The Body Beneath – review

Director: Andy Milligan

Release date: 1970

Contains spoilers

In a series of correspondence recently Doc. Despicable, from over at the Frequency of Fear wondered about my thoughts with regard to the body of work of Andy Milligan and, specifically, the vampire movie The Body Beneath. I had to admit I wasn’t familiar with Milligan and thus hadn’t seen the film, but did spot it cheap on Amazon marketplace (coincidentally, OllieMugwump mentioned the film in a comment the day after I ordered it).

Now they do say, “Never listen to a mad scientist,” but to be fair Doc Despicable didn’t lead me wrong with this. It was pointed out that it was cheap as a film, almost a sadistic version of Ed Wood, and yet it was a labour of love. I must admit it had something, it isn’t a good film by all the standards of cinema but there is that indefatigable earnestness, which in itself can make something worthwhile.

We start off in a graveyard and note that the film poster proudly states “filmed in the graveyards of England”. Well, to be fair, some of the shots were taken in a graveyard – ostensibly Highgate Cemetery and I’ll take it to be so. One glaring plot faux pas came later in the film when it suggested that the Ford family (who, as we shall see, are all vampires) were buried in Highgate for 21 centuries. Given it was opened in 1839, and was designed by Parliamentary order, I doubt that very much!

The woman in shot is Anna Ford (Susan Clark) and she is visiting her mother’s grave. The film as it stands is a grainy, dark effort and this (surprisingly) worked well, especially as the colour of her red coat and yellow flowers juxtaposed nicely – it might have been accidental but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume it was purposeful. Then three green faced vampires appear. Yes green faced – but I’ll discuss that in just a moment.

Graham Ford (Colin Gordon) is at home snoozing when the doorbell rings. A vicar and a woman stand there. He introduces himself as the Reverend Alexander Algernon Ford (Gavin Reed), a distant relation, and the woman is his wife Alicia (Susan Heard). Alicia spends the film silent, whispering to Algernon. They have just moved to the area, he is reopening All Souls Church, has taken Carfax Abbey as a home and wishes to invite his cousin to dinner. Anna comes home and she seems fearful of Algernon but the scene cuts abruptly away before her reaction can be gauged.

We cut to a couple in a softcore embrace. Linger for a moment and then cut to them (partially) dressed and talking. She is Susan Ford (Jackie Skarvellis) and he is her boyfriend Paul (Richmond Ross). She is pregnant, they talk of marriage and she says that she is going to visit an aunt and then on to Carfax to meet a new relative who recently contacted her; the Reverend Ford.

Finally we meet Candace Ford (Emma Jones), a fashion designer. She is due to go out when there is a visitor. Her maid answers the door and a hunchback, Spool (Berwick Kaler), gives her flowers for Candace. When she turns around a green faced vampire is there. The vampire whispers to her and she takes, in a daze, the flowers to her mistress, manages to prick Candace’s finger and get a slide of blood for the vampires.

So, we have our main players… what is going on? The Fords (historically) are vampires but their bloodline is weakening. Algernon has returned to put things straight. Susan is to be a baby machine, breeding a new line of strong Fords. Candace is to be a blood donor, offering her blood to Susan (if needed during the pregnancy) and to the vampires. As for Graham? Well Algernon has no use for him but his wife will be a centre piece at a vampire feast. The plot veers off at the end, as all goes wrong, and Algernon decides that the family should move to America (a land of pimps, prostitutes and religious fanatics but better than police state England, is the rationale).

Okay, let’s talk vampires. They can go out in daylight but it weakens them. Algernon and Alicia must be injected regularly with blood to combat this. Why there was an intravenous blood bottle up during these scenes is anyone’s guess; there probably was a reason but, to me at least, it was unfathomable. Sometimes this procedure causes Algernon’s blood pressure to fluctuate and he must be bled with leaches. No, I didn’t get this either and, to be fair, neither did the script as Algernon states his confusion.

Why most of the vampires have green faces and the two principle vampires do not is beyond me. This is not the only film to do this sort of thing however. The vampires do not have fangs – a failing as fang marks seem to be left behind. The fact that Algernon poses as a priest is interesting but, I’m afraid, nothing new. Sir Francis Varney posed as a monk in Varney the Vampire.

The main locations are wonderful (though the lighting can be pedestrian) but the outfits not so much so. Doc. Despicable mentioned wondering if there was a naked sofa somewhere, bringing to mind innocent furniture having been viciously skinned alive to provide costumes. I had to admit that I wondered whether Algernon was wearing a tea cosy at one point. The stock music used can be terribly intrusive.

Film wise the print used for transfer is damaged in places, but little can be done about that I’m guessing. Some of the angles chosen are peculiar but the scene where the family get out of the cemetery for a vampire meeting was nearly wonderfully atmospheric – except dark filters made it difficult to see. In fact the entire feast was a near miss visually.

When action sequences occur there is shaky camera syndrome (though there aren’t many action scenes). When I say shaky camera, let me be clear, this is flinging the camera around wildly to completely obscure the action being filmed. That said, whilst we do not see the actual deed, Milligan tried his best to throw some gore in aftermath. The primary example of this being the knitting needles in the eyes of the maid Jessie (Felicity Sentence).

Acting wise things are odd. Everything is done with utmost seriousness and has a very stagy feel to it. This does not work to produce a high class performance level but offers an Englishness that does work on a very weird level. The dialogue actually seems to flow quite nicely and Gavin Reed is excellent in his own perverse way. The plot is too convoluted for its own good and scenes cut away at what feels like the wrong moment sometimes.

Actually, I should also mention that I was rather impressed with the characterisation that Milligan decided to lend to Spool. We discover about his abused childhood and how he became hunchbacked. We see him vulnerable and able to be coerced by one of the good guys. This characterisation spilled over into Algernon who punishes Spool (by nailing his hands to a wall) and then questioning why he should feel compassion (sadistic, two-faced compassion it turns out) when he has no soul. A little gem within the script.

I mentioned the earnestness, this really comes out in the performances and the entire thing is obviously a labour of love. It misses the mark severely as good cinema but it has a quality which makes the entire thing fascinating. In fact I have noted that some have called this boring but I was strangely drawn into the world Milligan created. Not good, but somehow worth watching – as long as you know what you are letting yourself in for. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Gone fishing…

Well, not quite. However, I am working away for a week and so Taliesin Meets the Vampires will enter the period of quietude known as a hiatus. Now, I have noticed that blogger has set up a scheduled post function and so I could have set up a week’s schedule of posts and let them post themselves. To be perfectly frank that feels a little too much like hard work! (Getting a week’s worth of posts prepared, not setting the scheduler you understand).

I’ll be travelling back next Friday, so don’t expect a post until Saturday 24th May at the earliest.

Whilst I am away, why not nip on over to the MySpace page of The Case of the V. Murders, where you can now see the short (just shy of 9 minute film) film for free.

Also, in some late breaking news: “British stars James Corden and Matthew Horne of the cult TV hit Gavin and Stacey are teaming up for a movie called Lesbian Vampire Killers” get the rest of the story here.

Wishing you all the best until my return.

Classic Literature: Varney the Vampire

“Presently the corpse opened his eyes and glared full at them. Oh, such glistening, lead-like orbs, that froze the very current of their blood”
Varney the Vampire, Chapter 143

I must admit that to feature “Varney the Vampire. or, the Feast of Blood”, which was written by James Malcolm Rymer, as a piece of classic literature is, for a couple of reasons, a bit of an oxymoron.

Firstly, the work is not that well known, which makes it difficult to argue its classic status. There are no films directly based on the saga that I am aware of and the name of Varney is seldom borrowed (though there are exceptions that prove that rule). I am sure that many will say they have heard of Varney and its central figure Sir Francis Varney but how many can say they have read it, at least in entirety? For myself I had read extracts certainly and had the complete work in pdf form. But it is such a large tome that there was no way I was going to read it electronically. This article came about after I purchased the critical edition produced by Curt Herr, and yes, I did read the entire saga before writing this.

Secondly it is difficult to call Varney classic literature when by all standards it isn’t really that good in a literary sense. Don’t get me wrong, it was never meant to be. Varney started life as a serial of Penny Dreadfuls and was published as such between 1845 and 1847. In many respects Penny Dreadfuls were the literary equivalent to soap operas, produced weekly and sold for a penny an issue, and one can see within them that awful repetition and meandering that the modern TV phenomenon is also full of. They were also produced by writers often paid by the word (leading to more literary meandering) and rarely, if ever, proof read. Typesetting errors and typographical errors were the norm.

Varney ran for an inordinate length of time, when such a serial could be cancelled at a moment’s notice – if the readership lost interest and thus they were not turning the required profit. As such we find that the text itself is self contradictory in lore, events are forgotten and names become confused. However, the worst sins within Varney are in the early to central chapters and the last third of the saga has much to offer, as Herr himself points out. That is not to say that there isn’t anything worth reading in the first two thirds of the mammoth publication, but that the worst excesses of the Penny Dreadful genre are played out in that section.

However Varney, from a vampire genre sense, is classic literature in that it very much bridges the gap between Polidori’s The Vampyre and Stoker’s Dracula (As an aside we actually have a character called Count Pollidori at one point). We can see the definitive influence Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla had on Stoker and, whilst there is no evidence that Stoker had read any/all of Varney, it is difficult to imagine that Stoker was unaware of the saga.

Indeed Herr points out, in the footnotes to the critical edition, that the turning of Clara Crofton – towards the end of the saga – has many similes with the events surrounding Lucy Westenra in Dracula. The turning itself seems slightly at odds with the lore Rymer introduced (as we shall see) but that is hardly surprising in itself. There is a beautiful description; “and in another moment that white clothing was observed to be in motion. Slowly the dead form that was there rose up, and they all saw the pale and ghastly face. A streak of blood was issuing from the mouth, and the eyes were open.”
Varney the Vampire, Chapter 222

Yet despite the ghastly apparition of the raised Clara, she like Lucy, in death and repose, looks more beautiful than when she was alive. The tales’ similarities might be accidental but it is telling that there are resemblances at all. Further, Rymer occasionally put text of other, invented, Penny Dreadfuls within the text of Varney and at one point we are treated to a vampire one called “The Dead not Dead” – a title reminiscent, as Herr again points out, to Stoker’s The Un-Dead (Dracula’s working title). We should also remember that there is the line in Dracula “and if my death can do her good even now, when she is the dead UnDead, she shall have it freely” (chp 15), and the phrases ‘dead UnDead’ and ‘Dead not Dead’ are similar enough to give pause for thought.

More than that, the nineteenth century literary vampire tended to be rather one-dimensional as a character – a criticism often laid at Stoker. People look to Anne Rice, and her Vampire Chronicles, for the popular inception of a vampire with layers (though perhaps the series Dark Shadows got there first); vampires who felt guilt at their acts and yet were pushed to commit them by their infernal instincts, who were capricious and yet generous and who searched for a meaning to their damned existence. Anne Rice was over 100 years too late, Varney did all that and more; sadist and saint, murderer and saviour, Varney was a complex vampire character unbeknown before and for many years afterwards.

It is pointless, within the confines of this article, to try and relay a plot – though in general it saw Varney involved in many a machination, attempting to acquire either wealth or virgin’s blood – as the saga is so huge. However, what I will do is look to some of the more interesting (if contradictory) lore, genre staples and genre oddities that I noted down as I read through the tome.

The first thing we should ask ourselves is who is Varney? The answer, unfortunately, is that we do not know. Rymer, through the life of the text, changed Varney’s background many times. At one point Varney states that he is 180 years old, at another point he states that he was born, under the name Sleighton, in the reign of Edward the 3rd (1327 – 1377), which would make him more around the 500 mark. This is likely down to faults within the text, rather than any trickery on the part of the character, due to the nature of the Penny Dreadful writing process.

Likewise we do not know how he came to be. We meet a vampire intimated to be his sire and we also hear that vampires come about as a punishment for murder of the innocent. It is suggested that Varney killed his wife or lover, at one point, and his child at another. When we hear that vampirism is a punishment we see a group of vampires (including Varney), summoned, to raise ritually a newly created vampire from the grave. This happens with Clara Crompton, Varney raises her, but she was not guilty of murder – she was merely the victim of a vampire and her birth into the ranks of the undead was part of a sadistic revenge Varney gave out for an act of chivalrous charity (her brothers fished his dead body from the sea). Yet Varney tells Flora Bannerworth, the first vampire casualty detailed in the saga, that a vampire bite will not turn a victim.

It is interesting to note that a red herring is thrown into the early plot that indicates he might have been revived through experimentation with electricity upon his hanged corpse – bringing Frankenstein to mind. This is not the case, and the reviving was coincidental to the experiment (or so I interpreted that section, at least). Later, Rymer likens the effects of the moon (which we shall detail later) to such experimentation when he writes: “Suddenly there was a movement in the form of the dead man −− a spasmodic jerk of the whole muscles of the frame, as if a galvanic battery had been applied to it;”
Varney the Vampire, Chapter 139

The vampire must feed on blood. We hear some folklore that suggests: “those who know about vampires say there are two sorts, one sort always attacks its own relations as were, and nobody else, and the other always selects the most charming young girls.”
Varney the Vampire, Chapter 183
As for Varney, well he is partial to the charming young girls (for that read virginal girls) and has a wont to marry them, often, before feeding. Clara also feeds on young girls and is an early example of female vampire/female victim feeding pattern – predating Carmilla. Whether the vampire can eat and drink normal fare fluctuates; at one point Varney ravenously eats, at another he eats to disguise himself and at yet another he does not partake of mortal food.

The fact that Varney gets these girls to marry him (he has been married several times we hear) is unusual in itself as he is not the dashing hero. He is overly tall, with a ghastly complexion and described often as ugly. Indeed one of the reasons he wants money is as a lure for maidens to marry him as well as to gain a standing in society. The text is a little fluctuating as to whether he has fangs. Sometimes fangs are mentioned, other times teeth. At one point someone mentions a protruding tooth at the front and at another long front teeth are mentioned, both of which brought to mind Nosferatu. At yet another point Varney is described as having tusk like teeth.

Vampires in Varney do not shape change, he is likened occasionally (in his manner of movement) to a wolf – though we should remember that the vampire and the werewolf were interchangeable as concepts at the time – and Annette Lake states that, when attacked by Varney, she dreamt that it was a wolf attacking her before she awoke to see the vampire. Bats are not mentioned – Stoker introduced that bit of lore – and the bat winged demons on the cover of the first issue were artistic and not story integral.

There is a hint of mesmeric eyes but this occurs just once and most of the time Varney’s victims cry out – leading to his detection by others in the household. Like other nineteenth century vampires sunlight is not an issue but, in this, the vampire is not indestructible; he can die by very ordinary means, such as a gunshot or sword strike. More than this, lack of blood (though feeding frequency seems quite moderate) can kill the vampire. However, this is not true death and exposure to moonlight, as with Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, will revive the corpse again:

“No sooner was the whole of the body, the breast, and the face illumined, than there was a particular quiver through that form”
Varney the Vampire, Chapter 104

True vampiric death is difficult to achieve, to say the least. Stopping exposure to moonlight may cause the body to rot after a time and the peasants believe that staking will hold the corpse down and allow it to rot (not necessarily through the heart either, a stake through the stomach is mentioned at one point). Varney, when at his most self-loathing with regards his ‘condition’, attempts suicide. At one point this is attempted by drowning, hoping that the moonbeams will not penetrate the ocean – unfortunately this is when the Cromptons fish his body from the sea. He finally succeeds – at the very end of the saga – by jumping into the fiery mouth of Vesuvius.

I have barely scratched the surface of Varney the Vampire – literally a full book, indeed many volumes, could be written about him, his adventures and his likely impact on the genre. It can be a slog to read but the rewards are there for the genre fan, especially towards the end of the tale. I would recommend Herr’s critical edition as illustrated at the head of this article, which has copious footnotes and critical essays on Varney and the Penny Dreadful form itself.

Being Human gets a series

You might recall that I was rather impressed with the one off BBC comedy/drama Being Human. So, it seems, were the BBC and so a six part series is to be made due to air 2009. More details here.

Vamp or Not? Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay

Sometimes you want a little bit of sexploitation or maybe some fantastique. With its wondrous cover this 1971 flick by Bruno Gantillon would seem to be just the ticket. Plus it is on some vampire filmographies to boot. Its place must be questionable, however, hence doing a ‘Vamp or Not?’ article.

The start of the film is odd, to say the least. A young naked girl is tied and on trial. She is surrounded by old women and the proceedings are presided over by a makeup wearing man, whom we later realise is a hunchback dwarf named Gurth (Alfred Baillou). She has broken the rules and her punishment is to be cast out. She cries defiance, stating that all is illusion.

As I say, an odd start but in perfect keeping with the film, which has a surreal, dreamlike quality throughout that is reminiscent of Jean Rollin but, to be honest, not as lyrical as Rollin at his best.

Two girls drive through the countryside. They are Anna (Michéle Perello) and Françoise (Mireille Saunin). They take turns driving and, after a while, stop at an inn. The patrons are all male and older, a comment is made about the place still being in the middle ages. They order mulled wine and coffee to take away and notice Gurth looking at them. The innkeeper advises them not to drive through the village but to turn around and leave. When Gurth has gone they leave.

They drive for a while but, as night falls, they seem to be driving in circles and then the car runs out of petrol. They shelter in a barn – cue some lesbian heavy petting – and in the morning Anna has vanished. Françoise comes across Gurth who leads her through a forest until she sees a lakeside castle. Gurth vanishes.

There is a boat, of a (cheap looking) pre-Raphaelite design. When Françoise steps into it, it takes her (under its own steam) to the castle, where she is met by three chiffon wearing ladies, who lead her to their mistress Morgane (Dominique Delpierre) – the spelling difference from the title is due to a disparity twixt subtitles and English title. Morgane seems evasive of her questions and gets her stoned before going off to a ceremony with the three ladies.

This is in a cavern room, where Anna is tied up and here we get the crux of the vampirism. Morgane (yes she of Arthurian fame) is a spiritual vampire. She exists by taking the souls of young ladies and, in return, gives them eternal life and beauty. If they displease her they are thrown to the crones where they will age.

To be honest, that is a liberal interpretation. We do not see what Morgane does with the souls. If it were psychic vampirism she would consume the soul/spirit/lifeforce – but we do not know if she does. To say it is psychic vampirism is a leap at best.

Even if we take that leap we have the taking of souls for everlasting life and giving eternal youth and beauty, but… Well that’s all we really hear of it. Anna agrees to the pact and screams but we don’t see what happens to her. Later we see her and she seems spacey but happy. The need for souls is not mentioned again. To be fair it seems more like a thrown in extra and the majority of the film concerns Françoise and her attempt to escape Morgane and the enchanted realm she is in.

The film itself, as I mentioned, is dreamy. It is also somewhat slow and nothing really happens. There is an underlying philosophical question about femininity, youth and aging – this is answered subtly but not in great depth. There are some naked lesbian romps but, for a sexploitation, these are low in number. Beautiful photography and luscious sets cannot disguise the wafer thin story.

All in all I think the spiritual vampire aspect is so sparingly used that to class this as Vamp would be simply misleading. Flawed as a fantastique and sparing with its sexuality for a sexploitation this is interesting but not the best film to watch. I’m going Not Vamp and would suggest you are better off with Rollin.

The imdb page is here.

A Real Friend – review

Director: Enrique Urbizu

Release date: 2006

Contain spoilers

A Real Friend was on BBC 4 the other night and was one which I wondered about. Should I ‘Honourable Mention” it, should I ‘Vamp or Not?’ it. In the end I decided on review – whilst there is some question over whether you could class this a vampire film, the character Vampiro (Eduard Farelo) is a primary character and, whilst he is not actually a vampire – probably a spoiler too far – the main character Estrella (Nerea Inchausti) believes him to be a vampire and it is her perception of reality that is of primary importance to the film.

The film begins with a scene of the aftermath of a prison riot. Men are injured, gunshots still ring out. A man sits with a rosary. He is taken by a guard (for cash) to the morgue, where he inspects the charred remains of a prisoner. The prisoner has the tattoo of a star still visible upon his hand. Of course, we do not know where this scene takes place, we do not know it is a prison – we discover this later. We then see the man in a room, he is summoned by a girl as *he* has returned. He enters a building and goes through a room with an injured/murdered man. He enters a bedroom and shoots at a man escaping through a window.

Estrella is a young girl home alone, with a tray of food. She gets a DVD out and starts watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or an approximation of it). She seems emotionally drawn by the fate of Leatherface. Her mum, Angela (Goya Toledo), is a nurse and phones her to say she is on route home. By the time she gets to the apartment the news is on.

Estrella takes the trash out and draws, in her breath, a star on the mirror – the star is a recurring theme through the film, even with Estrella’s name. After doing her chore she hears a chainsaw, but in reality it is a motorbike in the parking area. She is drawn to a door and opens it. Leatherface is in the room, they shake hands. This is Estrella’s world, she is a loner, obviously intelligent, and the monsters she sees on screen become her friends.

Her mother does not approve. Though she will let her read horror books, she is opposed to movies. Estrella sneaks them home on DVD (how many of us did that with VHS!). To her the monsters are real, we see Leatherface in class with her, she even hits him when he reaches out towards another student. We see him wandering at the back of shots, quite often.

We then see her new friend, Vampiro. He is a vampire, to Estrella, who can come out in daylight and rides a motorbike. But, perhaps he is more real than some of her friends and more dangerous. More than that perhaps her friends are more real than we would believe or expect.

Given what I said at the head of the review you’d be forgiven in thinking that the film did not contain much lore and yet, very subtly, the film does refer to various genre lore. I have mentioned the sunlight reference and there is mention of mirrors also. The use of the cross is maintained by the presence of the Inspector who clutches a rosary whilst holding a gun and, with his poor aim, gives an impression of imperviousness to bullets on Vampiro’s part.

There is a subtle twist on the lore of invitation, with Estrella inviting Vampiro to supper. There is also the licking of a drop of blood, followed by a visual that, for the world, looks like a feed – though it is a kiss to the neck (itself followed by a death-like swoon) – and this is closely followed by a bloodied mouth visual. There is also a decapitation that, in itself, may not have been playing with genre staples but taken with the whole works its way in. Kudos to Urbizu for playing with these staples in, very often, the most delicate of ways.

The film is wonderfully surreal in places, a melting pot drawn from the imagination of a lonely girl. Nothing is quite what it seems, and there are dark secrets a plenty. Be they the secrets hidden by Angela, or the secret life led by Estrella’s teacher. The film is wonderfully circular as well – but I can say no more without spoiling too far.

The pace is downbeat, but purposefully so, and I was rather impressed by the performance given by the young actress Nerea Inchausti. Farelo looks the part as Vampiro.

This is an unusual, short (at 73 minutes) slice of surrealistic horror mixed in with forlorn fantasy. Many thanks to Ian who DVD-RW’d this for me, as it clashed with other programming. Worth catching 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Dr Shock’s Tales of Terror – review

Directed by: Douglas Agosti & Lance Otto Smith

Release date: 2003

Contains spoilers

Dr Shock’s Tales of Terror is an anthology of four short films and it is the first of those four, Bullet for a Vampire, which we are concerned with. This is not a portmanteau movie, leaving each individual tale hosted by the titular Dr Shock – a most annoying, overtly hyperactive creation.

The start of Bullet for a Vampire sees a man, Vyto Lucciani (Mark Standriff), watching a home movie, whilst flanked by a couple of heavies who also seem to be enjoying the show. It seems at first to be little more than a home video involving a pool party with middle age men and girls in bikinis but it becomes clear that it shows the execution of one of the men – something Vyto finds amusing as he is a gangster.

Cut to a fortune teller (Elena Pointinger) reading what would appear to be hand painted tarot-like cards. To be honest she is a rather annoying character with a faux accent but, despite being the lynch-pin of the story, she isn’t in it long. Her client is Vyto’s daughter Sophia (Chris-May Zeithami), a most spoilt little brat. The fortune teller predicts a man but then a skull card appears. She is fearful and will say no more, much to the disgust of Sophia who threatens her.

The fortune teller is leaving her shop when she is grabbed by a couple of Vyto’s goons and beaten in the car (something hinted not actually portrayed). They throw her out into the trash and leave her there. She wanders into a graveyard, heading straight for a crypt and it is clear she knows exactly where she is going.

She reaches a stone coffin and begins to say a spell over the place that has been a final resting place for fifty years. She pulls the lid back and the interior of the sarcophagus is full of smoke and light and a fanged skeleton. She summons this creature to get revenge for her. The fortune teller is no longer in the film so our ears are spared her scratchy cacophony of a voice from this moment.

Sophia is shopping and buys a rather expensive ($25K) necklace – acting all the while like a spoilt brat. When she gets outside the shop she is grabbed by a couple of mugger/rapists. The odd thing here is the filter used on the film. It is obviously used so that we ‘can’t tell’ that the outdoor scenes were shot in daylight – except that it is blooming obvious. A man (Timide) appears in the alley.

He runs at the mugger with a gun, twisting his arm and making him shoot himself and then breaks the other one’s neck. He accompanies, at her insistence, Sophia home and meets Vyto. Vyto offers the man, who introduces himself as Drake Uala, a job – which he excepts with the proviso that he work at night as he is allergic to the sun. Vyto doesn’t trust him however and has a thug keep an eye on.

That doesn’t stop him going to Sophia – having changed the modern clothes for something a little more gothic and melodramatic, including cape (!). We come across one of the vampire’s skills here – he can talk in another person’s voice. He bites Sophia and had quite a cool pulsating vein thing going on – if only they had stuck to that.

The next day Sophia looks like Hell – I mean she really does, you have to feel for the actress. Vyto sends one of his men to find Drake, who seems to have vanished and puts another on guard in respect of his daughter. However, as night falls so calls to the guard and her voice has changed timbre.

She attacks the guard and we get a Buffy type vampire effect with the face that was less impressive than the pulsating vein thing. Vyto comes in, realises what is going on and stakes his own daughter. However, this is not before he punches her and gets a fang embedded in his knuckle. Of course he still has to deal with Drake and Drake needs to get revenge on behalf of the fortune teller.

What else do we discover about vampires. As well as stealing voice Drake actually wears someone’s face as a disguise. They fear the cross and stakes are effective. I mentioned lens filters earlier and there is a strange effect that gives us vampiric vision – strange in that it is then not used again in the film and thus seemed pointless. Other than that our lore is limited. The story itself owes quite a bit to Innocent Blood, being a tale of vampires and mafia.

The acting in the ranges from poor to passable. I particularly liked Timide, not that he was a great actor but because he looked the part and had an almost Adrian Paul thing going on facially. However I was less then impressed with the filtered lens trying to disguise the day shots – cheap.

As always I am only scoring the vampire segment, which is just as well as it was easily the best segment of the entire movie. 2.5 out of 10 is about all I can muster for it, there were some neat ideas (face and voice stealing being primary ones) when one avoided the pure rip off aspects (Buffy face) and the more annoying performances. If I was judging the movie as a whole the score would drop considerably.

The imdb page is here.

Mis-fest - a final reminder

As is my want, I will likely be posting a regular reminder about upcoming Blackpool Goth/Horrorpunk festival Mis-Fest, organised by the lovely folks behind Misery of Sound. Over a weekend in June, the Friday night (20th June 2008) will be a club night – all DJ all night – and the Saturday (21st June 2008) will see 8 bands starting at 4PM and going late into the night.

The line-up is looking mighty fine:

Danse of the Dead – a local folk/Goth band, really worth a watch
The Cemetary Girlz - Over from France, one of the bands I don’t know
UFX – sleaze rock, I can’t say too much as the lead singer is an old friend, but they are good
The Eternal Fall – a Spanish Trad Goth band, I saw them last year and they are fantastic
Pink Hearse – a local all girl horrorpunk band who do a cracking version of Creature of the Night
Eyaculacion Post Mortem – Over from Spain, the other band I have not seen before
Screaming Banshee Aircrew – a fantastic Goth act with a touch of Vaudeville and a sense of humour
Zombina and the Skeletones – I love this lot and have embedded their Punk Rock Vampires Destroy video below.

Pre-ordered tickets are £15, an absolute bargain. Plus I’ll be there, so if you spot me say hello.