Real Vampires – review – TV

Director: Daniel Richler

First aired: 2007

Contains spoilers

Last night, as many channels showed the usual Halloween horror movies, Discovery Channel gave an alternative by showing this two hour (including ad-breaks) documentary on real vampires.

Presented by Dr Timothy Taylor and Dr Kathryn Denning, the show covered many of the usual suspects of this type of documentary. Dracula, of course, was present and correct – as in Tepes and not Stoker’s creation – but it was in this section that some of the superiority of this documentary can be identified, as information not normally looked at was shown. I didn’t, for example, know about the sheer logistical difficulty involved in impalement – or more precisely how much man power it took up. The show also suggested that his atrocities were, perhaps, exaggerated but in doing so gave statistical information to back this up.

Báthory was present and correct also, although I was not convinced by their attempt to suggest that her crimes were more a frame job by political enemies. The documentary never mentioned her alleged diary of kills, which would, to me, be compelling evidence and needed to be addressed. They again, statistically, showed that the Hollywood imagery of the blood bath is more than probably unlikely, and I couldn’t help but be amused with the actress’ face when Bathory found clots in the bath!

The show went through several of the infamous vampire killer stories, most interestingly looking at the case of the vampire of Niteroi – as I was largely unaware of the case and was fascinated by the killer's claims that he was influenced by the Christian church to do what he did. There was also the obligatory look at the Goth and vampyre scene – though it was a very small part of the whole.

There were some serious attempts to analyse what could have made people think that they were plagued by vampires. Consideration was given to undiagnosed rabies (we also got a brief but interesting look at vampire bats, talking of rabies). The misunderstanding of the decay process was also looked into, as we shall see.

More interesting, however, were the real cases associated with vamires. The programme looked at the Arnold Paole case in depth – concluding that it was more than likely a misunderstanding of the decay process. The programme did mention the fact that Paole had claimed, whilst alive, to have been attacked by a vampire but didn’t really tie that claim heavily into the conclusions.

Another really interesting section was the recent case (2004) of Peter Toma. This case made world headlines when the suspected vampire was dealt with by traditional methods. The family members involved were prosecuted by the Romanian Courts but their sentences were commuted. The programme actually interviewed people from the village and Toma’s alleged victim. There is a really good, in depth report on this, by Taylor, located here - many thanks to Crabstix, who emailed the article, which alerted me to the documentary itself.

Also interesting was the section surrounding the Highgate vampire and the case seemed to have a real impact on Denning as she realised that she had interviewed a man, Seán Manchester, who truly believes  (or maintains he believes) that he has hunted and slayed a vampire. This wasn’t someone following the traditions of their peasant village but a Western European who got out his slayers kit and explained the techniques and also described a rapid decay after staking.

I may not have agreed with all their conclusions – whilst the figures of those Báthory killed may have been inflated I have not been convinced that she was the victim of a frame – this was a worthwhile documentary with impressively high production values in respect of the illustrative film sequences. 7 out of 10.

At the time of review there is no IMDB page.