Short Film: Vamp

Director: Zack Chapman

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

At a shade under 19 minutes Vamp succeeds due to script and performances, with a great performance by principle lead Adam Budron as Ren, a slacker. The film also throws names around like confetti so we get a news report, as the opening, that talks about the “Suburban Succubus” a (thought to be female) serial killer who has killed 8 victims thus far – all of whom displayed punctures of their main arteries.

Ren and Jon

The news report also suggests that the locals have their own theories and the words vampire and chupacabra are both mentioned. The Suburban Succubus is said to have a mark on her wrist. The news report is being watched by Ren. Ren is homeless and jobless and is currently living on his best friend’s couch. Said best friend, Jon (Seth Baird), is pressuring Ren about gaining employment and wants him to move out – the couch was only meant to be temporary and Ren’s only contribution to the household is beer.

the news

Jon has also got a new girlfriend, Lucy (Elizabeth Lee), who he met via Craigslist. Ren hasn’t met her but is suspicious – he later suggests that all women suck the soul out of their partners. He arranges to meet them both at a bar that night. When she walks in we (and Ren) immediately notice that she has a tattoo on her wrist, he challenges her to shots – which she wins when he retires to the toilet to hurl. When he gets out he is informed that they are leaving.

Lucy bloodied

Walking home drunk, he drops a cigarette. Looking up he sees a man and woman in an alley. The man slumps and the woman turns – it is Lucy with blood around her mouth. He runs… In the morning Jon jogs Ren's hungover memory of what he saw, when he plays him the voicemail Ren left his friend. Ren is convinced that Lucy will eventually kill Jon (and is horrified to discover she is moving in) but how can one deal with the undead, especially when your main source of information is a patently mad homeless guy called Abraham (Martin Pfefferkorn, I Sell the Dead) .

expert advice?!

As I mentioned at the head it is the performances – primarily Adam Budron’s, but the other leads all deliver – that makes this, along with a slick script. The tone of the film is very much a hip comedy, perhaps in the Kevin Smith vein, that is until the ending, which was excellently counterbalanced against that humour. It gives the short extra legs.

The imdb page is here.

Aleta: Vampire Mistress – review

Director: Phil Condit

First released: 2012

Contains spoilers

Originally entitled Empress Vampire, this film had been on my radar for quite some time – having stumbled some years back onto the film’s homepage. It has been a long old wait but it has now been released under the title Aleta: Vampire Mistress, but was the wait worth it?

In some respects no, not at all, and yet the film certainly has redeeming qualities as we will see as the review progresses. Unfortunately it does suffer through a lack of budget (IMDb estimates it at $250000) and that is reflected in the filming quality, which seems over-exposed throughout. This makes it easy to see in dark scenes but overall is unpleasing and very cheap looking.

dead robber

The film starts with a Halloween party and a man (Jake Girowski) arrives with a woman, Aleta (Ange Maya, Blood Scarab). An armed robber (Darren Lebrecht) comes in to the party and shoots to the ceiling, telling everyone to stay still whilst his accomplice (Marcus Johnson) collects their valuables. A cloaked and veiled woman approaches the robber and he shoots her to no avail. She picks him up by the neck and breaks it. The accomplice runs but the woman leaps the swimming pool and brings him down. We see his reaction when he sees her face but we see nothing of her (at this point), though we do see the aftermath. 

a vampire

In another part of town a group of girls are having a slumber party with Trish(Megan Renee Kim). One suggests that she’ll “shock the Hell out of Trish” by suggesting they play strip poker – an excuse by the filmmakers to get the girl who suggests it topless. After the first hand the lights all go out and they are attacked by vampires. When the cops subsequently arrive they remark how the killing of the three (Trish is missing) is like the one at the Halloween party. Elsewhere Aleta and her date are driving when she goes down on him and her groinal feed makes him crash his car.

caught on camera

The Secretary of Defence (Tom Cochran) is contacted and shown a video from the party. Realising he has a vampire on his hands he has FBI Agent Dan Higgins (Beau Nelson) attached to the case with orders to find the vampire and contact her – the thought is that they can harness her as a special operative. On his investigation Higgins discovers that a Russian, Ivor Helsing (Garrett Brawith, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), is also searching for Aleta. Around the same time Ivor – who comes from a line of vampire hunters – meets Ariana (Laura Cotenescu), who is a mystic tasked with hunting down the vampire. She knows the history of Aleta. Despite the differing agendas the three end up working together.

Ange Maya as Aleta

Aleta was originally the Empress Yang, mother of the next Emperor. Somehow she became a vampire – Ariana does not know how – but for 1000 years was protected by her son’s line. Eventually one of the Emperors arranged a marriage for her, to the King of Tibet, telling her that he expected her to eat the troublesome monarch. However he really expected the King and the Dowager Empress to kill each other. Just in case he summoned mystics from around the world to keep her out of China and hunt her down – that is where Ariana’s heritage comes from.

Aleta staked

As for Ivor, one of his ancestors – Joerg Von Helsing (Zachary Ryan Block) – found Aleta just over the border from Transylvania and tended to her. She fell in love with him and did not kill him and he seemed nonplussed by the fact that she sucked the blood out of a rabbit and was allergic to the sun (it making her develop boils, she says). That was until he is told that a vampire was hounded out of Transylvania and puts two and two together. He and his father (Britt Prentice) confront her and he ends up staking her – to no avail. She takes his eye and places it in the stake hole so he can mystically see her destroy his family over the centuries. We discover she killed Ivor’s wife (Sylvia Panacione) and unborn child.

energy worms

And this is where the film worked. It had a complex story that was interesting, though the way the US Government storyline was handled verged on the ridiculous at times and it was sometimes too complex for its own good leading to story short cuts to resolve things. The lore was also unusual in places – a fairly big spoiler is that two Chinese scientists created a device that could open a portal to another world and, through that, energy worms appeared and accidentally merged with the Empress turning her into a vampire. That leads to her near invulnerability – whereas other vampires can be staked and will die in the sun. She created all the other vampires and feels it if one dies.

musical number

Another aspect of the film that was bizarre (and didn’t work so brilliantly) was the use on two occasions of musical numbers (one of them being a song, with interpretive dance and nudity, the other a seduction scene). The acting was variable throughout – some not bad at all but other performances quite weak. There were some strange comedy moments (beyond the musical numbers). Aleta has a taste for virgins and sends her minions out to get some. Ivor saves one woman, staking the vampire that has mesmerised her (and alerting Aleta to his presence), and tells the girl to save herself by having sex with someone – so she immediately phones her boyfriend and says she is ready.

a vampire is staked

This is tough to call, when it comes to a score. I actually found myself enjoying the film, budgetary weaknesses and all, but it is fundamentally flawed. I’ll suggest 4 out of 10 and remain unsure as to whether I have been a tad too harsh or overly generous.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: A Feast in Kalix

I was contacted very recently by Viking Almquist. Viking is a long time reader of the blog who has noticed that I am currently running quite a few short vampire film articles. Viking wrote, directed, shot and glued together A Feast in Kalix during his time in film school.

a vampire creating pill

The film itself is in homage to Frostbite, the excellent Anders Banke black comedy, but reimagined in a Mike Leigh style. The film was produced on a shoestring of a budget and, to be fair, Viking describes the English subtitles as “somewhat crappy”. The story will be familiar to those who know the original film – kids, booze and pills that turn the users into fanged (one-fanged in one case) blood hungry vampires.

fangs

I was struck, however, with the characterisation that Viking was able to imbue his players with, despite the fact that it is only nine minutes long, as well as the low budget and all the other restraints he was faced with. The Second World War aspect is missing entirely – it is just the pills and the vampires; the initial modern outbreak as it were.

The imdb page is here.

Short film: Upir

Director: Patrick Lenahan

Release date: 2003

Contains spoilers

Upir is just over eight minutes long and is dialogue free. The film seems overexposed and the sound is scratchy giving it an older feel than it actually is and (I suspect) this was deliberate.

the clientele

It starts with a man (Jan Hrubec) delivering bundles of newspapers. When he gets to a bar he stops and takes a seat. The barmaid (Sanela Radovičova) takes three shot glasses of red wine to some strung out looking patrons. When she returns from the bar he points to the bottle, ordering the same. She glances to the table and the leader of the men nods, so she pours him a shot.

Sanela Radovičova as the barmaid

He downs it but very quickly runs to a bin and throws up. Whilst he cleans up after himself the barmaid takes cards to the table, passing the three men invites to an exclusive night. She checks the bin where the man has been sick and he steals an invite… Because nothing is going to go wrong with that, is it?

Jan Hrubec as the man

As often happens with shorts, it is a very simple story – little characterisation and so we imprint our stereotyped thoughts on the characters’ motivations and actions. In many respects this works because of it, a broad brush painting an impression and we fill in the blanks.

At the time of writing the article there is no IMDb page.

Honourable Mention: Mad Mutilator

Oh Lordy, Lordy… sometimes there is inept, sometimes surreal and sometimes we get a unique combination of the two. Welcome to Mad Mutilator, also known as Ogroff, a bizarre and rubbish French offering from 1983 and directed by Norbert Georges Mount.

How inept and strange. Let us look at the opening scenes. A car pulls off the road onto a forest track, now in the upcoming scenes the continuity flips the car's parked location from dirt track to road and back again. Three people get out of the car – a man, a woman and a child with his dog… but it seems that all three were shot on separate days, there is no coherent continuity between the three and none share their shots.

getting out of the car

The man goes for a pee, the child runs in the woods and the woman has a cigarette. Then we see Ogroff (Norbert Georges Mount) – a man with axe and mask. He kills the child first and then gets the man. He finally goes for the woman and we get the worst chase sequence of all time. At first round the car and then through the countryside, at times the super 8 film seems speeded up like the keystone cops. However she is able to stay ahead of him and even (from some shots) seems to have lost him. We do get POV shots from him at times.

random clown

She flags a car, which stops (and causes him to walk nonchalantly away, rather than pursue her or quickly hide) but a clown gets out, tells her to use her legs and then drives off! Ogroff resumes the pursuit. Then she gets to a crossroads and doesn’t know which way to go and sees a man pushing a bike. She approaches him and he turns – it is Ogroff! He captures her, binds her arms, they walk a bit (with him pushing the bike and holding her bonds) and then the bonds seem to fall off and she runs off again.

a rare reaction emoted

She somehow gets away from him and finds a shack and enters it, walking through it without any level of emotion showing despite the axes that line the bed (she doesn’t take one) and the body parts around the place. She finally emotes to camera when she gets blood on her hand, leaves the shack but is caught and tied to a cross. Then she screams (incessantly) and so he cuts of her tongue (it appears) but it is a bloodless operation. For some reason Ogroff is throwing flesh into a trap door under his house. 

strangely familiar

If it all seems bizarre so far believe me it will only get weirder. We discover, via a piece of dialogue (and the film is almost silent so a piece of dialogue is rare), that the police are aware of Ogroff but can’t find him in the woods. A girl wanders around the woods and is eventually caught by him, however he doesn’t kill her as she looks like an old photograph (actually she looks nothing like) and they sleep together! Before he caught her she found a body hanging from a tree, she cut it down and (for apparently no reason) stabbed it. It then got up and she shot it. It got up again and she then tied the noose to her car bumper and beheaded it… Wait… a zombie?

a zombie

Oh yes, the thing under the house are actually "things", multiple, and they are zombies. Suddenly we have the dead rising from graves and slow, shambling Romero-esque zombies on the loose. Was Ogroff the guardian of this area? The film hints but doesn’t say. That’s all well and good, you might now say, but what about vampires… This is, after all, Taliesin Meets the Vampires. Firstly it isn’t Ogroff himself, though he does drink gathered blood from a bucket at one point. Instead we keep cutting scenes to a “hands only” shot of someone playing with a car engine.

the priest

Cut to the end of the film and the car is on the road and stops to pick up the girl, who is running from the zombies. The driver is a priest (Howard Vernon, Dracula Prisoner of Frankenstein, Revenge on the House of Usher, the Erotic Rites of Frankenstein & Daughter of Dracula) and the girl warns him of the living dead. He says something about many types of creatures of the night. She wants him to stop at the nearest village to warn the police but he refuses – he has to get home before dawn. Then he finds time to pull over and attack her… with fangs and a bite.

distorted but fangs on show

It’s shot in such a way as you don’t actually see it, but he stakes her with his cross and then it is dawn. The car drives off, she is pulled into a gutter (by a red eyed fiend) and the credits roll… As I say, bizarre, inept but containing a fleeting visitation of a vampire who is dressed as (or is) a priest. The soundtrack is awful, tonal electronica. The photography is amateurish. Moutier ran a horror fanzine and owned, I understand, a video store – he is no Tarantino, not by a long shot. One for the very dedicated slasher/zombie/vampire fan!

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Baits

Director: Jacopo Calatroni

Released: 2013

Contains spoilers

Jacopo Calatroni as the vampire

Sometimes less is more. Let’s take Baits as an example, coming in at less than 5 minutes the film manages to tell a story – albeit simplistic given the short time frame. Whilst it eschews much characterisation and certainly avoids anything too complex in narrative, it does what it does well and the short running time actually saves it from needing the characterisation and advanced narrative.

waking

After a bright opening, a coffee shop with girls enjoying winter beverages as the soundtrack is filled with a Christmas song, we know we are watching a film set at Christmas and the move into a starkly filtered photography is all the more telling for the contrast. Two girls (Marta Bertolotti and Sara Ballerani) wake in separate parts of a disused building. One of them is bleeding.

hunting

Also in the building is a third girl (Elena Serra) and a vampire (Jacopo Calatroni) , who sets out hunting the girls. The look for the vampire was more Nosferatu than anything else and the film has the hunt but also shows the narrative of how the girls got there and why – not bad given the running time. At the time of writing this article there is no IMDb page that I can find but the short is on YouTube so I have embedded it below.

Preacher: Book 1 – Gone to Texas – review

Author: Garth Ennis

Illustrator: Steve Dillon

First published: 1996

contains spoilers

Wow, I’m late to the party with these but better late than never. This collection contains the issues #1 to 7.

Preacher is a Vertigo comic that was gory, blasphemous and – based on the first volume – loads of fun because of that. A TV series of the comic is imminent.

The comic has three primary anti-heroes. Jesse Custer is a bad boy turned preacher who is disheartened by his flock. Having insulted several of them in a bar he finds himself with a full church. Unbeknownst to him, however, an entity called Genesis has escaped Heaven. It melds with him, killing the entire congregation as it does so.

Tulip is a hitwoman on the run from a botched hit when she meets Cassidy, an Irishman who gives her a lift. Their paths cross with Jesse and it transpires that Tulip and Jesse were an item (prior to him becoming a preacher) and he had walked out on her. As the story progresses Cassidy’s habit of sleeping under a tarp during the day is explained when he is injured, rips open a man’s neck and drinks his blood.

There is, however, an immediate connection on a friendship level between Jesse and Cassidy (despite the former calling the latter an abomination). Meanwhile the angels tasked to look after Genesis have released the Saint of Killers to destroy the one Genesis has merged with. Genesis in its turn has given Jesse the power of the Word – controlling people with his voice. Genesis is the result of a taboo coupling between an angel and a demon and, at its birth, God absconded from Heaven to Earth, whereabouts unknown. Jesse decides to find God and remind him of his duties – Tulip and Cassidy coming along for the ride.

We meet some bizarre characters. Arseface is a Nirvana fan who tried to copy Cobain’s suicide and has been left with a face like an arse. An upbeat young man until Jesse kills his morose, racist sheriff father by telling him to go fuck himself – which the sheriff does literally by ripping his own manhood off and using it on himself. Arseface names himself and swears revenge. John Wayne appears occasionally as Jesse’s conscience.

In this volume – on a vampire level – we only get a little bit. Cassidy is a vampire, sunlight burns him, blood heals him and that’s about it. But this is a strange and wonderfully offensive volume that I really rather enjoyed. 7 out of 10.

Gangpire III – review

Author: Sentu Taylor

First Published: 2015

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: When Tacoma finds out that the Honored Elders gave his wife, Helen, an ultimatum under a death threat he asks her to hide with Seattle and his son Menelik as he plunges head first into preparations for war.

He blackmails FBI agent Shane Tyson to give him the classified weaponry used to kill vampires. Tacoma sends Iron Head and Slow Poke to different cities to recruit new GANGPIRE disciples, while he and Raider join forces with a vampire revolutionary group called The Modern Collective. Yes, Raider is back and asserts himself to be Tacoma's right hand again. It seems as if the Gangpire gang has it all figured out, and then chaos erupts.

Helen's hideout was the farthest thing from safe, Iron Head gets unexpectedly side tracked on his mission, and Slow Poke can't find enough soldiers on his out of state trip. After becoming separated from Helen, Seattle disobeys her brother and takes the mischievous Menelik and his pet hyena to the exact place Tacoma didn't want them to be, Oakland, California, which turns into a fiasco within itself. Starburst resurfaces to wreak havoc, and on top of all that Tacoma learns that he himself is a bigger danger to his family and friends than his adversaries are. Find out who will survive this anarchic journey of torture, slaughter, and black magic as new enemies are established, old feuds are rekindled, and friends become traitors in this final instalment of the critically praised Gangpire trilogy.

The review: Book 1 successfully merged street and gang culture with the vampire genre (no mean feat in itself) and Book 2 defied convention and reinvented itself as a fantasy book. With the final part of the story, Sentu Taylor returns to a gang meets urban fantasy setting as he paints the streets with blood and the vampires fight each other.

He has drawn a world where characters Tacoma and Helen are just too powerful to be allowed to live but just powerful enough that they could throw off the yoke of the traditionalist rulers of vampirism. He also adds a streak of devilish humour personified in his Menelik character (the rapidly growing, physically at least, son of the two primary protagonists). Of course, by pitching vampire against vampire he is able to ratchet up the characters’ power but the humans play at least a small role (the FBI having developed anti-vampire technology).

One new piece of lore that is added is the idea that because Tacoma became a vampire through an occult ritual then all the vampires descended from him will die if he does. Tacoma has become a were-hyena as well as a vampire and we also get vampiric hyenas in the final battle. Other than that we follow the lore as set out through the series.

I need to mention the ending as I thought it was particularly brave as set out – if not exactly feel good. Just in case that was too much for some readers the author offers an alternative ending as well, with more of a feel good vibe.

The pace is riotous, whilst the slang does not detract. I was amused however by the use of the slang word hella (which was a constant through the three books) having discovered that (apparently) in the Russian Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary it is suggested “that Hella was the name given to girls who died too early, and became vampires after.” Absolute coincidence but a hella good one! And a hella good finale as well. 7.5 out of 10.

The Haunting Hour: Grampires part 1 and 2

Director: Neill Fearnley

First aired: 2012

Contains spoilers

The Haunting Hour was an R L Stine vehicle that ran for 4 seasons and was marked by having perhaps a slightly darker hue than vehicles such as Goosebumps. Grampires was actually two episodes from season 3, with the story continuing from one episode to the other.

As per the normal model of these types of show the main protagonists are kids – in this case a brother, Mike (Mitchell Kummen), and his sister, Cristen (Chanelle Peloso). She is old enough to drive and he is the kid brother.

Shirley and Gladys

The show starts with Mike having a nightmare about his grandpa, Walt (Christopher Lloyd, House of Monsters), and the ravages of old age. He is actually in a car with Cristen and they are travelling to a place called Sunset Estates – a retirement village – to visit Walt. Their mum has suggested that he sounds depressed and so it is a surprise visit to cheer him up. They become lost so it is late, just before sunset, when they arrive at the place.

is he dead?

It is a gated community and security only let them in after a blind is pulled up, in the guardhouse, to look at them. They get to Walt’s house but no one answers the door. Not to worry, Cristen has a key and they let themselves in. The house is dark and smells funny. They discover that the shutter slats are glued down. Eventually they find Walt but he is cold to touch and seems dead. They are talking about calling 911 when he suddenly comes around (we can assume that the sun has set).

he's a grampire

Cristen insists they all go for a walk and the place, which was deserted an hour before, has residents wandering around – though there is something sinister about them. They are approached by Gladys (Mary Black) and Shirley (Patti Allan) but Walt quickly ushers the kids away. Back at his house there is a meal box on the doorstep – Walt takes it into the garage. Cristen walks in on him feeding on a rat – but thinks it cool that he is a vampire… indeed, a grampire. While this is going on Shirley and Gladys try and fail to get an invitation into the house from Mike.

when vampires attack

Cristen sends Mike to the store for food – not realising that Walt isn’t the only vampire. Mike gets to the store but once in finds himself confronted by a group of geriatric vampires who have decided lunch is served. In the meantime Walt and Cristen go after him – and get a speeding fine in their golf cart from a vampire cop. This is where the first episode ends and I am not going to spoil the concluding episode but will say it involves bingo.

staked vampire

We get some bits of lore. Vampires become stronger as they age (but they do not become younger through blood consumption), so we do get a vampire on a mobility scooter and another with a Zimmer frame. A stake to the heart dusts them as does exposure to sunlight. Rodent doesn’t taste as good as human.

This was fun and Christopher Lloyd was, as always, a joy to watch. More could have been made of the traditional vampiric OCD and bingo – but that is a hindsight thing and, to be fair, the target audience probably wouldn’t have got that nuance. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Red Dwarf: Polymorph – review

Director: Ed Bye

First aired: 1989

Contains spoilers

In the UK, for people of a certain age, Red Dwarf is an institution. Comedy at its finest, it followed the misadventures of a group of misfits on the mining spaceship Red Dwarf.

The basic premise was that technician, and self-confessed lazy slob, Lister (Craig Charles) had been frozen in stasis having illegally brought a cat on board the ship. Following this there is an accident, caused by his overtly neurotic and bureaucratic bunkmate Rimmer (Chris Barrie, the Young Ones), and the crew are killed by a Cadmium II leak.

Hattie Hayridge as Holly

3 million years later the ship’s computer, Holly (in season 3 played by Hattie Hayridge), deems the radiation danger to be over and revives Lister. Holly also brings Rimmer back as a hologram to help keep Lister sane. As the series started the other occupant of the ship was the Cat (Danny John-Jules, Blade II), a creature evolved from Lister’s pet cat (which was safe in the hull when the leak occurred). This episode was from season 3 and by that time the android character Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) had been made a permanent character.

the polymorph

Now, as I say, this was an institution but I never thought to consider any episodes for this blog. I started rewatching the show from the beginning on Netflix and when I watched this episode it became apparent that I would have to cover the episode – after all the creature they encounter is described as, “sort of an emotional vampire”. Essentially a pod in space containing a genetic mutation experiment is breached and the creature gets aboard Red Dwarf.

Robert Llewellyn as Kryten

It is a polymorph, turning into a variety of objects and people. At one point it becomes a pair of boxer shorts that Lister puts on. The shorts begin to shrink necessitating Kryten (who happens to be wearing a vacuum cleaner groinal attachment) to pull them off. Apparently, according to IMDb, the live studio audience laughed so long at that gag that Chris Barrie had to wait several minutes to deliver the next line. The creature uses its polymorph abilities to provoke negative emotion in its prey and then eats the negative emotion.

sucking emotion

This feeding leads Lister to lose his fear, Kryten his guilt, the Cat his vanity and Rimmer loses his anger. They all get their emotions back once the creature is destroyed but, in the meantime, their personalities have all changed. Rimmer proposes (as a right on activist) to call the group hunting the creature The Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society – I’ll let you work out the acronym. The creature was a product of Earth, an attempt to create a perfect warrior that could change shape to adapt to any terrain – it is, however, completely insane.

Craig Charles as Lister

Season 3 was a brilliant season of Red Dwarf – the dynamic of adding Kryten into the regular characters worked splendidly and this was a great episode. Definitely worth 8 out of 10 as an episode.

The episode's imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Master and Margarita (2005)

Regular readers will know that I only recently discovered the marvellous novel the Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. Since then I have looked out for the visual adaptations. I have watched the 1972 Yugoslavian adaptation – a marvellous film, though it did change the narrative structure and made some idiosyncratic changes. It did not, however, keep the character of Hella in the film.

This was a Russian mini-series directed by Vladimir Bortko and it does, indeed, keep the Hella character intact within the story – though she is renamed as Gella (Tanya Yu). The character loses the scar to her neck but is most definitely a vampire as we will see. A couple of other vampires are mentioned in passing.

Oleg Basilashvili as Woland

The mini-series is incredibly faithful to the book – though there are changes such as new police characters added – so suffice it to say that it follows the chaos and misfortunes meted out on the citizens of Stalin’s Moscow when the devil – under the name Woland (Oleg Basilashvili) – visits. His purpose is to throw his annual ball and due to quirks of fate, and her name, Margarita (Anna Kovalchuk) becomes Queen of the ball. She is a melancholy woman as her lover, an author referred to only as the Master (Aleksandr Galibin), is missing. He, in turn, is in a psychiatric unit – ill due to the attacks on him, by the art establishment, because of his novel about the life of Pontius Pilate (Kirill Lavrov).

Anna Kovalchuk as Margarita

The story flips between Pilate’s story – and the trial and execution of Ieshua Ha-Notsri (Sergey Bezrukov) – told both by Woland and through the Master’s story, and the events in Moscow. The series uses the technique of being primarily in a washed through black and white (which allows footage contemporary to the series to be added in) moving into colour at opportune times in the story (all of the Jerusalem scenes are in colour and much of the more supernatural moments in Moscow).

kissing Varenukha

So to Gella. Gella is an often naked vampire and part of Woland’s entourage. We see her in vampiric action when  Woland and company arrange to give a black magic demonstration at a theatre and subsequently confound, confuse and terrorise the theatre management. Having been warned not to go to the authorities, she attacks the disobedient Varenukha (Andrey Sharkov). In the book it says she offers him a kiss. In this it is confirmed that the kiss is a bite, when we see her at his neck.

fangs

When we next see Varenukha, he is a vampire and he and Gella are threatening theatre manager Rimsky (Ilya Oleynikov). The sfx do not stretch far enough to include her elongating rotten arm or her rotting breast in this scene but Varenukha does have fangs. The pair are foiled by a cockcrow and have to flee with Rimsky unharmed. I mentioned other vampires and there are two very fleetingly. Woland’s primary Lieutenant Koroviev (Aleksandr Abdulov) is introducing the guests at Satan’s Ball to Margarita. The final two are a pair of drunken vampires. The book's scene with Margarita showering in reviving blood is one of the few elements that the series actually missed.

Woland and his entourage

The series seems to have divided folks online but I really enjoyed it. There was a quality that made it feel more like a 1970s production than 2005 and thus some of the more clunky sfx were entirely forgivable. I have seen criticism of the region 1 subtitles – ranging from them being literal translations (I wouldn’t say they were quite that, but they were obviously not done by someone whose first language was English) to them being completely unintelligible. The latter is not true at all, they made sense but were somewhat verbose at times (with multiple lines on the screen) and were a heartbeat out of sync. Nothing that can’t be lived with, however.

Tanya Yu as Gella

So, our vampires make a fleeting visitation. Like the novel’s Hella, Gella is forgotten about following Varenukha pleading with Woland to make him human again and the reuniting of the two lovers. As such she doesn’t leave our mortal realm when Woland’s entourage goes. However this is a great adaptation, in my view, and worth watching. Perhaps not as slick as a US series but worth your time.

The imdb page is here.