Another short break

Okay guys… we’re taking another short break here at Taliesin Meets the Vampires as I head back out to Spain for a few days again. I’ll be flying back Sunday and so expect posts to resume on 6th September. What’s first… who knows but it might be the sequel to the dreadful Red Lips!

In the meantime Zeitghost media have asked me to let you know that Sherrilyn Kenyon’s No Mercy is out on the 7th September. The blurb suggests: Live fast, fight hard and if you have to die then take as many of your enemies with you as you can. That is the Amazon credo and it was one Samia lived and died by. Now in contemporary New Orleans, the immortal Amazon warrior is about to learn that there's a worse evil coming to slaughter mankind than she's ever faced before....."

The trailer looks a little like:




Also, before I go, I know that several friends of the blog are big fans of Carmilla - as am I to be honest.

Well, though you may never forgive me… I stumbled across this and I dedicate it to the Carmilla fans…

The Vampire Diaries – season 1 – review

First aired: 2009

Directed by: Various

Contains spoilers

I’ll admit that I have put off watching this, having watched the pilot some time ago. Said pilot episode did not ring my bell and, despite many a person suggesting that the series improves (and it does) I had little faith. However, having watched it all in one weekend I am now suffering from… You know when you eat too much Chinese food and you get that weird too much MSG feeling? Well I am suffering from a too much angst induced weird feeling… honestly so much teen angst can’t be good for you… perhaps I should have watched this on a weekly basis and controlled my intake!

Firstly I’ll admit that I have never read the books and so had no preconception of the world the series created. So, the basic story runs like this – for those who haven’t seen the show – new boy Stefan (Paul Wesley) turns up at the Mystic Falls high school. You just know he is something odd as he looks like the bastard son of Angel and Edward Cullen – all pouty and hair gelled – plus his voice over at the head of the series talks about remaining hidden for over a century but he has to meet her. Also at the school is Elena (Nina Dobrev) – the *her* he has to meet.

writing in her journal

Elena and her brother Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) lost their parents during the previous school year and now live with their Aunt Jenna (Sara Canning). She now copes by writing in her journal, Jeremy has turned to drugs – a subject we will return to later on. A lot of the angst of the series flows through the Stefan and Elena relationship as one invariably leaves the other episode after episode, but they can’t live without each other despite the fact that he is a vampire and she a mortal. Jeremy is another source of angst through the series.

Ian Somerhalder as Damon

Damon (Ian Somerhalder) is the ‘evil’ brother of Stefan and also turns up in town with a diabolical, but for a while undisclosed, master-plan and also an aim to make Stefan’s life a living hell. Actually, from this viewers point of view Damon was the much more interesting character – despite the fact that the writers did try and domesticate the character later, and he did become embroiled in the angst, he remained a breath of fresh air through the show.

Katherine's photo

It quickly becomes apparent that the two brothers fell out, ostensibly, over the same woman – Katherine (Nina Dobrev again) and that Elena is her spitting image. They loved her (Stefan through compulsion, or as we know it eye mojo, and Damon naturally) back in the civil war days as they were part of the founding town families (an undercurrent of the story is small town snobbery, though the series actually seems to more revel in it than condemn it). She was a vampire and they became vampires on the night that the town folk fought back, locked 26 vampires in the church and burned it down.

a spell to make feather's float

Turns out that Katherine’s servant Emily (Bianca Lawson) was a witch and ensured that the vampires were protected through a spell that sealed them in a tomb below the church. The spell was charged by a passing comet and can be broken when it passes again… Emily’s family still live in the area and Bonnie (Katerina Graham) is Elena’s best friend and also a witch just coming into her powers. Given the tomb bit I was relieved that Elena was quickly revealed not to be Katherine reborn – that would have been one cliché much too far.

Stefan with full vampire face

The vampires subsist on human blood – except for Stefan who uses animal blood. Vampires burn in sunlight – except for certain ones with mystical wards in jewellery form (including Stefan and Damon who have magic rings). These wards cannot – it seems – be transferred as they are made for the specific vampire by a witch. I have mentioned the eye mojo and they have a funky eye vein thing that goes on, around the eyes. This goes from just the veins in overdrive around the eyes to full vamp face, thus it's rather nice as it is distinctive but can be much more subtle than the Buffy face thing.

dead vampire

They can be killed through fire and staking – the latter causes a greying of the skin with prominent veins. There is no convenient dusting and the town elders (and Sheriff Forbes (Marguerite MacIntyre)) hide both dead vampires and victims’ causes of death to prevent a panic – the sordid history of Mystic Falls has been handed down through the generations. So have methods to fight the vampires – for instance an antique pocket watch is part of a vampire compass.

wood bullets

The vampires are super strong and super fast – the relative strength depends on both the age of the vampire and their diet – Stefan is relatively weak due to the animal blood diet. Wood bullets will injure and slow a vampire, so that they can be staked. I didn’t actually understand why a wood bullet through the heart would not kill itself – after all it is a mini stake. I also didn’t understand how Stefan got an elaborate (and clearly modern) tattoo? Surely the scars would heal.

summoned mist

The vampires have to be invited in – though it appears the invitation cannot be revoked. Turning is achieved by ingestion of vampire blood and dying whilst it is still in the system – other than that the blood heals human injuries. Early on it becomes apparent that vampires can summon a mist – but this seems to get ignored in later episodes. Damon had a crow that he had control over, which he eats when desperate for blood at one point. He could use it as his eyes and also as a conduit to invade dreams (presumably he could do the same if present). No use of animal familiars was shown later on in the series.

vervain

Coffee helps a vampire’s circulation, thus allowing them to blend in, and alcohol can subdue their cravings. A vampire can switch off emotions such as guilt. Holy objects have no impact, nor does garlic but there is a new idea in the form of vervain – this will knock a vampire for six if ingested (even in a victim’s blood) and prevents compulsion if worn or carried by a human. A liquid essence of it burns a vampire like holy water does in other stories.

I mentioned drugs and it seems that someone in the writing staff has a real addiction bee in their bonnet. From casual drug use leading to death (by vampires), to alcohol leading to getting off with your best friend’s mom, to drunk vampires and blood as a drug this programme really does use the vampire/addict allegory a lot, as well as highlighting more mundane substance abuse, and is fairly preachy with it. Stefan on human blood for a couple of episodes went down a relapsed junky route and one fears that he will relapse once a season - much like Angel seemed to become Angelus once a season for a while.

the corpse is bloodless, the series not so

Beyond that, though, it wasn’t too bad. Despite the angst levels being on overdrive the acting was good and, in the last couple of episodes, they did raise the bar. It certainly shows the Twilight film franchise that you can do teen romance and angst with good acting – if only you hire good actors and get decent dialogue writers – and it is not a bloodless programme either.

That said, compare it to the current crop of vampire related series and it fails to touch either True Blood or Being Human. Perhaps it still is a tad too teen?

Take it in small sips – 6 out of 10 (for the season as a whole, earlier episodes would drop a point).

The imdb page is here.

Red Lips – review

Director: Donald Farmer

Release date: 1995

Contains spoilers

Hmmm… that probably sums this up best but I am sure you want a little more than that as a review!

Firstly, however, I must apologise for the crud screenshots but, just like I did, the only way you will get to see this film is through a (probably very tired) VHS Recording. The question is should you sit through the bad reproduction – short answer… no.

Oh, yeah, more than a one word review is required...

The film starts off with some lesbian sex, on the verge of not being softcore but still fairly tame. One of the two lifts her head from between her lover’s legs and her lips are red with blood… I should, I guess, mention the riff heavy guitar soundtrack that sounded, well amateurish if I am going to be honest.

Mandy Leigh as the doctor

Meet Caroline (Ghetty Chasun) she’s broke and selling blood but she only gets $15 dollars. The doctor (Mandy Leigh) – or she might have been a tree, rather than a doctor, I mean her acting was that wooden – offers her a hundred dollars to take part in a drug trial. She has come up with a serum that will eradicate illness, yes-siree-bob. Of course Caroline goes for it.

Having left the clinic she becomes wracked with pain and nausea. She falls to the floor and cuts her knee. She has the urge to taste the blood and the pain goes away. When she tells the doctor the next visit, she tells Caroline that it is perfectly normal and injects her with another dose.

fangs

This time her hunger leads her to attack a carpet salesman – but not after one of the worst acted moments, with a wannabe startlet convinced he is a movie producer, that I have had the misfortune to watch. Again back to the clinic but this time she feels the doctor up (who makes no attempt to resist) and kills her. Now… is this because of some hypnotic power… possibly… or perhaps in Donald Farmer’s world every woman is a potential nymphomaniac lesbian just waiting to jump the bones of any other nymphomaniac lesbian.

always hungry

Lisa (Michelle Bauer, Morgana and Tomb of the Werewolf) has just ditched her girlfriend Amy (Kitten Natividad) – who responds with some histrionic acting that would strip lead paint off wood – and bumps into Caroline. Caroline is weak with hunger and so she takes her to a coffee shop. Short story even shorter, Caroline goes into bathroom, finds another nymphomaniac lesbian, eats her and then goes clubbing with Lisa.

Lisa doesn’t seem to mind that Caroline tries it on with Gina (Jasmine Pona) as it gets them a place to crash and Gina even sleeps on the couch, whilst they get into some nudey rumpy pumpy. Middle of the night Caroline gets up, wanting a midnight snack, slips out of the bedroom and snacks on Gina. Lisa catches her.

bloody mouth

She then does what any self respecting woman, who had met a woman that day and seen her turn into a homicidal blood sucking freak, would do. She sends Caroline to bed, puts Gina’s body in the bath, dons a shower cap, cuts her up and puts the bits in the freezer! Yes, they are in love and the rest of the film is just Caroline finding feeds (mostly taking her top off to do it – if not more) until the film spins into its tragic ending that would be worthy of Shakespeare (should Shakespeare had been given a full frontal lobotomy before writing it).

Yes it is that bad… no redeeming features. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Countess – review

Director: Julie Delpy

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Over 2008 and 2009 there were two serious productions concerning Countess Erzsébet Báthory (in this played by Julie Delpy) – this one, obviously as I mention it, and Bathory.

Bathory received an honourable mention, whilst it mentioned vampires in passing it took the premise that Báthory was innocent and framed. This does not take that premise, though there is a degree of framing for political/monetary gain she is guilty of the crimes she is accused of. There is only an oblique reference to vampirism – which I’ll mention in review – and so there is no mystical rejuvenation ala Countess Dracula but there is a belief that the blood is making her younger. I, however, get ahead of myself.

Ferenc and Erzsébet's wedding

The film begins with Istvan Thurzo (Daniel Brühl) visiting Báthory’s grave and can I just say at this point how impressed I am with Brühl – he was marvellous in Inglorious Basterds and he was marvellous in this. Anyway, Istvan is unaware of all that has happened (he was only present for a small part of the tale) and thus he does offer the opinion that history is written by the victors. The film then very much glosses over Erzsbet’s childhood and marriage and we are left with the impression of a woman taught to be cold who was responsible – whilst her husband, Ferenc (Charly Hübner) went to war – for making their estates so profitable that the king, Matthias (Jesse Inman), is indebted to her family. Mention is made of her running a hospital but again it is quickly glossed over.

first kiss

The film quickly passes beyond Ferenc’s death and Erzsébet takes her children to Vienna, for safety reasons, and whilst there we see the cutting edge of her wit and learning at a dinner party. At the dinner party is Count Gyorgy Thurzo (John Hurt). The Count asks her to marry him but she declines pointedly telling him that he, being a noble through money gained, was not noble enough to marry her bloodline. She then goes to a ball and meets his son Istvan and they are immediately attracted, though Istvan is much younger. They kiss and begin an affair.

Anamaria Marnica as Darvulia

Erzsébet has to return to her castle and she has her healer – Darvulia (Anamaria Marinca) – cast a spell to tie her and Istvan together when a promised letter from him is late. Darvulia is obviously jealous and the price for the spell is time in the Countess’ bed. Again this lesbian aspect is little played upon. When she hears that Istvan will be at a ball she high tails it to Vienna. She is approached by a noble called Vizakna (Sebastian Blomberg) but dismisses him. Istvan finds her and speaks to her briefly – saying that he will go to her and run away with her.

Sebastian Blomberg as Vizakna

He never shows. We later discover that his father has intervened and sends him under guard to Denmark for the arranged marriage that will strengthen trade routes. A distraught Erzsébet goes riding with Vizakna. Here we get the oblique vampire reference in that she makes comment that his family are said to shun the day and eat babies. He explains that they share a complaint that makes exposure to sunlight painful – Porphyria – but they don’t eat babies. Given the obliqueness of the reference I didn’t actually mind it. An old hag gets in her way and tells Erzsébet that one day she will look like her. At Vizakna’s urging she beats the woman – her cruelty begins to show through.

obsessive love

However the true source of her sadism is multi-faceted. Heart broken by Istvan’s betrayal (she receives a forged letter telling her that she was never loved by him) she becomes obsessive. She had taken a snip of his hair and cuts open her own breast and then sews the hair under the skin. Perhaps the resultant infections caused some of her delusions – as we see much later on that the wound is festering. She has also become obsessed with age.

what Erzsébet sees...

She looks in the mirror and sees herself lined and bagged – much worse than her actual natural lines and wrinkles. She assumes the hag has cursed her and that Darvulia’s salves to keep her skin soft are failing. It is during this that she has her hair snagged by a maid and beats her quite viciously. However, when she wipes the blood away – as a morning light illuminates her window – she sees that she looks younger. She assumes that it is the virgin blood.

first victim

She has the girl looked after and then bled into a bowl so she can wash in the blood. We see no blood baths in this – though later we get a hint of blood showers from a piercing cage contraption she has built (ostensibly to bleed witches before burning them). The first girl we see bled over time and then we see her taken to the priest for burial.

post blood delusions

From this (to give us a sense of the crimes) we see a hand dipped in blood, blood rubbed on the face and bodies – at first sent for burial and then abandoned in the woods for the wolves. We also see exactly what she sees in the mirror through her delusion. During this time, at Count Thurzo’s behest, Vizakna seduces and begins an affair with Erzsébet. He is a masochist and actively encourages her sadistic side, flatters her vanity and generally (mainly unknowingly) encourages her delusions. Her downfall is less plotted than it is stumbled over and capitalised upon. In a cruel moment it is Istvan who has to uncover the truth of her crimes – and quickly (from his father’s perspective) before the king raises a charge of witchcraft and gets all her lands himself.

The acting is all top notch and, unlike its contemporary 'Bathory', there are no silly monks with James bond type gadgets. I couldn’t help but think, however, that where Bathory was a little too long this was a tad short. Perhaps a little more of her early life was needed, maybe something of her relationship with Darvulia needed exploring. Gore hounds will be disappointed at the lack of gore but over all this was a satisfying piece.

6.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

Honourable mentions: Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye

Italian director Antonio Margheriti appears on the blog from time to time. We honourably mentioned his film Long Hair of Death due to the elements that he borrowed from Carmilla. His films Castle of Blood and its colour remake Web of the Spider are examples of films about vampiric ghosts.

In the case of the 1973 movie Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye we are faced with a (rather enjoyable) film that is, at its heart, a murder mystery. Vampires, however, are mentioned and at least one character believes in their reality – though we as an audience know that a mortal murderer is behind the deaths.

rats have eaten the face

The film begins with the sound of someone dying and footsteps, a crate being dragged and the crate then falls down stairs. All this is observed by a cat, who is the constant silent witness to the events that unfold. The crate spills its contents and we see the corpse of a man. Time segues forward and the rats have eaten away at his face.

gorilla at the window

A horse and carriage goes along the road. The driver Angus (Luciano Pigozzi) – for we are in the Scottish highlands – has met his passenger Corringa (Jane Birkin) at the station when he was going for supplies for his employer – Lady Mary MacGrieff (Françoise Christophe) of Dragonstone Castle, Corringa’s aunt. She remembers the castle from when she was a little girl and mentions the MacGrieff legend, to which Angus crosses himself and then says to do so is an old custom. As they arrive we see a fanged beast, perhaps a gorilla mask, at a window.

arguing over money

In the castle Mary and Corringa’s mother, Alicia (Dana Ghia), are arguing over money. Mary wants Alicia to give some to help keep the estate running but all Alicia’s money is held in trust for Corringa. She suggests that Mary sells the castle and moves to London – it would be good for her son James (Hiram Keller). When Corringa arrives it appears they did not expect her for a month. She says that the school closed early due to building works but then admits to Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann) – a ‘French teacher’ employed for James – that she has been expelled.

Father Robinson inspects the Coat of Arms

We quickly meet our other players. Father Robinson (Venantino Venantini) who is there to replace the current Priest (Franco Ressel). Dr Franz (Anton Diffring, the Man Who Could Cheat Death)) who is there, allegedly, to treat James, but is having an affair with Mary. Dr Franz hired Suzanne and is having an affair with her also. James is a rude individual, with few social graces, who has inherited his title and is believed to have killed his own sister when they were children. The Gorilla is his – also called James – though he calls it an orang-utan. We also discover that the MacGrieff legend is that a MacGrieff who is murdered by another MacGrieff will rise as a vampire to extract revenge. The coat of arms looks, to Corringa, like it shows a vampire though Franz calls is a Chimera.

in the secret passage

This first to die is Alicia – smothered. The murder is covered up by Franz and Mary, and he writes a death certificate that suggests she died of natural causes. During the time the murder was occuring Corringa had discovered a secret passage and subsequently found the body with the rat eaten face – a find she keeps to herself – and is then freaked out by bats in the passage. She is not allowed to see her mother’s corpse, which is quickly placed in the family vault. During the funeral, the cat jumps on the coffin and a local states that if a cat follows a dead person they will be a vampire – similar to the traditional idea of cat’s jumping over coffins causing vampirism. The cat is purposefully locked in the vault at Lady Mary’s order.

the vampire Alicia

That night Angus returns to the vault to release the cat, sees that the coffin is broken open and is then killed, throat slit by a razor, murdered by an assailant unseen but who Angus clearly knew. Corringa is in bed and the cat enters her room, lies beside her and then bites at her neck as she shifts in her slumber. Corringa subsequently dreams of her mother, returned as a vampire, who says that Corringa is similarly marked by the cat and must help her mother exact revenge on her killer.

Corringa and James

That is our vampiric input and it is all in the head of Corringa, traumatised by finding a body and her mother dying, fascinated before then by the legends and cursed with an over-developed imagination. For the viewer, we know a human culprit is to blame and the film throws in red herring after red herring with the suspects dropping like flies.

I rather enjoy Seven Deaths, it has a nice, sumptuous feel. From a genre point of view the vampire element isn’t enough to make this anything more than a fleeting visitation during a thriller. The imdb page is here.

My Dead Body – review

Author: Charlie Hutson

First published: 2009

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Joe Pitt’s used to life in the gutter. He’s spent the last year crawling around Manhattan’s filthy sewer system, protecting the turf below where his love, Evie, now lives.

Meanwhile, above ground, a civil war rages. Manhattan’s rival vampyre clans have finally sprung for each others throats. The carefully maintained peace is forgotten, old debts are being settled and the bodies are piling up. Joe would be wise to stay out of it, but an old acquaintance will drag him back to the surface. And Joe will finally get the answers he’s looking for. He’ll see which of his friends and foes will be put in the ground and who will claw their way to survival.

This is a war with no middle ground – only winners and losers. But when the blood stops flowing, what side will Joe Pitt be on?

The review: If you read the blurb and thought that it sounded like an ending then you’d be right. This is the fifth Joe Pitt novel and it ends the series off. As such it is probably not the best place for a reader new to the series to start. The series itself runs: Already Dead, No Dominion, Half the Blood of Brooklyn and Every Last Drop.

The novel itself is tour de force, bringing into play just about every character Joe has met in the previous four volumes (at least those who survived the previous volumes) and thus the book careens forward at breakneck speed. That is not to say that there is no rhyme or reason to the book, there is a definite plan but the speed (and absolute brutality) is dizzying.

This might be a bad thing in other hands but Hutson keeps us on his chosen road and ties, I think, just about every loose end on the way. If I had a complaint it is that the series definitely finishes here and that complaint is only half hearted. Having become invested in the series I am sorry to see the last of Joe Pitt’s story but I am also glad that an author actually brings a story to a conclusion for once.

An excellent ending to the series. 8 out of 10.

Blood Countess – review

Director: Lloyd A Simandl

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

More Czechploitation. After discovering this strange little sub-genre with Demon’s Claw we now look at another film by director Lloyd A Simandl. This one is less horror and more the historical biopic with plenty of nudity to give it a “ploitation” label (why the country of origin should be important is currently defeating me, this, at heart, is a good old sexploitation).

In her cell

I said that it is more a historical biopic and so it is. It sets the film in 1611 with Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Andrea Nemcova) waiting to be walled into her room and writing a diary trying to explain events. The date is right, the historic Báthory was arrested in 1610 and held under house arrest until her trial (in abstentia) in January 1611. She was sentenced to be imprisoned, walled up in her rooms, for life and died in 1614.

writing diary

In this she decides to write her diary to show the falsehood of the trial, that she was to be slow executed for the sins of men – mostly her husband (who historically died in 1604) and her cousin the King of Hungary. She seems to protest an innocence and yet we then cut to her first musings and it involves the murder of peasant girls.

fondling the iron maiden

Yes, the sleaze begins. We see girls chained, a girl having her throat slit by Dorothea (Deny Moor) as Elizabeth’s relation (referred to later both as niece and cousin, so I assume cousin is used as in a generic familial term) Nora (Sabine Mallory) fondles an iron maiden and complains that Dorothea used too much hemlock and thus she cannot hear the screams.

in the bath

Elizabeth, meanwhile, is in a bath and being looked after by two hand maidens – one of whom has to strip and get in the bath with her to wash her mistress. The blood, when it comes, is poured through an aperture in the ceiling. This allows a slow trickle that goes in the bathwater and can be caught, in order to wash in it. As such we don’t get a complete blood bath.

Following this Elizabeth – as the diarist – admits to one crime. Killing a noble, in this case Nora but it was because she was a liar and a thief. Long story short, Elizabeth fears that the magic is wearing out too quickly and thus she needs noble rather than common blood. Nora is tasked with getting her a minor noble girl and given money to this effect. She eventually brings a girl but she is no noble, she is a peasant called Anna dressed up and Elizabeth notices this due to rough hands. Subsequently she has Nora killed.

lesbiansim was mandatory

Before that point we get a variety of scenes showing both lesbianism, breast feeding of prisoners (Simandl appears obsessed with this as it appears in both of his films that we have observed) and some sadistic sexual practices that add nothing to the story. They are there only to titillate. The killing of Nora is the end of the film and you wonder at the lack of worthwhile story and exploration of motivation. The film ends like the end of a first chapter so one assumes the story continues in Blood Countess 2. However, from what I can gather that is a prequel to this, rather than a continuation.

Deny Moor as Dorothea

The actual film looks more sumptuous than it should but there are glaring incongruities. It appeared that Elizabeth sported a tattoo on the back of neck, normally hidden by her hair. Nora had highlights in her hair – something that I find unlikely for the seventeenth century. It was also incongruous that these peasant girls would take time to have such pubic neatness (some of the girls are bare and some sport Brazilians). Perhaps I think about such things too much.

just a taste

Elizabeth is no vampire (in an undead sense). She has a treatise on witchcraft (the same book we saw in Demon’s Claw) and she does catch some blood on her tongue at one point. However this is all stylisation and the bottom line is she is a mortal woman who thinks that bathing in blood is the route to eternal youth. Just a shame the film went nowhere slowly, despite the overly dramatic soundtrack, 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vampire Kids – review

Directed by: Keith Li

Release date: 1991

Contains spoilers

There are some poor Hong Kong films out there and, honestly, this is one of them. A film marred by unworkable comedy moments involving characters most of whom are not named and who have no back stories for the audience to pin sympathies to.

That said this film does have an interesting main vampire. The lore, however, seems utterly screwed up. It is not just the fact that there seems to be very little lore, generally, but that the little we get is not explained in any way, shape or form. The film begins with a typical kyonsi bouncing along. Don’t forget him, he won’t reappear for a while.

shipwrecked

Then we get scenes of survivors of a shipwreck washing up on a deserted island. There is, as we get few actual names, a brainy guy, his uncle, a guide (Sandra Ng Kwan Yue), a young woman, a fat guy (Billy Lau), a man and his wife (though they are not yet registered), a muscular guy who may have been called Buffalo and his busty sister (Amy Yip). The poor comedy begins with her needing resuscitation and is centred on the size of her boobs.

Japanese decor

The survivors wander towards a village – though the buildings seem rather spaced out. Brainy guy, the uncle and the young woman enter one building that was clearly used by a Japanese soldier – probably an outpost during the Second World War. The uncle picks up a katana and looks to be trying to commit seppuku, and it appears he is possessed. He is stopped, we see a picture of a Japanese soldier but no more is said about the suicide attempt or potential possession.

vampire awakens

The guide is in another building and backs into a stick embedded in mud with a diamond at the end of it (and the most fake looking diamond at that). She starts trying to remove it and doesn’t notice the mud cracking to reveal the face of the Japanese soldier, who has fangs. The guide removes the diamond and then fights over it with the busty girl. Eventually Buffalo intervenes and throws the diamond away, but the guide finds it again. No one noticed the vampire, who is still pinned to the wall and who manages to revive himself slightly by sucking on a passing mouse.

the vampire kids

There are no real incidents that night, in a supernatural sense, and I am not going to relay the silly jokes that primarily centre around the fat guy and the married man. The next day the married man finds tomatoes and they all fight over them, managing to eat some each until the brainy guy notices and tells them they are poisonous. They will cause them to pass out and then go mad. He gets knocked out for his trouble. As it is that night the vampire kids appear and the survivors wake and have indeed gone mad.

holding breath

The vampire kids find themselves attacked by these mad people (who do not attack each other). In a complete turn around of lore the kids stop breathing so that the humans cannot see them. As we know, not breathing is a way of avoiding kyonsi normally. Eventually the kids run away and return, empty stomached as it were, to the Japanese vampire (referred to as the king vampire) who sent them out to drain the blood to bring back for him.

daylight disguises

He names the kids Fatty, Timid, Stupid, Sharp Teeth and Naughty, and controls them by means of magic – and magic collars we later discover. He sends them back out for blood. The survivors wake, recovered from the poison, and the kids try to get them during the day. Can they survive daylight? Apparently so, though they do wear leaves... Does this protect them or just disguise them? Who knows? They fail to harvest any plasma, as none of them actually want to suck blood. They are forced to attack the humans again when night falls and are, eventually, subdued.

king vampire attacks

The King vampire realises that the humans are trying to remove the controlling collars and manages to captures a particularly crap looking bat and eat it. This gives him enough power to push the stake out and go get the humans himself. They fight him and quickly realise that the diamond can hurt him. He is pinned in the mouth with a bamboo and forced to swallow the diamond. This blows him up.

kyonsi dad

The kyonsi from the beginning then returns and, it turns out, he is the kids’ father. He takes them off. The end, and thank god. This just didn’t work that well in my opinion. The lore was skew-whiff, aspects like the diamond just were, with no explanation what so ever. How long had he controlled the kids, why had the father not come before and who pinned him to the wall? The film does not deign it necessary to tell us. The jokes are thin, the characters have less personality than the names I gave them (and which, in the main, the film failed to give them). 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.