The Reverend – review

Director: Neil Jones

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

Blurbs can lie, its something we have seen on these hallowed pages more than once. Worse than that are front covers. For a moment take a close look at the front cover of the UK release of this DVD…

Ok, given the prominence of his portrait – centre and large – and the large typeface used for his name, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this film stars Rutger Hauer (Dracula III: Legacy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer & ’Salem’s Lot). Now… the blurb (and I quote) “Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner, Batman Begins) delivers a haunting performance as the bringer of death in this terrifying take on the vampire tale…” (their emphasis). His fairly laconic performance is actually all of five minutes long at the head of the film. At least one of the other genre icons in the film, namely Doug Bradley (Umbrage), has three separate scenes (though the first one with Rutger is spent silently floating around the back of the set) even if the screen time is probably even shorter.

the girl and Withstander

So, what do we have… Well it starts with Rutger’s character, called Withstander in the credits, in a car. Of course withstander means adversary and he is actually the devil. There is a girl (Marcia Do Vales) in the car with him and he sends her, in the car, to the village. Now… there are three locations in the film that we hear named, the village (a countryside village), the estate (a suburban sprawl) and the city (a city area) and we will get to the naming of things later. Withstander walks into a building where a group of priests aim swords at him until told to stand down by the Almighty (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, City of the Living Dead) – no guesses who he is.

Almighty and Rev Andrews

Withstander wants a certain young man – the Reverend (Stuart Brennan) of the title – a man who is pure. The agreement is that the Almighty will remove the protection from him and allow Withstander opportunity to show him pain, blood and suffering. This, Withstander believes, will make him turn his back on God and curse him. They fight over the souls of man one at a time. Of course Withstander has already sent the girl to the village where the Reverend is the new vicar.

attacked

He has just finished his first service to a low house and has promised the nosey Mrs Jenkins (Helen Griffin) that he will visit her for tea and cake on Tuesday. Outside it is raining and the girl knocks on the church door asking to see him, soaked to the skin. She briefly flirts and tries to tempt him but then launches at his neck, ripping a huge wedge of flesh as his blood spews across her mouth. He grabs a (conveniently pointed) cross and stabs at her, hitting the mark and he sees her burst into flames as he falls unconscious.

nasty wound

He awakes in the morning and we hear a voiceover as he tries to rationalise what has happened, his own doubts and fears coming into play. I loved the fact that there was a huge rip in his throat. He nearly calls the police but there is no body or scorch marks from the fire. Just in case we hadn’t realised it, she has written “poor little Job” in a hymn book as a clue for him. He heads to the vicarage (in sunlight – the sun has no place in this film’s lore) and by the time he gets there his neck has healed to just teeth marks. He studies the book of Job and then falls asleep.

licking blood from a knife

He dreams of the girl – her advice is to “embrace it” and is woken by Mrs Jenkins, worried as he didn’t turn up for tea… it is now Friday. He seems ill and so she makes him tea, but when she leaves due to a cut finger (and the need to get a plaster) he finds himself licking her spilt blood of the knife and from the work surface. He goes for a walk and meets all-too-obvious-villain Harold Hicks (Tamer Hassan) who “owns the village”. When he returns he is covered in blood – from a dog. He phones Reverend Andrews (Doug Bradley) but says little too him about events, yet despite this he is given the “embrace it” line.

vampire film club

Study is called for, so it is into the estate and an internet café to research vampires and then to a convenient vampire film club run by tart with a heart Tracy (Emily Booth). He runs into her pimp, Prince (Shane Richie), and a second run in sees him attack Prince, drink from him and then stake him – in this the vampirism is spread immediately on bite (even if it takes a while to turn properly as soon as someone is bitten they can be staked and their bite, in turn, spreads the affliction immediately), thus they burn up into conveniently inconspicuous ashes if staked. From here on in the Reverend – who has not lost his faith in God – starts to do God’s work by sermon and by bite. This will, of course, take him on a collision course with Hicks.

eyes turn black

The Reverend has massively (contact lens) blue eyes but when the thirst comes upon him they turn black. Other than that the lore has been pretty much covered. It is a case of the vampire becoming a divine messenger and his Job-like test is one of power and, of course, of simple faith. I found the acting quite pantomime at times but it very much worked as this is a graphic novel in film form. Indeed it says it is based on a graphic novel but then the film’s homepage suggests said graphic novel is coming soon. Compared to some of the performances, Stuart Brennan’s is understated and does come across as a mild mannered Reverend. The performance reminded me a lot of Sting in Brimstone and Treacle but where Sting could suddenly switch on evil, Brennan’s action orientated moments lacks some of the power they needed. That said it wasn’t too bad. Another aspect of the graphic novel-ness was the fact that there were no real names and everyone seemed to be content with that.

God's work

When the Reverend phones Reverend Andrews (only named as such in the credits) he says something along the lines of it’s me, the reverend. When asked which one he simply refers to the village and this is enough to identify him. This, along with the scenery chewing performances and the absolute lack of crisis of faith (within the main character’s development that is – to me he accepts what he is and acts as judge, jury and executioner almost too eagerly with only one dream suggesting he likes it a little too much), offers a surreal surrounding. The use of a rather good and strangely complimentary country and western soundtrack over the pastoral English village just adds to this.

Emily Booth as Tracy

I enjoyed this, it was far from perfect but I liked the simplicity of the violence – and boy did it have violence at times. I liked the use of the vampire as messenger and executioner on behalf of the divine, something we recently saw in Pearblossom. It is a film I am sure many will disagree with me over, but I think it deserves 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Kiss the Abyss – review

Director: Ken Winkler

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

Kiss the Abyss is a low budget independent flick that I would most certainly say had ideas above its station and, for the most part, achieved them. It isn’t perfect but it is a good, solid horror that deserves more of a distribution than it currently has (to get hold of the film I picked up the German DVD release).

Certainly, on the print I watched, it had a slightly overexposed quality that worked for the opening scenes as a Jaguar drives through a desert . The car contains three men, who we later divine to be Harold (James Mathers) – an older man and the driver of the car – his son Stephen (Scott Mitchell Nelson) and his son-in-law Mark (Scott Wilson). Harold seems quite gruff and we quickly ascertain that he thinks little of Stephen.

James Mathers as Harold

However his relationship with Mark is even more strained. In flashback we see the lives of Mark and Lesley (Nikki Moore). We see a couple in love, though not in love with their neighbourhood, especially next-door neighbours - the loutish Bruce (Ronnie Gene Blevins, True Blood) and his abused girlfriend Mary (Christina Diaz). Cutting from the car to the past and back we see mark strung out and being sick, whilst we realise that an intervention to help Mary led to an escalation that saw Lesley grievously injured.

Douglas Bennett as Gus

The body of Lesley is in the boot of the car, packed in ice, and Harold (who happens to be wealthy) is taking them to see Gus (Douglas Bennett, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Gus is a ‘magic man’, a hick with powers (it is suggested) and he takes the three men into a bunker area with the body. Towards the back of the bunker, hidden from sight, is something… we only see a yellow eye and long talon like nail. Gus tells them that he has a no-returns policy, after he does this he never wants to see them or it (he refers to Lesley) again. He gives Mark a needle, puts a bit in her mouth and injects her with a large syringe. As she revives and starts bucking, Mark has to inject her with the sedative Gus gave him.

vein marks spread

Lesley awakens at home and it seems it has been a while as she keeps having a dream of being in the desert. Mark is in the dream now and, later, it begins to involve his blood. Now, let’s be honest, she’s back from the dead and this is Taliesin Meets the Vampires thus we know what will happen. At first she notices a vein on her neck (where Gus injected her) becoming darker. She bites Mark and tastes his blood during sex and she vomits normal food. Mark and Harold are at odds over what to tell her.

finding Mary

As things develop the veins spread. When Mary visits to try and ascertain whether Lesley is alive and apologise for Bruce (now missing) Lesley loses control and, off-screen, attacks her neighbour. This leaves Mark with some bodily cleaning up to do. He tries to help his wife by quitting work and being a source of food for her. One wonders if it was ever going to be enough? But Harold wants his daughter back and isn’t afraid to take her from Mark.

changing

As she changes she becomes paler and her eyes glaze in a cataract-zombie kind of way. However, she showers and starts sloughing skin and, as she emerges with yellow eyes, one feels that the skin and cataract was almost a cocoon as she changed. So, what caused her to become what she now is, what was in that syringe? It’s a clever idea and I’m not going to tell as the film hinges on it. The other clever idea is to make the film character driven.

yellowed eyes

Of course that relies on actors and none of them do a bad job in this. I wouldn’t say there was an Oscar winning performance but there wasn’t a bad performance either. I particularly liked the character of Gus.

Other than the interesting source of the vampirism, this does nothing too unusual but is a good solid film. It perhaps lost its way in the last five minutes or so but that last unnecessary meander did not spoil the rest of the film. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Livid – review

Directors: Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

Vampire films that emerge from left field are great fun, for me, because I tend to keep an eye on production and release of films from the genre and then to just stumble across a new one in a store with no knowledge of it at all… it triggers a real sense of discovery.

So I sat down and watched Livid, a French language film by the directors Bustillo and Maury and was lost within a stylised, gothic and brutal world of adult fairy tale. If I were looking for a comparison, on the fairy tale level, I might cite Valerie and her Week of Wonders. Not that this film marks a passage into womanhood but that both are fairy tales, dark, bloody and adult.

reminiscent of Rollin

It begins with a beach and it immediately brought the works of Jean Rollin to mind, the beach being a favoured location, and then we see a human face decaying in the sand, followed by urban/social decay a car abandoned, boats rusted, beached and titled, and cemeteries. Finally we see (what appeared to be) missing posters. It is Halloween, day time, and sat beneath them, in a bus shelter, is Lucie Klavel (Chloé Coulloud). A car pulls up and the driver, Catherine Wilson (Catherine Jacob), checks it is Lucie.

Chloé Coulloud as Lucie

Lucie gets into the car. Wilson is a nurse employed to visit elderly patients in their homes and Lucie is a new trainee, with her for two weeks. Wilson notices that Lucie has eyes of two colours (with a further suggestion of Strabismus) and suggests that it indicates two souls, she asks if Lucie smokes (denied but a lie) and suggests the girl calls her Catherine but Lucie prefers to call her Madame Wilson. We follow them on their first couple of visits, in which Wilson proves to be quite jaded and Lucie displays a caring side. Then they reach the gates of a large mansion on the moors… Wilson tells her to wait in the car.

Madame Jessel

Lucie is quickly bored and ignores the woman, following her into the grounds – we later hear that the mansion on the moors is the stuff of local legend – the mansion itself is dilapidated, overgrown but Lucie goes in and climbs the stairs, eventually entering the room where she heard Wilson speaking. Inside is an ancient looking woman called Madame Jessel (Marie-Claude Pietragalla), who is comatose, on a respirator, with an intravenous blood transfusion and whose nails have grown into talons. Wilson seems more impressed that Lucie followed than angry. Jessel, she explains, was a famous ballet teacher but is now trapped in a coma. Lucie questions why she has blood transfusions but Wilson does not know, explaining that she is no doctor. Wilson has Lucie pick a book at random, from nearby shelves, and when she opens it a moth flies out (we’ll come back to moths). Jessel wears a key round her neck and Wilson suggests that there is rumour of treasure but she has tried every lock and never found it. Madame Jessel was said to have had one daughter, Anna (Chloé Marcq), who was mute and is long dead.

the slaughtered lamb

Lucie is dropped at the docks where she waits for her boyfriend, William (Félix Moati), who works a fishing boat with his father. Whilst we wait we see Wilson drive past a girl on a bike, the film image screeches to a halt and it is no surprise later when we see her butchering the girl in a bath. Lucie and William then go to the bar run by William’s mother, where his brother Ben (Jérémy Kapone) works. The bar’s sign should be noted here, and the name, which I understand translates to the Slaughtered Lamb (and of course the mansion is on the moors). This is all in reference, of course, to An American Werewolf in London.

will-o’-the-wisp

Lucie mentions Jessel’s house and the treasure but gets upset when he suggests robbing the woman. We discover that Lucie’s father has money woes (since her mother died) and that William has been in jail. She goes home to find that her father is moving a new woman in (it has been eight months since her mother died), this makes her summon a vision of her mother, a suicide, and pushes her to decide to contact the brothers and arrange to rob Jessel. There is an eerie moment en route where they are surrounded by a group of costumed trick or treaters and a moment on the moor where Lucie finds a will-o’-the-wisp. This is reminiscent of the blue flames seen by Harker as he is transported to the castle in Dracula and also is tied in with vampire folklore as grave lights (a similar phenomenon) can be reported in allegedly vampire haunted graveyards.

undead mechanical

They manage to find one basement window through which they can enter the house and explore it. The house is a visual treat for the audience, a decaying monstrosity with taxidermy (including a mechanised doll’s tea party where all the dolls have taxidermy animal heads). Eventually they find a locked door and get Jessel’s key. The door is not opened by the key – Ben breaks it down – but inside they find the corpse of Anna, in a ballerina’s outfit and placed on a clockwork mechanism that the key activates – she is the centrepiece of a life sized music box and this is the hidden treasure.

Jessel awakens

Once the corpse dances all Hell breaks loose, though Lucie realises that the girl with her eyes pinned shut is not actually a corpse (rather she is undead). In flashback we see that Anna (and her mother) are vampires but her mother – pushing her dancing – broke her back and then added in a mechanical device to make her a permanent ballerina. I don’t want to spoil too much here on in as it is a surrealist nightmare that should be experienced but it is also from here that I have seen issues raised about the film on IMBd so want to look at these, as it is from here that the film becomes slightly flawed.

ballerina attack

We gain a rush of imagery, mini-ballerinas slitting the throat of an intruder in a room he entered through a mirror, and which has no door, and then the corpse attacking his brother, for instance. Who are the ballerinas, why don’t we see them again, what power possesses that corpse… Nothing is answered and purposefully so, we are transported into a nightmare and in nightmares things do not have to make sense. That said a little more explanation around the lore would have helped.

in the sun

There is an aspect around moths… which was nice. They are shown as a vehicle for a vampire’s soul and this fits in very well with some folklore that shows the moth or the butterfly as the vampire’s soul – as was explored in the film Leptirica. The vampires cannot leave during the day and we see, in flashback, Anna’s face cracking in the sun as she floats in the air – almost like smoke on a breeze. But they can also not escape during the night and we see the house floating in a vortex and this is not explained. Such lack of explanation can be written off as an aspect of nightmares but some will find this frustrating.

feeding

Personally, what I found frustrating was a lack of explanation around a final relationship (that I won’t spoil) but ultimately I think the film, like Valerie and her Week of Wonders, is a psychodrama. Unlike the earlier film, however, it doesn’t explore the blossoming of womanhood, rather it explores the loss of a parent – or the escape from parents, perhaps – the problem is that the filmmakers do not make the subject matter clear enough within either the narrative or the imagery, and therein lies the flaw. The images are beautifully macabre, the gore hidden in night shot a little but certainly there and the soundtrack is superb. Ballerina Marie-Claude Pietragalla brings an unnerving otherworldliness to Jessel and Chloé Marcq brings so much to Anna with so little to work with, bar expressions.

taxidermy tea party

Catherine Jacob is interesting as Wilson and Chloé Coulloud gives us a stimulating and sympathetic protagonist as Lucie. Unfortunately I think the brothers worked less well as characters and the actors were given less to work with but, ultimately, they are only pieces in the psychodrama, a means to get from one world to another. The film might be flawed in its ultimate exploration but it is a beautiful nightmare that deserves 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vampirism Bites – season 3 en route

I owe James Fernandez an apology as, whilst I featured season 1 of his webseries Vampirism Bites as an honourable mention, I have not got around to doing a similar feature on season 2 (this was simply lax of me and I will, I promise… at some point).

What better way of apologising, however, than by announcing that there is a third series winging its way towards us. This will premiere on September 5th and will be a 13 episode season, each released over 13 consecutive weeks.

For more information, and to catch up on the existing series, go on over to the series homepage.

Honourable Mention: the Werewolf and the Yeti

Known, domestically, as La Maldición de la Bestia and directed by Miguel Iglesias in 1975, this is a Paul Naschy vehicle in which he once again dons the persona of Waldemar Daninsky. "Who?" you might ask, if you have not come across Naschy’s body of work before. Think of a Spanish Larry Talbot, though in Waldemar’s case each film outing tends to be a separate incarnation of the character.

This is also one of the films still on the BBFC banned list from the days of the, so called, “video nasties” – clearly because it has never been re-submitted for UK classification as it is mild compared to other Naschy outings (or indeed compared to a large majority of horror films). As a result, your best chance to see it is on a fuzzy, dubbed VHS rip to DVD-R – apologies, therefore, for the quality of the screenshots.

Sylvia and Waldemar

In this flick Waldemar is an anthropologist and Psychologist who knows the region of Tibet and speaks Nepalese (!!!) who is asked by one Professor Lacombe (Josep Castillo Escalona) to accompany him and his daughter Sylvia (Mercedes Molina) on an expedition to capture the yeti. A previous expedition had taken pictures of the beast and got a genuine Yeti scalp from a monastery before they were all killed (by the yeti). Waldermar agrees to go.

Paul Naschy reprisesWaldemar 

When they arrive at Kathmandu they discover that inclement weather will stop them using the pass they wish to take. There is another pass known only by a junkie explorer called Joel (Víctor Israel). A base camp is set up and Waldermar has gone ahead with Joel to scout the pass (a place local Sherpa are unwilling to go as it is cursed). They are overdue and Joel (as a non-character) quickly vanishes down a crevasse). Waldermar finds a cave and goes in looking for shelter. There is a statue within and a couple of women – they tell him the cave is dedicated to a God (I didn’t catch the name) who in turn is dedicated to Kali. He passes out.

fanged corpse

The girls, who have said he will make a good companion and passionate lover, tend to Waldemar, nursing him to health. They also make sure he indulges in some three-way action. When he is recovered (on what happens to be the night of a full moon) he starts checking out the caves. He sees the girls eating human flesh and also finds a locked gate now covers the cave entrance. He gets to a room with a sarcophagus, on which lies the desiccated remains of a fanged creature. One of the girls attacks him, he pulls a dagger (it looked like) from the corpse (which doesn’t regenerate – and in other Waldermar stories even a werewolf would regenerate should the silver blade be removed from its heart) and stabs her – she rapidly decays.

vampire woman

He moves on and is attacked by the second girl and she clearly has fangs. She too decays when stabbed but she manages to get at his chest. Video fuzziness meant that I couldn’t clearly see if she bit him but she leaves the pentagon mark (in Waldermar films the pentagram is replaced by the pentagon) and he is now cursed to be a wolfman. Unusually, this is a film where Waldermar can be cured (rather than just killed) but if you want some werewolf on yeti action I am afraid you will have to wait to the very end of the film.

The vampire women (and I am classing them as such due to the fangs and rapid decay on death, not to mention the penchant for human flesh) are only briefly in the film, hence the honourable mention. The imdb page is here.

Blood-c –review

Directed by: various

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

In the beginning there was Blood the last Vampire, it was beautiful but story bereft and was later remade into a poor live action film also called Blood the Last Vampire. Beyond the ultimately pointless live action film there was a wonderfully flawed reimagining of the OVA in series form entitled Blood+. At its best it was great anime, but it was overlong and suffered pacing issues.

Now we have a new member of the Blood family – Blood-c. Like its predecessors it is flawed. It was also almost an honourable mention rather than a review. It does feature main character Saya (Nana Mizuki), however in this she is given the familial name of Kisaragi, she lives at a temple with her father Tadayoshi (Keiji Fujiwara). By day she goes to school and is an interminably happy soul who seems oblivious to any romantic overtures classmates might make and is often late because she likes to help old people and animals.

temple maiden

She is also a temple maiden and, at night, her father has her hunt down monsters. These are not the chiropterans of previous incarnations but furukimono, translated as Elder Bairns (on the DVD) or ancient ones. These feed on humans but take a variety of forms and they actually reminded me of yokai. It seems that Saya is still the ‘last vampire’, her eye becomes red with a slit pupil when enraged in battle and she heals quickly but, beyond this, the vampire background seems lost.

injured furukimono

At first the series becomes formulaic with Saya fighting a furukimono each episode and being given coffee and a marshmallow treat called Gumauve by unusually pleasant café owner Fumito (Kenji Nojima). She meets a talking creature (which she assumes is a dog) who seemingly is there to grant her a wish and is trying to jog her memories. Each battle becomes tougher and more and more locals are drawn into the battles, being killed as food for the furukimono – eventually this impacts her school friends. Later we hear that, like chiropterans, the furukimono require massive blood loss in order to die.

eyes turn red

This formulaic approach, without any explanation of why Saya has lost her memories, makes for poor watching. However the series pays off towards the end as the truth is revealed and we discover that Saya had been captured and the whole town is a fake, created to experiment on her with the promise that – if she retains or regains her original personality – the antagonist of the series will help her regain the ability to devour humans (something she had lost somehow).

We discover that she still drinks blood – though it is the blood of the furukimono. We hadn’t seen it because, whilst she drank after each battle, the antagonist had ensured that she had no memory of doing so.

reminiscent of yokai

The end of the series was marvellous but it took time for it to get there. The formulaic beginning might have worked on a fresh franchise (though I doubt it) but because it was tagged onto the blood franchise I felt it made the viewer impatient as we wondered about Saya and waited for the reveal of why she was behaving as she was (in contrast, Blood+ had an amnesia aspect but we saw much more of what had happened to her early on, making the more drawn out reveals much less frustrating).

5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Nisemonogatari

Nisemonogatari was the sequel series to Bakemonogatari and follows the adventures of Koyomi Araragi (Hiroshi Kamiya). Before the first series Koyomi was turned into a vampire but was cured. Through the first series and this he is human, but carries some vampiric traits with him – indeed in this series he does refer to himself as a vampire and wonders whether longevity/immortality is a trait he has carried with him.

There is a vampire character in the series called Shinobu (Maaya Sakamoto). In the first series she was silent, in this she appears occasionally, emerging from Koyomi’s shadow, where she now resides. She does speak to Koyomi and also has a fetish for donuts. It appears she no longer needs to feed on blood – possibly due to her symbiotic relationship with Koyomi – but can regain some of her powers when she does feed on blood (in the case of the series, on Koyomi’s blood), and when she feeds she morphs from a child’s form to an adult.

emerging from shadow

Sunlight will no longer kill her, when exposed to it, but will give her a bad sun burn and we discover that she is approximately 500 years old. When we meet some monster hunters it is also revealed that she has been classed as harmless and thus not a target.

bite

The anime itself only covered two stories over 11 episodes and went for a lot of character dialogue within those episodes. There was much play on words – probably meaning more to a Japanese speaking audience – and some self-effacing humour, laughing at the harem style anime, which this could be classed as. There were some incestuous parts to the story also that might make some viewers uncomfortable. The actual animation and art style was as gorgeous as the first series but I didn’t find the episodes as fulfilling. Nevertheless, the series is one of the better anime series out there.

The imdb page is here.

The Science of Vampires – review

Author: Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D.

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers


The Blurb:

• Are any vampire myths based on fact?
• Bloodsucking Villain to guilt-ridden loner—what has inspired the redemption of the vampire in fiction and film?
• What is vampire personality disorder?
• What causes a physical addiction to another person’s blood?
• Are there any boundaries in the polysexual world of vampires?
• How would a vampire hide in today’s world of advanced forensic science?
• What happens to the brain of a vampire’s victim?


Since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897, the concept of the vampire has evolved from supernatural creature of the night to reluctant bloodsucker to the sympathetic creature of today’s popular culture. Featuring interviews with forensic experts, creative artists and real-life bloodsuckers, The Science of Vampires offers a fascinating investigation into the myths and realities of the vampire, exploring every aspect of the dark force that has played host to our fears of infection, depletions, alien influence, and disease. From vampirism’s roots in ancient legend, to its scientific evolution as a very real mental disorder, Ramsland proves just how immortal, enigmatic, and seductive the lure of blood can be.

The review: This was a difficult book to pin down, eclectic might be a good term but let me illustrate this with a definition. Ramsland defines vampirism, for the sake of the book and as a starting position, as “more of a feeling than a creature: the dread of losing control to something that invades us and slowly drains us while holding us enthralled.” This is all well and good (though there are the vampires who quickly drain and violently terrify) and, indeed, it is a roughly catch-all definition for a lot of the genre. However it is too wide, perhaps, to give a focus and this is where the book fails.

The book takes a potted trip through the media vampire, recognising the malleable nature of vampire media, but concentrating mainly on Dracula, I am Legend and (rather heavily) Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. It looks at folklore and killers with vampiric traits (some listed are only debatably vampire orientated killers, though admittedly Ramsland does draw doubt on some cases herself) and then wanders into the vampire lifestyle/spirituality scene.

Perhaps the title is the problem, I was certainly looking for more on ‘if vampires were real how could we scientifically explain them’, but I think overall it is the diffuse focus that causes the problem. The book is a catch-all rather than concentrating on folklore, media, murder, lifestyle or spirituality. I, as a reader, did not feel that all the questions in the blurb had been explored satisfactorily.

That all said, I enjoyed what was there and my own personal focus on vampires is diffuse enough that there was meat amongst the literary bones I was picking through. Mixing the metaphors, however, it was a long meandering trip and by the end I had aching feet. 5.5 out of 10.

I Kissed a Vampire – review

Director: Chris Nolan

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

I Kissed a Vampire was based on a short, 3 episode series of the same name that was released on iTunes some time ago. Those initial episodes (or at least the script and songs thereof) made up the beginning of this film with the only real difference that main character Dylan Knight (Lucas Grabeel) was changed into a vampire (or more accurately a half vampire as the film begins) by being bitten by a foreign exchange student (Tahlena Chikami) rather than a bat.

Now, the fact that I know this indicates that I have seen the shorts but you might be aware that I have never reviewed them. I have them but could never summon up the gumption to put finger to keyboard and wax lyrical about them. Why? Probably because of a word that danced its way into the first paragraph… did you notice it? Songs… Yes the shorts were, and this is, a musical and the blurbs try to suggest that this is a vampiric High School Musical… honestly, I wouldn’t know if that is accurate or not.

Dylan bitten

As it is, the plot for this is wafer thin. Dylan has been bitten and the anti-blood lust pills he ordered from the internet don’t seem to be working, especially around Sara (Adrian Slade). She’s the girl next door and his best friend… not quite significant other but they were almost there before each near miss kiss was deflected towards her neck. This is causing a strain, obviously, which tends to emerge in song.

Drew Seeley as Trey Sylvanie

Into Dylan’s life comes full vampire Trey Sylvanie (Drew Seeley) – yes it’s a pun a minute in this film – and he is not a very nice vampire, liking the corruption of innocence too much. He offers to take Dylan under his wing but when Dylan stops himself with Sara one more time, a Sara that Trey had eye mojo’d already, Trey bites her. The trouble is that she is turning into a full vampire much more quickly than Dylan. This is because Trey’s vampire DNA is that much stronger than Dylan’s sire. Also, Trey has a harem of vampire gals and a place amongst them is reserved for Sara.

Dylan and Sara

Dylan and Sara go to see Dr Dan the poison man, also known as Dan Helsing (Chris Coppola). He was the one who made the anti-bloodsucking pills that didn’t work but he reckons he can make a cure – however he’ll need some of Trey’s DNA – so it is a trip to Trey’s castle (which may or may not have been in the underworld). Temptation is all around the two young friends… will they find a cure…

Sara vamps

And could we overly care? Well that is a little harsh but the characters are as thin as the plot and, whilst the acting isn’t dreadful it isn’t Oscar winning either. The vampirism lore is all over the place. You are turned with a bite but the turn takes time (and the length varies). Vampires can eye mojo victims, Trey mentions that sunlight will kill them but there isn’t actually any more evidence of that. They can teleport themselves but there is little else to say lore wise.

dancing vampires

As for the songs… bland pop ditties… okay probably I am not the person to ask about such tunes (he says listening to Fields of the Nephilim as he puts the post up) but they seemed throwaway. Next to the tracks composed for the Buffy musical episode Once More with Feeling there is no real comparison. The Buffy tracks were witty, amusing and catchy… these were teen pop. Which brings us to the question of was it any good…

From the rest of the review it is clear I was very underwhelmed but I got the real sense that if you were a young person, probably just pre-teen, who liked stuff like High School Musical you’d get a lot out of it probably. For adults, well it was low budget but it wasn’t offensive, just bland . 3 out of 10 as I am far too old to appreciate it.

The imdb page is here.