Honourable Mentions: The Dark Path Chronicles

This 2008 series of webisodes was a Fear.net original over 7 short episodes. Now the trouble with Fear.net is that it does have a tendency to not have the videos accessible from the UK. However Coroding Halo contacted me to say it was available over at veoh. I have since discovered it is also on YouTube – just do a search, which you’ll have to do for episode 5 as it is curtailed by a minute or so on Veoh.

The series is a vampire series, directed and written by Mary Lambert, and is in itself a heady mix of heavy metal and classy vampiric images. The story itself is perhaps a little simple, a lot derivitive and under explained but the build is very MTV and as such it works well. There is also some interesting lore appearing through the flashiness, though perhaps it is not as original as it first appears.

It follows a girl named Samantha (Amanda Bauer), who is reading about the Second World War and singing as she does so. Somehow this attracts an awakening vampire named Jurgen (Carson Aune). When Jurgen awakens he is quite horrific of visage - which actually owed a bit, in respect of design, to subspecies, I felt. He still wears his Nazi uniform. He became what he calls a dark one after his parents died during the Dresden bombings – the Third Reich used vampires it appears.

He has been upon the Dark Path – a separate dimension accessible to vampires, a place to move unseen and to hide from the sun. The sun will not kill a vampire but it does make them weaker. He summons Samantha and the summoning causes her to bleed from the ear. This was perhaps too reminiscent of Night Watch. Summoning caused nose bleeds and the Dark Path is reminiscent of the Gloom. When a human enters the Dark Path they cannot breathe and they bleed from the eye.

Samantha’s sister, Lisa (Lisa K. Lambert), is searching for her sibling. She is in touch with a priest and vampire hunter, Father Raymond (Willie Laureano). Raymond was a con and came across vampires in prison, where they would enter the cells at night, after lockdown, to feed. It was there where he learnt to fight the undead.

Also around are the vampires Enid (Elena Caruso) and Luke (Joseph Gatt). Luke seems to monitor other vampiric activity and classes Jurgen as a rogue who is breaking all the rules. Because of this he ends up hunting down Jurgen and Samantha – a hunt that ends up involving Lisa as well, an trully innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. Father Raymond wants to rescue to Samantha though we question whether she wants to be rescued.

The trouble is there isn’t much more story and there isn’t much in the way of character development. However there is a huge amount of iconic vampire imagery and the flashiness works well in an MTV sort of way, especially with the pounding metal soundtrack. Indeed, these are almost more music video than short film.

As well as the Dark Path and the idea of vampire Nazis we get the weapon of holy water mixed with garlic – that does major damage to Luke’s face. Raymond sharpens a crucifix to use as a stake but Luke actually just uses a knife on Jurgen and so I doubt a holy wooden stake would be needed to kill a vampire.

However, being completely free, this is worth a look.

The imdb page is here.