Taliesin meets the vampires

Director: Mark Vadik

Release date: 2007

Contains spoilers

In an online discussion about Lilith – where the vampire connection was being discussed – friend and author Doug Lamoreux mentioned this film that he is in, though he said that it wasn’t a vampire film.

Now that depends. There is an inextricable connection between Lilith (Tina Krause) and vampires, drawn pretty much through the media vampire and, I totally agree, that the Lilith myth most people are familiar with is not particularly ancient. However, once a link is established through media, and if that link is repeatedly picked up, then it can’t be denied as a modern phenomenon. Regarding this film it really depends on your interpretation of vampire – this demoness is deemed to have had her soul removed by God and thirsts for what she has lost (the film is alternatively known as the Thirsting) and she is said to consume souls, obliged to take one per day to maintain the lives of her children. This pushes us into an energy vampire area. Apparently she is non-corporeal and must therefore visit her victims through dreams.

Tina Krause as Sister Catherine

Sister Catherine (Tina Krause) was a victim of Satanic ritual abuse – though her psychiatrist/priest doesn’t seem to think so. She believes she was saved by three angels, though this is denied by the church. Despite this, however, he recommends she return to active duty, which is chaperoning five young women on retreat. Mary (Jacqueline Hickel) is one of these and she is giving a talk on Lilith as part of the comparative religion class. The bits she doesn’t know are filled in by Father Palmer (Jason Matthew Palmer), such as Lilith’s children being spared if Lilith is allowed to possess a person until such time as she is exorcised. He sets the girls a collaborative paper before leaving.

Lilith haunts dreams

Sister Catherine seems a bit of a task master, insisting that the five go for a run (the retreat is not about fun, apparently). I guess we should mention that Mary is bunking with Clareese (Nikki Gahan) and the other women are sharing a room and they are Tiffany (Lauren McCarthy), Michelle (Courtney Pahlke) and Jackie (Lauren Ryland). After their run Sister Catherine orders them in to the shower and this leads her to have an erotic lesbian vision of three of her wards together. Following this they all nip in to town, where Clareese is to surreptitiously meet her boyfriend, Randy (Brian Cade). Instead she meets a homeless man who rants at her and Mary with biblical references – apparently he is one of three angels who visit and try to prevent the girls summoning Lilith, but taking a less ranting form might have helped. When Randy shows up she arranges for him to visit her cabin that night.

shared dream

As evening falls, Sister Catherine leaves her wards alone as she goes back to town to have her confession heard. Clareese comes up with the genius idea of summoning Lilitha and her friends go along with it. Just to note, apparently going skyclad now involves keeping knickers on! A part of the ritual is writing down their darkest sexual desire as a sacrifice to call Lilith to them. The ritual is interrupted as Randy arrives and he and Clareese go for some sex. When he leaves and the girls go to bed, Mary starts to dream and the dream involves a child (Sister Catherine, played by Sydney McGill) but also Randy coming in and having sex with her and choking her. In her dream Clareese is looking at them. In the morning Clareese is upset as she had the same dream but believes it to have been real and runs off rather than goes to volleyball practice.

eating her soul

Clareese falls asleep and has a dream induced by Lilith, sleepwalking whilst she does. This causes her to jump from a cliff and dash her brains out below. A hooded figure (Lilith, of course) sucks the soul from her body and then puts the scrap of paper with the sacrificed sexual desire in her mouth. Lilith then turns her attention to the other women. Now, the film's own internal logic stumbles a little bit at times, such as when Lilith passes a hairdryer to a dreaming victim who is stood in the shower, so she will drop something in her dream and drop the hairdryer into water – if she is incorporeal, how did this happen? Other than that the film tries to build up a psychosexual drama and is partially successful but ultimately it doesn’t fully work.

Mickey Rooney as an angel

This is probably down to budget, as much as anything. There are some sections of dialogue that sound awful and I assume they were dubbed post-production as the speakers sound like they are in the bottom of a blooming well. There is a cameo from Mickey Rooney as one of the angels (and as he doesn’t rant, he is actually listened to!) All in all this was ok, she is an energy vampire and therefore there is an element of vampiric possession. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Director: Monica Demes

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

As this is the first feature length film from the David Lynch MFA Program and, mostly, in Black and White there are parallels that might be drawn with the film Nadja. However, where that was an arthouse remake of Dracula’s Daughter, I have seen this described as a re-imagining of Dracula.

Personally I don’t think it is. Clearly it uses the names of characters from Stoker’s novel but it uses them, I believe, more in reference than in re-imagining. This explores female empowerment and that can be seen in the title itself. The vampire (Barbara Eugenia) might be named Lilith on IMDb but in the actual movie credits she is simply called the vampire. Lilith, as a title, is more a concept of the feminine – empowered and free of patriarchal shackles. She is the archetype that rules over the protagonist of the piece, Lucy (Sophia Woodward).

the photography concentrates on details

After a voice over suggesting that every time the speaker closes her eyes she connects with the universe the camera shows us Lucy, her face is captured in detail but we know from the sound and her motion that she is on a swing. Lips come close, speaking seductively in French. This is the main motif of the film, the photography is gorgeous and concentrates on close up, at times in an almost detailed still life. There are moments of vastness, when we first meet the vampire she is almost lost as a figure within a wide shot of woods, the same when she bites Lucy. But the majority of the film is close, intimate, perhaps claustrophobic at times.

the vampire arrives

The alarm goes off, Lucy fights waking as Jonathan (Sam Garles), her husband, gets up. Through this sequence we never see Jonathan in focus. Lucy showers but he chivvies her along due to the time. As they breakfast he tells her that he is going out for a beer with Renfield (Zach Dean) that evening. Lucy doesn’t like the way Renfield looks at her – but he is Jonathan’s boss. Lucy goes to work, a dead end job in the store connected to her father’s garage. Her father is called Abe Helsing (Steve Kennevan). It is after this we see the vampire arrive through the woods; cloaked, guitar carrying and striking.

a moment of colour

As Lucy leaves the garage to go home we see a figure sit up behind her in the car. It is Arthur (Matthew Lloyd Wilcox), Abe’s mechanic. He grabs her and tries to force himself upon her – the scene more powerful for the close, intimate photography. Eventually he says he will leave her alone if she kisses him and when they kiss she responds. He doesn’t leave her though until she promises to meet him out at the abandoned rail car and then her father starts calling for him. As she drives away the photography moves into colour – and this occurs occasionally through the film. She purposefully misses the rendezvous but Arthur picks up the vampire – his fate eliciting no sympathy due to his behaviours.

reject Judeo-Christian patriarchy

The film, as I say, is about female awakening. There is a fight against patriarchal restrictions – including the explicitly communicated idea that Lucy “needs grounding” and this should be done, Abe says, by Jonathan giving her a child – forcing her into the role that patriarchy demands of her. There is a religious aspect as well. Conspicuous placing of a cross in shot, the saying of grace and, most telling, the drone of a radio preacher – who is also played by Steve Kennevan and this reinforces the patriarchal nature of religion (especially of a Judeo-Christian type). Lilith, of course, is a name synonymous with rejection of the Judeo-Christian patriarchy.

bite marks

The acting is solid throughout but most impressive was the performance given by Sophia Woodward the nature of the photography meant that her performance had to be given by nuance and she captured and carried the viewer; be that with her boredom, her awakening, her fear and confusion. She subtly takes the viewer through a veritable roller-coaster of the character’s emotions.

Barbara Eugenia as the vampire

I mentioned the photography and I have to say it is what captured me most about the film. It was absolutely arresting throughout. The story itself is, on the surface, rather simple and yet weaves in a non-linear aspect that offers a deliberate dreamlike confusion for the protagonist. The simplicity also relies on a knowledge of the source inspiration, I feel, and this then tells a more complex socio-political tale based on gender imbalance. It is, in a word, dazzling.

A real gem but definitely arthouse. 9 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Author: Paul Meehan

First published: 2014

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: This examination of the history of vampires within the science fiction realm also analyses the role of science and pseudo-science from the 18th century to modern times. The vampire's connection with science fiction is traced to its literary origins during the Victorian Era in seminal works by Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and other writers of the period and later refined by modern SF writers such as Richard Matheson, Whitley Strieber and Brian Aldiss.

The history of the science fiction vampire in the cinema, from the silent era to the 21st century is given in detail. More than 60 films are discussed, including works by such acclaimed directors as Roger Corman, Mario Bava, David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro and Steven Spielberg. The book treats of time-travelling vampires, spacefaring vampires, future-noir hemophages, giant mutant bats, vampiric plants, blood-drinking mad scientists, cyber-vamps, half-human hybrid dhampirs and bloodsucking extraterrestrials - the ever-popular children of the night.

The review: I do like a vampire reference work and it is always nice to find one that looks at a less trodden path of the genre. This, therefore plugged a definite gap in the market but, like all reference books, it did contain one or two controversial claims – however the genre is so wide that is to be expected.

Of course, regular readers will know that it was this book that led me to examine the film the Quatermass Xperiment and was, from my point of view, worthwhile just for that. As well as that his inclusion of L'Atlantide, provided a novel and films that I will be examining at some point. There was a nice examination of the roots of the vampire in science fiction through the late 19th century inclusions (Dracula, for instance, could be said to be science fiction and War of the Worlds had a vampiric element).

Meehan was wrong when he supposed – having looked at the Blood Beast Terror - that “any connection between moths and vampires is obscure other than the fact that they are both creatures of the night”. He does mention Dracula’s control of them but the moth and butterfly is a part of Slavic folklore – as noted by Milovan Glišić in After Ninety Years. A minor thing really, as it is not the most mainstream of lore and certainly won’t have influenced the makers of the mentioned film, but nonetheless it is extant lore.

Not all of the entries I agreed with. I haven’t read George du Maurier’s Trilby but I have watched Svengali (1931) and do not believe there is an aspect of psychic vampirism around it. I also have to mention that whilst listing the wonderful film Goke, Bodysnatcher from Hell was welcome, the claim “Japanese culture is not one to embrace vampirism” is not one supported by the facts – indeed the Japanese have produced many fine vampire films and kyūketsuki (the Japanese word for vampire) was introduced into the Japanese language in the early twentieth century. Perhaps Meehan meant that there is not, perhaps, the level of vampiric entities in Japanese folklore, but even then there are some.

There is nothing, however, that majorly detracts from the usefulness of the book as a whole. A good, solid 7.5 out of 10.

Director: unknown

First aired: 1971

Contains spoilers

Ultraman was, and still is, a highly successful franchise in Japan. This series – also known as Ultraman Jack – was a 51 episode series that ran through 1971 and 1972. To me, the fact that it had a vampire episode shows that the vampire genre, imported into Japan from the West, had taken a cultural hold (indeed it was created during the period when the Toho film company was creating its three “bloodthirsty” vampire films).

The basic premise is that Earth is in the age of monsters – these being Kaiju, the Japanese giant monsters typified by Godzilla and Gamera– and this means that each episode features a kaiju either of earthly or alien origin.

Ultraman revives Goh

In the first episode we get a fight between two kaiju and during this the young racing car driver Goh (Jiro Dan) is killed saving a young boy and a dog. This is observed by Ultraman who, impressed by the heroic effort, merges his lifeforce with Goh reviving him. Goh can now turn into Ultraman; this is done when in peril at first and later through choice and, I understand, unusual as no device was needed to allow the change. Ultraman grows to the size of the kaiju, though he can maintain human size too. Goh is conscripted into MAT – the Monster Attack Team.

Rumi Sakakibara as Aki

Again unusually (for the series' formula) we see Goh’s private life. He lives with the mechanic Ken Sakata (Shin Kishida), Ken’s little brother Jiro (Kawaguchi Hideki) and their sister Aki (Rumi Sakakibara) – Goh and Aki are almost an item. Whilst the series is a joy of kaiju fun, with men in rubber suits stomping scale model cities, there are some elements to the series that don’t pass modern muster. Goh giving Aki (and another woman in another episode) a good smack because they disagree with him seems awfully misogynistic and simply wrong in its message now – and I can’t imagine that it was much different (in the West at least) when it aired. However, these moments are few and the general tone of the series has a warmth and also a sentimentality to it.

bite marks

As for this episode. It begins with Goh and another MAT member in a car tracking down a strange energy reading. It seems to be coming from a woman, Midori, walking ahead of the car. She turns a corner and then seems to have vanished. We see her approach a house and claim, to a young woman at the gate, that she is Midori’s sister as Midori died some six months before. The woman is struck by the likeness and lets her in. They share a room that night but during the night there is a scream. Two men from the household run into the room and find the woman dead, bite marks at her neck. Midori is flying off into the night. Note Midori is able to walk around in daylight.

Midori's sarcophagus

The MAT team discuss the vampire attack (it is the 15th such attack). All the victims are rich young women and Goh makes a leap of faith and connects it with the mysterious girl they saw (Goh does that a lot). The police hand the case over to MAT and MAT go undercover to try and solve the case. They visit Midori’s father who says she died of myocardial infarction. He then admits that he didn’t cremate the body and takes them to a cave where the sarcophagus is hidden. Opening it, he discovers the body has gone.

Midori

When the team went into the cave they left the only female team member, Oka (Mika Katsuragi), outside. The misogyny I mentioned can be seen, in a casual sense, through this character. She is more than capable as an agent but tends to be left behind. In this case it left her to be attacked by Midori – who has some clownish lipstick on now. Midori is foiled and takes to the sky and Goh and Kishida (Ken Nishida) chase her in a jet until she vanishes. However, she managed to lead them to a spacecraft.

spaceship

Now I am spoiling this totally as it is an episode of an old series but because it is fascinating too. The MAT team watch the spacecraft and during their vigil the alien makes telepathic contact with Goh, addressing him as Ultraman, calling him a traitor and asking why he, as an alien, sides with the humans. We discover he has been killing women in a convoluted plan to stop humans breeding! Then, as night falls, the spaceship takes off. The team attack the craft and cause it to crash land. However, this forces the alien – called Draculas – to take its true form.

Draculas

Its true form is something that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a bat, with bat wing ears and bat wing membranes on its arms and legs. It is probably the epitome of crap bat syndrome and I absolutely love it. Of course we know where the name Draculas comes from. The episode doesn’t mention the name of its home planet, however according to the Ultraman Wiki it is the planet Carmilla. The MAT team engage the kaiju, which for a moment changes form into a giant version of Midori. This causes the father to run out and Goh to go after him – separating him from the rest of the team and giving him chance to transform (no-one knows he is Ultraman).

impaled

Of course the two then fight. Draculas can fire energy beams from its mouth and also emit a fog that temporarily blinds Ultraman. More tellingly it bites our hero, sucking his blood and depleting his energy. This makes it quite a threat as Ultraman only has enough energy for a three-minute appearance. An indicator on his chest is blue for the first two minutes then becomes a red flashing light with an alarm for the last minute. To defeat Draculas Ultraman uses his Ultra Bracelet to create a blinding light (the alien in its natural form cannot stand the strong solar energy of the sun) and then impales it with his Ultra Cross – the alien crumbles to dust and Midori’s body can be returned to her father.

biting Ultraman

The idea of an alien entity possessing a dead body and making it a vampire was explored in the 1968 Japanese film Goke, Bodysnatcher from Hell - though what impact the earlier film had on this is unknown. I also don’t know how much impact the Toho films had on this but the year before the Bloodthirsty Doll did feature the idea that the vampire (which was created in that by hypnosis, to be fair) was a girl who had (at least ostensibly) been buried rather than cremated.

shooting at Draculas

This is a great episode for picking up some of the Japanese ideas around vampires. The genre is very Dracula driven (as it was in the West to be honest) and the concept that the kaiju is called Draculas seems to be a step towards the name becoming a genus. The Sakata family are barely in this episode and their brief appearance centres around Jiro hanging garlic to protect them from vampires. Interestingly one of the MAT team suggests that they thought there were no vampires in Japan anymore – indicating the idea that there had been vampires in the past. Vampires are, of course, often representative of “the other” – Dracula especially so. That year the Toho film the Bloodthirsty Eyes had the origin of the vampire as a foreigner who came to Japan – you can’t get much more foreign than an alien, though, of course, that was half the premise of the series as a whole, with the threat to Earth coming from space.

MAT team members

If you do not like Kaiju films/programmes you might struggle with this. It is also not the easiest series to track down – I have a Malaysian DVD set and the subtitles for the English are quite literal. However, I think it is great fun and worth it for the design of Draculas itself. 7 out of 10.

The episode's imdb page is here.

Director: John Semper

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

I came across Creeporia on Amazon Prime (UK) and from what I can gather there was a web serial that became a film. Actually IMDb lists two films and suggests one is one and a half hours and the other just shy of two hours. What we get in the cut I watched is a three and a half hour edit – so this ties both films into one cut, I assume. This is also a massive problem, as I will explain later.

The film is based on the character Creeporia (played by both Camille Kitt and Kennerly Kitt, identical twins who also perform as the Harp Twins). There are moments where we get two “incarnations” of Creeporia on screen at once and this is obviously aided by having two actresses play the role.

animated opening

The film begins with an animated backstory about a Lovecraftian horror preying on the Native Americans in a specific location. Those killed by him become demonspawn. The place eventually becomes Indiana and, in 1970, an entrepreneur named Mason Q. Arkham (Tristan Ross, My Bloody Wedding) decides that he will build a waxwork of horror characters and sell ribs with a secret sauce. I was impressed with the animated backstory as I watched, thinking that the animation was more professional than I had expected.

animated vampire

Indeed animation becomes the order of the day through the film. There is a long computer animated sequence next of a man going into the “asylum house” and being followed by classic monsters as he searches for the Necronomicon. He is then chased down by Creeporia, in an amorous fashion. This segues into the animated credits but at this point I was already concerned that the sequences were proving too long. Later animated sequences are used for Creeporia’s backstory and Scooby-Doo style chases through the waxworks.

Mother Teresa, monster killer

Cutting to the modern day and a couple of movie workers are on a lot trying to find props for a film. The props are horror props despite the film being a biopic of Mother Teresa (Maura Murphy, the Middleman - though not the vampire episode). It turns out the biopic and a serial killer remake of Citizen Kane are being made by Rhob Zhombie and we get moments from the latter and a trailer for the first where Mother Teresa transforms at night from an elderly (Caucasian) nun to a young woman who rips of the habit and slays monsters in lingerie. The reason for concentrating on this – as well as the fact that she stakes a manbat – is this sums up my general thoughts around the film. There are definite inventive madcap moments but they are too often and too long and we will talk later about pacing.

Creeporia and a crap bat

So the prop guys find a coffin that’s a-popping, as it were, due to someone sneezing inside. It turns out it is Creeporia who, some forty years before, got trapped in the prop on the set of a Roger Corman movie. The guys scream and she transforms into an insect like creature and, apparently, every time she hears a scream of genuine terror she transforms into a random creature for two minutes. Now free from the coffin she is ready to pursue her destiny and we get to hear her backstory.

as a vampire

Creeporia was an actress 300 years ago, but after she embarrasses a magician on stage he curses her to live in undeath for ever. There are two ways to break the curse, to persuade a man to love and marry her or to regain her fame as an actress. As sunlight has an unfortunate effect she has tried for the latter and has been part of the film industry since its inception. She describes herself as kind of like a vampire or a ghoul but she doesn’t drink blood or eat flesh (the idea makes her nauseus) and the sunlight impact is not a standard vampire one. We do see her as a fanged vampire (animated and in person) as she plays one in films sometimes.

Creeporia with Count Blablabla

However, her career has taken a forty year nose dive and her (dead) agent (Randy Cox) gets her a job at the waxworks in Indiana and she starts to drive there until her car sprouts batwings and she flies. She discovers that most of the waxwork figures have been replaced with the real monsters – many of whom she knew – and who are now yesterday’s news. For our vampire connection we get Count Blablabla (Michael Davis). We also later get Creeporia entering into one of her old movies and a brief meeting with Nosferatu (Phil Yeary). Creeporia and the monsters must try to rescue the waxwork, which is now run by Arkham’s son Gregg (Josh Baker) as the bank are looking to foreclose and also prevent the return of an eldritch horror that would destroy the world.

Nosferatu

So far so good but the film is excruciating in getting to where it is going. There is no definitive cut point between the two movies that have been stitched together and I suspect the first probably doesn’t have a satisfying structure. The entire thing does overstay its welcome, a lot, and some parts are really badly paced – such as the silent movie, which is absolutely silent and is thus insufferably long to watch despite some good moments of comedy within it. The shame of this is that there are loads of good ideas, too many to be honest, and also the fact that this does come across as carrying a love of the horror genre.

Wolfgang with Creeporia

Played for laughs, the fact that the monsters are replaced by much younger performers for song and dance routines coupled with the low budget feel, especially as it flips into animation for scenes I suspect they couldn’t physically do, actually work in the film's favour. The twins are entirely personable as Creeporia and the werewolf Wolfgang (voiced by Douglas Dunning) was nicely done as a character. It was just the poor pacing and the length that did for the film and kicks the score right down to 4 out of 10, which still is respectable as a budget film but could have been higher if they cut the entire thing down by two hours.

The imdb page is here.

Author: Carlos Fuentes

Translators: E. Shaskan Bumas & Alejandro Branger

First published: 2010

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Where, Carlos Fuentes asks, is a modern day vampire to roost? Why not Mexico City, populated by ten million blood sausages (that is, people), and a police force who won’t mind a few disappearances? “Vlad” is Vlad the Impaler, of course, whose mythic cruelty was an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In this sly sequel, Vlad really is undead: dispossessed after centuries of mayhem by Eastern European wars and rampant blood shortages. More than a postmodern riff on “the vampire craze,” Vlad is also an anatomy of the Mexican Bourgeoisie, as well as our culture’s ways of dealing with death. For—as in Dracula—Vlad has need of both a lawyer and a real-estate agent in order to establish his new kingdom, and Yves Navarro and his wife Asunción fit the bill nicely. Having recently lost a son, might they not welcome the chance to see their remaining child live forever? More importantly, are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned?

The review: Its nice, from time to time, to delve into some modern literature about vampires and this novella was certainly a beautifully written piece. Of course the blurb as set out is wrong, Vlad the Impaler’s mythic cruelty wasn’t an inspiration for Stoker – who, as far as we know, knew nothing about said cruelty.

Vlad in this, however, is the impaler – turned, we discover, after being buried alive, by a centuries old vampire who was also a little girl. When we eventually meet him he wears wigs, false moustaches and habitual sunglasses (that hide the fact that his maker took his eyes). Whilst he can make himself any age he dons these affectations and Yves – once he has discovered the truth of his client – even suspects that he trims his ears nightly to make them more human looking.

A document recounts Vlad looking into the legends of the undead when he was alive and lists a series of vampire types; muroni, Nosferatu, Lugosi, strigoï and varcolaci. Of course, whilst some of these are from folklore, one is a conceit.

What struck me about the book, however, as it explored the potential of routine and boredom for professionals in their middle class existence and the reaction to the loss of a child, both against the backdrop of the vampire, was the absolute dourness of the novel’s conclusion. I won’t spoil it but will warn that it is bleak. But bleakness captured within beautiful prose. 8 out of 10.

Director: Anthony G. Sumner

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

This was a portmanteau film and Sumner’s next portmanteau effort has already been looked at on TMtV. Gallery of Fear contained the excellent By Her Hand, She Draws You Down, which was most definitely a vampire segment. It involved an internal parasite – as does the segment we are looking at in this – but I’ll discuss the vampiric nature of it later.

The wraparound in this, Sketcher, was very interesting but deserved to be the wraparound as I felt that it lacked the exposition to be a feature – it was perfectly good, and gloriously weird, for what it did however. The first segment W.O.R.M. wasn’t bad and was a sort of techno-zombie piece. The second section Amber Alert was, frankly a bit turgid. I had guessed exactly what was going on almost straight away and then the short took forever to get to the point. The in-between time was meant to be drawing both a mystery and atmosphere and I felt it did little of either.

body in the bath

The final segment was called Pink Snapper and was probably the best segment of all three – it was certainly, sporadically, the goriest. It is also the reason we are looking at the film here. There is definitely a genre connection and I was a hairsbreadth away from giving this an honourable mention as something of genre interest but eventually went for the review. The film starts with a woman, Elizabeth (Judith Lesser), bound. Her father (Bruce Varner) locks her away – she yells at him asking how he can do this to... (presumably she was going to then say "his daughter"). He goes upstairs and starts to dismember the gory remains of a body of a man in the bath.

Deneen Melody as Susan

In the city Susan (Deneen Melody) is cooking when her brother, Eric (Galen Schloming), calls. He asks if their Uncle Jack (Mike Tracy) is home as he wants to borrow the car that evening. Jack, in his cop uniform, is drunk and asleep on the couch and Susan says Eric will have to ask when he gets home. When she gets off the phone she turns to see Jack awake. He forces himself on her – we get the impression he has been abusing her for years. He is just about to rape her when Eric gets home and attacks Jack. Jack gets the better of him and Susan brains him with a frying pan – they take his car keys and leg it.

Elizabeth Bound

Meanwhile Edgar, Elizabeth’s father, has dismembered the body, put it in black bags in the boot of his car and driven from the house to a wooded area to dispose of it (he hasn’t driven far, a few hundred yards from the house). He trips and knocks himself out. The brother and sister, in the meantime, are running out of gas and turn off the interstate. They find Edgar and Eric runs to the house for help but finds no one (he doesn’t go into the basement) and so they drive the man to hospital – still drifting in and out of consciousness, indeed in his delirium he assumes Eric is his son and asks for forgiveness.

rescuing Elizabeth

After getting Edgar to the hospital, with the staff assuming they are his kids, they go back to the house intent on stealing money, clothes and food with which to survive. They hear banging from the basement and go to investigate. There they find Elizabeth and help her out of the basement. She tells them that her aunt had visited some time before and her father changed, accusing her of being the recipient of the family curse and his actions were in order that he might starve *it*. The siblings suggest she get cleaned up whilst they look for useful items for the road.

family tree

They find a series of anatomical type pictures, along with a family tree that suggests that Elizabeth and Edgar are descended from Erzsébet Báthory (indeed their surname is Nadasdy – the familial name of Báthory’s husband). Certain pictures on the tree (including Elizabeth’s) have the word host by them. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is in the bath – we hear a hungry noise and she says to her stomach “soon”. Eric is in a bedroom when Elizabeth comes on to him, she guides his hand below when suddenly he screams, his hand emerges missing fingers and spurting blood – Elizabeth has not finished with him yet…

missing digits

The spoiler to come is that this is not quite, as may be suspected, vagina dentata. Elizabeth is the host to some form of internal parasite with sharp teeth, a desire for human flesh (and that desire is born of hunger) and a lodging place in her female bits. The suggestion is that this parasite has been passed from woman to woman in the familial line, all the way from Báthory. The film also makes it clear that the parasite can be passed to a non-family member and the woman so infected most definitely morphs into a Vamp as well as a host to a vampire. The attack on Eric is gruesome, the parasite ripping his entire body apart and not just concentrating on his penetrative parts.

Judith Lesser as Elizabeth

Now, we have classed those infected (or even taken over by) internal parasites as vampires before, but I very nearly settled on an Honourable Mention for this. I was still writing the article when I decided that this should be reviewed. The film makes the connection by using Elizabeth Báthory who is, of course, of genre interest but Eric mentions the concept of Countess Dracula. As I said at the head, this was the strongest segment. However it wasn’t perfect. The interwoven narratives needed sharpening somewhat to make it feel more like a whole, the acting was passable but not stellar and things felt just a tad too convenient at times. However it wasn’t a bad effort at all, it was an interesting take on the genre and that originality pushes me to award 5.5 out of 10 for the segment.

The imdb page is here.

Director: Sami Haavisto

Release date: 2004

Contains spoilers

I have looked at another film by Finnish director Sami Haavisto, in the form of Desire of the Innocent Blood. Many of the cast of this film were also in the earlier film. I am quiet taken by the ambitious films Haavisto has made, even if they may have the occasional problem.

This film is dual language. The first half is in English, the second in Finnish and these correspond to the time periods with the first half being set in the 19th Century (in Wallachia) and the second half in the present day (in Helsinki).

Mika Vattulainen as the Cardinal

It starts with a witch burning and intertitles inform us that the practice of witch burning had all but died out except amongst a few die-hards. In this case the perpetrator is Cardinal DeCeville (Mika Vattulainen) though, as the story progresses, it would seem that the Abbess Catherine (Kirsi Vahomäki) is actually the power behind the Crosier.

Marie

Marie (played in the 18th Century section by both Nanda De Bruijn & Emma Räihä) is a flute playing country girl who has joined a Satanic cult led by a Warlock (Kai Zakowski). She confirms her desire to take the final rites. The Cardinal is hunting in the area, however, having received intelligence that a witch cult is there. The rumour is that the next rite will involve human sacrifice.

ritual sacrifice

The rite does indeed include the sacrifice of Marie’s love (Nino Hynninen) but, during the rite, the Cardinal and his soldiers attack. All the witches are killed, bar Marie who is knocked out but alive, and the warlock is captured. The Cardinal kills one of his own men who was going to rape a witch. The warlock is tortured, a confession signed and he is hung but Marie (still in her ritual mask, half naked and covered in blood) sneaks into the Cardinal’s keep.

a hanging

There is a scene where (I assume she makes) a nun hallucinates Jesus coming down from a cross and subsequently shows the nun, naked, rubbing against the bleeding religious figure that will, I am sure, manage to insult many a person watching the film. Jesus becomes Marie and she kills the nun ritually and is then caught, pleads that she is pregnant and then sentenced to be buried alive anyway. This takes us almost to the end of the 18th Century section and it is a tad over long as an introduction.

a victim

I do have to mention, however, that one compassionate Christian unearths her body and finds the child born in the coffin – barely alive. He sends the child north to be fostered (in Finland). This is important as it gives us our lore. In the modern day we meet Marie (Mari Koivula) in a hotel room with a victim – the victim’s throat ripped out. She remembers being buried alive and then being born – Marie, therefore, became/possessed her own daughter. She was fostered and at a given point killed the foster parents and stopped growing older. She has to kill and drink blood (presumably, given the fact that she fills a glass with blood). She literally rips the throats of her victims out with her fingers.

Marie and Anton

She falls in love with a guy named Anton (Juha Särestöniemi) but the Cardinal and Abbess are still around and vampires as well (I assume, there is talk of marks on the neck but no biting is shown). This is where the film lost me a little, I’m afraid. I just couldn’t reconcile why they were now vampires. Marie, yes, she made a pact with the devil but, despite the religious pair being bloodthirsty and murderers, the fact that they were vampires seemed incongruous. I guess they came to Finland as the baby was sent north but that isn’t actually relayed.

blood at mouth

More than this, I didn’t actually buy the relationship between Gothy Marie and straight laced Anton and there were story aspects that I won’t spoil that just happened with no narrative explanation or flow. The second half of the film also suffered from poor pacing. It’s a shame because a period piece that then flows into a modern piece was a brave move by the filmmakers and I do believe I have a soft spot for Sami Haavisto’s films. The gore was well done and used practical effects – one particular needle related effect made me cringe (making it absolutely effective). However nothing can hide the pacing flaws and the narrative gaps. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Director: Ryan Shovey

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

When I look at a short film I try my best not to spoil it. When it comes in at just over 7 minutes that can be difficult. However when your IMDb page holds the description: “An actress on her way to a late-night audition in New Orleans is cornered by a gang of seedy men before she reveals a supernatural secret which stops them dead in their tracks.” And when said character is listed as Paige Alucard (Courtney Lacombe), well all bets are off – even if your twist is who is predator and who is prey.

the gang

So, as the IMDb page suggests Paige is walking through the streets of New Orleans, late at night, on her way to an audition. She’s on the phone to the person who has set up the audition, one Gary Brams (Pedro Lucero). Slowly a gang of men fall in behind her, keeping their distance as they work out whether she is their target. She enters a parking garage (bemused that it is the location of the audition). It becomes clear that Gary is the one who set these men upon her as he messages them to confirm her as the target.

revealed

They catcall as they approach her and she, at first, runs until she tries to get through a door that is locked. They beat her and a comment is made about not playing with their food. But, after the beating, she laughs and then she lets her true nature take over… Which is being a vampire, of course, and the film is embedded so you can watch the thugs get their comeuppance. The short itself is neatly put together. I liked the muted colour scheme with occasional vibrancy in the reds. The imdb page is here.

Author: Eric M Gore

First Published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Marcel Dekrey, angel of The Lord and nine-hundred year old vampire, is a double agent in service to The Most High God. Marcel is charged with a clear mandate; observe and report to the heavenly host events as they unfold in the dangerous world of anomalies--vampires, werewolves, witches, warlocks, demonic creatures, and variations of each--which exists within our own, and intercede if and when necessity demands.

Necessity does indeed demand when Marcel learns a recent attack against him was orchestrated by his ancient enemy, Stefano the Gouge. The assault is part of his enemy's plan to use Marcel's duel nature to enact a ritual derived from a powerful artifact which has been in the possession of the human military since the end of World War II; The Book of the Dead.

This ritual will reprise the devil's first fall from grace when one-third of all the angels followed him to the pit, ushering in a new demonic world order and humanity's final day. Marcel must use his skill in swordsmanship and hand to hand combat, honed to their most ardent degree in nine hundred years of unlife, to stop Stefano before The Heavenly Host descends to Earth to carry out God's will and puts an end to reality itself.

The review: I was sent Vengeance Obtained for review and, as I looked at the back of the book, I must admit to being wary of what I was about to read. The author, by his bio, is clearly a committed Christian and the blurb made it clear that this was a book steeped in Christian mythology – now I don’t mind reading a book based around Christian mythology (many, many books in the vampire genre are) but I worried that this may lay it on a bit thick.

So, first of all – despite encompassing the concept of the Christian Apocalypse and using phrases such as "most high God" this was a very readable book that didn’t make me feel that I was being evangelically preached at, and those moments that were a tad heavy handed tended to be in the main character Marcel’s voice and, him being an angel and all, that actually works. The next worry was the idea of a vampire being an angel – why on Earth would that pan out. Well it did. Marcel is actually more angel than he knows (he is an archangel actually) but he has no memory of his angelic origin pre-turn (at least when we first meet him). In the book he is told of his angelic nature after he is turned and told that he is to observe and report on the activities of the “anomalies” – vampires, werewolves etc… One might ask why an omnipotent deity needs such a double agent… but that would be nit-picking.

Marcel was sired by a daywalker and thus is immune to sunlight - this has nothing to do with his angelic side. The vampires are able to manipulate reality and can open portals that allow them to "flick" or appear to move with impossible speed and can regenerate destroyed flesh - one does so and develops a huge tentacle as his "body image" was askew. Another vampire got too close to a nuclear fission reactor and has permanent raven wings. The book itself is set in a universe where such things as quantum computers were developed (by the military) in the seventies.

So we get a rip roaring yarn that involves vampires, the Necronomicon, the devil, werewolves (and lycans, they are separate, though related, beasts in this) and mages. It is not necessarily the most sophisticated prose but it moves along at a brisk pace and is generally clearly constructed. However, all is not positive and my biggest complaint probably rests around one phrase that Gore uses way too often. Everything seems to be caveated as being “vampirically fast” or “vampirically strong”, later this also leads to the phrasing “angelically fast”. It is really clumsy English that jolts the reader’s suspension of disbelief with its clumsiness and, to be honest, once the reader is told that the vampires are stronger and faster than humans it is unnecessary.

That gripe aside, solid enough, not too preachy and fun. 6 out of 10.

Director: David Lee Madison

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

I have to say, at the head of the review, that those who know me will realise that what I tend to do for reviews is watch the film (taking screenshots and notes) and then write the review, using IMDb for the actors’ names but avoiding the IMDb reviews until the review is in draft stage at the very least.

I was gobsmacked, therefore, when I saw how low the IMDb headline score was for the film. Now I was given access to a stream of the film by writer/director David Lee Madison, and I have to say that the film isn’t the best I’ve ever seen – but it really doesn’t deserve the derision held in that score. It is also a film featuring Stephen Geoffreys (Fright Night) the year before he did Bite Marks and he really is in cracking form – more on that later.

family moment

So the film starts in October 2010 and in a kitchen oozing domestic bliss we have Holland Price (Brad Loree), his wife Julie (Jessica Cameron) and young daughter Amy (Megan Heckman) as they prepare for Halloween night. Something struck me here, the tone of the acting was melodramatically saccharine and could have been dismissed as poor but I just felt like it was a deliberate tone set to capture an idyll that never really existed except in the minds of those stretching for a halcyon era that was meant to have been. If so then it was brilliant, if not then the tone was set several notches too sweet – I’m plumping for the former.

Brad Loree as Holland

At the end of the night, after trick or treating is completed, there is a late knock at the door. A priest, Father Flannigan (Edward X. Young), is there and tells Holland that his bus full of orphans has broken down further down the road and asks to use his phone. He insists on being invited in and then asks to use the facilities. A couple of points. Firstly, Flannigan’s Irish accent is poor – ok he is pretending to be an Irish priest (he is actually the Mr Hush of the title) but it really wasn’t a good effort. Secondly the invite aspect was too heavy handed. The film plays like a straight slasher until later on when Hush is revealed to be a vampire – this should have had Holland invite him in without being asked, rather than play the trope heavily at this point and thus spoil the twist at this point.

threatening Julie

So, Holland sits himself down until there is a scream and Flannigan appears holding Julie with a knife at her throat. He doesn’t waste much time before he slits her throat (a well done sfx) and suggests that Amy has met a similar fate. Holland legs it upstairs and drops to his knees – we soon discover she is missing, not murdered – and is coshed over the head. This moves into a dentist waiting room and Holland being given gas and air and the dentist being Hush – this is a nightmare Holland has and wakes from, now grey and bearded.

Debbie murdered

It is ten years on and Holland now lives in a tent, with a guy called Donald, and washes dishes for a living. Later we hear that he moves around a lot, still searching for Amy. However, this time around he actually opens his heart to a waitress named Debbie (Connie Giordano) and they start dating. This seems to meet the approval of her daughter, Kat (Alexis Lauren), but just when happiness seems to be on the cards the doorbell rings again, Debbie is murdered and Holland (and Kat) are kidnapped by Hush – Hush is never called so by name but often sings the ditty “Hush, Little baby” to himself.

vampire face

So, Hush is a vampire – the reveal of this is a bit of a damp squib in film both because of the invite hint early on and because the vampire makeup is a bit rubbish to be frank. Actually it is only the makeup – a serious over indulgence in greasepaint, it looks like. The fangs looked good and the copious drooling actually worked. Hush has taken it upon himself to menace and punish Holland’s bloodlines for the “sins” of his grandfather – a dream sequence Holland has with his grandmother could have been better handled to have a bit more relevance.

Stephen Geoffreys as Stark

His lackey is Stark (Stephen Geoffreys) and Geoffreys is magnificent in this, overplaying with a Dwight Frye meets Evil from Fright Night zeal that makes you wish his screen time was much longer. As for Edward X. Young, I actually felt that he might make a rather good Max if the Lost Boys were remade. A gag he makes towards the end and Geoffreys performance betray a want to make the film more comedic than it was and it might have worked better had they pushed it all the way in that direction. I assume Holland was named by combining the names of Tom Holland (Fright Night’s director) and Vincent Price (who is referenced in the Fright Night character Peter Vincent).

Edward X. Young as Mr Hush

The editing could have been tightened, to be fair, and there were noticeable sound inconsistencies. However, I liked the premise of slasher film actually being a vampire movie, I liked the idea of making one person suffer (Holland’s parents were murdered and we assume this was by Hush too – that might have made either a good prologue or a better dream sequence than the grandmother one). Compared to some films this isn’t as bad as the scores on IMDb make out. Of course, as I said at the head of the review, it isn’t the best film either – and I think it lets itself down a bit. And a fair score is probably 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The film is on demand at Vimeo or available via Amazon:

This was a 1977 Kung Fu movie directed by Joseph Kuo Nan-Hong and was the third of the 18 Bronzemen movies (though not a direct sequel thereof).

In many respects it is a foreshadowing of the Kenny Rogers hit Coward of the County. It begins with 8 Masters of Kung Fu coming for Chu Shiao Chieh (played young by Ching Lap-Wai). His father, now dead, has managed to anger the masters and they are coming for the young song to get their revenge. A colleague of the father rescues the son and gives his life to get him to the Shaolin temple, where the boy is taken in and trained.

Carter Wong as Chu Shiao Chieh

Chu Shiao Chieh (played as an adult by Carter Wong, Big Trouble in Little China) becomes a kung fu expert but wishes to become a monk. His request is refused as he has a debt to pay – his rescuer having wanted him to go out into the world and do good. He is left with the philosophy, “Keep the peace. Have patience. Forgive offence.” On hearing he has returned to his family home the 8 masters demand he accept a challenge to fight them all, he denies this due to the philosophy until he is pushed too far. Even then he defeats but doesn’t kill the masters in a riot of Kung Fu action.

kyonsi attack

So, where are the vampires? Well they are there but only briefly. They are kyonsi kept in a hidden chamber below the 8 masters’ base and we can tell what they are due to their greyed faces, arms out and hopping gait. They also rise up to the vertical in a swift movement ala Count Orlock. These kyonsi have blades attached to their hands and are killed through Kung Fu rather than mystical means.

A fleeting visitation. The imdb page is here.

Director: Tommy Stovall

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

There are indie films and then there are indie films. I find myself ploughing through quite a few films where the photography looks really rather amateurish and, you know what, that’s ok. I am on the lookout for the positive within a film. A sublime performance, perhaps, or a great piece of story-telling or an interesting use of lore/tropes.

However, it is nice to watch an indie film where, just in the establishing shots, one recognises skilled photography. Aaron’s Blood was one such film. As the shots that told us we were in small town USA came upon the screen I settled down to watch the film, hoping to find more positives in place.

call from the school

As I say we are in small town America and, following the establishing shots, we settle on a school where there is a blood drive, Aaron (James Martinez) is taking blood. A girl sits in the chair, nervous, but Aaron has been doing this for ten years. As he is packing up for the day he gets a call from his son’s school. Tate (Trevor Stovall) has tripped a boy at school and faces a day’s suspension. In the following scenes we discover that Justin (Noah Heekin) has been bullying Tate, that Tate’s mother is dead and that he is a haemophiliac.

Acuka cola

This, of course, means that physical damage to Tate is especially dangerous and so, when Justin has his revenge, Tate ends up in ICU. He has a hairline fracture and some internal bleeding that the doctors have managed to stop. Aaron is, understandably, worried for his son and wanders into the hospital chapel where he meets Father Kane (David Castellvi), who prays with Aaron for Tate. In a nice throwaway we see that the vending machine sells Acula cola.

James Martinez as Aaron

Aaron wakes in a chair and Tate’s bed is empty. He runs into the corridor calling for his son, the nurse at the desk hasn’t heard of him and the room has been unoccupied. Worried by his frantic behaviour she calls security as he runs outside. He finds a missing person flyer, created for Tate, but then hears his son’s disembodied voice calling him. He awakens with Tate calling from the bed, worried about his dad who has been having a nightmare.

dealing with Justin

Tate has made a miraculous recovery and the Doctors send him home. He is ready to go to school, but not hungry. At school he is making shot after shot at basketball and when Justin aggressively throws a ball at him he catches it with ease. Later, when Justin and his friends come to the toilet to bully him, Tate picks Justin up by the neck (his eyes changing as he does so). The caretaker, Mike (Michael Peach), comes in and witnesses this. That night Tate tries to eat but throws the food back up almost immediately and the next day becomes severely sunburnt after a few minutes exposed – a trip to the doctors has the medical experts suggesting a reaction to the drugs he has been given, explaining his very low heart rate as a by-product of the sedatives he had also been given.

Trevor Stovall as Tate

We see a man, Earl (Michael Chieffo, Transylvania Twist), break into Aaron’s house. He and Mike are vampire hunters and Mike has recognised Tate for what he is. What led them to become hunters is never explored and, you know what, that doesn’t matter. However, when they break in that night to kill him, Aaron intervenes with a gun and Tate kills and feeds from Mike in front of his dad. Earl leaves saying that Tate will turn on him, that when the heart stops it is too late and suggesting that Aaron removes Mike’s head, just in case.

drawing blood

So that is our premise. Aaron contacts Earl and discovers that there is a rumour of a cure – though Earl is not sure whether it actually works. Aaron needs to discover how Tate became infected and the focus of the film, on Aaron rather than Tate, was nicely done. This is mainly down to an excellent performance by James Martinez who absolutely sells the character and story to the viewer. From feeding his son his own blood to trying to track down the source of infection, Aaron is a solid and believable character. Trevor Stovall was good as Tate, but it is the Aaron character that steals the show.

demonic visage

Lore wise, aside from the cure (which I’m not going to go into either the methodology or the effectiveness, you’ll have to watch the film), I’ve covered the main lore. There is no “what am i?” moment as such – Tate immediately asks whether he is a vampire. We get quite the demonic face change but that is in a dream sequence and we don’t know how true it is. We know that there is longevity and that, once his heart stops, Tate will not age any further. His haemophilia is cured – by dint of his fast healing, if nothing else – and his eyesight has improved.

I really enjoyed this. It was a simple story but well-constructed with a nice viewpoint. There’s a tad of gore but really it is character driven. This one comes recommended, 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Directors: Sophia Cacciola & Michael J. Epstein

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

Blood of the Triblades ran a successful kickstarter campaign and the version viewed for review was the backers exclusive digital access. What I watched was a film that owed a debt to 70s Euro-horror – especially Jean Rollin - no real surprise as the film’s homepage cites both films of Rollin and Jess Franco, as well as some of the 70’s Hammer vampire films as inspiration. Not listed as an inspiration was the film Jonathan but to me there was a definite simile to be drawn between the two.

The film also proved to be rather stagey, with many a reference layered within the film – for instance the character names, with an overarching commentary on religion and a need, perhaps, to be a little more explicit within its narrative.

opening narration

We start with Grando (Seth Chatfield) offering the viewer a pseudo-religious tract that tells of the Lord Bathor who created man in His own image and offered the pain of childbirth to women but the women no longer bear defference to the men or bear them children. The men subsist on the blood of Bathor but the women took to taking the blood of man and beast and so the men would spill the blood of the tribades in the name of Lord Bathor.

voyeuristic

It’s an evangelical rant that is replaced by the credits, simple and effectively done with a nice guitar based theme. For those who have never come across the word tribade before it means a lesbian. This is, of course, the launching platform into the 70s Euro-horror, which often had a lesbian theme. The film is set in the village of Bathory and is set in 2000 AB. As it opens a woman takes a bath and a man, with pox on his face, watches her for a while. He in turn is watched by two hooded and fanged women, Naga (Simone de Boudoir) and Giltine (Sindy Katrotic). Naga prevents them from interfering.

dying bather

The man sights the bathing woman with a roughly hewn crossbow and shoots a wooden bolt through her heart. As she dies she reveals fangs and a red vapour escapes her mouth as she expires. The man returns to his brethren. They all wear a similar costume and a red Saint Andrew’s Cross as a lapel badge. One of the men has breached their arbitrary religious rules and he is "forgiven" by stripping him and has his eyes ripped by rose thorns before disposing of him. The worshippers of Bathor drink from a fountain of blood that comes from a stone rose, they are all marked with the pox accept for Grando. He is fasting, unwilling to partake of Bathor’s blood until they eradicate the heretic tribades.

on the beach

We see three hooded women go to a beach – the location, the costumes and even the camera filters do summon a feel of Rollin. They hold up Saint Andrew’s crosses and pull down a red vapour. They then approach women showing their now red hair – it becomes apparent that these women are elders and the hair is a sign that calls the women to a meeting. The recent spate of murders is a sign from Bathor, they say, they must stay and prepare for the return of Bathor. There is one dissenter, Fantine (Mary Widow), who was the sister of the woman killed at the head of the film and who suggests they should run and hide. The film concentrates on Fantine and her lover Elizabeth (Chloé Cunha).

Elizabeth and Fantine

I don’t really want to spoil more but will say Naga and Giltine are two of a group of women who were exiled years before and the women (and men) have been around so long that they have forgotten much of their own past and history. The film explores female self determination to a degree but more forcefully explores religious fanaticism. Both the women and men worship Bathor but both interpret the “holy” word differently and are at war because of it. The destructive, erroneous, pretentious and deceitful message of organised religions is the target here.

the twins

There are most definitely Rollin-esque aspects – several I have already mentioned but the inclusion of twins is yet another aspect and well done. The film, despite its inspiration and the fact that they often had a sexploitation basis, is actually rather chaste – there is some nudity (male and female) but no real sexploitation element. Where the film struggled, for me, was less in the stagey feel – which one felt was deliberate – but in the narrative.

fighting stance

As obvious as the film’s underlying treatise was, the plot’s narrative and background opened more questions than it answered. These factions had been at war for such an expanded period of time, apparently, but their numbers were small. One wondered at this. One wondered at what the female vampires (for, of course, that is what they are) feed upon. Whilst we see the returned exile women feed on the men we do not see the village women feed (it is mentioned in passing). Perhaps a little more illumination of such things might have helped.

the blood of Bathor

The film will stand or fall on whether you appreciate 70s Euro-horror and arthouse movies. If the answer is yes then this proves to be a solid homage. You can also see the fact that, without a knowledge of these films and the background gleaned through character names, the lack of a clear exposition might prove distracting. I liked where this was coming from but found that it was, unfortunately, missing something at its very core – maybe because it was a homage rather than actually being that thing which it based itself upon? 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

As there has been a UK Blu-Ray release of this film (set at Region A and B) I thought I’d revisit it. However, don’t go looking for the film under the title "Blood Bath" on the blog. I reviewed it under the title Track of the Vampire.

Now, Track of the Vampire is a stinker of a movie – I scored it 0.5 out of 10 – so why on earth would you want the Blu-Ray? Well that goes a little way down to the title change and mostly because the Blu-Ray makes an honestly fascinating set for any student of cinema.

the vampire

Blood Bath was a Roger Corman production – he had invested in the Yugoslavian film called Operation Titan and it was eventually released under four names with different cuts. It was cut for drive-ins under the name Portrait in Terror, reshoots led to it becoming the vampire film Blood Bath and then a TV edit was created by cutting and adding scenes and creating Track of the Vampire. The double Blu-Ray set contains all four cuts (or as near as can be got to the original four cuts).

camptured

Blood Bath itself is shorter than Track of the Vampire and is missing some of the odder and more ponderous moments – this leads to a smoother, more coherent watch (and gets rid of the 8 minutes of interpretive dance on the beach, thankfully). This makes it a more satisfying film (perhaps worth 1.5 or even 2 out of 10, rather than the score I previously gave Track of the Vampire). The Blu-Ray comes in a slip case that also contains a booklet and a double-sided poster. All in all a great set for the collector (though not for the casual viewer) and an interesting insight into the exploitative practices surrounding schlock horror film production.

Director: Lucio Fulci

Release date: 1975

Contains spoilers

To avoid confusion with the cracking children’s series of the same name I suppose I should have used the Italian title Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco, ovvero: Dracula in Brianza.

This was a 1975 comedy vehicle directed by Fulci and there isn’t a shred of horror to it. More this is a bedroom farce (with very little bedroom) meets a political satire that is as hamfisted as anything you’d see and throw in some overt homophobia disguised as jokes. I should state that the film is hard to come by and the version I watched was an awful VHS rip, badly dubbed into English (which probably didn’t help) and with hard-coded Greek subtitles. Beggars, however, cannot be choosers.

basketball match

The film begins at a basketball game where two Italian Industrialists are presidents of opposing teams. Unfortunately the team owned by Costante Nicosia (Lando Buzzanca), the protagonist of our little tale, are losing. By the second half the hunchback Peppino (Antonio Allocca) has arrived late, allowing Costante to rub his hump for luck – honestly this is the level of the thing. The luck doesn’t happen and his team are annihilated. As he drives his wife, Mariù (Sylva Koscina, Uncle was a Vampire), home a black cat crosses the path of the car and he tries to find an alternate route home.

driving home

At home she denies him the sex he wants, as the day is auspicious for conception – she doesn’t want a baby. He breaks a mirror and, to remove the bad luck, tries to get the maid, Anastasia, to pee on it as he believes the old woman to be a virgin – she takes it as a (welcomed) sexual come on. He is obsessed with things that rhyme with “u”, refuses to walk on cracks between paving stones and is, in short, superstitious. As he arrives at the factory he owns, he is attacked by the guard dog Gestapo – and this is a daily occasion but the dog only ever attacks him. In the factory the film is quick to point out the worker who is communist – because its political, of course.

meeting the Count

He has to have dinner with his sister and his family that night and his Aunt Maria (Grazia Spadaro) tries to con him into hiring two family members – he refuses and she casts the evil eye at him. Then he heads off to a business trip to Romania. On the plane (where he salts the cockpit to purify it) he meets the Count Dragulescu (John Steiner), who invites him to his castle. At the hotel his meeting has been put back two days and, after discovering that Romania has nothing to offer, he goes to the Count’s castle. The electricity is out when he arrives but the servant shows him portraits of the Counts, through the years, by candlelight. He is open about them being vampires.

portrait in castle

The Count arrives with three women and a bloke. The women all kiss (and pull the ear of) Costante – he stops the guy from kissing him. He gets dressed for dinner to find that everyone else is nude, has his clothes ripped off, drinks, frolics and eventually passes out. He awakes in bed with the Count and, having caressed him when he thought he was a woman, freaks out. Later he’ll find the bite marks on his neck. Following this the film nose-dives from unfunny to offensive as the joke becomes him thinking he has turned gay, and boy it labours the point. This goes on until he tastes blood and finds a new passion.

a vampire baby

After this he is on a quest – one that kind of feels like a bedroom farce but has not a lot of sex to carry it through. Looking at vampire lore, the only thing other than a thirst for blood that we see is that he can now give Gestapo a stare and the dog doesn’t attack him and – at the end of the film – he and his wife have a baby who has two teeth through in a “fang formation”. Occasionally he’ll thinks of the Count and sees him fanged. There is a whole bit about him exploiting his workers, the communist worker going on hunger strike and cutting her wrist to offer him blood and that leading to the solution (the workers give blood in return for bonuses and better terms and conditions).

the factory

There was little subtlety to this political side and it fell as flat as everything else. Now it might be that the dubbing didn’t help but I struggle to see how this could have been a good film in any format. Some of it is aging badly – the homophobic jokes, are the prime example of this. Other aspects lay flat and unfunny generally. I really didn’t get on with this one. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Author: Paul Jacob Smith

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Cinderella and Bluebeard is a dark fairy tale based upon the life of Gilles de Rais. As Marshal of France, the Baron de Rais was Joan of Arc’s staunchest supporter both in court and on the battlefield. His devotion to the saint was unwavering even as his peers abandoned Joan in her push north following the liberation of Paris. De Rais’ story did not end with Joan’s death, however, and in one of history’s greatest absurdities, de Rais became drawn to the occult, proceeding upon a campaign of blood and sexual excess which left over 300 dead in its wake.

While Gilles de Rais eventually became the inspiration for the fairy tale of Bluebeard, the baron’s wife’s history invites comparison to that of Cinderella. As the audience’s entry into the novel, Catherine de Thouars is something of an opposite to her flamboyant husband. She is a sympathetic and naïve figure, who, while easily led astray, is capable of making unorthodox decisions and living with the consequences. Catherine grew up an orphan in her own home. Her mother, Celine, had had an extramarital affair before she died leaving Catherine’s parentage in doubt. Now, eighteen years later, Celine returns to her daughter, telling Catherine that she had faked her suicide in order to join her lover in eternal life as a vampire. Catherine accepts her mother’s offer to be bitten, and, with her new powers…

The review: A few words of explanation, if I may. I have taken the blurb, above, from this novel’s Inkshares' Page though I have curtailed it a little as the wording on the page went further than the end of the book. That’s not to say there was anything missing – I think the book went to a natural conclusion for the volume with a sequel necessary to continue the story.

I should also explain that Inkshares is a place where new authors try to garner interest in a book and, if they get enough pre-orders, inkshares will publish it. Paul Jacob Smith sent me a completed draft of the book for review. Now, I don’t balk generally at long books – but this was exceptionally long and, of course, by a new author. However, can I say now that I just ate this up. It was exceptionally well written and very well edited.

The book brings two fairy-tale characters together. Cinderella will be familiar to you but perhaps not so much Bluebeard. However, Bluebeard is a popular tale in France and is often linked to the historic figure of Gilles de Rais. De Rais fought with Joan of Arc but, years later, was arrested and tried for killing and torturing children. His actions are often tied into vampirism also, famously by Huysmans in his novel Là-Bas - though for Huysmans vampirism was something to associate with necrophilia.

Smith constructs an epic historical novel, with Cinderella the first daughter of a member of France’s landed classes and takes us on a journey where she and de Rais meet during a celebration of his coming of age. For the most part Smith eschews the fantastical, except for the vampirism of course, but rather draws a visceral novel filled with dynastic intrigue and bloody melee. The vampires avoid the sunlight – they are weakened – seem fine with most religious artefacts bar holy water and the host; though crosses, even in a churchyard, might impact during the daylight hours. They can shapeshift, cloud minds and must be staked, beheaded and cremated to destroy them. There is clearly a shadowy vampire society hidden from mortal society, though we do not delve too deeply in to that.

This is a book that deserves to be published and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 8.5 out of 10. You can support the book by pre-ordering it at the Inkshares' Page.

Director: Christopher Wesley

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

Otaku is a Japanese word meaning a young person who is obsessed with popular culture (the word has become synonymous with anime and manga) to the detriment of their social skills. It is, essentially, a culture specific version of a nerd.

Now, nothing wrong with being a nerd and whilst Otaku Vampires flirts within the nerd culture, and derives its comedy from there, it does so sympathetically. Unfortunately, the film itself is weak.

the vampire approaches

It begins in a graveyard and a groundskeeper finds a bottle and bemoans the recently opened school and the troublesome kids. A cloaked figure approaches, communicating with him telepathically. The vampire, Terra (Christina Lambert), grabs him and feeds from him. We see very little but hear slurping noises. Indeed, the outdoor night shots are not the best filmed in the world. Whilst things are semi-visible the lighting seems non-existent.

Lora and Stanley

Ollie Otaku (Daniel Land) runs a radio show on campus and has an anime club, more than that he has an inflated ego. Nevertheless, new student Lora (Rachel Scott) has picked up a flyer. She meets her boyfriend Stanley (Tom Shelley) who deferred two years to go to school with her, likes to play video games and has no clue about what he wants to do in the school. Theirs is, we discover, a chaste relationship. Lora gets him to go with her to the anime club.

gone emo

Whilst she befriends Ami (Kelby Tienken) – a yaoi fan, yaoi being gay romance/sexual manga – we see Ollie’s sidekicks Dale (Nicholas Maertz) and Davis (Daniel Robers). Stanley befriends girl gamer Willow (Caitlin Drance) and porn addict Pierson (David DeVita). Terra is hunting on campus and sees Lora fall, helps her up and decides to seduce her. Stanley sees Lora drift away, starts a rivalry with Ollie and is then dumped and turns emo before realising what has happened and goes to save her.

an anime fan vampire

There is a concept of a vampire society within the film that isn’t explored (it is really introduced in the epilogue) but we do discover that Terra is a svengal (or so it sounded like) – a master vampire. The turn rules are not explained but some seem to be bitten and die and others are bitten then turn. Those turned are slaves to the svengal. Using blood and energy, a svengal can create another of her kind – that’s what she wants to do to Lora – but she does make some of the anime class thrall vampires.

staked vampire

Staking works – but the wood must be aspen. When this occurs we get a splash of cgi blood and then a ham fisted explosion done through post-production effect. Vampires can regenerate limbs, can be killed by a spirit sword, seem to avoid daylight (though nothing is done with that) and a vampire in thrall to the svengal can break away from them through sheer force of will.

Christina Lambert as Terra

The problems I had with this were many and varied. I mentioned the outdoor night shots – and they were better than some budget films but not brilliant. The acting was, generally, amateurish. There were sound inconsistencies and the effects looked pretty darn cheap. Many of the gags were college humour (though that probably fit the location). Some sequences were too long – the Stanley Emo one could have been mostly expunged and the gag still work as well as the segue into the next story phase, for instance.

All in all, I just didn’t click with this. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Author: L M Labat

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: She’s been beaten, stabbed, poisoned, and shot, but Hael refuses to die. In her pursuit for vengeance and her origin, the dhampir Hael hunts down the madman responsible for her fateful transformation. As this half-vampire juggernauts her way through a world at war, Hael battles hordes of Nazi soldiers and struggles to maintain her sanity. However, while Hael gathers knowledge on how to trap and kill her target, her adversary’s network is expanding at an exponential rate; his sick obsession with Hael grows deeper. Will she have her revenge? Will she find her origin? Or, will she crumble beneath her own insidious bloodlust?

The review: Is hosted at Vamped.

It’s difficult to know exactly what to make of this 1986 film. Directed primarily (in the credits) by Genie Joseph, the director was building upon work from an unfinished work called Twisted Souls that was directed by Thomas Doran and Brendan Faulkner.

Twisted Souls was the story of a group of people who end up at a house (one with a cemetery as its front lawn) and find an Ouija board. One of the group, Carol (Lisa Friede), becomes possessed (with noticeable fangs, by the way) and the film morphs into a version of Evil Dead without the style and cult appeal of the more famous film. A variety of villainous monsters, including a lawn of zombies, farting “muck men” and some stop-motion creatures try to get the kids.

Linda and Duke

I say kids, but at least one of their number, Peter (Peter Dain), was treated like he was the “straight laced one” but looked old enough to be the rest of the cast’s dad. I should also mention bullish leader of the group, and the one who landed them at the house, Duke (Nick Gionta). His brash form of Bronx machismo was difficult to take with any degree of seriousness given that he seemed to have squeezed himself into one of Michael Jackson’s stage costumes. Of course this was only part of the story.

Billy's Birthday

The film was incomplete and shelved until additional footage was shot and stitched to the film. This involved the cadaverous character Kreon (Felix Ward) who has kept the body of his love, Isabelle (Maria Pechukas), preserved in a coffin for seventy years, luring victims to the house in order to preserve and raise her. This is one of the possibly vampiric aspects as Kreon suggests that he has sacrificed the youth of so many to keep her preserved. In main his victims are now the Twisted Souls kids. He does lure Billy (Alec Nemser), a runaway, to the house before they arrive and host a fake birthday party followed by burial alive – so much for Billy.

Kreon's son

The primary vampire element seems to be Isabelle and Kreon’s son (A.J. Lowenthal). Now, just when and how they had a son is not explored. When she is revived she is aware of him and so the suspicion is that it was before she poisoned herself to escape Kreon – she may be his love but the feeling is not reciprocated. The child (who may be over 70) is a blue faced and fanged thing in a cowl. They talk of him killing but, as he wasn’t in the footage of the original film, this does not happen and so the child does very little in film.

drained by the spider

The final aspect to mention is the Spider Woman (Soo Paek), who lures Rich (Peter Iasillo Jr., Street Trash) off from the others in the house and he’s not suspicious that the woman – who claims to be trapped like them – knows his name. When back at her lair she morphs into an actual spider, whilst he is stuck in a web, and then sucks him dry. Given Rich’s involvement this was certainly meant to be a scene in Twisted Souls.

And that’s it – the mention is primarily for Kreon’s son, just because he looks like a child vampire. The film is nuts but not particularly watchable nuts. The imdb page is here.

Lilith – review

Lilith’s Awakening – review

The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature – review

Return of Ultraman: Yoru o kechirase – review

Creeporia – review

Vlad – review

III Slices of Life – review

Rites of Blood – review

Short Film: The Audition

Vengeance Obtained – review

Mr Hush – review

Honourable Mention: 8 Masters

Aaron’s Blood – review

Blood of the Tribades – review

Revisit: Blood Bath

Young Dracula (1975) – review

Cinderella and Bluebeard – review

Otaku Vampires – review

The Sanguinarian Id – review

Honourable Mention: Spookies