Short Film: Bandit Blood be Bitter

From 2022 and coming in at 10 minutes, this short film directed by Asdis Guðrún Ragnarsdóttir manages to tell its story without dialogue and a cute, self-contained little tale it is.

It starts with wanted posters and, particularly Monty Sprout described as a wily bandit. It cuts to whom I assume is Monty (the character names gave no real indication when checked in the credits) who takes a deep breath that is, almost, like he is coming back from the dead – and I assume that is what the filmmakers wanted the audience to guess.

1st vamp

As he trudges through the snow, we move elsewhere and see a man with a bandaged face. There is a trail of blood in the snow and, whilst vocalising inarticulate noises, he sniffs and then tastes the blood. The blood is a trap, however, and a vampire hunter comes for him at which point the maw of sharp teeth becomes apparent. We see the hunter cleaning off his stake and he takes the vampire’s coat. After moving away from the kill he cuts his palm and bleeds into a canteen.

Monty the bandit

He takes the canteen and leaves a new trail that will lead to the blood-filled canteen that is hanging on a branch. Then, leaving his bag (with his gun and stake) with the canteen, goes to toss holy water around the blood trail (I assume to keep the next vampire on the trail). Whilst the hunter’s actions can be pieced together some make little sense – for instance, why take the first vampire’s jacket? Well Monty comes across the bag and, after putting the bullet-holed jacket on and trying the “water” canteen, spitting out the blood but getting blood down his chin, he does look suitably vampire-like when the hunter returns… but Monty has the vampire hunter’s bag by him and clearly there is another bloodsucker on the loose.

the hunter and the 2nd vamp

As mentioned at the head this did tell a neat story and whilst there are narrative gaps/questions – first and foremost being, why sprinkle holy water around the blood trail, what was the in story reasoning or was it just to remove the hunter from bag but keep the holy water for story reasons – but the overall story was fun and the effects were nice – we have a good, visceral blood effect going on. The end credits are a homage to Dracula (1931).

The imdb page is here.

The Last Breath Before Death – review

Author: Alan Golbourn

First Published: 2024

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

A missing brother … An imminent phenomenon …

Award-winning comic book illustrator and artist Jimmy Cochran is also a freelance reporter in New York City, specialising in the supernatural. Upon hearing that his estranged brother, Quentin, has gone missing with his best friend over in Germany, Jimmy becomes concerned — unable to shake off the feeling of foreboding and dread. Things worsen when he quickly learns that the missing two are in great danger from an unequalled evil, which is connected to an upcoming, ominous and phenomenal event.

A mysterious ‘man’ with a terrifying tale …

With time running out, Jimmy investigates further, in spite of the strong warnings and the danger to his own life — particularly after he is contacted by a peculiar and mystifying man with a horrific, nefarious past of his own, linked to old Serbian and German folklores and a sinister, secret brotherhood.

The review: I received this novel by Alan Golbourn for review and, honestly, my take is mixed. On the one hand it is a really interesting story and races along at the end of the novel at a breathtaking pace. However, there are issue with the prose, specifically around the dialogue.

So, we have a character Jimmy, an Englishman in New York who is estranged from his brother, Quentin, due to missing the other’s wedding (for medical reasons). Yet, following a call from their mother, suggesting that Quentin and his friend have gone missing in Germany, he begins have a feeling of intense foreboding. He has also had an accidental meeting with a psychic, and their subsequent association convinces him something is very wrong. He travels first to England and then Germany.

Quentin has been embroiled with (and kidnapped by) a vampire cult and the author’s choice of lore was really quite interesting. He based the cult on the history and folklore around Arnold Paole, as well as the Germanic Nachzehrer, bringing in the shroud eater aspect, but making them much more active and purposeful than suggested in Bane, who posited that it “remains in its grave during the day not because it is harmed by sunlight but rather because it chooses not to confront the living who would without a doubt try to destroy it.” Bane’s entry suggests they are more an astral creature that devour life (energy) but the author has taken the name and myth and created a physical, deadly adversary who are looking to perform a ritual to increase their powers. The author genuinely looks to make the vampires here a thing of nightmares.

The first half of the book paces steadily as we get to know Jimmy – the author has added an afterword about the character, explaining some of his foibles for those who believed he made a strange protagonist, but I never thought negatively of the character – and start placing the pieces together. The pace ratchets up when he travels to Germany and starts trying to investigate the disappearance himself. The author carries the reader with that vastly increasing pace. I mentioned an issue and it is within the dialogue which often feels unreal – with a formality in the phrasing that just didn’t feel natural. The author contacted me as I was reading through the volume and I mentioned this to him, he suggested that this had been said on an occasion before but felt it was the way his mind works, which is fair. It is also true to say that dialogue writing is, to me, one of the hardest parts of authorship and one that develops over time. As mentioned, the formality in some phrasing was the main issue but also, occasionally, a non-British character would use specifically British idioms, which was also noticed whilst reading. However, I must stress that the story and the pace kept me engaged. It is those elements that suggests to me as 6 out of 10 being fair with a thought that Alan Golbourn’s writing can only go from strength to strength.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

The Radleys – review

Director: Euros Lyn

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Based on the novel by Matt Haig, which I really rather enjoyed, I procrastinated when it came to watching this film version and, having now watched it, I think I know why. Subconsciously I feared that it would be pretty poor and that’s never a good thing when you like the source material. This came to mind as I found myself being not as disappointed as, I realised, I feared I would be. On the other hand, this didn’t rock my world either – far from it.

Harry Baxendale as Rowan 

With a narration from son of the family, Rowan (Harry Baxendale), we enter a suburban world (set in Whitby) where the Radleys are a seemingly normal family. Dad, Peter (Damian Lewis), is a doctor and a bit of a workaholic, mom, Helen (Kelly Macdonald), keeps herself busy with hobbies and organising, sister Clara (Bo Bragason), is an awkward looking vegan (with a tendency to vomit) and Rowan is as equally socially awkward, called a freak by kids in school and is in the closet gay.

at the party

The film starts (after seeing the dog kill a rabbit) with the prep for Peter’s birthday party. Rowan and Clara have planned to escape, with the other teens at the party and booze, to fields near the abbey (where, it looks like a bigger teen party is going on). With them is Tilly (Madeleine Power), more an acquaintance whose parents brought her to the birthday bash, and Evan (Jay Lycurgo), a new neighbour who Rowan is crushing on. Snooping on goings on is Evan’s dad, Jared (Shaun Parkes, Da Vinci’s Demons – the Devil), who is known as a bit of a conspiracy nut, watching through twitched curtains and then following the kids as they go to the teen party.

fangs emerge

Eventually Clara has had enough and heads back home, but is followed by one of the kids at the party, the bullish Stuart Harper (Freddie Wise), he tries to force himself on her and chases her when she runs. Eventually he pins her to a tree but she punches him away with astounding strength, fangs appear and she attacks and feeds, killing him. She calls her parents in shock, who find her, get her home, stash the body and explain to the kids that they are vampires but abstainers – vampires off the blood – and the kids are too. To help they call Peter’s twin brother Will (Also Damien Lewis) an active vampire. From that point, things start falling apart for the family, secrets are revealed and cravings start to take hold.

twins

The impact of blood is telling. When using the vampire regains powers such as mind control but also weaknesses (such as an aversion to garlic). Clara after feeding loses her awkward drab demeanour and is clearly confident and projects charisma. There is an abstainer’s handbook and helpline and so the main reason for reaching out to Will would seemingly be to have him dispose of the body. Some of the lore from the book is changed or not explained in enough detail. The film suggests that there are born vampires (Peter and Will) and converted ones (eventually we discover Helen was converted) but goes to pains to suggest a converted vampire will obsess over their maker and thus can never love them – in the book it is explicit that the attachment is two-way. Also, the in book conversion is achieved through a large blood exchange – the film suggests a few drops will do.

Shaun Parkes as Jared

Paranoid conspiracy theorist Jared is actually an ex-copper whose wife was killed by a vampire and he has taken the mantle of vampire hunter – though investigator would seem to be a better word, we never see him hunt as such – but how he became so steeped in their world is not adequately explained enough to understand how he ended up with the abstainers’ helpline number. The trouble with the film is that it is competent enough, the actors are all up to the task (though Helen is, through no fault of Kelly Macdonald, depressingly dour through the running length) but it just kind of trudges along. It is far too much family drama (which it has to be) but the vampirism could just be removed and for a film based on a vampire book, it feels tagged on. Obviously, there are similes for addiction and coming of age within the film. All told, not the miss I feared but not doing nearly enough to be a hit. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: The Substance

With numerous Oscar nominations I thought it about time I watched Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 movie The Substance. I went in expecting body horror, I also recognised many influences on the narrative as I watched but I don’t think I was expecting to strongly feel a vampire trope. Now, before we go on, I have to say that whilst I think there is something we might describe as auto-vampirism, I do not think there was any intention to touch into a vampiric element (unless that was the vampirism of the movie and TV industries themselves). However it was such a strong recognition within me that I felt compelled to feature The Substance here.

Elisabeth in the corridor

The film starts with an egg, the yolk is injected and it splits into two – it essentially communicates the main plot and then, to give us the background we need on main character Elisabeth Sparkles (Demi Moore), we see her Walk of Fame star being laid and then see it weather and crack over time. In the present of the film, she is hosting a daytime TV fitness show. The studio has a long corridor with carpet that was not the same as the famous carpet in the Overlook Hotel but I couldn’t help but think had been chosen to bring it to mind. Elisabeth, after filming, needs a restroom but the ladies is out of order and so she goes in the gents. Whilst in a cubicle she hears station executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid) discussing getting a younger replacement for her as he makes his misogynistic ageist views about her apparent. When she later meets him for lunch he is drawn as the greed of the industry personified.

the sale's pitch

Elisabeth ends up in a car crash but, luckily, is uninjured, but the various events have had an emotional toll. Before she leaves the young male nurse (Robin Greer) feels her spine and declares her an ideal candidate. When she has left the hospital, she finds she has been slipped a memory stick labelled with The Substance and a note saying how it changed the writer’s life. I’m not going blow-by-blow as it is the vampiric trope I want to get to. Suffice it to say that she listens to the cryptic message on the stick, ignores it but eventually, driven by the casting advert aiming to replace her, contacts the people behind the Substance. What I found interesting was in no place is finance mentioned, nor are full instructions given (and yet Elisabeth seems to know what to do). Having got her starter package from a back alley building she injects the substance.

eye division

It works pretty quickly and we see her in pain and her pupil divide and become two as her body is twisted, things move below the skin, two eyes sit in a socket and her back splits from which emerges a younger woman – who later names herself Sue (Margaret Qualley). The rules of the Substance are as follows: “You are the matrix. Everything comes from you. Everything is you. This is simply a better version of yourself. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. The one and only thing not to forget: You. Are. One. You can't escape from yourself.” The injection can only be used once and should then be discarded. The other self has to inject stabiliser every day (which is harvested spinal fluid from the original). Whilst one is active for seven days, the other is fed intravenously (food refills are provided by the invisible ones behind this). However, the balance has to be maintained.

the hag's finger

Sue gets Elisabeth’s fitness show slot and is a hit. Elisabeth seems lost within her weeks and Sue wants more than she has (they forget they are one and the same). Sue overruns, due to carnal desire, actively taking an extra dose of spinal fluid. When Elisabeth is switched with her after this (the switch being achieved through tubes that seem to exchange their blood between them) a finger has become old, gnarled and greyed – almost crone or hag like. Literally, if Sue takes time from her, remains her young self-longer, then it greatly ages (parts of) Elisabeth and this was the trope I spotted. Although they are split into two, they are meant to be one and so it is very reminiscent of vampire films such as I Vampiri and Countess Dracula - though she is not getting her youth from the death of others. Indeed, the accelerated aging affecting her normal self as a price for the periods of youth is very much like Countess Dracula. Elisabeth discovers she can stop this and there is a termination solution for the other self but also discovers “What has been used on one side, is lost on the other side. There's no going back.”

Margaret Qualley as Sue

There are obvious things the film draws on. The elements of The Picture of Dorian Gray and perhaps even Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the science, though it is youth and fame that is explored as well as the misogynist heart of the fame machine that sees female value in sexualised youth, are very apparent. I had noticed a while back that Kim Newman had made a connection to The Wasp Woman, which does share some broad themes with this and which was one I examined as a potential vampire film (concluding it depended on how broad your definition of the genre is). I loved the look of this film; it wore superficialness as a badge of honour and applied a stylistic gloss, which worked so well given the themes it explores. I had been told some time before that the third act turns heavily into body horror so that was no surprise but there is a blood filled sequence that gives Japanese Splatter-punk a run for its money. Is it a vampire film – in truth no, whilst it plays with the youth stealing trope, she steals from herself (rather than vampirically stealing from others) after all, They. Are. One.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ On Mubi via Amazon US

On Demand @ On Mubi via Amazon UK

Short Film: Where Blood Lies

A ten-minute-long film from 2019 that was directed by Byron Q, this takes us into the Second World War and Romania in 1942.

A group of Nazi soldiers hold villagers and demand to know where the creature is. The man they question claims to not know as he is not from there, he verbally attacks the villagers saying they are not good people but he is a good Christian. He is shot in the head for his trouble.

The Commander (Ben Prendergast) turns his attention to a woman and asks her if she is local and where the creature is, but she doesn’t know. He is about to execute her when a man (David Castro, Immortally Yours) says to stop, he knows where the creature is but warns it has the strength of twenty men – that is exactly why the Nazis are looking for it.

David Castro as the local

When he is leading them, they ask how he knows so much about vampires and he says that a vampire attacked his village, killing his wife. Only he and his ten-years-old daughter survived and she is very ill. I’ll leave it there but you, like I when I watched it, can probably sense where this is going. It is a well shot short, with decent costuming and worth ten-minutes of your day.

The imdb page is here.

Worth Each Penny presents Scary Stories – review

Director: Tatiana Wisniewski (segment)

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Pulled together by Mark Mos, this is one of a group of anthology films released in 2022 based on shorts from various LA film festivals. Each anthology has a host, in this case the clown masked Worth Each Penny (Kristen Lundberg) who, in all fairness, was really annoying but mercifully not on screen for long.

J.C. Henning as Magda

The segment that interests us is a rather short (11-minutes) piece entitled Fresh. It follows philosophy student Emily (Lestonja Diaz), whose grandmother, Magda (J.C. Henning), has passed and she finds a strange set of words and a pendant and, having read them and worn the pendant, starts to not really wish to eat (food that is).

taste blood

She is, however, attracted to the blood that is shed by her friend Lisa (Mika Shepherd) from an accidental cut (that seems to get more than you’d imagine on Emily’s hand) and also hallucinates bathing in blood. She starts to see Magda and the grandmother informs her that she has performed the ritual (whether she intended to or not) and brought on the change by tasting blood. She needs to feed and Emily now has to decide whether she can face the moral dilemma of taking a life in order to live…

bathing in blood

This was a simple little short but it had a great, very brief, blood bathing scene. Unfortunately, I felt it pulled its punch at the denouement and could have been somewhat more explicit. That said, it was solid enough and I liked the idea of accidentally performing a ritual to become a vampire. The score is for the segment only but the film was worth a watch for lovers of shorts/anthologies with a nice collection curated within. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Video Shop Tales of Terror – review

Director: Sam Mason-Bell (segment)

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

This portmanteau horror film harks back to the days of VHS and has a varied level of success as it explores six tales of terror – I should give a shout out to Clark who told me about the film.

As always with these sort of films, here we are concerned with the vampire segments and in this case there is one – that being the segment entitled The Red Lipped Moon, a segment shot in black and white and which carries a film noir sensibility with primary character (and narrator) Karl (Chris Mills) in the driving seat.

Annabella Rich as Ivy

Karl’s friend Gordon (Ryan Carter) was killed – his pale throat ripped open. Karl determines to find out what happened to Karl, with a clue of a vial of blood. It is disingenuous to think he manages to track down Ivy (Annabella Rich), rather she comes to him with the same offer she had for Gordon – serve her and she will eventually make him immortal…

Chris Mills as Karl

There isn’t a lot more to say. This was a short segment and suffered for it as there were interesting ideas that were not expanded on in a meaningful way. The undercurrent of addiction, for instance, deserved much more exploration. The black and white worked, though a stronger contrast might have been a bonus in some scenes. As always, I am scoring the vampire segment only and 3 out of 10 reflects a segment that could really have been considerably longer.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK