Happy Halloween

Greetings and Happy Halloween to you all. The horror blogger’s favourite time of the year and the best of the holidays.

To anyone of a pagan persuasion, I wish you a most Happy Samhain.

The picture accompanying this post is one that was sent to me by Christian Esquivel, an aspiring artist, who is working on an anime literature series called Midas Adventures, which features the vampire character Black Aramis (featured). I normally don’t showcase pictures but as Christian took the time to contact me I thought in only fair to post his art.

The vampire craze shows little sign of abating and there are a couple of indie films I am really anticipating. One is the Spanish film Vampire in the Hole and another that has caught my attention recently is Midnight Son, the trailer for which is below:

First Impression: Let Me In

Let Me In had some awfully big shoes to fill and it had the odds stacked against it, or so it first seemed. A remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, itself a film of the ultra-black novel of the same name, the first question was why remake such a fantastic film so soon?

Then there was the pedigree, it was being co-produced by Hammer whose comeback film, Beyond the Rave, missed much more than it hit and was being directed by Matt Reeves, known for Cloverfield, thus known for shaking cameras – a pet hate.

The odds were stacked but initial reports were good and, having just been to a UK preview of the film…Wow… and Hammer are back… and Wow…

I will assume knowledge of the original film and apologise now for spoilers and say that you would probably get the best effect watching this with no prior knowledge. Essentially the film follows Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a young boy who is bullied, whose parents are divorcing and who harbours fantasies that perhaps shouldn’t be allowed to develop. He meets Abby (Chloe Moretz) and they start an awkward relationship. She is a vampire, of course he doesn’t know that at first.

The film does not start there, however, but actually starts with her ‘protector’ or servant, known only as the Father (Richard Jenkins), being rushed to hospital having poured acid over his face, accompanied by the police as he is the main suspect in a brutal murder where a young man was exsanguinated, and his subsequent tumble from a hospital window. I did wonder at this for, whilst it didn’t show Abby’s involvement, it certainly revealed a main plot area in the first few minutes. What it actually did was... I was going to say set the pace but it didn’t... more it set the undertone that pervaded the film.

Indeed there are changes to the film from the Swedish film and I felt that they all worked in their own way. Indeed some scenes that remained – the iconic bed-burning set piece for one – were vastly superior. The bed scene was absolutely brutal – fantastic stuff. Abby's secret, obliquely hinted at in the Swedish film, is utterly dropped in this.

I was impressed with the way that Abby’s vampiric moments were displayed. There was an aspect of animalism but it was deeper and darker than that, it was demonic, it was evil. It certainly wasn't pretty at all. Owen has had an insight when he asks his (absent and only on the phone) father about evil but he doesn’t really realise it, seduced by its pleasant face and possibly drawn to it because of his vulnerability and the strength it offers.

The book has a strong aspect that reality is scarier than any monster and the fact that Håkan, the Father in this, is a child molester is part of that. In this there is no hint of such crimes. The Father's targets are older teens, the normal fodder of the slasher in horror films, in fact the film switches things on its head. In this Owen is, in many respects, groomed by Abby. She is twelve but has been twelve for a long time and we see pictures of her with the Father at Owen’s age. In this way she is much more evil than her demonic, hungry and violent vampiric visage gives credence for. If only Owen knew that when, at the head of the film, he wears a mask and postures with a knife at the mirror it is a glimpse of him in old age, that he will be the Father.

That brings us to performances and I expected Chloe Moretz to be good – she stole the show in Kick Ass. It is the finest child vampire performance submitted to celluloid. Understated, subtle and truly terrifying – especially after the event and you are able to take in the full magnitude of her performance. Kodi Smit-McPhee was an unknown to me and he was superb, laying down a performance any actor would be proud of.

Let Me In is a must see. The full Taliesin Meets the Vampires review will be done once the DVD has been released and expect it to score very high.

The imdb page is here.

The Horrible Sexy Vampire – review

Director: José Luis Madrid

Release date: 1971

Contains spoilers

Horrible… yes that was a good and accurate descriptor though the word sexy was probably a misnomer – one can’t help but think there was probably a more explicit version of this film doing the rounds, however. Yet the name is probably more fitting for the English dubbed print than the Spanish El Vampiro de la Autopista.

scream until you like it

That said we do begin in a car, on the motorway. In it Arthur drives and his unnamed companion suggests that they stop at the first motel. This they do, though why they got a twin room rather than a double is befuddling. She has the quickest bath in history and then he has a shower. Someone invisible grabs his throat, throttles him and then turns out the lights. The turning out of the lights is only a precursor to her turning them back on, allowing her to find the body in a more impactful way. She screams.

bite mark

The police commissioner arrives at the coroner’s building. The coroner has just completed the autopsy and we see a bite mark on the woman’s neck that actually looks more like an elliptical sucker mark – don’t get excited through, it is just a bite mark. The commissioner believes the assailant to be some kind of sadist. The doctor says no, and alludes to something supernatural and invites the commissioner round for a drink.

the Baron's portrait

Over drinks the doctor explains that he believes the crimes to be the work of a vampire. He has checked his father’s journals and there are flurries of crime, over a 28 day period (which was interesting) every 28 years (which was less interesting) with a one week gap between attacks. Pay little attention to this pattern because this time round the killer attacks over and over again it would seem. Anyway, the doctor even knows who the vampire is – one Baron Winnegar (Waldemar Wohlfahrt), pronounced vinegar. The commissioner is dismissive but gets a warrant for the unoccupied castle. They get the key off the caretaker and explore. They find a portrait of the Baron and then find the coffins of him and his wife. His wife is bones but his is empty. He’s busy killing the cops and, by the end of the night, two cops, the commissioner and the doctor are all dead.



Waldemar Wohlfhart as Count Oblensky

The Commissioner is replaced with a new inspector but he can find no clues as to the assailant (and the vampire theory has died with the doctor). Then the Baron’s heir Count Oblensky (also Waldemar Wohlfahrt) arrives. The castle is sealed and so he goes to the inspector. Oblensky’s father and grandfather never claimed the inheritance due to the will’s stipulations. The heir, the descendant of the Baron’s caretaker (who has now died of natural causes after the murder of the cops) and the heir’s wife are the only ones allowed to enter the castle and the heir must not go into the cellar. These stipulations are quickly ignored.

Waldemar Wohlfahrt as Baron Winnegar

Anyway, it’ll be one night before he can get in the castle and there is a murder that night… Now, let us assume Arthur and his lady friend were the first killed (though it sounded like they were not) and the police went to the castle the next day (and their murders are out of the general pattern). The Inspector was not hired until after their funeral – unlikely the next day – and he had been in town 10 days when Oblensky arrives. Then we have at the most one more murder to come, following which it is likely the 28 day period is up, but there are several more, which is why I said to ignore the pattern that seemed so important. Oblensky is followed so they know that, whilst he took a stroll, he was in his hotel when the murder took place and yet he is still a suspect it seems.

disbelief

As it is, spooky things go on in the castle until he goes down the cellar and thinks he sees his ancestor stood before him. Let us talk Waldemar Wohlfhart – also known as Val Davis. He is not a good actor, he carries little presence and, from what I can gather, his main trade was softcore flicks. When he sees his ancestor he must have been told “do disbelief” by Madrid and so he rubs his eyes, almost as though he were a child actor in a school production it is that bad. Yet there is something endearing about his performance, in that he seems to give his all – when he is beaten by the invisible vampire (for Winnegar can attack whilst invisible) his acting is so over the top it is ace.

the skeletal Count

Anyway, the inspector gets a warrant and they check the coffins – Winnegar’s bones are there as it is daylight and this vampire is bones during the day and reforms at night. Winnegar approaches Oblensky (whose forename was Adolf, I seemed to catch) and begs his relative to destroy him by stake through the heart – presumably having to catch him at sunup or sundown, in his coffin but not yet bones. Winnegar says that he cannot attack Oblensky as they are related (except to beat him up later).

Susan in the bath

To add to the problem, Oblensky’s fiancé, Susan, turns up and insists on staying in the castle and questioning his sanity. This is clearly a breach of the will’s stipulation (as they are not yet married) and makes her a prime target for the Baron – who plum ignores her at first, going into town to feast, and only attacks her on the night when Oblensky makes a stake.

repelled by the cross

The other lore is really around the cross and this does repel the vampire but we get little else of substance. There is a parting comment by Oblensky about the victims of vampires becoming vampires and the Inspector suggesting that they’d be overrun. Of course, with his ancestor staked he is leaving town – the inspector is happy as an escaped lunatic has confessed to the crimes – so we never get to see this predicted plague of vampires.

The film is awful, a little flesh and a story that drags on and on… but, strangely, it is Wohlfahrt’s performance – as bad as it is – that keeps you watching. He hasn’t the skill or presence to pull off one character, never mind two, but somehow he manages to keep an interest going in between the gratuitous booby shots. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Count Duckula – the complete third series – review

Director: Various

First aired: 1990-1993

Contains spoilers

The complete third series of Count Duckula (David Jason) is somewhat of a misnomer title wise. The first thirteen episodes are the complete third season. The final seven episodes are the shorter lived fourth season, but let us not split hairs.

We have previously looked at the first and second seasons – though you can buy all three/four seasons as a single set now.

rare fanged pose

When it comes to a review the trouble is, of course, it is absolutely more of the same with each episode being a stand alone adventure with the vegetarian vampire duck, his evil manservant Igor (Jack May) and his gargantuan pea-brained Nanny (Brian Truman). There was no more lore added in this then previously, except for the idea that the original Count Duckula was turned into a vampire by the bite of a bat – something the present incarnation tries and fails to prevent by travelling back in time.

The Egg

The two standout episodes come from season four. “Venice a Duck not a Duck” sees the arch-villain The Egg (Jimmy Hibbert) setting a series of dastardly traps for Duckula involving many of the criminals who have previously graced episodes. As such it becomes somewhat of a rogue’s gallery of an episode.

Dr Quackbrain

The final episode, “The Zombie Awakens”, is a surrealist joy with the insane Dr Quackbeak – and his hand puppet binky – using his zombie, named Morpheus, to kidnap Duckula so that he can watch his dreams. A wonderful tonal grey (which could have looked even better if these episodes had been digitally restored), with a castle straight out of a German expressionist classic and Igor’s nightmare of cute fluffy bunnies.

This – like the other two seasons – gets a score of 7 out of 10 and the imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Terror Creatures from the Grave

Terror Creatures from the Grave is a film that often crops up on vampire filmographies. Indeed it is one of the films that appear on the twenty film set Undead: The Vampire Collection – however, many a film in that set is not a vampire film.

The film itself is from 1965 and was directed by Massimo Pupillo. It credits Edgar Allan Poe for the story – though like many such films it only has the vaguest of connections with Poe. The film does, however, feature Barbara Steele – always a good thing.

It begins with a man in an inn. He sees a hand against a window and runs out of the inn and through the streets. He reaches a stable, saddles a horse, unties it and then the horse rears, stomping his head.

Walter Brandi as Kovac

A car reaches a house, in it is the attorney Albert Kovac (Walter Brandi). He tries ringing the bell but it has no clanger and so he knocks, the door swings opens and he walks in calling for attention. A maid, Louise (Tilde Till), appears and takes him to Corinne Hauff (Mirella Maravidi), it is her father he has come about and so she takes him through to her step-mother Cleo (Barbara Steele).

Barbara Steele as Cleo

Cleo inspects the letter he has brought, written by her husband and sealed with his seal. It is a request for a will, it was written to Kovac’s partner Joseph Morgan (Riccardo Garrone) but Morgan was away and, as it sounded urgent, Kovac came instead. Cleo explains that her husband has been dead for almost exactly 12 months. The handwriting, however, looks authentic and the seal was buried in his grave. She and Corrine are at the house to transfer his corpse from its grave into the family chapel – as per his request that he be buried for 12 months. Kovac is invited to stay the night.

mummified hands

Corrine, it seems, believes her father is trying to communicate from beyond the grave. As well as being the town doctor he was a spiritualist who claimed to have communicated to the dead buried below the house – it was a plague hospital. Displayed in the hallway are the mummified hands of plague spreaders – men who deliberately spread the plague and so had a hand cut off before being hung. There is a storm that night (and Corrine believes her father came to her, causing her to scream and Albert to come a-running). In the morning the attorney’s car is wrecked after an owl got in the engine(!).

dead mayor

The local doctor (Alfredo Rizzo) gives Kovac and Corrine a lift to the village. Whilst he stops off at a patient’s house they walk by the nearby lake, Kovac makes a seductive move but then she believes sees her father and falls in the lake. They dry her off in the house. The wheelchair bound owner, Stinner (Ennio Balbo), was a friend of her father’s and recognises the letter seal, confirming its authenticity. They head off to tell the mayor, who is also the pharmacist, but when they get there he is dead – acid on his face.

Kovac and the doctor

The doctor is preparing the death certificate and the clerk gives him his paperwork already filled out on his behalf. The clerk claims that he knew the mayor would be found dead as the village heard the ghostly sound of the body collector’s plague cart that night and each time it has been heard someone has died – the ones to die being the men who signed the witness statement to Hauff’s accidental death, in the strict order they signed the document. The mayor was the third name, the fourth name belongs to Stinner and the fifth is illegible.

dead hand

That night Kovac hears a woman singing and sees someone by the fountain but she is gone when he gets there. The song talks about pure water being the way to be safe. Stinner hears the cart near his cottage and kills himself by fixing a sword into a cupboard and ramming himself onto the blade. We see a corrupted hand touch his dead shoulder. So, there is something supernatural going on, but what?

he has the plague

When disinterred, they discover Hauff is not in his tomb – he is not the killer though. As he died he cursed the five men, who actually murdered him, and the fifth is… Morgan; the attorney who was meant to get the letter from beyond the grave, and the illicit lover of Cleo. That night his curse will be complete. The plague spreaders – buried in the garden in unhallowed earth – are the ones killing and that night they will get the guilty and innocent alike. Their hands twitch in the display case when they rise but that is all we see of them. They spread a virulent form of the plague that will kill in minutes. The only protection is pure water.

So they are the dead risen, they are buried in unhallowed earth and they fear pure (rather than running) water. The water is the really vampiric aspect and yet it is there as it fits the story background – the plague spreaders would contaminate water and thus pure water is an anathema. All in all this has very little vampiric about it – Not Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

Haunted Cop Shop – review

Director: Jeffrey Lau

Release date: 1987

Contains spoilers

When it comes to Hong Kong movies, especially from the 80s and 90s, many of them contained a comedic element, however some seemed played simply for laughs. Honestly, as I started watching this it seemed as though it was just a comedic film. The principle characters, Macky Kim (Jacky Cheung) and Chiu (Ricky Hui), seemed your atypical comedy foils.

It was a little bit of a shock, therefore, when the gore levels suddenly ramped up… a welcome shock but… I am getting ahead of myself.

Chiu and Macky Kim

It begins with cops looking out at a priest and a joke being made by Millie (Shut-Ma Yin) that Chief Shun would refuse him charity. Said Chief recognises him as an ex-cop and the priest says that to levitate above worldly concerns he has come to warn the Chief (whom he hated when a cop). Firstly, after midnight 7 days hence, he should not let a woman in pink enter the police station and he should refrain from course language. This leads to some course language and a ball hits him, slightly cutting him. He asks Macky Kim what day it is in 7 days – it is the hungry ghost festival.

General Issie

On the day of the festival the cops have captured the notorious thief Ming (Billy Lau). Dressing up as a headless ghost they scare the thief into revealing where he hid the diamond encrusted crucifix he had stolen (and hidden in a false shoe sole). Shun isn’t happy with the shenanigans and sends them to burn offerings for the ghosts – leading to them explaining to Millie that the police station used to be a clubhouse for the Japanese during the occupation and many ritually killed themselves at the end of the war. Ming meanwhile has been let out of his cell by a female ghost in pink and lured into the spectral clubhouse. He loses a rigged game of mahjong and has to take General Issei back to the mortal realm.

Ming in the sun

Issei is a vampire and he feeds on Ming, turning him into a vampire also. Micky Kim and Chiu re-arrest him, not believing that he is a vampire, and question him. Over and over he insists that he is now a ghost until they decide, given it has passed dawn, to see if he turns to ashes in sunlight. Unfortunately for them, he does. Now no one believes that he is dead and they think the two let him escape.

cattle barn vampire

They end up staking out a cattle barn (come slaughter-house, it seems) as there has been reports of vampires there. They find themselves surrounded by a veritable horde and start pretending to be vampires to survive. They fake drinking blood but the vampires bring them buckets of the stuff until a doctor dressed as a vampire comes in and they are rounded up – they are all inmates of a local asylum.

a vampire rises behind Fanny

This leads to the two men (who are briefly incarcerated in the asylum) transferred to a new commander, Fanny Ho (Kitty Chan). After an overlong and distasteful joke about them cooking the station’s dog in order that they can make her eat dog meat and lower her luck, just so she can see ghosts too, they are called to the morgue as a woman has been murdered by exsanguination. They suggest that she will rise a vampire and Fanny doesn’t believe them. However, they are proved correct. Now the three have to prove that vampires exist and hunt down Issei.

losing an arm

I mentioned that it gets rather gory and eventually they meet an exorcist. He disposes of two recently turned motorcycle cops and is fighting the woman from the hospital (whose face quickly becomes corrupted, I noted) when Issei appears. He is much more powerful and pulls the exorcists arm off.

Fearless vampire killers

Lore wise we have already mentioned sunlight and the effect that has. There is a moment almost lifted from the Fearless Vampire Killers with Fanny and Macky Kim fumbling with a stake as Chiu is stuck in a window (at first purposefully faking to get out of facing the vampire, but later actually stuck and in peril) – however, it is not sunset but an eclipse that nearly does for them.

Pants on head

We see that the vampires do not cast reflections – a shocked Chief Shun then mentions Sammo Hung and Lam Ching-Ying, wondering if they are around, and the lengths Hong Kong movies will go to, even employing real ghosts. We also get an odd protective charm in the form of wearing underwear on your head – this is clearly more on the comedy side!

pierced by coffin nails

Issei has control over fire it seems. A new killing technique, for powerful vampires such as Issei, is to get seven coffin nails and to pierce the vampire with them – the seventh going through the heart. In the subtitles the words ghost, vampire and ghoul seem interchangeable.

Despite some of the more excessive comedy moments, which seemed to go on for some time, this was actually a fine little movie. The more aggressive gore was a welcome addition to the movie offering a darker edge. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Games of Countess Dolingen of Gratz

Does the name Countess Dolingen ring any bells? It should as the following quote is from Dracula’s Guest:

“I walked around it and read, over the Doric door, in German--


COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
IN STYRIA SOUGHT
AND FOUND DEATH
1801

“On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble--for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone--was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters: "The dead travel fast."”

Marucha Bo as Nena

This, however, is a rather bizarre art-house movie from 1980, directed by Catherine Binet. It threads the story of a married couple, Louise (Carole Kane) and Bertrand (Michael Lonsdale) – his obsession with a burglar who eats his food and seemingly can slip past any locks and the story written by Louise’s friend Nena (Marucha Bo), a schizophrenic.

The Nanny

Nena’s story interjects the film and is the story (possibly intended to be semi-autobiographical) of a young girl and her march to puberty and the importance of father figures in her life. She has a Nanny, at one point, who is obsessed with Dracula and we see the tomb as described in Dracula’s Guest as she reads the passage. The nanny claims that to enter vampire country you must cross a border (the sea-shore, a forest, etc) and she knows of one. That is the vampiric element until Louise refers to this again in the climax of the movie. I say climax but the film meanders in strange and surreal ways, so much so that it hardly feels like a climax. The imdb page is here.

Yanggaw – review

Director: Richard Somes

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

Yanggaw is a Philippines movie that concerns the aswang. What is both remarkable and (in some respects) annoying about this film is how the aswang aspect almost takes a back seat. Yanggaw itself means affliction or infection.

As the film begins we see a healer go to a woman, Amor (Aleera Montalla), who is ill. She plays with her neck and ear and asks where she lives. Her co-worker suggests that she has been staying in Alegra. The healer is shocked, she wonders if Amor knew what sort of place that was and says she must go home – her ailment is serious.

Ronnie Lazaro as Junior

Junior (Ronnie Lazaro), who is Amor’s father, lives with his wife Inday (Tetchie Agbayani), his son Toto (Gio Respall) and Toto's wife Erma (Monet Gaston). There are also two younger children Leon (Leon Gaston) and Abner (Keith Cabañez) – it seemed one was Junior’s youngest son and the baby was Toto and Erma’s child. We see them eat a family meal and go to play volleyball against local headman Dulpo (Joel Torre). Through all this we get the impression that Junior is a very proud man.

Amor and Erma

We also see Junior and Toto chase a man, at night, whom they accuse of being a thief. They beat him and the next day Dulpo arrives with a couple of Barrio guards to ask about the beating – the man may lose his sight. Dulpo worries about reprisals. After he leaves, Amor arrives home and collapses. The family get a healer out who suggests pinning ginger on Amor’s clothes to keep bad winds away and mentions keeping the kids safe as aswang might be abroad. Junior believes in aswang and has a copper knife, as aswang fear such.

down with the sickness

For a while the film follows the life of the family. It seems that Junior believes he was cheated out of an election and left the barrio work. He scratches a living for his family. Amor has strong and weak days but we see her at night and she moves strangely in her bed, her head shaking and jerking. However, for the main the film languidly follows the family and this is were some of the weakness comes in. The character depth is good but the dialogue sometimes meanders without real purpose.

going to Lazarus

Amor seems to be getting worse and Junior wants to borrow money from Dulpo to take her to a hospital – Dulpo is the woman’s Godfather. Unfortunately he has none. Amor is hearing noises at night and has told Erma she is pregnant – she can smell the baby. Inday takes her to Lazarus (Erik Matti), a faith healer, who says to watch her for three days and then bring her back – and not to let anyone else treat her.

after eating the goat

However, that night she absconds from the house. Junior finds her the next morning, a goat ripped apart besides her and her mouth covered in blood. They take her to a nearby barrio, and the hospital, but they only believe she has a stomach infection and prescribe antibiotics. That night she vanishes again and the next day two barrio guards are found dead. Lazarus does see her again but can do nothing for her.

overtones of the exorcist

She is aswang, she was infected through the ear and whilst she is herself during the day she is a ravening beast at night, only caring about feeding her hunger. Actually, very much, she came across as though possessed – moments from the Exorcist were invoked by Aleera Montalla’s performance. At first they keep her chained up, preventing her from slaking her thirst for blood (which is directly mentioned) but eventually Junior cannot stand it. She is still his daughter. He unchains her asking that she promise not to take her own family.

Aswang

Again the aswang is secondary to the impact the condition has on the family unit. We see the pain of a family falling apart due to forces outside their control and the massive emotions said forces command. However, again, this is a strength and a weakness in the film. The general direction is interesting but sometimes the film feels unfocused, lacking a specific route, with the dialogue circling unnaturally rather then being honed. In the main it works, at a very different pace to the horror films we are used to in the West, but perhaps a firmer hand should have been at the tiller.

The film clearly is of a low budget and director Richard Somes has managed to pull a ‘less is more’ approach to the movie. We do genuinely feel for the family and the pain they go through, especially from the mistakes they make. As I say, it just needed a little more focus. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Vampyr: A Soap Opera – review

Directors: Nigel Finch & Robert Chevara

Release date: 1992

Contains spoilers

Whilst this – being an opera – might have a limited appeal (though I am perhaps doing it a disservice there) it does seem a shame that the BBC would not release it on DVD. Indeed it is only available on vhs.

However, for the collector of vampire movies, at the very least, this is a necessary piece that has a pre-Stoker pedigree. You see, the modern vampire craze was far from the first. Back in 1819 when Polidori published the Vampyre it caused quite a reaction, adaptations of it appeared in book form, plays and operas. One of the operatic adaptations was by Heinrich Marschner, entitled Der Vampyr and premiered on 29th March 1828.

Ripley circa 1793

Cut forward to 1992 and the opera was modernised, given an English Libretto by Charles Hart and produced (by Janet Street-Porter) for the BBC. It begins in 1793 with Ripley (Omar Ebrahim) – as Ruthven has been renamed – running from men with dogs. Rotten floorboards give way and he falls unconscious to, what seems suspiciously like, a sewer. He is frozen and the ice entombs him until work is done in the area and the ice melts some 200 years later.

Ripley revived

We have to, of course, ignore the fact that, if it was a sewer, the London sewers were not built until the mid-Nineteenth Century. Further we have to ignore the fact that it is unlikely he would have frozen as depicted, and more than unlikely that the ice would have remained frozen until the late twentieth century – after all (as was pointed out to me) this is a world were people communicate through singing. Though perhaps the ice appeared through infernal interference? We’ll get back to that soon…

We are introduced to the characters at the head of the opera and a handy voice-over (narrated by Robert Stephens) tells us the ins and outs. As well as Ripley, whose natural predator instincts (and shady practices) have seen him rise to the top of the business world, we have Alex (Philip Salmon), a young man caught in the whirlwind of Ripley’s vice and also the secret lover of Miranda Davenant (Fiona O’Neill) a society heiress. Her father, Sir Hugo (Richard Van Allen), however is bankrupt.

high priestess

It appears that Damian Hirst is all the rage amongst Satanists, as a group of high powered individuals gather for a Satanic Rite and his work is on display. The Satanic High-Priestess (Winston) informs Ripley that his revival comes with a cost – he must kill three women in three days. This price for revival caused me to wonder, if Satan was behind his revival was he also behind his icy tomb? Several other things struck me, firstly the three days only works (given the events that follow) if you take strict 24 hour periods from when he was told and secondly that, for a vampire, killing three women shouldn’t be too difficult. However the main thing that struck me was the infernal relationship he has with Satan.

Whilst Ruthven is immoral there is no religious aspect to Polidori’s story. This would seem to add a post-Stoker lilt to proceedings as Ripley also says, much later, that vampires are a separate race blessed with immortality at the cost of imbibing blood and relinquishing their souls. Marschner’s opera had a similar scene though it was a witches’ Sabbath that Ruthven attended and it was a Vampire Master who passes on the stricture of his survival and the three had to be virgins – not a stipulation here.

stylised feeding

The first to die is a fashion model called Ginny (Willemijn van Gent) who has argued with her lover, Berkeley (Roberto Salvatori). Ripley seduces her, giving her a ride home and coming in for coffee. The attack that we see is very stylised – just Ripley’s head and a whole lot of blood – though we see the mutilated corpse the next day after the police arrive. Their arrival has Ripley fleeing through a window and being knocked down by a hit and run driver. He drags himself home.

Alex with the injured Ripley

In the Ginny scene we also discover that Ripley can transform into a wolf – again more post-Stoker than pre (despite the close connection between werewolf and vampire in the early nineteenth century lore). However it is when Alex arrives at Ripley’s flat we see the most Polidori orientated aspect. Ripley has Alex drag him to the window so he can “bathe my wounds in healing moonlight”. The healing aspect of the moon was in Polidori's story but didn't really survive past Varney the Vampire as a genre staple. Having done as he was asked Alex goes to his lover Miranda – who Ripley spies on from afar. Alex is late and so they argue but quickly make-up.

a future son-in-law

Miranda’s father goes to Ripley – whom he believes is the Earl of Marsden, a pseudonym the vampire also used in Polidori’s original. Ripley offers to save the man’s finances if he makes Miranda marry Ripley. In the morning Sir Hugo goes to tell Miranda the news (that she is getting married the next day) and discovers her in bed with Alex – whom he kicks out. At a subsequent engagement party Alex discovers that Marsden and Ripley are one and the same.

Ripley has a stag night with George (Colenton Freeman), his chauffeur, and picks up a woman named Emma (Sally-Anne Shepherdson). He goes to get his own car – having told George to stay and drink (George tried it on with Emma to no avail). Alex confronts him and Ripley admits that he is a vampire and that Alex has a choice – let him kill Miranda or die as well. This is a move away from demanding that Aubrey (the same character of Alex) maintains an oath and fits the modern setting much more. Ripley picks Emma up and subsequently kills her.

Colenton Freeman as George

Alex is leaving the city but decides that he cannot allow Miranda to die and turns around. George went to pick up the car, which Ripley left at a car wash, just as the workers find Emma’s body in the boot. He too rushes to save Miranda and gets to the church first but no-one will listen to him and the police take him away. The wedding party are in the church when Alex arrives.

head of a wolf

Of course this means that Ripley can enter a church (and, incidentally, he has been walking in sunlight all the way through the story) thus it seems a little odd when Alex brandishes a cross – this strikes me as being used simply to meet a genre expectation. We actually see Ripley develop the head of a wolf in this scene and then, presumably because his plans have been frustrated, lightning strikes the church. This causes the cross to fall from where it is suspended and it stakes the vampire (who subsequently vanishes, presumably dragged to Hell). The church doesn’t go unused however; Sir Hugo insists that Alex and Miranda marry.

classic post-Stoker pose

I am no expert in opera – it is not my favourite medium generally. I did find myself watching in rapt facination, having not seen this for many years. The libretto seemed strange in places, the modern English words almost alien when sung in the operatic style. This again may just be my own ignorance when it comes to the medium. However, this was important for the bringing of an early vampire story (no matter that it was modernised) to a modern audience and for bringing that story’s opera form to a mass audience. There is some marvellous imagery used (and some bits that fall flat, Ginny has a row of the ugliest plastic dolls on her bed and a random appearance of synchronised swimmers was odd to say the very least). It deserves a DVD release. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q