Taliesin meets the vampires

The Black Tavern, or Hei Dian, was a 1972 Shaw Brother movie directed by Wing-Cho Yip and the basic premise of the movie saw a beggar monk in a tavern telling all who will listen to his song about an allegedly corrupt official he saw on the road the night before carrying a king’s ransom in treasures.

Two brigands go after the official who is rescued by a hero. They arrive at the Black Tavern – a brigand’s place where steam buns made with human flesh are served – and it quickly becomes apparent that the “official” is another criminal out to get the real official and the hero is more than happy to work with him.

As the night progresses more and more villains appear.

spitting bun in the corpse's face

The reason it takes our interest is because a corpse herder eventually turns up with his four wards. Now the idea of corpse herding, walking the corpse across the land for burial, is where a lot of the kyonsi myth in movies came from. In this case, however, they are not actually corpses at all but other members of a criminal gang and their disguise is the corpse and herder combination. This becomes all too apparent when the nervous beggar monk spits steam bun at one of the “corpses” to check it is docile.

corpse hearding

We discover that the band are known as the Five Ghosts of Xiang Xi (the region where, apparently, the myth of the corpse herder developed). Of course they do eventually end up as corpses for real as they fight with the villains already at the inn. So, a fleeting visitation and only acting like a vampire but enough to get a mention. As for the film it is primarily an action martial art flick and well worth a watch if that is your sort of thing.

The imdb page is here.

Director: Fred Olen Ray

Release date: 1986

Contains spoilers

Good old Fred Olen Ray, he really is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to B movie madness. This time around we have vampires with an Egyptian theme… and John Carradine .

Now there is no shortage of vampire/Egyptian connections. Be it Mummy’s with vampiric tendencies, the backstory to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles or just the appropriation of the ankh into vampire lore. In this case it is less mummy more vampire.

David O'Hara as Banning

However the film starts with a jeep racing across the desert driven by tomb raider John Banning (David O'Hara) as a plane buzzes him. The plane lands and he meets the pilot, Jade (Sybil Danning, the Lair& Pale Blood). He hands over a bag, having first removed a bottle of beer – this becomes an on-running gag that he always has a handy bottle of beer, even if it is hidden in skimpy shorts. She is going to stiff him on payment for the artefact and kisses him to allow her gunmen to get into position – the script is good enough to have banning marvel at where they came from, sparing us the job. His guy Tyler (Craig Hamann) pops up with a gun and Banning gets away with the loot. The entire opening feels like an excuse to have Sybil Danning cameo.

the band

Cutting to a bar and a band sing Tutti Frutti. A waiter tries to suggest food and is dismissed by Banning, who calls him a rag-head. Given that Banning actually plays a fairly light role in the film as a whole there seemed, with hindsight, little reason to make him that detestable. Tyler comes in with a local, Youseff (Emmanuel Shipov), who has found a tomb and will lead them there for a price. There is a gag where Banning calls Tyler and himself gynaecologists rather than archaeologists – it was as unfunny as it sounds. They get to the tomb and it is undisturbed but unmarked and quiet bare. A statue of Bast is, depressingly, not gold under the paint.

emerging from her sarcophagus

There is, however, a sarcophagus – which Tyler is sure was not there when they arrived. Youssef tells the story of the illegitimate daughter of Ptolemy the Great, Nefratis (Michelle Bauer). She was said to be a Priestess of Set who maintained her magical powers by drinking blood and was buried alive in an unmarked tomb. Legend suggests if she was disturbed she would awaken. Banning nips out to bring the camels closer and Tyler follows (to suggest killing Youseff). Too late. A rather dishevelled Nefratis emerges from the tomb.

victim

By the time Banning gets back into the tomb both the others are dead – a nice hole in Tyler’s neck – and there is a rather refreshed looking Nefratis. Banning shoots at her and runs. She doesn’t chase, she suggests she’ll be waiting for him when he stops running. Banning gets back to the US but he has troubles. US customs are after him as they suspect he has artefacts and he has sold the two pieces collected from the tomb (that he had on him when he ran) to two collectors. Add to that Nefratis who finds him and sticks a scarab beetle in his chest that will destroy his heart if he betrays her, you see she wants her artefacts back.

John Carradine

Why – well it is in the lore that things get sticky. Nefratis clearly became younger again when she drank Tyler’s blood. To look at she is a young woman, with fangs and wearing one glove – her magic hand has long talons and is a bit greyer in colour than her other skin. We know she is a blood drinker but expert Mr. Andoheb (John Carradine) suggests that she needs to make a sacrifice of a woman every 7th moon, from which she will steal the life-force and soul of the woman to make herself young (which makes one wonder how she became young again in the tomb). The artefacts are an essential part of the ritual.

unleashing the magic hand

Yet, despite the rubbish gags (mercifully few and far between), the fact that Banning is dislikeable and then side-tracked as the protagonist and that the lore is made up as it goes along, it would seem, this isn’t entirely terrible. It’s one of those rubbishy films that doesn’t offend, doesn’t challenge and probably sits better with a beer. A cameo by Kitten Natividad (Red Lips) necessitates moving part of the film into a strip joint and there isn’t much else to say. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Another suggestion from friend of the blog Ville, and I can only apologise that it has taken me so long to get to this film. I had seen it before and really should have gotten around to looking at it as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ as Ville suggested.

The film is from 1960, was directed by Giorgio Ferroni and, whilst an Italian/French production, was set in Holland. The cinematography is quite lovely at times, though the colour palate is rather muted and as I re-watched it I felt that this had a thickness to the photography that was reminiscent of its era but could have benefited from the deft lighting associated with Mario Bava (or perhaps just a digital clean up).

It begins with Hans von Arnim (Pierre Brice, La Notte Dei Dannati) arriving by barge. He is looking for the residence of Professor Gregorius Wahl (Herbert A.E. Böhme) and is directed to a further short boat trip followed by a walk to the Mill of the Stone Women – or at least that is what the locals call it.

the Carousel

He reaches the house connected to the Mill and is let in by the dour housekeeper Selma (Olga Solbelli) and is waiting when he sees a woman peeping from behind curtains. Before he can investigate he is taken through to the Professor’s study and, it seems, is only mildly curious when a wail sounds out from the room he left. The study is interconnected with a room with a diorama fed by carousel. A gust of wind catches the mill’s sails and the display begins on its own. The display is of infamous women (murderers and the murdered) who are all cast life-size – the stone women of the mill’s name. The Professor appears and speaks to the young man.

the Professor and Hans

He has been sent to write an article on the centennial of the Professor’s Great-Grandfather’s opening of the carousel. The Professor hadn’t been expecting him so soon but, as he is there, he might as well begin work straight away. He is given a workspace and told that he cannot remove the papers and so will have to work from there and that the Professor expects him to be done within five days. He is told the times of the last ferry back to town in the evening.

giving mixed signals

The Professor has a lesson to give at the art academy. Amongst his students is Liselotte (Dany Carrel), an old friend of Hans who holds a flame for him, and their mutual friend Ralf (Marco Guglielmi), who is shamelessly flirting with model Annelore (Liana Orfei). So, as things move on, Hans discovers that the face he glimpsed belonged to the Professor’s daughter Elfie (Scilla Gabel). On that one glimpse she has fallen in love with him and, when they do properly meet, he kisses her and then, the next day, realises he loves LiseLotte. This does not sit well with the Jealous Elfie but, also, he is warned by the Professor that she is sick and strong emotion can bring on an attack and thus asked to stay away from her.

assumed dead

This illness has necessitated that she has a live in physician, Doctor Loren Bohlem (Wolfgang Preiss, Cave of the Living Dead& The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse). When she succumbs to the illness, with Hans in the room, she wails and collapses, blood trickling from her mouth. He carries her to her room and she seems to have sores on her skin and, when he puts a mirror to her mouth, no breath – causing Hans to believe her dead. Later, in conversation, Bohlem and the Professor discuss how she has died and been brought back many times.

about to be transfused

The issue seems to be an illness of the blood and we see her having her “bad blood”, as the Professor terms it, drained out of her. She is then transfused the blood of an unwilling victim – in the scene we see, this is from the kidnapped Annelore. Bohlem and the Professor carry out the procedure together but Bohlem claims that his participation is absolutely necessary to her survival – suggesting that there is an element more than the transfusion necessary, as the Professor seems quite capable of performing that. Certainly, when they discover someone with a rare blood type, Bohlem suggests that use of a newly developed serum with that blood could prevent the need for any more transfusions. There is no suggestion that specific blood types are needed for the standard transfusions.

Bohlem and Elfie

This, of course, follows a science offering life through the life of another scenario. Unlike films such as I Vampiri the procedure is not making the person younger, although it does seem to remove the skin blemishes and sores that appear when she has a turn. More importantly she is aware of the procedure and the impact it has on the victim – we see her mock one victim. Hans visits her sleeping and she appears unnaturally still and she is said to have died several times – thus is sort of undead. Not important to the vampirism, but the Professor mummifies his victims and makes them the models in his display – beating a similar motif in Track of the Vampire by 6 years.

Lisalotte and Hans

All in all, I have to say that this is a vampire movie. I think it is the miraculous impact the blood (or possibly serum enriched blood) has on her (healing the blemishes as well as reviving life) and the fact that she knows she is extending her life through the deaths of others. A nice slice of euro horror and worth your time, the pace might be slow but the atmosphere works throughout. The imdb page is here.

Director: Jennifer Thym

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

I’d gone over to TubiTV and was watching the Hillbilly Horror Show, which features horror shorts, when I came across Bloodtraffick.

Set in a world where angels had been born to fight a war against the vampires, we hear that the angels were proud and arrogant, whilst the vampires were quick and cunning and so soon the angels ceased to be the hunters and became the prey. In the film we follow Ava (Grace Huang). Ava is human – though she does have wings tattooed on her back indicating, one assumes, sympathies.

Finn and Ava

Her sisters Rachel and Samantha vanished and she wonders if they had become angels. She has spent ten years trying to find them and her journey takes her to a place where it is quickly obvious that the vampires hold as she finds a room full of angel wings (I made the assumption that they have been removed from their previous owners) and soon faces Finn (Kirt Kishita). Finn does nothing overtly vampiric but dies display speed and strength. What will happen…

I don’t want to spoil any more of the 11 minute short for you. I will say, however, that the film has a Facebook Page and the IMDb page is here.

Originally released as Indigenous, this 2014 film was directed by Alastair Orr and came onto my radar due to one word… Chupacabra.

Now the chupacabra is one that almost always warrant a ‘Vamp or Not?’ – the infamous goat-sucker doesn’t always stick to sucking the blood of goats (or humans) and is often portrayed as a standard beast. So what about this film?

It starts with what appears to be found footage (it isn’t quite that) of American tourist Scott Williams (Zachary Soetenga) saying that he was holidaying in Panama, he and his friends have gone too far into the jungle and something is chasing them. He starts mentioning the fates of two friends when there is a screech and a scream. The video ends.

a last hoorah

The film then jumps back two days. Scott and his girlfriend Steph (Lindsey McKeon) are going to Panama to meet their friends Trevor (Pierson Fode), Elena (Sofia Pernas) and Charlie (Jamie Anderson). Steph has been accepted into Vet school and Elena and Charlie have opened a restaurant and so this is their last hoorah before real life kicks in. Scott has created an app that is in beta mode that uploads video to social media tagging friends through facial recognition.

Scott and Steph

Whilst they are out having a good time Trevor meets local girl Carmen (Laura Penuela) and through her they all meet local bloke Julio (Juanxo Villaverde). Scott reads about the Darién Gap and sees a video supposedly of tourists attacked by something there. Julio tells them that there is a waterfall in that area that they used to go to as kids but no-one goes there now. The region is supposedly haunted by the chupacabra (Mark Steger, I am Legend) – and he describes it as an evil spirit trapped in a half human and half monster body.

chupacabra

Scott gets in to the idea of going there and Carmen offers to take them – despite promising Julio that she won’t. They go and do get to the waterfall. Julio follows but is stalked and legs it from the jungle, heading back to contact his uncle (who is in the local police). The friends at the waterfall are soon attacked, night falls and they are separated. Their fates are not quite sealed as Scott’s app releases their plight to the world (and is the video we saw at the head of the film). So, is this chupacabra Vamp?

big tongue

Well, it is natural we assume – despite the legend of it being some sort of evil spirit, the original title of indigenous suggests a natural creature – if a cryptid. It is bipedal – has a long (cgi) tongue, rows of sharp teeth and is certainly carnivorous – devouring raw flesh from the bone. A news report late in the film does use the word bloodsucker – but this refers to the legend of the cryptid and not necessarily its actual modus operandi.

of genre interest

This one probably falls as being of genre interest – given the association of chupacabra with vampirism. It is a separate species and hunts humans but there is nothing overtly vampire (no supernatural elements are there and little is said that might connect it to vampires within the vague description of folklore in film). How many chupacabra are there is unknown. It could be one hunting all of them or there might be more than one. The DVD cover shows several but that is not replicated on screen.

The imdb page is here.

Sorry guys but for the best of reasons there won’t be any posts for a week.

However, when we return look out for reviews of the book Blood of the Dragon, and of the film the Forbidden Girl, as well as a “Vamp or Not?” of the film Finger of Doom.

Anyone leaving comments please note that they have to be authorised and again that won’t be done over the coming week. However they will be released in a weeks’ time and I beg your patience. I do love receiving your comments.

T_ttlg

Director: Till Hastreiter

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

I came across this as someone posted about it on Facebook (my apologies, I can’t recall who and thus give you proper credit). It was the first time I’d heard about the film and, more, it was said to be a vampire film.

I found the trailer – not much within that to give a vampire feel, to be honest, and it was suggested that perhaps it was “Vamp or Not?” fodder. No, to be fair this is definitely a vampire film (indeed there are three separate vampiric types). It is also a strange film that reminded me of several predecessors – all of a more arthouse/surreal bent – but I’ll get to them at the end of the review.

Roger Tebb as the Reverend

With an introduction talking about a bridge to eternity being created after 66 moon cycles one got the feeling that the number 6 was going to play a prominent part in the film (and it does). We meet Toby (Peter Gadiot). He kneels as his father, the Reverend McClift (Roger Tebb) demands of him, who is chosen through having the sign, that he denies love as it is forbidden to him – for him killing evil is doing good.

Kathy and Toby

6 hours later he has removed the handcuffs (used by his father to restrain him at night) and escaped to the graveyard where he is to meet Kathy (Jytte-Merle Böhrnsen), who wants him to come before sunrise. He finds her in a crypt – a picnic laid out. We actually see very little of this scene (more of it is revealed piecemeal through the film) and so they are not long together when something comes, out of a black, living shadow. Something fanged. 6 weeks later and his father is dead, killed in the crypt, the girl is missing and he only speaks of something he likens to a wolfman. He is committed.

the house

6 years on and a doctor (Jesse Inman, the Countess) releases him. He suggests Toby get a job and, as he helped tutor some of the other inmates, passes him a paper with an advert for a private tutor. Toby goes to the address, a big country house, and I was struck somewhat of the character of Victoria Winters in the 2012 version of Dark Shadows. As he approaches the barbed wire wrapped gates he seems to be followed by a man (Marc Bischoff) who appears less than substantial.

waking Lady Wallace

He gets to the house but no one heeds his call. The door is open and he finally gets to a room where the mistress of the house, Lady Wallace (Jeanette Hain), is in bed, hooked to pumps and machines and looking more like a corpse than a living person. His presence wakes her and brings in her servant/lover Mortimer (Klaus Tange) who accosts Toby – lifting him by the throat as he tries to explain that he has come about the advert. After Mortimer releases him Toby decides to leave but, outside, he sees Kathy on a balcony (later it is suggested that she cannot be exposed to sunlight).

beneath the sun and moon

He stays, of course, but the girl denies being Kathy and suggests she is called Laura. A girl who was found and looked after/adopted by Lady Wallace. Mortimer remains threatening and when Toby gets into a room with “the book” – a tome about witchcraft – he allows light into the house that not only burns the book to a crisp but seems to spur Lady Wallace out of her death bed – and younger and younger it seems. The semi-substantial man seems to be trying to warn Toby.

burnt by the cross

The film is incredibly stylised with some lovely imagery (like the house being reflected in a lake at night with the moon and as the camera pulls up the actual house is in daylight) but I expect you want to know about the vampires. Mortimer would seem to be a vampire – he is the creature from the beginning and although likened to a wolfman what we know is that he is strong, can produce fangs and can become black shadow or darkness that can move around the house. He can be burnt with a cross (and shies away from it) and suggests that only silver bullets would harm him.

becoming younger

At one-point Toby is spying on Lady Wallace and Mortimer, when blood from a cut drips onto her hand, which immediately becomes younger, ala Erzsébet Báthory. This, of course, is the second vampire type. Lady Wallace also embodies the third vampire type. She does become very young – and flirtatious – but this would seem to be temporary pending a specific sacrifice – she claims to be the oldest witch and thus is sort of a merging of witch and vampire. Expect no straight communication of lore, however, this is deliberately obscure and surreal in its delivery.

from the shadows

I mentioned films it reminded me of in tone, at the head, and whilst I can’t say it is necessarily as good as some of these there were overtones of La Maison Nucingen (around the surreal household) and Livid (especially when we meet lady Wallace). I was also very much reminded of A Virgin Among the Living Dead as well. That should give an idea about the sort of audience this is really pitched towards. This is one, I think, that will grow in cult status. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Author: Paul Voodini

First published: 2015

The Blurb: Four saucy tales from the legendary vampire girls of Victorian London, bound up in one alluring volume! Tales to quicken the pulse, thrill the mind, and excite parts of the body that other, lesser books fail to reach! A delightfully sweet confection of blood, sex, and gothic melodrama!

Novellas and short stories featured in this compilation include the Holmes of the Baskervilles, Miss Katie Bell - Victorian Vampire, Joan Dark is Lost, and The Vampire Alice Through the Looking Glass. Welcome to a perverse and gothic London of the 1800s, where vampires walk the streets and some of your favourite characters from Victorian literature have been taken and twisted until they snap!

The review: is hosted at Vamped.

Director: Víctor Matellano

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

I am not against remakes. Let me make that perfectly clear. Some remakes surpass the original, some plough their own furrow, some are worthwhile and some are, frankly, rubbish. However, I find the immediate backlash against remakes and re-imaginings irritating, low-brow and, quite frankly, one of the worst aspects of “fan entitlement”. It also misses a salient point in the development of the vampire genre – the fact that it is built on reimagining and remake – even the first English language vampire story, Polidori’s the Vampyre: A Tale was a re-imagining and remake of Byron’s unpublished Fragment (and a satire of the Lord to boot, of course).

will it live up to the original?

I say that but this was going to be a hard sale for me as I do love José Ramón Larraz’ 1974 original. It isn’t everyone’s favourite film, I respect that, but to me it is a wonderful slice of Eurohorror of a psychosexual persuasion. However, I went into watching this with my expectations kept as neutral as I could and, you know what, it isn’t bad. It kind of misses some of the point and it has faults but it isn’t a bad effort.

from the opening scene

We start with a quote from la Morte Amoureuse– the translation in this case not quite the same as the versions I have but fairly close, and the short story will come into this later. We see two naked women kissing, there is blood, and movement from a blood soaked carpet clearly wrapped around someone. We then have a motor bike with pillion rider through the credits. The countryside is immediately recognisable as not being British (the original film was set in Britain) and I believe it was shot in Spain. There is an in-dialogue question later in the film regarding someone not being British – though why that should be asked is beyond me for although the film was shot in English (language) the location is clearly not in the UK.

cut throat

The bike goes onto a backroad and suddenly there is a cloaked figure in the way. The bike crashes. When Peter (Fele Martínez) comes around his companion Anne (Alina Nastase) is gone. He goes into the woods looking for her and is stalked. We see a hand grab his head and his throat cut, a black rose dropped into his hand and then we see a cloaked figure carry the still alive Anne away. By the time a group of hikers walk the road the bike is gone. The hikers are photographer Harriet (Verónica Polo), John (Anthony Rotsa) and Nolan (Víctor Vidal). They were due to meet the two bikers.

Caroline Munro as the hotelier

Ted (Christian Stamm) gets his case out of a car and goes to a hotel that seems to be run by an unnamed woman (Caroline Munro, Flesh for the Beast, Midsomer Murders: Death and the Divas, Absence of Light, Night Owl, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter& Dracula AD 1972). The conversation about having been there before, from the original film, is gone but later the hotelier gives Ted a wrapped book, which she had got for him should he ever come back to the hotel.

the house

So Harriet and the boys replace the caravan couple from the original film, and they have pitched a tent near an abandoned house. The house was disappointing. In the original it was a rambling Gothic mansion that had become decrepit bar the rooms that the vampires used. In this it just looks like an abandoned house with a decorated room for entertaining and seems incongruous with the large rambling cellar we later see. They just don’t look right together. The vampires are Fran (Marta Flich) and Miriam (Almudena León) and they pick up victims (normally) by hitching. They function during the day, it seems, though this isn’t too clear. They shut doors at one point to keep out the light, they sleep in the cellar or in the graveyard and yet they also move around (though cloaked) – it seems they are nocturnal rather than destructively photosensitive. They do not appear in photographs.

Fran and Ted

They pick up Ted, who Fran keeps, toying with him rather than killing him outright, and the three friends get drawn into things. What the film doesn’t really do is hint at the relationship between Ted and Fran prior to the film (the original suggests that Ted and Fran were lovers and she cheated on him with Miriam, causing him to murder them both and thus the events are a reckoning of sorts). Indeed, the film suggests at the end that Ted is a Victorian who died (the hotelier has a death posed photo of him) but now hunts vampires. The package he is given is not opened by him but found by Harriet and contains Theophile Gautier’s story.

straying towards torture porn

So issues, I don’t think it did psychosexual very well. It missed the root of the dynamic between Fran and Ted and so wasn’t as strong in that suit. Because of this we needed the film to be a little more explicit in the backgrounds it assumed and, for the most part, it failed in this regard. The acting wasn’t brilliant (though the majority of the actors were not using their first language) and there was some torture that threatened to stray into torture porn but just managed to balance away from that. However, the blood effects were nice, with a Báthory type moment over a bath that worked very well – the girls also connect themselves to Báthory in dialogue. The Carpathian wine reference from the original remains in place.

Verónica Polo as Harriet

Don’t get me wrong. As a standalone this wasn’t bad and had a feel of Eurohorror of a time past. It revelled in its own mystery but by failing to build that core relationship (even though it is vague in the original) it felt lacking in exposition. If I had never seen the original I think that criticism would have stood. The hikers failed to illicit in me the sympathy that they should have. Caroline Munro was clearly having fun as the mysterious hotelier and the character clearly knew a lot of what was going on, but it did feel that the role had been a bit padded to take advantage of having her in the film. Incidentally she wasn’t the only scream queen in the film, Lone Fleming was the hotel receptionist and she was in the first two Blind Dead films.

fleeing to the cemetery

This was a brave effort – proper psychosexual eurorhorror would seem to be the province of a period of cinema past (the fact that the film nearly flitted to torture porn attests to this) and yet it was fairly successful. It perhaps layered symbolism that was unnecessary (the black rose motif, which recurs through the film) and needed a little exposition at the centre. However I did enjoy it. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Author: David T Pudlevitcz

Illustrator: David St. Albans

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Being the only true journal of Vladislaus Tepes Bassarab called Draculya; Voivode of Wallachia, Knight Order of the Dragon, Defender of the Faith and the Realm of the Holy Roman Empire, Count of Transylvania, Protector of Moldavia, Bey of the Ottoman Sultans, Alchemist, Necromancer, Vampyre! Penned by his own dead hand.

The review: The first thing to say about Blood of the Dragon is that it is a tome of considerable length. Published as penned by Pudlecitcz and illustrated by St Albans the first conceit of the book is that it is a publication of the actual journal of Vlad III, bookended with chapters around the archaeologists forced to do so by the vampire.

This vampire is the creature of Stoker’s novel but it was Stoker who led the fight against the vampire and Dracula is (an inaccurate, according to the vampire) recollection of those events.

The bulk of the novel takes in the events surrounding the birth and life of Vlad III and ties vampirism in at an early stage in his life when Vlad and friends, whilst in Constantinople at age 9, are attacked by a vampire. Vlad is forced to help detect the grave and destroy the vampire – and this includes pouring the vampire’s blood over the boy. Unfortunately blood gets into a cut on Vlad’s tongue and the “vampiric ally” attaches itself to the boy – therefore much of Vlad’s bloodthirstiness in life was due to being a living vampire.

You can see this as a type of vampiric possession and Vlad is lucky to survive with soul/will intact and not become a minor undead. Eventually the ally is exorcised but Vlad will, subsequently, invite another ally to become a parasitic/symbiotic part of himself and this is what allows him to live beyond death.

The book invokes a variety of names and types of vampires, draws in some figures such as Erzsébet Báthory and the Comte de Saint-Germain (as periphery mentions more than anything) and layers fiction onto history (and some pseudo-history) in a satisfying way. The archaic turns of phrase actually work in context – especially compared to other books where they jar. Most fundamentally the book draws on Lovecraftian mythos at its heart.

This version of Dracula can walk during overcast days, when well fed, but temporarily dies in sunlight (the book actually misses, given it was supposedly written at the end of the 19th century, that sunlight was not listed within vampiric myth in any great measure, if at all, until the release of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens). This Dracula feasts on negative emotion as much as the blood it is conveyed on and steals souls for his master as he does so (to reveal more than this is too much of a spoiler).

The most important thing the book manages to do is give the character a strong voice; it is a narcissistic, egoist voice, prone to self-contradiction and repeating salient points – but it is a genuine voice. Worth the entry price, indeed. 7.5 out of 10.

Director: J.R. McGarrity

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

Opening with a quote from Rickles’ the Vampire Lectures is probably not the best way to open a vampire film. Whilst I have time for the book (as you’ll see if you nip over to my review of it) it can be a tad impenetrable.

Therefore the quote that opens this – concerning the murder of the Other – may prove itself to be an impenetrable opening for a budget end movie – an indication, perhaps, of ideas above its station. However, it is those very ideas that made this so watchable to me. The film had issues but the fact that it looked behind the veil of the tropes/myth and announced its thoughts belied the perhaps less stellar cinematography and perhaps some crass aspects also.

Clint Jung as Mr Wang

So, as the film starts we meet Gus (Rollin Blanton) an apartment manager doing some plumbing for tenant Tiffany (Cassandra Leach). Music blasts from downstairs as Bob (Ken MacFarlane) cross dresses and Tiffany has plenty to say about the noises from Bob’s apartment. Gus can see at crotch height and Tiffany is barely wearing her panties. When he stands he realises her blouse has fallen open exposing a breast, goes to fix her blouse and is accused of touching her nipple. She complains to his boss, Mr Wang (Clint Jung, the Revenant, Aleta: Vampire Mistress& Teeth and Blood)

Rollin Blanton as Gus

Mr Wang, an old gentleman on inhalers and oxygen, is less than happy. Not just over Tiffany’s complaint but because a tenant committed suicide and Wang wants the apartment emptying and re-letting. When Gus found the deceased tenant hanging in the attic he put his foot through the ceiling of a Mrs Ezell (Angele Caron) and Wang wants that fixing. Gus is an ex-cop who “retired” when he killed a kid (in a clown suit), who killed Gus’ partner Loretta (Tia Bean) and Gus himself was shot in the head. As a result, he is under psychiatric care and is prone to bad dreams.

quiet zompire

His dream, this time around, is of finding the hanging tenant and then seeing Mrs Ezell in an animalistic, Evil Dead sort of configuration. She comes across as quite zompire to be fair with a definitely dead complexion but with sharp teeth that she uses on rats. Before he awakens the hanging tenant says, “don’t let them in.” Gus awakens because his phone is going off and it is a couple, Connor (David Landry, also Teeth and Blood & True Blood) and Star (Elise Jackson), at the front of the apartment asking to be let in as they want the (as yet unadvertised) apartment. As it is three in the morning he refuses.

Connor and Star

Of course, they are vampires and his does let them in eventually. They are responsible for the deaths of the tenant and also Mrs Ezell (it transpires that Gus’ dreams are more real than he knew). What I found interesting was that they were identified as vampires but also succubus and incubus – from that class of demon. This recognises the similarity in trope/folklore/psychological backstory for the creatures. Later we also get them tied into the tension between liberals and conservatives, which falls back on Voltaire almost – with mass consumerism (and the consumers thereof) being likened to zombies.

silver was in the bloodstream

Lore wise there needs to be a two way passing of blood between vampire and victim to change. They seem able to appear and disappear once they have been let in – and of course the invitation trope is central to the story – but once allowed in a building they become very difficult to remove. They have a leader who calls the shots but interestingly doesn’t have to be the oldest vampire. Silver burns their flesh and can kill them (especially if someone’s blood is laced with silver and they drink it). They sleep in earth (not necessarily coffins) and avoid sunlight.

vampire attack in the shower

The acting wasn’t necessarily brilliant and the script moved into crass territory from time to time. The SFX is not necessarily top notch – seeing Star walk in with an obvious bald head piece was distracting. However I was transfixed by some of the undertone and exploration of the tropes and that really pushes the score up for me to 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

This was a Shaw Brothers production from 1972 that was directed by Pao Hsueh-Li and originally entitled Tai Yin Zhi. It has all the stylish hallmarks of the Shaw Brothers and an intriguing central premise that leads us neatly into the ‘Vamp or Not?’

It opens with a "hero", Chang Kung Chin (Yeung Chi-Hing, Enchanting Shadow& the Black Tavern) inviting four young swordsmen to discuss the appearance of a new player in martial arts, Kung Suen Mao Neong (Park Ji-Hyeon), the mistress of the Finger of Doom. The meeting is a trap, they are forced to spar and then Kung Suen Mao Neong fights them and embeds a needle in the back of each one’s neck, from a set of finger sheaths, causing them to fall in agony. She feeds them an antidote making them fearless of pain and death and obedient to her. They are taken off, given white robes, and then she gets into a coffin and they carry her off.

carrying coffin

An intriguing opening, which is followed quickly by us meeting our protagonists. The heroine (Ivy Ling Po), whose name we are never given, is sent out by her Mistress (Ou-Yang Sha-Fei, Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave), the Leader of the Finger of Doom clan, to kill her renegade clan sister. She sets to using the Finger of Doom needles on a series of criminals to make them her slaves and carry her coffin also. Elsewhere two brothers, Lu Tien Bao (Chin Han) and the younger Ju Jian (Chen Feng-Chen), make and paint umbrellas. The elder is content but the younger misses their swordsman days. Their middle brother, Tang Juen Shung (Hung Sing-Chung), shows up and then tries to blackmail Chang Kung Chin for the massacre of a clan. He is taken by the baddies and the search for him draws the two swordsmen out of retirement and they cross the heroine’s path.

feeling no pain

So, what’s going on? The needled swordsmen are referred to as the living dead. The needle administers a poison and the antidote is temporary, giving them just 10 days’ relief. However, it really does seem to set up a full control of the person, they become ashen of face and removal of the needle stops them. One practitioner swapping needles (and administering their form of the antidote) can take control of the swordsman and the more sinful a person is the more effective the poison is in controlling them. There is some confusion in film as to whether they are alive or dead, however.

eating

We actually see one killed through a strike to the throat and left to be found by officials. However the body is then retrieved from the morgue by the baddies – so whether this is covering tracks or to resuscitate him we don’t know. We do see them eating and drinking a meal at one point. At another point the bad guys have the protagonists over a barrel and yet retreat as the cock crows. At first I thought that this was because Kung Suen Mao Neong’s brand of Kung Fu is said to be a form that can be effective only at night, however the heroine intimates that her sister’s swordsmen are dead and would rot if they were exposed to sunlight for four hours.

fighting the "living dead"

It’s quite a hotchpotch. The idea of poisoning and then offering an antidote to take over someone reminded me of Haitian zombies (specifically around the Serpent and the Rainbow type lore). The use of needles (indeed golden needles, as Kung Suen Mao Neong uses) reminded me of what would later be used in Wolf Devil Woman - except the needles were in fetish dolls and froze the corpse, so kind of inverted. The women use coffins as it is traditional in their clan when using Kung Fu to travel in coffins – there is no occult/vampiric reason. The last piece of evidence is the fact that the subtitles I saw actually refer to the swordsmen as vampires, once.

Ivy Ling Po as

All in all, I don’t think we can call this a vampire movie. There are elements reminiscent of western tropes – such as putrefaction in daylight – but though they are said, at one point, to be the living dead they are more like zombies (as in those created and controlled by a voodoo master) than vampires. They don’t do anything particularly vampiric and they are far enough removed from the kyonsi type to really need to be doing something vampiric. Not Vamp but a fine Shaw Brothers film with some really nice cinematography. The imdb page is here.

Director: Cheung-Yan Yuen

Release date: 1993

Contains spoilers

Xiang xi shi wang is a film that centres itself on corpse herding and the term vampire and zombie seems interchangeable in the subtitles. In fact, the corpses are, mostly, well behaved through the film (bar one faux attack and being controlled in battle). It is the herders – or voodoo men as the subtitles call them – who are the misbehaving element in the film.

As such we don’t get any real vampiric action in the film but the kyonsi are front and centre throughout the film.

Zombie King

The film starts with a quick voiceover about corpse herding and the methods used (we see them floated on platters behind a pilotless boat, carried, hopping and flying). Then we see two herders bringing a line of hopping corpses along the road. They don’t notice a pair of cops grab a corpse and pull it into the bushes to search. However Zombie King (the leader of the herders) knows all about this and flies in (by the medium of magic cloak) to admonish the herders.

A group of cops led by Cha try to arrest Zombie King and his herders – the charge being that they use the bodies for unspeakable acts. However the arrest is resisted and a battle ensues. Despite greatly outnumbering the herders, the cops have their asses handed to them, Cha is grievously wounded and orders a retreat. Zombie King, of course, promises revenge for interfering with his business.

Yong and Qin

We see a “couple” on a boat (along with a singing boatman) They are Qin and Yong. Yong acts as though Qin is his girlfriend (even saying so at times) and she acts as though she is oblivious of his feelings. He is a comedy character throughout, prone to histrionics. They have come over from Japan as Qin’s father has died (it is Cha, we quickly discover), though ethnically neither are portrayed as Japanese – rather they are Han Chinese, as the film reiterates and I’ll return to ethnicity shortly. The boat trip is long enough to provide some misadventures – establishing Yong’s comedy status – and to let us know we are in Xiang Xi.

entering the morgue

When they get to the village we have some more misadventures around the morgue and Qin discovers that her father has been taken by corpse herders already, so as to get him to his home village. She decides to follow after but ends up fighting herders and being rescued by Dang (son of the local king). Back to ethnicity and the village is made up of a Miao Clan. Yong thinks of the locals as primitive (and this seems more based on ethnic divides than simple country vs city issues). They are quick to label the pair as Han. However I do not know enough about Chinese ethnic groups to get the nuances (if there are any).

Zombie King addresses the smugglers

Qin is a doctor (it appears, though later it is established that she and Yong are student doctors) and she offers to save the Miao King’s grandson – however when the injection she gives seems to kill the lad (who is dying of pneumonia) the King looks to have them summarily executed. Again Dang rescues them and then they start their quest for Cha’s body in earnest. Their misadventures will, of course, have them return to the village.

acting as a kyonsi

I mentioned a faux attack and one kyonsi has its prayer scroll removed and seems to go on the attack – however it is actually a robber waiter at a tavern acting as a vampire and attacking them. The reason the police are after the herders is because they are opening up their wards’ bodies, removing the intestines and filling them with gold and opium. The corpses are then used to transport the contraband.

Qin finds her father's corpse

The film is ok but I really could have lived without the worst excesses of Yong as a comedy character. Qin was more a cipher than a well-rounded character and that is a shame as she would have made a brilliant female lead had the filmmakers chosen to use her better. There are some plot issues (one around the faux kyonsi, for instance) and the kung fu is passable, even if it is not the best I have seen. All told 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Edited by: Jonathan Maberry

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The blurb: The Vampire Wars are raging. We're all infected. Anyone can turn at any time. Your ally one minute could be at your throat the next. Or you go suddenly crave their blood. V-WARS: SHOCKWAVES chronicles the spread of bloodlust, bloodshed, and violence between the living and the undead.

The review: I am a fan of the V-Wars series; I make no secret of that. If you look at my reviews of the first three volumes (One, two& three). You’ll see that I have heaped praise (and 9 out of 10 reviews) on them.

It saddens me therefore that this volume sees a dip in quality. Now that is not to say it is bad. There are some damn fine stories in here. However, it isn’t entirely consistent. It does have some nice arc moments with the emergence of the Red Empire – a quasi-religious group who worship a messiah figure of the Red Emperor – that being patient zero Michael Fayne, who they believe will return and lead them. We also get a reveal, at the end of the volume, of the identity of the Crimson Queen.

For Mayberry fans there are cameos of Joe Ledger and other characters from the Ledger series. We get a welcome return of the V-Wars character Mooney in a tale and the stories range a little further internationally. We also discover that not all the vampires are as a result of the Ice Virus and that some strains had survived and were around before the virus activated junk DNA.

I was disappointed by the editorial decision to keep most of the shorts as complete pieces (bar Mayberry’s own Wet Works and Red Empire, which are split into the more familiar vignette format). There also seemed, despite containing a multitude of vampire types, less of a "who's who" list going on. One of the stories, Young Bloods by Mike Watts seemed slightly out of place, in that it felt that it was set out of the V-Wars at some point in the future, concentrating (as it does) on a vampire only school that had been around for over a decade. However this is the first volume where I have actually felt a story was not as well written as the rest of the volume. Silver and Lead by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow just felt a little sub-par to me. Now that may be unfair as the quality of prose is so good generally, but it knocked my immersion in the volume.

8 out of 10.

Director: Alberto Sciamma

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

Appearing on Amazon’s VoD circuit this was a vampire film I hadn’t heard of before viewing – so I guess it kind of crept out of leftfield. It was filmed in Italy but is classed as a USA/UK production – however the Italian setting offers an air that is more in line with Euro-horror, even if the plot is essentially a take on Ten Little Indians.

The film also has an absurdist edge to it that works really quite well and adds something to a film that could have languished in mediocrity had that edge not been there. As it is, it plays around with the vampire tropes and leaves you thinking.

ready for retirement

It starts with Roman (Costas Mandylor, Immortally Yours) crawling along a corridor. He reaches for a gun and puts it to his head… Pop goes a Champagne cork and we see Roman, in his prison warden uniform, as his colleagues celebrate his retirement. Sat at home, with their gift of a zippo, he phones an ex-colleague called Boria (Gianni Capaldi). Boria was sacked for having his hand in the till (and likely served time).

Vinnie Jones as Big John

They discuss a scheme (it sounds like it is Roman’s plan) to kidnap and ransom Nika (Elena Mirela), the daughter of a mob boss. Boria has an idea for a crew – all of whom have been through Roman’s prison. There is Big John (Vinnie Jones, the Bleeding), Alec (Drew Kenney), and partners Santa (Denny Mendez) and Zita (Grazia Leone). In the early dawn they raid the house, killing two guards at a tunnel and entering through one of two basements.

about to shoot up

Nika is taking a bath (in a negligée and stockings) and, by the time that the gang get to her she is just about to shoot up some morphine. They bundle her into a body bag and head out – Alec pocketing her drugs and needles. However, as they leave shutters start coming down on the windows and the very tough doors lock. During this Big John tries to hold one of the shutters up but it slams down removing his fingers.

the rest of the gang

Cut to the kitchen and Nika being questioned about the shutters and how to open them. She is not forthcoming, suggesting they will open automatically at sunset. Mainly she asks for her drugs – a plea that Big John echoes as pain relief for his damaged hands. Roman shoots him – Vinnie Jones' part in the film was no more than a minor cameo. Essentially Nika gets loose – mainly to look for her drugs, which are the only thing that keeps her urges at bay. She is, after all, a vampire.

turning

The plot then sees the villains trying to escape as they are picked off. We get surreal moments such as animalistic men in the (very narrow) sewer pipes – presumably victims now living an undead life in the sewers but never venturing beyond those areas (so we see little of them). There are frozen body parts in a walk-in freezer but the most interesting things happen around the vampire tropes. We can assume sunlight is an issue – hence the shutters and we see Nika get shot but survive whereas a turned criminal is shot repeatedly and eventually dies (we also see decapitation stop a turned vampire).

toddlers

When they find a room full of babies and toddlers – with blood bags attached – the thought goes to them being a snack collection. Actually they are Nika’s babies and her 268-year role has been to be a brood mare for these vampire infants – though some are so human they cannot bite. We do, therefore, get a vampire baby biting some of the criminals. She also breeds with one of the blokes but she doesn’t use seduction, she simply forces a Viagra down his throat and waits for the drug to take effect and then rapes him. The gestation period for a vampire baby is incredibly fast, it would seem. When she loses control she ages into a crone and her physical appearance was a tad reminiscent of the Rec movies – the fact that Roman dons armour at one point was also reminiscent of Rec 3 – however this presentation of maiden (their first impression of her being the daughter of the mob boss), mother and crone was interesting in its own right.

Nika in crone mode

The film’s epilogue was deliberately strange but it is the strangeness that lifts the film above the very generic ten Little Indians plot. The past history between Roman and the rest of the gang wasn’t really exploited in any satisfying way. Gianni Capaldi really stole the show as Boria but relative newcomer Drew Kenney gave him a run for his money. The rest of the acting was ok – Jones’ pained character was perhaps overly melodramatic rather than realistic but he is in it so little that you could have blinked and missed it and he wasn’t really given the time to do much more with the character.

It is the strangeness that keeps this afloat and pushes it above average. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Author: Sergei Lukyanenko

Translator: Andrew Bromfield

First published (English): 2016

Contains spoilers

The blurb: The Streets of Moscow aren’t safe. Vampires are attacking innocent people, and the names of the victims are spelling out a message: ANTON GORODETSKY.

Higher Light Magician Anton is one of the Others, possessed of magical powers and able to enter the Twilight, a shadowy world parallel to our own. Each Other must swear allegiance to one side: either the Light, or the Dark.

But who is after Anton and what do they want? Anton’s investigation leads him to a Prophet, an Other with the gift of seeing the future. Her horrifying vision heralds the end of all life at the hands of an ancient threat – unless Anton can reunite a mysterious organisation known only as the Sixth Watch, before it’s too late.

The Review: When I have looked at the previous books of Lukyanenko’s series I have vascilated between reviews and Honourable Mentions, depending on the amount of vampiric activity within the volume (those articles can be found via the following links: Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, the Last Watch& The New Watch). In this (reportedly the last volume in the series) the vampires are front and centre.

Not only do we have the attacks as listed within the blurb, but we get to see the vampire hierarchy and discover their own myths and legends (which may well be true) that suggest that they were the first Others. There is a vampire involved, known as Lilith, who may or may not be the source of the myth. There is also a vampire who, when he removes the illusions that make him look human, is revealed to be Neanderthal. Now, having a Neanderthal vampire is not a new idea but it is rare enough to be mentioned.

As for the book itself. Well as soon as I started reading it was like meeting up with an old friend – I discovered that I had actually missed Anton and that is the power of a good, well written (and translated) character. That Russian feel is still there in spades and the only downside was realising that the reported end of the series is likely to be true given an event in novel.

8.5 out of 10.

Director: William Kaufman

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

This is most definitely a zompire movie. What seems a by the numbers zombie apocalypse film (a genre that part owes its existence to the vampire genre and, specifically, I am Legend) strays into our territory with the idea that the infected (I suspect infected rather than living dead though the film is not explicit) blister and die in sunlight and have an alpha who shows intelligence and decision making.

It’s also a film that has big gaping holes at the centre of its story logic. These struck me after the fact as during the watch it is a by the numbers shoot the running infected and fight to survive.

Mad Max style

So it starts with a car, and in Mad Max style it has metal grating rather than glass – though what protection it would offer as it seems ill fixed and flimsy is questionable. A masked figure, Rourke (Johnny Strong), gets out the car and noses around a gas station. He notices a chest freezer and locks the loose lid down and something inside is not happy. He drags it out by a chain on his car and shoots the lid lock. A girl (Brittany Ingram) tumbles out and cries in agony under the sun before expiring. Rourke drives off – it appears he never bothered checking for gas.

a zompire in the sun

He gets into a town and starts wandering aimlessly around. He goes through a diner and into a building. There are bodies around and eventually some get up, go for him and he shoots them. Apparently sunlight has to be direct and these can be killed by being shot (head shots are not necessary). It is for this reason I wondered whether they were simply infected (though then one has to wonder what they are feeding on most of the time).

it's a trap

A group of cops, with a woman called Sam (Chelsea Edmundson, Bloodsucka Jones), stop their car in the road – Rourke spots them from a rooftop and goes down. There is a woman, Annabel (Farah White, Aaron’s Blood) sat in the road holding a bundle (that looks like a baby but turns out to be a doll). One of the cops, Mike (Craig Cole), approaches her but is shot. She is being used as a lure by marauders who then attack, kill the cops and are about to rape Sam when Rourke comes to the rescue and kills the baddies (bar one left bleeding in the road). Sam gathers the shell-shocked Annabel and persuades Rourke to drive them to their base in Dallas.

a chase of infected

Night is falling as they arrive and they are chased by infected. The base – a police station – send out men to give covering fire and they make it back safely. In the place (a shelter for many survivors, including a lot of kids) he meets their leader (and pre-apocalypse police chief) Frank Hill (Lance Henriksen, Near Dark, Monster Brawl, Vampires: Out for Blood& Blood Shot). Frank doesn’t trust the newcomer and they take his weapons and tell him he’ll be in a cell for the night. In the morning they’ll give him ammo and fuel and he can be on his way. They will also be leaving as Sam has found a plane that can take them all to safety (that being the middle of a dessert). During all this, somewhere, it comes to light that we are three years into the apocalypse.

the alpha

However the alpha creature (Krzysztof Soszynski) who turned up a couple of weeks ago has been sending attack squads at them relentlessly, and also seemed to recognise Rourke as he made it to the shelter. During the night the creatures cut the CCTV and some get in through vents (something they haven’t done in three years). Rourke helps fight them off (having got out of his cell by picking the lock). In the morning they discover that the creatures have blocked the garage doors with vehicles during the night so Rourke, against Frank’s wishes, goes to attack them in their nest (a hotel), and kill the alpha. A group of survivors go with him…

dream of Rourke's wife

The big story fail for me was in the Rourke/alpha relationship. Rourke claims to have killed an alpha before but we also discover this one turned his wife. Rourke killed her and, presumably, has been tracking the creature in his car, who, in turn, has apparently outpaced him (they started in New York). The alpha seems impervious to bullets (but we discover he is wearing bulletproof armour, presumably from his pre-turn army life) and is clearly giving orders by gesture to the other infected. Whether they had a previous alpha is not explored but this one seems to understand CCTV and so we are left with a question over why they didn’t have one for three years or why the previous one never thought of cutting video feeds and using air vents for entrance to the shelter. There also seemed to be an endless supply of infected (at least until the alpha is disposed of) despite the nest in the hotel seeming to have a limited number.

turning

A bite turns and – it is intimated – getting infected blood in the mouth will also do the trick. Turning is pretty darn rapid but not so rapid that it can’t first be used for dramatic effect! The eyes go red/bloodshot around the iris. They do seem to attack to turn (so bite once and then leave the victim to turn and seek out another non-infected) as well as attack to feed. Whether it is blood or flesh they crave is not really explored. For a bunch of creatures living on cellar floors and revelling in blood, their clothing doesn’t seem as bad as one would imagine after three years. They blister in sunlight but die within less than a minute. However we see them running down a street during the day and in light flooded corridors so one imagines it is direct sunlight that’s an issue. The Z word is used at least once, the V word not.

Lance Henriksen as Frank

As I say, by the numbers but the story didn’t hang and elements like the flimsy car defences, what the infected have eaten for three years, why the alpha was different and what caused the plague in the first place are not answered. The acting was limited, though Henriksen was his usual professional self and helps add a touch of class to proceedings. Johnny Strong was probably let down by the script as he himself seemed a stoic lead action hero, as called for, and my questions where more in story motivation than acting chops. Strong provided soundtrack elements also. 4 out of 10 (because 3.5 seemed harsh).

The imdb page is here.

Director: Rodrigo Aragão

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

Now, I know quite often that Chupacabra films are covered under the auspices of ‘Vamp or Not?’ articles but in this case it was so definitely ‘Vamp’ that I decided to just go straight for review. This means I am going to spoil an aspect quite badly but it is necessary as we chronicle developing genre tropes and lore.

A Noite do Chupacabras, to give it the original title, is an independent Brazilian film and is far from perfect – as a piece of cinema – however I’ll say up front that I did kinda like it. Certainly it has an exploitative edge with a nice line in gore – even if the storytelling could have been sharpened up, a lot.

Dog senses the beast

It begins with a dog going nuts at night waking his owner, Pedro Silva (Markus Konká). Pedro leaves the house, carrying lantern and gun, and finds a goat dead, blood at its neck. He releases the dog, which immediately chases off into the jungle. He follows but eventually finds the dog’s body. We see something creeping in the background, given away by its glowing eyes. It is, of course, the chupacabra (Walderrama Dos Santos). As it moves towards Pedro he fires off a shot into the dark.

walking home

At a train station Douglas Silva (Joel Caetano) and his heavily pregnant wife Maria Alícia (Mayra Alarcón) have been waiting for his brother Jorge (Jorgemar de Oliveira) for an hour. They decide to walk towards the family home, following the train tracks. En route Maria Alícia wanders off towards a small cave or hollow, where a photographer is taking pictures of a jaguar that has been killed. Eventually they find Jorge and get to the farm, where mother Clara (Margot Benatti) is disapproving of the new daughter-in-law.

actual goatsucking

His other two brothers, the wheelchair bound Ricardo (Ricardo Araújo) and head injured Alzir (Alzir Vaillant), are butchering a pig to prepare it for lunch – with the intention of selling the rest of the meat. Douglas goes to find his dad, Pedro, who is burying the dog and the goat. He blames “the devil” for the deaths – the rest of the family blame the nearby Carvalho family with whom they have a feud. Ricardo has Alzir take over the burial (and tells his brother to remove the goat from the grave, they’ll sell its meat rather than the pig’s).

Silva family dinner

As the story progresses we discover various things about the family. Douglas, it seems, is a lover not a fighter and was not involved in the fight between the two families (whether he had gone to the city to study medicine at that point is not revealed). The head of the Carvalho clan tried to buy Pedro’s land but the farmer refused. The Carvalho patriarch was killed in the jungle and the clan blamed the Silvas. This led to a shootout where Ricardo was shot, making him a paraplegic, and Alzir was smashed in the head giving him brain damage. To save their lives Pedro gave away much of his land and there has been a truce since.

Pedro hunts the beast

The brothers go to sell the meat to a bar owner (Afonso Abreu), who is suspicious as the meat smells funny but gives them $30 and a bottle of booze. Douglas has gone with them when he discovered that Maria Alícia has brought some sort of drug with her (we later hear that she is an addict). It just so happens that the Carvalho boys also go to the bar, eat the meat and then end up projectile vomiting (so the bite of a chupacabra leaves the meat of the victim spoilt) and then have a bar fight with the Silvas. Meanwhile Pedro tries to lure the beast with a chicken, shoots at it and his gun explodes (something he had been warned about, with his antique firearms), and kills him.

cannibal shaman

The Silvas blame the Carvalhos for the death and go armed to get revenge. The amount of blood left in the wake causes the chupacabra to terrorise both the Silva household and the men who are fighting… And that is where I’d leave the description but there is lore to cover. Firstly, and off chupacabra, Douglas gets himself captured by a cannibal shaman, who eats part of a Carvalho, whilst casting a spell, and then rips away his own skin revealing new skin beneath. This is a case of cannibalism to maintain youth (or not quite as old).

chupacabra

As for the chupacabra, it drinks blood – rather than eats flesh – and with both the goat and humans it seems to go for the neck and suck the blood from there. One might ask why it has suddenly ramped up the number of attacks (because the film needed it to is the obvious answer) but it had been taking a lot of livestock previously and, generously, the amount of blood spilt was also a lure. It is very difficult to kill, being shot numerous times. The flesh of a dead victim is rotten, as mentioned, but should a victim survive… well that is the spoiler I mentioned. The chupacabra is evidently a man transformed and can pass the condition on to another person.

detail of head

Unfortunately, the film could do with some tightening up, story-wise. The cannibal shaman came out of leftfield and vanished just as quickly. There is some evidence that he killed the Carvalho patriarch (due to coins he has) but that is not capitalised on. The acting is not brilliant and not a single character is likeable (bar sister or wife Kika Silva (Kika Oliveira), who comes across as nice and helpful but is a periphery character and probably Pedro, but he is more a dramatic device than a character). Even main “hero” Douglas turns out to be a git. This makes it quite difficult to root for anyone.

turning

All that said, despite its faults I liked this. I could have lived with 15 – 20 minutes shaved off it but, on the other hand, I loved the fact that the monster was a man in a suit, I really liked the setting and there was some nicely done gore at times. It isn’t the greatest film and 4 out of 10 seems fair balancing out the issues and the fact that it was quite good fun.

The imdb page is here.

Although directed by Stephen C. Apostolof this 1965 movie was written by Edward D Wood Jr based on his novel of the same name and featured Criswell (Plan 9 from Outer Space). It often worms its way into vampire filmographies and so I decided to look at it here.

The film, in truth, seems to be little more than a portmanteau wraparound for a series of (rather un-erotic) burlesque dances by half naked girls – apparently the novel has stories instead. However it begins with a coffin being opened and the occupant sitting up. He is the Emperor (Criswell) and he gives us a typically Criswell-esque speech about the “threshold people”, this being a phrase describing all the monsters/undead. Later he refers to them as Night People also.

post car crash

Bob (William Bates) and his gal Shirley (Pat Barrington) are driving at night looking for a graveyard as Bob is a horror writer and is searching for inspiration. Shirley is a nag and she is doing just this as he speeds up looking for a place to do a u-turn and crashes. They awake nowhere near the car but awfully near the graveyard where the Emperor is.

Black Ghoul and the Emperor

The Emperor is judging the dead (or the female dead, at least). This is based on whether their dances entertain him. With him is his princess of the night, Black Ghoul (Fawn Silver). The Mummy (Louis Ojena) and the Wolfman (John Andrews, Horror of the Blood Monsters) capture Bob and Shirley and tie them up, forcing them to watch the entertainment whilst Black Ghoul pleads to be given Shirley and the Emperor decides their fates.

a famous cloak

So, vampire? Well if there is one it would be the Emperor or Black Ghoul. Black Ghoul certainly looks vampish – and this is unsurprising as the role was written with Vampira in mind. However, she does nothing vampiric – almost. Criswell wears a cape and does walk with his cloak over his face, reminiscent of Tom Mason pretending to be Lugosi in Plan 9. According to IMDb trivia the cloak he wears is the same that Lugosi wore as Dracula in Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein. I said almost nothing re Black Ghoul's vampiric activity and, as sunlight hits the cemetery, she does turn into a skeleton as does the Emperor... but so do the wolfman and mummy. Indeed, all Night People do, or so the reformed Emperor informs us, whilst sat in his coffin, and then they reappear on the night of the next full moon.

captured

So, barely a plot, wooden acting, un-erotic burlesque and Criswell hamming it up. The best I can say for this is that the colour palette of the photography looked nice. But is it Vamp? No. Let’s be honest, she is referred to as a ghoul (and yes there is a lot of ghoul and vampire crossover) and looks a complete Vamp and he is wearing Bela’s cloak, but that does not make someone a vampire. The turning to skeleton in daylight impacts all the creatures and so loses its vampire exclusivity. It just shouldn’t be on the vampire filmographies unless looking a bit like a vampire gets you on.

The imdb page is here.

The High Cost of Dying is a 2015 film directed by Rodney V. Smith and based on a character from his prose series So You Might Be a Vampire.

It follows the character Beatrice (Sara Cecile) who tells us that she has been out of the world for ten years. She wears a medical gauze over one eye, is followed by a man in black (Joe Cheng) who is likely in her own mind and is giving presents to those who know her, before moving on, but she actually doesn’t know any of the people. She asks a waitress, Clarice (Nikki Barran), for her usual but the waitress has never seen her before. When she says this, Beatrice suggests that the waitress just pretend as she really needs a friend.

blood stains

Leaving would appear to be suicide and this is clarified when she meets the sinister Mr Flynn (Simon Fletcher Li) who welcomes her back and suggests he will have her killed. When she mentions killing herself at dawn he allows her the night. In their conversation she mentions the strain that progress is having on her – the move of things like carriages to the automobile a moment of stress in her life. So will she kill herself or will Flynn do it for her?

You’ll have to watch and see. The character was interesting. In 11 minutes there is little room to build a character but Smith does very well in the time he has to play with. The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Black Tavern

The Tomb – review

Vamp or Not? Mill of the Stone Women

Short Film Bloodtraffick

Vamp or Not? Prey

Brief Hiatus

The Forbidden Girl – review

Dolly Biters!: The Vampire Girls of Victorian London – review

Vampyres (2015) – review

Blood of the Dragon: The Journals of Vlad Draculya the Impaler – review

The Blood Let – review

Vamp or Not? Finger of Doom

Kung Fu Vampire – review

V-Wars: Shockwaves

Blood Trap – review

The Sixth Watch – review

Daylight’s End – review

The Night of the Chupacabras – review

Vamp or Not? Orgy of the Dead

Short Film: the High Cost of Dying