'Tis the season and all that... Hope you all have a great Halloween and keep coming to Taliesin Meets the Vampires... Up soon is a 'Vamp or Not?' for "Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire".
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Happy Halloween
Monday, October 30, 2006
The Greatest Ever Scary Movies
The UK Channel 5 last night transmitted another scary film list – this time a viewer voted top 40 scary films.
There was only one vampire entry and I found the choice odd as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), at number 33, isn’t my idea of the scariest vampire movie made.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Honourable Mentions: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Whilst I realise that this Tim Burton story, directed by Henry Selick and released in 1993 isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I must admit that I love this movie. I waited a year to see it on the big screen, from its original US release, the film being delayed 12 months before it was released in the UK cinemas and bought the VHS when that was released a year later. It was one of the first Videos I upgraded to DVD. Now-a-days it is a firm holiday favourite in my house, actually the one Christmas movie I can stomach.
The basic story is that Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, is bored by his work – every year the same old frights. In his dejection he finds a set of doorways to other holidays and falls into the Christmas Town doorway.
Mystified and enamoured by what he sees he decides that he will run Christmas, having Santa kidnapped and getting the denizens of Halloween Town to create the Christmas gifts. Of course, as Jack has no idea of the nature of Christmas, it all goes horribly wrong.
Through the film we see the unrequited love felt for him by Sally, the only one who can see that he is making a horrible mistake.
The film is stop-motion animated and a musical, and it is the musical aspects that often put people off this movie. But why, you might ask, the honourable mention? Four of the denizens of Halloween Town are vampires. They have minor roles to play, reporting (when Jack goes missing) that they searched behind the Cyclops’ eye. Also, we see them building toys for Christmas, including a vicious looking duck with bleeding bullet holes.
It was nice to see that the model makers decided to have both standard side fangs and Nosferatuan front fangs. Their accents, of course, are mock-Transylvanian.
Their role is way too small to suggest that this is, in any way, a vampire movie. However their presence affords this magical film an honourable mention.
The DVD also has the Tim Burton shorts Frankenweenie (1984) and the marvellous Vincent (1983) about a little boy who wants to be Vincent Price.
The film has got a new lease of life, having been re-released in 3D. The 3D film has a homepage here.
The imdb page is here.
The basic story is that Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, is bored by his work – every year the same old frights. In his dejection he finds a set of doorways to other holidays and falls into the Christmas Town doorway.
Mystified and enamoured by what he sees he decides that he will run Christmas, having Santa kidnapped and getting the denizens of Halloween Town to create the Christmas gifts. Of course, as Jack has no idea of the nature of Christmas, it all goes horribly wrong.
Through the film we see the unrequited love felt for him by Sally, the only one who can see that he is making a horrible mistake.
The film is stop-motion animated and a musical, and it is the musical aspects that often put people off this movie. But why, you might ask, the honourable mention? Four of the denizens of Halloween Town are vampires. They have minor roles to play, reporting (when Jack goes missing) that they searched behind the Cyclops’ eye. Also, we see them building toys for Christmas, including a vicious looking duck with bleeding bullet holes.
It was nice to see that the model makers decided to have both standard side fangs and Nosferatuan front fangs. Their accents, of course, are mock-Transylvanian.Their role is way too small to suggest that this is, in any way, a vampire movie. However their presence affords this magical film an honourable mention.
The DVD also has the Tim Burton shorts Frankenweenie (1984) and the marvellous Vincent (1983) about a little boy who wants to be Vincent Price.The film has got a new lease of life, having been re-released in 3D. The 3D film has a homepage here.
The imdb page is here.
100 greatest scary moments
Last night Channel 4 (UK) repeated their 100 greatest Scary Moments on their alternative E4 channel- typical Halloween programming that I missed in total last year.
It was nice to see several vampires, a genre not really known for being terrifying as much as I love it, hitting the top 100.
At 90 we had Dracula (1931) - entered for Bela’s performance.
We then jump to 42 and the scene of Ralphie Glick at the window in Salem’s Lot (1979).
At 38 was Nosferatu (1922) and just ahead at 36 was Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) - though this entry was more for Christopher Lee as Dracula in total, rather than just the one film.
At 25 was “Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997+)”, though it is a little bit of a cheat mentioning it because it was for the episode ‘Hush’ with the Gentlemen – not actually vampires but a great episode.
The highest vampiric entry was at 24 for the “League of Gentlemen – Christmas Special (2002)”. Again, not solely vampire - though they were in it, this was the Christmas special for a British comedy and one I must admit I have not seen as I was never a huge fan of the series.
Anyway, nice to see vampires getting into a viewer polled list and if you want to check the non-vampire entries click the link at the head of this article.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Vamp or Not? The Norliss Tapes
Contains spoilers
This Dan Curtis directed TV movie from 1973 shares quite a lot of the Kolchak legacy, beyond the fact that Curtis was heavily involved in both productions. Kolchak was a reporter who believed in the supernatural and got drawn into occult based investigations. David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) was a writer, working on an investigative book debunking the occult especially charlatan spiritualists who made money out of the beliefs of others, who got drawn into cases that made him a believer. Both started life as made for TV movies, both piloted to open a further series, which Kolchak got and Norliss did not. Perhaps that was because Norliss was a lot darker in essence.
The film begins with Norliss ringing his editor;
he has been working on his book for a year but has not written anything. He wants to see his editor, Sanford T Evans (Don Porter), that day, when the next day is suggested he claims it may be too late. The editor keeps the meeting but Norliss doesn’t show, he vanishes from the face of the earth and all the editor is left with is a series of tapes, his notes, if you will, of his investigations. This film is the story on the first tape. Obviously, if it made series, each tape was to be an episode.
In this Norliss is contacted by an Ellen Cort (Angie Dickinson), recent wealthy widow of sculptor James Cort (Nick Dimitri). She was awakened the night before by her dog barking. She took a shotgun and her dog led her to her husband’s studio, a building separate
to the main house. In there a man lurches out of the shadows, blue/grey of face. He kills the dog with ease and turns on Ellen who blasts him with the shotgun and, rather sensibly, runs. By the time the cops arrive the body is gone. They believe she missed when she shot the intruder and do not believe her claim that the man was her husband returned from the grave.
She tells Norliss that her husband had been diagnosed with an incurable brain disease that left him wheelchair bound before he died. However he became obsessed with the occult and made a deal with an occultist, Madame Jeckiel (Vonetta McGee), the details of the deal unknown to Ellen. Jeckiel gave him an Osiris scarab ring which his will stipulated he be buried with.
Before Norliss gets to visit Ellen a young woman, Millie, is attacked by Cort. He lunges at her from the back seat of her car and strangles her, causing her to crash. When the police are called to the crash by a passing trucker they discover that, whilst cause of death was strangulation, her body has been drained of blood. The Sheriff, Tom Hartley (Claude Akins playing fairly much the same character, with a different name, that he did in the first Kolchak movie, The Night Stalker), wants this kept quiet. Norliss, with a gut hunch, believes that his case and that of the dead girl are connected. How right he is.
So far, so good, in a vampire sense. We have a man returned from the grave. He is impervious to bullets and we have a drained victim. He is immensely strong, we see him wrench the door of a car at one point, and has freakishly portrayed eyes.
This Dan Curtis directed TV movie from 1973 shares quite a lot of the Kolchak legacy, beyond the fact that Curtis was heavily involved in both productions. Kolchak was a reporter who believed in the supernatural and got drawn into occult based investigations. David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) was a writer, working on an investigative book debunking the occult especially charlatan spiritualists who made money out of the beliefs of others, who got drawn into cases that made him a believer. Both started life as made for TV movies, both piloted to open a further series, which Kolchak got and Norliss did not. Perhaps that was because Norliss was a lot darker in essence.
The film begins with Norliss ringing his editor;
he has been working on his book for a year but has not written anything. He wants to see his editor, Sanford T Evans (Don Porter), that day, when the next day is suggested he claims it may be too late. The editor keeps the meeting but Norliss doesn’t show, he vanishes from the face of the earth and all the editor is left with is a series of tapes, his notes, if you will, of his investigations. This film is the story on the first tape. Obviously, if it made series, each tape was to be an episode.In this Norliss is contacted by an Ellen Cort (Angie Dickinson), recent wealthy widow of sculptor James Cort (Nick Dimitri). She was awakened the night before by her dog barking. She took a shotgun and her dog led her to her husband’s studio, a building separate
to the main house. In there a man lurches out of the shadows, blue/grey of face. He kills the dog with ease and turns on Ellen who blasts him with the shotgun and, rather sensibly, runs. By the time the cops arrive the body is gone. They believe she missed when she shot the intruder and do not believe her claim that the man was her husband returned from the grave.She tells Norliss that her husband had been diagnosed with an incurable brain disease that left him wheelchair bound before he died. However he became obsessed with the occult and made a deal with an occultist, Madame Jeckiel (Vonetta McGee), the details of the deal unknown to Ellen. Jeckiel gave him an Osiris scarab ring which his will stipulated he be buried with.
Before Norliss gets to visit Ellen a young woman, Millie, is attacked by Cort. He lunges at her from the back seat of her car and strangles her, causing her to crash. When the police are called to the crash by a passing trucker they discover that, whilst cause of death was strangulation, her body has been drained of blood. The Sheriff, Tom Hartley (Claude Akins playing fairly much the same character, with a different name, that he did in the first Kolchak movie, The Night Stalker), wants this kept quiet. Norliss, with a gut hunch, believes that his case and that of the dead girl are connected. How right he is.
So far, so good, in a vampire sense. We have a man returned from the grave. He is impervious to bullets and we have a drained victim. He is immensely strong, we see him wrench the door of a car at one point, and has freakishly portrayed eyes. Later we discover, when
Norliss and Ellen go to the crypt, that he is back in his coffin. Thus we are led to believe that he only functions at night and this is confirmed later when Madame Jeckiel confesses the truth of what is occurring and tries to make good for the evil she has wrought.Things are not so simple. Cort is fairly inarticulate, he mainly groans and roars. He does seem to mumble an occult ritual at the end and say “Ellen,” at one point. To a degree he is much more zombie like, though this would be one of the earliest
examples of a running zombie, and he is actually referred to as a zombie at one point, but never is the word vampire used except in a disparaging reference to the headline the press would produce if they discovered that Millie was drained of blood – “Vampire killer loose in Monterey.” On the other hand, towards the end of the film, when Cort groans her name, he obviously recognises Ellen and lets her go – not normal zombie behaviour as it displays complex memory and feeling and, of course, zombies are not known for their inability to function in daylight.The blood draining is a red herring also. We discover later that Cort is making a statue and, it turns out, this is of the demon Sargoth (Bob Schott).
Essentially he was given the ring in a deal that it would grant him the ability to rise from the grave and in return he would use his skills as an artist to create a statue of the demon and be granted, there after, true immortality. The clay he uses is made with 40% human blood and the statue is to serve as a vessel to allow Sargoth to walk the earth. In other words Cort’s rising from the dead is at the behest of a demon and blood gathering (and not drinking) is secondary to his resurrection.Can he be killed? Ellen and Jeckiel try to stop him by finding him during the day and taking the ring off him. Of course the signet ring is a favourite prop in Hammer’s Dracula Cycle, but removal of the ring doesn’t normally stop the vampire.
In the end Norliss puts an alchemical blood circle around the statue and, when Cort completes the statue and the demon comes to life, he sets it on fire. This is meant to prevent anything within from leaving and the resulting inferno devours the studio. The next day Cort’s charred bones are found. However, it wasn’t clear to me whether the fire killed him or the displeased demon withdrew the spark of life from the corpse – the demon did turn on Cort when it discovered it was trapped.This is a hard one to classify; it certainly has vampirish overtones, as well as zombie overtones and demonic overtones (in the source of the resurrection). It is also a film that appears regularly on vampire filmographies. Ultimately, however, I am tempted to go for not vamp (and yet discreetly secrete the DVD amongst my vampire collection in case I change my mind).
That said, I had been looking forward to watching this film and really did enjoy it, despite the fact that it was so heavily 70s that it hadn’t aged particularly well. I have read some disparaging comments about the noir styled voiceovers, but they added to the atmosphere for me and I feel that it is a great shame this was never picked up as a series. Whilst its premise was very similar to Kolchak it was darker and the central characters were very different, Kolchak dogged yet mischievous, Norliss dour and, certainly just before he vanished, terrified. I’d recommend fans of horror generally to give this one a watch – Sargoth, might have looked like a Hulk reject at the end but, overall, this was a class piece of TV cinema.
The imdb page is here.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Vampire Beach Babes - show and future news
Last night saw the the vampire beach babes playing the Misery of Sound.
The band played (mainly) their new material, which is a lot darker than their older songs, however it was great to hear. Also, great fun, was the couple of old tracks they played. It was a good tight set and thoroughly enjoyable.
I spoke to lead singer Baron Marcus afterwards and, as well as seeming a really nice chap who gave me an advanced demo ep (thanks for that, much appreciated), we arranged that once the band finish their current tour we’d talk about doing an interview for Taliesin Meets the Vampires. This is somewhat of a departure, I’ve not done interviews before, so I’m rather excited about the prospect.
Stay tuned for more later...
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Vampire Beach Babes - a final reminder
A final reminder that the goth/surf band the vampire beach babes are playing the Misery of Sound, Blackpool, tomorrow night. Misery of sound is located above The West Coast Rock Cafe.
It is probably too late to get a ticket now but it is £4.00 on the door.
As I'm going to the gig there is unlikely to be a Taliesin Meets the Vampires post tomorrow (unless some interesting small news snippet floats my way) but normal services will resume the day after - likely with a few thoughts about VBB's show.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
New Film - Revamped
Having just reviewed Vamp it was a nice coincidence to discover, via Vamp News, that Billy Drago has a new vampire film due for release.
There is a rather nice looking homepage with a trailer that looked none too shabby and, with Fred Williamson and Jason Carter in it, I can say that I am really quite excited about this one. The synopsis is as follows:
"When successful businessman Richard Clarke is bitten by a beautiful Vampire, he is transformed into a creature of the night and plunges into the dark world of the supernatural.
"Richard very quickly realizes that immortality isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be and must fight for survival when a militaristic Team of Vampire Hunters, The S.T.A.K.E. Team, discover his existence. Richard is separated from Lilith, the beautiful vampire that originally “turned him”. Searching for his eternal Soulmate, Richard winds up in Club Synister where a Goth promises to lead him to her. He takes him downstairs to a private party, which turns out to be the set for a snuff film.
"When a female Vampire-Dominatrix viciously kills her leading man, it becomes obvious that Richard is about to become the next star of the film. When the Dominatrix realizes that Richard is also a Vampire, she and the crew soon become the unwitting talent for their own production.
"After viewing the carnage in Club Synisters basement, two L.A. Detectives develop the film and discover Richard’s existence along with his face on celluloid. Through a bizarre course of events, Richard is finally reunited with Lilith, but their bliss is cut short, when they are ambushed by the S.T.A.K.E. Team.
"Barely surviving, Richard’s presence is brought to the attention of The BLEEDERS, a savage underground gang of Vampires bent on survival at all costs.
"The BLEEDERS capture Richard and are attacked by the S.T.A.K.E. Team. All Hell breaks loose and it turns into a war for survival and no one is taking any prisoner’s. Let the Bloodbath begin!"
Monday, October 23, 2006
Vamp - review
Release Date: 1986
Contains spoilers
Vamp was a film, I must admit, that I missed in the 80s and have now seen, some twenty years after original release, on the Anchor Bay DVD release. Being Anchor Bay, this is chock full of extras and I intend to do a bonus section at the end of this on an early Wenk production, “Dracula Bites the Big Apple” a twenty Two minute short film also on the DVD.
The biggest problem with this film is that it is, ostensibly, a comedy and yet it failed to raise much of a smile never mind a guffaw. That said it is a nice looking film, with some idiosyncratic and fetching cinematography.
The story itself is very basic, we begin with robed figures dragging two men, in their underwear, into a gothic looking building. They are taken to a room as atmospherically stirring classical music plays, a room which contains a hanged figure and two nooses. The nooses are placed around their necks as a figure intones and… the music and voice screw up as a tape is chewed.
This is the frat initiation for AJ (Robert Rusler) and Keith (Chris Makepiece). AJ has a bit of a mouth on him and berates the frat for such a pathetic initiation prank and says he can get them anything for their upcoming party – in return for frat membership. The task – get a stripper.Several futile phone calls later, during which scene we discover that Keith is a dead aim with a bow, and the only solution seems to be a road trip to hire a real stripper. The nearest city is two hundred miles from the school so they enlist the help of rich nerd Duncan (Gedde Watanabe) who has a car. Off they set and reach the city, deciding to go to the After Dark Club.
There is an interesting, and yet largely unexplored moment, as they enter the city and nearly crash. The car seems to spin for an extremely long time and, when the spin ends, they are in a deserted street on the wrong side of the tracks. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” is the comment and it is as though they have passed into another world. Perhaps it was meant to be just a throw away referential scene, we will see another Wizard of Oz connection in the bonus section with regards Wenk’s work, but I found this interesting.
This otherworld they enter into really isn’t Kansas anymore, a world of strange green and pink neon lighting, vampires and albino gangs… but I get ahead of myself. The guys go to a coffee bar, wondering what time they should go to the club as it opens after dark.
Hearing this, the owner checks the time and gets ready to leave, putting on priest garb and a large cross. However some girls enter with an albino, known as Snow (Billy Drago). There follows some animosity between Snow and AJ and Keith (Duncan is in the bathroom) after Keith reacts to one of the girls rotten teeth. AJ settles this in a macho moment but it leads to various amounts of trouble with an all albino gang later.They get to the club. AJ goes in first and, by the time Keith and Duncan get in, AJ is by a bar on his own and the others take a table.
A waitress approaches Keith saying that she knows him; we later discover she is Amaretto (Dedee Pfeiffer). Eventually a dancer comes out, her face whitened and, below her dress, she is daubed in body paint and her dance can only be described as avant-garde. She is Katrina (Grace Jones) and AJ decides she is the one for the frat party.AJ is taken backstage and eventually meets Katrina. She comes onto him heavily and he believes his luck is in.
How wrong he is. Katrina morphs into a particularly ugly looking vampire and there is a very nice feeding scene here. It is all a mistake, however. The strip joint is owned and run by vampires, most of the staff are vampires (or Renfield types), but they only feed from the loners who wouldn’t be missed, they have not realised that AJ is with friends. For Keith the night goes from bad to worse…The film should have worked, with interesting lighting and not a bad (if simple) premise. The comedy falls flat but the real problem is that the film does not seem to hold together very well. None of the performance are bad, Pfeiffer as Amaretto (or so the character is listed as on imdb, I heard the name Alison Hicks) is cute and there is something very likeable about Makepeace. Grace Jones is under used but is mysterious and, well just plain old Grace Jones weird when she is used, and yet nothing really stands out. The Duncan character was just annoying, though he was meant to be, but is not in the film that much if the truth be told.
The joint itself seems a little under-seedy. Years later Rodriguez would realise the perfect vampire strip joint in “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn” (1996). This feels a little wrong. The albino gang was just one weirdness too far, it made very little sense and felt like an attempt to get a cheap laugh. There is intimation that Katrina is Egyptian, possibly a Nefertiti type. This was subtly done but could have stood for more exploration.
The vampires are fairly standard, with some monstrous morphing. A stake
through the heart, fire and sunlight will destroy and they cast no reflection. There is a nice moment, early on, with two dancers getting ready. The mirror space between them is empty and they apply makeup to each other. There is a child vampire and that led to an excellently realised scene where she attacks one of the albino gang. She truly is one of the creepier things about the film.The film, unfortunately, just seemed to go on and on, in fact there seemed to be several endings.
It should come as no surprise that AJ comes back as a vampire and there is a good attempt at making you wonder whether Amaretto is one of the undead or not. One nice part, despite being a little silly, is this is the first movie that I am aware of that includes a vampire dying because of stake by stiletto heel – the screenshot doesn’t really do this justice.The film has nothing essentially wrong with it, but on the other hand it does not excel in any way (bar the green and pink looking rather good as a lighting scheme).
The imdb page is here.
Bonus Bit – Dracula Bites the Big Apple
Director: Richard WenkRelease date: 1979
Contains spoilers
This bonus extra on the Vamp disc was a short student film by Wenk, shot over three days for $6000. It tells the story of Dracula (Peter Loewy), bored with the flat tasteless blood of Transylvania, moving to New York.
The opening sequences are sepia in tone and subtitled - my knowledge of languages is not exactly wide but I suspect the spoken dialogue (including a Hamlet quote) was in Romanian (or at least was meant to be). When Dracula gets to NY we shift into colour. He disembarks his plane (everyone, hostesses and fellow passengers, are feeling their necks) and is met by Renfield (Barry Golmolka).To a degree this reminded me of the Tom and Jerry short cartoon, “Mouse in Manhattan” (1945), where Jerry runs away to New York, I’m sorry but it did. Essentially Dracula is out of his depth, trying to cope with metropolitan life. In the Tom and Jerry short there is a dance sequence, in this we get a song and dance moment with Dracula singing “Dancing in the Moonlight”.
His coffin case goes
missing and whilst Renfield tries to find it he tries to find a victim, to no avail. There is one particular girl (Karen Tull) who takes his fancy. After negotiating a turnstile he tries to have his toothsome way with her in a subway, complete with cloak below eyes and finds his cloak painted by a graffiti artist. Later he swoops upon her in her home, the lights come on and it’s a surprise party.He tries to get into Steve Rubell’s club (played by himself) and is refused entrance as he can’t dance, despite the ability to transform into a bat. The budget wouldn’t stretch to a proper bat so we have a couple of wings and a Photostat of the actor’s face and a subtitle that says simulation – this was so self-effacing it worked.
Of course, like Jerry, Dracula eventually gives up on the City and leaves the city for home – though Dracula uses his coffin as a raft. In this scene as Dracula states “There’s no place like home.” We hear Renfield hum “Over the Rainbow” – this, of course, is the Wizard of Oz reference I mentioned in the Vamp review.All in all this is a silly but satisfying little short. Not high art and terribly seventies but a nice addition to the Vamp DVD.
The imdb page is here.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Honourable Mentions: Creatures of the Night by Rosie Lugosi
I have mentioned Rosie Lugosi a few times on the blog. Rosie was an original member of the 80’s Goth band, the March Violets. Now she is a performance poet and Vampire Queen.
Creatures of the Night is a book of her performance poetry, some her twisted song lyrics (where she self admittedly takes well known songs that people cherish and subverts in ways that make it impossible to hear that song in the same way again) and her poetry.
The reason this gets an Honourable Mention, rather than a review, is because her poetry looks at many aspects of life and is not simply vampire related.
There are some vampire related pieces. “V-a-m-p-i-r-e”, which is performed live to the music of “Respect”, is a great example of Rosie twisting lyrics to her own dark sensibilities. “Why I wear Black #1”, is specifically vampire orientated also. There is a second, non-vampiric, “Why I wear Black”.
The poetry is enjoyable, cleverly constructed and with a strong sense of humour running through the verse. There is often an adult theme and I mention this only because, if such things offend, then perhaps this is not for you.
Personal favourites, and none vampiric, are the sublime “Succubus” and the incredibly funny tribute to John Cooper Clarke, “I Made the Horror Films” (which never scared) – where else will you find reference to Rosemary’s Baby Bouncer, the Wicker Basket Man and the Satanic Kites of Dracula!
The book is available directly through Rosie’s website.
Creatures of the Night is a book of her performance poetry, some her twisted song lyrics (where she self admittedly takes well known songs that people cherish and subverts in ways that make it impossible to hear that song in the same way again) and her poetry.
The reason this gets an Honourable Mention, rather than a review, is because her poetry looks at many aspects of life and is not simply vampire related.
There are some vampire related pieces. “V-a-m-p-i-r-e”, which is performed live to the music of “Respect”, is a great example of Rosie twisting lyrics to her own dark sensibilities. “Why I wear Black #1”, is specifically vampire orientated also. There is a second, non-vampiric, “Why I wear Black”.
The poetry is enjoyable, cleverly constructed and with a strong sense of humour running through the verse. There is often an adult theme and I mention this only because, if such things offend, then perhaps this is not for you.
Personal favourites, and none vampiric, are the sublime “Succubus” and the incredibly funny tribute to John Cooper Clarke, “I Made the Horror Films” (which never scared) – where else will you find reference to Rosemary’s Baby Bouncer, the Wicker Basket Man and the Satanic Kites of Dracula!
The book is available directly through Rosie’s website.
Rosie Lugosi - another fine performance
Many thanks to Rosie Lugosi for another excellent performance. One potential problem with the evening was that the organisers had neglected to acquire a PA system for the night. Rosie puts songs as well as poetry into her performance and, because of this, she was unable to play her backing tracks. It is a testament to her, therefore that she still performed her songs and the lack of a backing track allowed us to see just how strong her voice truly is. Wonderful stuff and a consummate professional.
If you fancy hearing some of those songs there is an official bootleg CD, email Rosie via her website for details. I purchased her book of poetry, Creatures of the Night, see the Honourable Mention above for details.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
The Balloon Manor
Located at the Medley Centre, in Irondequoit, NY (near Rochester), USA, this is a genius concept. A haunted house made entirely from balloons. The picture here is of a vampire in the house (which I’ve inverted as it was hanging upside down).
All profits from visits to this go to cancer charities.
A homepage, with interactive tour, is here.
All profits from visits to this go to cancer charities.
A homepage, with interactive tour, is here.
Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires: The Curse of Ed Wood - review
Directed by: Tim Swartz
Release Date: 1999 according to disc, 2003 by IMDb
Contains Spoilers
The best I can say about this film is that it should win an award for the name. Other than that…
Release Date: 1999 according to disc, 2003 by IMDb
Contains Spoilers
The best I can say about this film is that it should win an award for the name. Other than that…
We begin in a movie lot and then get a voice over about a man who seeks deviant pleasures, a man who is known as Beelzebub or simply the Beast. The voice over refers to Mr Creepo, the host of the film, 
who we then see entering a cemetery in order to raise the spirit of Ed Wood in order to save the movie production. He appears a couple of times in the proceedings, although to associate the name Ed Wood with this film is to do the B movie director a disservice.
We cut to a house and then a softcore lesbian scene, enacted between Lilith (Stephanie Bloode) and her lover (Theda Baire).
What to say about this? Erotic… no. Sexy… no. This is a dismal scene with lots of stroking and badly dubbed gasping. Occasionally we see two red lights (I guess they were meant to be eyes) and a bat, which is screenshot here. At least Creepo has the good grace to admit that the bat was shabby in the centre part of the film.
The next day Lilith asks for commitment and her lover says no, so she walks out. Cue scenes of her in the city and awfully 80s soap opera music.
She is approached by Carmilla (Lolita Langsuir), a strange girl with, as the screenshot demonstrates, the largest chin in the vampire movie industry, who speaks in third person for no good reason. Cue skipping through a graveyard, into a crypt/dungeon and another tame softcore lesbian encounter, this time with red filters on the lens or red lighting. This ends with some biting then… I can’t go on describing this. Suffice it to say Carmilla has chosen Lillith as her mate, there is a vampire slayer named Muffy (Circe) – oh gee that’s a funny name – who enlists the help of Lilith’s lover in order that they might save Lilith. There are several softcore scenes including a tame S&M scene and a bloodbath with two girls that is actually a water shower with a pack of blood hung up nearby and squirted. The twist ending is so obvious that if you don’t spot it I’d give up watching films.
Let’s get to the really bad parts. The acting is so bad it just cannot be described. The film quality is awful. There is a section of the film where sound is lost and you can only hear scrapping of the mike and I don’t believe it was an issue with the actual DVD but a problem on film.
One vampire gets staked and the stake is held at her breast by herself – at one point you see her lift it up from her body. She burns, and the screenshot here illustrates the 'quality' of that 'special' effect.
who we then see entering a cemetery in order to raise the spirit of Ed Wood in order to save the movie production. He appears a couple of times in the proceedings, although to associate the name Ed Wood with this film is to do the B movie director a disservice.We cut to a house and then a softcore lesbian scene, enacted between Lilith (Stephanie Bloode) and her lover (Theda Baire).
What to say about this? Erotic… no. Sexy… no. This is a dismal scene with lots of stroking and badly dubbed gasping. Occasionally we see two red lights (I guess they were meant to be eyes) and a bat, which is screenshot here. At least Creepo has the good grace to admit that the bat was shabby in the centre part of the film.The next day Lilith asks for commitment and her lover says no, so she walks out. Cue scenes of her in the city and awfully 80s soap opera music.
She is approached by Carmilla (Lolita Langsuir), a strange girl with, as the screenshot demonstrates, the largest chin in the vampire movie industry, who speaks in third person for no good reason. Cue skipping through a graveyard, into a crypt/dungeon and another tame softcore lesbian encounter, this time with red filters on the lens or red lighting. This ends with some biting then… I can’t go on describing this. Suffice it to say Carmilla has chosen Lillith as her mate, there is a vampire slayer named Muffy (Circe) – oh gee that’s a funny name – who enlists the help of Lilith’s lover in order that they might save Lilith. There are several softcore scenes including a tame S&M scene and a bloodbath with two girls that is actually a water shower with a pack of blood hung up nearby and squirted. The twist ending is so obvious that if you don’t spot it I’d give up watching films.Let’s get to the really bad parts. The acting is so bad it just cannot be described. The film quality is awful. There is a section of the film where sound is lost and you can only hear scrapping of the mike and I don’t believe it was an issue with the actual DVD but a problem on film.
One vampire gets staked and the stake is held at her breast by herself – at one point you see her lift it up from her body. She burns, and the screenshot here illustrates the 'quality' of that 'special' effect. We get repeated setting shots of the same statue and sunset scene. There are cheap plastic fangs on some of the vampires and in one shot they come loose and the vampire pushes them back up by tongue. We see a newly turned vampire rise from the grave, but it is actually, and very obviously, from a pile of leaves.
In the fight finale we see Muffy, who has the power to turn water into holy water (!), turn her back to camera and we can see the mike pack on her waistband. The list could go on and on.Now, even worse… the desecration. There is a scene where Muffy gives us the background on vampires to a series of stills, including stills from Nosferatu (1922). Before I declare “How dare they!” to that, I’ve got to say that referencing Carmilla was an even greater sin.
I suppose this could have been so bad it was funny, but it was just painful. I kept checking the time, to see how long I had to endure this, as I watched and the only reason I didn’t switch this off was because I was reviewing it; having spent money for the dubious honour of watching this wouldn’t have been enough to make me keep it on. Pendulum Pictures should be ashamed of themselves for foisting this onto the Brutal Bloodsuckers DVD and thus an unsuspecting public. There is nothing in it to recommend this movie, 0 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Music: Gnarls Barkley
Lifeblood – review
Directed by: Steven J. Niles
Release Date: 2006
Contains spoilers
I was really looking forward to this one. The write up on the back of the Brutal Bloodsuckers DVD box gave nothing away plot-wise, simply stating “Destinies intertwine in a tale of gothic horror and intrigue set in the seedy underbelly of Philadelphia. ‘Lifeblood’ is a suspenseful neo-noir, featuring music from some of Philadelphia’s hottest Goth industrial bands including a special appearance by Carfax.” That would be Carfax Abbey, who do appear and who I have a fondness for (though, as they cover it, one imagines that it would have been somewhat amusing if they had played “Cry Little Sister” originally from the Lost Boys soundtrack).
So were did it go wrong? The film begins with a couple of nuns in a church and a man entering behind them and we can see the two main places it went awfully wrong immediately. Firstly, and it might just be the print used on this DVD, the film was awfully dark – so dark in fact that at times through the film you cannot see what was going on, which is just plain annoying. Then we had the dialogue and the delivery thereof, it truly was risible - one might say stagey but it wasn’t just that, there was a raft of bad delivery running throughout the film (mainly, in fairness, with more minor characters). This is a shame because the film contained some good ideas.
Anyway the man is a vampire, we later discover to be called Demetrius (Kevin D Spotts), he is searching for some ashes, kills one nun and then, after telling the second “Everyone should sin once before they die,” spots where she glances and then stabs her. Things vampiric to note here, the vampires can obviously enter holy ground, Demetrius moves with inhuman speed at one point and uses a blade (although later we see that the vampires sometimes use fangs).
In the city a man picks up a prostitute and they drive off and go to her apartment. She tells him to make himself comfortable and whilst she is out of the room he takes out surgical instruments, lays them out and then hides them below a magazine. She returns and after some banter she suddenly slashes his throat and begins to feed. This was a really nice turn around, it built up to him being the vampire
(one guesses he was just a common or garden serial killer/nutter) and switches ground quickly. A man enters, who we later discover to be Carl Spencer (Steven J Niles, the director and not the comic book author) and fights the vampire. He nails her hands to the floor (a nice moment again) and demands to know where Demetrius is, she doesn’t tell until he threatens her with a stake and then tells him to find a drug dealer called M.D. (Greg Niles). He is going to leave but then, after a taunt from the vampire, stakes her. Once staked she begins to burn, he leaves and as he walks through the street an explosion bursts through the apartment – a nice touch but not repeated, other vampires, when staked, burn but there are no big explosions thereafter. Unfortunately the burning is obviously digitally produced and looks poor.
In a club, where Carfax Abbey are playing, we ‘see’ many of the main players. I put ‘see’ in inverted commas as the visuals are so dark we actually see very little. Spencer enters the club to speak to a mystery man (a mystery because we cannot see him) who put him onto the whore and asks where he might find M.D. We meet Clara (Kimberley Niles) who is out with her friends. One of her friends, Tilly (Emily Lopizzo) meets Demetrius and goes off with him. Not long after a drunken Clara decides to leave and then Spencer, somehow, detects Demetrius and goes running out after him. Demetrius has a taste of Tilly, decides she isn’t the one he’s looking for, and eats her anyway. Spencer sees him and chases after him. Demetrius escapes, I think, by wall climbing but it was too dark to tell for sure. Clara finds her friends body and is found in turn by Spencer. She won’t call the cops as she is wanted (for robbery we later discover) so he calls the cops and then drives her home.
Clara has puked in his car and is out of it when Spencer gets her home to her worried sister, Sheila (Marci Tint-Kotay). Sheila is ill and, later in the film we discover that she has a mystery blood disease that killed her mother and that Clara is likely to come down with also.
Demetrius returns to the vampire hold-up, the vampires reminded me of the coven from Underworld,
it had the same decadent ‘new romantic’ feel, though in a warehouse not a mansion. He is tackled by Wraithwood (Jef Kelly) leader of the vampires. I did actually quite like the character in a foppish, faux-British upper class accent way and he gave one of the better performances. Demetrius is searching for the two descendants, whose blood can resurrect the Countess Vrana (Kathryn Matuch). The Countess was burnt at the stake 300 years previously and it is her ashes that were searched for earlier. Can you guess who the descendants might be?
The vampires come in two varieties, purebreds and transformed.
Demetrius is a transformed and can be killed by staking, no one knows how to kill a purebred (though one guesses burning at the stake was, at least, a temporary solution – temporary as they can be resurrected). The transformed’s bodies work at a higher rate, hence their need for blood. The drug dealer M.D. does say that they do not need nor want chemical stimulants (so why some of the vampires in the warehouse are smoking is beyond me) but he sells them blood. They can go out in daylight, although they dislike it, without ill effect. The mystery illness affecting the sisters (descendants of the countess) is untapped vampirism that, as they don’t feed it blood, is eating them alive.
I said there are some nice moments and there are. Spencer’s wife, Angela (Leah Schmidt),
was killed by Demetrius, hence his hunting the vampires. There is a well crafted moment when we see him both in real time with a stake and in flashback with a rose, going to see his wife and finding her being fed on. His wife’s spectral appearances as his conscience also works well, more for the fact that he seemed to ignore her as much as he ignored her when she was alive (as seen in a dream memory) as anything.
The acting, as I say, was not brilliant in the main. Some of this seemed to stem from bad dialogue,
this was especially the case with regards M.D. who had the worst case of bad street slang I’ve heard in a long time. That said Steven J Niles as Spencer worked, in the main, though he never really struck me as an action hero. There is a moment, when he is tied up and being taunted by Demetrius, however, when he really ramps up his acting and I totally bought into the character at that point. Spotts, as Demetrius, looked the part and, again, in the taunting scene with Spencer really did shine.
Despite the nice ideas the main story was a little clunky, things happened on occasion that was just a little too convenient or contrived. There is a nice twisting around with the ending but, ultimately, the main story didn’t do it for me. This was a shame as there was a nice build of tension and divergence of ideas between Wraithwood and Demetrius that could have been exploited but ultimately was underused. As for the actual twist, it was good and I’m not saying that it is obvious, but I found myself thinking, just before it happened, “wouldn’t it be funny if…” In that way it was actually, in some respects, even nicer.
Dialogue,
acting, the too dark shots and obtrusive digital effects ultimately spoil a film that had flashes of brilliant ideas. Probably the most damaging aspect was the darkness of the shots, if the viewer cannot see what is going on and finds themselves staring at a virtually all black screen the viewer switches off. Niles, however, should be encouraged as the good ideas this film contains could be harnessed and, in the future, I could see him coming up with a really good film – the building blocks are there it just needs tightening up. This one, however, I hold at 3.5 out of 10 and the score has been bolstered because of the good ideas.
There is a homepage with trailer here and the imdb page is here
Release Date: 2006
Contains spoilers
I was really looking forward to this one. The write up on the back of the Brutal Bloodsuckers DVD box gave nothing away plot-wise, simply stating “Destinies intertwine in a tale of gothic horror and intrigue set in the seedy underbelly of Philadelphia. ‘Lifeblood’ is a suspenseful neo-noir, featuring music from some of Philadelphia’s hottest Goth industrial bands including a special appearance by Carfax.” That would be Carfax Abbey, who do appear and who I have a fondness for (though, as they cover it, one imagines that it would have been somewhat amusing if they had played “Cry Little Sister” originally from the Lost Boys soundtrack).
So were did it go wrong? The film begins with a couple of nuns in a church and a man entering behind them and we can see the two main places it went awfully wrong immediately. Firstly, and it might just be the print used on this DVD, the film was awfully dark – so dark in fact that at times through the film you cannot see what was going on, which is just plain annoying. Then we had the dialogue and the delivery thereof, it truly was risible - one might say stagey but it wasn’t just that, there was a raft of bad delivery running throughout the film (mainly, in fairness, with more minor characters). This is a shame because the film contained some good ideas.
Anyway the man is a vampire, we later discover to be called Demetrius (Kevin D Spotts), he is searching for some ashes, kills one nun and then, after telling the second “Everyone should sin once before they die,” spots where she glances and then stabs her. Things vampiric to note here, the vampires can obviously enter holy ground, Demetrius moves with inhuman speed at one point and uses a blade (although later we see that the vampires sometimes use fangs).
In the city a man picks up a prostitute and they drive off and go to her apartment. She tells him to make himself comfortable and whilst she is out of the room he takes out surgical instruments, lays them out and then hides them below a magazine. She returns and after some banter she suddenly slashes his throat and begins to feed. This was a really nice turn around, it built up to him being the vampire
(one guesses he was just a common or garden serial killer/nutter) and switches ground quickly. A man enters, who we later discover to be Carl Spencer (Steven J Niles, the director and not the comic book author) and fights the vampire. He nails her hands to the floor (a nice moment again) and demands to know where Demetrius is, she doesn’t tell until he threatens her with a stake and then tells him to find a drug dealer called M.D. (Greg Niles). He is going to leave but then, after a taunt from the vampire, stakes her. Once staked she begins to burn, he leaves and as he walks through the street an explosion bursts through the apartment – a nice touch but not repeated, other vampires, when staked, burn but there are no big explosions thereafter. Unfortunately the burning is obviously digitally produced and looks poor.In a club, where Carfax Abbey are playing, we ‘see’ many of the main players. I put ‘see’ in inverted commas as the visuals are so dark we actually see very little. Spencer enters the club to speak to a mystery man (a mystery because we cannot see him) who put him onto the whore and asks where he might find M.D. We meet Clara (Kimberley Niles) who is out with her friends. One of her friends, Tilly (Emily Lopizzo) meets Demetrius and goes off with him. Not long after a drunken Clara decides to leave and then Spencer, somehow, detects Demetrius and goes running out after him. Demetrius has a taste of Tilly, decides she isn’t the one he’s looking for, and eats her anyway. Spencer sees him and chases after him. Demetrius escapes, I think, by wall climbing but it was too dark to tell for sure. Clara finds her friends body and is found in turn by Spencer. She won’t call the cops as she is wanted (for robbery we later discover) so he calls the cops and then drives her home.
Clara has puked in his car and is out of it when Spencer gets her home to her worried sister, Sheila (Marci Tint-Kotay). Sheila is ill and, later in the film we discover that she has a mystery blood disease that killed her mother and that Clara is likely to come down with also.
Demetrius returns to the vampire hold-up, the vampires reminded me of the coven from Underworld,
it had the same decadent ‘new romantic’ feel, though in a warehouse not a mansion. He is tackled by Wraithwood (Jef Kelly) leader of the vampires. I did actually quite like the character in a foppish, faux-British upper class accent way and he gave one of the better performances. Demetrius is searching for the two descendants, whose blood can resurrect the Countess Vrana (Kathryn Matuch). The Countess was burnt at the stake 300 years previously and it is her ashes that were searched for earlier. Can you guess who the descendants might be?The vampires come in two varieties, purebreds and transformed.
Demetrius is a transformed and can be killed by staking, no one knows how to kill a purebred (though one guesses burning at the stake was, at least, a temporary solution – temporary as they can be resurrected). The transformed’s bodies work at a higher rate, hence their need for blood. The drug dealer M.D. does say that they do not need nor want chemical stimulants (so why some of the vampires in the warehouse are smoking is beyond me) but he sells them blood. They can go out in daylight, although they dislike it, without ill effect. The mystery illness affecting the sisters (descendants of the countess) is untapped vampirism that, as they don’t feed it blood, is eating them alive.I said there are some nice moments and there are. Spencer’s wife, Angela (Leah Schmidt),
was killed by Demetrius, hence his hunting the vampires. There is a well crafted moment when we see him both in real time with a stake and in flashback with a rose, going to see his wife and finding her being fed on. His wife’s spectral appearances as his conscience also works well, more for the fact that he seemed to ignore her as much as he ignored her when she was alive (as seen in a dream memory) as anything.The acting, as I say, was not brilliant in the main. Some of this seemed to stem from bad dialogue,
this was especially the case with regards M.D. who had the worst case of bad street slang I’ve heard in a long time. That said Steven J Niles as Spencer worked, in the main, though he never really struck me as an action hero. There is a moment, when he is tied up and being taunted by Demetrius, however, when he really ramps up his acting and I totally bought into the character at that point. Spotts, as Demetrius, looked the part and, again, in the taunting scene with Spencer really did shine.Despite the nice ideas the main story was a little clunky, things happened on occasion that was just a little too convenient or contrived. There is a nice twisting around with the ending but, ultimately, the main story didn’t do it for me. This was a shame as there was a nice build of tension and divergence of ideas between Wraithwood and Demetrius that could have been exploited but ultimately was underused. As for the actual twist, it was good and I’m not saying that it is obvious, but I found myself thinking, just before it happened, “wouldn’t it be funny if…” In that way it was actually, in some respects, even nicer.
Dialogue,
acting, the too dark shots and obtrusive digital effects ultimately spoil a film that had flashes of brilliant ideas. Probably the most damaging aspect was the darkness of the shots, if the viewer cannot see what is going on and finds themselves staring at a virtually all black screen the viewer switches off. Niles, however, should be encouraged as the good ideas this film contains could be harnessed and, in the future, I could see him coming up with a really good film – the building blocks are there it just needs tightening up. This one, however, I hold at 3.5 out of 10 and the score has been bolstered because of the good ideas.There is a homepage with trailer here and the imdb page is here
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Vampire hunter - review
Directed by: Sean Gallimore
Release Date: 1995
Contains spoilers
Before I watched this film for review I tried to find a little something about it on the net. Difficult as there isn’t even an imdb page for the movie that I could discover. Sticking the DVD in for a second I jumped to the credits and discovered it was directed by Sean Gallimore. A tad more googling and I find the smallest amount of material on Gallimore’s own site. So, before we enter the fray (so to speak) let us note that this film was shot for a mere $5000, it was shot on Hi-8 video and edited on a primitive PC. This truly is shoe-string stuff.
The other thing to note is I think that this had previously only had release on video before ending up on the Brutal Bloodsuckers set and it wouldn’t surprise me if the print was taken from VHS, we get bands of pink down the side of the screen occasionally and the dialogue sounds like it was recorded in the toilet. However, despite limitations Gallimore has created something for very little and it is better than many of the low budget movies out there.
The film itself is a bit of a fantasy play-out for Gallimore. Ex-marine, weapons expert and martial artist John O’Ryan (Sean Gallimore) has now settled to civilian life as a fantasy artist. Gallimore himself is a fantasy artist and a martial artist, which is why I say that it is a bit of a fantasy fulfilment movie. However we get ahead of ourselves. The film starts with a woman in a gallery, bound and gagged. A man enters holding a gun and suddenly a vampire, Morgan Bane (Leonardo Millan), appears. Given the budget, to have him appear from animated smoke was a brave move. Bane admonishes the man for being armed with a gun, he takes his jacket off and reveals garlic and stakes. A second vampire, a kind of heavy metal comedy vampire servant, also joins in. The man is quickly despatched. It seems that Bane is bored of immortality and is looking for a challenge.
He insinuates himself with John and his wife Heather (Erin Leigh), through John’s artwork. However when they first meet a man, Ramone (Frank Swarez),
attacks Bane with a stake. John stops him and Bane’s bodyguard pulls a gun. Aiming a water pistol at Bane (filled with holy water) Ramone is able to escape. When he gets back to his apartment the long-haired vampire is waiting for him. Ramone despatches the vampire but I did like the idea of the vampire spitting blood at his enemy to distract him.
John decides, through his instincts, that he dislikes Bane and refuses to do business with him. However he left his portfolio at the gallery and returns the next day to retrieve it. He is prevented entering a back-room by the bodyguard but fights his way in and sees a coffin. On his way home he is followed. He stops the car and is approached by Ramone who warns him that Bane is a vampire and after Heather. When he gets home Bane is in his house. John places a cross on the table before him but it has no effect and Heather wonders why John, an atheist, has a cross. As he leaves Bane tells John that you have to have faith to make a cross work. John gets his cop pal Ray to break into the gallery to check Bane out.
The next night Ray turns up at John’s house and he has been vampirised. After some fighting John kills his friend and discovers that Bane has taken Heather. It is up to John, with Ramone’s help, to get heather back and stop Bane.
Gallimore, as I said, is a martial artist and you can tell. There are at least two long practice sequences, a sparing sequence as well as
fights with his martial arts buddies who are in the film. The martial arts look good, the choreography of the fights perhaps not so as it is clear on many occasions that no contact is really made. This is, of course, the inexperience of an amateur filmmaker. There is some gore involved and, given the budget, it works quite well.
As for the vampires well they are standard - crosses, holy water, garlic and stakes through the heart, as well as needing an invitation to enter a home are all present and correct. They can hypnotise, appear from mist and (we hear but do not see) turn into bats. After staking their bodies dissolve to bones within 24 hours – again unseen but given the budget that is not surprising.
At the end of the film Bane changes into a monster vampire. As you can see from the screenshot, the makeover isn’t brilliant but again we are talking budget restrictions. It was a brave move, perhaps, and given the level of the film not too shoddy compared to what it could have been. That said the glowing red eyes of the vampires actually worked well and put other low (and some higher) budget productions to shame.
The direction is functional but nothing special and the acting isn’t the greatest ever, but again I’ve seen worse. Unfortunately this could have been better if played more for laughs – the long hair vamp was quite a comedy character and probably underused – though I’m unsure as to whether the actor could have sustained full comedy. It is a labour of love but everyone seems so earnest and that gravitas makes this fall apart a little, it is difficult to look moody when grasping a super-soaker as a weapon.
My biggest problem was within the scripting, however. The story is basic but, worse than that, there are things within it that don’t ring true. John is told Bane is a vampire and, whilst he might not accept it immediately, he does produce a cross before Bane – why would he do that, especially as an atheist? John wants Bane checked out and so his cop friend Ray immediately offers to break into his gallery, surely he’d do background checks and such like? Also Bane wears a Kevlar vest, making him impervious to stakes. Kevlar is great for bullets but, as far as I know, useless for such things as knives (and presumably, therefore shards of wood). Modern Kevlar has been developed that is good with knives but this movie was eleven years ago. I wait to be corrected by someone who is a Kevlar expert, however, as I admit my knowledge of the ins and outs of body armour is limited.
All in all, in the grand scheme of vampire movies this is not great (though certainly not the worst) as it adds nothing really to the genre. I recognise that this is a labour of love, I recognise that Gallimore did more with $5000 than I could ever contemplate doing myself and therefore I feel that the 2 out of 10 I am going to give this is slightly unfair but ultimately justified, if this were for free streaming I'd be singing its praises but as a commercial piece it didn't really cut the mustard. The one thing I will add is that I respect the tenacity that went into making this film and the fact that they did a lot with (virtually) nothing.
Gallimore’s page for the film, with trailer, is here.
Release Date: 1995
Contains spoilers
Before I watched this film for review I tried to find a little something about it on the net. Difficult as there isn’t even an imdb page for the movie that I could discover. Sticking the DVD in for a second I jumped to the credits and discovered it was directed by Sean Gallimore. A tad more googling and I find the smallest amount of material on Gallimore’s own site. So, before we enter the fray (so to speak) let us note that this film was shot for a mere $5000, it was shot on Hi-8 video and edited on a primitive PC. This truly is shoe-string stuff.
The other thing to note is I think that this had previously only had release on video before ending up on the Brutal Bloodsuckers set and it wouldn’t surprise me if the print was taken from VHS, we get bands of pink down the side of the screen occasionally and the dialogue sounds like it was recorded in the toilet. However, despite limitations Gallimore has created something for very little and it is better than many of the low budget movies out there.
The film itself is a bit of a fantasy play-out for Gallimore. Ex-marine, weapons expert and martial artist John O’Ryan (Sean Gallimore) has now settled to civilian life as a fantasy artist. Gallimore himself is a fantasy artist and a martial artist, which is why I say that it is a bit of a fantasy fulfilment movie. However we get ahead of ourselves. The film starts with a woman in a gallery, bound and gagged. A man enters holding a gun and suddenly a vampire, Morgan Bane (Leonardo Millan), appears. Given the budget, to have him appear from animated smoke was a brave move. Bane admonishes the man for being armed with a gun, he takes his jacket off and reveals garlic and stakes. A second vampire, a kind of heavy metal comedy vampire servant, also joins in. The man is quickly despatched. It seems that Bane is bored of immortality and is looking for a challenge.He insinuates himself with John and his wife Heather (Erin Leigh), through John’s artwork. However when they first meet a man, Ramone (Frank Swarez),
attacks Bane with a stake. John stops him and Bane’s bodyguard pulls a gun. Aiming a water pistol at Bane (filled with holy water) Ramone is able to escape. When he gets back to his apartment the long-haired vampire is waiting for him. Ramone despatches the vampire but I did like the idea of the vampire spitting blood at his enemy to distract him.John decides, through his instincts, that he dislikes Bane and refuses to do business with him. However he left his portfolio at the gallery and returns the next day to retrieve it. He is prevented entering a back-room by the bodyguard but fights his way in and sees a coffin. On his way home he is followed. He stops the car and is approached by Ramone who warns him that Bane is a vampire and after Heather. When he gets home Bane is in his house. John places a cross on the table before him but it has no effect and Heather wonders why John, an atheist, has a cross. As he leaves Bane tells John that you have to have faith to make a cross work. John gets his cop pal Ray to break into the gallery to check Bane out.
The next night Ray turns up at John’s house and he has been vampirised. After some fighting John kills his friend and discovers that Bane has taken Heather. It is up to John, with Ramone’s help, to get heather back and stop Bane.Gallimore, as I said, is a martial artist and you can tell. There are at least two long practice sequences, a sparing sequence as well as
fights with his martial arts buddies who are in the film. The martial arts look good, the choreography of the fights perhaps not so as it is clear on many occasions that no contact is really made. This is, of course, the inexperience of an amateur filmmaker. There is some gore involved and, given the budget, it works quite well.As for the vampires well they are standard - crosses, holy water, garlic and stakes through the heart, as well as needing an invitation to enter a home are all present and correct. They can hypnotise, appear from mist and (we hear but do not see) turn into bats. After staking their bodies dissolve to bones within 24 hours – again unseen but given the budget that is not surprising.
At the end of the film Bane changes into a monster vampire. As you can see from the screenshot, the makeover isn’t brilliant but again we are talking budget restrictions. It was a brave move, perhaps, and given the level of the film not too shoddy compared to what it could have been. That said the glowing red eyes of the vampires actually worked well and put other low (and some higher) budget productions to shame.The direction is functional but nothing special and the acting isn’t the greatest ever, but again I’ve seen worse. Unfortunately this could have been better if played more for laughs – the long hair vamp was quite a comedy character and probably underused – though I’m unsure as to whether the actor could have sustained full comedy. It is a labour of love but everyone seems so earnest and that gravitas makes this fall apart a little, it is difficult to look moody when grasping a super-soaker as a weapon.
My biggest problem was within the scripting, however. The story is basic but, worse than that, there are things within it that don’t ring true. John is told Bane is a vampire and, whilst he might not accept it immediately, he does produce a cross before Bane – why would he do that, especially as an atheist? John wants Bane checked out and so his cop friend Ray immediately offers to break into his gallery, surely he’d do background checks and such like? Also Bane wears a Kevlar vest, making him impervious to stakes. Kevlar is great for bullets but, as far as I know, useless for such things as knives (and presumably, therefore shards of wood). Modern Kevlar has been developed that is good with knives but this movie was eleven years ago. I wait to be corrected by someone who is a Kevlar expert, however, as I admit my knowledge of the ins and outs of body armour is limited.
All in all, in the grand scheme of vampire movies this is not great (though certainly not the worst) as it adds nothing really to the genre. I recognise that this is a labour of love, I recognise that Gallimore did more with $5000 than I could ever contemplate doing myself and therefore I feel that the 2 out of 10 I am going to give this is slightly unfair but ultimately justified, if this were for free streaming I'd be singing its praises but as a commercial piece it didn't really cut the mustard. The one thing I will add is that I respect the tenacity that went into making this film and the fact that they did a lot with (virtually) nothing.
Gallimore’s page for the film, with trailer, is here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
