Gone Fishing… again…

The blog will be taking a little break whilst I go on vacation for a little while. I’ll be off visiting my folks over in Spain and won’t be posting here again until 5th September. Comments might be checked… possibly. E-mails to the taliesinloki account will be picked up and I will see you all very soon.

Antoo Fighter: Amukan Drakulat! – review

Director: Azizi Chunk Adnan

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

This Malay film was really quiet odd. On the surface a kind of Ghostbusters rip off using various monsters; some of these were recognisably Pontianak (including a transvestite Pontianak (Rabiatul Adawiyah)) and a kyonsi (Azron Othman). Others were various types of ghosts/monsters from different mythologies.

Awie as Drakulat

The leader of the monsters was Drakulat Van Listerooy (Awie) who had fangs, pointed ears a long extending third arm (when wished for) and giant bat wings. Now, there is no IMDb page for the film (at the time the article was written) but there was a Malaysian Wikipedia page, which can be found here. This confirmed that Drakulat was a vampire – of Dutch origin apparently.

mystic beams from crescent staffs

It also gave a breakdown of characters. There are the crescent warriors, who are the good guys. Now, crescent will be two fold, firstly these demon hunters carry spears topped with a crescent symbol that fires mystic energies to defeat the antoo (the monsters). Secondly there are a couple of comments through the film that indicate that the good guys are Muslim, nothing wrong with that and it isn’t in your face.

the chosen

More problematic was the thought, offered by the Wikipedia page, that the bad guys were the council of Zion. Did this mean that the filmmakers associated the monsters with Jews? Was it simply another movie reference, perhaps to the Matrix? I don’t know but I can say that there is nothing anti-Semitic actually displayed in film (that I noticed), though the thought that it might be anti-Semitic at a conception level is disturbing. The film itself follows Poh Jee (Radhi OAG) as he discovers that he, and four others, are the new generation of demon fighters – selected through a birth mark.

Poh Jee in action

The film actually started with Drakulat and his minions being defeated decades before and trapped in a box. They had been trying to use a virgin sacrifice (of a girl related to Drakulat) to summon Lord Sharon, Satan’s son, into the world. In the modern day some children find the box and release the monsters who promptly start terrorising the neighbourhoods until taking over the KL Tower in Kuala Lumpur. Poh Jee rounds up the new group of demon hunters and rushes to the rescue of Delyla (Delyla Adnan) the new sacrifice and Poh Jee’s crush.

kyonsi

That skips a lot of film that, truthfully, does little anyway. To me the filmmakers should have jumped to the demon fighting quicker and maybe cut down the running time which was at least 30 minutes too long. The comedy didn’t work for me – though that might be cultural – however I felt it relied much, too much on a slapstick comedy found in both the physical humour and a slapstick narrative. Little in film errors didn’t help, for instance their in film guru, Guntur (Usop Kopratasa), tells them that humans (and all natural life) are water based but demons are nitrous dioxide based, or N2O – hence he has named them antoo and yet Poh Jee inherits a book earlier in the film about how to fight antoo.

I hate to say it, but this one did little for me. However it is the only film that I am aware of that brings together Pontianak, kyonsi and vampires. 3 out of 10.

The House on Blackstone Moor – review

Author: Carole Gill

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: “They say my father was mad, so corrupted by evil and tainted by sin that he did what he did. I came home to find them all dead; their throats savagely cut. My sisters only five and eight were gone as well as my brother who was twelve. My mother too lay butchered in her marriage bed. The bed her children were born in.


I discovered him first, in the sitting room, floating on a sea of crimson, the bloody razor still clutched in his hand.


How pitiful I must have looked, bent down trying to wake him. Calling to him over and over: “Papa please, please wake up!”


He could not waken of course. No more was he to open his eyes, not in this world, had I not been struck mad I would have realized.


Yet madness is sometimes a mercy when shadows come to take the horror away. Please do not pull away in terror, please. I have much to confess. Just be patient, for I promise I will tell you everything. The only thing I ask in return is for you not to judge me until you hear my entire story…”

So begins a tale of vampirism, madness, obsession and devil worship as Rose Baines, only survivor of her family’s carnage, tells her story.

Fragile and badly damaged by the tragedy, she obtains a position as governess at a desolate house on the haunted moors where demons dwell.


The house and the moors have hideous secrets and yet there is love too; deep, abiding and eternal…but it comes with a price, the loss of her soul.

The review: The House on Blackstone Moor is very much a book of two halves. For the first half of the book Carole Gill writes a gothic story that actually feels very much like a period piece… ish…

I say ish as the book has an undercurrent that is much more brutal than anything that might have been born out of the time. Issues touched upon, visceral murder suicide, abuse, rape and insanity are dealt with in a modern way but with a gothic veneer that screams 19th century.

In short the first half of the book is a gothic joy as Rose is tortured but that torture always carries a glimmer of hope. Gill makes Rose a strong voice, even though she is a vulnerable character and as she faces the murder of her family by her father, her placement in an institution, the hints of the abuse she suffered and her gaining the governess position at Blackstone – with children too old for their age – a gothic mystery is weaved and then dyed as red as the blood spilt from a bird as she catches the children drinking from its headless body.

As she, and thus we, discovers the truth… the family are vampires (bar the father who is the vampiric son of a fallen angel and the source of the vampirism) and they are working at bringing her into the fold... the story shifts and it becomes the book of two parts that I mentioned. Gone is the nineteenth century veneer (gone also is the glimmer of hope I mentioned) and the story morphs into something akin to Clive Barker in a period costume. There is devil worship, hate filled spirits, betrayal and a host of dark (pitch black) secrets to emerge, we even get a battle of fallen angels. The reason for mentioning Barker, is not only because of the visceral nature of the horror but because, like Barker, it seems that Gill cannot have her heroine suffer enough. Just as you think she cannot suffer another indignity then another is found and Rose suffers and suffers.

I for one found this gloriously gothic, refreshingly brutal, honestly horrific and a great read. I look forward to the sequel. 7.5 out of 10.

Carmilla – another version

I wanted to interrupt our normal programming to mention another version of Carmilla available for purchase. But, you may ask, what makes this version different?

Well, aside from the fact that it carries a quote from this blog on the sleeve, it is also illustrated with original plates by Eliseu Gouveia – and I was rather taken by the illustrations, as they gave the volume a period feel, reminding me very much of books I used to leaf through as a child.

Also the volume carries the LeFanu story Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter (scroll down the page for my ‘Interesting Short’ article). Schalken is an interesting piece in itself and whilst not definitively vampiric in nature we can interpret the story that way, plus LeFanu did interesting things with fangs in the story.

Kiss My Blood – review

Kiss My Blood – review

Director: David Jazay

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

Perhaps I was missing something…

When I have read about this German language film, which admittedly is pretty obscure, it seems to attract a great deal of praise. It left me somewhat cold, it is very clever and forces you to think at times but I felt it relied too much on filmic gimmicks and could have actually benefitted from some straight narrative film-making.

That said it had some interesting moments and some iconic vampiric images and as cold as it might have left me I do have to take my hat off to a film that makes the viewer think.

male vampire

It begins with images; a man (Thomas Haydn), a vampire hunter, in confession, a vampire hunted down – later we see that he and Celina (Anya Fisher) were hunted together, they split up and the hunters followed the male, killing him with a high powered stake gun – for now, however, we see Celina on a bus, she coughs and looks unwell. A man looks to her and she hits him either knocking him out or killing him.

tempted

Jane (Nadja Rieger) is a victim of spousal abuse. Her husband, John (Benno Fürmann) is a petty criminal who is too handy with his fists. They are short of money and have a room for rent. Celina applies for the room and Jane tries to delay her, so that John can make the actual decision as to whether the girl gets the room. However she gives Celina the room when the vampire offers two months’ rent in advance. John goes ballistic when he discovers this and Celina hears the abuse. Celina speaks to Jane about the abuse, suggesting in the conversation that she is 691 (Jane assumes this to be how old Celina feels), and almost gives in to vampiric hunger during the conversation.

feeding

The next morning as Celina sits in the kitchen, wearing shades, John comes in and she makes lurid gestures to him – unseen by Jane – that causes him to reconsider his wife’s choice of lodger. He gives his wife a credit card and tells her to buy wine for the evening, she is distressed later on as she forgot the PIN and the card was eaten. Worse still, some ‘business associates’ come round and she (by following John’s instructions) manages to anger them. She knows what John will do and Celina rubs her shoulders, the gesture leading to sex. When John gets back he attacks his wife As she packs a suitcase, determined to leave him, Celina attacks the husband. Jane walks in on Celina devouring him.

blood on nose

Her terror turns quickly to love and practicality (carving knives are suggested for the body that is eventually wrapped and dumped in the river) and they begin an affair. At first it works, Jane sleeping with a man, who Celina then feeds from – though he then attacks the vampire and Jane accidentally kills him with a pan, after which we see the man's soul in one of the film’s odder moments. However Jane wants to be turned, this leads to a refusal – Jane needs training first – and the eventual admittance that Celina can turn no one as she has a vampiric blood disease (her coughing and spluttering is not to do with sparse feeding at times, or the sun, but the disease). This puts a strain on the two.

Thomas Haydn as the hunter

There is also the hunter. He seems obsessed with Celina and, indeed, he is and not in the standard hunter way. We discover that he can – for no explained reason – sniff out vampires and it does seem there is more to him than meets the eyes. On the run at one point, Celina and Jane run through a room with a group of Satanists. Celina does something that causes a devil to actually appear and attack the Satanists. The Hunter, following, shoots the devil and manages to dispel the creature.

hunter raid

Exactly what powers he has are not explained. Rather the film throws in speeded up sequences, colour filters and strange cgi moments. Equally the lore is strange, the sun seems to only hurt the eyes, but perhaps have a long term negative effect. The blood condition can only be cured by draining a healthy vampire. A stake through the heart kills a vampire. There is a transsexual vampire called Graziana (Stella Sander) , who has a lobster’s claws thrust in her eyes during a short fight between her and Celina, who knows where the vampires hang out and whom we see feeding – yet she is released by the hunter as a deluded wannabe.

This is difficult, as it did leave me cold, but I can see why others like it. It just isn’t for me though. 4 out of 10.

The IMDb page is here.

Kiss My Blood [VHS] on Amazon US

Tales of an Ancient Empire – review

Director: Albert Pyn

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

I suppose I am doing this film somewhat of a disservice by reviewing it, as I am reviewing the Thai DVD and I believe extra footage is being added into the US release (5 minutes or so at the head) but 5 minutes will not save this film, I’m afraid.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is a vampire sword and sorcery flick and stars Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) - and trust me the production values were higher in Hercules.

Melissa Ordway as Tanis

The film starts with photos and legends regarding two characters, Tanis (Melissa Ordway) and Kara (Victoria Maurette), the first a princess, the second the slave daughter of a vampire sorceress… both sharing the same father and the same destiny. One a champion of light and the other a creature of darkness. Etcetera and so on, you get the picture.

vampire awakens

After a scene from the end of the film (we’ll get back to it later), we cut back three weeks and a ship heads to the Isle of Sorrow. Sailor/pirate type guys enter a tomb and open a sarcophagus, but it is empty and then it starts to fill with a reforming body. Some funky effects follow. The core crew seem (through a distortion) to have their essences sucked as the captain shields his eyes. A vampiress reforms and kills the crew – and I liked her first appearance. She questions the captain about the kingdom of Abelar and can’t enunciate through fangs… the dialogue sound is poor (possibly, bar speech impeded by fangs, a Thai disc issue)… nevertheless I turned the subtitles on.

Victoria Maurette as Kara

Long story short, the vampire was killed by ‘the mercenary’ whilst working for Abelar and cast her demon father into the abyss – whilst taking time out to get both the vampire and the queen pregnant (fathering Tanis and Kara). The queen is now dead and her daughter Ma’at (Jennifer Siebel Newsom) rules. The vampires attack Abelar (and we see little of the attack in the limited sets, indeed we see little action throughout). Kara persuades a guard to abandon his post, they are captures and (half) turned. Tanis is told the truth of her father and escapes.

the good ship 'no texture'

The escape is made on the worst cgi ship ever… Little tip, textures. When, nowadays, computer games trailers might be mistaken for a film trailer there is no excuse to have such insipid computer graphics in a film. The sorceress causes it to shipwreck (a pointless exercise as the Princess survives and is apparently just down the road from where she wanted to be). Kara is half vampire and thus can daywalk and is sent after her – as Tanis will trust her… well, except fot the fangs and the fact that there is no attempt to gain her trust, just an attack later on.

Kevin Sorbo as Aedan

Tanis, looking for her father finds her half-brother Aedan, played by Kevin Sorbo who is excellent as the lecherous, conniving rogue of an anti-hero. He helps her find her sisters, after a promise of reward, and the siblings (who have to save Abelar before the full moon or the world will end as the vampire sorceress opens a portal for her father) look for their father. They get to the town he lives in and are picked up one by one by the vampires.

bad cgi blade moment

They are rescued (in the scene we saw at the beginning of the film) by a cloak wearing dude, ie their father. He throws unconvincing cgi blades around and the vampires die – except Kara who vanishes but isn’t dead… it doesn’t matter though because the film ends dead in its tracks – mercifully short but annoyingly not even at a cliffhanger. At the credits there is a trailer for part 2 and, despite the poor mess that this is, I’ll undoubtedly watch it.

fangs

Plusses; Kevin Sorbo, a few nice fang shots and some beautiful girls. Minuses; story, cgi, fang related speech impediments, lack of sword fights, lack of sets and lack of budget generally. Director Pyn gave us the sword and sorcery cult classic the Sword and the Sorcerer back in the eighties (indeed as Lee Horsley is in this playing the character Talon, one could say this is a loose sequel). I can’t help but feel that there was a good fun film wanting to scratch its way out of the corpse-like carapace of this flick. It didn’t, hamstringed by a lack of budget as much as anything, but it wanted to.

cinematic masochism

Will I get the US (UK?) cut with the different 5 minutes (and I pray, some work on the cgi)? Possibly, just to see…. Will I get the sequel? As I said, yes, very probably, due to an innate need to know and a sense of cinematic masochism especially with regards the vampire genre. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

There and back again...

No post today as myself and my better half nipped over to Whitby for the day and as it is a rather long drive, plus the great day we had exploring the nooks and crannies of Whitby, I'm afraid I'm only offering you this holding post tonight.

But, as I said, a great day was had in Whitby, as always. I picked up the leather coat I’ve been lusting after for about five years as a treat for myself and I also bought the little volume I’ve illustrated this post with; Vampires: a BITE-sized history by Judyth A McLeod. A pocket sized book it caught my eye as it is a padded-cloth bound hardback with silver edged paper and a place ribbon. All in all a cute little volume.

Talking of cute, Sarah picked up the vampire salt and pepper shakers reproduced below (with my arms in the background). These seem to be going over a bundle on facebook and I thought I’d share over here.

Honourable Mention: Thirst

A 2006 film directed by Roxanne Turpen, Thirst is short but not sweet. It takes the idea of the addiction to blood felt by vampires and makes a gritty little character piece with some intriguing elements.

It begins with two guys sitting out at night. They are approached by a man and woman, Dylan (Ian Ellis) and Leah (Jasna Novosel). Dylan is clearly ill/withdrawing and he asks the guys whether they are holding. It is readily apparent that he is speaking of blood and not narcotics. Dylan, it transpires, is the last vampire in town, the others have left, and as no-one is buying then no-one is selling. This was the intriguing bit; I’d have liked to have known more about this society where the dealers clearly know about vampires. Why have the vampires left? We aren’t told but this isn’t frustrating, rather it is a nice layer to the story.

Ian Ellis as Dylan

Dylan won’t bite anyone but when the dealer becomes verbally abusive towards Leah he becomes angry. The dealer holds him off with a cross. Having failed to score Leah takes him to the hospital. She leaves him in a corridor as she sneaks into a room. A nurse (Jaqueline Martini) happens across him and is taking him off in a wheelchair when Leah reappears with the blood pack. The nurse challenges her and she sprays blood in the woman’s face. The nurse calls for security as they run.

bite

Once well away she feeds the very little blood left to Dylan but it isn’t enough. Leah offers herself but he refuses. She picks up a pipe and attacks a passer-by, offering the victim to Dylan, who can take the thirst no longer and bites him. A cop comes across them and the reinvigorated vampire beats the cop before the two run off into the woods. But disaster awaits…

This was a nice, very short film. It was the grittiness that made it and, whilst not perfect, it is worth catching.

At the time of the article there is no imdb page.
;)Q

Nightwolves coalition – review

Author: Clarrissa Lee Moon

Published: 2011 (3rd edition)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Nightwolves Coalition starts the tale of Catrina who flies to New York to be with her mates of which there are three (Demitri, Andre and Antonio Caberelli). On the way there is an attempted hi-jacking and Catrina steps up to save the passengers from the takeover.

In doing so, she exposes herself as a vampire to Special Forces. Now she must clean up her mess and make a deal with the military. The military had been having problems completing missions successfully due to very unusual things happening in the field. Catrina and her team may be their answer. However, the military finds the reasons why things have been going strange on missions.

It's the beginning of high adventure and unusual situations even Special Forces may be challenged to overcome.

The review: As I started reading Nightwolves Coalition I wasn’t, I have to admit, enamoured with the writing style. Note that this observation isn’t necessarily a criticism, as often it is a matter of taste. In this case, I have to admit that Clarrissa Lee Moon’s style did grow on me and I found that I enjoyed it as it gave a distinct voice to central character Cat. Thus the style perhaps worked a little less when the book entered into third person for a short period of time, but again that might be just me.

The second criticism came from the wish fulfilment aspect of the Cat character, who was a vampire (but a good one who had none or few of the weaknesses) and a high priestess, child of a Godess who was adept at spell craft and astral working, who had several academic degrees, but was also a fierce momma bear etc. If I can be ultra-critical, she was too darn perfect and even her more negative character qualities were born entirely out of positives.

However, all that said, as I started reading through the book I got caught up in a real sense of adventure. The scenes on a(n attempted) hijacked plane had a palpable sense of adrenaline and tension around them. There was an interesting merging of mysticism and guns that did work and I, ultimately, enjoyed the read and, of course, that is what a book should be about. 6 out of 10, a robust opening of the saga and we shall see how Clarissa Lee Moon develops it in future volumes.

The commercial Vampire – Axe

It does seem to me that poor old vampires get the rough end of the stick for the sake of earning a company a few more pounds.

Take this vampiress, forced by the advertising agency to bite the guy… well… you’ll see where in this advert for Axe deodorant.

Classic Literature: The Virgin Vampire

Officially in 1825 (though Brian Stableford offers some evidence that the book might have been published as early as 1824) Etienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon published his novel La Vampire ou la Vierge de Hongrie (The Vampire or The Hungarian Virgin), which the always awesome Blackcoat Press have published as the Virgin Vampire.

I’ll take a moment to reproduce the books blurb:

"And then we shall march together directly to the tomb, which must serve as our nuptial bed…."

"What a horrible prediction! Alinska, you are the most cruel of women! Can you perceive nothing in the future but a coffin?"

Alinska allowed a few bursts of laughter to escape, which bore such an imprint of horror that Delmont, as if frozen by fear, thought he heard the frightful gaiety of an infernal power...


During one of Napoleon's military campaigns, Edouard Delmont, a young officer, promised to marry Alinska, a Hungarian girl. Back in France, he goes back on his vows and marries someone else. Several years later, Alinska suddenly reappears in his life, transformed into an avenging vampire. She threatens to kill his wife and children unless he honors the vows he made to her...


In La Vampire (1825), Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon tells the story of the first, implacable, female vampire. What makes Alinska stand out in the ranks of female vampires is that she is not a predator, but the instrument of a higher power, working for God as the tool of Divine Wrath.

The blurb isn’t entirely accurate, Colonel Delmont is offered no easy choice of ‘honour your vow and your family will live’. Indeed he spends the first half of the novel on a mission of mercy, during which time Alinska is introduced to his household and his son dies.

What I found remarkable in this was the way in which vampires feed. At first we are told about the death of a peasant girl – “he got into her bedroom and bled her from four veins” – and in answer to this Raoul, the Colonel’s faithful manservant, concludes vampirism. Raoul suggests that they feed from friends and relatives, “opening the veins of their victims, they suck the blood that they need to sustain their odious existence, unrelentingly. After each day’s end, from midnight to one in the morning, they continue this abominable operation, until the moment when all the stolen blood leads to the victim’s death.” Despite the nocturnal method of feeding Alinska is perfectly capable of going out in daylight.

However, when we see Alinska actually feed her method seems different (the peasant girl may have been killed by another vampire who posed as Alinska’s manservant until meeting his end in a fire.) Indeed her feeding method is absolutely astounding: “She places her fetid mouth on the pure mouth of the child, and seems to drink long draughts of blood, which she aspires from the unfortunate victim’s lungs.”

Alinska and Delmont vowed to each other in a contract drawn in blood. When he never returned for her and then revealed (in correspondence) that he had married another Alinska killed herself and it is that suicide, along with the powerful vow, that has summoned her from the grave. She wears a glove over a skeletal hand and has a weeping wound in her breast (where she stabbed herself, presumably). She seems to have another form, winged, but that is only a fleeting moment in the book.

As for killing vampires, fire works (and the vampire rapidly decays). So, when Raoul suggests a more convoluted method it seems that the mutilation is just cruelty for the sake of ritual. He suggests “…it’s necessary to seek out the body in the ground, which initially seems inanimate, but is soon observed to be alarmingly plump with its cheeks strangely coloured and its mouth crimson, still stained with the blood on which it has fed. Then one takes the detestable monster out of its coffin; its hands, head and feet are cut off, but there will be no effect until a sharpened stake pierces its heart—from which a torrent of bloody matter will emerge, accompanied by a terrible cry, which announced that life is finally escaping the homicidal corpse. Then, the ceremony is terminated by throwing the disgusting remains on a fire.” From a genre point of view this is a very early, graphic representation of vampire destruction.

Actually there is an easier way. You’ll see that the blurb suggests that Alinska is an instrument of divine wrath. If she is (and Stableford suggests, in his afterword, that it is a particularly cruel and vengeful God) then to me it is in terms suggested by Leo Allatius in his 1645 volume De Graecorum Hodie Quirundam Opionationibus in which, whilst the Devil raises the corpse as a vampire it is with the explicit permission of God. Thus, Allatius suggests, the vampire being repelled by holy objects. Alinska is certainly fearful of religion (and even priests) and also suggests that if she ever entered hallowed ground an avenging angel would strike her down.

This, as a story, has definite faults but in the lore it draws around us, and the date it was published, it is an absolutely necessary volume for genre fans and we owe a debt to Brian Stableford for translating it and Blackcoat Press for making it available.


Find the Virgin Vampire at Amazon

One Dark Night – review

Director: Tom McLoughlin

Release date: 1983

Contains spoilers

Though it should have been the fact that this was a film about a psychic vampire (and one that is named as such in film) that drew me to watch it, actually, to be honest, it was the presence of Adam West (American Vampire) that drew me in. It was a shame therefore that his was a bit part that really could have been any old actor…

That aside… this is a psychic vampire film and, not just that, it was one that actually named the protagonist as such.

Melissa Newman as Olivia

It starts with Olivia (Melissa Newman) led in bed. She is awake and it is thus confusing when she starts to dream of a girl hitchhiking. Later we discover that she has psychic powers and this is no dream but a vision of reality. She sees the girl approached by the driver, she is clearly scared of him and Olivia bolts upright screaming.

dead girls

A convoy of coroner vans arrive at an apartment block. Inside bodies have been found, six girls and a man called Karl Rhamarevich, also known as Raymar. It appears that he has had a heart attack but there is no obvious cause of death for the girls and the apartment’s state is… weird. One of the coroners gets upstairs. The girls are piled in a closet in various states of decay, Raymar is on the floor covered in a sheet and the walls are embedded with utensils and pans. As he is lifted to the gurney his hand falls, energy sparks and a hole is blown into the ceiling.

Julie and Steve

In a local highschool there is a three girl gang called the sisters. They are Carole (Robin Evans), Kitty (Leslie Speights) and Leslie (Elizabeth Daily). A girl named Julie (Meg Tilly, Carmilla) has wanted to join for some time. Recently Carole has been thinking up some initiation dares for her, mainly because Carole’s ex-boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels) is now with Julie. The trouble is, Julie is passing them all. However Carole has a master plan, a hazing that Julie won’t pass…

Adam West as Allan

Olivia attends, with her husband Allan (Adam West), the funeral of Raymar – as he is her estranged father. The press crowd outside the mausoleum. Inside she has a psychic flash of Carole and Kitty running scared in the mausoleum. She has to leave the service but returns afterwards to say goodbye. When she gets home she is approached by a man called Dockstader (Donald Hotton) who says he knew her father. He tells her that Raymar was a psychic vampire, much to Allan’s scorn, and leaves her a tape to listen to.

ready to haze Julie

The haze is on. Julie has to spend the night locked in the mausoleum. The girls leave her a downer to help her sleep, but really it is Demerol. They intend to come back and scare the bejesus out of her. Leslie decides it is cruel and bails, leaving Kitty and Carole to do the dirty by climbing through a broken window. The trouble is, of course, that Raymar is in there. Listening to the tape Olivia hears that he was able to drain the life from living creatures (the tape describes animals), manipulate bodies to do his bidding (not zombies exactly, they are more like corpse mannequins) and was obsessed with experiencing dying – and he is coming back. Steve, when he gets wind of the haze rushes to the rescue as does Olivia.

Raymar's sparky eyes

That’s the long and short of it basically. It takes a long time to get to Raymar awakening, and at first he is little more than a cracked plaque, eventually though his coffin does emerge and he appears, all sparky eyed. The zombies are, as described, puppets controlled by him. But they are gross for all that, as many are in advanced decomposition. Are the effects brilliant… no… but I have seen a lot worse. The only other lore, and this is a film end spoiler, is that he can be destroyed by looping his sparky eye mojo through a mirror. A nice twist on vampires and mirrors but Carole just knows so we don’t know where this comes from.

fearful

The acting is ok… nothing to write home about, though Tilly’s mad panic is well done. Ultimately the film is a little… lame, is probably the best word. It spends ages building and the payoff is over too quickly with not enough tension or atmosphere. However a dedicated psychic vampire film is unusual enough to get a little score boost. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

La Vendetta di Lady Morgan – review

Director: Massimo Pupillo

Release date: 1965

Contains spoilers

La Vendetta di Lady Morgan is not an easy film to come across but I managed to track down a copy, in the original Italian (which sounds odd as the film is set in Scotland) with fan subs built into the dvd-r, at iOffer. Unfortunately it wasn’t the best quality print, clearly lifted from a VHS that had recorded it from TV but that is probably the best we can hope for at the moment. A nice, restored version on DVD would be appreciated from a good progressive DVD company.

It is also a film that will befuddle you, as you watch it, unless you know going in that it is one of the rare vampiric ghost types of films. This aspect appears at the very end of the film and, for the most part, it seems like a period crime thriller.

Barbara Nelli as Susan

It begins with Susan (Barbara Nelli), the niece and only relative of the local Lord Neville (Carlo Kechler), sat beneath a tree with architect Pierre Brissac (Michel Forain). He has been doing work on her Uncle’s stately home, but the work is complete and he has to go back to Paris. However, she is in love with him and does not want him to leave. She was meant to marry Harold (Paul Muller, I Vampiri, Count Dracula and Nightmare Castle) but she tells Harold and her Uncle that she loves Pierre. Harold bows out gracefully (it seems) and her Uncle is delighted.

Pierre with amnesia

Pierre has to nip back to Paris and whilst crossing the English Channel is knocked out and tossed overboard. So it is that Susan follows her Uncle’s wishes and marries Harold a few months later. The proviso is that she go away with her Uncle for a while and only return when she feels right about it. Mention is made, by Roger (Gordon Mitchell) who is Harold’s manservant, of how lucky he is that Pierre fell into the sea leaving the opening to marry the country’s richest heiress! Susan can only whisper ‘I do’ and the priest makes her repeat until she screams the words. Somewhere a man (Pierre) who has been in a coma awakens but has amnesia.

the eyes have it

When Susan (now the Lady Morgan, as that was Harold’s surname) gets back she finds that all the servants have been replaced. She says she is tired and is led to her room by the maid Lillian (Erika Blanc, Kill, Baby, Kill!). The camera lingers on Lillian’s eyes giving a thought that they were hypnotic and, when Susan sleeps we hear her voice calling her to obey. Actually she calls through a grate in the fireplace and the next section of the film concentrates on Roger, Lillian and Harold conspiring to send Susan mad. They even kidnap Uncle Neville and chain him in the dungeon.

Susan the ghost

This is the crime thriller I spoke of and it gets to a point where they have Susan pretty darn mad, walk her to the edge of the roof and then cause her to fall in a way that looks like suicide. She dies with Pierre’s name on her lips and his memory suddenly returns. He, some time later - as his legs are wasted at first, goes back to the house and it is in ruins inside, but Susan comes to him. She tells him that the spirit of a violent death must linger but, if that spirit were pure (which she was) she can become corporeal in the presence of her true love.

tormenting her killers

Pierre has a tough time believing the tale she tells him, but she becomes incorporeal and lets his arms drift through her. She tells him how she got her revenge upon the conspirators by turning themselves on each other and leading them to their untimely deaths. However, they are now ghosts too, blood drinking ghosts who have kept Uncle Neville chained up and drink his blood night after night to become corporeal. Poor old Pierre is now on the menu as well…

Susan will faint in just one moment

The film looked pretty grim on the print I watched but you could see there was a genuinely atmospheric film underneath. The story was unusual and it was nice to be able to watch such a film without an awful dub. It perhaps wasn’t up there with the best of Italian horror and the story's narrative really was dependent on the fact that Susan was such a gullible wimp.

the vampiric ghosts

The vampiric ghosts are absolutely blood hungry, spill blood on the floor and they race to lap it up – how they managed to restrain themselves and keep Neville alive for so long is beyond me. There was a wonderfully dour tone to the ending, which I won’t spoil. The film really was a film of several parts and that did give it a little bit of a disjointed feel.

Worth tracking down as a rare bit of Italian horror and a rare vampiric ghost tale. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.