The Ship of Monsters – review

Director: Rogelio A. González

Release date: 1960

Contains spoilers

Some Mexican cinema is crazy; that’s a fact and La Nave de los Monstruos is a prime example. In this we manage to get a sci-fi, monster, vampire, singing cowboy mashup. Now if that’s not crazy I don’t know what is. The film is on DVD in Spanish only, but there are fan subtitles out there on the web.

The voice over at the head of the film clarifies for us that an atom is infinitely small (I don’t know that we can admit to that being strictly true) and the universe infinitely big. The voice then goes on to talk about the destructive forces of the atomic bomb and this segues into…

the ship

Venus. It seems that the men of Venus have all died out and so an expedition is launched to find men to replace them. The mission is to be commanded by Gamma (Ana Bertha Lepe) who is to be ably assisted by the non-Venusian Beta (Lorena Velázquez, Wrestling Women Vs the Aztec Mummy & Santo Vs the Vampire Women) – apparently Beta is from Ur, the Planet of Shadows but is also the best navigator around.

in flight

Through the opening credits we see the ship land on several planets and then, after the credits, we cut to the two women in the ship, now accompanied by a robot (we later discover to be named Thor and captured on one of the planets visited, but one where all the men had died out also). The robot warns that there is a problem with the left engine. They ignore him and listen at a door where the men are stored – Gamma preaches patience as they are all kidnapped and therefore prone to be cranky. The engine gives out, whilst a break out involving one of the galactic men (all designed as monsters) allows us to see that the women have a freezing device at their disposal.

Eulalio González as Lawrence

Beta goes out to try and repair the engine but they are advised to make an emergency landing on the nearest planet – which happens to be Antarsis 13 or (in our parlance) Earth. Now the names are a nonsense, of course, we get details about Venusians and Martians, at one point someone is said to come from Saturn, but ultimately they are just names. If you think about the plot (such as it is) and then wonder why they didn’t realise that their galactic neighbour had men on it (of the same human looking design) then the whole tissues of lies comes crumbling down. Meanwhile cowboy Lawrence (Eulalio González) is singing a song when he sees a shooting star (the ship) and wishes to meet a nice girl. At the cantina that he then goes to we discover that he is a teller of tall tales; weaving one about being attacked by numerous bandits, splitting a bullet for two enemies by placing a knife in his gun barrel and marauding dinosaurs.

Lawrence (frozen) and the space babes

Not too long a story even shorter; Lawrence meets the two girls (who have gone exploring whilst Thor repairs the ship) and both of them decide to fall for him. Beta vocalises her desire but Gamma says that he is for the whole of Venus (they have decided he is a prime male specimen). That’s all well and good you might say but then legitimately ask, where does a vampire come into it.

vampiric attack

Beta, upset by the fact she can’t have Lawrence (presumably) becomes a vampire and drinks a man’s blood. Now this must be a not too uncommon occurrence out in the universe as the leader of the Venusians (Consuelo Frank) – by intergalactic communication – says that “To drink human blood is the worst crime as stipulated by Galactic Law” and orders Beta disintegrated. Gamma sends Thor to bring her back but proves herself too soft hearted and Beta tricks her.

some of the galactic men

Beta wrests control of the ship and Thor from Gamma, unfreezes the monstrous alien males to wreak havoc (the main havoc being the devouring of Lawrence’s cow leaving just a skeleton on an obvious frame) as she plans to take over the world. She suggests that one – a high priest of Mars with an enormous brain on show – already knows the pleasure and immortality available through blood drinking. She also suggests that she will create a race of vampires as this was the wish of her ancestors.

the pathetic demise of Beta

Clearly the good guys will win but I want to spoil the ending further and offer you the pathetic demise of Beta. In the finale, as Lawrence, Lawrence's little brother and Thor battle monsters, Beta and Gamma fight. The fight consists of this: Beta flies at Gamma, misses and impales herself on a branch! And that, as they say, is that. We get some robot love when Thor falls for a jukebox with lovely valves. We get song and dance moments. We get some hokey monster suits. We get a really bad script.

alien vampire

Unfortunately this one doesn’t manage to fall into the “so bad it’s good” category. Lawrence is more a comedic foil than a lead hero (though he does step up to the plate). Gamma fails to show any real strength (Lawrence steals the ship’s control belt and Lawrence fights one of the monsters. On the other hand Gamma's raison d'être is to be missed by Beta who accidentally kills herself). The whole thing seems a bit… “Right, we have a spaceship/footage thereof, fangs and some monster suits (plus a monster skeleton that we can control like a puppet)… let’s just throw them all in and see what comes out…” “Shall we put a singing cowboy in?” “Why not.” 2 out of 10

The imdb page is here.

Please remember the DVD is not in English and has no built in subtitles.

Dead Frequency – review

Director: Rob Burrows

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

I feel incredibly mean. Dead Frequency is an independent movie (with all the issues that can carry with it) and director Rob Burrows was specific in mentioning that it was a comedy and not a horror, when he made the screener, which I had asked for, available to me.

Now, personally I would not be too concerned that a vampire film is a comedy rather than a horror – after all there are plenty of vampire comedies out there, ranging from hilarious to atrocious. I would, of course, have to bear in mind that comedy is very subjective and – as such – what tickles one person does not tickle another. Dead Frequency did not tickle me at all, I’m afraid.

Stephen Mason as Sam

The film is set in Newcastle – something I liked – and starts off in a radio station as night DJ Sam (Stephen Mason) is holding a dial in, where a woman (in London) is telling him about pigeons in the loft. She has phoned in because he and she share a trait she won’t mention. Meanwhile new station manager Diane (Faye Ormston) is getting ready for work. She complains to boyfriend Roger (George Collings) that there is something wrong with the kids in the station. He would seem to be a loan shark (though he is simply described as a debt collector later).

Sam and Emily

Wayne (Robin Bayne), a radio technician, complains about staying behind and covering some of the day shift – the sun gives him a headache. Sam and friend Emily (Michaela Marshall) are reminded about a meeting with Diane, but they leave anyway. When they get to the building that they (and Wayne) all live in Emily suggests to Sam that he spend the day with her. He refuses and she states she knows he loves her. It ends with him in his room sobbing and smashing an empty bottle as she walks the streets of Newcastle barefoot in the rain.

Jenny and Kevin

Here is one of the problems. The reactions seemed too extreme and overtly angst filled and the montage over a ballad felt out of place within something billed as a comedy (there is another ballad scene later and both could do with complete expulsion from the movie). Even if you wanted to keep these scenes in we don’t know enough about the characters to actually care at this point. The film less builds and more implants a love triangle between Emily, Sam and Sam’s ex-wife Jenny (Cheryl Moody). However it is clear that everyone, including Jenny’s new husband Kevin (Simon Hodgson), already know each other’s denied feelings and it seems somewhat pointless.

chow time

Anyway, Dianne is a complete neurotic, it seems, but she is also part of a hunter organisation (that acts like an arm of the police) and is undercover trying to expose Wayne, Sam and Emily as vampires. Jenny is also a vampire – apparently Kevin is not but is aware of their nature. Things take a turn for the worse when Emily loses control and chows on Dianne, turning her into a vampire – and a horny alcoholic apparently. There is slapstick humour en route with Roger and his heavies, who are unable to physically best Wayne or Emily. It wasn’t very funny (or particularly convincing within the fight choreography - when we actually see a fight).

hoodies

Here lies the hub of the problem. The acting, in the main, was amateurish – a group of hoodies planning an attack on an old lady displayed some of the worse dialogue delivery I have heard in a long time. The trouble, of course, is that comedy is often about timing and that is a specific skillset that I didn’t really see. I did think Stephen Mason came across as very personable – especially in the DJ scenes – and Cheryl Moody wasn’t too bad either. The story seemed shoehorned into place, rather than organically building. The idea of a group of vampires living in plain sight, assimilated into society but still hunted works (even if it seems a tad Being Human). However they were never properly hunted and the film, when it winds to its conclusion, felt more like a prologue than a feature.

seductive powers at work

The vampires are blood drinkers and flesh eaters – they tend to eat raw cow’s liver and, occasionally, suckle a rat. The attack on Diane, it seemed, wasn’t guaranteed to turn her. They are apparently very strong, can move super quick, have seductive mesmeric powers and other powers were hinted at. They are apparently endangered by silver bullets, fire and mobs – but not sunlight, as mentioned earlier. The vampirism took a long time to emerge in film and when it did we got a one minute scene of a lodger who was human obviously knowing that Jenny is a vampire and Sam’s worry about this but nothing done with the character or scene. Like the caller at the head of the film (who I assume was a vampire in London) she is simply forgotten and that was sloppy within the script.

Diane and Wayne

There was a potential here and I desperately wanted to like the film. But its comedy was unfunny (though that is subjective), its pathos misplaced, the ballad scenes stomach churning (quite frankly) and opportunities were missed. 2 out of 10 but note a re-edit that simply removes the ballads and the hoodies scenes would probably up the mark.

The imdb page is here.

Eventide: Lost in Darkness - Review

Author: S W Best

First Published: 2013

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: "MURDERED on her wedding night."
"BETRAYED by her sister."
"FORCED to make a deal with the Devil to become a vampire."
"LOST in darkness . . ."

By the hand of her jealous sister Lucinda, Jennifer Sal Vinci is thrown into a dark dangerous world she did not choose.

The vampire houses of New York are at war. They police the cities, looking for stray vampires to wipe them out permanently.

Jennifer must battle her own demons if she is to win her sanity when all else crumbles before her like the shifting sands of time. Her true maker holds the key to her survival, but will she have the courage to follow her heart?

In Pennsylvania, Green Hill Lakes, three people go missing, feared dead. There is something sinister about this quiet mountain town. Why have routine disappearances been accepted for so long? As the mysteries surrounding this sleepy town unravel, you are dragged into a world far darker and ancient than you could have ever anticipated.

But when a new Sheriff James Hall arrives, his family get caught up in the web of lies ranging back over hundreds of years. He must fight back against the town and demands answers to the terrible questions that everyone is too afraid to ask. But will his sense of duty be at the cost of his family? Intertwining conflicts bring two worlds crashing together with deadly consequence . . .

The review: I find no sense in not being honest in a review, it does you the reader and the author, to be candid, no favours. But whilst I do have a couple of criticisms regarding this novel by S W Best I also, positively, found it an engaging story – as I’ll get to.

However the first criticism is a strange one – and one that has not impacted the final score. That is within what amounts to a very odd formatting choice (or, potentially, error). I bought the book on Amazon Kindle and have a basic model kindle (grey screen). For some reason an effect was added to the page that made it much darker than standard. This wasn’t a file error as I deleted the book and redownloaded it and the effect was still there.

The impact was that (as well as allowing ghosts from previous eink pages to show in certain lights) the book was dark text on dark background and – candidly – a bitch to read. I could find no way of changing the contrast on the basic kindle. I struggled to read, fighting through chapters (and the fact I wanted to tells you something about the story) and then switched to my phone. Now I hate reading backlit ebooks (and the screen of the phone is smaller), but the kindle android app allowed the page colour to be set and thus I used the phone as my reading device.

As I say, I do not know if this was a choice or an error and if you own a kindle fire I assume that (as on Android) you’ll be fine. However the format undermined accessibility for those who use the basic kindle’s accessibility functions. I don’t know what the effect would be on paperwhite. I repeat that this issue has not been reflected in the score.

The story is one of vampire clans and revenge and the core character Jennifer Sal Vinci comes across as a likeable and interesting character. There is some degree of vampire angst reflected but it is tempered and doesn’t get in the way of a good smackdown. We hear something of vampire society and I am sure the author will expand this further in future volumes, though I’d have a liked a little more in this.

Indeed the author created a working world around us that he can further hone as he goes along and the story rattled along at a good old pace. The vampires are not too powerful (at least the younger ones aren’t, older vampires with purer blood do have access to powers) and there is a Satanic element (though I didn’t notice holy items being used as apotropaic). The sun is deadly – though there is one exception.

Prose wise however there is room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, the prose was strong in places and shows that when Best hones his skills he will have much to offer. Good story also counts for much and my mind goes to Laurell K Hamilton who had some pretty shoddy prose at the start of her Anita Blake series but it just got better and better (though her stories started to vanish more and more). Best does use some turns of phrase that seem clunky, at times, and I was going to suggest that what the book needed was a professional edit through.

However the author’s note at the end suggested he had paid for a professional edit. I would have said that I would hope it was actually just a proofread (though there were some typos clearly missed as well). However a professional (good) edit should have knocked away the clunkier corners.

That sounds harsh, I know, but I say it for a reason. There is a talent here and it needs to be developed, but ignoring problems is not the way to do that. The author will develop. His story will grow. Perhaps he will return to this volume himself and hone those edges (and sort out the formatting too). I can certainly recommend the book both as a story and as the start of something I hope will develop into a respectable career. 6 out of 10.

Interesting Shorts: The Vampire

The Vampire by Jan Naruda is an odd little story, which appears in anthologies from time to time. I wanted to look at it here as, despite various sources suggesting it was published in 1920, it is a piece of pre-Dracula 19th century literature and one that hails from the Czech Republic.

Naruda was born in 1831 and died in 1891 and was a journalist by trade. I have seen an approximate date of 1884 for his tale. The vampire of the title does show supernatural powers but is not your typical undead. He is a Greek artist, perfectly at ease in the sunshine. The story takes place on the Island of Prinkipo (off the coast of Turkey, near Istanbul) and the narrator is holidaying.

The boat the narrator arrived on also carried the Greek and a Polish family. The daughter of the family is ailing. An hotelier tells the narrator that the locals call the artist the Vampire as “he sketches only corpses”, however he always sketches them immediately prior to their death. In this case it was the daughter of the Polish family.

Is the man simply, and unerringly, drawn to the dying? Or, perhaps, it is he who kills them, an energy vampire maybe? The story is silent and so it could be either. I did like the fact that the author was Czech and it was an interesting pre-Stoker dip into vampirism.

You can read the story here.

Vintage Vampire Stories – review

Editors: Robert Eighteen-Bisang & Richard Dalby

First Published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers—these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world’s leading vampire anthologists and experts. Also included are rare images of Bram Stoker’s handwritten manuscript pages for Count Vampire (1890) courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia.

The review: I am really torn over this one. It does contain some very important early vampire stories – indeed I specifically featured the Vampire; or, Pedro Pacheco and the Bruxa (1863) and the Blood Drinking Corpse (1679). As such I would be straying towards this being essential, but there are problems.

Putting in a handful of Stoker’s notes does not make for them being a story in their own right, for instance, and whilst interesting for some, for other readers I can imagine they were just padding. More so for those of us who have the facsimile of all the notes. The story A Kiss of Judas (1893) by Julian Osgood Field was, debatably, not actually a vampire story – though it did carry some tropes. Equally the story Herself (1894) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon had some aspects that might have equated to energy vampirism but would definitely need a ‘Vamp or Not?’ That said I could see arguments as to why they both deserved inclusion.

What was unforgivable, however, was the endless parade of typos that stood glaringly from the page. Typos happen, I understand, but the editing process was clearly slipshod, and if the book is going to be of use to a student of the media vampire then accuracy should have been strived for. That pushes the score down, I’m afraid, to 5 out of 10. Get the volume, I say, to get these rare stories together. But beware the typos and, if the editors read this, you need to do a second edition with a decent proofreading process.

Honourable Mention: The Pink Panther and Friends – Pink Plasma

The Pink Panther is a cultural classic, a series of cartoons based on the opening credits of the live action crime comedies of the same name and featuring the always cool Pink Panther (character, not diamond). This episode came from the series The Pink Panther and Friends, was directed by Art Leonardi and first aired in 1975.

Dracula

It features the Pink Panther backpacking through Transylvania when he spots what he takes to be a lodge but is in fact Dracula’s castle. He decides to stay the night and the five minutes of the cartoon is taken up with encounters with an invisible, squeaky footed yeti and a disembodied, knife throwing hand and – of course – Dracula, who is recurring character The Little Man in a vampire get up.

The coffin

PP finds Dracula's coffin and, assuming it to be the coffin of a really dead man buries it. When the sun sets the coffin rises out of the ground and Dracula is on the hunt for some pink plasma. Of course hunting PP is never going to be that easy and there are irate spiders plus a moat living shark for the bungling vampire to contend with. Dracula can always assume the form of a crap bat, of course. When day breaks vampire, castle and all the other inhabitants vanish.

The imdb page is here.

The Unwanted – review

Director: Bret Wood

Release Date: 2013

Contains spoilers

Director Bret Wood was the man behind the magnificent Indie flick Psychopathia Sexualis and, indeed, I interviewed him about that film. So when I was contacted by him and told he had a new film, it was based on Carmilla and would I like to view it… Well, let us just say I almost gave myself whiplash replying in the affirmative.

Of course the level of excitement I felt, as the film began to play, could have left me disappointed once the film was over – it didn’t. Rather it left me, with a smile playing across my lips, cogitating about a very fresh take on the Carmilla story. It also left me knowing that I had to write these two first paragraphs as a preamble, thus warning you that I am somewhat taken by the Unwanted.

Christen Orr as Carmilla

It has also left me with a quandary, how much of the film do I spoil? After all, the basic Carmilla story is well known but it is the revealing of the layers, the interactions and development of the characters (past and present) that make this film and I hope to not stray too much into spoiler territory with regards that. However I do want to discuss a fascinating story choice that Bret decided upon. I have to say at the outset that this is certainly not a horror film, I would say that it is a psychosexual drama set within a Gothic Americana landscape. It all begins as Carmilla (Christen Orr) arrives in a rural American town by bus.

Troy denies knowledge

She walks out into the country, looking for a specific address. She knocks on the door and a timid young lady, Laura (Hannah Fierman, V/H/S & the Vampire Diaries), answers. Carmilla says she is looking for someone who used to live there but Laura’s family have always lived there. Her dad, Troy (William Katt), takes over the conversation. The person Carmilla is looking for is Mircalla Karnstein (Kylie Brown). Troy denies knowledge of anyone with that name but does offer Carmilla a lift back into town.

Hannah Fierman as Laura

Carmilla goes to the police department to look at the public records of calls regarding Troy’s home, but it will take 2 days for the records to be found and compiled. She then goes to a diner and is handed, when she sits down, a cold drink. She looks up and sees the waitress is Laura. She orders coffee but Laura brings some food over. It is clear that Carmilla doesn’t have the funds for food by her reaction but Laura insists she has it. Laura asks about Mircalla and we discover that she is Carmilla’s mother – though she never saw her. Carmilla is both guarded (indeed, in an interesting costuming choice she wears a breastplate through much of the film) and a little touchy about her mother.

Tell me my life is about to begin...

Laura suggests that her father may not have technically been lying (about her living in the house, he was lying about not knowing her) but may know more than he let on and suggests Carmilla meets her back at the diner at 3. In the intervening scene we see Laura’s hand languish over a carving knife. Laura takes her to a trailer that her father used to rent out. Laura doesn’t know if he rented it to Mircalla but he may of, she tells Carmilla. She offers Carmilla the trailer as a place to stay for a couple of days. When she speaks to her father he admits he lied about Mircalla but says he did it for the best of reasons. He intimates that no good could come of knowing about her.

blood is involved

That is about as far as I want to go re their story but you will be aware that Carmilla and Laura do develop a relationship and it does involve blood. Troy believed Mircalla was a vampire and Laura cuts herself. The relationship, as it grows, does involve blood-drinking. I mentioned a fascinating story choice and that appeared within the subtleties of the character portrayals, as the dynamics between Laura and Carmilla were in some respects – as I saw it – inverted to the way they were in Le Fanu’s original. This is despite the fact that Laura seems very fragile in many ways (beyond the obvious reliance on cutting) and Carmilla seems strong.

car crash

It is also interesting that the carriage crash, from the beginning of the original story, does remain in the film but in the form of the historic car crash that brought Mircalla into the family’s life. The car hit a bridge support and Mircalla was the most injured being the passenger. The driver, Dwight (Neal R. Hazard), left by bus for their original destination whilst she was taken to hospital and he never came back. Karen (Lynn Talley), Laura’s deceased mother, took Mircalla in. Carmilla knew Dwight’s surname but we never discover how she knew it, presumably through her research into her mother but we can look to her being something more than just a character, a living symbol within the psychosexual landscape.

in the field

The acting was superb. I immediately recognised Hannah Fierman from V/H/S and have to say that she is a very striking looking young woman, with astoundingly large eyes – and that element gives her face an otherworldly quality and adds to her characterisation. Christen Orr was excellent also as Carmilla and the two actresses worked well together generating a real chemistry. It seemed to me there were some referential nods to the genre. For instance, one scene seemed to subtly parody and subvert the Twilight “lying in a field” scene, and there was a brief moment, through a music box, of Swan Lake that immediately summoned thoughts of Dracula (1931). Talking of music the piece of music over the opening credits was superb.

Kylie Brown as Mircalla

As I suggested, I really liked this. Carmilla is a piece that lends itself to being the basis for psychosexual drama but I was taken very much with the journey this took the Laura character on, the play with the genre (that was very knowing) and that reversal of dynamics I mentioned. 8.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Stixx – review

Author: Remy Porter

First Published: 2013

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: There's a murderer loose in Greystones, a small estuary village tucked against the wintry, wooded trails of O'Halloran Hill. The gory body count begins to rise, sending the media into an all-out feeding frenzy. The village is swamped with police and onlookers, and everybody wants to catch 'The Vampire Killer'.

While the hunt is on James Stixx and his partner-in-crime, Faye Burns discover that beneath the surface is a whole different story, a mystery that goes back decades. The teenagers find everyone has something to lose, or secrets to bury.

And all the while the vampire is waiting ... choosing its moment to strike...

The review: You should never judge a book by its cover, so they say, but can we take a moment to revel in the glory that is the cover of Stixx. A cracking piece of cover art that totally sells the book to me.

The book itself is a piece of crime fiction set in the English countryside, a rural landscape that is haunted by lumbering shells of derelict buildings as sepulchre as a tomb. Winter beaches, uninviting woodlands and fields on which there is no place to hide. In this bleak, winter scene we are witness to a double murder and the killer seems to be a vampire. This is not the suave vampire flitted out of some City goth club and wintering out in the sticks. Nor is it a cloaked member of the gentry, using his mesmeric gaze to trap the fluttering heart of a damsel. The vampire is naked and a ruthless killer and the police can’t seem to catch him.

In this village lives Stixx and he has just met Faye Burns who has recently moved to the village (and has a boyfriend overseas). They begin to try and investigate the attacks but what was great about the primary characters was just how damaged they all were. Stixx works a dead end job (though he may have just lost it), is known to the police due to a bad habit he used to have of setting fires and is a small time drug dealer. Faye has massive psychiatric issues – stemming from her dad having a psychotic break and cutting her twin sister into pieces. Porter writes a great character as they are damaged, sometimes petty, but you still sympathise with them.

Is it a vampire – now that really is a spoiler too far though certainly there is belief that a vampire is out there. I will say that there is a deeper plot aspect, a dark mystery at the heart of village life that, if I had a complaint, seemed just a tad convoluted. However that is a minor issue as the story certainly did keep me with it, but it is those characters that really hook you.

Not a heartthrob vampire, a Count or an angst-ridden vampire in sight, rather a ruthless monster and a novel that is definitely worth your time. 8 out of 10.

McHale’s Navy – the Vampire of Taratupa – review

Director: Hollingsworth Morse

First aired: 1965

Contains spoilers

I must admit that I was unaware of the series McHale’s Navy. As I settled down to watch this vampire orientated episode from the third season that fact left me at somewhat of a disadvantage, I think, and I came away with the impression that it was essentially Bilko at sea (or at a naval base at the very least). I wasn’t far wrong.

From what I gather McHale’s Navy started off as a drama (with comedic elements) in its original pilot form with Ernest Borgnine playing Lt. Commander Quinton McHale one of 18 survivors of a Japanese attack during World War 2 and their struggle against a Lieutenant parachuted in to get them up and running as a fighting force, as they had gone native and were content to just try and survive the rest of the war on the island. However, when it became a syndicated series it was under the producer, Edward J. Montagne, who had been behind the Phil Silver’s Show - making it Bilko in the navy (but in war rather than peacetime).

Benson and Parker

To the specific episode then: Ensign Charles Parker (Tim Conway) is a klutz, when he meets new nurse Lt. Melba Benson (Ann Elder) they are instantly attracted to each other and she is as big a klutz as he is. On their second date they go and watch the vampire movie “Vampire’s Revenge”. We do not get to see the film but we do see the audience reactions and hear parts of it – and the vampire’s faux-Lugosi accent. Following the viewing Parker manages to trap the hand of commanding officer Captain Wallace B. Binghamton (Joe Flynn) in a chair and then knock supply boxes over him with a jeep.

Ernest Borgnine is McHale

Binghamton decides to ship Parker off to a coast-watching location, an assignment that is essentially a suicide run, and thus be done with the clumsy ensign. However he then discovers that Parker has the same incredibly rare blood type (AA6 –ve) and rescinds the order, instead closeting Parker away to keep him safe. Whilst Parker milks this quite a bit, he wants to get back to his mates. Worse they discover that Melba faked the blood records to save him. McHale comes up with a plan to get him back.

our fake Vampire

How the plan was actually meant to work in any meaningful way outside of the fuzzy world of the sitcom was beyond me, but they have Parker dress as a vampire and lie in a coffin. He then menaces Binghamton until McHale and mates come in to the rescue – saying it is Parker’s secret and he turns into a vampire every full moon! Parker then suggests (in an equally faux-Lugosi accent) that he has brought some friends along and in walks the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Wolfman. Binghamton soon sees through the scheme, as well as the disguises, but sends Parker back to his friends anyway.

plus Mummy too

With a quick visit from the Creature from the Black Lagoon as a coda piece, that was about all – so, as in Bilko, it is a fake vampire. I apologies now to fans of the series but I wasn’t aware of it before and won’t be watching more. To me it was just a facsimile of the Phil Silver’s Show, without the distinct advantage of having Phil Silvers in the cast. 4 out of 10.

The episode’s imdb page is here.

The Devil’s Gravestone – review

Director: Jay Mackenzie Roach

Release Date: 2010

Contains spoilers

This was one of those frustrating films that, for everything it did right, it managed to make a mistake also. Probably unavoidable, to some degree, when you are making a low budget movie but some of the issues were avoidable.

Let us take the location of the film – Roach City. Creating your own city for the location offers a freedom next to a real world location in that you can design the city as you want it and not have to worry that someone who knows the location will know that the locations are fictional. On the other hand, calling it Roach City makes the viewer start – it makes you wonder who would call a city that, even when you realise the director used his own name.

opening scene

The film starts with a voice over, from main character Jaq (Elle LaMont, who is the new Satanica Pandemonia in From Dusk till Dawn the Series - EDIT: This is incorrect, though she does appear in the series as Karina), as she talks about no longer seeing the sun. It’s a little play with expectations. We see a woman, with dried blood at her mouth, and will soon discover this isn’t Jaq. Jaq says that she does not have the disease that goes through *their* veins. She follows their patterns because she is a hunter and it is a male vampire she has come for.

fanged and bloodied

She shoots him twice with a shotgun but then he overpowers her and starts to choke her with a belt as her fingers grasp a nail gun – a nail in the temple and three in the side is followed by a pickaxe (the filmmakers choosing, wisely, not to tackle that effect and so we see the swing). Realising that the vampire was lonely, rather than hungry, she turns on the victim who has been infected. The implication as we move to title screen being that Jaq has killed her.

attacked in the stall

We get a sequence that that is treated to add wear lines into the film and give the impression of a Grindhouse flick, whilst we hear Jaq’s thoughts about “the Scarlet Stalker” (Reece Rios , After Sundown) a serial killer (who she knows is a vampire). We also see black talons being cut and false, human normal nails being applied. This was clever but never actually followed up. We see him on the hunt, a forgettable, normal looking guy – he follows a woman into a bathroom, removes his clothes and then rips the stall door off and attacks. Outside Jaq sets up a high powered sniper rifle down an alleyway and, after speaking to him on the phone, puts a couple of bullets in him. She then gets up close and personal and eventually does overpower him but is stabbed for her trouble also.

Elle LaMont as Jaq

She tortures him to try and get information (overlooking how she managed to get the vampire back and chained down, especially with her injury). He was created by a vampire called Catherine (Mila Moravec), a vampire who lived to turn men into monsters. Jaq has previously disposed of her and it is one of creations she is after, Jaq’s erstwhile husband Cale (Niko Red Star). As the film progresses we discover that his first victim was their young son (Connor Hill). When the injured Jaq gets home we see her shooting up drugs, fixing the stab wound with superglue and setting up a homemade IV as she tries to get through the next day.

Maggie Alone

When she awakens a cop, Dick (Joe Nemmers), is sat there and he brings her into his world. He has watched her for years (he was on the crime scene, when Cale killed the kid) but things have gone strange. We have seen a woman, Maggie (Kristin Sutton), in a wedding dress and she is alone and upset, as well as Cale, in a tux, committing suicide before a church; both scenes in snippets explicitly without referencing. It turns out that Maggie was just married to Cale (not knowing he was a vampire) and he vanished off after the ceremony. Then she was attacked and raped by something, though there was no physical evidence of anyone else there. Three days later and she is in a coma and heavily pregnant.

experimentation

Dick has taken her to an abandoned building where his friend, Doc (Grant James), experiments on vampires – we see one which is missing everything below the abdomen, chained to a table. Interestingly none of the primary “good” characters see anything wrong in this. The film then takes us down two lore routes. Doc’s experiments have shown that the vampires are stronger and heal fast because their systems are on overdrive – heart rate, immune system, muscles and tendons are all beyond human normal. This burns blood off as fuel and so the body has adapted, linking the digestive system and circulatory system. The appendix becomes a conduit between the systems (one wonders whether that means vampires who have had appendectomies will die – there is a sideswipe comment from Jaq about this). Jaq had already told us that the way to kill a vampire is either massive blood loss, or major trauma to the heart or brain.

Cale's sacrifice

The above is interesting, if a little bit technobabblish. The other lore line goes on about the church, the True Covenant of Christ, which believes that Jesus was Lucifer (in other words the bible is the biggest con job of all time) and a prophecy that a vampire will father a second son (having eaten the first), who will be God’s Shadow. Vampires are sterile, it appears, and the act before the church was Cale’s self-sacrifice to the devil – he does get a body back later. This was also interesting but suffered for two reasons. Firstly there wasn’t the budget that would allow a full representation of this (for instance the invisible sexual assault is not particularly shown), Secondly the film was gritty and down to earth, with a viral/disease explanation and an attempt to draw science into the feeding cycle and the two sides sat uncomfortably with each other.

Doc and Dick

That said, it was ambitious for such a low budget film. The acting was hit and miss all the way through. Jaq’s film noir voice overs worked and you began to get a feel for her and Dick as characters, especially after you let the noir aspect of the film take hold. Grant James offered an idiosyncratic performance that grew on you. Nico Red Star didn’t work for me as Cale, however. There were aspects that made me startle that I won’t reveal due to them being a spoiler too far but brought a serious story faux pas to light. The effects weren’t bad for a low budget film, but the 70s-esque filming hid a lot of issues. The story didn’t flow in places but ultimately kept my attention. I did like the fact that the good characters were absolutely fundamentally flawed.

Cale turned

So, not bad for an indie effort, but it had issues. Some of those were budget based (the range of the storyline somewhat outstripped the budget on hand, though they did a lot with little). Some were down to expectation – the in-half vampire I expected to have some form of role, other than showing the main characters’ absolutely degenerated level of morality. Some could have been solved by the filmmakers – such as the poorer end of acting. All in all it probably deserves 5 out of 10, but with a caveat that it is worth seeing as an indie offering. The IMDb page is here.

Armando Creeper’s Valley of the Vampire – review

Director: A Neal

Release: 2006 (re copyright notice)

Contains spoilers

I found this film on YouTube and, to my knowledge, it has not had a DVD release nor is it on IMDb (at time of review). It does an awful amount wrong but there are moments within it. For instance it might be down to the low resolution on the YouTube upload or the film may just look washed out, but that – if deliberate – does give the film a feel of a 1970s movie. Something rediscovered (a claim made at the head of the film that suggests this is a “lost” movie). That said there is no excuse for the title banner that sits across the film like a bird of doom.

We are in the realm of the vampire western, though this is a western with biblical pretentions, quoting through its length passages from the book of revelations and, so, we are also in the subgenre that ties vampire and antichrist together.

Armando Creeper as Von Strom

It begins with a man, Harley (Gregg Griffin), at a campfire – on his way home from cattle market. His horse threw him at the campsite and he has stopped to warm himself, a cup of coffee is desired. However, instead, he finds a book filled with prophecy – it claims in companion to the book of revelations – a book that mentions his name. Out of the dark comes a creature, Eric Von Strom (Armando Creeper), a grey faced, drooling monstrosity with a buzzard on his arm. He attacks Harley and, as he feeds, he infects him with a fever.

Gregg Griffin as Harley

Harley awakens in daylight, naked bar a cross at his neck and a brand on his chest. He stumbles back to his home town where he collapses. He is placed under the care of his bride to be, Belle (Michelle Calhoun), meanwhile her best friend (and his secret admirer) Sally (Shellene Stindle) goes to see the sheriff (Hal Whamsley). She wants to see what he will do about the bandits that robbed Harley (his story as he believed no-one would believe the truth) but the Sheriff is lazy and corrupt and is only interested in being lecherous. His lechery leads to a fight between Sally and his wife Louisa (Sarah Duke). This shows one of the big problems with the film. They fight in the mud for four minutes, it is a boring and pointless sequence that adds nothing to the movie (not even offering titillation).

wedding

Harley and Belle get married but, on their wedding night, Harley dreams that Von Strom appears (and indeed he did). In the dream Von Strom feeds from Belle’s side as Harley lies immobilised. When he awakens to find her dead she has a mark at her neck (it didn’t make a lot of logical sense). Anyway, Von Strom resurrects her, as his helper, but of course she is now vampire. She also ends up being pregnant (this would be the antichrist but really the film just mentions it once and then again in the epilogue). For the return of his wife Harley agrees to help, kidnapping townsfolk for Von Strom and for his wife (though they are both capable of hunting their own food).

More like zombies

There is one part where Harley asks Belle to show strength – he has the fever but doesn’t feed. Nonsense as we have already had a scene where they feed together. It grinds inexorably on to the point where they decide to do away with Von Storm but it might be way too late, as most of the town are turned. In reality they do very little and the master vampire is brought down by a horde of vampires who shuffle more like zombies than anything else.

feeding together

The film is slow. I can forgive the film quality on the basis that it looks like a relic from the seventies but not the pacing of a film that feels at least an hour too long (it runs at 1 hour 45 minutes). The acting is am-dram, though the Von Strom makeup is surprisingly effective when the film is running (again, the poor resolution might have been the cause of this, working in the film’s favour). The sound is poor, with dialogue shifting from having hisses over it to being clean depending on the direction the camera (and thus the mike, I assume) is facing – or perhaps some was redone in a studio, who knows. The soundtrack was effective in places and missing in other places.

All in all this wasn’t brilliant but I could see something worthwhile in its core, a should-be-gleaming gem that you won’t want to watch it for as the slow pace strips it of any lustre. 1.5 out of 10.