The Bad Sister – review

Author: Emma Tennant

First Published: 1978

Contains spoilers

I have the novel the Bad Sister in the Emma Tennant omnibus of the same name. The Omnibus also contains the novels Two Women of London and Wild Nights. This review is looking at the Bad Sister only and I must thank my friend Leila who put me on to the book.

The story is actually a female centric reworking of the 1824 novel by James Hogg, “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner”. Though whilst the earlier novel concerned a world of angels, devils and possession, this novel concerns vampirism – though, in some senses, it is almost hidden within the pages. Whilst it is primarily a reworking in some respects it could also be a sequel.

It is told from two points of view. An unnamed TV journalist is re-investigating the murder of Michael Dalzell, the owner of an Estate in the Scottish borders, and his daughter Ishbel. The larger part of the novel is handed over to the journal of a woman named Jane, allegedly his illegitimate child.

The journalist looks into Dalzell’s past, he was a drinker and gambler (indeed he eventually lost his estates through gambling debts). On the night before his wedding, having lost hard in a London gaming room, he is confronted by a woman named Mary, a shop-girl whom he had a dalliance with and is now pregnant with his child. Some years later it appears that Mary turned up at his estates with Jane, her daughter, and a mysterious woman called Margaret or Meg. For those who knew him he seemed unusually tolerant as they squatted in one of his cottages, especially after it turned into a women’s commune and some of the alleged behaviour that went on, though other evidence suggests that he actually gave the cottage to Mary.

A friend of Jane, Stephen, contacts the journalist and provides Jane’s journal  The prose style changes here and becomes very thick in the language, poetic and almost lost as Jane describes her life and her relationship with Meg, a woman she reveres and fears and holds some kind of power over her. Meg is sending Jane on ‘journeys’, preparing her, and has promised her a mysterious man (through her journal she is dismissive to the point of abhorrence of her boyfriend/partner Tony). The man is Gil-Martin and this is why I said sequel as Gil-Martin is a central character in the original novel, and the journalist mentions summoning him from the seventeenth century – which is when the original book was set.

The aim of these journeys is to prepare Jane to kill her bad sister. Through her journal we lose sense of who the bad sister is; is it a part of Jane, is it Miranda (Tony’s friend, or possibly ex or current lover), is it Ishbel. The inference is, from the journalist, that Jane killed her sister. Though the journal does not mention her father contemporaneously to the journal, the journalist is sure that she killed him under hypnosis (the police suspect is his daughter, though which one is never clarified). All that said, the journal might be the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic and a psychiatrist says as much.

The vampirism comes into the book later in the journal. To prepare Jane, Meg bites her and suckles her blood. This leads to changes in Jane, she feels ill during the day and when she walks into a kitchen filled with garlic bulbs she is overcome by the stench (garlic is mentioned later, in the scene the bulbs are described but never named). When she strikes at “the bad sister” it is in the form of Miranda, Jane’s teeth grow and she bites her. By this time she has no reflection, though perhaps Miranda is her reflection. She then leaves this world through one of the journeys, as Meg promised, though how she did this and got the journal to Stephen is one of the story’s idiosyncrasies. Such things are fine as the book deliberately leaves us on unsure ground.

Whilst Jane says she is leaving by ship, she also describes the appearance of Gil-Martin near her mother’s cottage. The coda to the story is the journalist hearing of strange goings on near Dalzell’s old estates, with workers unwilling to chop down a copse of trees due to supernatural disturbances on the work site. He investigates and finds a shallow grave, marked with a stick. The grave contains a well preserved corpse, the face smooth, the dyed hair grown out in the grave. The stick that marked the grave also pierced through the corpse's chest. It was positively identified as Jane.

Was she a vampire? She believed she was and that Meg was, according to her journal. She, at the very least, acted like one and may have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia or a.n.other mental health impairment, possibly including clinical vampirism. There is the suggestion that she was under hypnotic compulsion, but she might just have been a vampire. We are left to wonder.

The journal section is not the easiest of reads, as I say it is poetic and lush to the point of being thick. It doesn’t become too much of a chore and the style is absolutely necessary. Overall though I was convinced, the more I read, at just what a good film the straight retelling of this book would make. It would be an artistic, confusing traipse through the psyche of a woman possibly manipulated psychologically or supernaturally, possibly deluded and possibly a vampire. 6.5 out of 10.

Honourable Mention: Thale

This is part of my attempt to highlight some films that, whilst not vampire films, have some genre interest. It is also forms part of the many interesting films that seem to be coming out of Norway at the moment.

Thale concerns a Huldra. For those unfamiliar with the creatures, the following is from Theresa Bane’s Encyclopaedia of vampire Mythology (p126). The entry is for Skogsfru but Huldra is given as a variant:

Skogsfru (Scocks- FRU)
Variations: Huldra, Skogsra, Swor, Tallemaja, Wood Wife, Wood Woman
In Scandinavia there is a type of vampiric fay that looks like a beautiful woman with long auburn HAIR and a cow tail. It is called skogsfru. It lives in the woods and usually approaches a young man at night while he is at rest in his campsite. It tries to use its beauty to seduce him. While engaged in sexual intercourse, it will drain him of his life- energy (see ENERGY VAMPIRE). On occasion, the skogsfru will decide not to harm the man and marry him instead. Sadly, their union will not last as it is a fay, an inherently wild creature, and will eventually return to the woods. The abandoned husband will slowly begin to die, longing for its touch. It is considered an unlucky omen to see a skogsfru, as it causes madness in its lovers.

Huldra

Whilst the Huldra would only have to come in the broadest definition of vampire, whilst using a comparative mythology basis, I decided that it was of interest. To be clear, the film features nothing vampiric (and certainly nothing that might denote an energy vampire) but it is certainly a rare beast cinema-wise. So, what about the film?

Elvis is unwell

Well it was a 2012 film directed by Aleksander Nordaas and follows Leo (Jon Sigve Skard) and Elvis (Erlend Nervold), though the film never told us I got the sense that they were brothers (or had been as close as brothers) who had been estranged for a while. After an opening that showed a tape reel with a man’s voice (Roland Astrand) addressing a girl and her scream, we meet the pair. Elvis is throwing up whilst Leo cleans up blood. Leo is part of a crime scene cleaning company and Elvis has stepped in to help out, and make some much needed money.

the baby

We cut to a scene as a camera moves pov through a wood, with a voiceover by the man from the tape. We hear the man suggest that it had been nine years since he found her (the girl he is addressing) and that he should have left her. As the camera moves into a small cave area below a tree, and the sound of a baby crying fills the scene, we move into darkness and then, in a brief flash, we see a baby but the skin is grey. She is clearly not human.

Elvis and Leo

Elvis and Leo are called to a house in the woods. The partial remains of an old man have been found, worried and scattered by wild animals, and they have to find the rest of him and clean the scene up. As Elvis digs through bundles of firewood in the shed he discovers a concealed door. Leo tells him to leave it but he opens it and goes through to a basement area. Ignoring instructions he goes through to another room – a stockroom with out of date canned foods. He again disobeys instruction and enters a further room. This looks like a survivalist den meets a mad scientist’s lair.

emerging from the bath

As Leo goes to phone the discovery through to his boss (and await instructions/inspection), Elvis breaks the rules again and plays with a tape deck – tapes marked Thale are narrated by the man we have heard through the beginning of the film, and he was the man found dead and scattered by animals. Suddenly, from a bath of milky liquid, a naked woman (Silje Reinåmo) emerges – pulling a tube from her mouth. She is cold and weak, it seems, and the men put her on a table. Soon, however, she has Elvis in a chokehold.

Thale, with tail

The film then follows the building of a trust between Thale, the woman, and the men (Elvis primarily). She does not speak but can hum a tune and later communicates telepathically, by touching Elvis’ face and showing him images of her life. We see her being treated/experimented on by the man who eventually steals her from the facility and takes her to the woods. They live below ground to avoid those they ran from. We hear him say that she physically looks different from her sisters but that is probably an adaptation/survival technique (her sisters are more animalistic, as we will see). A fridge contains a severed cow tail, which the old man cut off her.

impaled by gun

Meanwhile men from the facility now know where she is (later we hear that her unique metabolism – which is controlled by the liquid in the bath – creates a thermal fingerprint that can be searched for and tracked. I assume it is the opening of the fridge, exposing the (untreated for some time) tail, which pings their sensors (we are never told directly). Also her kind are closing in as well…

one of Thale's sisters

The film left much unanswered and probably could have done with some more exposition but, in some respects, the mystery made it more interesting. There is a side story about Elvis and Leo and the secrets they keep from each other. We do get some lore – beyond the tail, the telepathy and the strange metabolism. Thale is said to be able to elicit empathy to the point that a man will do anything to help her, that is akin to what Bane says about a Skogsfru seducing a young man. We see her take a dead blossom in her hand and, closing it over the flower, somehow causes the flower to become alive and in bloom again. This is energy manipulation but giving rather than taking; there is no evidence offered of her, or her sisters, draining anyone.

So, an unusual creature, an unusual film. It isn’t perfect but I rather like it. I would have preferred it to have soft coded subtitles on the UK DVD rather than the hardcoded ones included, but that’s just me.

The imdb page is here.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 – review

Director: Bill Condon

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

So, the Twilight Saga of films comes to an end and you know what, I didn’t hate this one – at least I liked it more than some in the series. That’s not to say that the film isn’t fatally flawed, it is, but up to a point I could see why fans of the series might like this one. I’ll walk you through that point with a really big spoiler but I figure either you have already seen the film or you will forever avoid its sparkly celluloid presence.

Part of the fatal flaw came in the pacing, very much like Breaking Dawn part 1. You see they could have cut the detritus from this film and the former and made one well-paced movie. But then they wouldn’t have been able to scam two films worth of money out of the fans.

super-Bella

The film starts where the last left off, with Bella (Kristen Stewart, Snow White and the Huntsman) as a new-born vampire. She wants to see her baby, Renesmee (later in the film played by Mackenzie Foy), but Edward (Robert Pattinson) wants her to quench her thirst first (a thirst that she apparently doesn’t feel until he points it out). So off they go into the woods and run around for a bit as she tries out her vampire speed etc.

sparkles

She is about to leap on a deer when she detects a climber, who conveniently grazes his knee. And she’s off like a bat out of Hell, Edward chasing after her. She’s almost up the cliff face when Edward reaches her and she pulls herself from the brink, returns to the deer and takes out a mountain lion that was hunting it. Edward is impressed with her monumental control. They head back to see the baby.

creepy

Which is CGI. What the Hell? They couldn’t cast a baby for five minutes screen time? It looks CGI… not that the CGI is bad as such but it is just not human, moves all wrong and is very, very creepy. This is the nearest the Twilight Saga gets to real horror and it was just a bad effect choice. Anyway, Bella discovers that Jacob (Taylor Lautner) has bonded with the baby and is unhappy, but that passes quickly enough. They are going to tell her dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), that she has died and leave the area so Jacob then reveals his wolf secret to Charlie and tells him that Bella is back…

evil little bugger

So Irina (Maggie Grace) comes to visit the Cullens and sees Renesmee. Believing her to be an immortal child, rather than a fast growing, now approximately seven year old, hybrid (as a hybrid is she technically a dhampir, I guess she is) she goes to the Volturi and reports the Cullen’s crime. Alice (Ashley Greene) has a vision of the Volturi coming to kill them all (and legs it but she is on a mission of her own really) and Bella is told of vampire children who remained at their mental age when turned and were wiped out as a risk to the vampire secret by the Volturi. The Cullens search for witnesses to attest to the fact that they have broken no laws and, with more and more vampires there, more of Jacob’s tribe transform into wolves.

killing Aro

OK… spoiler. The film dragged along a bit and could have done with less of the beginning and more exploring of the other vampires. However the witnesses (now convinced to fight) and the wolves prepare to battle the Venturi, Alice returns (with another hybrid) and offers Aro (Michael Sheen, Underworld & Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) a view of what she found. All Hell breaks out and a battle occurs. Now this wasn't in the book but the film gains some much needed momentum and, whilst it isn’t bloody, it is fun. It goes on until Bella and Edward kill Aro.

Michael Sheen, coming to a panto soon

And it is all a vision and nothing has happened and it is the most crass of filmic techniques, akin to the old false awakening scene that plagues films or Bobby Ewing in the shower. By the way, the distinction between werewolves and shapeshifters isn’t mentioned and so, in the film, I guess the wolves are still werewolves (they aren’t in the books). The film itself isn’t as bad as some in the series but pulls the rug from under its own feet with the false ending - for me they should have parted with the book and had the battle for real, dead characters and all. Alternatively they could have ended without the battle at all (as it was only there to provide a climax, albeit a faked orgasm rather than the real deal) and ended on a damp squib.

wolves

There was a comment needed to be made over an Eastern European accent that sounds Scottish at times and Pattinson and Stewart have all the chemistry of a wet lettuce – she is as miserable as always. Michael Sheen is in full on Pantomime mode, I await his presence in a Christmas production as the dame – this role would be perfect practice. The rest of the acting is how you would expect given the rest of the series and the fact that actors who have actually offered good performances during the series are marginalised in the subsequent movies. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Seven Kinds of Hell

The Blurb: When archaeologist Zoe Miller’s cousin is abducted by a vicious Russian “businessman” she must come to grips with a haunting secret: unknown to even her closest friends, Zoe is not entirely human. She is a werewolf and the daughter of the “Fangborn”, a secret race of werewolves, vampires and oracles.

Zoe’s rescue attempt leads her on a quest for artefacts and Pandora’s Box, a relic of mysterious and deadly power.With the fate of humanity in the balance, Zoe will be forced to renew family ties and pit her own bestial abilities against a dark and nefarious foe.

The Investigation: Another urban fantasy book with the elements that we have come to expect: a female protagonist with a chequered and painful past, a secret stash of abilities to tap into and written in first person. These series are becoming two a penny and they have to do something spectacular and/or unique to make readers sit up and pay attention.

Dana Cameron has gone down the unique path, creating her own lore of a group of supernatural creatures who don’t necessarily conform to the standard tropes. The Fangborn are of three varieties (all interlinked societally and genetically it would seem). These are oracles (hardly seen in novel and, apparently, fangless. They have visions of course), werewolves (which can take wolf or wolfman form, have constant mass, unusually, and like all the creatures in this are born not made) and vampires (of a snake like variety).

Zoe’s mother was an oracle, but was unaware of it. She had been committed to an asylum (we discover this was more insidious later in the novel) but once out she met Zoe’s father. Unbeknown to herself he was a wolf. Having seen some of his handy work, that handy work being ripped up corpses, and assuming it to be mob related, Zoe’s mum ran and Zoe spent her formative years moving from town to town (her mother getting hunches, due to her nature as an oracle, whenever Zoe’s father’s family were getting close).

At the start of the book her mother has died and Zoe, who has spent a lot of time trying to deny that she is insane following delusional episodes when she believes she has become a wolf (of course they aren’t delusions), comes face to face with an underworld of supernatural creatures. Because she pocketed an artefact, having had an urge she didn’t understand, she is drawn into a factional world where humans, government agencies and fangborn alike search for the keys to open Pandora’s Box.

Cameron makes the Fangborn good; they have an instinct to kill evildoers. This, of course, is morally grey as it is vigilante 'justice'. It also leads to an ends justify the means mentality and this is shown within the book. The fact that the US Government have a liaison body with the secretive creatures seemed strange (one would have thought they wouldn’t want werewolves and vampires going vigilante on their citizens, criminal or not). The idea of evil Fangborn (a strenuously denied concept) dangled at the end of the book was fascinating though.

So why ‘Vamp or Not?’ Well the vampires are more like snakes, they are born and they were altogether off when it came to lore. They relish being in sunlight – now whilst I don’t necessarily care if a book relies on the Nosferatu-developed sunlight rule, actually relishing the sunlight seemed out with vampirism to me. We even hear of vampires being tortured by being kept in the dark. They do have fangs and can inject a venom that causes memory loss and enables mind control or a bite can be used to “clean blood and heal”.

Of course cleaning blood at least involves blood but it isn’t vampirism. None of the normal apotropaic measures work – bar a stake through the heart but that is just because such trauma would kill anyone. The Fangborn are not immortal but are long-lived.

After all that I had to say to myself, when is a vampire (named as such) not a vampire? The answer being, when they are a Fangborn vampire. They seem more like lamia than vampire (and I am aware of the lamia/vampire crossover and have classed some lamia material as vampire in the past). The book itself is well enough written but it is just one of innumerate urban fantasy novels. I would say that you might well enjoy it, but it didn’t do enough for me to actively pursue the series. Not Vamp.

A shorter version of this article first appeared on Amazon UK as part of the Vine Programme

Vampire Tales Vol 3 – review

Author: Various

Artist: Various

First Published: 2010 (this format)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Prepare to be horrified by all the blood, bats, fangs and coffins you can hanle!

Witness Morbius the Living Vampire desperate for blood, unleashed upon the Old West and in the clutches of the mysterious Morgana! See Blade the Vampire Slayer in action against the legions of the unliving dead! Experience the tragic tale of Barnado Latta and the impossible quest of Zarathon! Including a surprise appearance by Jack the Ripper!

The review: Sadly, and despite the proliferation of exclamation marks (once again) in the blurb, I was less enthused by this third collection of Vampire Tales (including parts of #8-11) than I was by the first or second volumes. That isn’t to say that there was anything wrong with the stories or the artwork. Hell we even got an appearance by Blade.

The problem was encapsulated by me saying “parts of”. Whereas we got fairly straight facsimiles of the originals in vol 1 and 2, including articles, this was lacking articles and, apparently, lacking some of the comic strips. So the “in the next issue” of # 9 mentions Blade, the # 10 cover, as reproduced in the volume, mentions Blade (wanted for murder) but there is no Blade comic strip reproduced in the # 10 section of the volume (or in the #11 section, ironic given the cover for the volume).

There is a lot of Morbius so perhaps the editor decided to follow the Morbius story in this volume, forgoing other stories but, frankly, the joy of these volumes was the full reproduction. A shame. What is there is great, what isn't reduces the score; 6 out of 10.

Brides of Sodom – review

Director: Creep Creepersin

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

It was the director’s name that gave me pause to thought. It sounded a little too much like another (really bad) director’s name. Later I would discover that Creep Creepersin is head honcho of the horror-punk/goth combo Creepersin.

However, a vampire film is a vampire film and, you know what, it’s nice when you are pleasantly surprised. Not that this is perfect. Indeed it is far from perfect in many respects. But it is one that had real heart and jumps up high onto the guilty pleasure list. It also stars a couple of familiar faces from gay interest vampire series the Lair.

witches

After some remarkably effective shots during the opening credits we get a couple of witches waving their arms above a cauldron, talking about the end of *his* clan by making someone fall in love with a human. We then get a quick run through of the world in which we have landed, We see a broken city and hear about the great war. A war to end all wars. In short a nuclear war and, in the sun blotted depths of nuclear winter, the rising of the vampires to take control.

post nuclear devastation

Out on the streets and humans look around warily, armed with machettes. Flashes of movements is responded to with no fight back, just arms severed and blood spilling (it is viscerally gory in places, which is nice) Clearly the humans are no match for the vampires. Later we discover that this is artificial. The humans are in, what could be best described as, free range cages, the vampires’ hunting class little more than collection agents. We see a group of humans chained and led away. This was one of the problems. The entire human aspect seems important, especially when we discover there are only three left in that area and they decide to fight back, but it really isn’t in the grand scheme. Perhaps the film had a little too much ambition in places.

feed

The hunter, Eros (David Taylor), presents the catch to vampire Lord Dyonisus (Dylan Vox, The Lair, Vampire Boys & Scab) – incorrect spelling of Dionysus as per IMDb – who has vampire Persephone (Rachel Zeskind) dance before he lets the court chow down on the humans. During the dance one human, Samuel (Domiziano Arcangeli), slips his bonds but does not run away. We later hear, in a scene with the remaining humans, that he had longed to be taken by the vampires and turned.

Eros and a satroi

Apparently Eros is fascinated by him and, having checked him over, Dyonisus decides that he can be kept alive for Eros on the condition that Eros does not make him any kind of undead – in the film we see gay-scene fetish models with hoods over their heads who are called satrois and are, apparently, undead sex slaves. Samuel is sent to the dungeon and Eros has a date with Persephone. Given the fact that David Taylor is named on the DVD box as a gay porn star and there are several actors from the Lair, this was a somewhat surprising direction for the film as I assumed it would be purely gay interest. Later we discover that Persephone is Eros’ sister.

Beverly Lynne as the dungeon mistress

Whilst Eros is busy, Dyonisus visits Samuel and looks him over, letting us know that he has kept him alive as he perceives the human to be the first sign of weakness that Eros has ever shown. It is worth mentioning a cameo here by Beverly Lynne (also the Lair, Twilight Vamps, Kiss Me if you Dare, Tomb of the Werewolf and Haunting Desires) as a dungeon mistress. Anyway, Eros comes to Samuel for some sex, during which the mysterious Dominic (Peter Stickles, also the Lair) whispers in Persphone’s ear, letting her know what her brother is up to. The Dominic character is never explained but is a manipulator of the pieces on a larger board.

bloody face

After Dyonisus rapes Samuel, Eros decides that he and the human should run away – and also turns Samuel. Of course this betrayal does not please Dyonisus. We won’t go any further and we haven’t even got into the other, witch related, plot. But you know, for a piece on a budget this did really well. The acting might have been a little overtly melodramatic, soap like even, but it fit the mood of the film and managed to resist falling into too much campness. The story was in turns simple and overly complex in that it tried to stretch a little too far. If that sentence seems contradictory I can’t help it, the film did seem like that. The pacing was a little off in places but the relationship of Eros and Samuel was filmed in a way that seemed genuinely romantic.

Dylan Vox as Dyonisus

I wasn’t sure why Dyonisus' face was permanently in a Buffy-vampire-face mode, but there you go. I did wonder as to how the humans seemed to have tattoos when they were living free range, as it were, in a broken city block. This was probably not pre-war ink as Samuel doesn’t know what a bar is and so some time must have passed since the war. The timescales, thus, also seemed a little strained (would a nuclear winter last so very long?) Location wise the film knew its limitations and worked within them – which was positive.

I liked it. Most will probably disagree with me, but I did. A guilty pleasure that was easily better than the sum of its parts. 5.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

Dracula – Blu-Ray

The wonderful Hammer film Dracula, also called Horror of Dracula, has received a UK Blu-Ray release.

The set is three discs, a blu-ray of the film with extras and 2 DVDs, one of the feature and one of extras. Actually there are two films on the Blu-Ray and two on DVD disc 1 as the BFI 2007 restoration of the film is included along with the Hammer 2012 restoration.

The difference? About three minutes of running length as additional footage from the “Japanese reels” are restored into the film, adding extra footage of the seduction of Mina and in the disintegration scene. Below is a scene from the extra Mina footage, with some low key smooching that the BBFC decided was just too much originally. As you can see the quality is a little lower but the extras show us just how damaged the unrestored reels were and they have done a good job.

From the Japanese Reels

There has been some complaints that the colour scheme is colder and this is confirmed in the following two screenshots that show Mina from the seduction scene. The still of the new restoration is top and the bottom still is taken from the 2005 DVD. Note that all screenshots from the new release are from the DVD as I am unable to screenshot Blu-Ray.

2012 restoration is colder

from the 2005 DVD

Whilst there have been complaints, Hammer have suggested that this is how the colour was meant to be and that it was made warmer in the US Technicolor labs. However, even on a DVD to DVD comparison we can see that the film is crisper, as illustrated in this classic shot (new version top and 2005 DVD bottom again).

the 2012 restoration is crisper

from the 2005 DVD

A definite must have for a Hammer/Dracula fan’s collection and thanks to Sarah for purchasing the Blu-Ray for me.

Dear Dracula – review

Directed by: Chad Van De Keere

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

This was a 2012 Halloween short animated film that aired via the Cartoon Network and was released (in the first instance) exclusively through Wal-Mart. Concentrating entirely on Dracula, rather than going down a monster mash route, it actually managed to maintain a respect for the genre (vampire and the monster movies of yore) and pulled in some surprisingly famous voice talent.

The story is based on the graphic children’s book by Joshua Williamson and illustrated by Vicente Navarrete. In the book Sam (Nathan Gamble) writes to Dracula (Ray Liotta) because he wants to be a vampire. Not the case in this version, which is more about helping the “odd-ball kid” recognise the value of their own individuality. The resultant animation isn’t perfect, and it does have a dose of saccharine, but it is a cut above some franchises that were flying about.

Webber

It begins with a spider, the oddly sentient pet Webber, who hears a scream. He runs from the tree he is spinning on towards the house and discovers that the scream was from the TV. Sam and his Gran (Marion Ross) are watching a horror movie. The adverts come on, advertising a Dracula action figure, complete with coffin, fangs and hypno eyes. Sam wants one (and isn’t happy when Gran calls it a doll). She suggests that he should write Santa but he rationalises that Halloween is nearer - he’ll write Dracula.

Dracula has lost his scare

As a mailman (Matthew Lillard, Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire & Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The Secret Serum) races through the Transylvanian night we cut to Dracula’s castle. Inside Dracula is successfully scaring his henchman Mirroe (Emilio Estevez) but laments the fact that he has lost his scare. When he gets Sam’s letter (from a petrified mailman) he decides to visit the lad rather than send him an action figure.

Gran and Sam

Back to America and Sam is decorating the front of his house ready for Halloween. A girl from across the street, Emma (Ariel Winter, Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred), comes past with her friends. Her friends (a cool boy and cheerleader twins) dislike Sam and are disdainful, whereas Emma likes him and invites him to her party (he ostensibly refuses, though she doesn’t accept the answer and asks Webber – who has scared the others off – to work on him).

movie marathons

Mirroe arrive, with Dracula in coffin. He drags his master up to the porch (so he isn’t in direct sunlight when the door is answered) and knocks. Gran dislikes door to door salesman and gives them short shrift. Trapped between a broom wielding geriatric and sunlight, Dracula eye mojos her and gains entry. He introduces himself to Sam and they sit to watch a movie marathon. Having seen a vampire film Dracula is disgusted – we only hear a line by a girl “Edmund, you will be mine”, and Dracula’s comment about sparkles; yes it is the virtually obligatory (it seems) Twilight reference. This film is followed by a modern horror and Dracula has had enough, drifting out into the night and failing to scare trick-or-treaters. Hearing about the party, Dracula enters a deal with Sam. Sam will help him get his scare back and he will help Sam be himself and be able to go the party.

eye mojo

That’s about it. Dracula does get his scare back, Sam does go to the party, there is another sideswipe about modern vampires (the cool kid’s costume amounts to nothing but a pair of fangs), Emma is a classic movie fan. The embracing of the old monster movie monsters (although even Dracula wonders why the Mummy was deemed scary) is met with sideswipes not only at the romantic vampire but also torture porn type films (gruesome not scary, says Dracula – though Mirroe’s reaction says otherwise).

The animation was fair enough but nothing special, to be honest. Again, the voice acting was absolutely fine but one questions why one would bother with the expense (or at least I imagine it was an expense) of hiring Ray Liotta when his talent is trapped behind a faux-Bela Lugosi accent for the entire film. All in all this was okay. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Dracula Chronicles: Bound by Blood (vol 1)

The Blurb: The Dracula Chronicles is the brilliant and terrifying new concept of Dracula. It is an epic journey through the ages where the forces of Light and Darkness struggle for supremacy until the Second Great War, as foretold in the Book of Revelations. This bitter feud began after the creation of mankind. Lucifer’s jealousy leads to the First Great War of the angels. Hundreds of thousands of years on the feud simmers beneath the surface. It plots the course of history as we know it today. Both sides manipulate the major players through the centuries to seek an advantage over the other.

On a cold night in December 1431 in Sighisoara an old gypsy woman delivers a prophecy to the great Vlad Dracul. She tells him he is about to sire two sons, one an angel and the other a devil. He returns to his fortress just as his wife bears him a son, whom he names Vlad. In the very same moment across the country on the border between Transylvania and Hungary a gypsy girl gives birth to another son, Andrei. The die is cast. The twin souls are born. The young Vlad Dracula becomes the instrument of the forces of Darkness. To balance this, the baby Andrei is blessed by the angels and bestowed with awesome powers. These chronicles are their story.

The Mention: Honourably Mentioned as author Shane KP O'Neill is a friend on facebook, this 2012 offering explores an alternate history as experienced by Vlad Ţepeş in, what is the first of two volumes within a wider chronicle series. Now I trust that you know that Bram Stoker did not base the title character of Dracula on Vlad Ţepeş, Dracula was a borrowed name and a footnote, nothing more, and this has been convincingly and repeatedly proved by Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller. However it is also true that Ţepeş and Dracula the vampire are now forever interweaved in modern folklore.

Thus, whilst I bristle at versions of the novel that try to make that connection I am sanguine when a novel (or film) uses Ţepeş as its basis in its own right. What Shane O’Neill has done is take a historical figure, imbibe him with modern (and religiously based) lore rather than sticking canonically to Stoker’s lore and created a tale of a brutal and violent vampire.

This vampire has been created by Lucifer as part of his war against heaven – we also meet more briefly his twin-souled brother who is heaven’s agent. The turning process was like that of much vampire lore but it was the devil feeding Ţepeş his own blood. The primary vampire is pretty darn untouchable by mortal hands and thus there is a convoluted method of killing him that involves his soul brother and the brother’s seven sons. I say primary as he is able to make other vampires.

The novel walks through history, bending it into a vampiric shape, culminating in Dracula manipulating Martin Luther, causing the schism in Christianity part of his duty as he prowls through time towards the second great war. The novel also has a brutality to it. These vampires kill and maim, they rape and sadistically sexually torture victims. There is also the ability to be redeemed - not that many wish this.

The violence could be a bit much for some – I welcome it, vampires should have a dark side and these certainly do. I said that Stoker’s lore is not necessarily stuck to. Holy items need a faith behind them (though neither the devil nor Dracula can enter the Vatican), sunlight burns vampires – there is a get out to this. If Dracula feeds upon a foetus it confers the ability to withstand daylight (though not direct sunlight) and to become invisible at will.

It was nice to delve into history, when many authors are in a modern urban fantasy mode, it was great to have brutality, when many vampires seem to be potential boyfriends. I can live with it featuring Ţepeş as this is not Stoker canon. Gory fun.

Dracula Reborn – review

Director: Patrick McManus

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

Well this modern retelling of Dracula certainly came out of leftfield for me. It just kind of appeared on Amazon and it is a modern retelling – though the vampire is not called Dracula and the story is loose.

As well as being present day, the action is moved to the US and that makes the choice of English primaries, in a couple of the roles, interesting to say the least.

Stuart Rigby as Vladimir Sarkany

It all starts off with a woman (Christianna Carmine) entering a parking lot and speaking about a property on her cell phone, one that isn’t for sale. She is aware of a presence, it seems, and we see a translucent figure. Her key fob seems to be failing to unlock her car and suddenly a man, Vladimir Sarkany (Stuart Rigby), is there. He addresses her as Miss Hawkins and says that the refusal to sell a Malibu property to him has not been communicated properly to him. His eyes are black and she seems dazed.

vamp face on

As we get the opening credits, with a piece of music that seemed to, at the very least, owe a phrase or two to the theme of Dracula (1992) I want to ponder a couple of things here. We see his face in the glass of the car – eschewing a primary piece of Stoker lore. Hawkins does not reappear in the story and so I assume that the Malibu property is the one we see as Sarkany’s home later. Finally Sarkany, who is Dracula though he is never called so, has an English accent… why? Because the English make good villains? Certainly his name suggested Eastern European but we never get back story.

showing him around

Jonathon Harker (Corey Landis) drives to a building in the rough side of town. He goes in and uses his phone for light despite the fact that the lighting (for filming purposes) is more than adequate. The electrics, he discovers, are off despite said light. His client, Sarkany, appears along with his right hand man Renfield (Ian Pfister). Renfield has a torch, Harker is a realtor and the property is for sale. As they leave Harker confesses that the property is not in a good neighbourhood and Sarkany may wish to consider other properties. On queue three hommies appear and threaten the men but the vampire’s black eyes cause them to retreat in fear. Sarkany states he will buy the property – later he will come back and kill the hommies.

post rumpy-pumpy

Harker goes home. He is a newlywed and he and his wife, Lina (Victoria Summer), enjoy some off screen rumpy pumpy. Why she had an English accent is not explored and the accent, as well as her wooden acting, stood out like a sore thumb. She wants children, he is unsure, and this leads to disquiet. When Harker takes papers to Sarkany he spots a portrait that looks just like her (in the most unflattering ways). This, of course, is a device that was introduced into the Dracula lore-book in the 1973 Dracula. Harker shows Sarkany pictures of his wife and will later bring her around.

unflattering portrait

Leaving his client’s home, he finds himself accosted by a man – Quincy Morris (Krash Miller) – who has hidden in his car and tells him that his girlfriend, Lucy, was killed by Sarkany and asks to be taken to the police. After Harker takes Lina over to Sarkany’s place she becomes predated upon and, through Morris, he is introduced to a very young Van Helsing (Keith Reay). Seward is in the film in the form of family doctor Joan (Dani Lennon). And that is about all…

young Van Helsing

You see it is kind of more based on Dracula than a make of Dracula and it suffers for some poor effects (the body in a trunk was a doozy), some wooden acting and lack of back story. We don’t know where Sarkany has come from, or why he is there. Clearly Hawkins is a realtor, so is Harker and so was Lucy… why so many? What was the deal with Renfield and why did he vanish entirely in the finale? What was the truth of the Lina-like portrait, I have assumed it was reincarnation but though it is hinted at it isn’t confirmed?

eating the family dog

Lore adds more questions. Crosses do not work as this vampire is non-denominational (as the script expressly says) and yet, on at least two occasions, satanic symbolism is used and Sarkany calls himself the devil. As Satanism is, by default, a form of Christianity he is not non-denominational. Vampirism, it seems, causes a foreign element to be seen in blood but it is neither a virus or bacteria. Sunlight hurts (at least), a stake through the heart kills and silver will slow a vampire down. Lina’s eat the family dog moment nearly worked well if eating kitten scenes hadn’t beaten it in the seventies - plus even the script suggests she looks more like a zombie.

I wasn’t convinced and yet the film might have been an average movie but for the wooden acting (more than anything) and the lack of exposition. As it is, it falls below average. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Being Human – season 5 - review

Director: various

First aired: 2013

Contains spoilers

So Being Human (UK) comes to an end (the BBC announcers assertion on the 6th episode’s introduction that it would be the last ever episode conveniently ignoring the superior US version).

The series starts without any of the original cast. The housemates are now vampire Hal (Damien Molony), werewolf Tom (Michael Socha) and ghost Alex (Kate Bracken). They still live in Barry, Wales and this is where things go wrong.

Colin Hoult as Crumb

As Hal fell from the blood wagon in the last series, Alex and Tom have been forcing him to go cold turkey, strapped into a chair. As such Tom and Hal lose their jobs in a greasy spoon café and have to get new jobs. They end up working at the grand hotel. Just before his interview Hal is approached by Mr Rook (Steven Robertson) – one of the men in grey from the last series, civil servants whose job is to keep the supernatural hidden. Having refused Rook’s offer to take over the vampires of the UK, Hal has a street side conflict with an office worker Ian (Colin Hoult), reveals his vampire side and causes the man to be run over – to save his life he turns him.

the devil lives in Barry

Through episode one we see scenes from the past when the vampires and werewolves were constantly at war. Hal and werewolf Lady Catherine (Victoria Ross) realise that the devil is causing them to fight – their species were both created by him, it seems, and a vampire’s lack of reflection is called Old Nick’s Wink (all of a sudden). Their conflict feeds the devil. To destroy the devil they perform a ritual, with a ghost, where the devil is pulled into a human – a lunatic, conveniently masked – but Hal’s inherent selfishness makes it go wrong. The devil escapes but is trapped inside the lunatic's body. He now lives in the grand hotel as the wheelchair bound Captain Hatch (Philip Davis). This is where it lost me… conveniently the devil lives in Barry.

Steven Robertson as Rook

As Rook’s department closes due to budget cuts – and sorry, whilst I appreciated the commentary on ridiculous budget cuts I couldn’t buy the idea that an ultra-secret service would be axed like that – he gets drawn into Hatch’s plans. It seems that conflict between vampires and werewolves could power him up again… but we have just had two seasons of vampire/werewolf conflict in Barry, much more than happens in this season to be honest. Again it didn’t fit. We career towards an Armageddon end game, with Hatch causing all and sundry to commit suicide but if the over-all premise of the series struck an off-kilter note then what about the performances?

Kathryn Prescott as Natasha

Kate Bracken as Alex brought a breath of fresh air to the cast as the tom-boyish Alex. Supporting cast member Philip Davis was excellent as Hatch and in episode 5 we meet a reluctant operative of the men in grey named Natasha (Kathryn Prescott) who was superbly acted and wasted by only being in one episode. However other performances were not so good. Probably the worst offender was Colin Hoult whose character Ian becomes the vampire Crumb – possibly a comedy character, this was pantomime and, frankly, the BBC at its worst.

men with sticks and ropes

Lore came and went. Hal kisses Alex at one point their reaction ignoring the fact that such contact is either impossible or difficult for ghosts. His fall from the wagon with bottled blood forgets that we established in the first season that bottled blood is no good. We meet the men with sticks and ropes at long last but it turns out that they are ‘Hatch’s boys’. It is then suggested that ghosts, like vampires and werewolves, are creatures from the devil and this misses all the point of the last four seasons.

Alex escapes the grave

Individual characters kept my interest but the overall story and lore slips left me cold. I am actually rather glad the series has come to an end and look forward to seeing season 3 of the US series instead. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.