Taliesin meets the vampires

Some time ago my brother suggested that he would like to see me look at the 2016 Nicolas Winding Refn film about the fashion industry on TMtV and whilst the surreal and horrific exploration might seem, on the surface, to be little more than the run up through jealousy to murder, perhaps taking its cue from gaillo, if you dig beneath the surface you discover aspects that could correspond to witchcraft and/or vampirism – especially of the Báthory variety.

This, in and of itself, is interesting due to an exchange in the film when haute couture designer Sarno (Alessandro Nivola) says to amateur photographer Dean (Karl Glusman) “So are you gonna tell me that it's what's inside that counts?” When Dean affirms this Sarno is dismissive and, for him, all is surface. The film, later, does play further with this (as we’ll see), but it is worth noting that the film is stunningly beautiful in its composition and yet, as I have mentioned in conversation, it felt soulless. The response I received was that it is meant to feel that way – again reflecting a perception of the industry it exposes.

Because we are looking at tropes, be warned no spoiler is too big.

shoot

After credits with neon lighting in rotation that reminds one of gaillo, we start with a girl, draped on a sofa, her throat apparently cut and bleeding. The girl is Jesse (Elle Fanning) and the composition is vaguely Báthory-esque, the furniture almost looking like a bath in its composition, however the scene is as fake as the blood. She is new in town – a small town girl (her parents apparently dead) moved to LA to be a model. She is being shot by Dean. After the shoot she is cleaning up and makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone) compliments her on her skin and then invites her to a party.

Sarah and Gigi

At the party she is introduced to established models Gigi (Bella Heathcote, Dark Shadows) and Sarah (Abbey Lee) – I’ll refer to the two, with Ruby, as the trio. In an almost throwaway moment she is seen from a distance by Jack (Desmond Harrington), a sought-after photographer – we’ll return to him shortly. In the toilets it becomes apparent that the two models are catty but in a moment of foreshadowing, whilst discussing lipstick, Ruby suggests that all lipsticks are named after food or sex as a selling point and asks Jesse what she is, food or sex. When asked about her sexual proclivity Jesse lies and suggests she is very heterosexually sexually active. We soon discover she is just 16 (she signs a parental consent form herself and is told to say she is 19).

the puma

After an encounter with a mountain lion that gets into her motel room – a moment of surreality that speaks more to the metaphorical in the first instance, but also sets up for narrative moments exploring her own selfishness with Dean (who she had been out with immediately before), and might also be deemed a summoned (by the trio) familiar – she goes on her first signed shoot. The shoot is with Jack and he calls for a closed set, just him and Jesse, making her disrobe. What the viewer first assumes to be sleazy becomes the opposite as he covers her with gold body paint, almost worshipping her. In a scene with the trio, Ruby (who was on set before it was closed) tells the others about this and we hear that Jack never does test shoots with models. He has clearly seen something special, right across the room, and this brings the Fritz Lieber story The Girl with the Hungry Eyes to mind (iro the link, scroll below the film review for the article on Lieber's short story).

drinking blood

Jesse goes to audition for Sarno’s catwalk show and he too spots her ineffable something and Sarah is displaced from the show for her. Sarah smashes a mirror in a bathroom and Jesse goes to her – the model, who perhaps is becoming too old (though still very young), states that she is becoming a ghost. Jesse accidentally presses her hand on a piece of broken glass and Sarah grabs at it, sucking at the blood until the girl pulls away. Sarah looks up at her, blood at her mouth, and the imagery is pure genre. It is Dean who removes the glass and bandages her hand (though it probably required stitches). After the bandaging we never see the wound again, as though it has healed.

Jesse and Ruby

After (probably a hallucinated) disturbing encounter with her landlord (Keanu Reeves, Dracula (1992)& the Matrix Reloaded) Jesse calls Ruby and goes to the house Ruby is staying in (as a house sitter). The makeup artist comes on to her but Jesse confesses she is a virgin. This is irrelevant to Ruby who tries to sapphically rape her but Jesse pushes her away.

Ruby's fetish

The immediate aftermath of this occurs the next day when Ruby commits necrophilia with a corpse at the mortuary, this is intercut with erotically charged images of Jesse that might be reality or might be Ruby’s fantasy. It has to be noted at this point that vampirism and necrophilia were popularly connected at one point with such activity being conflated by J K Huysmans, who points out that Sergeant Bertrand, the infamous 19th century necrophiliac, was known in the popular press as the Vampire of Montparnasse.

blood bath

When she returns to the house Jesse makes a speech about her own beauty making her dangerous (the film has made it clear that she is descending into narcissism) but recall Ruby’s question about sex and food. Jesse has rejected sex and the trio hunt her through the house and kill her. We see the models covered in gore in the shower as Ruby, gore covered, bathes in blood. But it was not just her blood they took and Jesse has been cannibalised. The next day Ruby lies in Jesse’s shallow grave and reveals occult like symbols tattooed on her torso. At night she does a moon ritual and seems to expel a gush of blood from her privates at the height of it.

vomiting the eye

The models go to a shoot that Gigi has with Jack, Sarah just accompanying. Sarah, when asked if anyone ever stole a job from her, states she ate the person. From a distance Jack sees something in Sarah and fires the second model – indicating that consuming Jesse has taken her je ne sais pas. Can we be sure that they ate her? Gigi suddenly feels sick and, leaving the outdoor shoot, enters the house. She starts heaving until she brings up an eyeball and then cries that she needs to ger *her* out of her and stabs herself with scissors – almost a staking. Sarah picks up the vomited eye and eats it herself.

catwalk

So, plenty of tropes on show from the vampire genre – with cannibalism (but the sort that has a preternatural impact), occultism (and possibly witchcraft), necrophilia and blood bathing. It is not, per se, a vampire film but the strands of the genre it plays with means that it is playing with tropes and is of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Director: Stephen Groo

Release date: 2001

Contains spoilers

“Are we nearly there yet?” Had I been watching this with someone else I may have actually vocalised similar as I don’t think an hour has dragged so much for a very long time. I was checking the time on the movie from early on in (roughly the five-minute mark) and at no point did I immerse into the film enough to actually not be conscious of how slowly time was trickling by.

Of course, when it comes to watching vampire movies I have an iron constitution. I have sat through some utter dross. This was badly acted, badly scripted and badly photographed. More than that it was utterly pointless but what was it about?

gyrating credits goth

After credits with a gyrating Goth-looking vampire we are at a college and a couple of Goths observe a student, Derek (Stephen Groo), they are going to approach him about tonight. Derek goes into the college and chats to friends, goes into class and is bullied by some guy and then leaves the class and is approached by the Goths who invite him to Goth club. His friend is wary, he goes anyway and then goes missing for a few days.

wannabe Spike

When he turns back up, he is now dressed like a Goth (and looking like he is trying to be Spike from Buffy). He beats up the bully, showing prodigious strength, and is then told off by a couple of Goths for showing off his new powers. He takes his female friend off for a chat, reveals he is now a vampire and… well suffice it to say that he turns on Goth club, and he and his friends go and kill all the vampires. We’re only a third way in… “Are we nearly there yet?”

bitey

He is a “New Breed”, which means he has none of the normal vampire weaknesses bar being staked. He turns his friends and they all turn into Goths (apparently that’s a thing when you are turned into a vampire, you can’t dress “normal” and have to dress Goth). We get a montage where there is lots of fighting and his friends are mostly killed and then a new set of Goths turn up. We discover vampires are naturally polyglots and then Derek is staked (we are still not finished though).

long black wig

The stake is removed and he comes back to life – instantly sporting an unfetching long black wig (a side effect of stake removal, apparently) and now evil…. “Are we nearly there yet?” Yes, thankfully we are nearly finished and it took all of my iron constitution not to switch this off. I always try not be positive but this had no redeeming features. Badly filmed, awful direction, not one moment of good acting, no real plot, crap lore. I really wanted to find a positive to offer you but I can’t. Not even its short running time helps, because it feels like hours. It’s down there with the worst. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

“What in Sam Hill do you think you’re doing at this here vampire genre blog?” I can almost hear you say it, but just bear with me here. This film clearly needs no introduction. Dating back to 1974 and directed by Tobe Hooper, it introduced one of the modern horror icons in the character of Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen, Apocalypse & the Beauty Queen) but this does play with a vampiric trope and mentions vampires as well.

That shouldn’t surprise us too much as Tobe Hooper would go on to direct Salem’s Lot and Lifeforce. For those who haven’t seen the film; after a narrated (John Larroquette, the Librarians and the Eternal Question) intertitle, talking of the events we are about to watch, we discover that a cemetery in Texas as been desecrated, corpses disinterred and a bizarre totem created out of some of the remains.

totem of the dead

It is to the cemetery that Sally (Marilyn Burns) and her wheelchair bound brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) are heading with a group of their friends. After the cemetery (their grandfather’s grave is intact) they continue and I want to look at Hooper’s original script for a moment. In it there is commentary by Jerry (Allen Danziger) that “Your grandfather’s a vampire” and then “He’s the king vampire. He doesn’t have to do anything. The other vampires bring him blood.” This is in response to the grave being intact and was cut out of the film. At this point they pass a slaughterhouse and have to wind the windows up.

we picked up Dracula

They then pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) and Franklin says “I think we picked up Dracula” and when the hitchhiker says that his brother and grandfather (John Dugan) worked at the slaughterhouse Franklin adds “a whole family of Draculas”. Now this is interesting as an example of Dracula becoming a collective noun for a type of vampire and, of course, it is a passing mention. As the hitchhiker is part of the family of cannibals the kids are going to run into, it is also a foreshadowing that ties the family and vampires together. Interestingly, as their property is the neighbouring one to Sally and Franklin’s grandfather’s abandoned house the cut part of the script would seem to tie the two families together.

Sally at dinner

Cutting forward, however, and Sally is being pursued by Leatherface and runs upstairs into a room where the Grandfather and Grandmother (presumably) are. They both look to be corpses and I thought as much when I first saw the film. The script says he is “a tiny, very old and shrivelled man. He is motionless, his eyes shut. He is so small that his legs dangle above the floor like a childs (sic) though his are slack and lifeless.” The script, after Sally begs for help, goes on to say “he is like the dead”. So, later, when Sally is captured and they are to have dinner and Leatherface and the hitchhiker carry grandpa down it seems, on first viewing, that they are bringing a corpse to the dinner table.

Grandfather suckles

However, he is not dead. They cut Sally’s finger and put it into the man’s mouth and he suckles the blood – almost as though the blood revives him. The script tells us, “Leatherface must open the slack tooth-less mouth himself and insert the finger. Once the finger is in his mouth the grandfather begins to suckle like an infant his arms and legs suddenly have life and begin to squirm. He buts Sallys (sic) finger with his hands as if it were a reluctant breast.” There very much is a life through blood aspect here, with the old man looking (and for all intents and purpose being) dead until he drinks blood, the mention of a breast makes this definitely a feeding. This is the primary vampire trope the film plays with.

a horror icon

So, there you have it. A vampiric trope (and mention of vampires) in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre as well as a further mention in script that was cut from the final film. I’ll also mention that we see a dead armadillo at the beginning of the film, on the highway. The armadillo, of course, became associated with vampires when Tod Browning added the wee critter into Dracula, probably not a connection here but worth observing. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Author: Chris Hepler

First Published: 2018

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: IT'S A GENERATION FROM NOW
AND JUSTICE MAY BE DEAD

THE PLAINTIFF
In a future America still recognizable as our own, the outbreak of a vampire virus becomes front-page news. An infected trial lawyer named Morgan Lorenz sues the corporation that tried to conceal the existence of the virus, claiming medical negligence on a massive scale.

THE DEFENDANT
Facing potential bankruptcy, the Benjamin Rush Health Initiative files a unique motion. They say Lorenz cannot sue, because he's no longer human. For him, and all vampires like him, the Constitution simply doesn't apply.

THE COMPLICATION
Infinity DeStard and her "Forced Protection" team are assigned to kill Lorenz before the case reaches the Supreme Court. It's hard to fake enthusiasm ever since her own infection, but she has no choice. If she breathes a word about her condition, her team will execute her.
In the face of injustice, how long can she lie to them... and herself?

The review: Set in the near future this is the sci-fi vampire in full flow. It is a world where science has uncovered some of the secrets of Qi, life energy, and has developed technology that allows it to be used and manipulated – introducing a kind of magic into the world.

Four years earlier than our narrative, a researcher at BRHI labs had been bombarding a virus with qi energy when there was an accident and the qi positive virus, which was a bat borne rabies, infected her. The virus modified the host, causing increased strength, rapid healing, heightened senses (and a sensitivity to light) and an addiction. It is not exactly the blood that the infected person craves but human qi as released from the blood – and that can only be extracted at the point of injury (so feeding must occur against a wound and not from collected blood). The virus can be spread through saliva and blood on an open wound.

Hepler explores this world through the viewpoints of several characters but primarily through Infinity, a vampire hunter for BRHI (known as F-prots – or forced protection). These are black ops agents who are trying to contain the outbreak before it becomes public. Infinity, at the start of the novel, has been infected herself. The other main character is Ranath – another F-prot but this time a qi operative. However we do jump through other characters – some of the voices of the little used characters can be a little similar but the prime two have strong, individual voices that work well.

When the virus, EBL-4, becomes public, along with the existence of those with VIHPS (Virally Induced Hematophagic Predation Syndrome), it is through the actions of Lorenz – an infected lawyer who looks to sue and this pushes the novel into an interesting legal direction, which nicely juxtaposes against the action sequences.

The novel keeps a good pace, shifting gears upwards as needed but never losing the overall considered momentum, it presents an unusual virus-based vampire type that is neatly realised and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Director: Ronnie Khalil

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

Tying Shakespeare (and his works) into the vampire genre isn’t unheard of and director Ronnie Khalil looks to do just that with this vehicle set in Greece (Santori to be precise).

What we end up with is a queered take on Romeo and Juliet (more a sequel than anything else) and this should not surprise us as the vampire is a strong vehicle for queering a story. We end up with an interesting idea, with some nice lighting/brightness work but perhaps not delivered with as much aplomb as it might have been.

Ella Kweku as Juliet

Intertitles tell us about plague ravaging Europe in 1303 and a coven of Greek vampires taking refuge in Verona and finding the bodies of a pair of young lovers in the crypts. An observation here would be that using the Greek vrykolakas would have been nice – though there is one interesting piece of unusual lore mentioned, if not capitalised on. The bodies of the young lovers were, of course, Romeo and Juliet (Ella Kweku). Juliet was injured but not yet dead, a vampire known as Father (George Kavgalakis) turned her.

George Kopsidas as Amaltheo

800 years later and Juliet’s voice over tells us that she has been in love twice, the second time occurring three days before and leading, like the first time, to tragedy. Juliet spends each sunset reading Shakespeare’s play and taking the same poison that Romeo took (prepared by her servant Amaltheo (George Kopsidas)). She is unaware of what happened to Romeo’s body and has not fully transitioned to vampire – a state of being that is never fulfilling explained in the narrative, though the viewer can extrapolate that transitioning relies on killing prey rather than simply drinking from them. She is used to the poison and it causes seizures – later we’ll discover that poison can kill a vampire, again this is somewhat unsatisfactory in a narrative sense.

Paige Emerson as Farryn

Farryn (Paige Emerson) is holidaying in Greece, though her father believes she is in San Francisco. We get a memory of her mother (Devin Mills) dying in hospital of cancer. In a café she spots Juliet alone. A Lothario tries it on with the aloof and dismissive Juliet (who crushes his privates during the exchange). The girls make eye contact and the photography’s brightness increases telegraphing their immediate emotional connection. Juliet vanishes off. She is followed, so she grabs the young boy trailing her, who has a message from Father – literally carved into him – and carries Romeo’s ring. The suggestion is that Father has his body and the price for her to have it, on offer for three days, is her fully turning.

vomit blood

Farryn comes across a drunk Juliet who is stood on the edge of a cliff. Despite Juliet being positively rude, Farryn helps her home. Juliet runs to the toilet and vomits blood, causing Farryn to panic but Amaltheo takes over and Farryn leaves, forgetting her camera. She returns for it but Juliet has fed on Amaltheo by that point and seems much better. She convinces Farryn it was red wine she brought up but asks her to leave. However the next day their paths cross and a relationship develops. Farryn discovers the truth of Juliet’s nature when Juliet’s cousin (Ioannis Papazisis) threatens to feed on her and they bear fangs at each other.

Juliet's cousin

Rather than being overtly freaked out, Farryn quickly asks to be turned – this might seem an odd reaction but the narrative eventually gives us a reason why this would be the case. Juliet actually begins to consider it, causing a jealousy to develop with Amaltheo, and the two girls fall in love. We discover that a vampire can be destroyed via decapitation, fire and drinking dead blood – and the blood can be essentially dead even if the individual is not dead yet but is dying (of a disease, for instance). Later, as mentioned, we also discover that they can be poisoned but that made little general sense. Vampire’s lose the ability to see colour – which was the unusual lore but little capitalised on, simply used to have Farryn describe the colour of sunsets/rises. Juliet can stand the sun – but that might be a not fully turned thing. Fully turning allegedly kills emotion.

Juliet and Father

The queering worked as a concept and making Juliet’s ethnicity different to that which would be stereotypically expected was a great choice. I also loved how the brightness increased (and at certain times dulled), especially as a telegraphing of emotion. However, I felt the performances lacking. I didn’t particularly feel a chemistry between the leads – though the fact that Ella Kweku supplied Juliet with an aloofness might have caused that. I felt the delivery was a little stilted, whether this was due to the actors or a symptom of the dialogue I wasn’t certain.

shedding a tear

As for Juliet being a real person and yet a subject of Shakespeare’s writing – Juliet confesses that she told Shakespeare her story and he immortalised it – ignoring the actual history that Shakespeare took the story from Arthur Brooke's poem Romeus and Juliet (1562), which in turn came from an Italian novel (or a French reworking thereof). However such detail would have been confusing and the shorthand of Shakespeare was more efficient.

after drinking dead blood

I wanted to like this and I did, but not as much as I thought I would and that was really down to dialogue/performance as much as anything. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t terrible but could have been better. The vampirism could have been more explicit, visually things could have been done with the colourless vision and certainly there were threads with the jealous servant and sinister family that could have been expanded upon. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Director: Grant Austin Waldman

Release date: 2001

Contains spoilers

The streaming video industry has pluses and minuses due to its insatiable need to promote new content. On a plus side it will plumb the depths of various film industries, offering us rarities. On the other hand, it will purchase any old tosh to satisfy its need for content. In this case it really has plumbed some depths.

Staring scream queen Brinke Stevens, the only thing it really does right is look so atrocious that the poor effects get lost in bad photography.

funeral

That poor photography hits you as the credits explore a graveyard. Black and white photography in a graveyard should have been an easy ask, a moment where, despite budget, the film looked to have a little class (and probably a little cliché, but nevertheless). It looked simply dreadful with washed out photography. The film continues in black and white at the (night time) funeral of Mary McPherson who was killed with violence apparently – but not as much violence as the scriptwriter applied to the dialogue, leaving it battered and bruised. At the funeral are Victoria (Brinke Stevens) and Jacob (Bill Rodd), the latter promising that they will find Mary's assailant. Incidentally neither actor looks like the 16-year-old that it is later intimated they are.

attack

Victoria asks for a moment alone at the grave, as the mourners leave, and Jacob returns to the carriage. Behind her is a man with an eyepatch – the family doctor, Dr Ayres (Joe Schofield), who she greets before screaming as he attacks her (yup, he’s a vampire). Later Dr Ayres tends to the injured and insensible Victoria at home – telling Jacob not to mind the contusions on her neck. He finishes her off (and someone sees as they peak through the window). The next day the priest – in a monumentally poor performance – tells Jacob that the locals believe she has been attacked by a vampire and want to cremate her. Jacob takes her to a family tomb, with her favourite jewellery, breaks his cane in half and stakes her.

into the crypt

Into colour and we are present day and Max (also Bill Rodd) and Carl (Matt Oppy) are DJs (and not the cool kind). Their girlfriends, Julie (Laurie Reeves) and Tonya (Andrea Emmes) respectively, are worried about their gambling and have reason to be as the lads are in some amount of debt. However, they should have been more worried that the director used close up shots of them and yet still failed to compose his shots in a competent way... Be that as it may, Max has a way out. He cleared out a family attic and discovered Jacob’s diary (Jacob being his great Grandfather – no mention is made of the new wife he must have had post Victoria). He knows that the family crypt has her jewels and – after being threatened with violence and losing another bet – they go and raid it. Now, given the corpse is still fresh from the 19th century – warm even – and the journal suggests that the cane and a family crucifix are keeping her from raising as a vampire… yup they take cane and crucifix as well as the bag of jewellery.

handy

Victoria rises from the grave, eats the first person she comes across and then finds Ayres – who lives in an (apparently) abandoned amusement park haunted castle type edifice. In there he tortures humans with his mad scientist sidekick (nothing comes of that thread) and was about to get someone to remove the stake (he’s taken his sweet time) when Max did the business. Why did he wait? Apparently, a vampire cannot resuscitate another vampire – no one knows why! Max, meanwhile, has a psychic link with Victoria and sees her attacks in his dreams and she, on the other hand, has decided that he is Jacob…

Brinke Stevens as Victoria

Phew… after all that it plods to its less than thrilling conclusion and I could barely contain my boredom. There is no reason to like the characters in this sub-Dark Shadows plot line (Mac and Carl being like Willie Loomis, with the ancestor vampire being gender swapped). They are glib about the happenings, and the girlfriends are both glib about it when told and unconcerned with where the boys’ sudden windfall came from. Cinematography is bad, scripting worst and even a seasoned trooper like Stevens can’t make the story come alive. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Author: Mike Shepherd

First Published: 2018

The Blurb: Gripped by the demon of inspiration, he entered into the mind of the infamous Count Dracula…

The year: 1895. The place: a remote Scottish fishing village. Bram Stoker is feverishly penning his cadaverous tale of vampire horror as his family look on aghast.

Everything was conspiring to produce those words of gore... everything. What were the supernatural influences he found in the village? Who was the mystic poet who dominated his restless thoughts? Why was the pagan world trying to communicate with him?

Family memories, maps, photographs and newly-opened archives provide the untold story of how Dracula came to be written. Long untold and now never to be forgotten, this is the tale of a book that shocked the world, a book that would make the brave shudder…

The review: Over the years there has been a faction, if I can call it that, which suggests that Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire was the inspiration for Castle Dracula and/or the direct inspiration for the novel. What Mike Shepherd, a resident of Cruden Bay, has done is take that concept and – through a variety of evidences looked into the truth of this.

It is well established that certain sections, or perhaps even the majority, of Dracula was written when Bram Stoker took his month-long holidays in Cruden Bay. The fact that he wrote two other novels set specifically in the area shows his love for the place. We also know that he had made plans for a vampire novel, which became Dracula, before ever visiting the village. Indeed, Shepherd's even-handed approach to this is revealed when he states “It’s part of local myth that the sight of Slains Castle inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. This is incorrect…” and goes on to explain the motif of the castle in pre-Cruden Bay notes. However, I think it is fair to say that its presence above the village will have influenced (consciously or subconsciously) and Shepherd reveals that Slains had (and the ruins still contain) an octagonal room – a feature specifically mentioned in the novel and that Stoker had visited the castle as a guest.

In truth, the uncovered information this volume contains about Dracula specifically (such as the octagonal room) could have been the subject of a journal paper. The book is expanded further as the author explores Stoker’s relationship with the location and draws in subjects such as his long love of the poetry of Walt Whitman. The book is then more about Stoker – man and author – than Dracula, his famous opus. This volume is expanded further still with details of the local area; historical, sociological and mythological, which I have to say were fascinating in their own right. Shepherd does offer much in the way of supposition, about the book and the man – but that is fine, as he is clear that it is supposition and is not possibility passed off as hard fact.

The writing style is chatty, enthusiastic and clearly filled with a passion for both the author he examines and the location. One piece of clarification, if I may, when addressing the novel Lady of the Shroud the author suggests “She appears to be a ghost”, but she was actually posing as a vampire. Given that this touches on the legendary creature of Stoker’s famous novel I felt it was a missed moment of connectivity – but very, very minor in the grand scheme. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Director: István Várady

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

That Black Violet would appear, according to IMDb, to be István Várady’s directorial debut makes it an astounding effort – not perfect certainly but astounding nonetheless. A black and white, certainly arthouse effort that, either deliberately or accidentally, seems to summon the spirit and mythology of Jean Rollin - whilst offering enough of an intertextual genre basis to shorthand aspects of the vampirism in the story.

The film steps slightly out of linear storytelling by splitting the story into chapters and placing chapter 4 ahead of the other chapters. More could have been done with this – in terms of non-linear construction – especially as there is an aspect within the film’s internal mythology that steps out of time. Before the chapters, however, we get a prologue.

on the beach

We see a couple on a beach. They are Zelda (Kayli Tran), who narrates the section, and her dream-man (Jimmy Flint-Smith). We discover that this was a regular dream the young woman had, of being with a man, of being inseparable, of being safe and, yet, at the end the dream would fade and vanish. I do not think it was deliberate, and it might have been something to do with how the Californian sun impacted the quality of lighting on a black and white shoot, but my mind was drawn during the scene to Track of the Vampire {aka Blood Bath} - note this is not a quality comment.

sugar skull

From that scene we head into Chapter 4, subtitled the Devil. Jennifer (Megan Desboro) and Carmen (Val Vega) are sat out in the desert as Jennifer makes Carmen up in the style of a sugar skull. Carmen wants revenge over her little brother for melting a limited set of Homies figures she owned. They see a man, Pepin (Scott Vance), staggering around holding a rock. They approach him and he asks about Córdoba but they say they are in California. Jennifer decides they should take the obviously confused man with them. There is a house nearby that she has access to whilst the owner is in jail.

attack

As they walk, Pepin complains of thirst and they give him water. He bites into the plastic bottle rather than remove the lid and he quickly vomits the water back up. He tells the two that he wishes to give them something for their service and offers them dog teeth, the only thing he has on him, they refuse and he is further confused – swearing that he knows a village where he could trade such teeth for a suckling pig. They get to the house but it's locked and Jennifer has to break in, leaving Carmen with Pepin who is asking about the war against the Moors. She breaks in but when she steps out of the house again she stops in shocked horror and the camera turns to show us Pepin feeding on Carmen. Jennifer’s screams end when Pepin breaks her neck.

Danielle Henderson as Kennedy

We get moments of a train system and Kennedy (Danielle Henderson) who appears to be a cleaner for the train company. Later we see she lives in a nicely furnished apartment, the only resident in the block. The intertitle for Chapter 1 is the Hermit and Kennedy is said hermit. It is unlikely that she needs to work and she keeps herself to herself – watched over by Altmann (Iván Kamarás, Dracula (2013 series)). They are both vampires turned by Pepin. Kennedy is not consuming blood and does a ritual to stave off the hunger – the Killing Hunger as Altmann describes it.

the Horned God

The ritual sees Kennedy consuming a concoction and passing out, coming round upon a beach. On the beach is the Horned God (played by both Ashley Watkins and Calliope Tsoukalas) who is served by two hooded Spanish priests (Jose Garcia and Béla Lugosi – at least according to IMDb). As things develop we discover that this is a dimension out of time and space. It was this aspect that reminded me so much of the works of Rollin, who used the beach as a motif. In Rollin's the Nude Vampire the other-dimensional home of the vampires is displayed as a beach.

coughing up bullets

Later in the film we discover that vampires are not necessarily magic or miraculous and so cannot heal from damage. However an injured Kennedy, who has been beaten and shot, manages to get herself to the beach and is healed by the horned God. When she awakens, she coughs up the bullets. It is also a place where Pepin, who has awoken early from his deep sleep, can be taken to heal his psyche – an early awakening can cause psychosis and amnesia. The Horned God is intimately connected with turning someone into a vampire. Vampires are long-lived – Pepin is 3000-years old, need blood but do reflect and can go into the sun. Kennedy’s lack of windows in her apartment is about feeling secure and not due to the sun.

Kennedy and Zelda

Story wise, Kennedy takes Zelda under her wing. Zelda is being forced to work for a crime family (as a hostess) a hostage from another family. They quickly become lovers, and Kennedy shares the truth of her nature with the mortal girl. There is also the question of Pepin, of who awoke him and why. The film does fit neatly together by its conclusion but, in some respects, could occasionally have done with more narrative explicit moments. The IMDb page description suggests the film “intimately explores the idea of growing beyond violence” – however the end of the film would seem to be more creation through negativity (and a violent outburst).

Scott Vance as Pepin

The film is very well constructed. The black and white photography is beautifully rendered and the direction competent with moments of excellence. The soundtrack works well but it is the performances that probably make this more than anything else; Danielle Henderson carries the lead well, ably supported by Kayli Tran but it is Scott Vance who steals the show as Pepin – with a fantastic performance. The film is pretty darn arthouse, will resonate well with Rollin fans and deserves 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Controversial art/horror film Tenemos la carne (which is actually 'we have the meat') was a 2016 Mexican film directed by Emiliano Rocha Minter and I feel slightly disingenuous running this as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ as it kind of isn’t – despite part of El Topo’s negative deconstruction of the film having a section entitled “Fin – we’re all rape vampires in the real world” and asking “so they’re vampires now, question mark.” Yet it certainly is a film that plays with vampire tropes. It reminded me, in part at least, of A Nocturne: Night of the vampire though that was tonally more than anything and A Nocturne has much more narrative.

Now I will also say that I don’t share El Topo’s dislike for the film but I can certainly see why it was disliked. This is non-narrative with an inner desire to shock when perhaps shock became overused. However I was mesmerised by the film and, in particular, blown away by primary actor Noé Hernández’s expressive performance as Mariano.

Noé Hernández as Mariano

So we start with him, specifically him building a still essentially. He uses bread pulped in water, as the primary fermenting ingredient to make (as he states) gas – but clearly hooch. Now I have seen suggestion that the film is post-apocalyptic and I understand why one would feel that way. He seems to be alone in a building until siblings Fauna (María Evoli) and Lucio (Diego Gamaliel) enter his world. They say that they have wandered through the city and there is nowhere to go. Later still we get others in the place, and notice that the bread he uses appears fresh and he trades the moonshine for trays of eggs through a pulley system in a wall. My feeling was this was more a rendition of a purgatory or Hell – but even that steps aside from the ending.

siblings

As it is the two siblings are coerced to work with him and they construct a cave like surrounding in the building. Building a frame and then papering it – but it does appear to be a cave once complete and also the womb. He encourages the siblings to have incestuous sex and masturbates over the scene – dying at the point of orgasm. So, we have a theme of incest, which is a theme that ties into the vampire genre, and then la petite mort leading to his actual death. The incest aspect ties in as a cause of vampirism – the act sometimes said to lead the perpetrator(s) to become vampires after their death.

the constructed cave

Vampirism is often seen to be an analogy for sex (and deviant sex at that) hence incest being a cause. Certainly there was also a connection between necrophilia and vampirism with historic figures such as Sergeant François Bertrand called vampires (in Bertrand’s case he was dubbed the Vampire of Montparnasse) due to their necrophilia. As this film lurches through deviance and excess it should come as no shock that Fauna eventually has necrophilic sex with the corpse of Mariano. However the act causes the corpse to vanish and then be reborn within the womb like cave.

feeding Lucio

Fauna is the most dominant of the characters. She not only (at Mariano’s urging) instigates the incest and becomes insatiable, she also feeds her brother her menstrual blood, rapes a woman (when more people are found for the rooms/cave) in a sapphic attack and beats the reborn Mariano because she feared he had left them and wouldn’t return. She is with Mariano as her brother lies injured and they have a soldier held captive – Lucio stabilised by Mariano putting his mysterious drug, which we have seen him occasionally use, in the wound.

feeding blood

As they hold the soldier Mariano assures him that they will not kill him for the various reasons that someone might kill. Rather they will kill him simply for his blood and his flesh and “all the exquisite substances inside you”. They slit his throat and bleed him. The film cuts to the pair looking at each other, blood on their mouths as they flap – it is almost as though they have transformed into birds (through their movements). Then they feed the blood to Lucio to revive him and, so, we have blood drinking and an apparent transformation, though I would say it is more shamanic than anything else. Mariano uses the flesh within the still as he previously used bread – making a communion connection as well as the vampiric trope. (Later Mariano will declare that those in an orgy should drink his blood, “as warm as Holy Mary’s c*nt”, underlying the religious subversion occurring in the film as well and strengthening the idea that this might be some form of Hell).

the scream

So, there is blood drinking (with transformative and restorative applications) and sexual practices that (through the genre’s development/journey) have been tied into the figure of the vampire – be that aggressive lesbianism, necrophilia or incest. This isn’t necessarily a vampire film but it certainly uses the tropes (and I’d like to think that the multi-layered film uses them knowingly). This is not for the faint-hearted, there are hardcore sexual aspects with a desire to shock, no narrative as such, ambiguousness aplenty and some gore. However if you appreciate that in a film and want to see a stupendously animated performance this might just be something you want to see. Ultimately I’d say it is of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

From 2016 and directed by Brian Patrick Butler this is an 8-minute short film that takes some inspiration from the expressionist films of yore and we see this as it opens in the stylised intertitles and the establishing picture of a building in the expressionist style. The fact that the film lists out “the players” at the head also makes us think of a earlier age of cinema.

A dinner party has been organised for four strangers – though the (bug eating) chef Bryce (Brian Patrick Butler) has fouled up the dinner and they have brought chicken takeout. The guests are there for different reasons one (Morgan K. Reynolds) thinks it is a casting call, another (Dakota Ringer) is there to buy weed and another (Raye Richards) to buy sold out concert tickets. The fourth (Connor Sullivan) is carrying a wooden stake…

fangs-a-go-go

Just as well as their host, Nikolai (Luke Anthony Pensabene), happens to grow a pair of front placed fangs and does not get on with wooden crosses. Who will prevail? Only watching the short will answer that question but it is an amusing effort and the expressionist aspect works really rather nicely – it is all situation, however, with little plot and narrative. Perhaps a tad more style than substance. However sometimes that’s all you need.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Director: Anne Welles

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

This is a kooky little comedy that is inoffensive but perhaps lacked either a little depth or a little offensiveness to give it that bit of an edge. That said it is a genuine little piece with a nice edge of comedy.

That comedy comes from absurdism that remains unexplained through the entire film, the viewer has to just accept that certain things are, go with it and the film contains an internal logic that then works.

Cameron McKendry as Ted

It starts with Ted (Cameron McKendry) heading to work and dropping papers as we hear a conversation between his boss Frank (Kane Hodder) and Frank’s new secretary Bonnie (Tanya Chisholm). This gives a background to the workplace. It is a place that takes discarded skin, renders it (in boilers in the basement, known colloquially as Hell) and turns it into new things – suits, lingerie, purses. It sounds ridiculous because it is part of the thread of absurdism I mentioned. Ted seems to step in some gore on the way in and explains to Frank that he has had an accident and a report will be late.

Akari Endo as Livia

Meanwhile Bonnie has noticed Ted’s skin and asks (as Frank has just mentioned a new worker initiative – "don’t be a zombie") whether Ted is a zombie. This is something he gets accused of often – though he repeatedly states that it is a skin condition (it runs in the family, though his parents adopted him) he picked up during a vacation to the Caribbean. A woman, Livia (Akari Endo), enters the office – thinking the building abandoned and trying to get out of the sun. We notice she has fangs. Ted is emotionally struck by her but she leaves, dropping a card for Dr Lovio (Tami Brockway Joyce) – who treats disorders of the paranormal.

Chad Eric Smith as Wolfgang

Ted attends the therapy in order that he might meet Livia – there is also a real Dr Lovio (Izzy Church), a psychologist, dismissive of her sister’s practice. It is a group therapy and there is Wolfgang (Chad Eric Smith) a werewolf with alopecia, Grendel (Jordan Liddle) a cave troll who became smart and Evie (Christina Nigra) a fairy who got big. Livia has been feeling strange since a holiday in Romania – fangs and strength being mentioned. Whilst there she met a botanist who always went out at night. She denies that she is a vampire.

fangs

So the film follows Ted and Livia getting together, both in denial about what they have become. There is a sub-plot about his kooky family and his Poppy (Timothy Brennen), who is apparently dying and suspicious of Ted’s skin condition – not being overly tolerant of zombies. There is a further sub-plot of a group of co-workers going missing, whilst one co-worker, Mel (Mary Druzba), repeatedly suggests that Ted ate them. This could have stood to be explored more and felt too throwaway. Ted himself often suffers visual hallucinations – of brains, blood etc…

therapy

Its all very gentle and, as mentioned, inoffensive. But it is professionally drawn together and the cast do well with amusing but thin material. The missing co-workers thread might have added character, and more importantly narrative depth, to the production had it been expanded. As could the sub-plot of the gold-digging sorceress with her claws in Poppy, which was dealt with in a rather cursory manner. Both plotlines offered a route to a much more fulfilling film, whilst keeping the “in denial” central plot point fresh. Though it didn’t do this it isn’t as though the film didn’t work. It did, but it could have been much more. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

Director: Patrick Graham

First aired: 2018

Contains spoilers

This is an Indian mini-series, made for Netflix and combines a dystopian future with the supernatural and – if we are going to be honest – a large dollop of the Thing (1982) and does so with a massive amount of style. The horror (and gore) building through the three episodes until it crescendos.

First thing, of course, is I am going to have to tackle the fact that it is based on a version of the Arabian Ghoul before someone comments and says “it’s a ghoul not a vampire”. The fact is the two creatures have been closely linked for quite some time. The ghoul as a creature from Arabic myth entered into Western consciousness as it was mentioned several times in the Arabian Nights, as translated into French by Antoine Galland in the 18th Century. The story of most interest is The History of Sidi Nu’uman, which tells of a man suspicious because his new bride never seems to eat. Long story short he follows her to a cemetery and witnesses her indulging in eating the dead with the other ghouls.

fanged teeth

Cut forward to 1821 and E.T.A. Hoffmann published a story entitled Vampirismus as part of his Die Serapions-Brüder. There is every chance that the story title was added by an editor as the story is essentially a reworking, into a modern Western setting, of The History of Sidi Nu’uman. Jump forward a century and Dudley Wright adds the same story into his reference book Vampires and Vampirism and Summers conflates ghouls and vampires in The vampire, His Kith and Kin (1928). Ghouls were used in the work of HP Lovecraft and his ghoul story Pickman’s Model (1927) was reworked by Neil Gaiman, with a vampiric twist, in his film A Short Film About John Bolton.

the squad

In this case we start with a man cutting into his own flesh so that he can gather his own blood to paint out a glyph, a blood ritual that will summon the ghoul – we’ll come back to this. We are in an India of the near future, a radically different place from now. There is a military clampdown and a rampant (and I daresay popularist) nationalism. We follow a military raid on a terrorist base, looking for terrorist leader Ali Saeed (Mahesh Balraj). A man approaches the squad, saying “they’re all dead”. When they get to where Saeed is there are bodies and he sits there. He whispers something to the squad leader.

Radhika Apte as Nida

Jumping back a month and Nida Rahim (Radhika Apte), a young Muslim woman, is in a car with her father (S.M. Zaheer). He is taking her back to the academy of the National Protection Squad, where she is being trained in interrogation techniques, but he is complaining about raids and the burning of books. He reveals he has books that he has rescued in the car and his lecture notes – he’s been teaching off-syllabus. They reach a checkpoint and he becomes defensive but Nida intervenes to get them past. However, she thinks on his actions and the propaganda she is fed, and reports him – he is sent to a re-education centre but not before she reveals she has done this to him.

torturing Saeed

Nida is pulled out of the academy early and posted to a detention centre (the one her father was sent to). There is a difference of opinion of how to treat her. Commander of the post, Colonel Sunil Dacunha (Manav Kaul), wants her put on the squad who are to interrogate Ali Saeed (who is being transported there that day), but his Lieutenant, Laxmi Das (Ratnabali Bhattacharjee), doesn’t trust her and thinks she is a terrorist/sympathiser. It soon becomes apparent that Saeed is more than he appears and this is shown at first through mind games that get his interrogators turning on each other. Quickly it is revealed that he is the ghoul.

it's behind you

So, what are its powers – having been summoned, its purpose is to reveal their guilt and eat their flesh. There seems to be some level of telepathy involved, so that it can manipulate people – causing fights and generally freaking people out. However the primary power is that the ghoul will eat the flesh of victims and take the form of the last person it bit (hence dropping the pronoun to it). This transformation can occur whether the victim is alive or dead. This leads to the Thing aspect, with the series playing with the “who is it” card a few times. The ghoul can reveal sharp teeth, talons and black eyes. It does also appear to be very physically hardy.

hunting the ghoul

I really enjoyed this. It had a dark atmosphere with the dystopian setting, the torture/detention centre, the characters who were all fatally flawed one way or another and the gore and violence that built through the three episodes. It was superbly acted and, yes, it was derivative but in a good way. Whether you’d throw this into vampire filmographies depends on how wide you cast your vampire net but this ghoul certainly eats fresh flesh and not longer dead corpses (as is the norm through a lot of ghoul material) and can shapeshift (again not a power normally put in ghoul related material, more a vampiric power). 7.5 out of 10 and recommended.

The imdb page is here.

Director: Robert Wilson

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers

Ok, it’s “made by science” vampire time and whilst the V word isn’t mentioned and the film is shot as an atypical creature feature, this is definitely a vampire though an unusual one. I had considered for a moment whether to write this as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ article but decided the use of genre tropes was strong enough to just review.

Its also not the greatest film in the world. The premise is unusual enough but the plotting is by the numbers, the acting mostly so-so and, worst of all, is the choice in visuals a depressingly dull greenish hue that sets the tone all wrong.

Jade and Ali

So the opening credits have a voice over as we are told about a bio-tech lab that a bunch of young college animal rights activists are going to hit in order to vandalise, video and rescue the animals within. They have pulled off twelve successful raids previously and this time they have someone on the inside. One of them, Fix (Andrew Hachey), brings Ali (Ellen Furey), to their van and introduces her to remote tech girl Izzy (Krystin Pellerin), Tim (Dylan Taylor) and leader Jade (Andrea Lui). Ali is the daughter of head researcher Dr Woods (Andrew Gillies) and has brought his access card – she wants to make him notice her.

part of the squad

Ali insists on going with them – though Jade tries to prevent it. Inside are two security guards and one of them, Chris (Edward Furlong), is Ali’s new boyfriend and the inside guy. He opens the gate for them after distracting the other guard, Wayne (Marc Hickox), and is to open the door for them but Jade is impatient and uses the key card. This sets off an alert that Wayne notices and he calls his boss, Peter Issacs (James McGowan), who in turn calls in an armed tactical security squad. Meanwhile the kids have hit the labs and found nothing, cages are empty and there is an elevator that needs both the access card and a code (the second of which they don’t have).

Trina Brink as Maya

Realising the squad is there, Izzy tries to hack the code but there are too many door codes and she eventually just purges the IT system and unlocks all the doors in the facility. They manage to get in the elevator but Chris is tazed. Now the layout made little sense. There is nothing of interest upstairs and the underground facility is abandoned and decrepit. Inside it is Maya (Trina Brink) and she is our vampire. Plot wise she stalks and kills and people die – until final girl, all under the threat of nerve gas being released to destroy Maya, but why do I say she is a vampire?

Woods and Maya

Woods was working on a cure for cancer and was successful, with pigs. He essentially genetically modified them having pulled genes from creatures with strong regenerative traits and then bound the new DNA via a virus. However his concoction failed to work with human test subjects and so he upped the virus ante – as it were – and used a virulent strain of Ebola. His test subject was Maya and he was successful, her cancer gone within a day, but she continued to mutate. So what was it about the mutation that makes me say she’s a vampire?

melting

She is hungry (always) and her new food of choice is us. She uses her fingers to inject a toxin into the victim that causes their flesh to liquidise and she literally drinks her victim – the toxin is also touch transmitted, so touch the liquid gunk of a victim’s remains and you’ll start melting too! She is incredibly cold to the touch, she regenerates from injury with speed (but needs to feed) and her reflexes are heightened. Unanswered issues focus around the facts that she seems to be able to both vanish and become semi-transparent, and there also seems to be a thing about her transmitting a light (which was seemed important as Issacs and Woods mention it but don’t explain it).

vamp face

She was captured after killing several nurses by slowing her down with an anti-toxin designed to fight botulism and placed in cryogenic storage. This included an iron crate that looked remarkably like a sarcophagus, which was ‘buried’ in the cryogenic unit. In the actual film she is tricked into ingesting the anti-toxin again and this leads to her developing a monstrous visage – akin to a vamp face (though it's a full body transformation). That is about all we got for traits but, whether the filmmakers realised it or not they did liberally spread the vampire tropes around.

semi-transparent

But the film went by the numbers. Most of the characters are forgettable, there isn’t the tension needed to carry the film but the worst thing was the colour decisions. The off-green look feels turgid and this has affected the score I’m afraid. The high security lab with only two guards felt wrong and under-staffed and the lack of anything in the upper building didn’t ring true. As for the lab below, as well as ripping off Resident Evil in design, the design also felt wrong as it was too much abandoned factory and not enough high-tech lab mothballed. I should also mention the sound; mostly non-descript, Maya’s sound effects made her vanishing sound like a bug and the slurping noises sounded off.

3 out of 10– the score would have been higher if the film looked better but it wouldn’t have limped over being average.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Blu-ray @ Amazon UK

Director: Michael Laurin

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

This is a US/Philippines’ production that uses the traditional form of the aswang. The term aswang literally means monster and is both an overarching term for several folk creatures from the Philippines but also for a specific monster type often associated with the vampire.

You’ll see that in this there is an interesting merging of the western monster types (we see the aswang with standard vampire fangs at one point and it is called a type of ghoul at another) with various versions of the Philippines’ creature.

adults of the family

It begins with a family arriving in the Philippines. Tia (Shelene Atanacio) is from the area and married to Richard (Michael Laurin) and they have two kids Alice (Shannon Laurin) and David (John Michael Laurin). They have been met by Tia’s brother Vince (Merwin L. Gicain) who has taken them to meet Richard’s cousin Jake (Bryan Billy Boone), who has been over for two months fixing up Richard and Tia’s beach house. Unfortunately it isn’t finished yet and so Jake has hired the Liamol House – Vince is aghast and says they can’t stay there, it is rumoured to be haunted by aswang.

the Liamol House

They go to see the house and Richard describes it as the Addams House. The kids discover that there a cemetery in the backyard and the house itself looks absolutely decrepit. Local rumour is that it is built on a cemetery, as well as hosting one. When they get inside it clearly needs cleaning throughout. Why then they stay there when they have the beach house (which can’t be in any worse state) or, indeed, the offered opportunity to stay with Vince, is beyond me. Of course, there wouldn’t be a film if they did that.

Lady in white

The first night Alice wakes and sees a figure out back (it is later seen to be a lady in white). We also get visitations by a dog (also the aswang) and she shapeshifts quite a bit to be fair and in her lady in white (with veil) form she takes on Tia’s visage. Jake and the kids find pictures of Aswang in the basement and, of course, do the sensible thing and start playing Ouija boards down there and eventually the aswang puts Richard under her control. This is done with a combination of hypnosis, saliva through a kiss and bites. It is described as possession.

Merwin and the mananambal

A local young cop, Merwin (Christopher Eli Razo Hubahib), who is a friend of Tia’s, comes to the house as a corpse has been taken from a grave and he wants them to keep an eye out for anything strange going on. He tells Tia that it is the time when aswangs look to create other aswang and he also mentions a mananambal (Ernesto A. Tundaan) who is due to visit in a couple of days. A mananambal is a traditional healer/wizard and it is he that tries to help the family. What is interesting is that he uses a combination of traditional and Catholic aspects as he does this.

bitten

So, the aswang takes both the young form and an old lady form (Brigida H. Magalona) and can also appear as a shadow (which is a real rubbish looking sfx, just a person in a whole-body black suit). At one point we see her acting ghoul like by digging a nice meaty bone from a grave (though the graves looked too old to have such fresh occupants). To keep her at bay we get the use of garlic, oil (that boils in her presence) and to fight her we have a silver dagger and a sting ray tail. Whilst possessed Richard suddenly can speak tagalog.

fangs and blood tears

The set-up feels a tad false. The fact that they stay at the spooky house, ignore Tia’s family offer of a place to stay and do things like play Ouija board all seem a bit forced and silly. That said the pay off isn’t bad. This isn’t the best horror film put together but it does what it is trying to do and has quite a bleak outlook. The use of Western vampire fangs feels a tad put on for the US audience (not that other films don’t give aswang fangs, but it felt a little more appropriated in this). The acting wasn’t fantastic but it didn’t need to be. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Director: Michael Manasseri

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

Science goes mad and creates a mosquito human hybrid… its actually not an unheard of trope and the madness of the science is underlined by the fact that in every example (as well as this film we have also looked at Mansquito& Weresquito: Nazi Hunter) the mosquito human hybrid is male… and male mosquito’s don’t drink blood (they actually feed on tree sap, it’s the female mosquito that feeds on blood). Ok… perhaps that is thinking about it too hard!

bring on the mad science

The other thing to note is that it isn’t always necessarily enough to make the film a fully-fledged vampire movie – Mansquito actually became essentially a giant bug, rather than the hybrid that might lend itself to be called a vampire. But in this case the creature is a hybrid and we are definitely playing with the tropes – indeed vampires are mentioned at one point (in a dismissive way).

being drained

The first thing to note about this budget film is… it's great fun. Silly, yes, but great fun. It starts in a swamp, a mosquito settling on a hunter and being splatted for her trouble. The scene really is just a mosquito moment, with no story impact. Then we are in the city and a woman, Evelyn (Jordan Trovillion), is at an ATM when she realises that two muggers (Derek Faraci & Nathanial McClure) are behind her. She runs and they chase. She manages to mace one but ends up in a blind alley. Across the cityscape runs the Mosquito-Man (Michael Manasseri, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). He sucks the blood out of the first mugger with a long proboscis that emerges from his mouth and pierces the victim's throat (similes to the vampire work of Del Toro spring to mind) and then drains the other through his forehead. Evelyn faints.

the cops

She is being removed from the alley on a paramedic’s gurney. Two cops, hard-assed Shanahan (Monty Bane, Sleepwalkers) and Bowen (Danny Mooney), have got the case. They see the coroner (Lee Thomas) who confirms the victims have been exsanguinated. Like some kind of vampire? The coroner says no – a vampire would have left two punctures not one! So more like a mosquito then. The film then folds back to earlier that day…

Jim's having a bad day

Jim (Michael Manasseri) is a nice guy. Too nice (and unobservant) to notice that his shrew of a wife, Jackie (Kimberley Kates, Kindred: the Embraced), is cheating on him – cutting her call to her lover as he walks into the room. On his way to work he picks up co-worker Evelyn – she, it becomes apparent, is in love with him. He is hoping to get a promotion at the nuclear plant he works at but his boss, Mr Kopple (Lloyd Kaufman), promotes his rival Dan (Ted Myers) instead and sacks Jim. Jim’s car has been towed from the company parking lot as he no longer works there. On the way home he spots Jackie’s car at a motel and sees her with… you’ve guess it… Dan.

hybrid

With rain falling he runs into traffic but the car heading for him stops. In it is Dave (Ricky Wayne) who takes him to a bar and gets him drunk. When Jim passes out he takes him to his lab… What I haven’t mentioned is that the world is being ravaged by a mosquito borne virus and Dave is trying to find a solution to it. He injects the insensible Jim with an experimental serum and releases mosquitoes into the room – if it works they won’t bite Jim but he is indeed, eventually, fed upon and goes into a fit and dies. His body is dumped in an alley but a swarm of mosquitoes descend on it and he suddenly revives (so, technically, he has come back from the dead). The mosquito DNA in the serum, the bites and his exposure to nuclear material causes him to mutate. He hears Evelyn scream and we are back at the scene from the start of the film. From there he starts to avenge himself on those who wronged him.

summoning the swarm

So, he is faster, stronger (he is able to punch through three inch, bullet proof glass) and at one point seems to vanish. He now sees in a compound way (his eyes have multiple pupils) and he needs to feed (and, once sated, breed). He can summon swarms of mosquitoes – sometimes, it appears, from nearby and at other times from within him. He is able to see through the eyes of his mosquito swarm. He is able to perch up walls. Much of this comes out of the vampire playbook. Daylight isn’t an issue – but in his lab Dave has a giant bug zapper! And, as I said at the start, it’s fun.

Jordan Trovillion as Evelyn

All the cast seem to be having a blast – specific mention going to Monty Bane, who is great as the hard-headed cop, and Jordan Trovillion who gives some fantastic looks and offers a solid performance. Most of all Michael Manasseri is clearly having a blast. This is not serious, how could it be, but is played with a wink and a tongue in its cheek. The film is on a budget but does great things with it, considering said budget. Its sort of a creature feature meets super (or anti) hero flick with a hybrid bug vampire. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Author: Phillip Ernest

First Published: 2018

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Nada Marjanovic, professor of Sanskrit at the University of Zagreb, has spent more than twenty years translating an obscure text on the vetala, a parasitic, vampire-like being that possesses the bodies of his victims. When her mentor and collaborator in the Indian city of Pune dies, she finds herself face-to-face with the undead that the text describes, an evil which long ago killed her lover - and set her on the path of an obsessive scholarly revenge. She must rely on her intellect, mythic lore, and even dreams to piece together the mystery of the manuscript. The vetala's opposition grows increasingly violent as Nada nears the book's conclusion, and with the help of two colleagues, struggles to decipher its climactic secret, which would allow her to exorcise the demon at last - freeing not only the mysterious man whom he has possessed for centuries, but also, perhaps, her own imprisoned and forgotten love. Suspenseful and unforgettable, Phillip Ernest's debut novel captures the most universal elements of human experience - even the monsters we face.

The review: When one accepts a wider definition of vampire than that drawn from the Slavic folklore from where we get the V word, then the folkloric/mythical incidents of blood drinkers, unquiet corpses and beings with vampiric traits is truly staggering. The vetala is such a creature, this time from India. Sir Richard Burton, 19th Century polyglot and explorer (amongst other things), first brought the vetala to the Western consciousness in the book Vikram and the Vampire. In the preface to the 1870 edition it is said that “The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five (tales of a) Baital—a Vampire or evil spirit which animates dead bodies—is an old and thoroughly Hindu repertory.” In a footnote to this it is explained that, “In Sanskrit, Vetala-pancha-Vinshati. “Baital” is the modern form of “Vetala”.”

Author Phillip Ernest is a Sanskrit scholar from Canada, living in India, and has chosen the vetala as the focus of this novel and the world of Sanskrit scholarship as its stage. The book itself is a curious (in a good way) mix of supernatural horror, academia, high octane action (with one scene particularly coming to mind) and romance. It all merges together rather nicely and the book hurtles along with a sprightly pace.

The vetala itself is, within the lore of the book, dualistic with regards modus operandi but deliberately so. The vetala is a possessing spirit and it has the ability to possess a corpse and bring it to a state of undeath – raising the corpse like a more traditional Western undead. However, in this the vetala is also an entity that inhabits a living man (though there is a primary person the vetala possesses, it can also possess other people as well). The primary possession is of a man named Avinash who, centuries before, became jealous because his twin brother Amruteshvara fell in love with the woman he loved. It was this jealousy that allowed the vetala to take a hold of him until he was possessed.

Since then the three – the two brothers and the lover – have been reborn time and time again, the brothers always as twin brothers and the vetala possessing Avinash. Amruteshvara learned to replicate the tricks and powers of a vetala and the two brothers remember their past lives as they struggle with each other through their incarnation. It was Amruteshvara who wrote the obscure Sanskrit text that Nada had been working on with a respected Sanskrit scholar, who leaves her the manuscript and the task of completing the translation on his death. The book itself acts as a weapon and apotropaic against the vetala, who cannot allow the secret it holds (how to destroy it) be found. I won’t spoil the pay-off but suffice it to say it draws upon a trope that will be familiar to those who know the Western media vampire.

Definitely worth your time, this book touches on a variety of the vampire that deserves more exposure. 7.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Director: Eric Thornett

Release date: 2012

Contain spoilers

If there was ever an example of a film that was overly long this would be it, but before we look into it let us address the vampirism within the film. This film features a form of energy vampirism – it has a lore where the corpse of a deceased person contains the last breath – take that last breath and it can extend life and heal disease. The fresher the corpse, the bigger the impact – therefore a freshly murdered corpse will yield better results. It might not be standard vampirism, but with the breath being a simile for energy, vampiric it is.

However, this interesting premise, and some brave period work for a budget film, cannot hide the fact that from an editing sense this is a dog’s dinner. It weighs in at 131 minutes and I’d say an hour could have been shaved of the entire thing. Let’s look at it…

Narcissa dying

We are in the town of Harbour Bridge and we are told there is a graveyard overlooking the river and run off from the graveyard has imbued the waters with the essence of the deceased. Nearby there is a manor house where the last member of the Sentinel family resides, Narcissa (Bette Cassatt). She was dying and left the house for the first time in years. A large murder of crows waited in the trees for her and she collapsed, in the river. The essence of the dead revived her and gave her an idea on how she might continue to live.

Brenden McDougal as Ethan

In the town the local doctor, Moreland ( Bill Taylor), has hired a new young doctor, Ethan (Brenden McDougal), and no sooner as he arrived than the town elders send him to visit Narcissa (Moreland refuses to go up to the house anymore). They send him to local tailor Felix (Omar Ott) first and he suggests that rather than hire a horse (Ethan is no equestrian) Ethan goes to his friend Ingrid (Sara Cole, Faces of Schlock) who will drive him up in a trap. He meets the toy-boy who does take him, as far as she can as the horse will go no further and he must walk the last part of the journey. She gives him a red flower as the red will ward spirits said to haunt the woods.

costume party

Now we (and Ethan) do see strangeness in the wood. A spectral hand reaching from the river and branches reaching for him (in an unconvincing manner it has to be said). This all led to nothing. He gets to the dilapidated house and is met by Narcissa – pale and bloodless, one might say, but now ambulatory without a cane and better than described. He examines her (she has a slight fever, but apparently that is normal) and she insists he stays the night – she will throw a party in his honour. As he is coming down to the soirée the butler gives him a mask – it is a costume party and she will insist he wear the mask. He doesn’t wear it, she doesn’t insist, but they do dance. When he retires to bed the maid Sophia (Katherine DuBois) warns him not to open his door due to the ghosts that haunt the house. If he does, he’ll let them in.

with her parents' heads

He awakens to scratching, opens the door and then a ghost gets into the room – it is an effective little scene all told but absolutely not part of the plot and all talk of ghosts is lost thereafter. However, it does make him leave his room where he sees Narcissa take possession of a sack (her men have been digging). He follows her to an attic room and sees her remove the mummified heads of (we later learn) her parents. She kisses them (to his point of view, whilst we know she is drawing the breath from them). He makes haste to his room but Narcissa follows and explains what she was doing. She needs fresher though and asks him to get the heads of vagrants and homeless from the town’s morgue. The fact he does this is a bit of a stretch, even though she appeals to his scientific curiosity. Moreland allows this, but forces Ethan to decapitate the corpses himself.

sucking the breath

When a hospital administrator confronts Narcissa with a view to blackmail, she grabs an axe and takes his head. From here the film morphs from a period Gothic with necrophilic overtones (and a ghost story lurking somewhere but unused) into a slasher – Narcissa exchanges black attire for a white ballgown and mask and starts axe murdering her way through the town (with an uncanny knack of not getting blood on the dress). Of course, she is still stealing the breath. Ethan vanishes for a large portion of the film and Ingrid takes centre-stage as she tries to defend the town from the mysterious killer. Eventually the film will twist again as the headless zombies of Narcissa's victims return to put an end to her madness.

hunting

As well as making her less ill and extending her life, the last breaths do seem to make the woman stronger, faster and a fearsome expert with the axe, able to out-do any martial artist (one would guess). She actually says she is “becoming more than I was”. Somehow, however, the film should be a lot less than it is. It overstays its welcome by at least an hour and that causes the pacing to be awful. I’d remove the ghost aspects – they go nowhere – and then look for huge swathes to hit the cutting room floor. Bette Cassatt is clearly having a blast as the mad axe-woman but some of the performances are best described as wooden.

headless zombies

The costuming is, for a budget film, excellent and one does not get a sense of attire out of place and, indeed, the sets are suitable for the period portrayed. The entire thing about the crows (which want to take her overdue spirit to the land of the dead) was under-used and one might have suggested they would have been a better karmic provider than the headless zombies. On the other hand it is unlikely that any scene involving a murder of crows could have been rendered in any way without it moving to an unfortunate level of campness. But the zombies just looked odd (and we won’t ask how they knew Ingrid pointed at Narcissa to turn their attention that way).

Bette Cassatt as Narcissa

There is a good budget film wanting to crawl out of the grave of this film’s unwieldly length. It can’t however. I commend it for the sets and costuming, for the good performances (but not the wooden ones) and the absolute bravery of trying to do an unusual period film on a budget. That length, however, is unforgivable. 4 out of 10 is reflective of all the good bits I saw in it.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

If I were reviewing this, rather than offering an honourable mention, I would have caveated this article with a “contains spoilers” warning, and in some respects how could it not spoil the story when you are considering microshorts? Taking one of the conceits behind the ABCs of Death, this is a 2017 collection of short films all around the 60 second mark.

If the ABCs were a mixed bag then this is an absolute smorgasbord of quality. The art of the short is not easy, to be able to cram an interesting story within a tiny timeframe, to offer narrative, plot, character and twist against the clock (and do so with filmmaking panache) is difficult in the extreme. To cut this time down to 60 seconds increases that challenge, making the short absolutely reliant on trope, stereotype and often cliché. Within the collection are two vampire related shorts.

bats in the eyes

From director Evan Makrogiannis comes in Flesh and Spirit. Based on a comic series by Baron Misuraca, an alternative model, writer and musician who stars in this as the vampire. A woman (Rachel Rose Gilmour) feels the draw of the vampire. We see his eyes imposed across the landscape – the use of hand-drawn eyes kind of works as the superimposed image is so merged into the background and is so fleeting. The pupils are bats. She enters a church, we see a goblet of blood, the vampire gesticulating and then he bites. Fin.

fangs

The second segment is directed by Eric Alfonsi and entitled Ravages. A woman (Sylvia Stazzi) crosses a graveyard as a vampire (Florian Tessandier) attacks her. Hitting him, more by accident than design it appears, she gets away but finds that two zombies (Franck Junca & Cassie) start attacking her too. Her escape is aided with the vampire and zombies attacking each other (green foam at the vampire’s mouth when he bites a zombie), I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting she survives – the anthology is called 60 seconds to die – but will leave it a mystery as to what kills her.

Flesh and Spirit

And that’s it. The entire thing is quick fire, as you would expect, and the two vampire shorts are not the greatest shorts I’ve ever seen. Flesh and Spirit is essentially a vampire bite – possibly more useful as a bridge to the comic, as there isn’t anything of a story there. Ravages has a story, as brief as it is, but suffers from the photography appearing washed out and for its length (as a lot of these do). That’s not to say they’re terrible either and they do fit within the remit of the anthology.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Director: Darin Scott (segment)

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

Tales from the Hood was a portmanteau film from 1995 and so it has taken quite a while for the sequel to emerge.

Again a portmanteau, the wraparound in this has a storyteller, Mr Simms (Keith David), employed to tell stories to a robot that is the future of law enforcement and has an AI that can learn from relayed experience. Simms, of course, layers the stories with a sense of morality. There are some aspects that take us into the history of Black America, with the prejudice and bigotry suffered laid out, and the film also takes in a healthy contemporary dose of Black Lives Matter. Some of this worked really well – occasionally it was laid on very thick but perhaps it needs to be, given the resurgence of overt bigotry as normal behaviour for some (on both sides of the Atlantic).

Kahad and Ty

We are concerned with story #3 – Date Night– and this had less of a focus on race and, instead, owed its conception to the #metoo movement. So, Ty (Alexander Biglane) and Kahad (Greg Tarzan Davis) are driving to a date. Ty met the girls, Liz (Cat Limket) and Carmen (Alexandria Ponce), through Tinder and he has spun them a line about them being in the movie industry – the girls being aspiring actresses. Kahad is amused that such an angle still works.

Liz and carmen

The house they get to is rather large and the story of the girls being aspiring actresses is doubted and then the doubts are dismissed. At first everything is fun, with games of Cards Against Humanity and drinks. However eventually they spike the girls’ drinks and carry their insensible bodies upstairs. The strip them to their underwear and set up a pad as a camera. The intent is to rape and film the girls – however something suddenly goes wrong.

unfilmable?

The image on the pad is screwed up, their bodies aren’t in the shot, only their underwear. This was neat, in terms of it always being great when a film makes the vampire unfilmable/unreflective but has their clothing remain visible. However, in this case a plot hole made the concept unpalatable. If they can’t be filmed, how did their picture end up on Tinder and how do they appear on a video feed later? As it is, the girls aren’t as drugged as they made out and are soon on their feet and sporting fangs…

pretending to cower from the cross

A nice element was them tying their actions to that of the boys and saying that they are predators just like the boys. The story is simple and to the point, as such there isn’t too much to think about. The acting wasn’t Oscar winning but it wasn’t bad either. An earlier story about a fake psychic (Bryan Batt) who is suddenly possessed has a throwaway vampire reference moment where a gangsta holds a cross up, he pretends to cower for a moment, says that faith is needed and then explains that he isn’t a vampire anyway.

Keith David as Mr Simms

The score of 5 out of 10 is for the vampire segment only, and reflects the fact that this is average, a piece of supernatural fluff that has a nice turnaround premise and a comeuppance for a pair of sleaze balls, despite the plot hole.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Authors: Gary D. Rhodes, Tom Weaver & Michael Lee

First published: 2017

The blurb: Cross and wooden stake in hand, Dr. Gary D. Rhodes re-enters the sepulcher of supernatural cinema, casting his lantern's light on Universal’s 1936 classic Dracula’s Daughter. With fellow tomb raiders Tom Weaver and Michael Lee, he discovers long-forgotten lore, presented herein with the film’s original shooting script, pressbook and a large array of other freshly exhumed extras.

The review: If I am honest one primary reason for ordering this volume (beyond it being a book dedicated to Dracula’s Daughter) was the fact that it was co-written by Gary D. Rhodes whose monograph Tod Browning’s Dracula was such a joy of a volume. Perhaps it is for that reason that I found this volume disappointing.

Firstly, it is coffee table size – I got the paperback version which does not suit this size – and this makes it awkward to carry to read whilst travelling (ok not everyone does that, but I do). However, it is in the content that I was dissatisfied. It opens with Rhodes’ exploration of the film, its genesis and filming. This is excellent, as one would expect, but rather short. Perhaps there just isn’t the story to tell compared to Dracula and, of course, much of the background would have been the same or similar to the earlier monograph. This was the best part of the book for me.

Next we get Tom Weaver’s fun facts. The detail here is good but having bought the book as a scholarly reference work I felt a tad disconcerted by the frivolous style. It was more pulp magazine than anything else. Michael’s Lee study of the music in the film was interesting, but the detail was a little too much this time – but perfect for the student of soundtracks in general I suspect.

The vast bulk of the book is made up of a facsimile of the shooting script. The coffee table size comes into its own here as it is a difficult read due to reproduction from microfiche and smaller would have been awful. That said it was still an unpleasant read – a retyped inclusion would have served better than this (or both facsimile and retype). The appendices are a mixed bag of treatments, draft excerpts, a pointless script for a 50s horror host presenting the film on TV and, most interestingly, DeWitt Bodeen’s treatment from 1953 for a Universal production of Carmilla, which was never filmed of course.

Not what I was hoping for, this still has much to say for itself but the main change I’d make would be to type up the shooting script. 6.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Playing with Tropes: The Neon Demon

New Breed – review

Playing with Tropes: the Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Civil Blood: The Vampire Rights Case that Changed a Nation – review

With a Kiss I Die – review

Bitten: Victoria's Shadow – review

When Brave Men Shudder: The Scottish origins of Dracula – review

Black Violet – review

Vamp or Not? We are the Flesh

Short Film: the Phantom Hour

An Accidental Zombie (Named Ted) – review

Ghoul – Season 1 – review

Warriors of Terra – review

Aswang – review

A Mosquito-Man – review

The Vetala: A Novel of Undying Love – review

A Sweet and Vicious Beauty – review

Honourable Mentions: 60 Seconds to Die

Tales from the Hood 2 – review

Dracula’s Daughter – review