Blade of the Vampire – review

Directed by: Miles Feldman

Release date: 1996

Contains spoilers

Blade of the Vampire is a low budget independent that, when I came to write this, I struggled with. On the surface there isn’t much to it, the story is very simple and the acting medium to amateurish and yet it does do some interesting things with the mythology – and that is what I want to concentrate on in this review.

The story is so simple that I don’t want to get to hooked into it. Vampire Vandalis (Michael Taggert), also known as Van, drifts into LA and he is followed by former cop Grant (Rod Koch). Van is approached by ex-lover and fellow vampire Selia (Sophia Tsimel) to warn him that he is being hunted, a fact that he is aware of and he seems less than impressed with Selia’s interference.

Van is hunting a group of runaways and one of them, Alexis (Julie Tolle), becomes a special project for Grant – this of course complicates his hunt. And that, as short as it is, is the main core of the story. More interesting is what is done with the mythology.

The vampires seem immune to most things, certainly sunlight and bullets, and the only thing that seems to be able to kill them is the blade of the vampire. Now, when I read the film synopsis before watching it I have to admit that I was thinking big sword, not little dagger – but as they say, size isn’t important, its what you can do with it.

How Grant got the Blade is unexplored. There is a throwaway that Grant has some kind of psychic ability. He has been tracking Van for seven years and, although Van seems to hibernate occasionally, Grant has premonitions that lead him to the vampire – perhaps that is how he found the blade? More interesting is the effect of the blade and why it has that effect.

In an altercation he manages to cut Selia’s hand. The next time we see her, the cut is still there and the flesh is purpling around it. Later the infection (for want of a better word) has spread further across her flesh. We also discover that the dagger is of Roman origin and that the vampire lineage goes back to the alchemists of Rome, experimenting in the catacombs. These vampires are man-made – though through the occult and not modern science. Actually modern science is mentioned as the ill and dying Selia asks Van if he knows of any science that can save her.

As interesting as this is, there are a couple of problems. Brilliant premise, but not explored fully enough to make it satisfying, is the first problem. The second is the fact that the blade looks like a toy dagger – which makes suspension of belief difficult.

Also interesting was the effect of the vampire bite. Rather than kill the victim the bite makes the victim addicted to the vampire; an addiction so strong that they actually love the vampire with all their heart. This is not a generic addiction either it is to the specific vampire that bit them. A bitten Alexis, when it is suggested that going back to Van will kill her, states that she loves him and he needs to live. This was a nice touch. Where this fails is in the scene where Grant has been knocked to the floor and Selia and Van escape (just before Grant cuts her hand) wouldn’t you think they’d have just bitten him and made him addicted to one of them?

That said, Van does bite him at the end of the film and I don’t think it too much of a spoiler to say that Van does die – I’ll just not reveal who does the deed. Another nice touch was that the addiction is so strong that Grant and Alexis stay by the body for two days, unable to leave, until the need begins to wear away – but there is a confession that deep down they still love him.

There is a hint that Van is weaker than he was, but this is not really explored. There is also a statement by Selia that she has had Van’s child, Dorian, though that is something Van cannot believe and it is not explored any further – perhaps that was a throwaway to enable a sequel. There is also a hint of a vampiric teleport by Selia but again it is used once and then forgotten.

The story is flimsy, which is a shame given the brilliant underlying ideas. Taggert is so overtly dramatic that it becomes annoying, although Koch really looks the part of the haggard hunter. Better direction and acting would have really empowered some of the scenes that touch on the addiction, but it seems that for many involved it was their first project. The film stock quality is rather good for an independent and there are a couple of nice shots. I was less impressed with blurry attack sequences – too obviously hiding the joins that budget caused. The soundtrack worked rather well.

This film would have scored higher if the interesting elements had been explored more fully. They make the film interesting from a genre fan's point of view but ultimately frustrating. The scarcity of details allows the poorer elements to come to the fore and really effect the score – 2.5 out of 10 is about all I can muster but that comes with the caveat that if you love your vampire movies there are some interesting ideas in here that makes it worth a watch. Finally it has to be said that Feldman, who wrote this as well as directed it, should really think about remaking this and look to draw the stronger elements out – there is a nub of a classic in here.

The imdb page is here.

The Witches Hammer – review

Directed by: James Eaves

Released: 2006

Contains spoilers

I received an e-mail from fellow vampire fan Leila, saying that she would love to hear what I thought of this film (knowing I had it on order) as she felt it to be “a flawed mess, with scenes of pure genius”. All in all that is quite a tough summary, leaving me wondering if the film would fall so low or attempt to reach so high?

The film is a British comedy/action movie in the tradition of Razor Blade Smile (1998) and begins with Rebecca (Claudia Coulter) walking down the street. She is being followed and is then attacked by a vampire and left for dead. As the credits role we see her being looked at in a body bag by a couple of suits, her eyes open and flicking frantically. We then see medical procedures.

She is awake and being questioned three weeks later. She wants to see her husband David and son Timmy. We see her watching them from a car the tinted window down and the sunlight burning her forehead. We also see a test, two pint glasses are placed before her, one with water and one with blood. She takes the water and comment is made that she is resisting, then she takes the blood. The logic of the test escaped me, they seemed to want to see her take the blood, but it was never explained as to why - was it to show that their experiments had been successful?

Rebecca is a vampire and we can only assume that had she been left as she was, post attack, she would have become one anyway. The procedure genetically manipulated her and she is now a good vampire, recruited by Project 571 to fight evil. We see her training and hear some of the key vampire killing rules, decapitation and heart piercing will kill, sunlight burns and if the exposure is too long will kill. Vampires don’t so much dust as flash away in sparks.

The training session seemed a little derivative of La Femme Nikita but with a main difference. Rebecca is free to leave, but will not be able to control herself near her loved ones. They are used as a carrot and stick; her instincts being the stick and the carrot being the chance to observe them, from a distance, safely. Rebecca starts off quite rubbish, she picks up a gun and shoots a tied up vampire in the knee rather than the heart. At the end she is picking up a minigun and ripping said vampire to shreds. Cool visual but ultimately pointless as the gun is never again used in the film and anyone would succeed in destroying their close range target with such a gun.

The first mission we see goes wrong. She is sent to rescue a hostage from a vampire and kill the vampire. Though she kills the vampire, the victim is bitten and dead so she shoots his corpse just as the police enter and shoot her in the head. Rescued from the morgue by her trainer she goes to observe her family – during the day. It seems that biker leathers and a helmet is adequate sun block – despite the fact that I could see flesh at the neck, which the sunlight must have been touching. Meanwhile we have seen a vampire, Hugo (Tom Dover), summon the Souls of the Damned. Hooded figures with glowing eyes and cgi maws that looked fairly rubbish. They give him a jar.

When she gets back to the Project everyone is dead and she ends up battling four vampires and then two witches. It is here that the joins in the sfx really begin to show. A decapitation is obviously fake. That said, for the budget the effect is pretty good but the point has to be made. The fight scenes have Matrix-esque slow motion moments but the use of them wasn’t as good as bullet time or as well placed. Once she is victorious a man, Edward (Jonathon Sidgwick), shoots her with a tranquiliser.

She awakes chained and before Edward and Madeline (Stephanie Beacham). They are project 572, concerning witches, and need her help in stopping Hugo. He has been bespelled by a page of the Malleus Malifacarum (the witches hammer of the title) and that has made him impossible to kill. They need to get the book, so that a counterspell can be cast at him, and then stop him destroying the world. Standing in her way are four enemies three vampiric and one a masked ninja type.

The story then is fairly simple. What the film does nicely is introduce a series of weird and wonderful enemy characters and also fill in back story for them. What it doesn’t do so well is tell the back stories, as they are all in the same format with Edward narrating and their presence, whilst good for rounding the characters off, seems obtrusive. I was a little unimpressed with some of the motivations for the characters, why some characters were involved was beyond me. There is a twist in the tale that if you do not spot from a mile away you’d be very disappointed with yourself.

Other vampire lore we get through the film includes the fact that holy water kills. Vampires cast a reflection. Another way someone can be killed and turned is to eat vampire meat, which almost instantaneously poisons the eater and quickly turns the corpse. We also get a set of ancient vampires so old that any light hurts them, including a flashlight - quite a novel idea.

The acting is varied, some is distinctly amateurish and some quite good. Coulter unfortunately seems to have trouble speaking with fangs in. The characters of the thirty stone vampire Charlotte (Sally Reeve) – so large that it is almost impossible to pierce her heart - and her dwarf vampire side kick Oscar (Jason Tompkins) worked quite well but they seemed derivative (dialogue wise) of Spike and Drusilla from Buffy. The masked ninja just didn’t work, from an actor point of view, perhaps it was in his bearing but I just didn’t buy it – plus his costume looked awfully cheap.

There is nothing wrong with Beacham’s performance, as you would expect, but she seemed a little under-used to me. If you get such a high calibre actress in this sort of independent movie then my advice is take advantage of her presence.

As I said, the action sequences had touches of the Matrix but were not nearly as professionally done. There is one (comedic) action moment where Edward is beating Oscar with a frying pan and it is clear that he is not getting anywhere near his opponent – which was sloppy. Coulter does, however, look great with a sword in hand bearing fangs.

The comedy fell a little flat to me, and seemed a little forced at times. That said I could see a hidden spark in the weird characters but something was off kilter. I think that they should have played the film more straight and let the comedy of the weird characters appear naturally. When gags were set up (such as searching for knives in a kitchen, failing to find them, and then we seeing they are hung behind the door the character used) they seemed forced and lost their edge.

There are, however, flashes of brilliance. Charlotte feeding from a victim by placing two straws in his neck punctures worked brilliantly and was a fantastic visual that reminded, ever so slightly, of the tap in the neck in the film Vault of Horror and yet maintained a feel of wacky comedy rather than being black humour – which is exactly what, I felt, the filmmakers were aiming for. In this case the scene was not pushed too hard and the humour did not feel forced, which to me is why it worked.

For the budget they must have had this is an ambitious film and they did brilliantly with what one imagines was very little. Yet it missed the mark in the main, which is a shame as there were flashes of genius occasionally and this could have been a cult classic. As it transpires it is below average at 3.5 out of 10 and you would probably be better seeking out Bloody Mallory, which is a similar film – a shadowy group of Agents fighting supernatural evil - but created with a lot more panache.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: The Illmoor Chronicles book 2: The Yowler Foul-up

This book, by David Lee Stone, was found for me in a cheap bookstore and judging by the cover is a vampiric orientated book. The character pictured is one Jareth Obegarde (a half vampire on his mother’s side) and, whilst he is a main character, the vampiric elements are so low key that I thought I’d give this an honourable mention as opposed to a review.

The Illmoor Chronicles are comedy fantasy, much in the vein of Terry Pratchett, and the story of this entry into the chronicles surrounds a dark sub-sect of the only legal religion the Yowlers. This sub-sect had devised a plan to turn the people of principle city Dullitch to stone. It is up to a bunch of misfits including Obegarde, along with ex-thief and ex-gravedigger Jimmy Quickstint and penniless noble Duke Modeset to stop them.

We get a little bit of vampire lore and that is about it. As Obegarde explains, being half vampire, “I’ve just the one fang, I only drink blood when there’s no wine going and I can’t sleep a wink past midnight.” Later we discover that half vampires, or loftwings, can also lay on hands to heal others and they are extremely difficult to kill. The problem from a genre point of view is that, with the exception of an epilogue coda, the character could have been any creature - the fact he was half vampire was almost an irrelevance.

The book itself is an amusing and easy read, though a tad Pratchett derivative.

Music: Lesbian Bed Death

Lebian Bed Death describe themselves as gothic rock meets classic rock with punk (to be honest they are pretty much a classic sleazy rock) and they are great fun. From the album, “I use my powers for evil” comes the track ‘Vampire Lover”. The album is available via their homepage for a bargain price and samples can be heard on their MySpace page.

The chorus of vampire lover goes a little like this:

You call my name and I hear
My Vampire Lover
You bleed me dry and leave me weak
My Vampire Lover
You never give what I need
My Vampire Lover
Close the door as you leave
My Vampire Lover

Two New DVDs

I mentioned the trailer for Perfect Creature being out a couple of weeks ago. Whilst the Homepage is still a place holder the film seems to be available on DVD – in Holland. No sign of a release anywhere else in the world yet.

I also mentioned last year that two films called The Thirst were in production. One of them, staring Clare Krammer (from Buffy) is released on US DVD on the 22nd May this year. I've got to say that I love the cover, if the film is as good we might just have a classic on our hands (but never judge a book by its cover, so's to speak).

The Amazon.com product description says this about The Thirst: “Welcome to an urban underworld of pleasure and pain where fleshfueled slaughter is the ultimate high.

“Matt Keeslar of DUNE and Clare Kramer of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER star as a pair of recovering drug addicts recruited by a clan of sex & gore crazed vampires led by the charismatic madman Darius (Jeremy Sisto of SIX FEET UNDER). But as each depraved ‘fix’ leads them deeper into hell, what will be the final price for the most horrific addiction of all?

“Adam Baldwin (SERENITY), Erik Palladino (ER) and Serena Scott- Thomas co-star in this harrowing shocker from the director of THE ATTIC EXPEDITIONS and ALL SOULS DAY, and the producers of ROOM 6, HOUSE OF THE DEAD II and THE DARKROOM. Featuring the music of Rasputina, Dames Violet, Jack The Mad, Sonya Kahn, The Spindles and more.”

Mark of the Vampire – review

Director: Tod Browning

Release Date: 1935

Contains spoilers

I’ve wanted to catch this movie for some time and thanks to TCM last night I finally got the opportunity. Unfortunately this has left me in a bit of a quandary review wise. You see the film has a massive twist at the end, which I do not want to give away. Firstly because it is a shoddy trick to do so and also because I watched the film knowing the twist and felt I would have enjoyed it even more had I been in the dark. That said I like to look at the vampire lore and the twist does have a bearing – never mind, the twist will remain sacrosanct and you’ll have to watch the film to find out.

The film itself is a remake of Browning’s, unfortunately lost, London After Midnight (1927) – incidentally I believe there is a ‘restored’ London After Midnight using photograph stills. We begin in a Hungarian Village and see scenes of villagers tying a herb all over the place. Later we discover this is bat-thorn, a vampire deterrent. An old woman gathers the herb in a cemetery when a bat flies out and scares the bejeezus out of her.

In an inn an English couple are being persuaded to stay through the night. A horse and trap arrives and it is local Doctor Doskil (Donald Meek) racing the dark to safety. It seems that all the locals fear vampires, though the English couple are scornful. The next day the body of Sir Karell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found. Doskil confirms he has been killed by a vampire – there are two punctures on his neck and his body has been drained of blood.

The police inspector, Neumann (Lionel Atwill), is sceptical, believing a more earthly cause perhaps it was the suitor of Borotyn’s daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allan), one Fedor Vincenté (Henry Wadsworth), ensuring that his fiancée was even more wealthy. Maybe it was Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) who becomes the girl’s guardian and executor.

Though the coronor records death by means unknown the locals are in no doubt that it is the work of a vampire, specifically Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) or his daughter Luna (Carroll Borland). Now, one of the problems with the film is how much ended up being edited out. The film is 55 minutes long but the original previews were reported to be 80 minutes.

One part that was excised by the censors was the back story of our vampires. Lugosi sports an obvious bullet wound to the head and the story says that Mora was a suicide who has been involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter. The immorality of the incestuous act, coupled with suicide, was the reason for them becoming vampires. Such references were deemed as too scandalous and the censors demanded the references be removed.

One year after Sir Karell’s death Fedor is found dishevelled having fallen near the castle. An inspection shows wounds upon his neck. Locals start to see Mora and Luna stalking the night and Irena is attacked by Luna – describing the attack beautifully as a “deathly cold breath upon my throat.” The still sceptical Neumann calls in Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) who confirms that vampires are haunting the night.

There is not just Mora and his daughter, however, Sir Karell has risen – leaving an empty coffin behind – and there is a fourth vampire unnamed - but possibly a farmer who was mentioned at the coroners.

The race is on to stop the vampires before Irena and Fedor are themselves transformed into the undead.

The vampire lore is interesting. They can turn into bats and they cannot be harmed at night – by anything. It is only during the day, in their deathlike sleep, that they can be stopped. The only way to kill a vampire is to cut off the head and place a sprig of bat-thorn in the wound. We see Luna fly, at one point, with giant bat wings.

The film drips atmosphere, in fact Browning lays it on with a shovel.

Most of this surrounds Mora and Luna who stalk through misty graveyards and down cobweb festooned corridors. There seem to be bats wherever they go. Browning actually imported Large South American bats for the production but, obviously, those we see flying round the actors are props. They are not the best bats but somehow it didn’t matter, they seem to work – so no crap bat syndrome here.

The two main vampires are fabulous. Lugosi has no dialogue until the end – post twist so I cannot tell you what it is, but it is worth watching the film for that one line – yet he is still great, filling the screen with a malevolence whenever he appears. Borland looks fabulous, making an archetypal vamp that has been aped ever since. If I had one complaint it was that their screen time is limited.

Most of the actors over-act, and you know what it is fine – it fits the film perfectly well. None, however, overacts with the same exuberance as Barrymore. The actor hams it to the max, and it is great fun, I felt a little smile creep onto my lips every time he appeared on screen. Zelin is a great character and you always feel there is much more going on behind his outward appearance, there could have been a tendency to make the character Van Helsing like, but he is a very different character.

As for the twist. All I will say is that the actors were unaware of it until a few days before shooting and I wasn’t too sure about it. It seemed terribly contrived but it was a brave move.

This is a classic of the horror genre and is a must watch. That said it has flaws, the lost footage is problematic at times – mainly around back story and legend - and the overacting, whilst marvellous fun, diminishes the drama. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Download Blood of the Vampires

You might remember that last month I posted a ‘Vamp or Not?’ in respect of Blood of the Vampire, the 1958 movie directed by Henry Cass.

The film is now the latest movie to get the Frightmares the Series treatment. The file is just over 237 meg and is free to download.

Zombie Astronaut’s Frequency of Fear

The third podcast by the Zombie Astronaut is now online and it is a vampire special. During you will hear ZA himself emulate rising as a vampire, there are also the otr plays "Two Little Punctures" and "The Vampire's Desire", Dynamite! Magazine's Count Morbida's Chamber Of Horrors, plus music in the form of Sheldon Allman's "This Can't Be Blood" and Creepy Clyde’s “I’m a vampire”.

There is also some bloke called Taliesin_ttlg giving a rundown of his top 3 vampire movies.

Thanks to the Zombie Astronaut for the opportunity and the good (or bad!) news is that we are looking at making a top 3 by myself a regular feature on the podcast.

What are you waiting for, get over there and give it a listen.

Soul’s Midnight – review

Directed by: Harry Basil

Release Date: 2006

Contains spoilers

This was on Zone Horror last night and I thought, ooh a vampire flick I haven’t heard of… hmm, perhaps that should have given me a clue, so should the fact that I can’t find a corresponding DVD release at this time.

The film begins with credits, and a sub-Carmina Burana score, the music laying on melodrama with a shovel (and yet strangely the film doesn’t maintain said levels of melodrama within the feature – in fact it fails to maintain any melodrama). We open with a scene from 1975. A man, Max Milford (Ryan C Hurst), is dragging his pregnant wife Sara (Natalie Loftin) to his car. A priest, Father Dominic (Joe Nipote), is in the car. Max tells him to bless it, referring to an ornate box.

Suddenly robed figures are approaching. Father Dominic abandons his wards and Max leaves the car, telling Sara to get it started – the robed figures want her baby. He shoots one of the figures, to no effect, but a bullet has breached the petrol tank of a nearby vehicle and so he shoots a burning torch the approaching figure is carrying and manages to set the figure on fire. Sara gets away and Max is captured. They have plans for him.

Cut thirty years forward and Charles Milford (Robert Floyd) and his pregnant wife Alicia (Elizabeth Ann Bennett) are driving into town. Charles was the unborn baby and his recently deceased mother had told him that his father was dead. He, more recently, received a letter from his father’s business partner Ramos (Miguel Pérez) saying his father had just died and left him his business and house.

They are booked into a hotel and it is here that, if things hadn’t seemed too bad, we started to see the cracks. At reception a man named Ken (Thomas Cunningham) pushes in front of them to complain about no ice to the blind receptionist Lily (Amy Simonelli Briede). It is a really bad performance, and all he had to do was angry man. A little later he is killed following a pointless terrible injury by ice machine (his hand is ripped apart – if it was me I’d have just had him grabbed, which occurred post mangling).

Basic story – Ramos hasn’t written to Charles, he’s illiterate. Charles has been lured there by vampires. The town celebrates the feast of St. George but the dragon George killed was the leader of the vampire cult. To resurrect said leader as a dark messiah they must use the un-baptised blood of a descendant of the Saint (which Max and family are) on the ashes of the dragon. Father Dominic is still there, unaged but not a vampire. He betrayed Max as he thought he could save the town but is now repentant of his sin.

The two main vampires are Iris (Lucila Solá) and Simon (Armand Assante), who is the cult leader. They kept Max alive, and a slave to the cult, until they could use him to lure his son back. Armand Assante is probably the best thing in the film, overacting with gusto. The film itself throws in influences left, right and centre with no real concern as to whether it works or not.

The hotel has shades of The Shinning, and Alicia is having visions that tie in with that. There is a brief flavour of Rosemary’s Baby and there are some moments that feel Evil Dead… but before I explain that let’s look at the vampire lore.

The vampires are of a cult of the dragon, but in reality it is meant to be a real dragon (rather than a Dracul). The dragon, when resurrected, looks more demon than standard dragon. Other than that they seem to conform with generally standard vampires.

Simon puts his blood in Alicia’s tea and this causes her to have terrible visions, including having sex with Simon and then him removing her baby on a diner party table. To enslave a mortal they bite them – why feeding Alicia his blood didn’t enslave her is not explored, but we do discover that killing the main vampire will break the enslavement. Incidentally, early on Simon sneaks into her room and moves his hand over her pregnant bump – the baby seems to squirm through the skin – that didn’t make a lot sense especially as the baby seemed horned.

The vampires cast no reflection and burn up in the sun. Holy items will effect them but only if backed with faith. There is much play on the box from the beginning, a vampire hunters’ kit, and the fact that it is blessed but, in actuality, it is fairly standard. It has stakes, mallet, cross and holy water. Unusually it also has cyanide, but that is for the hunter in case things go wrong.

The holy water is effective and seems to cause a vampire to thrash its legs, the flesh to smoke and for the skin to slough from the chest in a most unconvincing effect. (A general aside thought here; if a cross only works with faith, in movies such as this, why doesn't holy water need the backing of faith?)

The effect on the dead victims seems odd. We are told that Max was found drained of blood and his flesh like that of a corpse dead several weeks – so, of course, the cops and coroner called it a heart attack and refused to listen to Ramos, who believed it suspicious, as he is known as the town drunk.

Other victims raise and here we get into part of the Evil Dead overtones. The caretaker of Max’s house, Mrs. Budge (Jane Hall), is turned and attacks (during the day, so is eventually killed with sunlight). The attack and looked seemed more akin to the Evil Dead with fangs. She went at Charles and Ramos with garden shears and chased Charles round the house in Benny Hill fashion. Later on Ramos goes at the vampires with a chainsaw, very Ash like.

More so we are told that a young girl committed suicide in the hotel. When the hanging ghost of the suicide hangs Charles, to the point of unconsciousness and capture by the vampires, we see that she is the blind receptionist and, again, the makeup effects made me think Evil Dead.

Much of the vampire lore is told to us by a couple of altar boys who are obviously going through film lore but state they know these things because they are altar boys! I should mention that the sword of Saint George is also an effective vampire killing tool.

The characters are unconvincing. Charles is one tough hombre, able to go vampire hunting after being hung by a meat hook in the back and then sewed up by an illiterate meat-packer. He also has a near sex experience with Iris but there is little to suggest it was vampire control and more the fact that he was horny and only just remembers his wife and stops the action in time – though Iris comments his will is strong, I wasn’t convinced there was mojo going on. Iris is a dancer in the hotel, whose show lasted about ten seconds. The other characters seemed irrelevant almost.

Soundtrack wise, other than the opening piece I didn’t really notice it.

So, muddled confused story (including the dragon attacking his own children for no properly explored reason, but the suspicion that as he was raised with just a dribble of the baby's blood he needs to feed on the blood of the descendent), with massively derivative elements. No suspense. Poor effects and worst acting – with the exception of Assante who whilst overacting terribly does so in a fun manner and tries to pull the film from the mire. One, really, to avoid and 2 out of 10 is for Assante's efforts more than the rest of the film.

You can catch a trailer here and the imdb page is here.

Eternal Blood – review

Directed by: Jorge Olguín

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers

This film from Chile has a very interesting premise and, as such, I’m rather glad that regular visitor Edna Sweetlove requested a review as it gave me impetus to dig the DVD out and have a re-watch.

The film begins with a TV interview about an upcoming lunar eclipse and the new age significance. The TV is in a shop window and we see a Goth girl (Blanca Lewin) walk past. She is heading towards the college and is looking for her friend Pancha (Pascale Litvak). Pancha is talking to a group of Goths, who are referred to by more casually dressed students as the freaks. We discover later they are M (Juan Pablo Ogalde), Elizabeth (Patricia López) and Martín (Claudio Espinoza). The girl (and I refer to her without character name for reasons that will come apparent later) has an assignment due for Professor Romero (Jorge Denegri) – I wonder who they were making reference to with that name – and goes to one of his lectures. M also goes to the lecture.

Later the girl asks M if he will consent to be interviewed for her assignment but he is busy. We see M and his friends walking down the street. M feels uneasy and we see a priest staring at them from across the road. They head down a side street and suddenly they are confronted by a priest and two nuns holding guns. They shoot M who vamps out and we get a gory confrontation between the clergy and vampires.

I’m not going to go too in depth into the fight itself except to point out that it is daylight but overcast and, as the sun emerges the vampires begin to smoke. We seem to be in the realm of schlock with really heavy gore moments – including a nicely realised ripped off head feeding moment. Some of the effects are not brilliant but all are passable and many work well enough. That said the actual makeup effects on the vampires are excellent, giving them a highly veined look. Then the film twists things around on us.

We see dice role and suddenly we realise that they are roleplaying (a vampire role playing game called Sangre Eterna). Elizabeth is not too happy as her character is looking fairly doomed as they finish and M seems to be a stickler for the rules, to the point of anal retention. After deciding they need a new player the friends go to a club.

M is in the toilet of the club, in a cubicle, when a punk clears the toilet out and a ‘meeting’ takes place between a man, the punk and a Goth, we later discover to be called Dahmer (Carlos Borquez). M watches from the toilet as the punk beats the man with a spiked knuckle duster and then Dahmer vamps out and feeds from the man. It seems that M’s fantasy world has made an appearance in reality.

The next day M consents to the girl’s interview request and persuades her to role play with them. Her character is Carmilla and this is why I never mentioned her name earlier. Elizabeth and Martín are also character names. We never get to know the players’ real names. Carmilla is not named before joining the game and thereafter is always referred to in character. When M rings Carmilla’s home and gets her mother he simply says “I am a friend of your daughter”. M himself is so called as he is the Master (as in game master). It is part of the blurring between fantasy and reality that the film does so well. After their game, in which the new character of Carmilla rescues the beleaguered Elizabeth, they go to a party in a disused house and discover it is thrown by Dahmer. M is wary and then sees Dahmer feeding from Elizabeth and, as the film progresses, he begins to realise that Dahmer intends to turn them all in a ritual connected with the eclipse.

That said, is Dahmer a vampire or are we seeing the delusions of a disturbed young man who has lost the dividing line between fantasy and reality? The film blurs these lines brilliantly and it is in this blurring that the film is masterful. There is also the point, of course, that Carmilla is a famous vampire name Elizabeth, Elizabeth (Bathory) is both known as a serial killer and a vampire through modern media, (Jeffrey) Dahmer is a serial killer and M is a film about a serial killer.

We get very little in the way of vampire lore. The vampires look normal until vamping and can be injured by gun shot. Too much sunlight is harmful and bullets dipped in holy water are deadly, staking also appears to work. Carmilla, in the game, is said to be from a certain clan which attracts shadow creatures – enemies of the vampires themselves.

All is not perfect in the film, however. Some of the effects can be hokey, as I said, and the film stock used is of low quality (or perhaps even a digicam). The lighting, however, works well enough, in that nothing is ever lost in darkness.

The direction is functional enough, though nothing stands out as utterly brilliant. That said the director does manage to instil some chills and minor jumps.

The biggest problem with the film is the dubbed dialogue. The dubbing is atrocious and the voice actors not brilliant. Given the relative newness of the film I cannot see why the DVD couldn’t have had subtitles. To be fair it is not enough to wreck the film but it is annoying. The characters are not brilliantly realised, we get some background but it is up to us to fill in the gaps, the scenes with Carmilla and her mother, whilst important to her character, fail to convince.

The film brilliantly blurs lines and, whilst roleplay orientated films are not too unusual, it is a fairly unique premise as a vampire film. That said I do not want to stray any higher than 6 out of 10 as the dubbing is problematic. The majority of score is down to the excellent blurring of fantasy and reality I mentioned. I really want to see an original dialogue, subtitled version of this.

The imdb page is here.