Vampire’s Breakfast – review

Director: Chung Wang

Release date: 1987

Contains spoilers

Hong Kong movies can be a strange old melting pot of lore at times. Take Vampire’s Breakfast, or Ling Chen Wan Can as it was known domestically... Set with a backdrop of a reporter Fat Piao (Kent Cheng) investigating a series of strange murders it introduces a Western type set of lore and then spins it around towards the end into something much more unusual.

reflected in window

It begins with a woman leaving a building and heading down a street, at night. She stops to look into a shop window and we see a reflection of a man (Simon Willson) watching her. He is, however, somewhat unusual. Rather than the standard suave Western Count he looks more like a zombie, his skin blued and corrupted. He also has a reflection we note. The girl becomes more and more scared as she walks, convinced she is followed. Until she reaches her car, gets in and is grabbed.

bite wounds on neck

The fact that he knew which was her car indicates that she is no random victim – though this is not elaborated on. A thief, Broker, breaking into cars to steal stereos opens her car and her drained body flops out, bite wounds on the neck. We then see a couple attacked on a building site, he falls and dies she is got by the vampire. Angie Lin (Emily Chu) is driving by and hits the vampire as he leaves. The body then vanishes.

raiding the blood bank

Fat Piao is sent by his editor (Ma Wu) to check out the crime scene at the building site. The police, headed by Inspector Chen (Parkman Wong), are not cooperating with the press and Piao takes it upon himself to climb up the building to get better shots. The police take the film from his camera. He then goes to Angie and (after she traps his hand in the door) gets some information from her – the police told her to forget what she saw. Finally a source tells him that all the victims have died from ‘over-bleeding’. He interviews Broker and then decides, with the thief, to break into the hospital. They find blood on the floor (when Broker slips in it) and this seems to be from the blood bank. Inside the blood bank the vampire is stealing blood. This leads to a chase around the blood bank and the very strong vampire flinging cabinets around.

behind you

Eventually he gets hold of Broker by having hidden in a fridge and grabbing him but Fat Piao manages to get the man away and they head for the door when the police burst in. The vampire ends up cornered outside but is impervious to bullets – which make a car explode. The vampire ignores the flames as he climbs the burning car to escape.

throttled

We see a blossoming relationship between Piao and Angie – though this does stall momentarily when he misses a date because there has been another murder. The next murder causes him and Broker to break into the mortuary which is filled with corpses all sporting wounds to the neck. Piao does try and circumvent ethics by taking a make-up wearing Broker to some pre-war buildings to photograph him as the vampire. As it happens the real vampire is there and throttles Piao.

violent cross reaction

He manages to get away due to a combination of his camera flash – leading to excellent pictures of the fiend – and the fact that there is a cross nearby. The vampire has extreme staurophobia and, indeed, just the sight of the cross makes his flesh part and causes spontaneous bleeding. Piao has a picture of the vampire but the police convinces his fellow reporters that the pictures are of Broker and fake. Paio must clear his name and that means finding the vampire…

some things live without a head

I do want to mention the ending as we get a showdown with the vampire that reveals the unique lore. Paio manages to get a good axe swing in and decapitate the vampire. All seems well but the headless body is soon up and around, throttling Inspector Chen and the head itself flies at Piao and tries to bite him. The adage “nothing lives without a head” does not hold here!

All in all I found this a solid piece of Hong Kong cinema. The vampire reminded me of something that Dan Curtis might have dreamed up a decade earlier, with the blue decaying visage. Kent Cheng is possibly not as personable as some of the better known stars we have seen in Hong Kong Vampire movies but he is still rather good and I think the word solid is probably the best descriptor I could come up with for the film. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Ang Pamana: The Inheritance – review

Director: Romeo Candido

First Released: 2006

Contains spoilers

Whilst we have seen depictions of aswang before, we should note that aswang is also used as an umbrella term for a variety of spirits, witches and vampire like creatures. In the case of this film aswang refers to a manananggal. As the film (which is a joint Philippine/Canadian production and primarily in English) deals with several creatures from Philippine folklore it gives us handy dandy references. I’ll breeze over kapre – a giant that lives n trees – and duwende – imp like creatures who live in small mounds of earth – but quote the manananggal descriptor fully:

“Sometimes referred to as aswang. An elemental creature described as a beautiful woman by day, capable of severing its torso from its legs to fly into the night of the full moon with huge bat wings to prey on pregnant women. The word originates from the malay word tanggal, which means “to remove”.

Caroline Mangosing as Lola Nena

The film itself starts with a woman, Lola Nena (Caroline Mangosing), dying in bed and then moves to snow-boarding. Johnny (Darrel Gamotin) is a young man of Philippines origin whose family moved to Canada. The family consists of him, his sister Ana (Nadine Villasin), dad (Tirso Cruz III) and mom (Jacklyn Jose). Mom is ill, and it seems it might be some kind of mental illness. Lola Nena was the kid’s maternal grandmother and her will must be read with three representatives of the family. Johnny and Ana must go to the Philippines for the funeral and reading of the will.

a hand appears

Before they go we see Johnny pocket some of mom’s pills and he is given a book to return. Once they have arrived in the Philippines and been picked up by an uncle and their cousin Vanessa (Phoemela Baranda), we see a sequence with a very young Johnny and Lola Nena, back in Canada, being taught from the book about aswang. He and his grandmother discuss his invisible friends, which she says she can see, and we see a clawed hand reaching from behind a door. Johnny wakes from his dream of the past and pops one of the pills.

the grandchildren

After the funeral, during the preparations for which Johnny has to sit with body and has what he thinks is a hallucinatory moment, they have the reading of the will. The three family branches are given different properties or land (to the disgruntled disgust of one sister, who feels hard done by). The three grandchildren are given joint ownership of the farm – and also responsibility for looking after Tommy (Nicco Lorenzo Garcia). The farm, it turns out, has a huge amount of land and a mansion.

a kapre

Tommy is a mentally disabled young man, who probably sees more than any of us would. As they stay in the farm, skeletons come popping out of the closet. Vanessa wants to use the property for growing weed. There is a ghostly presence in the house and Johnny becomes drawn deeper and deeper into local folklore. To get two main strands out of the way, Vanessa has three friends, Ronnie (Victor Neri), Paulo (Cholo Barretto) and Nico (Ketchup Eusebio). Nico manages to displease a kapre (Raul Dillo) and is killed – Johnny has to make reparations to the tree giant – and Ronnie becomes possessed by a duwende and has to be exorcised by a witch-woman.

The witch-woman had been in the film earlier. As the grandchildren explored the local market a woman (Lani Tapia) walks past Ana, waving her hand across her belly. Ana stops at an orchid shop and the witch-woman, who runs the shop – tries to foist a bottle of liquid on her. Vanessa later explains that it is an abortion tonic. Yes, Ana is pregnant and the woman was the manananggal.

sensing the ghost

When the witch-woman exorcises Ronnie, Vanessa asks her for a favour. The ghostly presence in the house is the ghost of Lola Nena and Vanessa wants it gone. The witch councils against it but Vanessa is insistent. It is about this time that, through the help of Tommy, Johnny comes to accept that he has the sight and tries to show Lola Nena to Ana. She cannot see but can feel a coldness in the air. It vanishes when the ghost is exorcised and, as well as getting rid of the ghost they have lost their protection.

flashback

A flash back tells us that Lola Nena’s husband (Alan Paule) had an affair with a maid (Angel Aquino) and she became pregnant. A vengeful Lola Nena took the child to the manananggal, later admonishing the girl for not locking her windows, and it seems that a deal was done that kept her own babies safe. Indeed she had told a very young Johnny that as long as they kept the peace then she (the manananggal) would sleep. It seems all bets are off. The flashback itself is pure exposition for the viewer; the characters are unaware of these events.

salting the lower half

Of course Ana is pregnant and becomes the target for the manananggal, who actually creeps up to her, passed out, as soon as Lola Nena’s ghost is banished. She does nothing to her then, as she is in human form. Johnny, having appeased the kapre, is told where the manananggal lives by the giant and goes to salt her – salt being a traditional weapon. He throws the salt at her left behind lower half – this seems to cause her pain in the upper half, but, of course, that half isn’t in her hut.

coming to get you

The upper half is at the farm and it is stalking Vanessa. Its very presence seems to cause the girl bleeding and I assume that it crawls so slowly towards her due to the fact that Johnny has injured the lower half as much as it was meant to build in a tension…

Does it get there…? You’ll have to watch the film which isn’t a bad little movie except… It really does throw the kitchen sink in with kapre, manananggal, duwende, ghosts and witch women. There seems to be a bit too much going on and it makes the film feel crowded. Candido does his best to draw characters up through the family skeletons but a narrower focus would have helped.

picture book

The effects are okay. The manananggal is shown probably the most and that is kept at the level of vague details mostly, the kapre is only really seen through Johnny’s video camera and the duwende are invisible. The film is low on scares, there is some nice atmospherics around the ghost – but it relies on the white shroud, black haired figure trope – there isn’t really enough time to get a real tension built around the manananggal and the kapre kill is over in a flash and all we see is victim reaction. Again a tighter focus on one element might have helped.

Yet this is still a fair watch and the soundtrack carries some nice mellow numbers by Candido himself. All told 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Gabriel – review (TV series)

Director: Augustin

First aired: 2008

Contains spoilers

Whilst the format doesn’t seem to follow the standard (Gabriel being an 11 episode, each 45 minute in length) this show subtitled “Amor Inmortal” would seem to be, at heart, a hybrid of the telenovela format. It is a tragic romance created by SBS (the Spanish Broadcasting System).

Chayanne is Gabriel

We begin in a church, and the series does have a strong religious/Catholic theme. The priest, Father Miguel (Juan David Ferrer) knows that something or someone is there. We see a shadow flitting with speed past the terrified priest. There is someone in the confessional, Gabriel (Chayanne), who asks for Miguel to hear his confession – it has been three centuries since his last one (and a century since he last killed). Father Miguel bursts out of the confessional but stops to listen when the vampire asks the priest to save him.

Pizarro is cursed

We see a scene from the South American jungles. A Conquistador, Pizarro (José Luis Rodríguez 'El Puma'), weaves a bloody wake through the jungle killing any native who gets in his path. A woman stands near, holding an Incan relic. She curses Pizarro as he kills her… Eva (Angélica Celaya) wakes up – it was a dream. She works in the ER room of a hospital as a nurse where she is actively pursued (romantically) by Dr Padron (Julián Gil), much to the chagrin of Vanessa (Mirta Renee), slutty nurse and comedy character.

Angélica Celaya as Eva

Gabriel is talking to Miguel in the church who is somewhat confused that Gabriel can enter holy ground. So is Gabriel to be honest, though he has been able to for around a century. Suddenly he feels a stab of pain psychically connected to an old man, Roberto (Marcos Miranda), who has suffered a heart attack and is rushed into the ER. Roberto, as he comes round, sees Eva and tells her that she is Vivianna. When Gabriel gets there he puts his hand on the old man’s chest and revives him (a vampire that can lay-on-hands it appears). The man berates him for not allowing nature to take its course and says that the nurse is Vivianna.

is it a doomed romance?

The early episodes then follow the stuttering initial romance of Eva and Gabriel. He recognises her as his dead wife Vivianna – killed along with his unborn son by the vampire Pizarro before he turned Gabriel; the turning a vengeance, it would seem, because Gabriel killed one of his vampires during the attack. For her part she feels like she knows him and thus this is a reincarnated love story but it goes a little deeper than that.

a victim is left in plain sight

Meanwhile a neurotic priest, Father Sandro (Álvaro Ruiz) has noted the nocturnal comings and goings in the church, as well as the fact that Miguel is taking an interest in vampires. He contacts the Vatican who send a vampire hunter over (a character called Santori (Sebastian Ligarde) who becomes a rogue vampire hunter eventually, cast aside by the church due to his extreme measures). Other than that Sandro, like Vanessa, seems to be a comedy character but the light relief does not suit the atmosphere. Better handled was the ghost of Eva’s grandmother who watches over her through the episodes.

Freddy Viquez as Bruno

Also involved in the early episodes is a character named Bruno (Freddy Viquez). Pale of skin and horribly scarred, he is built as perhaps being a vampire at first but actually he is a cop forced into medical retirement after he developed xeroderma pigmentosa. This is actually quite neatly handled. He is dying of skin cancer and is trapped in the night and has tracked down Gabriel (someone seems to be sending him clues to his identity, though that thread is lost and was perhaps me reading a little too much in). Now he wants to be turned and is prepared to go to extreme lengths to ‘convince’ Gabriel to make him a vampire.

Camila Burns as Vampirita

Less well handled was the idea added later that the vampire ‘virus’ was something akin to both porphyria and rabies… that didn’t need adding in but was only a small mention, it also didn't quite fit with the description of feeling a vampire's venom during the turning process. The show offers some dark backgrounds. Gabriel meets a vampire chick named Vampirita (Camila Burns) whom he tries to set on the straight and narrow (and tries to convince her to feed via transfusion as he does). We discover that her mother sold her to Pizarro who then abused her until he stripped her humanity away and turned her.

death by stake

She is killed by one of Santori’s men by the good old stake through the heart method, showing us a kill in that manner. The fact that Gabriel, angered by this, kills the killer does not suddenly preclude him from entering churches and yet all other vampires are precluded and holy objects burn them. Is the murder of the vampire hunter not considered sin enough? But, we’ll get back to the religious side in a minute.

wings revealed

I suggested that Pizarro was cursed by a native woman and this is where the reincarnation bit gets interesting. She was reincarnated as Vivianna and Pizarro tracked her down – so she actually caused Gabriel to be cursed. Pizarro gets a kick out of killing her again and again but he also wants to destroy her entire bloodline (who have generally been in hiding since) as by doing so he will be able to walk in the sun; Eva is the last. So sunlight is an issue and vampires can also develop big bat wings.

exorcism

I mentioned the heavy religious play and there is much about redemption and faith. Santori believes he is doing God’s work but oversteps the mark by murdering Bruno. Miguel asks for a sign that helping Gabriel is the right thing to do and the statue of Christ bleeds. Gabriel is chosen by God – and Eva has a vision in which Gabriel has the feathered wings of an angel and battles demons. There is a suggestion that if someone is bitten (rather than being bitten and drinking the vampire's blood) then the 'demon' can be exorcised out of them.

Eva gone all Joan of Arc

This rule seems a little unfair (and the one attempt we see fails as the victim wants to turn) as we wonder about those forced to drink the attacking vampire's blood? Why shouldn't they be able to be saved through divine intervention? We see an entire crisis of faith bright about due to this scenario and, during this sequence, see that a cross will burn the flesh of someone becoming a vampire. Eva herself goes all Sarah Connor, cutting her hair and adopting combat pants and vest! However, when she later tools up with slaying gear and puts neck armour on, she seems less Sarah Connor and more Joan of Arc.

a flashback moment

The acting from the principles is melodramatic but that is what the show calls for. It is a heaving mix of romance and religion with a bit of voodoo (we get a good voodoo priestess involved at one point) and a bit of ghost haunting in the form of grandma. I could have lived without the more overt comedy moments, as fleeting as they were, but they weren’t offensive just out of place. More could have been done with Vampirita but that’s just me focusing on the fact that Camila Burns is rather attractive.

a vision of a vampiric feast

The effects were, in the main, okay but some of the CGI work was a bit too computer generated. Sometimes the wings worked and at others they looked awful. It appeared that Pedron was the only doctor working in ER and his storyline was a bit of a damp squib. Then again it would be, Gabriel and Eva were the show's main focus.

Gabriel and his transfusion machine

The actual physical aspect of the romance was rather tame, especially since True Blood, and the addition of Latin crooner songs over said scenes was more than a little heave-worthy, but I guess to be expected especially as the show boasted not one but two ‘Latin recording superstars’. The whole thing did roll up neatly at the end, with a couple of (probably purposefully) minor loose ends that could be developed and opened into a second season if they wanted to.

I rather liked this, something a bit different, romance with a little brutality and a whole heap of tragedy. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Chronicle – The King is Undead – review (TV episode)

Directed by: Krishna Rao

First Aired: 2002

Contains spoilers

I had not really heard of The Chronicle – a series about tabloid reporters whose stories turn out to be rather real and thus owing a debt to Kolchak - and was given this taped episode to watch.

I was struck by the odd, almost surrealist, timbre of the episode and so it came as little surprise to discover it was written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the brains behind the Middleman. Let us start at the beginning…

Jon Polito as Donald

Reporter Grace (Rena Sofer) is less than impressed with editor Donald (Jon Polito) as fellow reporters Tucker (Chad Willet) and Wes (Reno Wilson) are being sent on a major undercover assignment whilst she is sent to check out a vampire story. Donald points out that she has experience – but she counters with the fact that she didn’t know *he* was a vampire until the second to last date; the argument is to no avail. Wes and Tucker have to change into especially chosen outfits and Tucker goes over the mission brief. They are looking for someone spotted sporadically over the last 25 years, he appears before his worshippers and imitators at the final ceremony of any given event between 23:00 and midnight. They are dressed as Elvis.

three years old Tucker

They get to the hotel where the Elvis imitator competition is on. Tucker is a fan of Elvis but Wes is not so impressed – though he actually met him, at three years old when his parents took him to see Elvis and dressed him in an Elvis costume. He got Elvis’ scarf. A call to ‘Pig Boy’ (Curtis Armstong) reveals that one fan has booked into a room under one of the aliases that Elvis used to use and the room number is 1835 – Elvis’ birth date.

Meanwhile Grace goes to see the bum who spotted the vampire. She persuades him to take her to the sewers where, the bum says, the vampire lives because of the rats – he uses them as a food source. Tucker and Wes go to the room and see the fan leave, headed away from the ceremony with a steel suitcase. They follow as he heads over the ballroom but he hears them and fires a crossbow at them.

Cushing a cross together 

Having escaped the fan they get a call from Grace. She has found a room with a dead looking Elvis impersonator. She approaches him and he awakens, revealing his fangs. She manages to Cushing a cross together out of a couple of candles and he flees. Wes and Tucker have broken into room 1835 and found some schematics that they fax to Pig Boy. They are for adding chemicals to the sprinkler system. Grace is heading to the hotel and they find one of the devices. Tucker breaks the cylinder but it contains water – the water drips down a grate, alerting the master of ceremonies in the ballroom… you see it is holy water and he is the vampire leader.

chief vampire

The impersonator they have seen is called Jesse Garon (Joe Sagal) and he is a vampire hunter. Incidentally Jesse Garon was the name of Elvis’ twin brother who was stillborn. He set up the sprinklers to release holy water, but the vampires are dismantling the system. Half the attendees are vampires and they intend to feast upon the mortal Elvis fans. It is now up to Jesse and the reporters to stop the slaughter by, shall we say, more hands on means.

burnt by a cross

The vampires have two types of fangs. Some have the traditional side fangs and others have more Nosferatu-like front fangs. There seems no real rhyme or reason to this. Other than that they really do seem your standard vampire. They burn in sunlight, they are burnt by the cross, concentrated garlic essence reduces them to ash and stakes are effective.

shiny suit

A nice touch was using a UV lamp and then shinning it of a sparkly Elvis’ suit that caused shafts of light to fire all over. The vampires like impersonating Elvis because they work at night and get to wear sunglasses without comment. There is a nest of vampires in Los Vegas (we hear) and Jesse learnt kung fu in the Far East. He is a hunter – when the word Slayer is banded around he says that “teenage girls and sci-fi geeks say Slayer”.

dead vampires

The acting worked rather well, Sagal (who also played Elvis’ in Wes’ flashback) has played Elvis several times in various productions and looks to be having a whale of a time, whilst the surrealism of taking vampires out of their comfortable Gothic home and placing them with the King of Rock N Roll, bell bottom jump suits and all, just worked on so many levels.

A strange and bizarre episode but it works as a stand alone and is great fun. 6.5 out of 10.

The episode’s imdb page is here.

;)Q

Pastel de Sangre – review

Directed by: José María Vallés & Francesc Bellmunt*

Release date: 1971

Contains spoilers

*Four directors listed, the directors of the two vampire segments are listed here

Pastel de Sangre (which sounds much better than Blood Pie, the English title) was an anthology film with four segments. The segments Victor Frankenstein and La Danza don’t really concern us here.

The first segment, Tarota or Tarot directed by José María Vallés, was the first vampire section and whilst dreamlike it had a certain something – despite spinning of into surreal realms. It starts with a man running through woodlands. He gets to a river and finds a shallowly buried body but, by then, a group of robed figures get the man and burn him. We are in the year 1000 and the tale seems to be a tarot reading.

the knight and the woman

A knight travelling the lands reaches an abandoned church. Within it is a woman laid out and apparently dead. We hear a cry of a baby, though we don’t see its source. The knight leaves the church and goes to a river to wash and then catches a goose. He then returns to the church where he sees what appears to be a young boy.

masks

He chases after the boy and the boy’s face reveals himself to be older than he seems. The land is decimated by plague but the ‘boy’ comes to the church to keep bees. He and the knight travel together. The ‘boy’ gives his name as Jeremidas and when the knight admits he has forgotten his name Jeremidas names him Isaac, The knight tells of a dream of a man burnt by a mob and that the woman calls him. He sleeps and when he awakens Jeremidas wears a (rather contemporary looking) mask and puts one on his face – he hits Jeremidas and leaves.

slicing chest

He goes back to the church and tells the woman that he knows she’ll wake soon. We hear baby noises again. Once he has gone her toes, with sharp long nails, stretch and we see that there is a baby in the church. The Knight reaches a beach and, shirtless, walks to the woman, who is now there. They embrace and we see she has fangs. Her long fingernails slice his chest… Fin… okay, it is bizarre but has a certain dreamy quality.

profile with fangs

The other vampire tale, Terror entre Cristianos or Terror Amongst the Christians, directed by Francesc Bellmunt, is just as bizarre but not as satisfying. It is set in the time of Nero and a senator, Candido, has converted to Christianity. He is on the run, accompanied by Marco – a former gladiator, it seems, who certainly must have fought in the fat-weight category! They head into purportedly haunted woods where Romans had long since slaughtered Celts. There is a Christian community beyond the woods.

fanged woman

Despite its reputation they sleep in the woods and Marco wanders off! He sees a man hanging and cuts the body down, giving the man a burial. Suddenly he sees a woman who approaches him – her fangs clear to see. There is something here about him setting on fire but, honestly, the video quality was too poor to tell exactly what happened.

blood at mouth

The buried man rises from the grave and approaches Candido. Children stand around and laugh as he approaches the sleeping senator and bites his neck. In the morning Candido awakens and keeps putting his hand over his mouth – so we know what has happened. A roman soldier rides into the woods but the horse throws him when Candido approaches and the senator feeds from his neck. Come the night he seems to implore the hanged vampire for help and is attacked… fin.

Again weird, bizarre but not as lyrical as the first segment.

All in all these are not likely to set most viewers worlds alight (and the Frankenstein segment is even more pointless). More a poetic exploration than narrative story, 2.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

Red Scream Nosferatu – review

Director: David R Williams

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

I read that “Red Scream Nosferatu is an edgy, blood-drenched revisioning of the classic original vampire film.” This makes director/writer David R Williams very brave or very foolish – especially on a budget. After all Nosferatu is a classic piece of expressionist cinema.

Of course, it was based on Dracula but changed much in order to try and dodge a copyright bullet that found its mark anyway. Why then would someone add elements of Dracula, otherwise expunged, back into the film? One wonders, as the film is watched, how much of the original film was truly understood…

Jonathon and Mina

The film begins with a man, later revealed as Professor Von Helsing (Michael O’Hear), suggesting that the images are placed in order – using a form of words that almost lifts Stoker’s own introduction to the novel, bar the fact he mentions documents rather than images. One has to wonder at this. In the novel much play is made of placing the various companions’ papers in order but these are images… what filming or photography took place in the bedchamber of Jonathon (Richard Lovejoy) and Mina (Hillary Leising)? It made me think that little thought was going into this.



Renfield and Harker

Jonathon heads to work and a hobo speaks German to him – eventually translating to The Dead Travel Fast… Jonathon decides to walk to work, his bus is late. So what era are we in… a bus suggests contemporary, but his long coat and pocket watch (that appeared to have lost its hands) suggest earlier. In a moment of charity let us assume it is an alternate world. Jonathon works for Renfield (Robert Bozek) and I have to say I wasn’t impressed with the performance when it came to Renfield. Anyway, Renfield sends him to Transylvania to deal with Count Orlock (Alex P).



Lucy and Mina

Mina isn’t happy, possibly because all the colour has drained, what with her superimposed on a scene from the original film. I have to ask why… and this lifting from the original gets worse but we’ll come to that. Jonathon is leaving her in the capable hands of their friends Lucy Westenras (Tara Alexis) and Dr Seward Westenras (Aaron Krygier). The name changes annoy me. Okay, names are interchangeable in versions of Dracula but why give them the original surname of Lucy and then misspell it, and why give Jack his own surname as a forename? Picky, perhaps, but it is a pointless noodling.



A dream within a dream...

Jonathon has a dream of a tomb and evil and so, when he spots a tomb, he goes looking in it… as you do. To be fair I was impressed that, perhaps, Dracula’s Guest had been slotted in. Not quite. The occupant of the tomb was Carmilla – a legend suggests that she was "of Gratz in Styria" and "Sought and found death in 1801". The rest of the legend is from Dracula’s Guest but the name is, clearly, not Countess Dolingen (the name offered in Stoker's short/chapter) but the eponymous name from Carmilla, which was set in Styria itself. Was it trying to connect the two works or just using a more well known name? We don't know but, nevetheless, a vampiress attacks until (elsewhere) Orlock opens his eyes and she rips her own throat out. Jonathon runs and arrives at the castle.



30 seconds of research finds a map

Ok, research time… We have already established, from Renfield's dialogue, that Orlock is in Transylvania. The tomb is either in Gratz, Styria part of Austria and some distance from Transylvania (as per a merging of Dracula’s Guest for the reference to Gratz and Carmilla for the physical location) or the tomb is 400 km west near Munich (as per Dracula’s Guest). Okay I know I am being picky but… Well I even decided to get a map; locations shown are Munich, via Gratz to the Borgo Pass… Boy Harker can run fast!



Orlock is some young Gothic dude

After Orlock appears, and he is some Gothic looking young dude with tribal tattoos running down onto his hands, I am beginning to feel really irked. Where is the rat faced Orlock of Nosferatu? Clearly the iconic imagery of the original depends heavily on the marvellous, and horrific, look that was created via Max Shreck. We get moments that fail to gel, such as when Jonathon looks for a library, claiming that he was in need of reading material, yet his initial meeting with Orlock was in a room full of books (and, incidentally, the library scene is clearly shot inside a church - all stain glass and organ pipes with no bookshelves)…  but then we get the film's saving grace… sort of.



what big fangs you have...

The brides, played by Heather Daley, Hollis Witherspoon and Cara Francis… Okay, the strange juxtaposition of old-fashioned and contemporary continues as they all wear latex dresses; red, black and white. Okay, I’m thinking the one in red is a terrible actress (or really struggles with the huge fangs she wears). Then Orlock goes, leaving Harker to his fate, and there is a moment of genius. The brides decide to (physically) heal Jonathon before (mentally) breaking him, turning him and making him the new master (though one has to question the misogynistic logic that would make them want a new master… but lets leave that a moment).



bitten lip

We get stabbing, biting and crucifixion of Jonathon and it all adds an interesting new slant to the entire thing. They tempt him with the idea that, when Orlock bores of Mina, he’ll still be young and able to claim her back. More than that. The one in white is younger than the others and feels that she is hated. She gets berries that can drug the vampires and feeds it to a village boy, who she then gives to the other two. They are slumbering and she deals with Jonathon to kill them and make her his first and favourite.



head removal

He places a crucifix on them to bind them, then seals them (with holy water, perhaps, though that wasn’t explained). He then stakes them and cuts off their heads. Following this he turns on the third bride and kills her before setting out for Mina. Later Von Helsing suggests that sunlight is the only sure way to kill a vampire but that seems odd (especially with the idea that Orlock steals the light from Mina’s veins and replaces it with darkness).



Orlock of the rubber mask

I mentioned another lift from the original film stock and the entire voyage of Orlock (on the Dementer rather than the Demeter) is lifted – giving us the oddity that we have seen the young Goth Orlock and now he is Max Shreck! Later, in the final confrontation, he further becomes rubber mask, bat eared Orlock and they would have been better keeping him as young Gothic Orlock. The ending is bloodier than the original (as, to be honest, the film is considerably bloodier all the way through) and the coda perhaps owes more to the end of the 1979 remake.

So, brave or foolish? Probably the latter through much of the film. Noodling where it didn’t need noodling and struggling due to lack of budget and locations. However the gore was well done and the twist to the bride segment was magnificent. Not magnificent enough to increase the score too much, however. Cruel as I am in my conclusions; this touched, perhaps even violated, a classic piece of cinema and most of the touches were the fumbling of a clumsy virgin, only in the one mentioned section did the virgin become Casanova. My advice, take the bride section and make something new and original with it. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.