Vampire Honeymoon - review

Director: Law Man Dick

First released: 2003

Contains spoilers


This is on a DVD called Terror Tales Volume 1 and the best thing I can say about this film is that the Terror Tales cover is excellent – a great fun, schlock cover. As for the film itself – well the edition on the disc is in Cantonese with subtitles in Chinese and English – at the same time. The English subtitles are very literal but the film itself does not hold together very well anyway.

We start with scenes in a police station where Tim (Eric Wan) is holding a team meeting with his detectives. They seem to be going on about a case, and the deposition given by someone called Judy, but to be candidly honest it has very little to do with the rest of the film as far as I could see. Following this they arrest some people in a club.

Tim falls asleep and has a bizarre dream about a ball that seems to move around of its own accord and Buddhist statues. He then dreams of dancers in a club and they are all vampires. Then he dreams of a girl wearing a satin slip. Suddenly the phone wakes him and he is called into see Mr Wong – his boss. Wong says he has given the latest case to Ling as he should be going on leave – he’s getting married.

We don’t see the wedding but we do see Fei Fei and Tim going on their honeymoon. They book into a hotel and ask for a suite but for some reason are given a very pokey little room. There is a little scene at the desk after they leave as the couple have been given room 602 – a room that is not meant to be given out. The room smells a little but Tim assumes it is musty.

Anyway, Ling seems not to be on a case but undercover with her old teacher – Aunty Mui, a Buddhist magician. Why? Who knows – certainly having watched the film I am none the wiser. As a result, however, they visit Tim (on his honeymoon) and interrupt him (having a wee against a tree!!) and suggest that evil is coming and he should leave – which he scoffs at. Mui says it is fate – if that is the case why bother warning him.

Tim is visited by the woman in the satin slip – she is a ghost. She asks for his help as she was killed by Ka Fu Yan. He refuses at first but she kisses his cheek. This leaves a lipstick smear that has Fei Fei going home to mother and threatening divorce. After she goes Tim, at night, develops glowing eyes and fangs and starts sucking blood. The ghost will help him if he helps her.

To be honest I don’t know what help she actually needed. Ka Fu Yan married her and then caused her father, who owned the hotel, to have a heart attack and then choked her. He buried her in the wall of Room 602. He took over the hotel and is visiting that week and she gets her revenge by killing him. Tim’s part in all this is less than negligible.

In the meantime he is being possessed by a ‘1000 years corpse’ and Mui, Ling and (when she returns) Fei Fei have to help him by him being exorcised. That’s about it folks… Vampire wise we have fangs, glowing eyes and blood drinking. The vampirism is possession and there is no other lore really. We get some atypical vampire bite scenes but very little else.

The story is almost not there and the vampire cop has blooming precious little to do but bite innocent passers-by (of course it isn’t his fault so that’s alright then). The film is peppered with awful direction moments – meaningless shots staring into a scene with little composure or construction. The acting is bad generally. A poor example of the Hong Kong cinema scene. 1 out of 10.

At the time of review I can find no imdb page.

Commercial Vampire: Duracell

Duracell wanted to show us how long a battery could be stored and I personally think that going down the lines of advertising with a cuddly vampire rather than a cuddly bunny rabbit is the way forward for the company:

Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror – review

Directed by: Enrique López Eguiluz

Release date: 1968

Contains spoilers


Okay there is false advertising and then there is False Advertising. This movie known as La Marca del Hobre-Lobo in its native Spanish, was named Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror for the US market. So, an audience would reasonably expect the appearance of Frankenstein and/or his monster? No. A voice over tells us, at the head that as some point the Frankensteins were cursed to become the Wolfsteins and that is the last you’ll hear of anything to do with Mary Shelley’s creation.

This is one of Paul Naschy’s werewolf movies and features vampires in the mix – as they often did. To be honest it is all a little familiar and has some gaping plot questions that we’ll come to.

The film, however, begins with a masked ball. The occasion is the 18th birthday of the Countess Janice von Aarenberg (Dyanik Zurakowska). She has been in a Swiss finishing school for 4 years and dances with childhood friend Rudolph (Manuel Manzaneque). The proud fathers look on, and it is clear that some manipulation towards matrimony is planned. A masked man , clearly to us Paul Naschy who plays another variant of Waldermar Daninsky, cuts in to paternal disapproval.

The next day Janice is to pick up a vase she sent for repair and then meet Rudolph and their fathers at a church. In the shop she is formally introduced to Waldermar and we see that he is the subject of village gossip amongst the little old ladies. He turns up at the church and then, when Janice and Rudolph head to the ruined Castle Wolfstein to explore it and perhaps find the secret tunnel to the old monastery, he turns up there.

In the castle he tells them of the legend. That Imre Wolfstein was from Poland but travelled extensively in the Far East. That out in the Far East he was attacked by a werewolf, he seemed to recover but when he returned to the castle things started to occur. Eventually he was killed by plunging a silver cross in his heart. However he could be revived by removing it as it was not done by one who loved him.

They leave the castle and Rudolph runs a gypsy caravan off the road. Waldermar stops to help them and then suggests that there is shelter from the storm at the castle. They do shelter, finding wine and getting drunk but the man, Donas I think, has found the family tomb and suggests some grave robbing. Now, number one rule of grave robbing, you find a remarkably well preserved corpse with something in the chest – let it be! No, they remove the cross and Imre comes to life.

He not only kills them but also some locals and the populace believe that wolves have come down from the Mountain and organise a hunt. Waldermar, however, goes to the crypt and finds the cross and dead gypsies. He and Janice meet up and it is clear that they have fallen in love (this wasn’t well developed). Waldermar states that he will join the hunt.

As it is he is close to Rudolph when Imre attacks the lad. Waldermar saves him and stabs Imre. They dispose of the body and then Waldermar goes to church – an attempt to stop the lycanthropic poison. It is too late – the mark of the wolf is upon his chest and he is cursed. Rudolph tries to shackle him, that does not work, and ends up finding him an area in the castle to lock him in whilst they check the monastery’s occult library (it seems the monks became Satanists).

They try to keep Janice away and fail and we get the back history of Vlademir Wolfstein who came under an evil spell and had vampire blood (which was added for no good reason). For himself, Waldermar wanting to be killed but Janice wants to find a cure. Then they find a letter, written to Imre years before, by one Dr Janos Mikhelov (Julián Ugarte) regarding a potential cure. They write to him and get a response from his ‘son’.

The son, also Janos (strange that), and his wife Wandessa (Aurora de Alba) turn up and promise to cure Waldermar. They then chain him and cast spells to try and control him. They also turn their attentions to Rudolph and Janice, for the Mikhelovs are vampires. Now, I could see why they might want to capture a werewolf as a slave but the exposition of their entire motivation left a lot to be desired.

They put the bite on both youths, placing them under control (which gets the attention of the fathers) and also re-resurrect Imre for reasons unknown as we don’t see them try to control him, they failed to control Waldermar and all it does is lead to some werewolf on werewolf fighting. This allows Waldermar opportunity to escape and he manages to stake Wandessa – can they save Janice?

Vampire powers seem standard. Sunlight must be an issue as they work only at night, but that is supposition on my part. Once a victim is bitten they are under the vampire’s control and can be called telepathically. There is a scene when Rudolph is before a mirror and seems shocked (thus no reflections) except we see Wandessa’s hand clearly moving in the glass.

There also seems to be an ability to teleport – both Janos himself and he seems to have teleported Janice also. This had the unfortunate side effect that they then seem to want to prance as well (both Janos and Janice, and there was a whole lot of prancing going on) when he should be making his cunning escape.

All in all this was below average. Perhaps better shot than some of the Naschy flicks, photography wise, the story let it down in that there was lacking motivations and everything was too standard, nothing I haven’t seen in other movies. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Mom’s got a date with a Vampire – review

Directed by: Steve Boyum

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

This was one caught some time ago on the Disney Channel and the first worry is, of course, that it is Disney. I must admit to feeling akin to the Addams kids (Addams Family Values) where putting me in a room of Disney programming is tantamount to a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' protocol precluding torture.

That said they have done some good movies – despite the fact I refuse to admit it – and this one manages to contain a certain something despite a total lack of anything resembling blood. It is also fitting, I feel, to feature a film on the blog that itself stars Robert Carradine, after all dad John and half-brother David have appeared on the pages enough times!

We start off with a carriage heading towards a castle in a scene that is fairly stereotypical gothic vampire. The carriage stops and a man and woman get out. They are challenged by a hunter for he is Count Krelski (Karl Pruner) and this is the movie ‘the Revenge of Count Krelski’. We hear a phone and it is in the house where the movie is being watched. Meet the Hansens: Adam (Matt O’Leary) is watching the movie, along with younger brother Taylor (Myles Jeffrey) – who hides behind the couch with a cushion. The phone call was for older sister Chelsea (Laura Vandervoot).

Mom, Lynette (Caroline Rhea), comes in and turns the film off sending the older kids off to do homework. Rather than do that, Adam surfs the web looking for the website of vampire hunter Malachi Van Helsing (Robert Carradine), the story of whom is in the tabloid the ‘Weekly Secret’. I haven’t mentioned dad and, to be honest, with the film’s title it is clear he won’t be in the picture – as it is he is getting remarried and he and Lynette are divorced.

Adam discovers, at school the next day, that his friend might be able to get tickets for the band the Headless Horseman. His day then starts to pitch towards a bad day when he is asked to read out his history homework essay. He tries to bluff it by talking about Malachi Van Helsing – actually reading from the paper – but is caught out. Things improve when he discovers that they don’t have tickets but backstage passes. Unfortunately his teacher has phoned mom and he finds himself grounded – Chelsea gets grounded for laughing at him.

How are they going to get out on Saturday night? Adam has the solution – get mom a date – and there just happens to be personal adds in his tabloid. They email a guy called wolfsbane (who we see is the vampire, “all the good vampire names are taken… by teenagers” he later laments) and then manipulate mom to a supermarket in order that she and her date can ‘accidentally meet’.

Actually two men, integral to the story, enter the supermarket and one is vampire hunter Malachi Van Helsing who has worked out that his quarry will be there (by reasons unknown). Indeed the kids nearly approach him when mom bumps into Dimitri Denatos (Charles Shaughnessy), who truly is the vampire. A wee bit of flirting, and a lie about being a doctor, and they arrange to go to dinner. Now all would be well and good but Taylor spots Dimitri, as he leaves, discarding his shopping and transforming into a bat. It truly is a bit of crap bat syndrome but as it is the only time it occurs in the film it is forgiveable.

Taylor cannot talk about vampires – under mom’s orders – and so he leaves the house to save her from her date. Adam intervenes and has Dimitri do a ‘spoon test’ to prove he is not a vampire (the test being that a vampire cannot hang a spoon on his nose, which Dimitri then does. Just as well that Taylor is only 8). However, during this, Adam spots the fact that Dimitri has no reflection. He gets Taylor home and he and Chelsea go to save mom. Taylor ends up with Malachi Van Helsing.

It is then a standard family comedy with a vampire twist. The thing is it works and mostly due to acting. The kids are all good but it is the adults that, for me, steal the show. Caroline Rhea is great as mom Lynette and works as a foil to Shaughnessy’s Dimitri who acts in a sophisticated manner and despairs at Lynette’s more common (and public) wishes for the date. His face when taken to a rockabilly club is a picture.

Shaughnessy himself is excellent. He plays the role for laughs and yet manages to create a believable vampire – even if it is vamp-lite. Carradine does well but is, perhaps, a little curtailed in his role as his vampire hunter plays second fiddle to the kids. Again the hunter aspects are almost hunter-lite, after all this is a kid’s film and blood is not on the menu.

The lore we do get, as well as no reflections, is the fact that vampires have some serious eye-mojo but the resultant trance can be broken by true love. Vampires sleep in coffins, can walk up walls, can use that eye-mojo to repel attackers and are very, very strong.

As well as the lore we get cross-references aplenty. Obviously Malachi Van Helsing is named for Abraham from Dracula and the restaurant for the date is called Renfields, which references the same. The movie theatre in town is showing the Lost boys, fitting as the failed vampire test – and the fact that the vampire is after mom – reminds the viewer of the classic film.

This is Disney piffle but it is well acted Disney piffle and thus mildly amusing and good for the kids. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q

Vampires get everywhere...

...even on the Benny Hill Show:

Honourable Mentions: Supernatural – Monster Movie – Season 4

This was the fifth episode of Season 4 of Supernatural, directed by Robert Singer, and was a comedy/novelty episode. In this case it was a Halloween episode and was shot in Black and White, with early talkies style credits, as it was most definitely a nod to the old (Universal) monster movies of yore. As such we get appearances by The Mummy, the Wolfman and Dracula (Todd Stashwick).

The episode begins with Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) visiting a town – during Oktoberfest – as they have picked up on a murder involving a bitten neck and drained blood. Disguised as feds they view the body and decide it isn’t really their sort of case – the body has two neat puncture wounds. In the Supernatural mythos the vampires have a second set of razor sharp teeth, not just two fangs. They decide it is some sort of sicko killer and they are nearly right. However, before they leave there is an attack reportedly by the Wolfman and they decide to stay – which gives Dean chance to pursue the comely bar wench Jamie (Melinda Sward).

When Jamie is pursued by Dracula – who calls her Mina and claims that she is his reincarnated bride – Dean intervenes (and is called Harker for his troubles) and manages to pull an ear off the fiend before he escapes... on a scooter. Now Dean knows what they are dealing with, a shapeshifter... but who could it be? Shapeshifters can take the form of most anyone, though this one has a thing for the old monster movies.

The show culminates with a lederhosen wearing Dean, strapped down for some Frankenstein styled electrocution, Jamie forced to wear a suitable dress for Dracula’s bride and Sam coming to the rescue (and being referred to as Van Helsing). All in a cardboard cut out castle. To some degree I was reminded of Fade to Black, though the killer in that was wholly human – the obsession with movies was the same. Obviously there are references to Dracula , the idea of Dracula searching for his reincarnated love with first dealt with in Dan Curtis’ take on Dracula, which Robert Singer was an associate producer of. All in all a decent comedy episode for the fans.

The episode’s imdb page is here.

Nash Bridges – Superstition – review (TV Episode)

Directed by: unknown

First aired: 1999

Contains spoilers

I must admit I never really watched Nash Bridges. I had heard of it – some cop show with Don Johnson in the titular role – but never watched it. This has changed, for one episode anyway, when FX recently aired the fourth season episode “Superstition” – that seemed to have a vampire connection.

As the opening credits rolled I was struck by some of the names appearing. Cheech Marin was in this, for goodness sake, who played not one but three roles in From Dusk till Dawn. The credits showed Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, who wasn’t in this episode but plays Nash’s daughter I understand, who I knew from Vampires: Out for Blood. Then there was Yasmine (run, Yasmine, run... run like the wind) Bleeth who was, without doubt, my favourite Baywatch gal.

And vampires... ish... what struck me about the show was that it came across as off-beat and I assume that is what they were aiming for, but the attempt failed and it straddled drama and comedy uncomfortably in a way that shouted of TV for the masses. Perhaps it was only seeing one episode in isolation but, generally, it didn’t do too much for me. Anyway there are sub-stories about Joe (Cheech Marin) trying to get a car for his wife, Nash and Caitlin (Yasmine Bleeth) nearly getting it together and some cop or another walking a dog to score with the ladies. Meaningless drivel in the background... oh, and for some reason the SIU offices turn into a disco.

So Nash and Joe are driving along when a limo streaks past them pursued by a patrol car. Of course the patrol car crashes and it is up to Nash to bring the chase to a halt, not before they have seen the vampire driving it. I mean fangs, makeup on face (including red streak to imitate blood), cape etc. The Limo crashes up and the vampire legs it. Nash finds a woman, Finn (Jenny McShane), tied up in the trunk – the body of her bodyguard is in the back seat.

He has been stabbed with a replica of Vlad the Impaler’s dagger (I didn’t know they had them but according to this show over 2 million have been produced!), the neck bite marks were superficial. Finn is a singer and says she might recognise the vampire from a Goth club she used to play as her first CD was Goth... fickle thing aren’t you, when we see you singing it is a country version of Desperado. They go to the Goth club and spot the guy. Leaving Finn to fend for herself, they give chase and he tries to leap from an overpass onto a garbage truck – he misses.

His name was Damian Kenso, he had fake fangs and someone else’s blood in his stomach – “I guess that’s what happens when lawyers marry,” Joe quips – and the investigation eventually leads them to the vampire’s leader, Lothar (Matt O’Toole). Of course he denies any knowledge of Finn, but vampires are still trying to get her (more cutting with their fake English accents than with the knives they carry) and eventually she is kidnapped.

Don’t worry, Nash is there to work out what is going on. By looking at some random books, he had another cop pick up by subject matter alone, on vampirism, immortality and white witchcraft Nash has worked out that Lothar and his vampires have cobbled a cult together out of aspects of vampire lore, Celtic lore, paganism and Wicca – which makes no sense – and they have taken Finn for the Quickening (strange, he didn’t mention they were using Highlander terms...) Seems they think she is a white witch (I guess because she said so on one track off her first album) and will bleed her on a specific night (that night) to gain immortality... sheesh...

There is so much that would be offensive within this to vampire genre fans, vampyre lifestylers, Wiccans and generic pagans... were it not so much drivel. In fact the parody is so caricatured that the caricatures almost become unrecognisable. On a genre level, these might be vampyre lifestylers but there clearly is a supernatural belief, if not element. I said vampires get everywhere, they do but sometimes they shouldn’t! As a vampire piece this was exceptionally poor. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.



On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mentions: The Transient

This short film is a low budget independent movie. Whilst they are taking pre-orders to buy the film (either in DVD format, if they get enough orders, or in DVD-r otherwise) the fact that this is available to view free made me run towards the concept of honourable mention rather than full on review.

What we have is indie filmmaking with some interesting ideas and some horribly bad moments. However, one almost gets the feeling that director Chris Lukeman was aware of the limitations and that those bad moments have been stretched into a parody of themselves. As such these moments that, if serious, would have damaged the viewing experience actually seek to enhance it.

The film becomes one of the most bizarre superhero narratives I have seen for some time. We have the Transient (Dave Ruthenburg), almost like the anti-Bruce Wayne in that he is a hobo rather than a billionaire but his masked persona is reliant on toys and gadgets – in this case made from rubbish. Like Batman, the Transient is morally grey in his actions. He also has a side kick.

Steve (Blake Stubbs) is a do-gooder and, it appeared, the Transient’s caseworker. He is not in favour of the methodology used by the Transient, threatening to report him to the police and yet is drawn into the Transient’s world – a world filled with the supernatural. It is Steve who comes up with the superhero name the Transient.

Local girls are going missing, kidnapped by a group of punks – to take to vampire Lincoln (Michael Krebs). The former president always was a vampire and had to go into hiding after the ‘assassination’. The reason for getting the girls appears in the sparse lore (which includes the fact that vampires have no reflections). It appears that should he bleed 87 women in a fortnight he will be freed from his curse. He also wishes to be president again – having not finished his second term.

The film contains zombie lore also and Timmy (Michael Bach) the zombie is dug up as they are like a divining rod when it comes to finding vampires. When Timmy bites a vampiress (Vanessa Prokuski) – who was one of the kidnapped girls and turned as part of a trap for the heroes – she immediately becomes a zombie and her fangs drop out.

This is silly, but being free it is watchable silliness. The film can be found here and has an imdb page here.

Thanks to Everlost who put me on to this.

Honourable Mentions: The Witcher (Enhanced Edition) – PC Game

Those who are long time readers of the blog will know I made the conscious decision not to review games on this blog. However I am not opposed to giving the odd one an honourable mention as I come across them. To be honest, it has been a while since I had a good gaming session, but that occurred recently when I bought the Witcher.

Based on a Polish series of books I was grabbed by this RPPG from the start. Its biggest draw was a wonderful balance of story and freedom. It doesn’t, perhaps, have the same freedom as Oblivion but it has freedom within choices and the choices you make massively effect the development of the story. You will eventually reach the same place, but on another road and for, perhaps, another reason.

The other great thing about the game is the fact that it is so... mature is the best descriptor I can find. Not just in gore levels, expletives and the fact that your character will sleep with just about anything – with sex cards (collecting them is kind of like a mini game) over a blurred back video and, incidentally, I believe that these were censored for the US release. But in the topics covered. There is a story about racism here and about monsters – the monsters within man compared to the beasts that haunt the night and our nightmares.

I have completed the main game at time of writing this and am about to embark on playing the additional adventures that ship with the enhanced edition of the game. The game does feature vampires – and a variety of them at that. We have a variety of minor vampires appearing as enemies through the game. Such creatures as Fleders and Garkains. Hideous bat like creatures who haunt the night and can stun victims with, what appeared to be, a bat like sonar.

The game does feature vampires in a side quest and main quest. The Side Quest concerns a brothel run by the Queen of the Night – a bruxa. She has her sisters with her, a pair of alps. As your journal says: “No other monster inspires so many myths and fallacies as the alp. People believe that this vampire is able to turn into a black dog or a venomous toad. They mistake alps for succubi, believing them to be lecherous and inclined to seduce handsome young men. Folk tales describe their charm and their beautiful, seductive voices, as well as their loathing of virgins. What is true beyond any doubt is that they move noiselessly and attack by surprise, rarely giving their victims as much as a chance to scream in terror.”

Play your cards right on this quest and you can end up with a bruxa and two alp orgy! Actually this quest really does underline the game’s desire to play with the concept of what, and who, is a monster. It also highlights the way the game will throw little bits of information at you and give it an importance later as you are told in an earlier chapter of a friend you once had, a higher vampire, and this piece of information seems throw away. You discover, in this quest, that he and the Queen of the Night were lovers. Marvellous stuff.

Towards the end there is a case involving a type of vampire, the striga. I won’t spoil the quest or the story leading up to it but we do discover that these creatures can be created through a curse and, in this case, incest is involved within the curse. Of course such unions have been the source of vampirism before. The film Mark of the Vampire had this as a source of vampirism (along with suicide) until the censors expunged that entire back story. Though the incestuous source is somewhat different in this story.

Anyway, if you game on the PC and you like your role playing games morally grey, you could do worse than give Witcher a go.