Demonsoul – review

Director: Elisar Cabrera

Release date: 1995

Contains spoilers

Demonsoul was a micro-budget British film and, well let’s just say in the first instance that it wasn’t great and yet there was something in it that kept me watching – and not just the pathological need to watch everything with a vampire in it!

blood sacrifice

It began with a satanic type ritual, a couple of monks (it turns out later that they’re undead) chanting as a man is led to an altar by a woman, Selena (Eileen Daly, Razor Blade Smile, Wichcraft X: Mistress of the Craft and Sentinels of Darkness). He lies upon it as she straddles him and begins to cut him with a dagger – a blood sacrifice. She turns and looks directly to camera and then we see a woman, Erica Steele (Kerry Norton), bolt wide awake.

in therapy

The next day we see her at her psychiatrist’s (Suzanne Ballantyne) and she tells her that she has had another nightmare and it involved the woman again. She does not know who the woman is but it seemed that she looked to her for approval. Erica asks the psychiatrist about hypnotherapy but she is dismissive, putting it in the same boat as astrology. Back at work and Erica's friend Rosemary (Janine Ulfane) suggests hypnotherapy but she is content to listen to her shrink – despite having nightmare’s every other night.

Eileen Daly as Selena

She heads to a comic book store, her boyfriend Alex (Drew Rhys-Williams) is in the rooms above it. He is kissing Erica’s neck when she spots Selena out on the street. She runs out of the shop but the woman has vanished. Erica then looks back to Alex and sees him in the window in Selena's arms. She runs back to the flat to find Alex and Selena having sex. She awakens from the nightmare and realises that she had fallen asleep, and thus into the dream, whilst Alex held her. She decides to try the hypnotherapist Rosemary spotted in the newspaper.

creepy hypnotherapist

When she gets there she meets a woman (Sue Scadding, also Witchcraft X) who starts talking about past lives and suggests she was a famous actress before (Marilyn Monroe, in fact). The hypnotherapist, Bucher (Daniel Jordan), comes in just before Erica bolts. He is actually a past-life regressionist. He is also a creepy dude who leans in just a little too close, as he puts her under, then suggests that she won’t feel his touch or remember anything as he goes on to molest Erica. In her mind she meets with Selena, who fondles her and calls her mistress.

fangs on show

Okay, long story short, Erica has the soul of a Countess Durna within her. Durna was a vampire and Selena her servant. Erica met Selena as a child (we get flashes to that moment a few times). Durna is trying to take possession of Erica’s body, can cause the woman to sprout fangs every time she is in control, and each drink of blood brings her closer to permanently possessing the body. Bucher realises what he is dealing with and wants to partake of her power. Of course Rosemary and Alex are dragged into it as well.

random vampire girl

There really isn’t too much lore. A bite can turn and, at the end of the film, there are a large number of vampires hanging around the disused church (it would seem to be). Durna's spirit is taking control of Erica's body but it was hard to tell whether the vampire was implanted as an additional spirit within her body (possibly when Selena met her as a child) or whether Erica and Durna were actually one and the same. The twist at the end makes any guesswork on this pointless.

beneath the fanged archway

The acting was generally poor – Kerry Norton made a fair fist of Erica and Eileen Daly is fun to watch – however the rest were pretty darn wooden. There was a fair bit of in-shot microphone work, poor framing and the camcorder quality print leaves a lot to be desired. However, from the director of Witchcraft X we should expect no less.

Yet, despite this, I found myself drawn to the film, whilst all along knowing it was pants. There is a little something – perhaps in the rarely trodden path of vampiric possession. Much better than Witchcraft X – but that isn’t difficult – somehow compelling and yet, ultimately, not a good film. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vampire Boy – review

Writer: Carlos Trillo

Artist: Eduardo Risso

Translator: Zeljko Medic

First published: 2010 (as a complete volume)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: What does it mean to live forever?

Five thousand years ago, a mysterious plague seared its way through Egypt, its only survivors a pair of deadly enemies: the pharaoh’s young son and the high priestess of a sinister snake cult. Bound by a common curse, the two have pursued each other across centuries and countries. Now, one of them is determined to end their fight for good—by any means necessary.

Brutal, Passionate, and above all achingly human, Carlos Trillo and Eduardo Risso’s odyssey is the antidote to tired vampire tropes: a wholly fresh and original reimagining of the mythos from two of the strongest voices in comics.

The Review: At its heart Vampire Boy has a very simple story that is summed up in the blurb. We have two vampires; a nameless boy whose father refused to name him until he became a man and now, stuck forever at ten years old, becoming a man will not happen. Then there is Ahmasi, a snake priestess and whore who contrasts against the sexless boy by being overtly sexual and using sex as a weapon.

Both survived a plague by becoming vampires – though neither knew the how or why of it – and Ahmasi has tried to kill the boy down through the centuries, bearing a grudge they both held for each other as mortals – the boy showed his father that she was liberal with her favours, rather than monogamous with the Pharaoh as his concubine should be.

reforming in sunlight

However, the lore in this is startlingly different. As the comic begins men are digging into an old sewer area that has been unopened for 50 years. Deep inside are the bones of the boy but, as the sun touches them, they reform – though it feels like liquid fire. This is the major lore difference; the sun heals (painfully) rather than destroys. The plague, in Egypt, was described as being like light inside and it was the sun that purged it from the two survivors.

This puts a totally different slant on the story. Wounds do not heal themselves but the sun will heal them in the morning – though there is a sequence where a headless vampiric body finds its own head and the reattachment never heals properly – looking eternally messy. The vampires have inordinate hunger, which blood or food can slake, though the boy must eat considerably more food than a mortal to even remotely dent his hunger. They are also incredibly strong.

To kill a vampire… well, as that is a main plot line I won’t spoil it.

What was nice was, whilst the dynamics were different due to the unusual lore and the story itself was simple enough, it kept you reading through its rather epic length (almost 500 pages). The loneliness felt by the boy and the purely evil machinations of Ahmasi kept the reader hooked. The art was a stark black and white that worked well, and the book never shied away from violence or sexuality – indeed a caveat here that the book does have quite a strong sexual undercurrent at times.

7.5 out of 10

The Aswang Phenomenon – review

Director: Jordan Clark

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Aswangs are, to me at least, absolutely fascinating. Like Jordan Clark I first came across them in the US movie Aswang, discovering a Philippine sourced vampire with a long extending tongue that fed on unborn babies.

The film had aspects right, but the breadth and variety of the folklore is much wider. Often female the aswang has many and varied varieties. There are aswang that turn into dogs or pigs, aswang like the manananggal that are beautiful women who segment their bodies at the waist and hunt the night on large wings.

manananggal

In films such as Vampire of Quezon City the aswang is a serial killer – it is unlikely that he is a supernatural being. Aswang have even begun to have romantic movies made about them such as An Darling Kong Aswang. The truth is, for the Westener looking in, the Aswang myth(s) can be confusing, whereas for the people of the Philippines the creature(s) can seem all too real.

folklore trail

Clark’s documentary cuts through some of the confusion around the myth and explains how the variety of aswang was documented by professor Maximo D Ramos in his book Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology (an out of print volume that has gone straight onto my wishlist), listing werewolf (or weredog) types, vampire types, witch types, ghoul types and viscera eating types all found within traditional folklore. Clark delves into the source of the name aswang and comes across a promethean myth where Aswang is a dark god who steals fire and suffers the consequences. I always find it interesting in these myth forms that the thief – be it Prometheus, Lucifer or Aswang, is portrayed as evil for bringing the spark of fire (or life or soul or knowledge) to the people as opposed to the 'good' God form who wanted to deny mankind said knowledge etc.

films start to inform myth

Clark explores a world where, over the centuries, superstitions have been exploited by the rulers in order that civil control might be maintained. Where disease has been misunderstood and the stigma of certain conditions caused supernatural labels to be attached to the sufferers. I also felt that, through the film, he sought truth and yet managed to maintain his respect of the people and their beliefs. What I found fascinating is the idea that with the Aswang and the way it has filled the consciousness of the people we can see a parallel, perhaps, with the way the western vampire was used as a scapegoat, had its regional varieties and, eventually, became shaped by artists – something that is happening with the Aswang myth.

For both folklorists and vampire fans this is an essential documentary. Now all we need is for the wealth of Philippine aswang films to start getting Western releases, as too few can be found with English subtitles. 9 out of 10.

The imdb page is here and the documentary’s homepage is here.

Bonus bit:



Janice Santos Valdez as Maria

Also on the DVD is the documovie Aswang: A Journey into Myth. This was filmed by Clark a year before and follows a young writer, Maria Villanueva (Janice Santos Valdez), as she researches a new book on hauntings in Victoria, Canada.

searching for the unnamed girl

She discovers the tale of a Filipino girl, brought as human traffic to Canada, where she was forced into prostitution. The spirit of the girl seems to haunt Maria until she passes the power she holds on to her and Maria has to travel to the Philippines and discover her roots. At the beginning of the film is a quote from Douglas H Everett that says, “There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” This is the essence of Maria’s journey.

visitation

However, as she journeys she discovers much about the aswang myths, and this is our documentary aspect. With some genuine chills in the film this is a great companion piece to the documentary. The imdb page is here.

Finally the DVD also contains the first three issues of the aswang centred “Diliman” comics – which can also be found here on artist Tobie Abad’s page.

Assignment Terror – review

Directed by: Tulio Demicheli*

Release date: 1970

Contains spoilers

Assignment Terror, or Dracula vs Frankenstein as it was erroneously titled in the US, was a monster mash type of affair. You’ll see I have asterisked the director. Whilst Tulio Demicheli was listed as director, IMDb suggest to us that Hugo Fregonese and Eberhard Meuchsner also had uncredited hands in the direction. Too many cooks spoiling the broth? It couldn’t help when it came to making this pretty darn awful movie.

In an opening that owes its very existence, one feels, to Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space, we get a message sent to alien agent Dr Odo Warnoff (Michael Rennie). He is told that two dead scientists, Maleva Kerstein (Karin Dor, Blood Demon) and Dr Kirian (Ángel del Pozo) have been revived via possession by alien agents. Their world is dying and they must prepare the way for colonisation of earth.

staked vampire

How do they intend to do this? By playing on our superstitions. Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this meant creating false monsters… Oh no, they are really real monsters… At which point don’t they cease to be products of superstition? Oh well... At a fair there is a gypsy fortune teller who has the bones (with stake) of a vampire (Manuel de Blas) – not Dracula, despite the credits but I didn’t catch the name they gave him. They have Kerstein sleep with the gypsy, un-stake the vampire and kill the gypsy with it and then kidnap the gypsy’s assistant. The removal of the stake causes the vampire to reform.

brainwashing

They will brainwash the assistant to make her part of an army of beautiful agents – praying on the lusts of mankind. You see the agents believe themselves superior to humanity as they have no emotions. They are, however, inhabiting human bodies so that begins to go horribly wrong. They also insist on unearthing other monsters including a mummy called Pha-ho-tep (Genes Reyes) and the Farancksalan Monster (Ferdinando Murolo) – yes, the Frankenstein Monster by any other name, who they make nuclear powered!

hirsute fellow

They also dig up the preserved corpse of Waldermer Daninsky (Paul Naschy, who wrote the damn thing). They remove the silver bullet from his heart – a thing that only paralysed him because it wasn’t fired by a woman who would die for him. They then give him a serum to prevent him becoming a Wolfman (making you wonder why they bothered) but he turns anyway and escapes – becoming an enemy of the aliens.

fangs a lot

His first near victim is Ilse (Patty Shepard, Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires) who gets away and becomes involved with inspector Tobermann (Craig Hill), who is investigating various murders. Ilse nearly ends up as vampire chow but Tobermann stakes him.

Other than that it is a mismatch of poor-dubbing and ludicrous storyline. Yes the monsters fight and yes humanity wins – mainly due to the Wolfman. However it really isn’t worth the effort of sitting through it. 2 out of 10 is more than it deserves and is for the sheer cheek.

The imdb page is here.

Vampires on Bikini Beach – review

Director: Mark Headley

Release date: 1988

Contains spoilers

With a title such as “Vampires on Bikini Beach” what do you expect? I offer for comparison the title Malibu Beach Vampires and note that I gave that poor excuse for a film 0 out of 10.

Well... This one wasn’t as bad… just.

coffin on car

It starts with a beach at night and a radio show. The Venice Beach area has suffered from murders and the locals are crying vampire. As we watch a car drive with a coffin on its roof the newscaster suggests that there are no such things as vampires. Then we see a silhouetted figure carrying the coffin, on its back, over a footbridge – for an inordinately long amount of time. Eventually there is a house and the coffin is taken inside… trouble is, the whole sequence really has nothing to do with the rest of the film! We see four girls at night, one walks off on her own, down an alley! She immediately looks around nervously and is then grabbed by a cloaked figure… the filmmakers singularly fail to impart any sense of peril into the scene.

Bob and Kim on Bikini Beach

We see a woman, outside a hospital room, she is called Judy (Jennifer Badham) and she doesn’t know how it ended up as it did – they only went cruising that day. Actually the day she refers to is a day on which not a lot happens, but it is where the story starts and Judy is our voice-over at ‘key’ points of the film. So there was Judy and her friends Clarke (Amanda Hughes) and Wynette (Jennifer Jostyn) they were cruising with their friend Kim (Nancy Rogers). They get to the beach and Kim goes off with surfer dude Bob (Stephen Mathews), the other girls taking Kim’s car. Then they meet ‘weird’ Harold (Todd Kaufman) and Judy goes off with him. Later, however, they all meet on the beach. Harold mentions the recent murders, which Kim thinks is creepy, and the girls agree to see Bob and Harold in their band.

AOR

God I wish they hadn’t, you see the band that Bob (on keyboards) and Harold (on drums) are in play the most asinine 80s AOR and we have to hear track after track through the film (or it felt like that). There are at least two full tracks – film fillers, of which there are plenty of other examples – and the sound of the crowd clapping is clearly dubbed on later and is so thin and reedy that it might actually be the sound of one hand clapping. Anyway, after the gig Kim goes back to Bob’s (rather expensive looking) apartment and discovers that he is also a professional photographer! Next we get the no titillation, soft-focused, AOR-accompanied sex.

seventh son of a seventh son

During the previous scenes we did cut to head vampire Falto (Mariusz Olbrychowski) who is brought a young woman for a snack. He reveals that he wants to die. He became a vampire because he was the seventh son of a seventh son and yet he longs to find the one who will love him enough to drive a stake through his heart. It won’t be this woman, however, and so, in the meantime, he is content for his second in command, Demos (William Hoo), to continue his plans for world domination!

Dr Gower killed

So long story (or at least it felt that way as this film drags and drags) short, a couple of robed figures barge past Bob and Kim in an alley, dropping a book as they go. The book is full of arcane symbols and becomes red hot at times. They are directed to Dr Gower (Jacques Dury), a priest who offers to translate the book. He is killed for his trouble and the book stolen. Kim and Bob don’t call the police but, rather, find a set of notes Gower made and decide to crack the case themselves.

Judy and Harold on date

It turns out that Harold is a computer whizz and they eventually discover that the book was a vampire book of the dead and contains rituals that will bring all the most evil dead back from Hell to take over the world. We have silly scenes such as Bob getting captured, Kim ‘rescuing’ him, but no filmed sequence of the pursuit of the vampires that they evade. Having totally skipped an action sequence, we get a date sequence of Judy and Harold and a scene with the 4 girls trying on bikinis and being ogled through a shop window. The kids get caught, escape and caught again, it’s all silly.

Demos of the rubber face

The ending must be spoilt because 1) it contains the most bizarre twist of lore and 2) the film is so bad that I doubt it can really be called a spoiler. Harold manages to translate a passage from the book and chant it, this summons a robed vampire called Gnordron (Robert Ankers), who turns out to be a good vampire – or at least wanting to stop Falro and Demos. He goes back to the vampire lair with the kids and defeats them with the cross of death (a glowing cross). So, we have a vampire using a cross as their weapon of choice.

conventional vampire hunting

The acting was poor and, worse, some scenes were clearly dubbed. A scene of Bob and Kim walking down the beach either had no dialogue recorded or it must have been really bad. The actual conversation was asinine (second time I’ve that word in this review) but the delivery was worse, lack lustre and flat as a pancake. There was a marvellously bad moment, when Kim and Bob find Gower's body, in which Amanda Hughes’ emoting skills were demonstrated by a five second frantic flap of her hands like a deranged animated penguin.

The story failed to gel but had some stand-out rubbish plot moments. Harold is a glutton, so when he, Bob, Judy and Kim (Clarke and Wynette have been captured, not that the others realise) steal the book they go back to his and order pizza. He is working on the book (whilst Judy and Kim play backgammon, as you do) when there is a knock on the door. This starts a panic as they wonder whether it is the pizza or the vampires!

No, this isn’t good. The pacing sucked, the vampires were rubbish, the music was at the lowest ebb of AOR and Demos had a rubber face. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.


Vampires on Bikini Beach [VHS]on Amazon US

Guest Blog: Steven P. Unger

Son Of The Dragon: How Dracula got his Name

Hundreds of years before Christ, the Dacians (called "Agathyrsoi" by Herodotus in the fourth volume of his Histories) were the first recorded people to live in Transylvania.  They tattooed their faces, arms, and legs according to their rank in society, and dyed their hair dark blue.

            Herodotus wrote of several Dacian legends and rituals, such as the priests of Zalmoxis who kept the secret of incantations that could make human beings immortal, and the ritual practice of wrapping a young man who wished to become a warrior in the skin of a wolf (some men were said to be able to change themselves each year for several days into the form of a wolf).  Modern historians have theorized that hallucinogenic mushrooms were used in the wolf-pelt ceremony, allowing the men to experience a complete psychological transformation into wolves.

            Once psychologically transformed into a wolf and thereby initiated into the Brotherhood of the Wolf, the Dacian warrior would enter fearlessly and ferociously into battle under the banner of the Wolf Dragon, an animal with the head of a wolf and the body of a dragon.  The Royal Order of the Dragon, into which the historical Prince Dracula's father was initiated at Nuremberg in 1431 (the year of Dracula's birth), was a branch of the Brotherhood of the Wolf, which had already survived for two thousand years.  Almost 500 years after that, a picture was taken in the early 20^th Century showing a shepherd in the Pindus Mountains of northwestern Greece holding a staff with a carving of the Wolf Dragon at the top.

            Roman legions first invaded Transylvania in the 1^st Century B.C., and the Dacians responded by building six defensive fortresses in the Orăştie Mountains near present-day Deva at the southwest border with Wallachia.  The ruins of the six fortresses, comprising a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1999, can be seen today.  Some of the ruins include the circular remnants of sanctuaries reminiscent of a mini-Stonehenge or of the Tholos Temple at Delphi, Greece; near another fortress is a circular stone solar calendar.  The photograph below of a Wolf Dragon was carved in a stone arch as long as 2,000 years ago.  Reproduced with the permission of Shane Solow, ©Lost Trails, LLC, the picture was taken at one of the Orăştie sanctuaries.  The carving is one of the only original, intact examples of the powerful Dacian symbol remaining in the world.

Dacian Wolf Dragon, Orăştie Mountains, Transylvania

            The Dacians were able to keep the Roman legions at bay for nearly 200 years, until they were finally conquered by the Roman Emperor Trajan in 106 A.D.  Rome ruled what is now Romania for the next 175 years, intermarrying until a Daco-Roman people emerged who spoke Latin.  Seven hundred years of successive invasions by Goths, Huns, Germanic Saxons, and Hungarians followed.

            By the 10^th Century, Romania consisted of three principalities:  Transylvania, the central part of the country, bounded by the sprawling mountain range that Jonathan Harker refers to as "the horseshoe of the Carpathians" in his first journal entry in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker; Moldavia to the east; and Wallachia to the south.  All three princedoms were dominated by the kingdom of Hungary.  This state of affairs still prevailed in the time of Prince Vlad Dracula (Vlad the Impaler).

            The ruling classes, or boyars, of Romania at the time of Prince Dracula were Magyars, who were of Hungarian extraction, and Szekelys, who believed themselves to be descended from the Huns.  Bram Stoker has Count Dracula claim Szekely heritage, and his descent from Attila the Hun, to Jonathan Harker in Chapter III:

     We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. . . . What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?

            The Szekelys may be said to be the only true Transylvanians, having guarded the land's borders long before the Magyar invasion and Hungarian rule.   Their allegiance was only to the sacred soil of Transylvania, no matter who held temporary political dominion over them at any given time.   Among their descendants are Prince Charles of England and his sons Princes William and Harry.

            Nevertheless, the historical Vlad Dracula the Impaler can be traced genetically much farther back than the Szekelys and the Huns:  Dracula's distant ancestors were the Dacian Wolf Dragon warriors themselves.

            The only portrait of Prince Dracula, copied innumerable times on posters and paintings and statues throughout Romania, hangs in Castle Ambras in Innsbruck, Austria, in Europe's first "museum," the Kunst und Wunderkammer—the Arts and Wonders Room, also known as the Gallery of Monsters.  Even this portrait, painted in the late 16^th Century more than 100 years after Dracula's death by an anonymous German artist (the Germans despised Dracula, who had impaled thousands of their Saxon relatives in Sibiu and Brasov), is only a copy of another portrait lost in the ash heap of history.  So, no one really knows if this sinister, angular visage with the Jay Leno chin is really that of Vlad the Impaler, especially when compared with the rounded, almost serene face in the only known—and contemporaneous—portrait of Vlad's father, a fragmented fresco recently discovered above the bedroom where Dracula was born in Sighişoara.

PORTRAIT OF PRINCE DRACULA

FRESCO OF VLAD DRACUL, Sighişoara

            Interestingly, the Kunst und Wunderkammer's portrait of Prince Dracula—descendant of the Wolf Dragon warriors—is adjacent to the portrait of a "wolf-man."  Although this portrait of Petrus Gonsalvus (a real person) shows his face completely covered in fur except for his nose, eyes, and lips, we cannot see his palms.  (See here.)  Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, however, did have "hairs in the centre of the palm," as Jonathan Harker tells us in Chapter II.

            The historical Dracula's father, Vlad Basarab, was born out of wedlock in 1392 to Prince Mircea cel Bătrân (Mircea the Old) and one of his many concubines.  Today, a statue of Prince Mircea cel Bătrân stands in the central square of modern Tărgovişte.  Always a loyal servant to King Sigismund of Hungary, Vlad Basarab fought the Turks as a guard commander of the mountain passes into Wallachia and acted as Sigismund's representative in Constantinople to the Holy Roman Emperor.

            As a reward, in 1431 Basarab was inducted into the ancient Royal Order of the Dragon, a society of Central and Eastern European knights who were charged with defending the Catholic faith against its enemies, and he was given the governorship of Transylvania along with a house in its capital, Sighişoara.

STATUE OF MIRCEA THE OLD, Tărgovişte

            (Incidentally, members of the Royal Order of the Dragon wore a ceremonial costume—reminiscent of the clothing worn by modern movie Draculas—incorporating a black cape over a red garment, to be worn on Fridays and during the commemoration of Christ's Passion on the first Tuesday after the eighth Sunday before Easter.  In another odd coincidence, the last remaining group of people claiming membership in what they say is a continuing, though underground, Royal Order of the Dragon is the Oltean family of—where else?—Bistriţa, in Transylvania on the road to the Borgo Pass, the site of the fictional Count Dracula's castle.)

            From the day of his induction into the Royal Order of the Dragon until his death, Vlad Basarab referred to himself as Vlad Dracul.  "Dracul" is the Romanian word for "dragon"—and it also means "devil," as Bram Stoker discovered while researching his novel.  The suffix "a" means "son of," so when Vlad Dracul's second son, also named Vlad, was born later that year in Sighişoara, he became Vlad Dracula, Son of the Dragon.

The 2^nd Edition of In the Footsteps of Dracula:  A Personal Journey and Travel Guide, available now from its dedicated World Audience Web page, as well as from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble,  Amazon Fr,  Amazon De and Amazon Kindle; includes:

·         References, Web Links, and Costs Updated to December 2010;

·         The First Review of Dracula Ever Written, Published in the Manchester Guardian on June 15, 1897;

·         A New Section on Bram Stoker's Dublin;

·         A Rare Photo of a Wolf-Dragon, the Original Source of the Name "Dracula," Carved Within the Ruins of a Prehistoric Dacian Temple in Transylvania; and much, much more!

Vampyre – review

Director: Bruce G Hallenbeck

Release date: 1990

Contains spoilers

Let me ask you a question. How would you feel if you knew that someone had try to remake Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr? I suppose the answer to that would pretty much depend on whether you had seen Vampyr and whether Dreyer’s dreamlike masterwork of cinema had impacted you.

That said, if you haven’t and it hadn’t then this will not make a huge amount of sense as a film. If you have, you’d be forgiven for asking what the Hell was the filmmaker thinking and why did he throw in a(n almost modest) homage to Jess Franco for no adequately explored reason.

staked

The film, however, begins with a conceit by entering into the background of characters within the film, which Dreyer never drew so explicitly. Starting – with a voice over by actor Randy Scott Rolzer, who will play the adult role – with the background to David Gray (played as a child by Davin Lageroos). Note that the original name changes depending on edition, either David Grey or Allen Gray – this is a mismatch of the two. Do we actually need this background? Probably not as Dreyer gave us a very lightly sketched explanation of the man that had an, almost Lovecraftian, academic occult background. Hallenbeck, however, makes him a child vampire slayer.

killing sister

We see a man (Dale Keenan) and a woman (Susan Hallenbeck) both staked – we assume his parents (an assumption the credits confirm), whilst the film infers that he killed them – he himself wears a cross and carries a stake. He lies in a field but a young girl with blood at her mouth approaches him, his sister (Melanie Van Allen). She attacks him and he fights her off. He wanders the woods and finds her in her coffin, with a struggle he stakes her.

vampire wench

A man chops wood by a lake; the surface bubbles and a busty wench emerges from the waters. She approaches him seductively and he accepts her advances, tumbling to the floor with her and losing his neck veins to her ministrations. Gray interrupts her feeding, holding the large wooden cross out, but she slaps it away. He manages to retrieve it as she attacks him and pierces her chest with it. Presumably it is because it was a cross used as a stake that caused her rapid decomposition. Thus we have Gray’s background but we also have an error and an assumption with regard the original film lore. Firstly wood stakes are used, whereas in the original they are specifically iron stakes. Secondly, in Dreyer’s film, whilst the book of lore they use mentions sin and funereal rites, the contemporary aspect of the film carries with it little in the way of religious trapping – this reimagining adds a stronger religious element.

Cathy Seyler as Marguerite Chopin

Welcome to the village of Courtempierre – though we are still offering character backgrounds as of yet. Dr Dreyer (John Brent) – and did they really need to give the doctor a name, never mind Dreyer’s name – is speaking and talking of suicides becoming the restless dead. He tells this to Marguerite Chopin (Cathy Seyler) and offers her poison to begin a new adventure, as life as not enough. A couple of things to note; the original Marguerite was an old woman – that is something that is startling within the movie, she is a crone – this makes her an attractive young woman. Also the legend of Marguerite dates (with a little basic math) to around 1745-1750. Now Dreyer’s film offers no date for the primary action but it is clear that the doctor was not contemporaneous to the mortal Marguerite. However, when it comes to new background material, we haven’t actually finished yet.

blowing the lid of the tomb

The doctor takes a young child to the cemetery as a gift for Marguerite, in an impressive awakening scene the top of her tomb blows off. The locals are revolting. Two children have gone missing and the blame is placed at the doctor’s door. They go to find him but only find his servant Justin (James Flynn). They chop his leg off but then bind it so that he can live forever with his sin – remember the peg-legged shadow soldier in Dreryer’s film? We didn’t need a background for him either. Gray then turns up and plants a cross that will keep out the evil for a while; it must be allowed to grow before it can be destroyed, or some such b/s.

killing Leone

Cut ten years forward and the film does, to a degree, now follow Dreyer’s film. Gray actually astrally projects twice – one such moment drawing him back to the village. There seems little point in the local landowner giving Gray a book – the lore of vampires – and saying 'she must live' as Gray was due to return and is an experienced vampire hunter. Scenes, such as the shadow dance, are replaced with solid people and the attempt to get Leone (Joan Crosby) to commit suicide is replaced with her being actually attacked by Marguerite.

donning the mask

There are other moments within the story that are new. There is a veritable plague of vampires as well, it seems, as devil worshippers. We get a woman (Rene Balsam) donning a vampire skull mask and slitting her own throat, dedicating herself to the beast – we even get a couple of shots of said demon. Does it add to what was originally made – not really and it adds a different atmosphere. As for the main plot lifted from the original, I don’t want to go into that here.

a modest shot of the girl in cape

I mentioned a Franco moment and there is a girl vampire (Elizabeth Carstens) wandering around, bare-breasted in a cape. I said, at the head of the review, that it was almost modest, and this girl wears French knickers unlike Lina Romay in the Female Vampire, who clearly inspired the scene. This caped girl also rides horses and appears in Gray’s astral vision. The fangs she sports seem to be like something from a Rollin’s film, but I am sure that is coincidence.

vampires with goblet

Now, what I haven’t mentioned yet is the actual filmcraft and acting – only how this has messed around with Dreyer’s vision. The acting is, to a man, blooming awful. Wooden deliveries abound and you just wouldn’t hold up a single performance as good. That said, the look of some of the cast worked well – Dreyer himself cast roles with non-actors simply because their look fit the role, but then he never gave most of those actors major speaking parts.

staking Marguerite

The film’s photography is poor but, to be fair, this was clearly done on a micro budget and there were some iconic vampiric shots on occasion. These shots seemed to be more accidental, or subconsciously selected, than anything else and I guess if you study a classic piece of cinema some of it is bound to rub off. Now having said that, don’t search out the vhs of this expected to be overwhelmed by iconic shots – they are occasional and don’t make up for the rest of the film.

I’d like to think that any criticism I have of this is down to its poor quality, rather than a pretentious defence of Dreyer’s work. Clearly one cannot help but compare, when a film is a remake, and had any of the changes been an improvement (in actuality or theoretically) I’d have said so. Trying to remake the work of one of cinema’s greats is never going to be a wise move unless you too are a true auteur. 2 out of 10 – sheer audacity has to get a couple of marks. The imdb page is here.

Vampire Boys – review

Director: Charlie Vaughn

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

There is one element missing from a lot of gay orientated horror and I’m afraid to say that it is the actual horror side. I can appreciate that a group of men looking like they just strolled out of a boy band is going to ring the correct bells for the target audience but there is that tendency to forget the horror.

Vampire Boys is no exception to this generic statement, and it is a shame. However, more of a shame was that this forgot to be a horror so much that it tried to be twilight, ish… well, at least these vampires had fangs.

It begins with a girl (Shana Eve), she appears to be being hunted by the four aforementioned refugees from the boyband. The boys are Jasin (Jason Lockhart), Logan (Dylan Vox, the Lair and Scab), Dane (Jess Allen) and Adam (Tanner Acord). She is attacked and it is suggested that she was not ‘the one’. Mention is made of it being close to the one hundredth year.

the Bela clock

Caleb (Christian Ferrer) arrives at a house. He is to share the place with Paul (Ryan Adames), a guy he met on line. He has escaped from Ohio, to go to school in LA; he used to be a jock but wants to concentrate on academic studies. In this scene we got a highlight (for me) of the film. The Bela Lugosi clock – sorry, I know it’s sad but I really want one!

vampire sundial

Anyway Paul takes Caleb for a coffee. Cut to the four boyband escapees, they are led out in the sun and mention is made of it being great that the myths are wrong about sunlight. Jasin starts seeing mental images of Caleb and vice versa… A psychic connection is made and perhaps it distracts, just a little, from the God awful 'coffee drinking acting faux pas' in the interspersed scene.

Zasu as Tara

Anyway, short story shorter, Jasin was made by an elder vampire and thus he has to live by the same rules. By his hundredth year of unlife he has to turn a companion – ‘the one’. If he doesn’t he, and all his previous turn-ees (that would be the three other vampire boys), will die. He is still alive (despite no longer being with the vampire who turned him as a companion) because the one who turned him was greedy for love and thus turned another companion after Jasin (so perhaps the monicker of ‘the one’ is a wee bit of a misnomer). Logan has found Jasin someone he believes to be ‘the one’, a girl called Tara (Zasu). However, given Jasin's immediate psychic reaction to Caleb, methinks Logan got it wrong.

minor moment of violence

So, does anything exciting happen. Not really, Jasin comes on to Caleb, taking him out on dates and what not. This irks Paul as he fancies Caleb himself (and so Logan and Co. remove the issue for Jasin, an event that elicits little comment or concern from Caleb). Seemingly Caleb’s blood smells really good through his skin (how Twilight is that) and so Jasin and Co. feed on a couple of guys and a girl who were about to have a threesome in a field (an excuse for a schlong shot) but it produces no sense of evil or peril for the viewer.

a boyband waiting to happen

Eventually Logan freaks out because he thinks Jasin is making a mistake but it is hardly a movie-time highlight moment. What that scene did highlight was the poor script and dialogue because Dylan Vox can be great fun in front of the camera and, despite emoting like a good’un, he was ultimately wasted as an actor.

vampire attack

Lore-wise, aside from the 'eternal love' rule and the sunlight not being an issue, bullets ping off a vampire (we discover when Jasin is accidentally shot by the most apologetic biker/redneck hybrids ever), a stake won’t penetrate the vampire’s fabulous torso and so beheading is the only way to kill one. They do reflect – obvious hair grooming comment (check) – but the need for an invitation still holds as a rule.

And we are back where we started, musing over the fact that the horror element was forgotten about. Some poor acting, a waste of good actors and poor dialogue… plus too much Twilight-envy… and we have a poor film. A shame as I actually hoped it might have been, at the very least, a guilty pleasure movie. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.