Honourable mentions: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Vol 1-3

I have been wanting to include the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels on this page for a while, but the vampiric connection is so tenuous that even a honourable mention seemed a bit of a fraud. However, I love the series, thus I’m pushing the envelope, so to speak.

Vol 1. sees the formation of the league, a group of extraordinary individuals who must save Victorian England from fiendish enemies of the empire. For those of you who have seen the film you will be in for a surprise. Firstly the composition of the league is different, secondly the actual characterisations are very different and then there is the reason why this hasn’t been reviewed.

The League is comprised of technological pirate Captain Nemo, opium addicted Allan Quartermain, the unstable Jekyll and Hyde, the utterly sociopathic invisible man and Mina Murray.

Note that in the film she had the name Mina Harker whereas in the graphic novel, as a divorcee, she has reverted to her maiden name and there is no evidence within the graphic that she is a vampire (as she was in the film). Indeed the only vampiric connection within volume 1 is the fact that Mina had survived and helped defeat Dracula before the events depicted.

The graphic is certainly not for children and, had it been filmed straight, the movie would have been an 18 certificate.

Vol 2. continues exactly where volume one left off and is concerned with the invasion from Mars as depicted in War of the Worlds, with the wondrous twists that Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill are wont to place within the series.

Yet again there is no vampiric element; things are as described in respect of volume 1 bar one additional element. Through the graphic novels Mina is depicted always wearing a scarf and, part way through this, she removes it and we see the scars left by Dracula.

What is great about this is that there are no mere fang marks, Mina’s neck is a mass of scars and it subtly gives the reader an indication of exactly how vicious Dracula was in the world mythology highlighted in the series.

The Black Dossier is volume 3 and takes the series on a very different direction. We are now in the 1950s in post Big Brother England and two agents arrive in the country to steal the black dossier, the reports on the league through the ages. It becomes clear to us that the pair are Mina and Allan Quartermain and yet, rather than being elderly, they are both young.

The majority of the graphic is actually prose (from the black dossier) in a variety of styles, which looks at the various incarnations of the League through the years. This includes many different characters, from Orlando, to Gulliver to Fanny Hill and many different styles. There is a boys own section, a lost Shakespeare script and a Kerouac style beat novel excerpt – unfortunately, sometimes it is too clever for its own good and not all the sections work. The graphic section is slight and depicts Mina and Allan trying to escape England with the dossier.

We discover that, whilst the intelligence community believe that Allan is his own lost son, it is apparent he bathed in the same pool of immortality that Orlando used. This is, it is hinted, what made him young again. Whether Mina also bathed in the pool or whether her preserved youth is due to her encounter with Dracula is not answered.

I should mention that the end of the graphic is in 3D (3D glasses come with the volume) and whilst the end section, storywise, was not too fulfilling it was visually some of the most stunning graphic novel art I have ever seen – the 3D being marvellous rather than a gimmick.

Barely a honourable mention but definitely a series to read.

For those we can’t review… we salute you.

In my quest to get hold of as much vampiric goodness as I can I sometimes acquire films that are in a non-English language and, unfortunately, are not subtitled.

Here I give praise to those films, which I cannot review as I feel that to do so would be unfair as I have to guess what is going on on-screen. However, actually having the films is no hardship, they all form part of the collection.

I have “Android Girl Nami”, a Japanese film concerning the battles of mentioned android girl and an escaped vampire girl. This is Japanese language only. I have “The First Vampire of China”, in Mandarin with Japanese subtitles.

I ordered Mexican wrestling movie Los Vampiros de Coyoacan, which does have a subtitled version but the seller sent me a non-subtitled edition. They were good enough to refund me the cost and not require the film’s return – I still want to get the subtitled version.

The latest set, with no English subs, to come into my collection was Korean series Hi, Francesca – season 1. I found this very nice set (pictured at the head of the post) for a bargain price on E-Bay, but unfortunately it has no English subs. I will still watch it but, being a sit-com I know that much of the point will be lost. No review though, how could I do it justice. Still, it is a gorgeous box.

Honourable Mentions: Paris, Je T’aime

The film Paris, je T’aime is a series of short films, directed by various directors and featuring a veritable galaxy of stars, all centred on the theme of love and set in Paris. The segments vary from poignant character studies to the surreal and, as you will realise because I am looking at the film on this blog, one of the segments features a vampire.

The segment is called “Quartier de la Madeleine” and is only some five minutes long but it does capture some wonderful imagery within its short length, though the segment has no dialogue. I intend to walk through the whole five minutes as, though it is visually wonderful, there is nothing shocking in its length.

It begins with an American tourist (Elijah Wood) setting up some very high steps in the night. As he climbs them he hears something, though he does not know what. When at the head of the stairs he steps into something sticky, the camera moves down and we see it is blood. The director, Vincenzo Natali, wonderfully juxtaposes the blue/grey wash of the Parisian night with the all too red spill of blood. I was reminded, in some measure, of the filming techniques in Sin City – though the colours used are different.

Crouching the tourist moves forward and sees the run of blood from a man (Wes Craven in an uncredited role, Craven also directed one of the segments) and a shape above him, a vampire (Olga Kurylenko). She raises her head and her finger touches her lips. The tourist drops back behind a car. When he looks back the body is still there but the vampire is gone.

He falls back and suddenly she is before him. She lunges forward as if to bite but the bite turns into a kiss upon his neck and she sniffs him in a most animalistic way. The she begins to float away. There is a flap of her clothing, like wings, but the movement is captured in an ethereal way with the wind whipping her hair.

The tourist stands and watches the vampire vanish. He grabs an empty wine bottle and smashes it, then slits his wrist, holding the wound out to the vampire. She stops, interested for a moment, and then continues her retreat. The tourist looks dismayed but then dismay turns into fear as he realises that the blood is pumping ferociously from the wound.

He moves, but slips in blood and falls back down the stairs. At the bottom we see blood leak from the wound in his head. The camera pans to the stairs and the vampire floats towards the prone, dying tourist. She bites her wrist and drops blood to his mouth. His eyes change and his vision shifts, and we see her not in the blue wash but in a vivid bright red and orange wash.

He stands, his tongue poking his new fangs. They embrace and he bites her neck. She looks shocked but the look melts to pleasure and she bites back. They suck on each other’s neck as the film fades through a heart shape.

As I say, short, sweet and to the point, the joy of the segment is the wonderful visuals. Kirylenko looks fantastic as the vampire and both primary actors communicate all through looks, given the absence of dialogue. There is an interesting undertone that, whilst the tourist ultimately has an accident, he has essentially committed suicide before being turned. If nothing else this is proof positive, as though we needed it, that vampires can turn up just about anywhere.

The film, as a whole, is an interesting piece, obviously not the normal sort of film that features on these pages. However, I do have to say that, with regard another segment, no matter how surreal you get there is absolutely never a need to have something featuring a mime! Jut my own personal prejudice but there you go.

The imdb page is here.

Revamped – review

Director: Jeff Rector

Release Date: 2008

Contains spoilers

This is very much a Jeff Rector project in that he not only directed the film and co-wrote it but he also stars as main character Richard. I was a little torn as I watched this as the prologue of the film worked so well, as an off-beat comedy, and yet it seemed to falter as it went along. Let us start, however, with said prologue.

We start with a cityscape view of LA and a voice over from Richard, he is going to tell us his story but I’ll just take a moment to wonder why he would say “if only they knew what was out there”? You’ll understand why I ask that soon enough. Richard is a business man and he is celebrating his first wedding anniversary alone, as his wife Janet (Alison McCurdy) is out. He opens a credit card bill and sees a charge to a hotel. He phones the hotel and discovers that his wife has been using it, allegedly with him.

Distraught he tries to kill himself, the gun is empty and the noose pulls the light fitting down. Then he sees an infomercial for Kiss of Death Inc. – offering to turn folks into vampires. He calls them, intending to cut his wife out of his will, become undead and get his revenge. We see his fantasy of what he’ll do to his wife and her lover. The next night he kisses his wife goodbye, as she goes to meet her illicit love, and then settles down to read up on vampires whilst he waits for his appointment with the company’s representative. Here we get a marvellous black and white fantasy in full Lugosi mode, which ends up with him being staked.

When the rep, Lillith (Tane McClure), arrives he is a little nervous and as she appears from mist he holds up a cross, causing her to retreat. Having been told off for being rude he invites her in, is told that his wife’s activities are well known and gets it on with her. She then bites him, leaving him for dead – to become undead.

He is in his coffin, at the amusingly inappropriately named Coffin Stuffers Funeral Home, when Janet discovers that she has been disinherited. Having no money she finds that her surfer boyfriend Jonathon (Kato Kaelin) leaves and she has to tell funeral director Mr Vincent (Carel Struycken – yes, Lurch) that she cannot afford the burial. Mr Vincent arranges a cremation – cue flames and a scream.

Up to now things have been quite good, well above average at least, and I have chuckled along with the film. The film then cuts forward five years and we see the funeral home, where Richard’s ashes remain uncollected, and the home (to stay in business) are selling bodies to Satanists. Unfortunately the body they have is not good enough and Mr Vincent and his cohort are murdered, their blood pouring onto Richard’s ashes which were spilt during the attack. The Satanists leave and Richard reforms.

He gets his revenge on Jonathon and then discovers that the actions of Kiss of Death Inc. caused a vampire epidemic to occur. The Government set up a team of exterminators – S.T.A.K.E. – and all the vampires have been wiped out. Richard can’t believe it, he wanted to find Lillith and his misadventures really begin when he is sent to a club that might lead to finding survivors and nearly becomes the unwitting victim in a snuff film. The aftermath of escape sees cops Reeger (Martin Kove) and Peters (Paul Michael Robinson) on his tail, though they are out of their jurisdiction.

That jurisdiction actually rests with Jake Hardcastle (Sam Jones, yes Flash Gordon), a rough tough hombre with a stake shotgun, whose family were killed and turned during the vampire uprising – leaving him no choice but to kill them. Hardcastle’s team (and pep talk) had the marines from Aliens scene written all over the script and yet the character seemed under-used.

Richard meets up with Mary (Alana Curry), who is a half-breed who lives in a half-breed hideout. It seems that infected blood got into the system and many people became mutated (as the film puts it). The half-breeds can’t stand sunlight, live longer but are not immortal. They tend to drink synthetic blood and have developed a blood patch (think nicotine patch with a 30 year withdrawal period). Richard also discovers that there is a group of vicious vampires out there called the BLEEDERS.

The film’s downturn really came in, for me, when the S.T.A.K.E. team attacked the half-breeds hide out and then the BLEEDERS also attacked. The scene itself had problems as an action scene, the gunfire used sounded good but the direction of the scene lacked something. The reason they are both attacking? The humans want to wipe out vampires, and half breeds will do, and the vampires want Mary as she is a virgin.

It seems that BLEEDER leader Vladimus (Billy Drago) wants to perform a ritual, which can only occur once every thousand years, that will blot out the sun and needs a virgin sacrifice. Virgins are hard to come by in LA, obviously, but somehow all know that Mary is one – except her father, who happens to be Reeger and he thinks she’s dead. It also transpires that Lillith (who is with the surviving vampires) believes Richard to be the prophesised vampire with a soul, who will turn the events one way or another.

The story failed to hang together here on in and one is left with questions like, if there was a vampire uprising (as mentioned in dialogue) and blood dealers hang around on street corners, how come no-one knows what is out there (as mentioned at the head of the film)?

There are several cameos in the movie, I have mentioned Sam Jones (whose role was slightly larger than a cameo but not by much), Carel Struycken and Billy Drago (his role was much more cameo than anything else). I haven’t mentioned Anne Lockhart who had a small role or that Fred Williamson makes an appearance as police Captain Michaels, though, in honesty, it was almost a pointless role and a waste of Williamson’s talent.

More fulfilling was the cameo by Jason Carter as Nigel, the snuff film director. Carter had little to do, but what he did was absolutely marvellous and it was at a point where the film still held together well. Rector was great, at the head of the film, as bumbling business man Richard but, once reborn, I didn’t really buy into the character. This was not down to Rector’s performance, however, but down to his script. Christa Campbell makes an appearance as Lillith’s sister Lexi, and looks mighty fine, whilst Deron McBee fulfils his role as vampire hardman Khan in much the way one would expect such a character to act.

You see the film tries to do too much and looses sight of the off-beat comedy after a while. It still pulls the odd gag, such as when Reeger produces a sixteenth century cross filled with holy water and, when asked where you get something like that, glibly states E-Bay. The vampire with a soul, magic ritual with virgin sacrifice and Government death camp elements all piled in on top and the film lost direction because it got too ambitious.

The effects were, in the main, good and you got a lot of vampiric imagery that worked. However a transformation at the end was just too rubber masked and again, like the story itself, blew the over-all feel of the film.

This, unfortunately, missed the mark but it still has merits, it was just too ambitious for its own good. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Rulers of Darkness – review

Author: Steven Spruill

First Published: 1995

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: “In the grounds of a Washington cathedral, the police find the body of a young woman with her throat shredded by human teeth. Soon other victims follow.

“Police Detective Merrick Chapman is called onto the case. When traces of a bizarre blood type are found on the victim, so is renowned haematologist Dr Katherine O’Keefe.

“Katie thinks that she and her former lover, Merrick, are working together to catch the murderer, but Merrick is better informed about the vampire killer than he lets on. And he knows he can never reveal the truth without putting other lives in danger.

“An ingenious fusion of horror, medical thriller, and police procedural, RULERS OF DARKNESS is a chillingly realistic vampire novel. It is a convincing and compulsive read, one that will grip and terrify you and keep you turning the pages to the very end.”

The Review: I need to tell you a story, about how I came to read this book as it will explain my thoughts on it. I first saw this book, along with its two sequels, for sale at a newsagents in a train station several years ago. I thought they sounded interesting but I was setting off for the day and didn’t know whether I could afford them. I didn’t purchase them. When I got home I had completely forgotten the titles and the author's name.

Not to worry, next time I was at the station I would buy the books (or at least book one). As it happened, the books were no longer there on my next visit to the station. Cut forward to about 6 months ago and I was in a second hand store when I spotted book 3 of the series “Lords of Light”. I purchased it and then when on line and bought book 2 and this book. It has taken me until now to read book 1.

This is my problem with the novel. It wasn’t that it was badly written, it isn’t, it was because for some reason the book did not grab me and I kept putting it down as something more interesting came along. Perhaps it is because I am not a big fan of medical thrillers (and it does have an aspect of that), or perhaps because I am not a big fan of police procedural novels (and it also has an aspect of that). To be fair, however, it is more aimed at being a horror.

We have Merrick, vampire and police officer (not an original mix I grant you) but what he does more than anything is hunt other vampires. Except they are not vampires. I think this is where I lost ground. These are hemophages, essentially humans with a different gene. The hemophage lives a normal life until around twelve and then the gene kicks in. They become inflicted with a rare, untreatable, form of leukaemia and will die, unless they ingest blood.

Having ingested blood their own blood structure changes and they become ageless (though we assume they grow to adulthood) blood drinkers. They have standard vampire traits, they regenerate, they are strong, they can cause blind spots on the retina of a person to hide themselves, they can use the same eye mojo to restrict blood and knock a person unconscious and some can trigger vivid memories in another.

It is pseudo science, there is no real explanation just an attempt to make the creatures sound both natural and scientifically explainable but, bottom line, what is being described is a supernatural creature but Spruill tries to strip away the supernatural elements.

Merrick himself hunts his own kind (to lock them away as they are essentially unkillable, until they fall back into leukaemia and die a natural, painful death) as he is the only one that does not kill. In other days he would take the wicked and now he takes blood by transfusion bag to drink later – none of the others seem strong enough to resist the attack. These powerful creatures are too strong for us lesser mortals.

I think it was this attempt to stray from the supernatural into the scientific that prevented me getting gripped (although I am not against the concept generally in vampire novels), though it might have just been me not getting on with the book. As it is, I feel funny about lowering the score as it isn’t a badly written book, but it just didn’t grip or entertain me as it should. To some degree I liked the interaction between the two main ‘phage’ characters, this being done at a distance and based on assumption of what the other was thinking and how they were motivated, as neither was talking to the other. However, even in this I felt unconvinced at times. I have books 2 and 3 and, whilst I will read them at some point, I feel no real compulsion to do so immediately. 5 out of 10.

Vamp or Not? Messiah of Evil

This 1973 movie by Willard Huyck, the man who brought us Howard the Duck, is generally classed as a zombie flick. However, when I read the premise and the similes with other films that people drew, I knew I had to see it. There was talk of Lovecraftian overtones, plus a likening to both ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. Given what a good film ‘Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’ is made sure that I had to see it. I have to say that, aside from being narrated by the female survivor and the dream like quality of the film, this isn’t too much like ‘Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’, however it is even less like ‘Night of the Living Dead’.

This is not your atypical zombie flick and, whilst it isn’t quite vampire, it straddles so many concepts that it was worth looking at here.

The film begins with a man running down a road and falling. A gate opens and a girl looks at him. He goes into her garden and washes his face in a fountain before falling. The girl goes up to him, there is almost a tender moment and then she slashes his throat with a razor. All the time there is an almost easy listening torch song over the top, adding to the bizarre atmosphere. We then get a voice over from heroine Arletty (Marianna Hill) She is obviously in a mental hospital but tells us of a town once called New Bethlehem and now called Point Dune, and the danger of the blood moon. She tells us that “They're coming here. They're waiting at the edge of the city. They're peering around buildings at night, and they're waiting. They’re waiting for you! And they'll take you one by one and no one will hear you scream.”

It all began when her artist father, who lived in Point Dune, stopped writing (after his letters became more and more bizarre), so she went looking for him. On her way to the town she stops off at a nearby gas station. The dreamlike quality really kicks in here, with a gas station attendant shooting into the dark as howls ring through the night and then wandering over as though nothing had happened. He tells her that he is shooting at wild dogs. A truck comes along and the driver, obviously from Point Doom, is strange, detached. The attendant looks into the truck’s back and, below a tarp, are bodies with their throats slit. He gets rid of Arletty and then, later, is nearly crushed by a car and then leaped on by a Point Dune resident and killed.

Arletty gets to her father’s house, a strangely painted place and much too eerie to stay in, if you ask me. She has no luck finding him but does find his deeply disturbing journal. She then finds a stranger, Thom (Michael Greer), and his companions, Toni (Joy Bang) and Laura (Anitra Ford). Thom was looking for her father, as an art fan, but has become fascinated with the local legend of the blood moon. He has local wino Charlie (Elisha Cook Jr) tell him of the legend. The full legend comes out during the course of the film but I intend to tell it here.

One hundred years before the blood moon shone down and people began to change. It was all tied to a stranger who had been a preacher and now, having been in a place where the moon effected the locals and having tasted of human flesh, worshipped a new God. He had walked into the waters off Point Dune having vowed to return after one hundred years so that he could lead the world into this new religion. Of course, after one hundred years the moon has started turning red and it has an effect on the locals again.

They are obsessed with looking out to the water, awaiting their Messiah’s return. Ahh, but if that was all. There seems, through the moon’s influence, to be some sort of infection. They start bleeding from the ear and the eye (and passing blood, we are told) as though they no longer need human blood and are expelling it from their system. They cease to feel pain. In a bizarre moment we see an infected person vomit bugs and lizards – why I couldn’t say.

They also develop a need for red meat, be it at the meat counter of a supermarket, raw, or by eating the none-infected. In this way they are quite zombie like but they are sentient, intelligent, they can speak and they run. This all takes it from the zombie realm and into new territory. The fact that they are obsessed with raw meat could be vampiric, given that some vampire legends have flesh eating as well as blood drinking, especially as it seems to tie in with the fact that they have expelled their own blood.

They are difficult to kill. At one point we see two cops open fire on a whole gaggle of infected, to no avail. Bullets do not work. Suddenly one of the cops starts bleeding from the eye and turns his gun on his companion, shooting him down as the uninfected cop runs. Then all of the infected present leap upon the downed cop in order that they might feast. Charlie has told Arletty that she must kill her father but not bury him, only burn him. Fire does leave them particularly crispy.

They do operate mainly at night, but this is tied into the blood moon and the return of the Messiah, and we see them out during the day. However, despite their sentience, when one is badly injured the others seem unable to stop themselves feasting upon him. In a move that takes this away from both the vampire and zombie genre, the infection is clearly from a supernatural force emanating from the moon (or at least concurrent with the moon turning red), bites do not infect others.

The film produces two well done set pieces, in respect of the two companions. Laura finds herself in a supermarket that seems deserted at first and then she spots one or two people in the aisles. At the back of the market she sees a group of infected at the meat counter. She runs but is eventually chased down, unable to get out as they locked her in.

Toni goes to the cinema and is sat watching a film as more and more infected enter, taking seats and surrounding her and I must say this was a really well done scene. She becomes more and more uneasy and then one turns and is bleeding from the eye. She tries to run, but again they have locked the door, and she too becomes chow for the infected.

I should mention the cameo appearance by Sammy Davis Jr. in the film shown in the cinema.

The film has overtones of the atmosphere of ‘Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’ and, maybe, even the later ‘Twin Peaks’, it also has a definite Lovecraft edge, perhaps similar to something like ‘Shadow over Innsmouth’. I can (just about) see why ‘Night of the Living Dead’ is mentioned, but these are not your Romero zombies and, despite being rather difficult to kill, they are not the dead as far as we know – despite the alternate title of Dead People. There is more of an overtone of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ to be perfectly honest. Death by fire seems vampiric enough but, in the end, I would say that this is a different beast all together.

It is perhaps not the ‘forgotten classic’ that many claim but it is interesting none the less, it does something that borrows heavily from many sources to create something fairly unique. Of interest to both zombie and vampire genre fans, but not vamp – there just isn’t enough to actually push it over the genre border.

The imdb page is here.

Dangerous Seductress – review

Release Date: 1992

Director: H Tjut Djalil

Contains spoilers


This Indonesian film is on a vampire filmography I have and has a note that it is a remake of Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl. Let us just squash this rumour right now. This has absolutely nothing at all in common with ‘the Living Dead Girl’, not one iota of the story is similar. This is a wholly different beast. It actually mixes up the witch and vampire genre quite considerably but, whilst it straddles both camps, it most definitely is vampiric.

The film starts of with a cityscape view and then we get a car chase, one of the most strange and bizarre ones put to celluloid. It involves a thieves’ car and a cop car. There is a thief in the back of the car and two up front and the front passenger keeps hitting the driver as they are being chased because the driver shot a cop in the robbery. When I say hit I mean punched, but somehow without causing a crash. The cops and thieves are firing at each other. The fire fight involves both pistols and machine guns and they are all the worst shots in the world. Eventually the cops call for backup, once they are out of the city, and backup is a police motorbike. This drives at the robbers, with the rider firing, leaps over the thieves car and hits the cop car.

Now, you’d think that was the end of it but the thieves go careening into a graveyard and crash after the driver receives yet another punch, which leads to the puncher being impaled (and yet still able to complain). The cops come along and ram them, enabling the driver to speed off again and crash. The resultant crash causes the loss of an arm and a finger and is witnessed by American Linda (Kristin Anin) as it is outside her home. Ambulances come and go and then the ‘fun’ begins… we get the most bizarre resurrection scene.

Wind shifts some dirt and a piece of jewellery is revealed (actually it turns out later to be more like a possessed, hand carved makeup mirror). Blood drips from a tree onto it and it opens. The un-retrieved severed finger makes its way along the floor (honestly, I couldn’t make this up) to the jewellery and it snaps shut on it as though it had eaten it.

Lightening starts to hit the ground and in the flash we see a woman (Amy Weber) appear (I assume this was her spirit) and then disappear again. A leg bone finds its way to an uncovered skeleton and reattaches itself and then flesh starts to form on the skeleton. Eventually it reveals her face, but the body is still rotten – a wail is emitted (and continues on and off through the scene). She stands and a dog comes over and tries to steal the skeletal leg. It is beheaded for its trouble, and its blood shoots like a jet straight into her mouth.

We see her face form fangs as more of her body reforms. She tries to move but her feet, which are in a hole, are grabbed by hands and she cannot move. She wails some more and her nipples glow a blue/white. Why do her nipples glow? For the same reason that her bum glows later and someone else’s nipples glow – so that we can’t see them. The Queen of Darkness has returned but is held in a hole!

Somewhere in America Suzy (Tonya Lawson) has given up waiting for her boyfriend John (Joseph Cassano) to get home for their anniversary dinner. He gets there eventually and seems drunk, he gives her a ring, is forgiven and gets amorous with her. When she refuses him he beats her and tries to rape her. It is quite a disturbing scene, to be honest, one would say brutal. She gets away with the prodigious use of a glass and a cupboard rail.

In Jakarta Linda is having a birthday party. Actually we get about five minutes of her dancing with her fiancée Bob (John Warom) and I’ll mention the film’s pacing later. A friend comes in and he has brought a colleague called Beko (Mick Carmichael). Beko has brought Linda an occult book for her birthday – as you do; give the American model, whom you have never met before, the ancient Indonesian book of spells! The phone goes and it is Suzy, who happens to be Linda’s sister. Linda gets her on a flight to Jakarta.

Linda has to go on a modelling shoot in Bali (I promise we are getting to a point) and leaves Suzy, and the book. Suzy says a spell to gain beauty, strength and glamour and, as a result, summons the Queen of Darkness into a mirror. Suzy will have all she wishes, but the Queen will use her body to gain sustenance… ahh the point, at last. Suzy becomes the dangerous seductress, getting men and feeding from them. Will her family realise in time? Perhaps so, if the mysterious holy man in Bali can warn Linda but, ultimately, could we care?

Lore wise this is mad. Suzy gains magic powers, this is much more than your atypical eye mojo, we are talking full on spells and witchcraft. This only seems to happen at night, she is attacked during the day and cannot defend herself. She seems to be able to turn the head of every man she meets. Once alone her mystic tattoo, which appeared when she made the deal, glows and she grows fangs – she doesn’t tend to bite though.

She dispatches the men in a variety of ways. One, for instance, she spear guns in the leg, pinning him to a wall, and then stabs him in the neck with a stiletto heel. The spurt of blood goes straight into her mouth in a jet. Once back at home she looks to the Queen in the mirror and slits her own throat, the blood jets into the mirror, feeding the Queen. We get an odd reference moment when some lads are talking and one describes her first murder as being committed by a weird Dracula, another refutes that and says it was obviously a weird feminist. If they were making a point in the dialogue I missed it, but I doubt it also.

She is immune to bullets it seems but the strangest crossing of lore was the Queen appearing as a floating head. I wondered whether this was an attempt to link the Queen with the Malaysian vampire myth of the penanggalan. Remember that Malaysia and Indonesia have a land border. Indonesia does have similar head only vampire legends and so it could be one of those that was being referenced.

The film has two major strikes against it, beyond the story I just described. The first is the acting, which is sub-porn. Now, to be fair, for some of the actors English will not have been the first language but there isn’t a single good performance. Everyone sucks equally.

The other issue is the pacing. From five minutes of Linda and Bob dancing, to other dance moments, to model shoots and even (supposedly seductive) pool games. The director seemed obsessed with slowing the pace of the film down for no good reason. One feels these scenes, in the main, were meant to be sexploitative, but the film failed on that score also – the European filmmakers were doing a much better job at titillation decades before.

Not a great movie, but with enough weirdness to warrant taking at least a quick look if you know what you are getting yourself into. 1.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Many Bloody Returns – review

Editors: Charlaine Harris and Toni L P Kelner

First published: 2007

Contains spoilers

This is a collection of 13 short stories concerning vampires, all around the themes of birthdays – be that the birthday of the vampire, inviting a vampire to a birthday party or the coming of age of a human in a vampire run town.

The collection features all new stories, which is nice, and many are from current authors whose series grace booksellers at the moment. Whilst some of the stories are clearly one off tales others are based in the universe of the author’s series.

For this reason we get a Sookie Stackhouse story by Harris, A Harry Dresden story by Jim Butcher and a Henry Fitzroy story by Tanya Huff, amongst others. This is both a strength and a weakness of the compilation. All of the stories are very readable but one wonders whether the stories would mean as much to a reader unfamiliar with the series – this being the weakness.

As for the strength, if you are familiar with the particular series it adds a little facet to the respective series and, if you are not, it might encourage you to start reading the series. For example, I have never read the Morganville Vampires series, a series said to be young adult but probably more accurately a teen series. However, I found the background offered in Rachel Caine’s “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life” so intriguing (the concept of a town controlled by vampires and humans forced to contract themselves to vampire protectors) that I may well give the series a go.

As always, some of the stories are better than others. Highlight tales for me were the Jim Butcher tale – as I am a sucker for the Dresden books and it was nice to see something Black Court orientated – as well as Bill Crider’s “I was a Teenage Vampire” and Christopher Golden’s “The Mournful Cry of Owls".

The Crider story had a level of preposterousness that I fully appreciated, a respect for perhaps the more traditional vampire story but a nicely modernistic, disenfranchised youth aspect. Golden’s story was fantastic as it moved away from the standard vampire lore and concerned itself with shtriga, a more traditional vampire like creature from Albanian myth – though tied in with owls rather than flying insects in Golden’s imagination. The shtriga was used to great effect in season1 of Supernatural, in the episode “Something Wicked”.

The sort of volume that would serve as an ideal birthday present for the vampire fan, it is definitely worth a look. 7 out of 10.

Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires – review

Directors: Ray Danton & Julio Salvador

Release Date 1973

Contains spoilers


This was a joint American and Spanish vehicle, which I have on DVD under the title “Crypt of the Living Dead”. The reason for reviewing it under the alternate title is, quite simply, because my review index doesn’t have a film beginning with Y! The film itself contains a fascinating, original, back story. I point this out because the main story itself fails to be that fascinating. It is also a rip off of a vampire short story, Loring’s “The Tomb of Sarah”, without crediting the original story. I shall be making reference to the original short as the lore in the film is sometimes a little odd but fits in with the story – hereafter referred to as ‘Sarah’.

The film begins on a remote island and after some establishing shots we are in a crypt and a man, Peter (Mark Damon), chants ritualistically to Hannah (Teresa Gimpera). Now this is a shame for, although we don’t know the character’s name yet, the film establishes the bad guy immediately and thus takes any suspense away in the later film – especially as the bad guy is secret from the main hero. We also see a strange figure, credited as the Wild Man (Ihsan Gedik). A man, professor Bolton (Mariano Garcia Ray), enters the church above the crypt holding a lantern and a gun. As he walks through the church blood drips on him from a hung (sacrificed?) sheep and then Wild Man leaps at him, pushing him and causing him to fall.

Bolton ends up in the crypt before an ornate tomb. He is strangled from behind by Peter and then pushed under the tomb, with only his head showing. Peter and the Wild Man chop at the tomb’s supporting legs, causing the heavy marble edifice to fall on Bolton and crush him.

A man, Chris (Andrew Prine), arrives on the island. He is Bolton’s son and, whilst his father was an archaeologist, he is an engineer. The locals studiously ignore him but Peter meets him and takes him up to the old church so that he can see where his father died. Peter shows him the tomb and Chris decides that they need to get his father’s body out (the exposed head is now missing) and bury him. At this juncture Chris reads the plaque on the tomb and, other than a change of name and date, the words are almost exactly lifted from ‘Sarah’.

He notices a statue on the tomb, whilst the human figure is different to how it is described in ‘Sarah’ the presence of a wolf is identical to that described in prose. When Chris mentions it he is told it is a werewolf and makes the leap that Hannah must have been thought to have been a vampire. This seems odd but is lifted from ‘Sarah’, “She was a witch or were-woman, the only companion of her solitude being a familiar in the shape of a huge Asiatic wolf.” We should remember that, back in the day, werewolves and vampires were interchangeable and the distinction between the two monsters is quite modern. Indeed some original lore stated that a person would become a vampire upon their death if they had been a werewolf, or indeed a witch.

Through Peter, and his sister Mary (Patty Shepard), we get Hannah’s back story. Whilst this is different to ‘Sarah’ the real shame is that it would have made a better film than the one we are watching. Hannah was, 700 years before, the bride of the King of France. He had taken 20,000 men to the crusades (also bringing Hannah for a ceremony in the Holy Land) but Hannah’s ship was lost and shipwrecked on the island. By the time the king arrived all aboard her ship, including her, were vampires. He had his crusaders hunt the vampires down until only Hannah was left but he could not face killing her, so rather than stake her he had her interred in the tomb – a torture rather than a mercy one feels.

Whilst weirdness goes on, for example the Wild Man puts professor Bolton’s head in Chris’ lodgings at one point, Chris erects a scaffold and pulley system to move the tomb. Unfortunately, due to the weight, it must be moved in two parts, starting with the lid – thus releasing the vampire. The attacks begin almost at once – with Hannah’s spirit leaving the tomb in mist form and then becoming a wolf (there is a strangeness here that she is corporeally a wolf but still in her tomb).

In wolf form she only attacks other animals but she will soon regain her strength and be able to leave the tomb herself and attack humans. Later, and at full strength, she attacks someone as a wolf but then turns into human form to try for the killing bite. ‘Sarah’ is inconclusive when it comes to this lore and whilst animals are the first victims it is due to weakness on the vampire’s part. One feels that in the film it was there for story pacing, in other words they needed her not attacking humans at first (as in the original) but didn’t rely on her weakness post internment as the reason. Chris comes to believe that something supernatural is occurring and determined, along with some of the locals, to put an end to her – whilst starting an entanglement with Mary. Unfortunately the Wild Man and Peter are working to keep Hannah free.

The dialogue is awful but we must mention Abdul Hamid (Frank Braña), a blind sailor, who plays mournful accordion and knows only one tune and who is the main source of lore. In a moment of complete ham, spread on so thick you wouldn’t believe it, he lets us know what vampires want. “No telling when she’ll find all the sealed off vampires and they’ll go cavorting around naked, holding black mass, sucking up little babies blood… Nothing evil they won’t try to do.”

Otherwise, when it comes to lore, we have the ability to turn into a wolf or mist. A stake through the heart will kill and fire will injure. They are inactive during the day and do not like sunlight (there is no direct evidence that it kills them). The cross “burns through like acid” and dogbane and garlic wards them off or keeps them sealed in (in ‘Sarah’ it is dog rose rather than dogbane – probably a geographic change). A bite turns a victim.

She does seem to have a hypnotic effect but is also a fairly slow moving vampire, all things being fair. After her first (dog’s blood) meal it is suggested that she would have changed in the tomb, as though the effect of blood would have made a noticeable difference to her physical state. There wasn’t much of a change in her appearance, as far as I could see, but this is lifted from ‘Sarah’ were the corpse, when first viewed, is preserved, but wrinkled and shrunken, becoming more whole and young with each meal – that effect was not attempted in this movie.

There is a lot of ham, but little (actually nothing) in the way great acting and whilst the film generates an atmosphere it is stodgy in its pacing. It is mildly interesting to watch, as a genre fan, but nothing special really. Actually the best part of the film is the coda moment, which is so dark one wishes that the rest of the film had matched it. Probably the biggest sin was that we know who the bad guy is and so there is no sense of suspense generated. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.