – Mank: The author and activist Upton Sinclair is a major part of David Fincher’s Mank through the California governor’s race that he’s a candidate in which is going on in the background and foreground of much of the movie. Sinclair himself, however, only shows up in one key scene where he’s seen passionately stumping in Los Angeles. In some act of mad genius Fincher had the idea of casting Bill Nye The Science Guy of all people in this role, which is appropriate firstly because Nye does kind of look like Sinclair but also because it matches his current role in public life as a frustrated climate change activist.

Bob Wells – Nomadland: Bob Wells is not an actor, he’s a real life Van-dweller who has become something of a celebrity in that community and has a YouTube channel about his life on the road and he’s basically playing himself in Nomadland. You see him on the periphery of some early scenes where the various nomads are congregating but his most notable moment in the film is a scene late in the movie where he and Frances McDormand’s character sit down and have a heart to heart about what drives her and he reveals some of the trauma in his own life and what the lifestyle means to him.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse – Promising Young Woman: In this early sequence in Promising Young Woman Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse plays one of the men who the protagonist ensnares in her sting operation. This dude is something of a goofy looking nerd who sees himself as being different from the alpha bros we see her going after elsewhere in the film but who actually behaves almost identically to them. This is one of the longer cameos nominated here, bordering on being more of a simple casting decision than a true cameo, but I think the casting here was pointed and that there’s a sort of meta-element to the fact that this character is being played by a guy made famous for his role in a light comedy premised around teenagers trying to get girls drunk for sex.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Reggie was on my long list, not so much the other two.

Real life van dweller/nomad.  Is sort of a guru in that world and has a popular youtube channel about it.

Literally nobody this year was happier to see a cameo than Bad Boys fans seeing Reggie. There is not a single person out there that doesn't love Reggie.

Not really.  


As for Michael Caine, that was a good scene but I don't know that I'd call it award worthy.

Not really a cameo, but the fact that the Asian guy was revealed to be Tattoo at the end was it's big attempt of "HE'S FROM THE SHOW!" twist.

Best Supporting Actor
These acting categories usually don’t take a lot of explaining. It was a little tricky this year however as there were a lot of films with largish male ensembles so a lot of these nominees had internal competition.

Arliss Howard – Mank: There are a couple of good supporting actor contenders in Mank (Charles Dance was certainly in the running) but the supporting performance that I liked the best was probably Arliss Howard’s work as the legendary studio head Louis B. Mayer. Mayer was something of a larger than life person and was something of a model for the stock type of the overbearing producer which lives on to this day and Howard has a lot of fun embodying this guy while also giving you an idea of what being in the presence of this guy would have been like.

Colman Domingo – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: Colman Domingo plays Cutler in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a trombone player who is something of the defacto leader of the band at the film’s center who acts as something of a foil for the younger hotshot trumpet player played by Chadwick Boseman. It’s not the showiest role in the movie by any means but Domingo manages to do a lot with it and you can see his mounting frustration through much of the film as he’s probably the closest thing to an audience surrogate in the film.

Bo Burnham – Promising Young Woman: Bo Burnham is a standup comedian and occasional actor who gained a lot of credibility in film a few years ago as the writer and director of the film Eighth Grade and has gotten his most prominent role as an actor in the film Promising Young Woman as a suitor of the protagonist who ends up having a bit of a dark side. Like many characters in the film, this guy is mean as something of a representative of forms of toxic masculinity, in this case pushy men who take the wrong lessons from romantic comedies and also people willing to look the other way in the presence of rape culture and he needs to embody these ideas while also seeming like someone the main character would still find herself liking.

Paul Raci - Sound of Metal: This year’s biggest “discovery” was likely Paul Raci, who played the part of a deafness teacher named Joe in the film Sound of Metal. Raci was the son of deaf parents and has had a foot in that community for a while and has also done a fair amount of work doing bit parts in movies and as a one-time guest star on TV shows but this is his first role to gain serious recognition, in large part because it’s a role that’s perfect for his background and also because he rises to the occasion and manages to subtly portray this character’s hopes and ambitions for the Riz Ahmed character.

Mark Rylance - The Trial of the Chicago 7: There are a ton of great supporting actors from the large ensemble of The Trial of the Chicago 7 and I suppose the one that stands out the most to be is the performance by Mark Rylance as the legendary civil rights attorney Bill Kunstler. Kunstler was a rather distinctive person known for being an ally of the counter-culture while still being a law professional and Rylance does a good job of portraying this duality while also avoiding making him too much of a perfect crusader.

And the Golden Stake goes to…