Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island – review

Directed by: Jim Stenstrun

Release date: 1998

Contains spoilers

Ok, you can ask, “Have you gone mad, the title clearly states Zombie Island?” And it is true that the gang, in this, are on Zombie Island and there are zombies (and ghosts as well, to be fair) but… Well, due to a previous ‘Vamp or Not?’ we have already kind of established this as vampire genre and I’ll explain that reasoning later. The explanation, however, will necessitate heavy than normal spoilers.

It should also be stated that this feature length toon contained actual monsters, rather than guys in rubber masks. But, I’m getting ahead of myself…

The film starts in a creepy castle with the gang tackling a monster and… it’s a guy in a mask. Cut to Daphne (Mary Kay Bergman) being interviewed. The gang has split up – due to the fact that the monsters always were criminals in masks, and Daphne is now a reporter with her own show – Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake. Fred (Frank Weller) is still with her, as her producer and crew, but the rest of the gang are doing their own thing. Daphne is to do a new segment looking for the real haunted America.

Velma (B.J. Ward) has a mystery book store and misses real mysteries. Shaggy (Billy West) and Scooby (Scott Innes) have a dream job sniffing contraband food for US Customs – until they eat the evidence and get fired. Fred calls them all up and gets the gang back together for Daphne’s birthday – the mystery machine is back on the road and heading towards New Orleans.

We see a segment of mysteries – but they are all the same, people in masks. I should mention here the bat like vampire found in a crypt during the segment, as a throw away. Despondent – as Shaggy and Scooby are looking for food – they are approached by Lena (Tara Strong) who invites them to Moonscar Island, where her employer Simone (Adrienne Barbeau) lives. The island is haunted by the pirate Morgan Moonscar.

Lena has not, of course, seen Scooby and there is an on-running gag with Scooby and cats. Simone has cats – lots of them – and dislikes dogs. There is also the on-running gag of 'the dog' been mentioned and Scooby becoming confused, “Dog? Where?” They are taken to the island by the ferryman Jaques (Jim Cummings) and there is a side comedy character in the form of fisherman come ‘Cajun Mick Dundee’ called Snakebite (a woefully under-used Mark Hamill).

The haunting starts in a low key way, writing on a wall – saying “Get Out, Beware” and Velma being levitated. There is a coldness to the air when the manifestation occurs. Fred is, of course, sceptical and Velma suspects the gardener Beau (Cam Clarke) a surly gentleman. Yet all seems real and the wall, on which the writing appeared, seems solid – though later they discover the wood came from Moonscar’s ship.

When they check the video back they see a ghost on film and more occurrences begin. A civil war ghost appears from out of a mirror and then Shaggy and Scooby fall in a hole with the bones of Moonscar. A green light animates them and then flesh appears – making him a zombie. Simone warns them that the hauntings will get worse in the night.

That they do, with zombies being resurrected all over the place. There is an amusing sequence with Daphne and then Fred trying to pull the mask from a zombie and Fred muttering about who it could be – the head comes off. When he suggests animatronics Daphne accuses him of being in denial.

So, what is the cause… major spoilers ahead...

200 years before, Simone and Lena were amongst a group of settlers on the island. Then Moonscar and his men came ashore. They killed the settlers but Lena and Simone escaped and prayed to their cat God for a curse. Their prayer was answered and they were turned into cat creatures and got the revenge they sought.

The curse was double edged, however, and now they have to feed on life energy once a year to survive. The zombies and ghosts are victims trying to warn the gang and stop the cat creatures. The feeding must take place on the night of the harvest moon (that very night as it happens) at the stroke of midnight.

We have seen cat creatures before when we looked at Sleepwalkers. These creatures are not exactly the same, but close enough. They do not fear cats as the Sleepwalkers did, cats are their pets. They are not a natural occurrence, rather they were magically transformed and they can pass the curse on – Jaques is a cat creature too.

However, they are people who can transform into cats – there are two stages, partial transformation and fully furred – and they have to drain life energy to survive. If they do not feed annually they crumble into dust – which again is vampire like. Not your standard vampires, I grant you, (although Carmilla turned into a cat) but nevertheless they are definitely on the radar and as Sleepwalkers was accepted as Vamp this feature got a review.

By using Warner animation the quality of the animation was upped and there is an adult edge with hints of jealousy between Fred and Daphne. The comedy segments work, though they are not hilarious. The idea of real monsters was a treat – not unheard of in Scooby-Doo but certainly rarer than the standard men in masks motif. The evidence of real supernatural occurrences, which the gang sought, ends up lost in quicksand, by the way.

Voice acting is well done throughout and the film is dedicated to Don Messick, the original voice of Scooby-Doo. Billy West took over Shaggy, allegedly, as the character is seen eating meat and Casey Kasem is a staunch vegetarian (that said I'm sure I've seen Shaggy eat meat when Kasem was doing the voice). Good fun, 6 out of 10.

Thanks to my son, who’s VHS I borrowed for the review. The imdb page is here.

Smallville: Thirst – review (TV Episode)

Director: Paul Shapiro

First aired: 2005

Contains spoilers

I must admit that I don’t watch Smallville – indeed this is the only episode I have ever watched. Why? Whilst, intrinsically, there was nothing wrong with this, I just have never been a huge fan of the Superman franchise and this series is, essentially, a Superman prequel – college boy Superman.

Of course, I am well aware of the main movers and shakers in Superman – so the concept of Clark Kent (Tom Welling), Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) and the effects of kryptonite are familiar. Plus this is a vampire episode, I had to watch that.

The episode itself is essentially the story reported by Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) as she tries to get internship at the Daily Planet – having been rejected and offered the chance to produce a story to be re-evaluated by editor-in-chief Pauline Kahn (Carrie Fisher). There is a side story concerning Lex Luther and Professor Milton Fine (James Marsters) – obviously the characters’ conflict meant little in isolation but, unusually, the sub-story fitted neatly into and complimented the main plot.

As a prelude we see a pizza delivery to the Tri Psi Sorority and the door is answered by three young ladies in bikinis. They get the delivery guy to head to a Jacuzzi with them and, when he suggests that he has to get going, develop fangs and bite him. Sorority vampire chicks… oh my! Incidentally the sorority president is called Buffy Sanders (Brooke Nevin) – Chloe explains that the names have been changed in her story and this is obviously a nod towards the Buffy TV show .

Anyway Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), Clark’s girlfriend, has been accepted into Metropolis University – a different college to Clark, and is going as they do the courses she wants. The only problem is that they don’t have any dorms left and so she is going to try for a sorority. In this case the Tri Psi Sorority. As you can guess she is successful and her initiation involves a passing of blood through a kiss – she seems to respond to the blood immediately.

The next day Chloe, who is having roommate hassle, discovers Lana in her dorm. She reacts badly to bright light but Chloe assumes she is suffering from a hangover. Clark shows up and Lana is acting strangely. She gets his scent and is suddenly aggressively seductive. When Clark doesn’t respond in a similar way (being in touch with emotions and all that) she suggests it is time to reassess their relationship.

Chloe is investigating the sorority, as well as googling vampires for some reason that seems like a leap of faith given that in her last scene she was oblivious to the signs. She telephones Clark and says something is wrong, in a flash he is there (Chloe, evidentially, knows about his powers). They decide to investigate the sorority at a Halloween party – cue Clark in a Zorro outfit deciding that the cape is kind of cool.

Unfortunately, to look at the lore, I will have to spoil the whole episode. Clark finds a clipping in Buffy’s room regarding survivors of a bat attack. Lana, meanwhile, has put the bite on Chloe. Clark rescues her and takes her to hospital. She is not responding to transfusions due to a rabies like virus that is attacking her red blood cells. Professor Fine comes in and suggests that Clark confronts Lex about project 1138.

Clark does so and, on hearing that Lana is infected, Lex spills the beans. A group of high school kids were stuck in a cave. The area around the cave had previously been struck by meteors and the radiation had got into the water table, forming into stalactites and infecting the (vampire) bats. Buffy was infected by the bats then rescued by Luther-Corp. The infection gave a cannibalistic thirst for blood, light sensitivity, caused the development of fangs and increased strength (we elsewhere discover it gave immortality and quick healing also). The infection seems to be kryptonite related as a stalactite effects Clark adversely. Luthor-Corp has a cure.

Once the information is divulged Lana gets into the room, she is specifically hunting Clark, as per Buffy’s orders. He manages to grab a syringe full of anti-virus but is bitten by Lana. His special blood invokes further powers in her. She looks in the mirror, disgusted by herself and her actions. In her disgust she shoots fireballs from her eyes, destroying said mirror. Of course, you know that Buffy will die (in a fireball), Clark will cure Lana and all will return to normality.

I found the idea of injecting the cure into the heart, which was synonymous with the stake in the heart, rather interesting and quite clever. The use of Bela Lugosi is Dead by Bauhaus on the soundtrack was an obvious referential moment. I did wonder at the strength of fangs that could penetrate super-skin – but perhaps Clark’s full powers have not developed and as a casual observer I’ll never know.

The episode worked in a glossy teen way. The cause of the vampirism worked within the confines of the Superman franchise. I don’t think it inspired me to watch the series, but as a vampire episode it wasn’t bad – which is, of course, how this will be scored. 5.5 out of 10.

The episode’s imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Vampire Clan

This 2002 film, directed by John Webb, is another film about a so called ‘vampire killer’. We have previously mentioned two other such movies. The classic M and Tenderness of the Wolves. However, there are big differences between the previous films featured and this – not only in the fact that the crimes portrayed are more contemporary.

Firstly there is the qualitative difference. Whilst M is allegedly based on events and Tenderness of the Wolves is based roughly on events, both are artistic movies in their own rights. This is a ‘real life’ movie and doesn’t have any substantial artistic aspect to it, as such. It is more a dramatised documentary. The other big difference is that whilst the murderers portrayed in the earlier movies were dubbed as vampires by the press, in this case the murderer, Rod Ferrell (Drew Fuller), claimed to be a vampire – it was part, it seems, of his delusion.

Ferrell murdered the parents of Heather Wendorf (Kelly Kruger) – in real life her father and step-mother – by bludgeoning them to death in a ruthless manner. The film follows the case from the point when Heather’s sister Jeni (Stacy Hogue) finds the bodies. Ferrell, Heather and Ferrell’s ‘coven’ – Scott (Timothy Lee DePriest), Charity (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Dana (Marina Black) – are caught and the subsequent film reconstructs events as they are questioned.

Ferrell claimed that he was a 500 year old vampire (the film suggests he claimed 1000 year old) and the film does show some blood drinking – in a vampyre scene way rather than in any supernatural sense. However it missed an awful lot of the background to the case out. There is some indication that his own life involved his (step) parents being delusional about vampirism and involved in occult activity. Showing this – it is mentioned in one throwaway line – would have given insight into the killer.

There is also background regarding a hang-out place known as “the vampire hotel”. Whilst we get a brief glimpse of it, we get no real explanation in the film and its presence only serves to confuse. There is no mention of the vampire role playing that Ferrell is known to have indulged in, something that is important to the background even though I detest it when the press tries to tie role playing in with violent crime.

Of course the background that has been missed out would have given us an insight into the murderer but the film, as presented, also fails to offer us anything that would seem to capture the pain and anguish which must have been suffered by the victims’ family.

Drew Fuller, as Ferrell, comes across as a charismatic, if weird, young man. He gives a solid performance but is limited by the script, which seems to follow a ‘crime dramatisation by the numbers’ model. Heather is portrayed in a very sympathetic way but we then question the film showing her being released at the end of the questioning – in reality she was held for months whilst a decision was made whether to prosecute her. In the end it was a grand jury who decided not to indict her and, from what I can gather, the judge had urged prosecutors to charge her. The film does mention, in text, the grand jury decision.

The Ferrell case is a disturbing chapter in recent crime history, the film is by the numbers and one can only question its actual purpose as a piece of cinema.

The imdb page is here.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Seasons 1-7 – review (TV series)

Directed by: various

First aired: 1997

Contains spoilers


How do I review Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Of course I knew I’d have to look at it one day and (having upgraded the VHS versions to DVD, courtesy of Zombiepunk, as a present for my lovely wife who is the huge Buffy fan) I thought it was about time. The review is unusual, however, for several reasons. Firstly I have not re-watched the series fully prior to review (as a general rule I would (re)watch the film/programme and then write the review), I am reviewing all 7 seasons in one go and I do not propose to do a full plot summary. Indeed, I only really intend to concentrate on the main vampire characters and mention the Slayers. This is a toe dip into the Buffyverse and no more.

The series followed on from the motion picture (or at least the original script thereof) with Sarah Michelle Gellar taking over the Buffy Summers role that had been played by Kristy Swanson. Following the events in the film Buffy and her mom move from LA to Sunnydale, which just so happens to be a Hellmouth and thus attracts every sort of creepy nasty you can think of. Through the series we watched Buffy grow, attending high school and college, and one of the main themes of the show was clearly the trials of growing up – with the monsters synonymous with the trials faced by teenagers. Buffy had her friends around her, known as the Scooby gang – after Scooby-Doo – but, of course, she was something special. The Slayer; blessed (or cursed) with the ability to battle demons, devils and vampires.

It is the vampires that we are most concerned with here and I guess we should begin with The Master (Mark Metcalf) – as he was the big bad, as the main baddy was known in the show, of the first season. He was unusual in many respects as he never showed a human face – looking not dissimilar to the ubervampires of season 7. He was the leader of a vampire cult called the Order of Aurelius. He had the same main weaknesses as the other vampires, a wooden stake to the heart, decapitation and sunlight could kill, holy items would burn and he needed an invitation to enter a domicile. His age granted him strength, speed, stamina and resistance higher than other vampires and he displayed an ability to use hypnosis (not a common trait in the series). When Buffy killed him he turned to a skeletal form unlike most vampires who ‘dust’.

The obvious vampire to look at is Angel (David Boreanaz) who is the good guy vampire. The vampires in Buffy are the dead reanimated by a blood demon (we get to see their true, non-hybrid, form in an episode of this character’s spin off series, Angel) and the dead have no soul. Angelus, as he was known, was cursed by gypsies and the curse restored his soul – and thus gave him guilt. In many respects his base model was Louis from the Ann Rice novels. When Angel reaches a moment of perfect happiness – in this case sleeping with Buffy – he looses his soul. This led to a storyline of heartbreak for Buffy, fighting the man who changed post sleeping with her. When his soul was finally restored (plus having returned from Hell because Buffy was forced to kill him) he had to leave her, and take up his own series, to allow her a ‘normal’ life.

Angel’s vampiric sire was Darla (Julie Benz), whose role in the series was minor but who proved a fascinating character none the less. She did return occasionally through the series, however, in flashbacks that fleshed out the main vampires’ story and, in many respects, these flashbacks were some of the more interesting vampiric parts of the series. Darla returned from the dead in Angel. For many a year Angel and Darla cut a bloody swathe with two of the best vampire characters in the series.

Drusilla (Juliet Landau) is a fantastic character. As a human she was driven insane by Angelus – by killing everyone in the convent in which she was to take holy vows and committing carnal acts with Darla – before he turned her. This madness was displayed through some incredibly poetic dialogue and she has minor psychic abilities. She is displayed as rather sadistic and, like the Master, seems to be able to hypnotise. In the series she kills the Slayer named Kendra (Bianca Lawson). She was the sire of simply the best vampire character in the series, Spike (James Marsters).

Spike – or William the Bloody – was a vampire with a Billy Idol look, a love of the sex pistols and a great turn of dialogue – a very different character to his human, wimpy poetic self. Indeed, his base model could be seen to be the brat prince Lestat and like Lestat he actually turned his own mother. It was clear that the writers of Buffy realised they had hit gold with the character and had a chip implanted in his head that stopped him attacking humans, leaving him a barely restrained good guy (with amoral/immoral instincts). Later he restored his own soul to win over Buffy whom he was in love with and had also attempted to rape. In the past he had killed two Slayers.

It should be noted that Dracula does appear in the show, but it is a gimmick appearance in a comedy episode – this episode is actually featured on TV during Night Watch. However it is worth mentioning the ubervampires or Turok-Han. Stronger and more resilient than modern vampires they are described as being to vampires as Neanderthals are to humans. They appear in the final season of Buffy as the First Evil attempts to release a horde of them onto earth.

Of course, ranged against the vampires were not one but three Slayers… ish… A new Slayer was called when a Slayer died and, as Buffy dies for a few moments at the end of season 1, a Slayer named Kendra is called. To be honest I do not know what was going on with that accent and the character only appeared in three episodes before being killed by Drusilla. The next Slayer to be called was Faith (Eliza Dushku). Faith in many respects was a mirror of Buffy, becoming a villain within the series. She does, in the end, make good.

Buffy does not always fight vampires, however, and I have to say that one of my favourite episodes was the fourth season episode Hush in which the voices of the residents of Sunnydale are stolen and a group of demons known as the Gentlemen float around town collecting seven human hearts. The episode really captured a vein of horror too often missing in TV.

The show did lots right; it had a mixture of pathos and humour with excellent dialogue and characters we came to love. However not all was right in the world. There are some weaker episodes and some too angsty moments. There was also the Scrappy-Doo of the Scooby gang – Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg). Originally a ball of energy that was the key to another dimension, she was given human form and implanted into Sunnydale reality as Buffy’s sister, so the Slayer would protect her. Unfortunately the character was a drag – a problem with the character not the performance I hasten to add – and the writers seemed to recognise this when a newly evil Willow (Alyson Hannigan) offers to turn her back into a ball of energy “Wanna go back? End the pain? You'll be happier. I'll be happier. We'll all be a lot happier without listening to the constant whining,”

But the occasional weak moment (and character) aside Buffy proved an excellent series and one that, it cannot be denied, invigorated mainstream interest in the vampire genre. How to score, however? The score I give this will never be right, always too low for the hardcore fan and too high for others. The fair score, for me, however (for the seven seasons as a whole) is 7.5 out of 10.

Finally I have to apologise if I have missed a favourite character – I know I’ve missed most of the Scoobies – or you feel I should have mentioned the Watchers Council, or one of the main threads or underlying symbolisms. This was designed as a taste only. I must also acknowledge friend of the blog, Mateo, who was the person who pointed out the similes between Angel/Spike and Louis/Lestat.

The imdb page is here.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – review

Director: Fran Rubel Kuzui

Release date: 1992

Contains spoilers


Long before a certain vampire slayer came to the small screen Joss Whedon’s vision was made into a feature and is a prequel to the events portrayed in the series… ish.

It is true that Whedon penned this movie but his original, critically acclaimed, script was changed so much that he walked off set during production of this movie. The film’s dark elements were excised and a comedy was born. Aspects of the original script that were excised, such as Buffy burning down the school gym in the finale, were referenced to in the series and so the original script was the prequel and not the final movie.

The film begins with a little bit of footage from the past letting us know of the Chosen One, the generational Slayer of vampires who bears the birthmark of the covenant.

Kristy Swanson plays Buffy – and despite imdb giving the character a surname it is never mentioned in the movie. Buffy is vacuous, a cheerleader with a basketball player boyfriend and friends who hang in the mall. I believe the term is Valley Girl – having listened to Frank Zappa in my youth. She and her friends are in the mall and decide to take in a movie.

As they enter an elevator it is stopped by a man, we later discover to be Merrick (Donald Sutherland), who looks closely at Buffy. In the cinema the girls constantly talk, much to the chagrin of bad boys Pike (Luke Perry) and Benny (David Arquette) – though they had sneaked in themselves.

One of the jocks is walking home. He hears something and we see Amilyn (Paul Reubens) – the vampires have come to town. The news is full of reports of slasher victims and the body of one of them has vanished from the morgue. Buffy dreams of other times, with herself as the female protagonist, she faces a mysterious man named Lothos (Rutger Hauer).

The girls are in a café discussing the Senior Dance when Pike and Benny come in. The two lads are drunk. Afterwards the boys are walking on a cliff top. They stop for a moment and Pike falls to the road. He doesn’t see Amilyn rise up the cliff, bite Benny and pull him away. Merrick happens along and takes the drunken Pike to safety.

Buffy is in the gym when Merrick appears. He talks to her of being the Chosen One and laments the fact that he has taken so long to find her and begin her training. She does not bear the birthmark as she had the ‘hairy mole’ removed. He wants her to come to the graveyard with him, which she does after he tells her of her own dreams. They wait for a vampire to rise, though Merrick knows there are two there, and Buffy despatches them both.

Buffy tries to deny her destiny but eventually capitulates and begins training. Meanwhile Pike is visited by a floating Benny and realises something is wrong in the world. Fate transpires to bring the two together and Buffy puts away childish things (to the disdain of her erstwhile friends). There is, however, the small problem of Lothos and his habit of dining on Slayers.

The lore in this is quite different to the series. The standard vampire deterrents seem to work. Holy water burns, they must be staked through the heart, invitations are needed to enter a domicile and crosses ward – the last being with the exception of Lothos who is too powerful to be effected by the cross. Vampires have less of a regenerative ability – Amilyn loses an arm and it doesn’t re-grow, earning him the nickname Lefty. There is none of the blood demon lore from the series and they seem more genre standard.

The Watchers Council isn’t even a concept in this. Merrick is the Watcher, and is reborn again and again (through 100 lives we hear) with the knowledge of the Slayer as part of him. He watches, the Slayer slays – though he does interfere this time around, an act that leads to his demise. Sutherland is a presence on the screen – as always – but is actually quite understated in his performance and some of the scenes with Buffy are quite touching.

The film boasts two of the finest comedy slays in the genre. When Buffy stakes Lefty (and the vampires do not dust as would later happen in the series) his death takes an age, complete with comedy gasps and frustrated little kicks at the wall. This sequence resumes within the credits. It is a highlight of the movie.

Lothos’ demise is nice for no other reason then Hauer exclaiming ‘oops’ as the stake hits home. Hauer is a favourite actor of mine and carries a suave presence through the film. Unfortunately he does have trouble with dialogue when his fangs are in, adding a lisp like quality. Though, as this is a comedy, it kind of works.

It is difficult to really comment on Swanson due to the fact that Sarah Michelle Geller made the role her own in the series (I have a similar problem with Sutherland as Hawkeye in M.A.S.H. as, via the series, Alan Alda is Hawkeye). Swanson looks more like how I’d imagine a Slayer to look, to be fair, in that she appears more athletic. She has a good stab at the role but will, forever, be lost beneath Geller’s shadow.

Unfortunately the film itself is comedic fluff – it always was, bar the two slays mentioned earlier. Worse than that the comedy hasn’t aged too well and the film feels incredibly dated now. This, we can clearly say, was not Whedon’s vision and will always be over-shadowed by the series. It does have some merit and some great cast members – Sutherland and Hauer would later appear in the 2004 mini series of ‘Salem’s Lot. 4 out of 10.

I’ll leave this with the cardinal rule, “One vampire is a lot easier to kill than ten.”

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Doctor Who: The Stones of Blood

We have looked at two definitively vampiric Doctor Who adventures before, The State of Decay and The Curse of Fenric, as well as honourably mentioning the modern episode Smith and Jones. A friend, Kris, let me borrow the Stones of Blood as he believed it worthy of a ‘Vamp or Not?’

The episode was part of the ‘Key to Time’ storyline, aired in 1978, in which the Doctor (Tom Baker) and timelord companion Romana (at this point played by Mary Tamm) search for the pieces of an artefact known, ever so strangely, as the key to time – an artefact broken into segments and scattered through time and space. Other than the fact that the key (or its pieces) can allow shape shifting, the higher arc is almost unimportant to our specific investigation. It should be noted that the DVD cover as lent to me was different to the illustrative one I found online.

The Doctor and Romana’s quest takes them to Earth and a stone circle called the Nine Travellers. Having seen the protagonists in the Tardis we cut to the circle and see a druidic ritual. During the ritual blood is poured upon the standing stones which then pulse and glow – you can just bet that has something to do with the investigation.

Having left K9 (voiced by John Leeson) they follow the signal of a tracking device to the stone circle but the signal vanishes. There they meet Professor Emilia Rumford (Beatrix Lehmann) and her assistant Vivien Fey (Susan Engel) who are surveying the stones. The Doctor leaves Romana with the women whilst he goes to meet the druid leader DeVries (Nicholas McArdle).

DeVries seems to know who the Doctor is – or at least that he is called the Doctor – and there is some banter between them. The Doctor spots someone in a ritualistic crow costume and, whilst distracted, DeVries coshes him. Romana in the meantime thinks she hears the Doctor calling to her, ends up on a cliff edge and seems to be pushed over.

When the Doctor awakens he is tied to a sacrificial rock in the stone circle and DeVries is going to shed his blood. The sacrifice is interrupted as Professor Rumford wanders along and the druids leg it. Romana is, of course, missing (she’s clinging to the cliff face) and the Doctor has K9 track her. They find her and she is scared of the Doctor, believing he pushed her over, but quickly they realise it must be someone manipulating the key – could it be the Celtic Goddess, the Cailleach?

Leaving Romana to go through Rumford’s research the Doctor heads back to DeVries. Romana discovers that the circle was one of three places of augury but we see the druid and his follower Martha (Elaine Ives-Cameron) attacked by one of the stones which has moved under its own steam to DeVries home. When the Doctor and K9 arrive DeVries and Martha are quite dead.

The stone, however, is still there and attacks the Doctor and we see K9 battling with the stone. By the time Romana arrives the stone has gone but K9 is very worse for wear. The stalwart little robot does manage to mention that the stones, a silicon based life form, are globulin deficient – a protein found in terrestrial blood. This then is the crux of the matter as far as we are concerned.

We need not go further into the story; suffice it to say it involves an escaped alien convict and a spaceship hidden in hyperspace. We also get justice robots (in the form of flashing blobs of light) and the Doctor on trial. However little of this effects the ‘Vamp or Not?’ We do discover that the creatures are from Ogros, the word augury being a corruption thereof.

The stones can move around, seem intelligent (though under the command of the alien convict) and definitely need blood to survive. This has been supplied by the druids but they can hunt as necessary. Having found themselves weakened by a force field constructed by K9 they hunt down a couple of unsuspecting humans – a pair of campers. When one touches the stone surface her hand seems to stick to it and the flesh is literally melted from the bone to get to the precious blood protein.

Is it Vamp? In a sci-fi sense these creatures could well be classed as vampiric. We have, previously, accepted the fact that an alien creature could be a vampire – rather than a vampire being undead – and the fact that they are a block of stone rather than a bipedal creature just underlines how alien they are. They are long lived (they have been around 4000 years) and may be immortal. The Doctor tricks one over the cliff and, when asked if it is dead, wonders how you kill a stone. They can be destroyed – the justice machines I mentioned destroy one – though they are tough – K9’s laser has little effect.

It is, however, on the cusp. They are blocks of stone but they are, also, feeding off the blood of animals and humans.

The imdb page for the first of the four episodes is here.