Redemption – review

Author: Susannah Sandlin

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Not since Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series has a sexier band of vampires roamed the American South. Fans of paranormal romance will be captivated by the immortals of Penton, Alabama, introduced in this début novel from Susannah Sandlin’s thrilling new series.

The world’s vampire population is on the brink of starvation. Since the vaccine for a global pandemic rendered human blood toxic, the vampires’ only hope for survival is to find unvaccinated humans to be donors. In the tiny town of Penton, Alabama, four-hundred-year-old Aidan Murphy has created a rare haven from the famine, a place where vampires and pure-blooded humans peacefully coexist. But when his estranged brother descends upon Penton to wreak havoc, Aiden makes a desperate choice. He kidnaps an unvaccinated human doctor to replenish their food supply—and finds himself falling in love for the first time in nearly four centuries.

The review: I don’t know why I do it… subject myself to the occasional paranormal romance… wait, I do… it’s because the ones I read have vampires in them and this one has floated like literary flotsam and jetsam into my awareness. And thus I read it

The thing is, some paranormal romances work; they prove themselves to be well-written and, whilst not my favourite sub-genre of books (at all), have a lot to recommend them—especially to those who actually are fans of the romance genre.

This was, unfortunately, not the case with Redemption. The author certainly came up with an interesting starting idea. A pandemic vaccine that makes humans poisonous to vampires was a really good starting point. Now the blurb mentions kidnapping a human doctor, Krys, to replenish their food supply and this does the plot a disservice. She is kidnapped because they do not have a doctor and the bad vampires are up to no good, injuries are expected.

Of course, despite this creepy start to their relationship, they are bound to be star crossed lovers destined for each other. It is here where the book faltered, in the romance. There was a good general story idea and the author has to spoil it all by having a character say something stupid like “I love you”.

The romance sections were, frankly, turgid. I had to wade through them and wait to get back to the more interesting narrative. These sections needed honing however. The fact that, should a vampire bind a human to them, only members of their scathe (a metaphysically bonded group of vampires) can feed from them, and so bad guy Owen can’t just take the humans in the town, made the slowness of his actions implausible. The fact that he takes so long getting around to killing his brother (which would free the food supply and grant him a pardon from a death sentence at the hands of the vampires’ ruling tribunal) was unbelievable and simply served to pad the story. The alleged desertion of one of Aidan’s top vampires was too simplistically handled, and Owen’s attempt at urban terrorism rang hollow when it was clear that a bomb he set off would kill more human food-stock than vampires.

However there was a potentially nice little baseline story that just needed polishing – just the romance needed ditching. 4 out of 10.

First reviewed at Amazon UK as part of Amazon Vine.

Honourable Mention: Blood soldier: Interrogation

This is a short from 2011, directed by Jake Thornton and seems to be a test piece for something larger – at least I hope so.

It begins with a pipe and we realise we are in some form of bunker, visions of a woman (Siri Baruc, Blood Angels) flit across the screen, she laughs happily. Captain Marcus Cole (Neil Jackson, Blade the Series, The Thirst & Vampyre Nation) bolts awake from his dream, he throws up and the vomit is composed of blood.

Mandy Amano as Vasquez

Colonel E Stracken (John Knox, Vampire Vixens from Venus) is interrupted in his paperwork by Thalia "Desert Cobra" Vasquez (Mandy Amano) who tells him the new Captain is awake. I have to say I loved the sci-fi look they gave her, at odds with the Afghanistan story setting but it worked well. Stracken has a file on Cole.

Layla Alizada as Leena

Cole is placed in a room, there is a table and a couple of chairs. He notices cameras and Stracken speaks to him via a microphone. He explains that Cole is now a dangerous weapon and this is a test of loyalty. Vasquez brings in a gagged woman, Leena (Layla Alizada), and from the interaction between Cole and Vasquez it is clear they have met before. Before she leaves the interrogation room she cuts at Leela with a combat knife, opening shallow wounds and licks the blood from the knife.

The Squad

Outside, Vasquez and two others, William "Bull" Hawking (Anthony Ray Parker , Xena Warrior Princess: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun) and Theo "Dire Wolf" Valance (Jeff Schine), comment on how Cole will do. Stracken explains to Cole that she is an insurrectionist, an enemy combatant. She holds information they need and Cole must get it out of her before he kills her.

will he have self control?

Given the fact that this is TMtV, you know he is now a vampire but will he kill the woman… You can find out in the embedded short below. I was rather impressed; it is only a teaser, a taste of a larger story, but it is a story I’d like to see.

The imdb page is here.


Blood Soldiers: Interrogation from Stone Tiger Productions on Vimeo.

Vampyre Nation – review

Director: Todor Chapkanov

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

The Sci-fi channel does it again… Whilst this is airing in the UK as Vampyre Nation the fact that it is also called True Bloodthirst shows that it is essentially ripping off other genre pieces. As well as True Blood (not only the name but the fact that vampyres – as spelt in film – are out of the coffin thanks to the development of synthetic blood), there is a huge slab of Blade 2 with a smattering of Daybreakers - oh, and let us not forget a name borrowed from Dracula.

Now, I know the genre is one built on borrowed concepts, outright thefts and lore evolution but this was just so very blatant. The question is, was it any good…

man-bat

We are in Bucharest and a man (Joro Zlatarev) walks down a line outside a club, a vampyre openly feeds. He goes to the bouncer (Dimitar Ougrinov) and says that he wants to see Grigori (Velislav Pavlov). He is sent round to the back of the club where he is met by Grigori and two other vampyres. He is trading AB -ve blood, very rare he says, for cocaine. Grigori has worked out he is the source but his 'from the neck feed' is interrupted as a large bat creature appears. It kills all three vampyres and the blood dealer.

Nail Jackson as Derricks

Over the credits we hear bits of news reports that mentions the vampyre virus, synthetic blood, vampyres being moved to Bucharest sector 5 – a quarantine zone that is more like an internment camp, and Konstantin Kovacks (Roark Critchlow) being made head of the Department of Vampyre Relations (DVR). We watch cop Derricks (Neil Jackson, Blade the Series & The Thirst) arrive at the DVR. A vampyre entering the building has mislaid his pass, Derricks takes him to one side until he finds it. The vampyre points out that he empties Derrick's bins and deserves respect. I liked the fact that a sign mentioned strigoi as well as vampyre.

Andrew-Lee Potts as Harker

Derricks wants in on the attack at the club and Kovacks admits that there have been similar attacks. He puts him on the case but tells him that he has to take Scotland Yard detective Innes-Bunchley (Jonathan Hargreaves) as a partner. Derricks says he wants John Harker (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Kovaks agrees if he takes Innes-Bunchley too. Harker is in a prison fight along with his friend Andrei (Vlado Mihaylov) – his freedom is offered for working with Derricks. Harker wants his sister, Celeste (Heida Reed), freed as well. They, along with his girlfriend Katya (Claudia Bassols), are vampyrgia (however you spell it) – vampyre hunters. The specifics of their incarceration is not given but one assumes it was for killing vampyres.

Ben Lambert as Nikolai

When they go – tooled up – to the vampyre club they meet Nikolai (Ben Lambert) second in command to his 600 year old sire who says he campaigned with Vlad Ţepeş – though later dialogue actually suggested he is Vlad Ţepeş. They tell them that the attacking man-bat creatures are vampyres infected with a retrovirus that devolves them, increases their metabolism even more than vampyres and thus makes them voracious – so whilst they look like the subsiders from Daybreakers the plot is pure Blade 2. Indeed the retrovirus is man-made and a conspiracy is unearthed whilst vampyre hunters and human hunters have to learn to work together.

killing a bat creature

Other lore; mercury will kill vampyres and silver burns, they burn in sunlight; we see one burn with head and hands exposed but they seem to be ok with a hood, shades and scarf – despite exposed foreheads. They heal quickly, have night vision, superior hearing and drinking a vampyre’s blood is enough to ensure turning. The bat creatures can be herded with the use of a sonar signal and they dust in a flash of light leaving a skeleton that then crumbles.

working together

The plot was simply lifted, as I say, though it had a sub-text of racial tolerance running through it. Some acting was okay, for instance Neil Jackson was rather good, but other acting was terrible - Jonathan Hargreaves’ English detective was painful to watch. Some accents appeared and disappeared and whilst his performance wasn’t too bad, and he seems a likeable cheeky chappy, Andrew-Lee Potts is just too baby-faced to pull off the big, bad vampire hunter.

kind of sub-Blade 2

The cgi was blooming awful and, of course, this relied on it and generally the film was just a sub-standard Blade 2 rip off – even the boss vampire was a red robed, bald vampire living in a castle like crypt. All in all pretty poor, but not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Twelve – review

Author: Justin Cronin

First published: 2012

Contains spoilers

The blurb: It seemed like a good idea at the time…

Infecting twelve death row prisoners with an ancient virus, in order to create human weapons. Instead the virus turned them into ravening, unstoppable monsters. And when the twelve broke out of the underground facility where they had been born, all hell was truly unleashed.

In a world now ravaged by the viral plague, humanity is reduced to stubborn pockets of resistance. But if the human race is to have a future, survival is not enough. Against terrifying odds, they must hunt down the Twelve and destroy them in their lairs.

But something is wrong. The virals’ behaviour is inexplicably changing. And all the clues point towards the Homeland, a sinister dictatorship where an unlikely trio are re-imagining humanity’s destiny: Horace Guilder, a veteran of the original experiment with a blood-curdling vision of immortality; a mysterious woman whose tragic past has driven her into a world of fantasy; and Lawrence Grey, a man whose hunger for intimacy has been fulfilled in the most gruesome way imaginable.

And then there is Amy. The girl from nowhere. Once the thirteenth test subject, and now the only human who can fathom the Homeland’s secret and truly enter the hive mind of the Twelve.

But what she finds there may spell the end of everything.

The review: Whilst not quite as leviathan in length as the Passage, The Twelve is still a weighty tome that, upon arrival, jumped ahead of everything else in my (equally leviathan) ‘to read’ pile because the first book was just that good.

After a pre-amble that takes place in the main story timeframe, this volume jumps back, at the head of the book, to the outbreak and we meet some characters from the first book in a little more depth as well as a whole bunch of new characters. This may have been annoying in the fact that, as we know that the main story is set almost 100 years on, we are meeting characters that will be dead come the main story. However, firstly that is not entirely true and, secondly, the writing is just so good that we fall into the struggles of these characters.

I say that is not entirely true as we begin to realise that, as well as Amy who did not take on a monstrous new physiology post infection, the Twelve have infected helpers (I am almost tempted to say Renfields though the term is not used) who maintain human form and that the virus, filtered through these beings, can infect others without turning them into the standard monster form virals. In the fascistic Homeland these are called red-eyes (due to the change the virus affected upon the eyes) and are the social elite, where the flatlanders (ordinary humans) are no more than slaves. We discover that the red-eyes in the Homeland lose all interest in sex but that might be because their source had been chemically castrated as a human.

A sojourn to a little before the main story’s timeframe, to the massacre at The Field – in Texas – which introduces us to further characters that will now enter the stage of the main story and then we are back to the struggle proper, 5 years after the events in the Passage and centred around the main surviving characters from book 1.

There is a little bit of new lore, beyond the red-eyes, but first I mentioned a traditional piece of lore used in the review of the first book that was a spoiler too far for that review. Assuming you have read the Passage now I will list that lore as the mirror lore and the fact that a viral is stopped in its tracks by holding a mirror before it and letting it see what it has become (and remind it of what it was). This occurs the once and that is pointed out in this book as they are unsure as to whether it would work as a ploy again. I mention it because it ties in with main character Peter holding the gaze of a viral and actually realising who she once was as she calms as her gaze is held. Telepathy has played a part in this series but this seemed to be tied into the idea that the eyes are a window to the soul.

Again a rip-roaring read. 9 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Zombie Honeymoon

This was a 2004 David Gebroe directed piece that was recommended for ‘Vamp or Not?’ by my friend Nick. It has Larry Fessenden as one of the executive producers, which boded well as Fessenden has been involved, in one way or another, with some great genre pieces including Habit, I Sell the Dead and Stake Land.

It begins with a wedding; Denise (Tracy Coogan) and Danny (Graham Sibley) have just got married and we first see them running to their car, leaving the guests still in the church. They are an unconventional couple, highlighted by her red wedding dress and the surf board on the roof rack. The honeymoon – set to actually be a month – is being spent in Uncle Brian’s New Jersey house, she gives him a little head on the drive and carried him across the threshold. They are looking to move to Portugal eventually.

vomiting blood

They hit the beach, Danny surfing and Denise sun bathing and then, as he rests up by her, she sketches (we discover that she is an illustrator by trade). Then their idyllic time comes to a crashing halt as she spots a man coming out of the ocean. It is clear there is something very wrong with him as he falls atop of Danny and vomits a blackened quantity of blood over his face and into his mouth before falling dead.

a happier moment

Danny is rushed to hospital but his heart has stopped. They try to resuscitate him but he does not respond. His heart has not been beating for ten minutes and they declare him dead when he opens his eyes and sits up and states that he feels fine. So, so far we have had a zombie, the zombie has reached the end of its life span by vomiting blood onto another (spreads via blood), the victim has died and then resuscitates (later the term living dead is used with regards Danny) but rather than be the mindless undead he is fully compos mentis.

Tracey Coogan as Denise

That night they make love, though he is rougher than normal and bites her. The next day Denise is upset, perhaps his close call put things into perspective but she is concerned that they will become complacent and not follow their dreams. To answer this they call up their employers and quit and let their apartment go… they intend to move to Portugal and call up best friends Nikki (Phil Catalano) and Buddy (David M. Wallace) to come over and say farewell. Local cop, officer Carp (Neal Jones), comes by. They have not yet identified the attacker but they wonder if Danny saw where his roommate in the hospital, an older gentleman called Jack Birch (Phil Catalano), went as he seemed to have vanished.

caught and contrite

Denise has gone out to buy ingredients for a candlelit dinner but when she gets back she discovers Danny in the shower with… a local (unhealthy) jogger (Steve Szymanski), who he is eating. She runs out of the house but he, blood-soaked as he is, pleads with her and, eventually, she come back. She smokes (having quit 7 months before) and it is her reactions that make the film. Tracy Coogan makes the character believable and she is in equal parts in love, terrified, angry, guilty, defensive and an array of other emotions that give the film a depth it just wouldn’t have had otherwise.

spewing excess

So lore stuff to determine whether he is a vampire or a zombie. Well, the newlyweds go for a meal with Nikki and Buddy. Danny, plays with his food (he was a vegetarian) until taking some of Buddy’s steak (and eating the meat rare). When Buddy points out a woman that looks like an ex, he can’t remember the woman Buddy refers to though Danny was seeing her for two years. This post death dementia gets worse and worse, though he doesn’t become as mindless as your average zombie until the end and we’ll look at that in more depth soon. He does vomit up victims, but that seems more due to excess than the vomiting at the end of the life cycle.

a nod to Zombie Flesheaters?

He attacks several people through the film, eating them, but none of them turn. Thus a bite doesn’t do it, it is only the vomiting of blood at the end of the life-cycle that causes infection. When Nikki reads his palm (she is a fortune teller by trade) he seems, at first, to have a deep, long life line. Then she realises something (it seems as though she is going to say that he is still dead) but her words cut off as she has a vision of him rotted and decayed. The look, I think, was a nod to the film Zombie Flesheaters (we see a T-Shirt from the film during this film). He does look worse and worse, but not as bad as her vision.

a nod to Living Dead Girl

At the end we see him kill by sticking two fingers into a neck, this was reminiscent of the Living Dead Girl, I think purposefully so, though the wounds also look like a typical vampire bite would. In this scene he clearly only drinks the blood, rather than eats the flesh, though the rest of the film has flesh eating aplenty. He does seem to loose sentience but then we see him shed a tear, this perhaps more shows a man ill and 'locked in' than anything else and is rather poignant. At the end he grabs Denise (who has had a couple of near misses already) and is clearly going to vomit blood on her as he is at the end of his life cycle. He remembers her and overcomes instinct to turn his head away and spares her, showing a degree of sentience even at the end. After he dies he seems less decayed than when the living dead, I don't know whether this was a fault in film-making or deliberate, to be honest.

Danny towards the end

Overall, despite the sentience, the living-dead-girl-esque blood drinking scene and the fact that it is through blood that these creatures are created I don’t think this is vamp. It is not your typical zombie either. It is certainly one that deserves the label zompire and it has much in it that is of genre interest. It is also rather good, despite the fact that I thought it would be a low budget shocker before I watched it. Not Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

Hemo – review

Director: Bob Freville

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

The first thing I have to do is apologise for the quality of the screenshots accompanying this review. As it was a shoe-string budget film they were never going to be fantastic but I hired this film on YouTube and was taking screenshots with the print screen button and dropping them into paint (from DVD I take a lot of screenshots and sort through for good ones after the film) and worse, despite the YouTube version having to be paid for, the actual film was uploaded at a really low resolution… you’d have thought they’d have put a good resolution up to watch… but n’er mind, we are where we are.

Felicia and Calvin

This was pretty much a vampirism as a symbol for addiction flick and these vampires are not your normal undead. They walk in daylight, can be injured (in the first scene of the movie we see female vampire Felicia (Pamela Price) on crutches, a scene that ties in towards the end of the film, they eat food (the need for blood is a thirst not a hunger) and there is very little that is supernatural about them. However, they seem to be definitely addicted to blood and need it to survive – without it they become ill/withdraw.

blood bank stick up

After the mentioned opening scene we see them preparing to go out. Gloves are put on and masks. They are going to raid a blood bank (in honesty it looks very little like a blood bank but we must remember the budget). The guard (Kenneth Wooton) has been knocked on the head and tied up - Calvin (Kevin Petroff) gets upset when Felicia uses his name but she points out that the guard doesn’t speak English. She has used a popcorn ball to gag him – if he chokes it might dissolve – and apologises for the knock on the head – this shows their state of mind which is quite anti-harming humans.

might as well face it, you're addicted...

When they get home they hit the blood hard and become covered in it. One criticism of vampire films is often how wasteful vampires can be given how much they need the red stuff. In this case I felt it forgivable, they are addicted so one assumes the blood gives a euphoric high and in that euphoria the hyper-indulgence seems fitting. They do things like go out to the woods, frolic naked and pour blood over each other. We hear Felicia question the society of today as she reads about a baby being murdered.

ghost or inner dialogue?

However, things go wrong. The blood bank tightens security and they cannot get bagged blood. The film then follows them as they fall apart, becoming so desperate that they start to attack humans – and each other, because of their actions and behaviours. Felicia starts getting ‘advice’ off Thanatos (Duane Bazazian), a vampire or the ghost of one at least, however it seemed to me that he was more an externalisation of her addiction speaking to her and pushing her forward.

what were they?

The film became, in equal parts, quite unpleasant (deliberately so) but rather fractured when they started killing. One wondered just how they got away with the attacks (or even managed them). The camera often showed us the aftermath, though not always, and they didn’t seem to have enhanced strength or speed to help them with their attacks (hence Felicia ending up on crutches, which also shows they can be injured). The other aspect that was particularly poor was the fact that the film needed to offer more narrative but just plain refused to explain things to the viewer. For instance, what were they – the undead, humans addicted to blood, two people with a shared delusion, another species or something created? I guess the last option, as they go to the rubble of a building and state it is where they came from, but it was knocked down… however I am only assuming.

a victim

The filming was in turns gritty and pretty poor. Night shots were awful (this wasn’t helped by the poor resolution) and lighting was non-existent. What carried the film, however, was the performance by Pamela Price – I don’t know what it was but there was just something about her that kept your mind focused on the film and commanded the screen whilst she was on it. I’m afraid to say the other performances were in the low to middling range.

There are better vampire/addiction films out there and this is never going to set the world alight. Freville made the mistake of not putting enough explanatory narrative in the flick but I have seen worse, I really have. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Suckablood

On dark stormy nights the Suckablood comes, to those boys and girls who still suck their thumbs…

This is a marvellous short written and directed by Jake Cuddihy and Ben Tillett from 2012. A twisted gothic fairy-tale, certainly, but is it Vamp?

Tilly caught sucking her thumb

It is one that I was tempted to do a ‘Vamp or Not?’ with, but ultimately I didn’t have enough to really investigate the film; barring the fact that there is the name Suckablood, the fact that it is clearly a supernatural creature and it felt at least of genre interest… so an honourable mention it was. My thanks, incidentally, to my friend Teresa who put me on to this.

Samuel Metcalfe as The Step-Mother

As I said this is a fairy-tale and concerns young Tilly (Holly Jacobson), a girl who still sucks her thumbs. Disgusted with this habit, her step-mother (Samuel Metcalf) beats her and then, as it doesn’t seem to dispel the habit, she curses her. Calling on the Suckablood (Robin Berry) to come if the girls should suck her thumb.

The Suckablood

In bed at night, terribly afraid, Tilly wants to suck her thumb but begs the Suckablood not to come and then sucks her fingers instead. The Suckablood does come though, emerging from beneath the bed and then looking under the covers at the girl. Then it is gone but she has sensed it and follows it through the dark house, where we discover Suckablood’s true mission. In many respects the creature looked like an elf/goblin creature and that reminded me of the vampiric creature the Tomtin – a creature associated with Father Christmas.

The IMDb page is here and the full short is on Vimeo, so I have embedded it below:


Suckablood - short fairytale horror from BloodyCuts.co.uk on Vimeo.

Vamps – review

Director: Amy Heckerling

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

Little known fact, I rather like the film Clueless… I don’t know why but it tickled me and made more sense to me than the period piece Jane Austin story that it’s based on (and that I was made to watch once). Perhaps I’m a philistine, who knows, but this boded well for a vampire film by the same director (and same lead actress).

Then again it is a vampire comedy and the vampires within all stay off human blood – well all but a few, one in particular being particularly voracious – so maybe not. Well, let us see...

no reflection makeup

The film starts with a voice over from Goody (Alicia Silverstone) a woman turned in the 19th century. We get some lore here as we discover that only certain vampires – Stem Vampires – can turn victims who have not been fully drained (by sharing their blood). All other vampires are infertile (in a turning vampires sense). Goody lives with Stacy (Krysten Ritter) who was turned by their Stem Cisserus (Sigourney Weaver) in the eighties at Goody’s request (as she didn’t want the girl to die, Cisserus being on a whole-human diet). Stacy does not know just how old Goody is, and historical observations are passed off with a comment about the history channel.

straw in rat

The two girls live in student like accommodation, they sleep in coffin that must have a layer of home town earth. They party and work as exterminators, hang out with a guy called Renfield (Zak Orth) – a mortal who thinks they are vampires, which they deny, who wants to be ‘awakened’. Their work as exterminators gives them access to rats (a straw in rat gag doesn’t work as well as it should, as straws have been used several times before as a comedy vampire prop). We discover that their Stem can summon them telepathically. They can wall crawl, move super-fast and vanish and reappear.

Malcom MacDowell as Vlad Ţepeş

When Goody picks up a musician, who has a nose bleed due to coke sniffing, she fails to contain herself and licks up the blood (her tongue stretching and lacing through his nostrils) but it is ok as they go to an elf (extended life form) 12 step group, where a regular attendee is Vlad Ţepeş (Malcolm McDowell, Tales from the Crypt & Suck), who wears a Lugosi-esque pendant, velour sportswear and has taken up knitting.

Wallace Shawn as Van Helsing

Peril comes in the form of Dr Van Helsing (Wallace Shawn) – ex-MI6 and now Homeland Security (I don’t know how that happens) – and is a third generation vampire hunter. Things start to go awry when the Government start getting the vampires on their radars (summoning them for jury service and IRS audits) due to their use of electronic communications, Van Helsing's goes on a vampire hunting warpath (having found the mutilated remains of one of Cisserus’ kills) and Stacy starts dating… Joey Van Helsing (Dan Stevens, Dracula), son of the vampire hunter. Meanwhile Goody meets Danny (Richard Lewis) an old flame from the sixties, whose wife is dying in hospital.

eye mojo

Other lore we discover is that the vampires have eye mojo, the Stems have a super eye mojo that comes out like beams of light – but they can’t make you do something totally against your nature (so Goody and Stacy can’t be forced to kill). The vampires have no reflection and do not show in photographs or on video. If a Stem dies all those who are of their line become human again but age to their chronological age. A vampire can become pregnant, but as a vampire, cannot support the foetus and miscarry soon into the pregnancy.

Justin Kirk as Vadim

A Stem must be beheaded to be killed, can function like that for a while and can animate other remains to support their head. The vampires we mainly see have standard side fangs (though we see Cisserus’ produce a maw of teeth) but a vampire (from the Ukraine) called Vadim (Justin Kirk) has front fangs. When someone is turned they almost immediately revert to looking in their prime and a vampire’s saliva has an anti-coagulant. We also discover that garlic aversion is a matter of taste.

super eye mojo

As for the film itself, it had a great cast – Malcolm MacDowell’s interaction with another Stem, a Turkish vampire, was great. Sigourney Weaver lapped up the role of the bad vampire and Alicia Silverstone was as personable as ever. There was almost a feel of Karmina, though not quite as good, and I found the film pleasantly watchable. Despite the “we don’t eat humans” aspect, there was some bad vampire action and it was ok. It isn’t going to set the comedic world alight, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared and is worth 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Death of Dracula – review

Story: Victor Gischler & Marv Wolfman

Art: Giuseppe Camuncoli & Gene Colan

First Published: 2011 (collection)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: He is the Legendary Lord of the vampires. Dracula. Who would dare attempt to overthrow him?

Only Dracula’s son, Xarus, a ruthless and clever upstart with the bold ambition to unite all the world’s vampire scts under one flag. But Xarus’s (sic) older brother, Janus, isn’t sure he likes the idea of a new regime and seeks allies to oppose Xarus. The ultimate battle for control of Earth’s creatures of the night unfolds, with the future of the vampire race – and possibly the Marevl Universe – at stake.

Plus: In a classic tale of sorcery and slaughter, witness the birth of Janus, conceived by magic! And when Janus is killed and revived as an adult, the war between father and son for control of all vampires begins!

The review: This collection brings together the first issue of the contemporary comic Death of Dracula and then follows it with issues 54-55 and 59-63 of Tomb of Dracula. Now I do like tomb of Dracula and I bemoaned the fact that the coloured trade paperbacks stop (at time of review) at Volume 3. The issues in here are after that volume and yet I am not a happy graphic novel reader.

Firstly there is no continuity between the contemporary and classic comics, as depicted. The first story sees Janus as an adult and vampire and then we jump to his conception and birth without finishing the story as begun. Indeed the art work clashes not only through the way Dracula himself is drawn but between the contemporary style and the classic Marvel art.

I was also not happy with the jumping around in the Tomb of Dracula issues. The story covers only part of the Tomb of Dracula story that was later converted into the animated Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned. It is interesting to note that in the review for that film I stated “the hopes that Blade would appear… …is a vain one” as he was indeed present through part of this. However the graphic actually misses all of the Dracula taking over the satanic church shown in the animation, jumping straight to the birth of Janus, and then leaves a gap in the middle of the story and finally leaves Dracula lolling around in Hell. One can’t help but believe they would have been better simply releasing Tomb of Dracula vol 4. (Incidentally, the blurb is wrong and Janus simply wants to kill his father – he is possessed by a heavenly agent called Golden Angel – and is not attempting to gain control of all vampires.)

So, disappointing because of the haphazard issues mismatching with each other. A shame. 4 out of 10.

Tomb of Dracula – volume 3 – review

Writer: Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont & David Anthony Kraft

Art: Gene Colan & Don Heck

This volume published: 2010

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Are there horrors even greater than Dracula?

Judge for yourself as the Lord of Darkness battles mad science and madder magic! His wars with Quincy Harker and Doctor Sun continue, but how can Dracula or Sun rule the world if the demon Y’Garon destroys it? Plus: more flashbacks from across Dracula’s life and death, including his first meeting with Blade’s vampire hunters! Also featuring the first appearance of Hannibal King, vampire detective!

The review: We previously looked at vol 1 of this series here and vol 2 here. This volume contains Tomb of Dracula #24-31 and Giant-Size Dracula #2-4.

It obviously follows on from the last two volumes but feels a little more splintered. The heroes are split up across the globe, all believing (bar Quincy Harker) that Dracula is dead and there was less of an overarching story – just hints towards the bigger picture. The first appearance of Hannibal King was interesting but he makes an appearance and then vanishes from the story.

That is not to say the volume was bad, just not as enthralling as vol 1 and 2. That said we did start to see a more human side to Dracula – not that it is too human and far from pleasant. There is a nice moment concerning religious icons. Dracula is warded by a Star of David and Dracula explains that “symbols of all Gods repulse me.” However it is not just the symbol (or the wielder’s faith) but also Dracula’s religious history that is important as “this star hasn’t nearly the power of the crucifix I once prayed to—still it’s very presence nauseates my unloving soul.”

The volume does end on a tease with an indication of a much bigger story about to occur. The trouble is that this volume, like 1 & 2, was published by Marvel in 2010 and once wonders when volumes 4-6 will appear.

7 out of 10

Enchanting Shadow – review

Director: Han Hsiang Li

Release date: 1960

Contains spoilers

Until recently told so, by Leila, I was unaware that firm favourite Hong Kong movie A Chinese Ghost Story was actually a remake. Discovering this made the original film a must find.

If you followed the link to A Chinese Ghost Story you will see that I looked at it is a ‘Vamp or Not?’ The upshot was a blog reader’s poll where it was decided that it should be classed as an Honourable Mention rather than a vampire flick – taking, as it does, some vampire tropes and drawing them into a story of demons and ghosts. I have mentioned before now that the word Guǐ means ghost but is also found in the kanji for vampire (which is suck blood ghost) and this leads to some crossover and confusion when considering Hong Kong cinema. However, this original film is definitely a vampire film (whether intended as one or not) and one produced by the Shaw Brothers. It was also shown at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, making it the first Mandarin film in colour to show at a major international film festival

the temple's pagoda

The story itself will be familiar to those who have seen A Chinese Ghost Story, though this is perhaps not as elaborate. It begins with two travellers arriving at Jinhua temple, a crumbling ruin of a complex. They bed down for the night. One of them hears laughter (male and female) and then the man’s scream. He runs in and sees his companion dead, bleeding from his foot. Something, unseen by the audience, moves towards him as he backs away in fear.

Lei Zhao as Ning Caichen

A horse and trap carries a young man, Ning Caichen (Lei Zhao), into town. The inn in town is full due to soldiers and refugees being in town (we discover later that the country has been invaded and is at war). Caichen asks whether there is a temple nearby and is told that the nearest is Jinhua, some ten miles north. The innkeeper also suggests that he wouldn’t want to stay there as it is reputed to be haunted, a suggestion Caichen laughs off. However he then discovers that the carriage drivers will not take him there. Eventually one agrees for an increased fare.

dancing with sword

When he gets to the temple he meets a swordsman called Yan Chixia (Chih-Ching Yang) – in the remake he is a Taoist swordsman, in this a Buddhist. Caichen asks whether the temple is haunted but Chixia suggests that it is superstition (though he actually knows more than he is letting on). Later in the evening Caichen hears the swordsman singing about a hermit’s life, they talk for a while but, as bells tinkle on a pagoda, he chivvies the young man to bed.

Betty Loh Ti as Nie Xiaoqian

Caichen sits up writing in his book (he is a rent collector by trade) rather than going to sleep and hears an instrument being played. He follows the music to a garden where he spies a beautiful woman, Nie Xiaoqian (Betty Loh Ti), playing and composing a poem. A string breaks and she spies his lurking shape but, just after she calls out to ask who is there, she is called to attend ‘grandmother’ (an honorific I suspect). The old woman is playing cards and, when she asks who Xiaoqian was speaking to and the girl denies anyone being there, jokes with her unnamed fellow card players and suggests it was a ghost.

Xiaoqian and Caichen

Meanwhile Caichen has snuck closer and finds her poem. He puts it on a desk but then starts making alterations to it. Xiaoqian catches him but likes his alterations. She has him write a poem to accompany a painting she has created but part way through the grandma catches them together and throws him out of the garden, accusing him of being a playboy and seducer of women. Later Xiaoqian goes to him and tries to seduce him but he spurns her (for proprieties sake). Her advances are orchestrated by grandma so she can devour him but, of course, his honourable nature brings them closer together (in this it is less romantic than in the remake and more a friendship where she trusts him to help her).

blood taken from foot

I won’t cover how their relationship develops in any further detail but I will have to discuss aspects of the lore surrounding grandma (also called, at times, old devil) and include in that the fact that she is eventually killed. We hear from the swordsman that she is a ghost herself, and from Xiaoqian that she dominates her because Xiaoqian is a weak spirit. She has Xiaoqian seduce men and then sucks their blood, drawing it through the foot. I had a look in Bane’s Vampire Encylcopedia for a vampire type that specifically draws the blood through the foot and only found the African vampiric witch the Axeman, who draws blood from the big toe. Thus, whilst not entirely unique, this manner of feeding is rare. (EDIT 26/12/12 - I have just been reminded of the Armenian legend of the Dakhanavar, who sucked blood through the sole of the foot, as documented by Baron August von Haxthausen in 1854.)

shadow

The film is called Enchanting Shadow but the shadow we see is that belonging to the grandma and it is menacing rather than enchanting. Of course seeing the shadow of the vampire as it approaches is a common movie trope that began with Nosferatu. There is no evidence, of course, to suggest that the earlier film actually inspired the use of the trope here, indeed we don’t know whether there was a conscious decision to make a vampire styled movie or whether it just so happened to involve tropes that are common within the vampire genre.

The old devil

That said we do know that the grandma has two faces, that of a normal looking, if somewhat severe, old woman and then a misshapen face with fangs. It is also interesting to note that, at the film's climax, the grandma is fighting the swordsman when the cock crows and she turns and runs. This isn’t a shock as the ghosts of Chinese cinema often vanish with the sun to reappear at night. We only see Xiaoqian at night or dusk and their beautiful garden is a wreck in daylight. The swordsman throws his sword and pierces the grandma as she runs and she rapidly decays to a skeleton – Chinese cinema ghosts are normally spectral but tied to their bones (indeed Caichen is transporting Xiaoqian’s bones back for reburial to help her reincarnate). When it comes to Grandma it would seem that she is that rare thing a vampiric ghost, at once spectral and physical, or that is my reading of the film.

rapid decomposition at death

The film is great and features some superb lighting (in places I'd go as far to say worthy of Bava) and excellent cinematography. All in all I do prefer the remake, possibly because it was the first version I saw but I do think, in honesty, it is a superior piece of cinema. There is no denying, however, that this is a worthy piece of Hong Kong film-making too. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.