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Mockingbird Lane – review

May 10, 2014, 4:28 am
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Directed by: Bryan Singer

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

I loved the original Munsters, hated what I saw of the Munsters Today (which doesn’t stop me wanting to see it on DVD at some point) and waited for this with trepidation. Released as a pilot for the 2012 Halloween it finally appeared on DVD on eBay (though I suspect it isn’t overtly kosher). Given the time that has passed it is as well to ask why it wasn’t picked up as a series and I shall offer some thoughts later.

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Jerry O'Connell as Herman
I had known, before it actually aired, that a lot of the ‘old school monster’ look was going to be removed. This wasn’t actually the Munsters but a modern reboot, a reimagining. So whilst the oddly normal Marilyn (Charity Wakefield) looks much as she did in the original show, Herman (Jerry O'Connell, Sliders - Stoker, Room 6& Crossing Jordan - revealed) looks normal, barring the vicious stitches (visible above his collar line). This would make sense given that Grandpa (Eddie Izzard, Shadow of the Vampire) made him for daughter Lily (Portia de Rossi) as no single man was good enough for her. Lily and Herman’s kid Eddie (Mason Cook) is a werewolf and we begin with him.

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Eddie as a wolf
Or rather, with his wolf form, at a scout camp. The next day, with the troop scared but unharmed, Eddie is unaware of the fact that he is a werewolf (it was his first turn) and the attack is put down to a baby bear. The family move away from the area and buy a (soon to be demolished) home of a serial killer; number 1313 Mockingbird Road. And it is here that the episode faltered and failed to get picked up. I loved the premise, I loved some of the ideas – for instance when the family arrive grandpa’s crate splits depositing a horde of rats that then transform into him, Lily emerges from her crate in mist form. When she takes on human form she is naked and spiders drop down and weave her a dress.

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Eddioe Izzard as Grandpa
We have the issue of Eddie discovering what he is, of Herman’s (original) heart breaking through loving too much and needing replacing – and all this gets resolved around a scout master named Steve (Cheyenne Jackson). However it is storyline fluff, background material that is good to have but has no substantive bite. The comedy is still there but less overt and more subtle – often centred around Grandpa, Izzard clearly having a great time – but not strong enough to make this a comedy, it is more a comedy drama and that (of course) relies on the drama to work. For this reason, I can understand why it didn’t get picked up… there just wasn’t enough there. Perhaps it would have developed well (I like to think so) but it didn’t grab from the first instance.

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manbat form
As for vampiric aspects. When Grandpa is “drinking” (human that is rather than animal blood) he becomes younger looking. His blood makes mortals his blood slaves. He is seen at different times with Nosferatu-like front fangs and side fangs. He can go out in daylight and transform shape. His manbat form was disappointing as the cgi seemed a little un-textured, making it almost appear rubbery.

So, a nice start but not good enough to let us see if they could have made it work over a long run and, of course, we will never know. The pilot itself is too short and, as I said above, is lacking in substantive storyline. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.
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Harry Dickson: The Heir of Dracula

May 12, 2014, 9:34 am
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Author: Unknown

Adaption: Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficer

First Published: 1933 – 1936

Contains Spoilers

The Blurb: Miloska, white as a sheet, pressed herself against the portrait of the saint as if she was begging for her protection. From out of the brush, a man slowly approached her. A man! No, it was a wraith! It had a dark, hate-filled face in which burned two hideous red eyes!
"The man from the portrait," muttered Tom Wills.
"Count Ion Nedelcu Dragomin, the Heir of Dracula, the Red-Eyed Vampire!" said Dickson.

When inhuman monsters walk the Earth, threatening the good and the helpless, Justice has no stronger defenders than Harry Dickson and his assistant Tom Wills, who fight the forces of evil and cast them back into the Darkness from whence they came.

Harry Dickson began as an unauthorized Sherlock Holmes pulp series in Germany in 1907, before changing its name and morphing into a hugely popular saga in Holland, Belgium and France, with 178 issues published between 1927 and 1938, especially after it was entrusted to the editorship of Belgian horrormeister Jean Ray.

This volume includes three original episodes and one short story:

The Heir of Dracula: From the rat-infested swers of Limehouse to the dark forests of Bavaria, Dickson hunts for the mysterious red-eyed vampire, Count Dragomin.
The Iron Temple: Deep beneath London, monstrous creatures engage in bloody sacrifices in their amazing, futuristic lair.
The Return of the Gorgon: A beautiful but deadly woman who may be a reincarnation of Medusa has the power to turn men to stone.
The Curse of the Crimson Heart: Meet Dickson's mentor, armchair detective Mortimer Triggs.

This famous Holmesian pastiche has been translated by award-winning authors Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier and includes original cover illustrations and a foreword about the Harry Dickson phenomenon.

The Review: Harry Dickson – the American Sherlock Holmes – was a pastiche of the great detective, whose stories were popular through Holland, Belgium and France (and, I understand, Dickson is still popular in France). Indeed he started life out as Sherlock Holmes, in a flagrant disregard of copyright, and elements remain in the Dickson stories of the 30s such as his address being 221B Baker Street.

This volume, by the wonderful Blackcoat Press, contains three longer stories and a short and – from a TMtV point of view – we are interested in the first (and title) story: The Heir of Dracula.

The story begins after Dickson has captured Ebenezer Grump – the serial killer dubbed by the press as the Red-Eyed Vampire. Gump is in prison in the small town of Hildesheim awaiting execution but Dickson has doubts about the case and when the Warden asks him to come the detective is quick to answer the summons.

Dickson believes that, after showing devastating cunning during the chase from England, Gump suddenly became too easy to capture in Hildesheim and wonders if another intelligence was guiding him? When Dickson and his young protégé Tom get to the town – that has its own “haunted house” owned by a Transylvanian family – they discover that Gump has asked for garlic flowers and is terrified.

We discover that someone can become a vampire is they are killed by a vampire, and this means killed in any way, not just bitten. Thus the vampire tries to take the place of the executioner in order that he might curse Gump but Dickson foils his plan. The chase eventually leads to the edge of the forest of Bohemia as they look for the two hundred years old grave of Count Ion Nedelcu Dragomin (the heir of Dracula). Is he really a two hundred years undead vampire? For that information you will have to read the story but there was a cracking piece of lore in the book.

I have already mentioned the turning principles and we discover that staking is a way to stop a vampire’s predations and garlic a way of warding them. However it is the grave dirt they put in their shoes I was taken with, or more exactly why they put it in their shoes. It is suggested that the cross of a headstone locks a vampire in its grave and so, by putting dirt from their grave in their shoes they remain (technically) in the grave and thus can travel abroad.

The stories are pulp – make no mistake – the detective work is almost secondary to the fantastique elements. There are, in other stories, people being turned to stone, human monstrosities, underground bases made of unknown materials and a plethora of semi-supernatural and science fiction elements. It makes it all a great diversion if you remember that it is only supposed to be pulpy fun. 6 out of 10.

The Blackcoat Press page is here.

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Friday the 13th the Series – Night Prey – review

May 14, 2014, 10:20 am
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Director: Armand Mastroianni

First Aired: 1989

Contains spoilers

When I reviewed the season 1 episode of this series, the Baron’s Bride, I admitted that I wasn’t too familiar with the series. That hasn’t changed and I let looking at the other two vampire episodes from the series that I had heard of lie fallow.

Recently Alex queried whether the review for the season 3 episode Night Prey was missing. It wasn’t, it had never been done. Through this conversation I discovered that the episodes had all been uploaded to YouTube – time to look at the other vampire episodes then – starting with this one.

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Louise Robey as Micki
Now the series was not connected to the famous film franchise it is about an antique shop. It seems the owner made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. When he dies his niece Micki (Louise Robey) and her cousin Ryan inherit the shop and together with Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins) they try to retrieve said cursed items. By season three Micki and Jack are still there but Ryan was not – in this episode at least – rather there was a new young man named Johnny Ventura (Steve Monarque).

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Chris Wiggins as Jack
Honestly I’m still not sure about the character dynamics (nor too bothered to tell the truth) however some knowledge of them might have been useful in this as the episode opens with Jack musing about *him* - the object of his musing is a vampire hunter named Kurt Bachman (Michael Burgess) and Jack wonders about the blurred lines between good and evil. It is clear, as the episode develops, that he is having some form of in-series crisis of conscience.

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the attack
We see Kurt, twenty years before, on his honeymoon with his bride Michele (Genevieve Langlois). They are happy but observed by a vampire, Evan Van Hellier (Eric Murphy). As they walk from the restaurant they had been in, he descends from them from the sky, knocking Kurt down and then drawing Michele to him. He bites her and then flies away with her – Kurt dedicates his life to killing vampires and this takes us to the now where a vampire woman attacks a young man.

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glowing cross
Kurt steps in with crucifix held aloft and is knocked away but, as she leaps at him, he raises a stake and she impales herself. The air is filled with the noises of the undead and Kurt runs. He reaches a church, breaks in and then sees a cross in a display. He smashes the glass and steals it but is interrupted by a priest (Dan MacDonald). The cross has a concealed blade and he stabs the priest, killing him. Vampires are against the windows but the cross glows and, as he gets out of the church (observed by a younger priest) day is dawning.

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stream of fire
So, we discover that the priest was a friend of Jack’s and the cross is an object they are seeking for the shop – the cross of fire. Not only does the cross glow, it emits a stream of fire at the undead – making them crispy critters. Beyond this, the standard garlic and crosses apotropaic rules apply. A vampire staked will age and decay rapidly (but as one doesn’t, I assume it depends on the age of the vampire). They don’t reflect and holy water seems to act like a hyper-accelerator for mystical flames. As for the show, well Michele is still around and Evan uses the shop staff to help remove the cross so he can get to Kurt.

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denture fangs
Now I thought the Baron’s Bride was awful but this wasn’t too bad. As I suggested earlier, it probably made more sense if you had watched all the series but the actual vampire story was a nice little story of revenge and blurred moral lines. There was an unfortunate scene with Evan snarling and the camera pointing up that clearly showed the denture parts of the fangs he was wearing. All in all I have seen much worse. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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Friday the 13th the series – the Sweetest Sting – review

May 16, 2014, 2:08 pm
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Director: David Winning

First Aired: 1989

Contains spoilers

This is the final vampire episode of the Friday the 13th series and, whilst it is a season 2 episode and so comes before the episode Night Prey, I have left it until last as it is very, very unusual.

To recap, the series was not connected to the famous film franchise it is about an antique shop. It seems the owner made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. When he dies his niece Micki (Louise Robey) and her cousin Ryan (John D. LeMay) inherit the shop and together with Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins) they try to retrieve said cursed items. In this case it is a cursed transport beehive.

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attacked by vampire bees
The episode follows a pretty standard track of searching out the item and trying to get it back but what is interesting is the curse turns the bees into vampiric bees and these can be used by humans to extend life in a most unique way. At the head of the episode we see a man stop on the road to buy some honey from roadside stall. At the stall is the beekeeper, McCabe (Art Hindle, Monster Brawl), who offers a taste of his special blend and smears it on the man’s shirt. He releases the bees and they swarm the man.

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transforming
He is then met at the apiary by a business man. Honey is put on his hands and they are locked into a device. The bees are let in and they start to "attack". What they are doing is injecting the blood stolen from the previous man and giving his face and body to the dying business man. However there is a catch, these bees make a blood honey and the transformed individuals will start to rapidly age and then transform back into their old selves, as they die, without regularly eating the honey. McCabe uses this as a method of control and blackmail.

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the apiary
And that is the strange lore that sits at the heart of this episode. Bees that sting and suck out blood through their stingers, who can inject blood on command (presumably different honey on the target suggested suck or inject but the episode was unclear) and who can use any other blood to make a rejuvenating honey. If I was giving scores for the unusual nature of the concept it would have to get a high score just for the unusual factor. I am not, however. The episode did work as a standalone, it had a very TV feel to the acting and directing (appropriately as it was a TV episode) and there was some nice atmosphere around the apiary. The actual concept might have been unusual but it did stretch credulity. 4.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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Off for a few Days

May 18, 2014, 12:26 am
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I’m away at my Trade Union’s annual conference for a few days in sunny Brighton and so the blog will go into temporary hiatus until this coming Friday when I should be sharing my thoughts about Tim Power’s Hide me Amongst the Graves.

I’ll see you all in a few.
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Hide me Amongst the Graves – review

May 23, 2014, 1:41 am
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Author: Tim Powers

First Published: 2012

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: London, 1862

A city of over three-million souls, of stinking fog and winding streets.

Through these streets walks the poet Christina Rossetti, haunted and tormented by the ghost of her uncle, John Polidori. Without him, she cannot write, but her relationship with him threatens to shake London itself to the ground.

This fascinating, clever novel vividly recreates the stews and slums of Victorian London – a city of dreadful delight. But it is the history of a hidden city, where nursery rhymes lead the adventurer through haunted tunnels and inverted spires. And where the price of poetic inspiration is blood.

Telling a secret history of passion and terror, Tim Powers recasts the tragic lives of the Romantics in a gripping and Gothic feat of imagination.

The Review: Having placed this on my wish list, Hide me Amongst the Graves was a birthday present from my better half. What I hadn’t realised was that this is actually a sequel (of sorts), the earlier novel (The Stress of Her Regard) concentrating on Byron, Shelley and Keats. Worry not, however, for this book is absolutely able to stand alone and I enjoyed it so much that I ordered the earlier book as I devoured this one.

The vampirism is very unusual – though Powers does interesting things with standard lore. The vampires are Nephilim – the stone people. There are two primary vampires in this, both of which wear the ghosts of the dead. One wears Queen Boudicca and the other John Polidori. There is also a distinction made between ghosts and souls. The vampires are possessively jealous of anyone they class as theirs and will kill any they feel are close to those they have claimed. They can make lesser vampires and the adventurer Edward John Trelawny is a bridge between the species (as he puts it) as a fragment of a Nephilim statue (the Nephilim are physically small statues) is lodged in his neck and growing within him.

I mentioned playing with traditional lore and the vampires are repelled by garlic and can be injured by silver and iron. They avoid mirrors but if they catch their reflection they can become fascinated and reduced – this can be used to imprison them. Drowning can save a person from the vampires (or prevent them turning) and whilst this may seem extreme near drowning is used effectively during the novel and the river Thames is used to escape vampiric attention. However those who are under vampiric attention become great artists.

The book is a fantastic exploration of the Romantics, the Rossetti family being a core group of characters under the baleful gaze of Polidori. The writing is strong and the atmosphere palpable, the story drags you in and makes you stay. This book comes very highly recommended. 9 out of 10.

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From Dusk till Dawn: The Series – Season 1 - review

May 25, 2014, 3:22 am
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Director: Various

First Aired: 2014

Contains Spoilers

Written by and starring Quinten Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez, the 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn is absolutely iconic and, whilst not universally loved, I think it a classic of the vampire genre.

It was with some trepidation, and yet optimism, that I awaited the release of this TV series based on it. Optimism because Rodriguez was behind the project (indeed he is behind the network it was made for) but the idea that the series would follow the film’s story line (for season 1) left a nagging doubt.

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You - be cool
As I sat down to watch episode 1 (cleverly the series was available on several countries’ Netflix immediately after US premier - other TV series makers take note) my doubts were displaced. The first episode is the prologue of the film extended to 45 minutes and there were changes. Richie Gecko (Zane Holtz, Vampires Suck) is not just psychologically unhinged but is clearly getting telepathic communications from Santánico Pandemonium (Eiza González). Her role in the series is vastly expanded (and yes the dance does happen) and Texas Ranger Earl McGraw (Don Johnson, Nash Bridges: Superstition) still dies, at the end of the first episode, but has a partner called Freddie Gonzalez (Jesse Garcia) who will hunt the Geckos across Texas and over the border.

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Don Johnson was magnificent
However let me stop here and say just how frigging good Don Johnson was in this. He outshone everyone on screen and this was perhaps a little unfortunate as we were to get to know the Geckos in this episode but their lights were dimmed compared to his. D.J. Cotrona had his work cut out as Seth Gecko because comparisons to George Clooney’s stunning portrayal were inevitable, but whilst not as good he did a very good job. Making Richie look so clean cut and boyish was a genius move that made him stand out against Tarantino’s sinister performance.

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The Geckos
Despite the differences in story the basic story remains the same. Having broken Seth out of prison, Richie and Seth rob a bank and run for Mexico, leaving a wake of bodies behind them. Meanwhile a paster, Jacob Fuller (Robert Patrick, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money) has recently lost his wife (Joanna Going, Dark Shadows: the Revival) and has taken his daughter Kate (Madison Davenport) and adopted son Scott (Brandon Soo Hoo) on a trip to Texas. The details of the death and family pressures are expanded on (and Scott gets a more substantial story). Their paths cross and the Geckos use the family to get across the border.

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sex machine
One change early on is that Seth’s contact, Carlos (Wilmer Valderrama), is part of the vampires and setting the brothers up. It is through him that we discover some of the lore early on. Later on a Professor of Mesoamerican legends, Professor Aiden Tanner (Jake Busey, Frost: Portrait of a Vampire), tells us much more. Tanner is also, in this, original character Sex Machine – replete with crotch gun. The vampires are not called vampires by Tanner but, for all intents and purposes, they are a snake vampire.

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snake vampire
They eat someone’s life energy (or soul, Carlos claims) through the conduit of blood and can turn a victim into one of their own by injecting venom into them (with a notable exception). This eating of the soul allows them to take the form of their victims – this also causes them to look to be wearing the clothes of the victim too. Their fangs flip down like a snake’s and they have various stages of snake form. A stake to the heart (as it is the blood organ) will kill them. They are not deterred by religious iconography (or at least not in the Titty Twister as it is their temple) and so the story of Jacob’s rocked faith isn’t as important. Despite the snake aspect they can grow giant bat wings (perhaps referencing winged serpents).

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burning
The sunlight aspect is odd. We see Carlos out in the day and also see his fingers begin to burn in direct sunlight but at another point we see him walking across a highway on the Mexico border with no shade and no noticeable detriment. Santánico tells a new vampire that he can’t face sunlight yet – indicating that he will be able to eventually. The vampires are themselves the slaves of the 9 Lords – these are (not-so-)mythical God’s of the underworld and the vampires are meant to provide the lord's representatives with sustenance and them with sacrifice (this is under explored for me).

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Eiza González as Santanico
So, the story diverges but holds its own. The fact that a film has been stretched to a 10 episode series wasn’t problematic. I think they made a dubious choice around language though as it was severely toned down and lost part of the atmosphere of the film in doing so. Certain iconic moments fell flat – “Richie, would you do me a favour and eat my pussy for me… please” as he hallucinates over Kate became a tame request for Bikini removal and clumsy as a result. Generally the series felt a little wussy when it came to the language, therefore. Given some of the violence and later nudity (the topless dancers are still there) it was an odd choice.

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bat wings
Not too much of a score detractor though. The fact was I looked forward to each episode release and whilst I don’t think it was as good as the original it was fun. Many of the story changes were good and I did start wondering how they were going to pull the divergent (between film and series) story strands together. This was good TV overall and it deserves the second season it has got. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.


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Rufus – review

May 27, 2014, 3:24 am
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Director: Dave Schultz

Release date: 2012

Contains Spoilers

Rufus is a film I have had my eye on for a while. I finally found the film on Canadian DVD, indeed the film is Canadian in origin (with an English lead) but has been slow getting a wider release.

Perhaps that is down to the fact that this is much less a horror than it is a drama. It actually looks into the subject of the outsider, a favourite of the vampire genre as that is a main theme that runs through Dracula. However, the seminal novel played on fear of the outsider, this is more contemplative.

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Louise and Rufus
The film begins with credits in which we just see Rufus (Rory J. Saper). As the blue skies turn to frost we realise he is sat before a window. As the film starts proper he and an elderly lady, Louise (Christina Jastrzembska, the Twilight Saga: New Moon), get off a bus in the middle of nowhere, it appears. He asks her why there and she says that she can go no further and implores him to fit in. She steps into the road in front of a truck. Her blood splatters him and we see his tongue tentatively taste some from the corner of his mouth.

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David James Elliott as Hugh
Hugh Wade (David James Elliott) is the top cop in a two cop town. When he arrives at the scene his deputy, Chet (Tom Carey), tells him what apparently happened and directs him to Rufus – warning him that the young man stinks. Rufus gives his forename (he has an English accent) but says nothing else. Hugh drives him to town, and to underline the fact that the boy stinks tells him to crack a window. He takes Rufus to his home, something his wife, Jennifer (Kelly Rowan), is not enthusiastic about. Later we find that they had a son, about Rufus’ apparent age, who died in a handgun accident and this has caused a marital rift.

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Merritt Patterson as Tracy
Rufus is sent for a bath but discovered an hour later just lying in it, in his clothes. Hugh discovers from the local vet (where he has stored Louise’s body) that she had two scars and the vet suspects she might have been lobotomised – though he is no coroner as he points out. The girl who lives over the street from Hugh and Jennifer, Tracy (Merritt Patterson), speaks to Rufus who is stood in a tree. He drops the great height with no ill effect and notices she wears pj’s and bunny slippers. She invites him over, tells him to stand behind an invisible line and orders him to strip as she does too. When he hasn’t moved towards her she says most boys would have already crossed the line but, he explains, she told him not to. She touches his chest and says he is cold and she can’t feel his heart. Its on the other side he says – Jennifer later discovers he has situs inversus (mirror organs).

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Kim Coates as Van Dusen
The fact that Tracy is so brazen with him might seem odd but the whole film moves reactions just slightly off kilter in a way that works because the skewed nature is consistent. As things progress we meet Aaron Van Dusen (Kim Coates, The Dresden Files& Dracula the Series) a vampire hunter – but not your normal one. He works for a pharmaceutical company who Rufus escaped from with the help of Louise (and several other institutionalised individuals) decades before. He wants to take their “property” back. At one point, looking at a model kit of a bomber plane, Rufus mentions the factory in Seattle where they were built as though he was there. When Jennifer says that the war was 70 years before he says it didn’t seem so long. Indeed we discover that his age is unknown but he is at least over 100 and time is perceived differently by him.

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Rufus attacks
Tracey discovers the truth of him when an ex-boyfriend, Chet (Tom Carey), tries to force himself on her and Rufus defends her. He grows fangs and claws and growls in a bestial manner. Instead of fearing him she accepts him almost immediately. Chet – who survives because Tracy whacks Rufus with a pipe – also starts to accept him and thus is confronted with his own homosexuality and this tension (his feelings versus the societal norm in a small town) is a major tension in the film. Rufus does heal the claw wound on Chet’s face with his blood and it is the blood's restorative qualities that Van Dusen wants and which kept Louise younger than she actually was. Beyond the need for blood (which causes him to vomit if he eats anything other than bloody meat) he reflects, can go out in sunlight but is physically enhanced. He is said to be a one off (by Van Dusen), a freak of nature.

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claws
I was struck as I watched the film by a similarity, tonally perhaps, of the classic film The Man Who Fell to Earth. This was probably enhanced by Rory J. Saper’s performance of the outsider that seemed so lost, so naive and innocent (in many ways) that it reminded me of Bowie’s performance in the afore mentioned film. Rufus is socially inept and illiterate, his accent makes him seem foreign to those around him. He really did make you think of the outsider; he became an accepted cuckoo in the nest who could cause a final confrontation of grief and allow healing to occur, he was attractive to some and yet reviled because of the attraction and he was there to be exploited by an uncaring capitalism (the file we see has photos of him being vivisected whilst awake, aware and screaming). Even when he attacked you had sympathy – he attacks a man who tried to sexually assault him and says the man selected himself and yet, as we think about it, he deliberately put himself into the position of being selected and that belies the naivety somewhat. The film is perhaps ponderous because it wants to explore these relationships and themes but it is Saper who pushes you along, preventing that ponderousness from becoming laborious. The skewed feeling allowed the exploration to occur outside the bounds of normal reaction and felt right in film, which is a credit to the script.

Rufus is a fine film and it deserves much more attention than it has thus far. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.
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Blackstone Vampires Omnibus

May 29, 2014, 3:40 am
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Carole Gill has had her four book series of the Blackstone Vampires released in Omnibus form. Carole has previously sent me complimentary copies of the individual books in exchange for honest reviews and, as a favour, I have agreed to recap the reviews and scores (links go to the full review):

Book 1: The House on Blackstone Moor: The House on Blackstone Moor is very much a book of two halves… the first half of the book is a gothic joy… the story morphs into something akin to Clive Barker in a period costume…. I for one found this gloriously gothic, refreshingly brutal, honestly horrific and a great read….7.5 out of 10.

Book 2: Unholy Testament - The Beginnings: …The book itself works well. It perhaps is neither as gothic or horrific as the previous – the former does not take away from the rich prose… Occasionally there are phrase structures that seem incongruous with the time period of the portmanteau but they are only occasional and are mentioned here for balance sake… 7 out of 10

Book 3: Unholy Testament – Full Circle: …However something within the book didn’t gel for me… there is another agenda and this comes to a head at the end of the book but that ending just seemed rushed to me. We had spent so long immersed in Eco’s past that the events in the book’s present seemed to be resolved very quickly and I feel that the final section of the book needs expanding…6 out of 10

Book 4: The Fourth Bride:…the book itself concentrates on a new character, Dia, a young woman cursed from birth to be the fourth bride of Dracula… The author writes a fantastic victim and this worked so very well in the first book – when the primary character was human. With the primary character being a vampire I was less comfortable with the “female victim”…I would like to see the author write a strong female lead, one who isn’t the victim and doesn’t need rescuing by a man… That criticism aside… this was more rounded as a book than the third volume…7 out of 10

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Dracula – season 1 – review

May 31, 2014, 3:48 am
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Director: various

First aired: 2013

Contains spoilers

I had watched Dracula as it aired but decided, on reflection, that I wanted to re-watch the series before putting my thoughts to blog (so to speak). The series itself made me struggle towards the end and I really wanted to give it the optimum chance. Worrying then that I struggled to watch it again.

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Mina, Jonathon and Lucy
That was a shame because, despite reservations, I found myself (first time round) enjoying the series – for the first few episodes. I felt that the naysayers (often on Facebook) kicked off because it didn’t meet their private vision of who Dracula (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the Mortal Instruments: City of Bones) should be. If that was the case, and you are reading this, then all I can say is you are in for a lifetime of disappointment because the persona of Dracula shifts from book to book and film to film – this is probably why Draculas have become a plural common noun for vampire (especially, but not exclusively, in Japan). This Dracula was based on the Vlad Ţepeş model but was very different from many portrayals of that variety. The plot also added the resurrected love trope.

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resurrection
Dracula’s resurrection was well done. Two men entering a lost crypt and finding the coffin and mechanically impaled corpse. One – revealed to be Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann, Blade 2& Dracula [2012]) – slits the throat of his companion in order that he might resurrect Dracula and it is this sort of turnaround of characters that the series did well.

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let's make our enemy a vampire!
Dracula and van Helsing are uneasy allies campaigning to destroy the Order of the Dragon – the Order punished Dracula by burning his wife Ilona (Jessica De Gouw) at the stake and turning him into a vampire (ok, I wasn’t too sure about the appropriateness of that punishment, seemed a little silly to turn your enemy into a supernaturally strong creature) and centuries later punished Van Helsing by burning his wife and children to death in a house fire and forcing him to watch. Renfield (Nonso Anozie) becomes an erudite lawyer and loyal employee of Dracula, notably – given the faux-Victorian London setting – he is African American. Harker (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is a journalist and engaged to medical student Mina, she is also played by Jessica De Gouw as she is Ilona reborn. Lucy (Katie McGrath) is still there as a socialite and secretly in love with Mina.

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attack
The enemies in the Order are new characters and of them the two most interesting are Order leader Browning (Ben Miles) and the chief huntsman (or vampire hunter to you and I) Lady Jayne Wetherby (Victoria Smurfit). She is distracted from the true identity of American industrialist Alexander Grayson (which is the persona that Dracula has adopted) by him pursuing her and involving her in a torrid affair. The supernatural aspect is continued with the Order adopting seers to try and track down the elder vampire they know to have come to London. Dracula’s presence is like a homing beacon and London is being infiltrated by the undead.

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proto-steampunk
The way Dracula and Van Helsing intend to take down the order is by a technology they are developing that provides cheap wireless electricity. I liked this almost proto-steampunk feel the series adopted – though where they got the technology from is never answered (perhaps Van Helsing invented it, who knows). However, as much as it is an alternate Victorian London (allowing daring dresses and actions by the ladies) it was here that the series also fell flat. London was too clean, there may have been angst amongst the lead characters but London almost felt like a slightly darker Mary Poppins place of cheeky chaps, progressive (comparatively) asylums and was a place you could walk at night. It might be unfair to compare two series – especially as, at the time of writing this I have only seen episode 1 – but the dark, griminess of Penny Dreadful’s London was a million time more effective and should have been what this series aimed for.

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Nonso Anozie as Renfield
The trouble with this generally, however, was that it really did not grab me. For about four episodes (first viewing) I was interested and then it became a drag. Re-watching it for a second time it really did become a chore. It wasn’t the actors, it wasn’t the characters – whilst some (like Harker) were ciphers, Lady Jane, and Renfield were cracking characters and I liked Rhys Meyers’ interpretation of Dracula (perhaps a little presence-lite and much more suave than monster but he had his violent moments). It wasn’t the lore, which was fairly standard in most regards – sunlight was added as deadly to vampires, which we know is out with the novel but it was a definite story element as Van Helsing tried to create an anti-sunlight serum so that Grayson could complete his industrialist persona and be seen in daylight. Other Dracula cinema invented tropes, such as reincarnated love, are virtually so commonplace as to be not noteworthy – neither interesting nor annoying. So what was it?

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Vampire in Sunlight
The overall story didn’t grab me I guess, it had little in the way of teeth. It plodded along and, overall, I guess I didn’t care what happened and that’s a shame. Moments of violence and action were too infrequently peppered amongst industrial intrigue that wasn’t that intriguing. It isn’t surprising, however, that the series failed to get a second season. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles – review

June 2, 2014, 1:32 pm
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Director: Erik Matti

First released: 2012

Contains spoilers


Released on Australian DVD as the Aswang Chronicles, Tiktik was (I am led to believe) the first Philippines green screen dominant film and this lends the film a graphic novel feel that actually lets the film’s more outlandish aspects off the “suspension of disbelief” hook.

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see, he's armless
The overall look is perhaps more professional than other offerings from its home country – though there are some CGI aspects that look very cheap (we’ll get there). In the film’s prologue we see a motorbike and covered sidecar that is being used as a means of transportation. We meet Makoy (Dingdong Dantes), a passenger, who is not happy with the delay at an armed checkpoint and comes across pretty much as an arrogant dick. The checkpoint chief (Roldan Aquino) predicts that he will meet his match. Then we hit the credits, which I mention as they were an excellent animated affair.

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Dingdong Dantes as Makoy
Makoy is looking for his girlfriend Sonia (Lovi Poe, Aswang) who has, following an off screen argument, gone home to her parents – Nestor (Joey Marquez) and Fely (Janice de Belen). Sonia is heavily pregnant and Fely gives Makoy short shrift. However Nestor seems to be more sympathetic to the young man and asks him to come along as he and his help, Bart (Ramon Bautista), deliver (what I assumed to be) moonshine, and pick up stuff for a birthday feast for Sonia. They leave Bart at the market and go to a nearby settlement to get a pig for roasting – Bart has suggested it as his uncle should have a pig for sale and they’ll get it cheap.

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sparkling?
The settlement is some distance into the mountains and, as they pull into there, Makoy gets annoyed with some youths and honks the car horn, which just attracts their (rather mild) juvenile delinquency. Now, it might have just been me, but a sheen of sweat over one youth almost made him sparkle! The kids are sorted out by Ringo (Mike Gayoso), Bart’s cousin, but Makoy is not impressed with the price he wants for a pig. During the conversation, however, Nestor has mentioned Sonia’s pregnancy. As they are leaving, Ringo’s son Kulot (R.J. Salvador) offers them a cut price pig. They wait outside the settlement for him and Kulot's friends eventually show with a pig (apparently without Kulot himself).

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tongue
Of course Aswang can take the form of pigs and the pig is Kulot looking to snack on the unborn baby. Ringo turns up, near the house, wanting to stop the errant Aswang kids as they are going to get the settlement moved on/attacked. However Kulot is already in the house and has snuck up to Sonia’s room and is ready to use his long Aswang tongue to get to the baby. Sonia awakens, however, screams and brains him with a lamp. Makoy kills the aswang, the nearby Ringo swears revenge and, eventually, the whole aswang settlement is trying to get them.

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in half and still going
The lore we get is a little confused in one respect; Bart, who never shows his aswang aspect and remains on the humans’ side, suggests that if they last to daybreak they’ll be safe as the aswang will lose their power – but, of course, it was day when Kulot transformed into a pig. Beyond this, garlic and salt repel and will burn an aswang – indeed it was a young lad shooting Aswang down, with deadly efficiency, using a garlic peanut snack and peashooter that was the outlandish moment I mentioned earlier. They can take some major punishment before dying (one loses her arms, is cut in two and still needs to be shot). A stingray’s tale cuts through Aswang like a hot knife through butter. If an Aswang bites and gets saliva in the wound it will cause a spreading infection that will kill the bitten person.

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dog form
They are closest when their call is faintest and they can transform. As well as becoming pigs they can grow claws and fangs and run on all fours (and also appear to have no genitalia). Having drunk the saliva of the head aswang (who has a toothed bird living within him, this being the tiktik I assume) they can become demonic dogs and the leader can transform into a bat-winged monster. The CGI for the creatures was a little poor, especially the matting, but the graphic novel aesthetic let them get away with that to quite a degree. However, all told they are fairly easily killed by Makoy and his compatriots and the film is much more action than horror.

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bird in the mouth - the tiktik
The acting works. Lovi Poe is subtly understated as Sonia, Dingdong Dantes plays Makoy as a complete ass and thus his redemption is all the more interesting. Janice de Belen is brilliant in a comedic sense as Fely. If you have a soft spot for Aswang (I do) then this is quite an accomplished little action film about Aswang. You can suspend disbelief and just enjoy it – even the more rubbish CGI won’t dim the film too much. There was a direction moment that annoyed, this was the slo-motion climax to the film that just went on and on and on and on – the scene could have been edited to around an eighth of its length. Other than that the direction captured the desired graphic novel feel. All that said, there is very little to the story (essentially a monsters laying siege trope). 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.
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Nosferatu in Love – review

June 4, 2014, 9:18 am
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Director: Peter Straughan

First aired: 2014

Contains spoilers

Nosferatu in Love is a short that was part of the Playhouse Presents series (actually season 3 episode 2). Shot in Black and White and filmed in Czech it doesn’t actually feature a vampire.

Rather it features an actor, Mark Strong (himself), playing a vampire – indeed playing Count Dracula in a remake of Herzog’s Nosferatu – the Vampyre. The film sees him in makeup through its length.

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Klára Issová as Luna
It begins with the fictional director (Zdenek Maryska, Bathory) suggesting that they were waiting on set for Strong to come out of his trailer. In the trailer his wife, Luna (Klára Issová), faces a closed door and tells him through it that she wants a normal life again. She has rented an apartment for her and their son and discards her wedding ring as she leaves (and as a runner tells him he is wanted on set). Strong leaves the trailer and starts to run, whether after her or simply away is not clear. As he runs he steals a moped off someone.

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Fonso and Mark
We see him in town being refused entry into a restaurant – he has money, just not on him, he says. He turns to see a petty thief, Fonso (Petr Vanek), trying to steal the moped. Fonso makes an excuse about thinking it was his but Strong suggests that he might buy it. Fonso has no money but does know a man who might. Having sold the moped Strong wants a drink and Fonso agrees to be his guide. This leads them into a series of misadventures (mostly surrounding Strong’s desire to release a truck load of rats – for the film – into the town).

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dancing Nosferatu
The film watches two disparate characters, who have more in common than they might think. The fact that Strong is in makeup throughout (which is rarely commented on, except that it leads Fonso to believe that Strong is the lead singer of death metal band Anus) leads to some of the comedy. The sight of Count Dracula dancing really tickled me. At one point Strong tells a barman that he is Sean Penn. The film leads them both to their individual catharsis, in a way, and leads Strong to give a stunning performance in his next scene (we are told).

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on set
I rather liked this. The odd couple aspect of the two men worked well and there was a genuine comedic vein underpinned with a sadness. It is not a short that will change the world, but for its 24 minutes it entertained. 6 out of 10.

Thanks to Raven and Everlost for their assistance with this TMtV entry.

The imdb page is here.
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Nosferatu – the Vampyre – review

June 6, 2014, 7:45 am
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Author: Paul Monette

First published: 1979

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Nosferatu… The Undead… Count Dracula… a name that will always whisper of the unspeakable, of sensuous evil, of the pinnacle of the sado-erotic, of death that travels on silken batwings.

A lonely, wraith-like figure, doomed to wander forever in the realm of twilight in search of the alluring and lovely woman, whose destiny is to defeat him only by submission… the giving of herself from the dusk until dawn.

Nosferatu – the name under which the vampire myth first reached the screen – is now recreated by Werner Herzog as a sensual and haunting masterpiece of cinema. Eighty years after Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Paul Monette’s outstanding novel once more breathes life into the ultimate myth of evil…

The review: If Dracula, the novelisation of the 1992 film seemed pointless due to its alleged closeness to the original novel then this novelisation was welcome as the film ploughed its own furrow distinct from the original novel.

The book is as evocative as the script it is based on and, like many novelisations, one wonders whether those aspects different to the film were born of an early script draft or the imagination of the author. I liked the idea that the affected perfection of Wismar (a false perfection as we scratch at the surface) almost causes its own downfall. The letter from Dracula employing Renfield’s firm is delivered by raven, which made me wonder whether it was Dracula in animal form – especially as Harker sees a strange man in black at the same time. However the raven remains on the outskirts of Wismar, a servant of the vampire, we discover.

The character of Mina is much more developed in the book (Mina and Lucy’s names are swapped, so Lucy is Jonathon’s wife). We also see more into Van Helsing’s actions, though he is still too blinded by science to see what is happening in the town (the film makes Van Helsing impotent). Dracula seeks out Lucy because there is a link, beyond the fact that she is Jonathon’s wife. Lucy is, Dracula believes, destined to be his queen.

It is an interesting companion to the film, though the evocative prose can, at times, drift languidly like a dream (the same could be said of some of the more picturesque scenes within the film, especially the longer German edit) but it may only be of interest to the fans of the film rather than a wider readership. 6.5 out of 10.

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Honourable Mention: the Beast and the Magic Sword

June 8, 2014, 2:21 am
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It feels sometimes that I will forever be finding "just one more" Paul Naschy film to feature on TMtV. The truth is, of course, that it can’t be... but, for now, turning over the cinematographic rocks and finding these euro-horror films amounts to little bubbles of joy in my life (even if the films aren’t that great sometimes).

The Beast and the magic Sword was a Japanese/Spanish co-production from 1983 and was written and directed by Naschy. In truth, though it was the V word that brought it to my attention, it nearly didn’t qualify for even an honourable mention. Vampires are literally mentioned in passing and their mention is at the head of the film.

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Paul Naschy as Irineus Daninsky
The king Otton the Great (Gérard Tichy) is in a quandary. He has defeated the Hungarians and captured their leader Bhulcho. However, despite the fact that they died like any other men, the people believe that Hungarians are “Devils – insatiable vampires who seek out victims to steal away their blood and souls.” They are thought to bring plague and ruined harvests. Indeed if Bhulcho is executed, rather than die in single combat, it is believed he will return from the dead, as will all the Hungarian soldiers who have been killed. To solve this thorny problem, Otton invites the Polish knight Irineus Daninsky (Paul Naschy) to challenge the Magyar to single combat.

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defeating Bhulcho 
The fight happens and Daninsky wins. To make absolutely sure, Otton orders the Magyar’s heart to be pierced by a silver cross and his remains burned. However Bhulcho’s mistress is a witch and curses Daninsky’s pregnant wife so that all their descendants will become beasts if born the seventh son on the full moon (and it did strike me that such curses are a bit too specific to be overly effective). Thus it takes six hundred years for one of the line, Waldermer (again, Paul Naschy), to become so cursed. He goes to a wise man for help but when the inquisition’s thugs kill said sage as a heretic, Waldemar is forced to seek help from a Japanese wise man called Kian (Shigeru Amachi, Onna kyûketsuki).

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wolfman
So it is a werewolf in feudal Japan and vampires are never mentioned again. I did learn, however, that if a woman is pierced in the breast by a shuriken she will immediately die and we do get a fight between a wolfman and a tiger – filmed using real tigers. The imdb page is here.

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I, Vampire: Volume 3 Wave of Mutilation – review

June 10, 2014, 9:25 am
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Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov

Artists: Various

First Published: 2013 (Trade Paperback)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Andrew Bennett is a very unusual vampire. For hundreds of years, he’s avoided feeding on humans and has attempted to use his powers to stop those vampires who prey on humanity, including a monster of his own creation – his former love Mary, Queen of Blood.

But now everything is changed. To stop Mary, Andrew took the power of all the vampires into himself, turning them all mortal… but in the process, turning himself into the most powerful, most evil vampire to walk the earth.

Now, as Andrew begins building a team of new vampires, Mary will have to unite with Andrew’s former allies – many of whom have a good reason to despise her – to stop him before its too late. But more than Andrew’s soul lies in the balance. If Mary fails, the entire world will fall to the mad vampire who once protected it.

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detail
The review: The first two volumes of the New 52 reboot of I, Vampire (Volume 1& Volume 2) were consistently good graphic novels, though I felt the Justice League Dark sections of volume 2 were weaker art-wise. The story of volume 1 was perhaps a tad simplistic but the breakneck speed of volume 2 made up for that.

Volume 3 was fabulous, the artwork was produced by several artists but was more consistent and suited the story and atmosphere. We get Andrew Bennett’s turning story, we meet both Cain and Lilith (Lilith is Cain’s wife in this universe), we get a brick from the tower of Babel and Constantine is in the story (though the other DC crossover characters from earlier volumes are missing). The switch around in characters was really nice, Bennett becomes thoroughly evil (and not too bright, to be fair, having relied on the wisdom of others before) and Mary becomes… well not good as such, but on good’s side at least.

The volume neatly ends the story (I understand that it was meant to run for some 5 more comics but Fialkov was given enough notice of the early series cancellation to be able to draw everything in neatly). 8 out of 10.

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Young Dracula – Season 4 – review

June 12, 2014, 8:51 am
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Directors: Various

First aired: 2012

Contains spoilers

The path of the Young Dracula series has evolved from being a predominantly kids’ show, with adult nuances and a dark heart, through Seasons 1 and 2 to a less comedic, more young adult orientated show in Season 3. They have continued along this path in season 4.

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Robbie Gee as Ramanga
There is still some comedy in the form of Renfield (Simon Ludders) and that comedy tends towards the physical and juvenile gross out comedy. Also Keith-Lee Castle is still suavely brilliant as the Count, under cutting his performance with a rock star performance that teases out the comedic nuances of his character. However, beyond this much of the lightness has been removed.

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Gerran Howell as Vlad
Vlad (Gerran Howell) has brokered a fragile peace between the Vampires’ High Council and the Slayers and this season sees political machinations, dynastic marriages (or not), blood farming and general intolerance between two groups of people neither of whom can seem to control their (homicidal) tendencies. Vlad also discovers In this that he has an illegitimate older half-brother.

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political games
The series actually uses the Vlad character as the centre of its renewed dark heart. He has gone from an idealistic lad, for whom things tended to go right in the end, to a young man struggling with responsibility, desire and power. We see him having to destroy his own kind, betray the girl he loves (by turning her when she is dying) and have her turn on him, challenged for his power, slipping into the use of real blood and becoming more and more paranoid, untrusting of those around him.

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blood farming
However it seems less a power corrupts (though there is a degree of that) and more a loneliness of power. He hasn’t quite reached the level of political animal and thus finds himself out of his depths and fighting against the various currents. The fact that the central character is so conflicted, angsted and emotionally vulnerable gives the season a much darker edge and it struggles to maintain the excellent balance between kids TV and drama that previous series achieved. Combine this with storylines including kidnapping breathers and placing them into blood farms and some of the lighter moments start seeming rather misplaced.

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Clare Thomas as Ingrid
This is reflected in the fact that the Wolfie (Lorenzo Rodriguez) character, Vlad’s vampire/werewolf younger half-brother, is virtually sidelined out of the show. If he seemed an inconvenience to the scriptwriters in season 3, he is even more so in this. A young child character does not seem appropriate in the show somehow. There was an excruciating love triangle added in between the Count, the mortal Miss McCauley (Letty Butler) and science teacher Bertolini (Simon Lawson), which was never raised above a kid’s script and thus felt awkward against the darker direction.

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bat at the window
But in this lies the problem. The balance was (as mentioned) brilliant in the first couple of seasons, was slightly off kilter in season 3 perhaps, but it left this season feeling unbalanced and less fulfilling somehow. It’s still worth watching, mind you, but it appears the creators are struggling to keep their creation as balanced as it deserves. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.
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Honourable mention: Il Prato Macchiato Di Rosso

June 14, 2014, 5:46 am
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Let’s get something straight from the get go. There is no vampire in this Riccardo Ghione 1973 film, which was internationally called The Bloodstained Lawn. Certainly nothing supernatural goes on and the blood draining (which is there) is for profit. There is no suspicion of a vampire and so you might wonder why I am looking at this.

Sometimes a film uses tropes that are recognisable from the vampire genre and it is enough to see it as a take on the genre. I felt that this did, but it is entirely up for debate and I expect that many will disagree. The film is also very surreal – and I don’t just mean the flamboyant ties, tied as bowties, worn by Enzo Tarascio’s character Dr. Antonio Genovese.

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checking the bottles
The film starts with two men carrying crates onto a ship. When they are on-board a man, credited only as UNESCO Agent (Nino Castelnuovo), picks up a crate and wanders off with it. He gets to his car and opens it up. Inside are wine bottles. He smashes the neck of one and pours the contents out, it contains blood. The blood, incidentally, is rather vivid red.

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Claudio Biava as Alfiero 
A man drives his car, his name is Alfiero (Claudio Biava). We see him pick up a prostitute (Dominique Boschero) and then, with the prostitute gone from his car, we see him stop for a gypsy girl (Barbara Marzano). He goes to a wine sellers and asks for Genovese and is directed to a back room but he is looking for Nina (Marina Malfatti), his sister, rather than his brother-in-law Antonio. They leave the place, taking a drunk (Lucio Dalla) with them.

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Max and his unnamed friend
Max (George Willing) and his unnamed companion (Daniela Caroli) are hippies who are hitching. Alferio gives them a lift. As they reach a town he suggests that, if they have nowhere to stay, they could stay at his sister’s home. He takes them there, through an electric security gate, and to a very posh home. In there are the gypsy, the prostitute and the drunk. Essentially what then goes on is that they are wined and dined for some time, but can’t help but feel that something nefarious is going on. Of course, it is.

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drained bodies
Actually (beyond the occasional bout of foreboding) their sense of danger is right off: they take the rather camp looking robot as nothing more than a statue and they hardly blink when they see the gypsy tied naked on a bed and gagged – because she is epileptic. They find a skull in a garden oven and do not try to escape or make mention of it. They find the obvious hatred between Nina and her husband amusing. However they do eventually wake up to the danger enough to start searching through the house, and discover a walk-in freezer full of exsanguinated corpses with wounds on their necks.

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blood draining robot
This forces them to face their fate – amply demonstrated on the prostitute when the robot uses a clawed appendage to pierce her neck and then suck out all her blood. The family are draining those who won’t be missed but it is not for sustenance in the standard vampiric sense. Rather they are smuggling it out of the country in wine bottles (apparently without refrigeration) and selling it on the black market in war zones. Nina married Antonio for his money (he also invented the robot) but has turned on him because she now makes enough money through the blood.

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Marina Malfatti as Nina
Whilst it isn’t traditionally vampire we have the blood sucking, through the robot, the position of the wound, the need to drain for money (rather than sustenance), the fact that Nina is vampish in the wicked woman version of the word, the incestuous undertone between Alfiero and Nina and the mysterious man taking travellers to the mansion (rather than castle). It all felt like it owed a debt to the vampire genre. I got a vague feel of Hanno Cambiato Faccia though the earlier film is better than this as a film and more clearly vampiric.

Certainly of genre interest. The imdb page is here.
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Bela Kiss: Prologue – review

June 16, 2014, 12:33 pm
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Director: Lucien Förstner

Release Date: 2013

Contains spoilers

Regular readers will be aware that I will look at films that are about real world serial killers, if they have been called vampires for some reason. Béla Kiss was one such serial killer.

Living in the small town of Czinkota near (and now part of) Budapest he had a farm on which he seemed to be stockpiling barrels of petrol. He was drafted into the First World War and, in 1916, soldiers went to his property to appropriate the petrol. Rather than fuel, however, they contained the bodies of women preserved in alcohol. The vampire connection comes in because, according to Charlotte Greig’s Evil Serial Killers: In the Minds of Monsters, there were punctures on the necks and they had been drained of blood.

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soldier
As such, when I sat down to watch this I thought it likely to be an honourable mention. As it turned out, it is most definitely a vampire movie – albeit one that suffers from trying to be a bit of all things to all people. It begins with images of soldiers attending the Bela Kiss (Rudolf Martin, Dracula – the Dark Prince& Buffy the Vampire Slayer) property, accompanied with a tape recording of one of them describing what they found. The opening is effective in generating an atmosphere for the film.

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Kristina Klebe as Julia
After some (frankly confusing) images of an attack (possibly sexual) the camera cuts to the woman, Julia (Kristina Klebe, Buffy the Vampire Slayer – season 8 motion comic), who is daydreaming the attack whilst playing with a pendant and looking out of a VW van’s window. Driving the van is her boyfriend Felix (Ben Bela Böhm) and the other passengers are Sophie (Janina Elkin), Peter (Angus McGruther) and Nikolai (Fabian Stumm). Nikolai is a childhood friend of Julia, they were in the same orphanage, and demands that they take a back road.

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Fabian Stumm as Nikolai
By doing so they get stuck as a land rover blocks the path. They hear a gunshot and a man (Roman Leitner) comes up to the van and says he’ll move his vehicle out of their way. His battery is flat and he asks for a jump start. Reluctantly they agree and Felix asks about blood on the man’s hand – he killed a deer he says. When his vehicle starts the radio comes on in the middle of a news report about bank robbers (3 men, 2 women) in a VW van. Now I have to say that they look the most unlikely bank robbers in the world, but it is they. There is a standoff that ends with a ringtone, the startled man accidentally fires, winging Julia - in return Nikolai shoots him; this is to the chagrin of the others as the guns used in the robbery were meant to be replicas only. Nikolai drags the man into the woods but he is still alive and so he bludgeons him to death.

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Pester-Haigh and Jakubec 
They reach a hotel, which is their hideout destination as it is a getaway for illicit lovers and no names are given. However the hotel staff seem somewhat weird. The two we meet are Ms Jakubec (Julia Horvath), the proprietoress, and a waiter named Mr. Pester-Haigh (Peer Martiny). There is a house red wine that is suspiciously red (little further mention is made of this) and the menu only contains meat – Sophie is a vegetarian and this causes Mr. Pester-Haigh some consternation. Nikolai is the go-between with the gang's mysterious crime boss who phones occasionally, but Nikolai is lying to his friends by suggesting (as he has the only radio) that the police are actively looking for them, when in truth the search has been called off, and suggesting, therefore, that they remain in the hotel.

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Death comes for Bela
Whilst all this is going on we get flashbacks, via a researcher (Jörg Koslowsky), to the story of Bela Kiss. Whilst the film suggests, due to the scenery etc, that the researcher is working contemporary to the original events, he is actually in the modern setting. We discover that Bela Kiss was married, that his wife (Claudia Jäger) was having an affair and that, when following them into Budapest, Kiss was shot "dead" by a robber. We get a scene where Death hovers above him before being pulled away.

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time took the bullet
His life was saved by his pocket watch, which took the bullet, and he later lets the locals know that his wife “ran away” with her lover. He hires a housekeeper, Ms Jakubec, and then starts luring women under the pseudonym Hoffman. Of course, as per the real live Kiss, he goes to war at which point his murders are discovered but he is thought killed in action. The film keeps the features of the housekeeper Ms Jakubec hidden but it is clear she and the modern hotelier are the same person hence the vampire aspect. It is a spoiler, but not too much of one, to be told that Kiss discovered the secret of immortality through blood. Like, a character later says, a vampire but without the fairytale (sunlight for instance) or the fangs. As for the form of vampirism; we know they are living rather than undead from what they say and we don't actually see any obvious blood consumption, bar a lick off fingers. However we know it is consumed as mention is made of a certain paralysing agent leaving a bitter after-taste in the blood.

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the film is part slasher
The trouble with the film is that it puts too much in, beyond the fact that our bank robbers look more like college students. Ms Jakubec has a clear interest in Julia and Nikolai (telling the latter that she knows who they are), there is a weird and creepy hotel vibe that needed further follow through (recurring vibrating liquid, as though a Jurassic Park T-Rex is nearby, might suggest the supernatural - rather than dinosaurs - but is not really followed up on). Then there is a slasher aspect that takes way too long to come to fruition to be really effective. Then there is a Hostel type vibe but the film shies away from torture and so it doesn’t become torture porn. There perhaps needed to be an establishment between the researcher, the research and the present sooner and Bela Kiss himself needed to be in it more.

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in a bloody bath
Julia Horvath is fabulous as Ms Jakubec walking the line between predatory seductress and ultra-creepy really well. Her performance could have been exploited more (as the best in the film) had the film concentrated on the creepy hotel vibe more. Most of the cast is otherwise unremarkable but I have to mention Rudolf Martin who has little to do through the flashbacks – they are done stylistically (and I was impressed with the look and cinematography of these scenes) with his voiceover – but then gets a choice line to camera towards the end and chews the scenery so much that there seemed to be teeth marks in the DVD! This could have been so much better than it was but it does have some sense of style and the post-production seemed excellent. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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The Stress of her Regard – review

June 18, 2014, 12:53 am
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Author: Tim Power

First Published: 1989

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Lake Geneva, 1816

As Byron and Shelley row on the peaceful waters of Lake Geneva, a sudden squall threatens to capsize them. But this is no natural event - something has risen from the lake itself to attack them.

Kent, 1816

Michael Crawford's wife is brutally murdered on their wedding night as he sleeps peacefully beside her - and a vengeful ghost claims Crawford as her own husband.

Crawford's quest to escape his supernatural bride takes him to the edges of Europe: a journey shared by other victims of the ghost’s embrace. The greatest poets of the day – Byron, Keats, and Shelley – embark with Crawford on a desperate Grand Tour through Europe, seeking to outrun the demonic presence who takes her pleasure in their ravaged bodies and imperilled souls.

Telling a secret history of passion and terror, Tim Powers recasts the tragic lives of the Romantics in a gripping and Gothic feat of imagination.

The review: Regular readers will recall that I have already reviewed Tim Powers’ novel Hide me Amongst the Graves. Set amongst the Pre-Raphaelites it was a stunning novel that spun an interesting and unusual take on vampirism – where the vampires were the Nephilim. I explained in that review that it was actually the sequel to this book. The main points of connection between the volumes being the Nephilim themselves, that the character Michael Crawford of this book is the father of one of the primary characters of the next and, of course, that Polidori is a living person as this volume begins, whose ghost becomes the integrated mask of a Nephilim and who becomes the primary vampire of Hide me Amongst the Graves.

I was so impressed with the second book that I ordered the Stress of Her Regard as I read it and it jumped to the top of my “to read” pile. This proved to be... not a mistake so much, but had I read the books in the correct order I don’t think I’d been as quick to read the second book.

Don’t get me wrong this is a finely written book, Powers is a consummate word-smith, and should actually draw me in more as I have always had an interest in Byron, to a lesser degree Shelley and, of course, Polidori is the English prose source of vampirism in literature. Perhaps this was part of the problem – they were personalities that I have already read about in many forms, and yet I wasn’t as drawn into the story as I was by Hide me Amongst the Graves. Perhaps it was because the sequel was so well written that this volume was always in danger of struggling in comparison? I didn’t feel that Powers had rounded his mythology as well as he later did – note that another name for the Nephilim in this is Lamia, by the way, and they can take the form of winged serpents.

Part of me was disappointed that Polidori’s role was so small in many respects (of course he and Byron did part company and the book was more interested in Byron and Shelley). The fact that he would be such a major part of the subsequent novel was likely unknown or embryonic for Powers as he wrote this, but the impact that Polidori ultimately had on the vampire genre is known and the Vampyre; a tale does not feature enough for me.

Not a bad volume, by any stretch, but not as good as the sequel and, for me, a slog in places. 7 out of 10.

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Honourable Mention: Chappaqua

June 20, 2014, 2:23 am
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This 1966 film was written and directed by Conrad Rooks, who also starred in it as Russel Harwick – a young man who is both an alcoholic and drug addict and who travels to Europe to take a cure. As such the film is semi-autobiographical as Rooks (who was a heir to the Avon cosmetic products fortune) was himself a troubled young man, who became an addict and then travelled to Switzerland to take a “sleeping cure”.

It is the sort of film that is not going to be popular with many, it is somewhat of a psychedelic mess as Rooks tries to explain addiction visually. However, for fans of the Beats especially, the inclusion of Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs in the cast will be a draw. It also has a vampire.

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the vampire
Harwick is the vampire in a couple of scenes. With his top hat and bat wing cloak he seems like something from Victoriana. We see him bite the once but it generally isn’t standard vampire stuff as it is steeped within Rooks’ own symbolism. A fleeting visitation but a visitation nonetheless.

The imdb page is here.

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