Honourable Mentions: The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

I haven’t properly gamed for a few months. A lot of work related travelling, the blog and finishing the degree I was doing kind of precluded anything more complicated than a simple android app. I do have the vampire stealth game Dark pre-ordered but when I noticed a game called The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing I had to give it a go.

Its Steampunk vibe probably makes this action RPG the illegitimate son of the film Van Helsing. In it you, the son of Van Helsing, and your ghost companion the Lady Katarina, are asked to go to the city of Borgova, on the banks of the Lugosi river. Borgova, however, has been usurped by a mad scientist and (to the point I am in the game) you are working with the vampire Vlados to put an end to the technocrat’s reign of terror.

The game itself could be summed up with the term hack-and-slash-a-go-go. Enemies swarm the screen as mouse buttons are mashed and it is great fun. Think games such as Diablo or Dungeon Siege. And, of course, you are Van Helsing Jr, with a gun and a really big sword. You can get the game via Steam.

Dracula, Lord of the Damned – review

Directors: Ian Case, Brian Clement & Theodore Trout

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

This is a tough one to review as it is a film with a very low budget, lots of ideas and, clearly, it is a labour of love. That said, when negative about it I will try and be constructive, as for everything negative there was a counter-balance of a brilliant idea.

The film is a remake of Dracula and so is ambitious from the get-go. I have read that this is one of the few that retained all the central characters – not true, Arthur Holmwood is expunged from the cast and aspects of the story are changed but then again there has been no make of Dracula that stuck to the story.

Harker arrives

As the film opens we see that it has been shot with a purplish filter and made to look grainy. Of course this helps hide some of the excesses but also it summons up the phantom of films long gone, especially Nosferatu. It is 1872 and the opening is narrated by Jonathon Harker (David McPherson). The Nosferatu aspect is mirrored in the fact that Harker is a realtor rather than a lawyer and from the firm Renfields no less. The music is quite lovely and rather evocative, whilst the digital rain overlay is rubbish and detracts. As Harker arrives by boat one questions the sense of this overlay, given that the rain seems to cause nary a ripple in the waters. A small point but one to bear in mind.

Theodore Trout as Dracula

The credits jarred, not because of the illustrations, however, which were stylistic pen and ink and suggested a Vlad Ţepeş identity for Dracula (Theodore Trout, Exhumed) but because of the rock song that came in on the back of the excellent instrumental strains just before (later use of Toccata and Fugue in D minor maybe should have been avoided also). The castle looked excellent (I am sure that parts of it were Whitby abbey) and then Dracula appeared. Like Orlock, he appears from a womb like doorway but rather than emerge he stands behind the threshold. He is armoured, as a warlord should be, but his welcome, and the delivery thereof, initially sounded odd. As the film progresses, however, Trout’s idiosyncratic delivery actually grew on me, taking his vampire in different directions to previous performances. I was not as struck with David McPherson’s performance unfortunately.

wall crawl animation

Whilst in conversation we discover the origins of this Dracula's vampirism; that he was killed in battle and then rose again three days later. If this sounds quasi-Christian we get more of an insight when Harker mentions the name Jesus and it throws Dracula into a rage. We discover, as the film progresses, that Dracula does not see himself as a vampire but as a saviour on a divine mission. This could be said to be delusion on his part, indeed he has forgotten exactly what he is, and perhaps we could suggest that he is antichrist. Other moments should be mentioned around the castle sequence. We see Dracula wall crawl but it is combination of animation and Claymation. This could jar but the overlay of effects that sit above the film, rather than sew seamlessly in, are so deliberately used that they become part of the style.

rotted form

We see the brides, but they are numbered more than three and the sequence of them with the baby is brutal. The peasant woman (Alexandra Steinmetz) seeking her stolen infant is kept in but, rather than be set upon by wolves, she is hung and left to dangle before Harker’s window. There is a scene where Harker searches for a means to escape and finds Dracula’s coffin. His initial appearance as a corpse was interesting (we will return to this), as was the fact that he also took a form like Orlock in Nosferatu, but the traipse through the castle itself was overly convoluted and could have done with some judicial trimming in its length and the pacing does sometimes become a little slow through the whole film.

Lucy and Mina

Turning to the England sequence and Lucy (Denise Brown) is a woman of means and her maid is Mina (Amanda Lisman). There are only two suitors, Dr John Seward (Ian Case) and Quincy Morris (Randall Carnell) and Lucy accepts Seward’s proposal. However the script goes to lengths to draw Lucy as a wanton hussy. Both men gain entry to her bedroom, whilst she is only wearing a robe, much to the shock of a housemaid – as an aside, why Quincy needed to deliver a note for Seward, who was standing next to him, was beyond me and seemed only to give Morris some dialogue – and she admits that she will have an affair with the Texan after marriage. This misses the truth of Lucy in the novel, to my way of thinking, who was innocent but perceived as wanton within the Victiorian patriarchal perspective of men like Van Helsing (Mike Grimshaw).

Renfield

The Renfield (Hal Hewett) in this retelling is a homicidal madman, we are told that he has a desire to ingest life so as to live forever and this means eating things whilst they live. However, as we meet him, he has not just eaten flies and spiders but has cannibalised humans (eating them alive too). More might have been done with Renfield in the film but, also, one couldn’t help but think he would more likely have been hung for his crimes rather than hospitalised.

Nosferatu form

Interestingly Quincy suggests that the vampire is known in his country as the wendigo – this is a generally unused folkloric overlap and we must remember that the US had imported the standard vampire myth from Europe, had its own “vampire panic” and so would probably not have conflated the myths. Wikipedia gives a quote from Basil Johnson that suggests that the creature, from Algonquian folklore, was “gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Weendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Weendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption”. This description might offer a suggestion of the walking dead but versions of the myth have men turning into wendigo after indulging in cannibalism or being possessed by a cannibalistic spirit, rather than being the restless dead per se. Even so – given the extra atrocities attributed to Renfield in this film – an opportunity to expand on the wendigo aspect via that character was lost.

Lucy returns

The vampire Lucy section was interesting. I liked the fact that the sense of giving her a blood transfusion was questioned as she might reject the transfusion (blood type is not mentioned, it hadn’t been discovered). Van Helsing, we are later informed, was in the country to investigate a plague of influenza – though he realised it was vampirism early on – and so he suggests that, at the stage (of vampirism) that Lucy is at, anyone’s blood would do. After her death, the vampire Lucy appears nightmarishly to Seward in his bedroom, holding a baby, lucid, bloody and yet glowing (to covert him to one of the righteous of the rapture). The subsequent dramatic staking scene is perhaps lessened slightly by the comedic sound effect of a shovel bopping her on the head.

taking Mina

It was interesting that in the subsequent attack on Mina we see the vampire in "Dracula mode" holding her, in an almost romantic pose, but then he is seen as Nosferatu taking her from behind in an animalistic rape. Again the scene is undone with a comedy sound effect, this time a chewing noise as Dracula takes a bite out of a bible flung at him. At the conclusion he is shown a mirror, Van Helsing says he does not reflect but Dracula sees himself as a Nosferatu. Later the brides are shown themselves and are dead, mummified things and the truth leads them to beg for release.

hanging the peasant

The fact that I have looked at the film in rather a lot of depth underlines the fact that despite some unfortunate sound effects, perhaps less than A grade acting on some parts and some ropey visual effects, this has a lot to interest those who know Bram Stoker’s tale and that it is filled with innovative and interesting ideas. How many versions of Dracula actually show Renfield’s trepanning? It is far from perfect but has much to offer and my score will balance the innovation against the less positive and cheesy aspects. 5 out of 10 seems fair, though one must enter expecting a unique vision.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The New Watch

Author: Sergei Lukyanenko

Translator: Andrew Bromfield

First Published: 2013

The Blurb: Walking the streets of our cities are the Others. These men and women are guardians of the Twilight, a shadowy parallel world that exists alongside our own. Each has sworn allegiance to one side, fighting for the Light, or the Darkness. But now, beyond the continuing struggle comes a peril that threatens their very world .

At Moscow airport, Higher Light Magician Anton Gorodetsky overhears a child screaming that a plane is about to crash. He discovers that the child is a prophet: an Other with the gift of foretelling the future. When the catastrophe is averted, Gorodetsky senses a disruption in the natural order, one that is confirmed by the arrival of a dark and terrifying predator.

From the Night Watch headquarters Gorodetsky travels to London, to Taiwan and across Russia in search of clues, unearthing as he goes a series of increasingly cataclysmic prophecies. He soon realises that what is at stake is the existence of the Twilight itself - and that only he will be able to save it.

The Mention: This is volume five of the Night Watch series, a trilogy that morphed into a series and why not? After all they have all been, consistently, a worthwhile read. In the world view of the series there are vampires, exclusively dark Others and they are only mentioned in passing in this book hence, like the volume the Day Watch, this only gets an honourable mention (the other three books were all reviewed as there was major vampire activity in each volume). In some ways all the Others are energy vampires but given the classifications of witch, sorceress, magician, werewolf, seer etc. I am happy to keep the distinction.

The substantive story (written across three books within the volume) tells the story of a prophet. Prophets are rare Others and, when they are due to tell their first (and major) prophecy a creature appears from the Twilight intent on killing the prophet it seems. The Tiger (as it is known) appears to each Other in a different way and is supremely powerful. If the prophet speaks their prophecy in a way that no-one can hear (one spoke it to a tree, for instance) or the prophecy is heard by a normal human the Tiger leaves and the prophet lives. If the prophecy is heard by a human being it will come true. But, as always with Lukyanenko’s series, nothing is as easy as that.

We meet a couple of vampires during this volume but they are small side stories, detail within Gorodetsky’s world. One of them is hunting (but has a license to do so) and the other is a Day Watch observer at a Night Watch operation. We also discover how vampires were created – a sadomasochistic order of Others who liked to bite, but one died (from the poison/drug they used to incapacitate the bitten) whilst in the Twilight. As it has its own rules the Twilight turned the person into what we would recognise as a vampire, the fangs able to naturally produce the poison (too much will kill a victim). We discover that vampires are able to create a Twilight Matrix, or map, of their bodies and use this to change their age and regenerate bodily damage. However, as they are dead they are unable to draw from or contribute to the Twilight and thus must ingest live cells to manipulate and use the Twilight – in other words blood. However only a small amount is needed – 300 millilitres a month, anything more is greed and desire on the part of the vampire.

So, a little bit about vampires, but an excellent volume generally and worth adding to your collection. My thanks to Clark for letting me know that the volume had been released.
 

Hemlock Grove – season 1 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2013

Contains spoilers

Hemlock Grove, produced by Eli Roth (who directed an episode), is unusal in the fact that it was a series developed for and broadcast via online provider Netflix and might be a herald of a new way of producing interesting series.

It had a cast that included well-known actors, effects that worked rather well and has been likened to Twin Peaks. In that it is set in a small town and is focused on the murder of a young woman then maybe it is. However at its heart it is a new and interesting twist on the monster mash.

Landon Liboiron as Peter

The murder (only the first) takes place on a full moon and is brutal. Attracted to the death are two very different young men. Peter Rumancek (Landon Liboiron) is a young man of gypsy extraction. He and his mother, Lynda (Lili Taylor, the Addiction), have just moved to a deceased uncle’s trailer. Early on a young, inquisitive girl called Christina (Freya Tingley), suggests that (because of his finger length) he is a werewolf and actually spreads that rumour through the school.

transforming

The thing is, he is actually a werewolf and I was impressed with the idea around the change. His human eyes fall out, he sloughs his skin and becomes a quadruped wolf (that eats his human body remains). He is also not the killer. There is an insane werewolf out there and he decides he wants to find it, especially when a werewolf hunter, Dr Clementine Chasseur (Kandyse McClure), comes to town. Possing as a federal wildlife agent, she is an agent for the church who is initiated into the Order of the Dragon.

Shelley is the Frankenstein Monster 

The other inquisitive youth is Roman Godfrey (Bill Skarsgård), heir-apparent to the Godfrey estate and son of Olivia (Famke Janssen). His father, JR (Paul Popowich, Vlad & Vampires Anonymous), committed suicide when he was a child. The Godfrey institute is a bio-tech institute that his uncle Norman (Dougray Scott, Perfect Creature) and Olivia have joint interest in. Now I said this was a monster mash and his sister Shelley (Nicole Boivin) died as a baby and was resurrected through a phosphorus treatment by mad scientist and Godfrey employee Dr Johann Pryce (Joel de la Fuente). This has left her deformed, a lumbering giant who cannot speak (bar through a voice program on her smartphone) but is gentle-hearted and intelligent. She is Frankenstein’s Monster essentially; her name is a give-away, of course.

born with a caul

That just leaves the vampire and that is Roman. Peter immediately recognises him as an upyr but also recognises that the rich boy doesn’t know what he is. The word vampire is not used but we get clues. The fact he was born with a caul is mentioned and he discovers that he can make people do his will (his nose bleeds afterwards). His mother is an upyr, she is addicted to a liquid that you take as an eyedrop and is produced by the gypsies. It takes the edge off the hunger.

using mojo

We do later see the end results of a feed, the victim flayed of her skin, the neck broken but still alive. Olivia uses Johann to cover up her tracks. Roman’s confused/repressed identity comes out in a need to cut himself during sex, fascinated with the blood on his fingers. At one point he slashes his chest open when receiving fellatio. However it is only in the very last episode that the vampirism is actually revealed to him and (fully to) the audience.

fangs revealed

We hear Olivia’s backstory, her pregnancy with a gypsy slave, the disgrace she brought on her family, her eloping and subsequent suicide. We discover the numerous attempts over the years to have a child, all of them dying or being killed as the upyr aspect had not appeared until Roman. We also discover that to truly become upyr they must take their own lives. Other lore includes the principle that a full upyr heals quickly (Olivia is shot with little impact) and they can walk in sunlight. Interestingly (and unconnected to Clementine) Roman suggests that he and Peter are the Order of the Dragon too.

Bill Skarsgård as Roman

I really enjoyed the series, it was interesting, had some varied subplots, such as Roman’s cousin Leitha (Penelope Mitchell) falling pregnant to, she claims, an angel and the mysterious Ouroboros project. The acting was strong – the two main lads took a little bit of time to find their feet but eventually developed a good chemistry between them. Can the standard be maintained in a further series? I hope so as it was stronger than some of the main TV produced series. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

A Brief Pause

The Pogues sang, “sad to say I must be on my way, so buy me beer and whiskey 'cause I'm going far away.” Indeed I am going fairly far away, to the far end of the country at least, but only for a week. So the blog will have a brief hiatus, for a week, but when I return you will have reviews of Hemlock Grove and Dracula Lord of the Damned to look forward to as well as a look at Sergei Lukyanenko’s New Watch – the fifth book in his series.

Whilst away I might not get chance to moderate comments, so if you do leave a comment and I don’t publish it straight away, I’d ask you to be patient.

Classic Literature: The Immortal Woman

The Blurb: When one is as beautiful as you are, one can have as much blood as one wants.”

In 1675, a female vampire possessing the secret of immortality was burned alive. Forty-five years later, during a dinner at the table of the French Regent, her then lover, Marquis de la Roche-Maubert, discovers that another guest, Chevalier d’Esparron, is in love with the same immortal woman. However, her attraction to him is not to satisfy her hunger for blood, but to implement one of the greatest secrets of alchemy: the transmutation of lead into gold.

Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail (1829-1871) was a French popular writer and a master of the serialized novel, having penned over 200 such works in 20 years. He is justly famous for his character of Rocambole and his ground-breaking horror novel, the Vampire and the Devil’s Son (1852). The Immortal Woman (1852) is a forgotten masterpiece of early vampire fiction, and another of Ponson’s classic flirtations with the supernatural.

The Book: La Femme Immortelle is another wonderful release from Blackcoat Press that has been translated and edited by Brian Stableford.

Ponson, the author, was (as the blurb tells us) a writer of the serialised novel and so there are similarities between this and the classic penny-dreadful Varney the Vampire, not least in some of the errors that creep into the narrative as Ponson forgets (or ignores) details previously mentioned in the text. Not that this takes away from the book, which still maintains a read-ability today.

The vampirism in the book is not real, rather it is quickly identified as a trick but certain characters maintain a belief in it through the entire length of the novel. The book is actually a tale of revenge and more thriller/swashbuckler than horror. Be that as it may, the lore included is interesting. The vampire is said to feed from the neck and, when her old lover the Marquis de la Roche-Maubert tells his tale, he says that she tried to pass off the pinprick at his neck by suggesting that one of her hairpins had scratched him. The immortal woman suggests that she can make another immortal by slowly draining every drop of their blood and then “infuse your veins with a young and generous blood. For that, it will be sufficient to give you a kiss every night.” Both the scratch and the kiss brought aspects of the later Dracula to mind. Mina mistakes the bite on Lucy for a scratch with a safety pin and the ‘brides’ have kisses (or bites) for Jonathon. Interestingly there was mention of the vampire’s hair having moved from black to blonde, reminiscent (as Stableford points out) to Feval’s the Vampire Countess, though the device was not expanded upon and was quickly lost. There is also use, in plot, of a Magic Lantern.

All in all, more fascinating 19th century French vampire literature. A footnote mentions Ponson’s novel L’Auberge de la Rue des Enfants Rouges, which opens with a tale of vampirism and Stableford hopes to translate that in the next couple of years.

The book can be found at Blackcoat Press and Amazon:

Stalk Kill Travel Stalk Kill – review

Author: TP Keating

First Published: 2013

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Stalk Kill Travel Stalk Kill is the fast-paced, action-packed tale of a female vampire, told with an eclectic mix of humor, excitement and scares. It’s aimed at readers from 13 to 313. An early draft appeared on America’s ground-breaking Textnovel.com, a social network for authors and readers of Japanese-style cellphone fiction.

The Review: What’s in a name?

Well, I was contacted by TP Keating and asked if I would care to review Stalk Kill Travel Stalk Kill. I agreed but was somewhat concerned re the title, it didn’t resonate well with me. Should you judge a book by the title… No, of course not. How about this book, definitely not. I didn’t know what to expect but it certainly wasn’t what I got.

Now the blurb (taken from Amazon) is a little thin and I must admit that I am not au fait with “Japanese-style cellphone fiction”. However to reveal much more in the blurb would be to do the novel a disservice. As the book began I felt that I was in a familiar territory, the first person narrative struck a chord although it was constructed in a way quite different to an urban fantasy, for instance.

It followed the trials and tribulations of an unnamed female vampire, her journey and the machinations of her ex, once lover and now vampire hunter. Yet as the book moved forward the ground beneath her feet shifted, she might find herself awakening in a distant future, the centrepiece, hibernated, of a vampire society just before an attack by a relentless horde of zombies or perhaps under attack from a sorcerer or facing the enigmatic fog-people.

Yet as she journeyed on, through a psychedelic, ever shifting landscape I began to recognise the style. It was almost like a beat novel (and the beat novel and the vampire are not strangers, for proof check out Kerouac’s Doctor Sax), perhaps I could call it neo-beat. And I liked it.

It is pointless me telling you the story for, like the best beat works, it is a journey (albeit fantastical). Lore-wise I won’t spoil too much but will say that vampires can turn into bats, must avoid the sun and have a proclivity for wearing black (for reasons that are explored). They also have no sense of smell.

Will you like it? I don’t know, it depends if you like arty, intoxicating prose where the story is perhaps less important than the journey. I liked it. 8 out of 10.

Vamp U – review

Directors: Matt Jespersen & Maclain Nelson

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

Also known as Dr Limptooth, by the alternate title we can tell this is a comedy and here comes the regular caveat… comedy is subjective. Plus, this time, I’ll add that not all comedy travels from country to country.

In this case I was underwhelmed and the cultural aspect I’ll come to very soon. There was also a very strange lore aspect that we’ll cover as well.

Tom and Fred

It starts with a college student, Tom (Matt Mattson), making a video. A confession or journal, if you like, that outlines how he discovered that his college Professor, Wayne Gretzky (Adam Johnson), is a vampire and the first 2/3 of the film covers that story. Here we have the humour not crossing borders. Apparently Wayne Gretzky was a hockey star. The film ignores this (assuming that the viewer will know that) until it makes a ham-fisted comment on it later on (we’ll get to dialogue). The problem is, of course, very few folks outside of North America are going to get the joke. This isn’t a criticism (at least not the geographic aspect) but pointing out a fact that filmmakers must be aware that not all humour travels.

an unfortunate bite

Anyway, three hundred years before the film, Wayne was in love with a woman called Mary (Julie Gonzalo). Unfortunately they lost track of time and, as the sun set, Wayne lost control of his vampire nature and bit her. Of course no-one was happy about this (on her family's side). He snuck into the funeral dressed as a monk but was found by her brother Gregor (Jason Celaya). After a struggle he killed Gregor with the stake meant for him – he didn’t use his fangs as he had lost the ability to produce them.

Gary Cole as Arthur

Cut to modern day America and Wayne is a history professor, much loved and known as the Great One. He has confessed his nature and "fang-flop" issue with psychologist and professor Arthur Levine (Gary Cole) who is treating him for his “vampire impotence”. One of the issues I had with the film was dialogue and the main problem was around these two characters. Wayne bumbles through lectures by keep suggesting he knew the historical characters. At best he sounds freaky and I very much doubt he would be “everyone’s favourite professor”. Levine actually blurts out about Wayne’s vampire nature in front of a student and her father and then covers it up (saying he had been reading Twilight) but one wonders at this “professional” who would do this. The dialogue was written for laughs (though I didn’t... subjective remember) but didn’t seem plausible round these characters and so came across as ham-fisted.

Julie Gonzalo as Chris

The student, incidentally, is Chris who is also played by Julie Gonzalo and you are now wondering whether this is a “reincarnated love” story. It isn’t. She is, however, his “vampire Viagra”. He gets his fangs and (as they are mutually attracted) they start an affair – much to the chagrin of Tom’s friend Fred (Maclain Nelson) as she is his unrequited love. When Wayne realises that actually she is the daughter of Mary, who turned rather than died, he gets carried away, bites her and turns her into a super-bitch vampire who, in turn, turns her sorority and wants to cut a bloody swath through the world. She has, of course, to die…

staked

I mentioned an unusual lore. This is about the turning process. If the victim is killed then they simply die. However a victim who is alive, after the blood has been drunk, turns (occasionally becoming a super-vampire as Chris did). However the bite is unimportant, it is simply the drinking of blood, so if a person donated blood and it was drunk (it takes about a pint) they would turn. This is not only unusual but frankly a little logic lost and put in as it becomes a plot point. Other than that it has to be ash stakes to kill them, though said stakes must be well-hammered due to a vampire’s dense bone structure, they don’t show on photos and sunlight will kill but an umbrella is protection enough from the sun. Clearly vampires can breed but the vampirism is not passed on (Mary passes her odd behaviour off to her family as "being Amish").

dead sorority gal

If the script didn’t do it for me comedy wise, I have to say that I was impressed with Julie Gonzalo who turned in two recognisably different performances and made for an excellent psycho-vampire. The film looked nice enough given the obvious low budget but the script just wasn’t taut enough for me. Part of the problem was it never offered the feel of a slapstick, so far-fetched gags (Wayne dumping a body in a cemetery and suggesting to the gravedigger that it was a new job, with no comeback later, for instance) didn’t work. I liked the general idea but not the execution.

Gonzalo manages to raise the score due to her excellent work in film. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Kolysanka – review

Director: Juliusz Machulski

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

Kolysanka means Lullaby in Polish and what we have is an unusual entry into the vampire genre by a film that is a gentle but black comedy that satirises modern Poland and societal concerns such of off-shoring of work.

It also features a rather unusual vampire family, though we get to see little in the way of vampiric activity, most of it inferred and off-screen.

the family arrive

It begins at a remote house on the edge of an isolated Masurian village. We hear voices discussing the resident, ensuring that he lives alone. The owner works in arts and crafts and we see shadows move along the wall and a walking stick knock at the door. The owner opens the door but no-one is there. When he looks again an odd looking family are stood before him. He asks if they are there about the land.

Michal with the postman

A postman arrives with a registered letter for the Makarewicz family who have now taken over the arts and crafts store. The first thing we should note is that it is daylight, the Makarewicz’ have no trouble with sunlight (though it does seem, later on, that they prefer to sleep through the day). The letter is from a welfare worker who we then see visiting the family. When they are asked how many children they have, the mother, named Bozena (Malgorzata Buczkowska), explains that they have four children – the youngest, Kuba, being a baby – and she is expecting a fifth (so these vampires are born).

 Bozena and Michal

Noises are heard from Dziadek (Janusz Chabior), Bozena’s father-in-law. When the welfare worker asks his age we are told that he is 550, this is quickly revised of course. The next visitors they receive are from a priest and his neophyte – looking for donations. The priest blesses the house and the vampires all make the sign of the cross, and so religious paraphernalia and ritual have no effect. When the priest asks about the previous owner he is told that he left (later they suggest he went on a round the world trip). However we then hear, via the police, that the postman, the welfare worker and the priest and neophyte have all gone missing (and more will go missing as the film progresses).

blood potion

The missing are not dead but kept prisoner in the cellar. The vampires feed from the feet of the victims for so long but the aim is to eventually let their victims go. This is achieved by the head of the clan Michal (Robert Wieckiewicz) mixing his blood into a spirit and forcing their captive to drink it. The potion makes the person who drinks it fall asleep and, when they awaken, they have no memory of their captivity (a conveniently placed empty bottle makes it look like the postman, for instance, has been on a boozy bender).

Dziadek's last two teeth

The problem is that Kuba takes a liking to the priest’s blood and will only settle after drinking from him. Indeed blood from the other captives makes him ill. Meanwhile Dziadek loses his two remaining teeth and, after apparently contemplating suicide, decides he wants false teeth making. Bozena wants to move to the city, Michal is happy in the country, and eldest child Wojtek (Filip Ochinski) begins to doubt that Michal is his father after the priest calls him the son of the devil.

vampire infant

The film was fun and rather non-horror. The vampires do have a vampiric guise. We see it flit over Kuba’s face at one point and when the family play music together they all morph into their vampiric selves, a transformation of clothing as well as physical. The vampire children, we note, have very pointed ears and the shot of them together has overtones of the Addams Family. They can make themselves vanish and there is a suggestion (through sound effects) that they can transform into owls but we see nothing that confirms this.

the vampire family

As I said, this is a black comedy and satire and some of the satire will have been lost on me, being aimed at Poland. Things like their arts and crafts contract being cancelled as it is cheaper to buy the goods from China is a trans-national concern, I guess, but the social commentary about the Polish welfare system went mostly over my head. I also wish we got to know more of the characters. There is some depth built in but they are a fascinating bunch and would have benefited from more detail.

All the above said, it didn’t make the film unenjoyable, indeed it was a fun, well shot film that is worthy of several viewings. I do wish we had got to know more lore but, be that as it may, the film gets a respectable 7 out of 10.

Reading the Vampire – review

Author: Ken Gelder

First published: 1994

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Insatiable bloodlust, dangerous sexualities, the horror of the undead, uncharted Transylvanian wildernesses, and a morbid fascination with the `other': the legend of the vampire continues to haunt popular imagination.

Reading the Vampire examines the vampire in all its various manifestations and cultural meanings. Ken Gelder investigates vampire narratives in literature and in film, from early vampire stories like Sheridan Le Fanu's `lesbian vampire' tale Carmilla and Bram Stoker's Dracula, the most famous vampire narrative of all, to contemporary American vampire blockbusters by Stephen King and others, the vampire chronicles of Anne Rice, `post-Ceausescu' vampire narratives, and films such as FW Murnau's Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Reading the Vampire embeds vampires in their cultural contexts, showing vampire narratives feeding off the anxieties and fascinations of their times: from the nineteenth century perils of tourism, issues of colonialism and national identity, and obsessions with sex and death, to the `queer' identity of the vampire or current vampiric metaphors for dangerous exchanges of bodily fluids and AIDS.

The Review: I bought Reading the Vampire purely on the basis of having read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Gelder’s New Vampire Cinema. Of course, whilst this is a discussion of vampire literature, it couldn’t help but stray into a discussion about cinema but primarily this is the literary companion of the later cinema book.

As well as looking at Carmilla and Dracula the book explores an ethnocentric look at vampire literature and the influence of Greek lore on Polidori and Byron. It explores the works of Anne Rice, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Brian Aldiss and S P Somtow. There is a Marxist examination of vampire literature and a look at Carmilla in terms of the uncanny.

This was not as immediately accessible as the later cinema book. This is down to, I believe, a more  academic-centric approach to the work as Gelder looks at vampire literature in terms of literary theory. That is not a criticism but the later book, whilst academically thorough, was more lay-reader friendly and the approach herein might put off the more casual reader, especially if some of the academic research is unfamiliar.

That said, it is an important book for the library of the student of the media vampire. 7.5 out of 10.

Vamp or Not? Hellgate

I first saw this John Penney directed film, under the title Shadows, at the Bram Stoker Film Festival and have been waiting an awful long time for it to come out on DVD. It finally has done in the US.

Now you might not immediately get the sense of why I have done this as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ or, indeed, featured it on the blog but there was an aspect of this that gave me a sense of a vampiric creature that we have features on the blog many times. The creature I have in mind, however, is not of Thai origin (and the film is a joint US/Thai production set in Thailand) and I just wished I’d thought to ask the question of John Penney, at the film Q&A, when I had the opportunity.

car crash

The film follows the fortunes of Jeff Mathews (Cary Elwes, Dracula (1992) & Shadow of the Vampire), a US businessman who has a Thai wife (Paula Taylor). They have arrived in Thailand with their son to visit her father but, on the drive across Bangkok, they are involved in a car accident. The crash puts Jeff in a coma for five weeks and kills his family. When he awakens he is at his father-in-law's home and a nurse, Choi (Ploy Jindachote), has been hired to look after him.

fading reflection

Jeff starts hallucinating, seeing people who are dead. However the Thai people are not as closed minded as those of the West and Choi takes him to see her aunt, a mystic. She explains that those who have suffered sudden or violent deaths often become trapped on Earth in a shadow realm, reliving their last moments. However, when they discover that they can see Jeff, and touch him (an encounter leaves a blackened hand print in his flesh), she realises something is desperately wrong.

John Hurt as Warren Mills

A ritual with him goes wrong and they have to take the spiritually injured aunt to another ex-pat Warren Mills (John Hurt). It transpires that Jeff’s soul has stayed with his dead family, giving him a foot in both worlds, hence the fact that the dead can touch him and also this is causing his reflection to fade in mirrors. If he and his soul are not reunited by the end of 48 days his body will die. He is taken out to an abandoned plague village where a gateway to the shadow world can be created.

Asurgi, are they based on Aswang?

Jeff has to physically go into the shadow world and reunite himself with his soul but the journey is fraught due to demons called Asurgi (my spelling) that congregate in the area, looking for an escape into our world. These are the reason for the ‘Vamp or Not?’. They are creatures of shadow that burn in sunlight and they are flesh eaters. Though the creatures are invented (as are all the supernatural elements in the film), John Penney said that everything in the film was a mish-mash of various Far Eastern folklore from various countries. The Asurgi remind me of some portrayals of the Philippine Aswang – hence looking at the film.

Are they? We get so little it is hard to tell but they are certainly of genre interest due to their similarity. If John Penney reads this then I’d love to know is a little bit of Aswang mythology was incorporated into the film. The imdb page is here.

Fat Vampire – review

Author: Johnny B. Truant

First Published: 2012

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: When overweight treadmill salesman Reginald Baskin finally meets a co-worker who doesn't make fun of him, it's just his own bad luck that tech guy Maurice turns out to be a two thousand-year-old vampire.

And when Maurice turns Reginald to save his life, it's just Reginald's own further bad luck that he wakes up to discover he's become the slowest, weakest, most out-of-shape vampire ever born, doomed to "heal" to his corpulent self for all of eternity.

As Reginald struggles with the downsides of being a fat vampire -- too slow to catch people to feed on, mocked by those he tries to glamour, assaulted by his intended prey and left for undead -- he discovers in himself rare powers that few vampires have… and just in time too, because the Vampire Council might just want his head for being an inferior representative of their race.

Fat Vampire is the story of an unlikely hero who, after having an imperfect eternity shoved into his grease-stained hands, must learn to turn the afterlife's lemons into tasty lemon danishes.

The Review: I remember a facebook thread that asked whether there were fat vampires in films… there are but they are few and far between. The fat undead also appear in some of the original folklore about the walking dead type the draugr, described as massively inflated in body size. However the point of the thread was about body consciousness as much as anything. Johnny B Truant’s book came from a similar place. The premise was, if you remain exactly as you were when you died, as a vampire, why do we not see fat vampires (and would you chose to be one).

From that premise was born this book (the first of a series). Now it has to be said it isn’t the first time a book has looked at this subject. Andrew Fox’s Fat White Vampire Blues and Bride of the Fat White Vampire apparently tread similar grounds (they are in my ‘to read’ pile).

Reginald is fat and mocked by co-workers because of his size. He was mocked in college and mocked at school. The book is therefore, very much, about the negative attitude many people have towards body image and the need that those with bodies that fit (more) in with societal norms to mock, persecute and, quite frankly, bully those who fall outside the media dictated view point. Perhaps they are just too insecure themselves and their mockery is a twisted attempt to feel secure?

When Reginald is turned he discovers that vampire society is pretty much the same as human society in that respect. The vampire body can excel because it heals faster than the damage the vampire does to it but the upshot is the more unfit a human you were the more unfit and physically weak you will be as a vampire. Indeed prospective vampires are expected to hone their bodies and must be able to pass a set of physically demanding tests. Vampire society does not appreciate, therefore, intelligence and artistry. However vampirism will work with what it has and if it cannot hone what is below the neck it will sharpen what is above and, as the Vampire Nation look to remove what they see as an aberration, Reginald must rely on a brain that has been well and truly honed.

Now there was a worry that, given the title of the book, that this was going to be a comedy (it is) that draws its humour from Reginald’s misfortune and whilst the practicalities of hunting when a vampire who is 350 lbs and can be physically outmatched by the average jogger is part of the book it never felt as though the humour was cruel. This probably comes down to the fact that Truant made Reginald the heart of the book and, as a reader, you certainly do side with him and feel for him.

The book is not massively long (approximately 148 pages) but even so I was astounded by just how quickly I devoured it (and I realise there is almost a pun there). Well worth a read. 8 out of 10.

Trail of Dead – review

Author: Melissa F Olson

First Published: 2013

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: As a null, Scarlett Bernard possesses a rare ability to counteract the supernatural by instantly neutralizing spells and magical forces. For years she has used her gift to scrub crime scenes of any magical traces, helping the powerful paranormal communities of Los Angeles stay hidden. But after LAPD detective Jesse Cruz discovered Scarlett’s secret, he made a bargain with her: solve a particularly grisly murder case, and he would stay silent about the city’s unearthly underworld.

Now two dead witches are found a few days before Christmas, and Scarlett is once again strong-armed into assisting the investigation. She soon finds a connection between the murders and her own former mentor, Olivia, a null who mysteriously turned into a vampire and who harbors her own sinister agenda. Now Scarlett must revisit her painful past to find Olivia—unless the blood-drenched present claims her life first.

The review: Despite the fact that there were some vampire related revelations at the end of Dead Spots, the first book in this series, which I thought were hokey I was very impressed with Melissa F Olson’s opening novel.

The stories are set on a stage in which our world and the Old World live side by side; the Old World filled with witches, vampires and werewolves and hidden from view. This secrecy is maintained by cleaners, persons employed by the Old World to clean up messes prior to discovery and investigation by the human world. If things go wrong the vampires can step in and press the minds of the humans, but so much the better if the situation can just be cleaned.

Scarlett, the central protagonist, is the Los Angeles cleaner and is a Null, a rare breed whose very presence switches the magic off within a field they project. Vampires are alive, werewolves are human and witches can’t cast. Thrown into the mix is Jesse, a handsome LAPD detective who has stumbled onto the Old World and whose presence is tolerated by the leaders of the three breeds.

This volume continued the bucking of the trend that book 1 started in that the chapters flip between first and third person. So whilst we do walk with Scarlett, the annoying trend that suggests all urban fantasy has to be first person is buckled and this adds a welcome literary dimension to the process. The story itself continues on from threads developed in the last book with the crimes centred around Scarlett and this leads to some excellent character development.

Lore wise we discover that vampires must be invited into a home and the “exclusion field” (for want of a better term) is like a bubble. Unfortunately, if a null’s field crosses that bubble then the section where the fields overlapped is breached (until the human owners live in the house a while longer and make it a home once more) and allows vampiric entry.

Definitely an up and up series if this volume is anything to go by, I look forward to book 3. 7.5 out of 10.

This review first appeared, in a shortened form, on Amazon UK as part of the Vine Programme.