Dracula: Blood Hunt: 1 – review

Writers: Danny Lore & Cavan Scott

Artists Vincenzo Carratu & Kev Walker

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: An icon of horror rises again as the blockbuster event BLOOD HUNT rages on! When day is night, and all is not as it appears, bitter enemies may find their interests - however briefly - aligned. And that will be true of Dracula, lord of the vampires, and Brielle Brooks, daughter of Blade! Faced with a devil's bargain of the soul, Bloodline needs a priest and a lawyer - and Daredevil has a little experience as both! But will even he know fear in a city full of bloodthirsty vampires?!

Plus: One man has made it his mission to protect his nation from the bloodsucker invasion. But what does the one-man-army Joey Chapman, who now bears the mantle of Union Jack, have up his sleeves? Who will Union Jack have to face to keep London from falling? And as he paints the town blood red, what will he be willing to sacrifice to save his country?

Collecting: Dracula: Blood Hunt #1-3 and Union Jack The Ripper: Blood Hunt #1-3

The review: Bloodline, also known as Brielle Brooks, is front and centre in the first three comics worth of this volume. This adds flesh to the bone of how she and Dracula team up (plus a brief appearance by, and some guidance from, Daredevil). This is one where you have to be grounded in the overarching story as moments that have appeared in other volumes are jumped and it can feel a tad jarring.

The story sees Dracula preparing to hit the streets (via occult teleportation) and search out Brielle – his ruthlessness is displayed early on as he tidies up a loose end and thereafter his business with Brielle is not altruistic – she is the key to stopping Blade, and therefore the vampiric entity Varnae but his reason for trying to prevent the end of the world is not heroic and he only offers her one pathway. We do get to see Brielle mystically tempted by Blade/Varnae and a manifestation of the latter.

The volume then moves to Manchester, England where we join Union Jack (through the eyes of a policewoman), I’m not familiar with these Marvel characters but we see a Manchester as devastated as the US cities previously seen, Union Jack protective of the turned Bulldog and the machinations of the Master vampire involved – a vampire named Hunger. Hunger is a character associated with Morbius, Blade and Spider-Man and, like Morbius, is normally portrayed as a living vampire. In this he seems to be creating a collective with him at the centre of the hive and we see a weakness in that any pain delivered to one of his minions also impacts him. This tale is a standalone three episodes and worked very well. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Tales of Dracula 2: Dracula Meets the Werewolf

The sequel to director Joe DeMuro’s solid love letter to monster mash movies of yore, Tales of Dracula, I was surprised to see that this wasn’t a feature. The DVD case suggests the deceptively inaccurate running time of 60 minutes, but the actual film is around 44 minutes long.

It follows two primary stories. The first is that of Jessica Von Helsing (Samantha Sloma) travelling into Transylvania to tackle Count Dracula (Wayne W. Johnson, Tales of Dracula & The Vampire (2013)), without realising that he is looking forward to meeting her. The conductor on the train is called Renfield (John Carey), which can’t bode well…

Wayne W. Johnson as Dracula

The other storyline follows Creighton Reed (Tom Delillo, also Tales of Dracula) who, having killed as the wolfman once again, reaches a Romani encampment and is caught stealing a shirt by Marina (Olga N. Bogdanova). She does his tarot and realises the hefty weight fate has put on him and is going to shoo him off when her elders intervene. It turns out she is also a werewolf but they have a relic that presents her from turning and a method of killing Dracula, if Reed will help…

female vampire

Of course paths cross and the two stories start to overlap. The relic the Romani have belonged to Radu (Jon Campbell), chief werewolf and brother of Vlad Dracula (which makes this Dracula a version who was, in life, Vlad Ţepeş). The film, like its predecessor, is shot in black and white and the overall impression I had was good but desperately too short and so it left more questions than it answered.

The imdb page is here.

Shadows of the Past – review

Director: Luz Cabrales

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

A portmanteau film, where the anthology is made up of films that seem to have been created for the film, rather than just tying unrelated shorts together, should be welcome. However this one struggles due to its poor framing of the narrative and, frankly, lack of chills.

There is no traditional vampire in this, rather there is a banshee that is part of the wraparound. Banshees do actually appear in Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology but generally are not thought about as vampiric beings. In this I would argue she is.

the youths

So, before I get to the banshee, let me talk about the framing. It starts with a group of teens running. One asks why Mario (Jamie Dougherty), leader of the gang and only guy, made her do it. *It* is shoot a woman – a senseless slaying, as another gang member says that she was going to give them all the expensive items in the museum. It just feels hokey, like a story sketched but not thought through. They head for a mansion and duck in the unlocked door.

Dan Frederick as the Caretaker

Inside they meet the caretaker (Dan Frederick) and the gun is aimed at him. However, he talks them down by saying if they leave they’ll get caught but if they stay and keep him company then he’ll give them all the valuables. Again, hokey and not great storytelling or realistic sounding dialogue. Nevertheless, they stay and each story the caretaker tells is a segment of the portmanteau. When Mario demands the treasures, we get the wraparound’s backstory.

the Langstones

It centres on a ring, that the caretaker puts on, and the owner Collin Brooks Langstone (Karl Barbee), a 19th century gang leader and businessman who was given the ring by a banshee (played by several actresses). The ring would grant his desire so long as he kept on luring souls to feed to the banshee – the souls/life (both are mentioned interchangeably) kept her young. However, he met and married Rose (Tara E. Kojsza), the banshee grew jealous and killed her, cursing him. The dialogue says he was “condemned by the banshee’s dark mind” and then “the mind turned mansion” – indicating that the mansion is a manifestation of her mind and, as she is an energy vampire, the mansion is a vampiric building.

supping a cup of blood

Now, where this goes further awry is that it is indicated that the caretaker is Langstone in another form, and the curse can be lifted if he passes the ring (and thus the curse) to someone as evil and greedy as he… the inference being Mario. However, then the kids are hunted through the mansion by the banshee and the ring is not passed on. A cop, going door to door, shows up in the morning and Langstone answers. He is asked about what he is drinking (we only see the teacup) and he says tomato juice, it keeps him “young, rich and vibrant” and “he just made a fresh batch”. This implies it is blood that he drinks but, as a concept, comes from nowhere.

vampiric building

It is very crude storytelling, certainly for the wraparound, and whilst the segments feel a tad stronger it isn’t by much and they fail to chill. It is a shame as dedicated anthology/portmanteau films are very welcome in general and this might have been a welcome entry in that genre. Rather it is a damp squib. The use of a banshee as an energy vampire is unusual. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vampire in the Garden – review

Directed by: Ryōtarō Makihara

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

There is so much vampire genre material out there that it is impossible to keep up, hence this blog has been running so long and why I have a watch pile like Mount Everest (and that pairs with an equally high read pile). There seems to be little excuse for me to have not watched this anime series, however. Only 5-episodes long and released to Netflix it is a short, satisfying little animation.

soldiers

It starts with a group of soldiers including the young woman Momo (Megumi Han). They are human troops and they are in conflict with vampires. This is a world which has virtually fallen to vampires, with cities in ruins. These humans live in a conurbation that they protect with a wall of light and they scavenge from the dead lands to survive. Momo, we will later discover, is the daughter of General Nobara (Rika Fukami), and on these duties to stave off suggestions of favouritism.

musical box

In a building they discover vampires and Momo faces a child who holds up a musical box that has a painting in the lid of vampires and humans living in harmony. The music startles Momo – music has been banned in human society and is deemed part of vampire culture – as does her apparent youth. As more troops arrive, the child injects a vampire drug that morphs her body into a monstrous form. It is defeated and once back at the city Momo is reprimanded for not firing.

vampire decadence 

Elsewhere the vampire queen Fine (Yū Kobayashi) tries to avoid her duties by attending lavish parties and hides the fact that she is ill as she refuses to drink blood. It is notable that at this point you could read the vampires as a millionaire class, decadent and dancing, with the humans as a worker class who are violently estranged from the vampire class. However, later we see poor and destitute vampires and thus there can be a further reading of the false promise of trickle down economics and the impact on those workers who buy into the system (are turned).

Fine and Momo

There is a raid on the city by the vampires (human traitors have been promised turning to take down the generators for the lights) and Fine is, reluctantly, amongst the vampires. Momo has been caught with the musical box and has run from the city in upset. Fate brings the two together and, coincidentally, Momo is the image of Fine’s human lover, a relationship that ended disastrously. Finding each other they run away – but the humans want Momo back and the vampires want their queen.

Megumi Han voices Momo

What was nice about this, beyond some lovely animation, was the fact that the story concentrated on a friendship and invested itself entirely in that. Of course the relationship could be read as deeper than friendship and queer but that is a subtext and the writing felt like it wanted to genuinely portray a growing friendship without needing to rely on sexual attraction (and fan service) and felt all the more authentic for it.

monstrous vampire

However, beyond this, the story did feel a tad curtailed, as short as it was. There was a whole fascinating world that was barely built due to time. They just put the essentials in place to carry the story forward and thus develop the friendship aspect. Don’t let that put you off, there is a neat little anime here that looks lovely, has some fighting and vampire action and is worth your time. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Invocation of Enver Simaku

Released in 2018 and directed by Marco Lledó Escartín, this is a very slow burn horror, done in a documentary style, which interests us due to the central entity they call a kukuth. This would seem to be a derivative of the Albanian kukuthi/kukudhi, which is a vampire type listed in Bane’s Encylclopedia of Vampire Mythology. However, the entry in Bane bears no resemblance to the creature here, Bane’s description of the kukudhi is a vampire that “seldom needs to feed, and when it does, it takes a very small amount of blood from its victim.” In the film the kukuth is described as a soul eater.

monks' fresco

The primary character is Julien (Julien Blaschke) a documentary maker. He had been in Albania some 18 years before the primary timeline of the film, creating a documentary about monks within a particular order who seemed to have a spiritualist/pagan overtone to their beliefs. He was there with his wife and a crew and they were in a bar, having finished filming, when they heard gunfire and screaming. They rushed out with camera.

Julien Blaschke as Julien

In context it was the day before the so-called lottery insurgence of Vlora, a real-world event of civil unrest following the collapse of a Ponzi scheme. However they were too far away, in Mesopotam, for it to be connected. The night became known as the Mesopotam pogrom and it started with a man, Enver Simaku (Ferran Gadea), dying. Enver had been in a coma for years (actually, probably not a coma and more a vegetative state) and with his death his brothers went mad and tortured and killed at least 50 people – Julien’s wife amongst them.

the spirit of Enver

So, Julien has returned to Albania to understand what happened and unearths a story of supernatural events, discovering that an undercover agent from the Government’s anti-paranormal brigade had been investigating the Simakus due to a belief that they were involved in the supernatural. The villagers believed a kukuth was in the village – and as things develop it seems that it could possess people, had possessed Enver and the man had kept it trapped within him – his death allowing its escape. Julien starts seeing things, including the creature…

the Kukuth

The film, as mentioned, is a slow burn and the documentary style adds a real world feel but also stifles the scares. This isn’t helped by the absolutely stoic portrayal of Julien. Nevertheless, I found the idea fascinating and loved the idea of using some pretty obscure (to me) Albanian folklore; even if the nature of the kukuth seems changed to fit the film, with possession and inciting violence being the order of the day and even the accusation of being a soul eater seems to be hyperbolic. It is primarily shot in English but there are moments of Spanish, Italian and Albanian.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vesper Glen – review

Author: Coryn Noble

First Published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Charlie Pike, a detective with the Boston Police Department, gets a call from his hometown in Vermont, asking if he wants to be their new police chief. It’s an appealing offer, but it would mean telling his wife Abbie, and eventually their kids Natalie and Marcus, about the “V’s” – the hundred or so residents of Vesper Glen with symbionts that make them live for centuries, heal rapidly from wounds, avoid sunlight and garlic, and regularly need to consume blood.

Even after Abbie overcomes her initial skepticism, and Charlie takes the job, she’s still apprehensive about her new neighbors, including leading citizen John Saxon, town doctor Meara Desmond, and night-shift Sergeant Ray Dante. Still, the family settles into small town life, sharing the ancestral Pike house with Charlie’s elderly dad.

Then a run-in with a biker gang gets the attention of an FBI agent, a hostile Army officer, a marauding band of V’s whose leader holds a grudge against John, and a secret society of fanatical vampire hunters. All of this will test the ingenuity and determination of the entire community…

The review: I think the first thing to note about Vesper Glen is the source of the vampirism. As the blurb mentions, the vampires are in a symbiotic relationship with a lifeform that has taken residence within their veins, living off the iron in blood and forcing the need to drink blood to feed the symbiote. In return it heals them and slows aging. A subterranean lifeform, it is highly sensitive to UV light. As such, these are living vampires and, as the novel progresses, they are split into factions – those in Vesper Glen believe in living side by side with humans, the most extreme believe that humans are foodstuff only and they are superior.

The book sees cop Charlie Pike take on role of police chief, already knowing about the Vs as he grew up in Vesper Glen (and kids are told the truth of some of the townsfolk at 15). Charlie’s wife and kids, however, are in the dark and he has to convince Abbie that living next door to vampires is not a dangerous thing. The reader soon discovers it is dangerous, however, not due to their vampires but down to general bad guys (in the form of a biker gang), a band of vampires from the extreme faction and the Hawthorn Cross – a shadowy secret vampire killing society.

The writing in this was crisp and perhaps veered over towards the utilitarian in places, but as this is told from Charlie’s point of view that felt right, given his cop pedigree. The book lies more towards police procedural than urban fantasy – though that element still sits there. We do get to hear quite a lot about the vampires’ society, including their own language, but there is much more than could and should be explored in future volumes. A neat little read, with some interesting takes on the genre. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Carmilla – review

Director: Jay Lind

Release date: 1998

Contains spoilers

After watching Jay Lind’s Valerie I was much more upbeat about watching this low-to-no budget adaptation of Carmilla. Unfortunately this just didn’t capture me in the same way – though I will say that the selected soundtrack for this worked a lot better than the Valerie soundtrack did. There is a nasty crackle over the sound but I think that is going to be the best version that a distributor will find.

crucifix

It starts in the second half of the 19th Century and Carmilla (Maria Pechukas, Spookies) is being forced to marry and so she killed her husband and then slit her wrists with a crucifix. She returned as a vampire, of course, and the women of the family started to die due to a strange anaemia. Maddie (also Maria Pechukas) had a dream of a strange woman in her room as a child – it started when her mother (Heather War) died.

Maria Pechukas as Carmilla

The film has quite a disjointed narrative, with an attempt to draw a psychosexual drama in much the way Valerie did, but this isn’t as well put together. Angela (Colleen Van Ryn) is being called by a voice (haunted as she is by Carmilla) and Maddie’s dad goes to stay with her uncle as Angela is her aunt and is ill. Maddie is beginning to experience phenomena too and later we hear that her dad had an affair with Carmilla whilst her mom died.

vampiric imagery

The film does create a dreamlike aspect to the narrative. I was more taken with the performance of Carmilla than that of Maddie and there is, of course, much in the way of vampiric imagery. If you like your movies to be a fever dream (with low-to-no budget) then you’ll get something out of this but I’d direct you to the much stronger Valerie. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.