Avia Vampire Hunter – review

Director: Leon Hunter

Release Date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Oh dear. By rote I put the ‘contains spoilers’ warning whenever I do a review and yet sometimes there is nothing to spoil. Actually, in this case, that is untrue as there was very nearly a rather nice twist in this… very nearly, except that it was so badly handled, however I get ahead of myself.

This is a low budget independent effort and the DVD itself fills you with worry as it launches straight into the film – allegedly. What it actually launches into are three different trailers for this very film. These are not on a different menu track and you have to fast forward to get to the feature (or watch them of course). Kind of reminds you of the bad aspects of VHS days.

The basic story is that a couple of cops are called to a murder. A woman, Avia (Allison Valentino), joins them at the crime scene and flashes a badge. They ask to see it again and I am not surprised as it clearly looked home made. Supposedly it is a military ID. She is to assist on their investigation.

They head to a suspect's house and we notice that Avia is carrying a sword. Entering the house (without a warrant, mind) they end up in the attic and find the house owner with a sword also. Suddenly a vampire stands up. One cop is injured and the second is in peril and, with some of the worst choreographed sword moves, Avia takes the vampire out.

One cop ends up vanishing from the film for some time, to the point that I thought they’d forgotten he existed, and the other, Raymond Guy (Rodney Jackson), ends up with Avia – having found out that she isn’t military after all – and they have the most unconvincing, fully clothed sex scene every committed to film.

Let us stop there for a moment and consider the dialogue and acting. The acting has to be some of the most badly emoted I have had the misfortune to see and the dialogue has no basis in reality, things are said because the film needs to go in a certain way without consideration of why the character would actually say what they do.

Anyhoo, the film then has brief moments of Avia and Raymond and other moments of Avia either training, dreaming or searching for vampires. This consists of long, dreary scenes of Avia wandering around seemingly aimlessly and us wondering how a movie could be so badly paced. Lore is offered. Vampires came to be sometime in the 1800s – don’t ask me when, but I’ll get to the awful dialogue volume issues later – some seem human (though most of the ones we see are monstrous) and they are allergic to pine resin!

The effects in the film are varied from rubbish to surprisingly well done. The blind vampires are quite cool, though what the deal was with their tree branch fingers was beyond my ken and they lost kudos for that, and the vampire with the half rotten face looks good until the actor actually moves and then he looks as though he is caught in a very bad disco dance in slow motion.

Then again you also have skulls, either human or vampiric, that are so fake looking it is untrue and a vampire with a set of finger knives that look like tin foil wrapped around cardboard. It is really that bad. Oh hum.

Suddenly the film throws in a twist and, you know what, the actual twist itself is brilliant. Had the rest of the film been up to it I’d have been waxing lyrical about it but… It is so badly handled. Firstly it does not fit in with the film up to that point, assuming we have seen things from certain characters' points of view, and secondly because it is never consolidated. At the end we are not sure whether the twist was true or false – a mystery that was not satisfying in its vagueness.

The soundtrack is superb musically, though it often failed to adequately match the events on screen, and it is little surprise that the film seemed to have more credits for music at the head of the feature than any other type of credit but… We are playing volume roulette. The dialogue is so quiet compared to the music that you keep having to turn it up and down so that you can catch dialogue and then not deafen the rest of the household when the music kicks in.

For the attempt at the twist – and the fact that it was potentially brilliant – I am giving this 1 out of 10. The music helps the film scrape this point, as the action, dialogue, pacing and acting really should have pushed this to a big, fat zero. That said; it is nice to know that, as a vampire hunter, you can walk out of a suburban house, carrying a sword, raise a hand and be sure that a taxi will magically appear – batmobile eat your heart out.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Les Vampires

This was a silent serial from 1915 that was directed by Louis Feuillade and, in the first instance, I have to say do not let the title fool you, it is not a horror nor does it feature the undead. Les Vampires of the title are a ruthless gang of criminals who are terrorising Paris. The episodes themselves ranged in length between 13 minutes and 57 minutes. With all that said, why then would I give this an honourable mention?

Really for three reasons and the first is tenuous. The Vampires do prey on the rich of Paris and are completely amoral. The serial itself is much more hardcore than a modern viewer might think to give it credit for, severed heads in boxes, murder and mayhem are the order of the day.

A rival thief, Moréno (Fernand Herrmann), not only apparently returns from the dead – he takes what is thought to be a cyanide suicide pill but it transpires it only places him into a death-like trance – he also has hypnotic eyes, which he uses to his advantage. Okay not a great reason for an honourable mention but there are others.

The second reason is for the main female star of the show, Irma Vep (Musidora). Irma Vep is an anagram of vampire and she was a surprisingly strong role for a female star, especially given the date the serial was shot. Vep performed at the Howling Cat Club and was a key member of the vampires. As for Musidora, herself, she was an acrobat who did all her own stunts for the film. Musidora is classed as the first ‘Vamp’ of European cinema – in the dictionary definition of the word.

Finally, and most importantly, we turn to episode 2 – The Ring that Kills – in which the vampires target the ballerina Marfa Koutiloff (Stacia Napierkowska) as they believe she is engaged to Philippe Guérande (Édouard Mathé) – who is the reporter getting too close to their operations. Marfa is scratched by a poisoned ring just before she is to perform a part in the ballet “The Vampire”.

Marfa actually dies on stage, part way through her performance, but the costume she wears and the performance itself is an excellent portrayal of a supernatural vampire in bat form. Highly surreal and yet beautifully done, this act brings a touch of the undead into the proceedings and, I hazard an educated guess that, the actual performance was selected as a tie in to the name of the serial.

Still accessible to modern sensibilities, Les Vampires is now classed as a highlight of European mute cinema and gives a stark image of (just about) turn of the Century Paris (the streets seem rather empty, due to the fact the country was at war at the time of production, adding to that stark feeling).

The imdb page is here.

Day Watch – director’s cut – review

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Release Date: 2007

Contains spoilers

I gave a first impression of this movie when I saw it at the cinema and the first thing to say is that the film presented on DVD is not the theatrical release. For some reason the UK DVD release is a director’s cut and what this means is that, whilst it is watchable in Russian or English dub, the subtitles are not the groovy built in subtitles. This is a shame, but does not lower the general appreciation of the film, however I do not understand why a double disc with both versions could not have been released. There is some content difference as well. Some scenes I just do not remember are now in the film and the précis of the story from the first film is curtailed to the point of being none existent.

This does mean that a working knowledge of the first film is preferable (and indeed desirable as I shall explain later) but I think a viewer with any intelligence will quickly grasp what is going on even if they haven’t seen the first film. The films are loosely based on three books The Night Watch, The Day Watch and The Twilight Watch. Whilst set pieces are pulled from varying novels in the series and many of the characters appear in both the literary and cinematic versions, the films are not the books and the overall story is very different. Book purists beware, though in my opinion both mediums tell fantastic stories, each worthwhile in their own right.

The film begins with an astounding set piece, back in time, as the warrior Tamerlain attempts to take the Chalk of Fate – an artefact that allows fate to be changed by writing the change with the chalk – from an impenetrable fortress. Rather than follow the maze of alleys that make up the fortress, Tamerlain goes through the walls in an impressive set of visual effects. Eventually he finds the chalk and we see its power and, whilst we do not fully know it at this point, its limitations.

In modern day Moscow the races of supernatural beings, collectively known as the Others, live among us. The Others are split into two camps Dark and Light and there is a truce between the two factions. The Light Others have the Night Watch policing the Dark and the Dark Others have the Day Watch policing the Light (incidentally the DVD blurb completely cocks up the distinction between the watches). Above them both is the inquisition, ensuring that both Dark and Light obey the Truce. It is a web of political intrigue, plots and counter plots. In this world our main character is Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), a Night Watch agent whose son, Yegor (Dmitry Martynov), is a Great Other gone over to the Dark and whose prospective love, Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina), is a Great Other sworn to the Light.

There is a shadowy other world in the film known as the Gloom. This is different to the books where it is called the Twilight. The main difference between the books and the films is to do with the levels depicted. In the films all Others can enter the first level of the Gloom, where they are faced with a bleached and generally lifeless world, filled with garbage and swarming with mosquitoes.

There is a second level of the Gloom in the films, whereas there are several levels of Twilight in the books. Only a Great Other can really travel to the second level of Gloom and this is a place of vibrant colours, with rushing images of people and nightmarish figures screaming. It is a beautifully shot and realised vision and the lowering of the number of levels is no detraction from book to film.

The film is a joy of intrigue and I really do not wish to spoil the film by revealing any of the plot. However, I do wish to look at the vampiric activity within the film.

The vampires are Dark Others, but really we get two types – though only one is the traditional vampire. Anton’s neighbours are Kostya (Aleksei Chadov) and his father (Vakeri Zolotukhin). They are vampires, his father’s job being a butcher. We never really see fangs in this but we do notice that the father wears silver teeth caps, perhaps hiding the fangs from public view.

The pair feature in this in a much more intensive way then in the first movie and we discover that Kostya has, unbeknown to himself, received his first hunting licence – something his father does not want him to have. He was born human and his father bit and turned him as he was ill to the point of dying. However he wishes his son to stay as human as possible.

There was a vampire girl in the first film, Larissa (Anna Dubrovskaya), who makes an appearance in cameo in this, styling Yegor’s hair. She carries the scars inflicted by Anton from the first film but, more interestingly, we see that she has no reflection. This is in contrast to what we discovered in the first film, that a vampire in the Gloom can be spotted in a mirror. So, in Gloom they show in a real world mirror but in our world they cast no reflection.

The other type of vampire we see is not a traditional one but a trait of a Dark Other, in fact Yegor. He has taken to stabbing mortals with a pin and then sucking the life from them through it and, as a result, murdering them. He is actually drinking their lifeforce and we can see the result of this later in the film as a victim ages during the process.

The actual mechanics of this are interesting. The pin is hollow – blood wells to the end – but he does not physically suck the blood through. He sucks at a straw, some distance from the victim, drinking a juice carton. It is a form of sympathetic magic that allows him to steal the life energy. It is interesting that his eyes turn a ghastly white during the process.

The film is difficult to fault. It is complex, but a modicum of intelligence coupled with an ability to concentrate will see you through without a problem. There are some massive, effects driven set pieces but these add to the film, rather than take away from it – constructing a visually stunning framework around the proceedings. The acting is first rate and the soundtrack fairly rocks along in a most appropriate manner.

I said at the head that it is desirable to be familiar with the first film. This is because the two films truly are halves of one whole. The films fit cyclically together in a most satisfying way. What was also astounding was that the very Russian feel of the film (and it is clearly a Russian movie both in atmosphere and attitude) gives way at the end to an almost French cinema feel – true though I cannot explain anymore without giving the ending away.

A truly remarkable film, 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Torchwood Rumour

Rumour has it that the latest series of Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin off series showing on BBC at the moment, is to have a vampire episode.

Of course, if it does, I’ll be having a look at it right here on Taliesin Meets the Vampires.

Vamp or Not? Demon Slayer

This one comes in as something of a public service announcement. Daily I do an e-bay search for DVDs with the keyword vampire and recently this 2003 movie has come up regularly. To be honest it never looked too vampire and I’ve ignored it but the seller puts the following label on the film “Demon Slayer - Vampires Slashers - Teen Horror”.

So, I was in a local market and saw it for a third of the price that the e-bay seller sets the postage at, even before you bid (which in honesty seems high to me), and thought that for £1 I’d have a look at it. Movie wise things didn’t look to hot at first. After an opening that saw a city worker killed in the basement of an abandoned hospital we cut forward almost one year and the LA penal system is putting five troubled teens on a work programme to see if they can clean the place up and, in doing so, avoid jail.

I said it didn’t start too well, what with the names and stereotype of the character flashing up on the screen. We have Alicia (Michelle Acuna) - the Goth, Tyson (Howard Williams Jr) - the brotha, Claudia (Hanna Lee) - the bitch, Phillip (Adam Huss) - the punk and Tamara (Monique Deville) - the bitch’s friend. It seemed so clichéd that it took a moment to realise that they were being self-effacing and parodying the clichéd elements of their own movie.

They are sent to the hospital, which stands on the grounds of a whorehouse. The whores abandoned the church – after the church abandoned them – and turned to the worship of an Aztec Goddess – sacrificing customers to their new deity. In doing so it seems they became demons who return on the Day of the Dead to carry on with their murderous ways.

Actually, despite a hackneyed premise the cast and director did rather well. The performances seem a notch above many of the cheap end films coming out and the director clearly wanted to develop character. All in all they rose above the level of the story and the script. There are many references to other movies in the dialogue, mainly through Phillip, who at one point quotes from The Monster Squad. All that said, is it Vamp?

Well all the demons are female and all the victims are men. They appear once a year and other females can be possessed. They kill in a variety of ways and there is a Buffy-esque face thing going on but nothing in the way of fangs. Their eyes glow red, but that is as demonic as it might be vampiric. We do see biting at one point but it is not clear that they are feeding and it could just be an attack form.

They can be killed. Holy prayer can hold them back and we see a beheading successfully kill one. That said we also see a stab in the forehead kill another. There is nothing within the killing methods that screams out primarily vampire genre. A profusion of bugs, spiders crawling out of a mouth and the spirit of a dead man, bleeding from the mouth and gutted at the torso, warning the kids to get out doesn’t indicate vampire either.

They are referred to as demons and demons they are. Sometimes films can be borderline, so much so that you can see why one person might decide they fit in with the genre even if you don’t. That is not the case here, horror, demons but nothing vampiric at all. So, a friendly piece of advice to e-bay sellers. Please do not state that something is vampire when it clearly isn’t. I bought this elsewhere but the phrase ‘trade description’ would spring to mind if I’d bought it through the seller who states it is vampire in the title listing. That said, given the price I bought it for and the fact that it was a fairly enjoyable, if very predictable, yarn means there was no real pain in bringing readers of the blog this ‘Vamp or Not?’

The imdb page is here.

Quantum Leap: Blood Moon – review (TV Episode)

Director: Alan J. Levi

First aired: 1993

Contains spoilers

When it first aired I used to watch Quantum Leap religiously. The show had a simple premise that allowed them to keep drawing the audience back in. For those who never saw it the idea was the Dr Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) had theorised that a man could time travel in his own lifetime. He stepped into the project’s ‘accelerator’ and leaped. The series eventually explained that it was Sam’s mind and body that leapt but wherever he leapt an aura surrounded him giving the appearance and voice of another (who was displaced to Sam’s own time).

Sam had no control over the leaps but he was always somewhere he was needed, compelled to stop something bad happening. Once his mission was complete he would leap to another time frame. His companion through this was Al (Dean Stockwell), an observer from his own time whose image was projected to Sam as a hologram only he could see.

Some of the episodes were a little schmaltzy at times but the premise ensured that you always came back to see what would happen next and the show had a virtually unlimited license when it came to plots. The fifth and final series seemed, as I watched it, to become darker and more daring in its premises and during this season we had a vampire episode, which began with Sam awakening in a coffin and his perennial catchphrase after a leap of “Oh Boy.”

Normally Sam would look into a mirror, so that he could see what he looked like in the time he found himself in, however this time there were no mirrors. He was in a castle in England and a rather Hammer-esque setting it was too. When Al appears he discovers that he is Nigel Corrington, an artist. However Al is convinced the Corrington is a vampire.

As he puts it, Corrington looks like a cross between Bela Lugosi and a sick corpse. He explains that he has a pale complexion, beady eyes and a lusful stare – which Sam points out could well describe Al as well. As Al appears through the episode we note that he starts wearing a cross and garlic – much to Sam’s disgust as he does not believe in vampires.

Al has worked out that Sam has to save Alexander (Shae D’Lyn), the recently married wife of Corrington. History shows that she was found murdered a couple of days later, drained of blood. Sam knows that it couldn’t have been Corrington, as he is in his place, and thus it must have been one of the guests at the castle, Victor Drake (Ian Buchanan) or his companion Claudia (Deborah Moore).

As things move along we hear it is the night of the Blood Moon and Corrington has invited the two to participate in a planned ritual. Drake has brought a gift of a silver dagger that belonged to Count Báthory (I’ll get to that in a sec) and it becomes clear that it was (or will be) the murder weapon. We have an idea of what Corrington looks like as there is a portrait of his ancestor that is his spitting image. Al even has Sam open the ancestor’s grave as he believes that Corrington and his ancestor are one and the same – though the opening is not completed.

Other vampire myth that Al introduces is the fact that as well as drinking blood, vampires are known to be highly sexed and lustful creatures – again Sam states that it sounds like Al. We do see Al try to ward a vampire with a cross, amusing as he is a hologram that only Sam can see.

Al also discovers that the ritual of the Blood Moon (a ten yearly event) is one that sees a sacrifice to the memory of the most famous vampire, Báthory. The background on Báthory is historically accurate, killing of maidens and being walled up, mixed with artistic licence – surviving the walling for three years by drinking his own blood and, more drastically, a sex change from female to male. Why they felt the need to make Báthory male is beyond me. As Corrington is, in their eyes, acting weak the guests turn on him and Sam finds himself tied up, to be part of a double sacrifice.

It is Claudia that will take Corrington and she goes at him with fangs – a definite “I told you so moment” from Al. However, when Sam escapes his predicament he checks her mouth and discovers that the fangs are fake. These are false vampires, though their murderous intent is very real.

As the series continues It isn’t too much of a spoiler to mention how Drake dies, as it is genre interesting. He is holding up the Báthory dagger, whilst on the roof, when it is hit by lightening. This is obviously referential to Scars of Dracula, in which Dracula suffers a similar fate. However, whilst the guests were not real vampires, doubt is cast on Corrington when Sam looks into a silver tray and sees no reflection, just before he leaps again.

The series as a whole was made, to a great extent, by the on screen chemistry between Bakula and Stockwell, as well as the camaraderie despite their obvious personality differences of their characters that really allowed the actors to spark off each other. This holds true in this episode. The episode also has a great, Gothic atmosphere born straight out of Hammer studios. The supporting cast ham it up with as much melodrama as they can muster.

For me it was a highlight episode in a highlight series and an example of a vampire episode that didn’t loose its story or become bogged down in issues from the main series' story arc. 7 out of 10.

The episode’s imdb page is here.

Mrs Amworth {2007} – review

Director: Frank Sciurbia

Release Date: 2007

Contains spoilers

Mrs Amworth was a story by E F Benson, which can be found in pdf format here. It had been made as a (short) film in the 1970s – a version available on VHS I believe and I am currently trying to acquire that version. The story itself was set in the genteel and leafy British countryside and when I saw the trailer for this new version I realised it had been modernised and moved to the US. I also got the feeling that it might be of a low budget, independent source but it felt a little like the low budget Dracula remake The Vulture’s Eye.

Now, despite the restrictions of budget I really rather enjoyed The Vulture’s Eye, it had a certain something. I then realised that this film was by the same director. Unfortunately, where the previous film had a certain, indefinable, element, this one did miss the mark on quite a few levels and it is a shame as the Benson story is a cracking little vampire yarn.

The film begins with an unsteady camera following a woman for a second and then we are in a funeral home. The mortician (John M White) looks in on a girl (Rachel Barianca) in her casket and then leaves with the embalmer (Chris Nelson). Once they are gone the girl opens her eyes. The mortician realises he left his hat in the room. The hat is atop the empty coffin. He sees the girl and she leaps at him. The embalmer comes in to find the girl feasting at the mortician’s neck.

Sarah (Christy Sullivan) is a reporter on a small town paper and is looking into the story of the almost buried alive girl. Her boyfriend is Jed (Daniel Ross), a photographer, and she encourages him to meet his new neighbour, who has been living next door for a month. He does so and meets Mrs Amworth (Magenta Brooks). It was around here that the cracks really began to show for me.

The film had been clearly of a low budget but several things stood out in this encounter both in editing, scripting, performance and concept. In editing (or perhaps scripting) Jed and Mrs Amworth sit and talk and his photography is mentioned in passing, later they walk together and he tells her he is a photographer. It was glaring, the dialogue had shown that she knew his profession already. It was either bad scripting or bad editing of scenes.

Mrs Amworth is portrayed very much as a sexual predator and this didn’t gel for me. Okay I know the Benson story, perhaps that was the problem, but the dialogue seemed too blatant and yet blatant trying to be subtle. Brooks as Amworth also didn’t have the stunning beauty I would have expected of the sexual predator either. She had an unusual look that, in certain photography worked really well, in an almost Dracula’s Daughter way, but most of the time felt wrong. I also felt that her delivery was a little out.

As things transpires we discover that she is a vampire and see this in a bizarre scene where she seduces the gardener’s son Luke (Jonathon Raymond) in a scene that was uncomfortable as he looked awfully young and yet the sequence ended up as a bad tease followed by a bite on the wrist. He becomes ill and he is the third to succumb to an illness that the local doctor, Lamb (Jim Nalitz – who played the vampire in The Vulture’s Eye), described as dehydration with anaemia leading to coma and death.

Mrs Amworth works her way through the locals as Lamb and newspaper editor Leland (Ben Murrie) become more and more suspicious. Well, to be honest that suspicion came early. Lamb takes Leland and breaks into the morgue as soon as Luke dies in order to cut the lad’s heart out as (being an ex-medican sans frontiers doctor) he has seen this before. When the heart is removed Luke struggles, though this does not lead the newspaperman to doubt but to revelation, and then Leland researches and finds the picture of a local murderess obsessed with blood from the 1930s, who is obviously Amworth, but doesn’t act upon the discovery for ages.

The film has some odd moments and, to be fair, occasional nice moments. Mrs Amworth does not have fangs, we see her stab Luke in the neck with a needle and drink from the spray and rip a tongue out with her teeth. Her bite marks seem to vanish from the victim after the attack and her attacks are remembered as nightmares. She wears a heavy perfume to hide the smell of her putrefaction. She appears to be able to disappear and appear at will.

We discover that embalming stops a corpse from rising. The reason the doctor takes Luke’s heart, another effective method, is because he wasn’t embalmed. The heart itself is thrown into a pond and has a dialogue line about not being afraid of vampire fish (meant as a gag and one of very few in the film). It would have worked better if it had been a river and had a line about running water. The film’s line sounded corny whereas my suggestion has actual tradition behind it. We also discover that beheading is an effective method of stopping these things.

She can go out in the sunlight and we see her sleeping in an open coffin, hidden in her shed, a couple of times. That said we also discover that she was buried behind the house in the 1930s and see her sink (once) into that grave. I didn’t understand why she would sleep in her own grave like that and have a coffin in the shed, it just didn’t gel, but the sinking into the grave was one of the nicer moments that carried a lot of atmosphere.

In the main, however, atmosphere was definitely missing from this, though there are one or two moments that were actually quite jumpy they were too few and far between. The story felt overly long in many respects and this was down to pacing. There is a scene of a distraught mother when Luke dies that just seems to go on and on. The gap between working out what is happening and doing something about it was too long.

As I said there is some nice photography scattered through the film and then we get shaky and movement blurred camera work. The performances are all very earnest but not outstanding from anyone and the director builds character at times that somehow feel mistimed in their placement (the Sarah affair/confession was almost certainly unnecessary).

The ending highlights the confused nature of the script. It almost follows the book and then veers off into strange dreams or dreamlike visions. Now there was a surrealism to The Vulture’s Eye that really worked. In this it missed the mark (and was misplaced). It is really unfortunate that this film missed much more than it hit as it could have been an independent masterpiece. I really can’t say it got close though. 3 out of 10 reflects that the original story is definitely recognisable despite the changes and the fact that there were aspects that worked, but I do feel they worked despite the majority of the film not with or because of it.

At the time of review this version does not have an imdb page.