Short Film: Lilitu

Lilitu was the feminine form of lilu, which meant spirit in the Akkadian Language, and is often associated with Lilith. There are, as you will be aware, connections between Lilith and the media vampire. Lilitu, in her own right, appeared as a demon in the Angel comic series Auld Lang Syne.

Over Christmas 2015 I was emailed by Billy who put me on to this short film by Richard Lowry, which was released in 2015. Coming in at just over 9 minutes, I need to thank Billy for drawing it to my attention as it is a cracking short.

Ben and Jamie

It begins with a woman, Jamie (Johanna Rae) awakening on a couch. She stands but whilst she is in a living room her mind is elsewhere, in a forest. How has she come to be in this other place? The film doesn’t answer (though the IMDb page suggests it’s an astral projection). However a priest, Ben (Greg Travis), is there and is able to talk to her. He asks where she is and asks if there is any visual clue as to where the place might be; there is not.

Nina Sallinen as Lilitu

She starts to walk and he steps behind her. Her hand touches glass in our world as she reaches the window. He guides her around the house as she walks through the forest. She says that there is something ahead, maybe 20 feet in front. We catch a glimpse of a woman, Lilitu (Nina Sallinen), holding a bloodied bundle. Jamie is scared but Ben gets her to approach, guiding her to the garden in the real world. Closer, she can see Lilitu digging a grave with her hands and placing the bundle in. She looks at Jamie and then vanishes.

Lilitu approaches

Time has moved on (though how much we do not know). Ben has her dig in the earth to uncover the bundle. She digs (in reality her nails scrapping against concrete) and uncovers a baby skull. Ben asks her to check the left hand, knowing the child will have had a deformity with the fingers fused together. She confirms this. Suddenly Lilitu appears and Jamie realises that she can see her…

apotropaic cross

And it’s here I would leave things normally but I do want to mention that Lilitu has sharp teeth, can unfurl wings and the cross has an apotropaic effect on her. As for the short itself, it is an exceptionally well made little piece that leaves questions hanging but also manages to generate a nice amount of atmosphere – thanks in great measure to Johanna Rae who portrays terror exceedingly well.

The imdb page is here.

You’re a Vampire: That Sucks! A Survival Guide – review at Vamped

Author: “Count” Domenick Dicce

First Published: 2015

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Being bitten by and turned into a vampire isn’t the glitz and glamor that Hollywood makes it out to be. In fact, one out of five newly turned vampires will succumb to a slew of easily avoidable and common pitfalls within their first few months as a nightwalker—tempting garlic-laced Italian food, silver jewelry, and anything with an SPF below 1,000 will have to go.

As an answer to this tragic loss of undead life, “Count" Domenick Dicce has written the definitive how-to guide that just might save your pale, ice-cold skin. This helpful tome will cover everything from Vampire 101—such as hunting, feeding, and getting used to your new powers—to Vampire Graduate Studies—such as coffin selection, the ghoulish world of vampiric social hierarchy, and the universal Laws of the Vampire.

This humorous and giftable guide will be perfect for you or the vampire nut in your life, complete with illustrations throughout.

For the review: go to Vamped.

Honourable Mention: A (Schizophrenic) Love Story

This was a 2014 film directed by Dylan Thomas Ellis & Glenn D. Levy, which was indeed a love story, indeed probably best described as a romantic comedy. The comedy came mainly from the central character Connor (Andrew Pozza) and the fact that he is an agoraphobic young man with anxiety and schizophrenia (brought on by trauma) and the interactions he has with his hallucinations and those in the real world.

Andrew Pozza actually wrote the screenplay and having looked in to his previous efforts he is primarily (at the point of writing) known for spoofs. This was not in that genre at all and though the Connor character was at the centre of the jokes one felt they were more with him than at him and, whilst it is a comedy, there was a large measure of sympathy built in for the character.

Connor and his three inner companions

So, you might be wondering why it’s being featured at TMtV. As the film starts we see a band playing in a garage. Connor is the guitarist, Einstein (Richard Lukens) is the keyboard player, the Virgin Mary (Jennifer Joseph) is the drummer and a vampire named Asher (Derek Lee Nixon) is the bass player. We also see that Connor actually isn’t plugged in and the others are not there. These three characters are the three staples of his hallucinations and much of the interaction in film is with them.

going to bite?

However, given that Asher does nothing particularly vampiric (though it does look like he leans in to bite Connor at one point) I decided to make this an Honourable Mention. The three characters represent aspects of himself and there is a definite reason why he hallucinates those three in particular. The fact that he is seeing them means that he is off his meds – they make him feel like a zombie – something he denies to doctor and neighbour Bob (Bruce Davison).

Jamie Teer as Lily

The three characters are aware of their nature and when Connor meets his new neighbour Lily (Jamie Teer) for the first time (she has just moved to her mother’s home on the street) he has to work out whether she is real in the first instance. She has her own problems but their friendship and romance quickly blossoms despite their unspoken issues and the barriers they both erect.

love advice during a date

This is, of course, not the normal film subject we look at here but is another example of the pervasiveness of the vampire through all levels of media. A film that could have been a crude joke based on mental health impairment becomes a sympathetic story, which is great, but the base genre might not be to the taste of all TMtV readers. The imdb page is here and you can find the film here.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from TMtV, let’s hope that Santa brought you some Vampiric goodies.

For a little Christmas vampire cheer check my story the Meaning of Christmas.

 Picture borrowed from Dracula's House of Halloween.

The First Vampire – review at Vamped

Author: John Davies

 First Published: 2014

The blurb: In his riveting debut novel, The First Vampire, John Davies provides an alarmingly plausible explanation of why and how the first human was transformed into a vampire, against a backdrop of factual Eastern European history.

In 1414, a priest and gifted singer from the Curtea de Arges region of Wallachia unknowingly set a chain of events in motion, which had the potential to cause catastrophic ramifications for centuries after.

Forty-eight years later, Vlad Dracula returned home to Curtea de Arges after a great battle in which he slaughtered fifteen thousand Muslims. Triumph turned to tragedy when he learned that his turncoat brother, Radu, was lurking in the region. Dracula was about to face his greatest nemesis ever.

Twenty-first-century, reluctant college sophomore, Kristi Johnson, is in a desperate race against time to save her family from complete disintegration. Her father commits the ultimate unspeakable act, and Kristi is forced to find answers immediately. Out of nowhere comes an unexpected possible solution—in the form of her unusual classmate, Alex.

The paths of the priest, the warlord, and the college kid are set on the collision course from hell in this fascinating blend of history, myth, and undying love.

For the review: Go to Vamped.org

Short film: Bunnicula: the Vampire Rabbit

Director: Charles A. Nichols

First aired: 1982

The animation of Bunnicula was part of the ABC Weekend Specials and was based on the children book series that began with Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery, written by Deborah and James Howe. The cartoon diverged radically from the book both in story and in the fact that it gave Bunnicula overtly vampiric powers, which the rabbit did not possess in the book.

For this article I watched the video rip that was on YouTube and the video quality was not the best, so apologies for the screenshots in advance. However it was good enough to view.

our narrator, Harold

The story is narrated by Harold (Jack Carter) the family dog who lives with The Munroes: mom (Janet Waldo), dad (Alan Young) and two kids, as well as the well-read cat Chester (Howard Morris) . Mr Munroe is a scientist at the World Co Food Processing Plant. The plant has been suffering from accidents and as the cartoon begins there is another, with a metal container nearly crushing Munroe and his boss (Alan Dinehart); the rope it was held by has been chewed through. Spooked out locals blame ghosts, one swears he spotted a wolf in the factory. The boss closes the factory down – which is the town’s main source of employment.

Bunny in a box

The family go to pick Mr Munroe up from his final day at the factory. Whilst there, the boys find a shoebox containing a rabbit (sleeping on a bed of earth) and a note – which is unreadable, due to it being in Romanian, except for the name Bunnicula (in the book the rabbit is named by the family as they found it in a cinema when they went to watch a Dracula film). One of the boys comments on Bunnicula sounding like Dracula. Harold, being part Russian Wolfhound (!), can read the note. It says “take good care of my baby”.

drained veg

Anyway, as things progress we see a pattern of vegetables turning white, having been drained of juice. Chester becomes convinced that the rabbit is a vampire. He is sleeping on earth, that sleep is through the day (Harold reminds him that they both sleep most of the day too) and the vegetables have a single puncture like a rabbit’s buckteeth (Harold points out they both have fangs and we should note that, despite the dialogue, the bunny is actually drawn with fangs when in vamp mode and not buckteeth).

using telekinesis

Eventually the neighbours decide that their drained vegetables are down to a vampire rabbit and head to the Munroe’s house as a mob. The dog and cat run with the rabbit to save it (in the books the cat repeatedly tries to kill the rabbit), unfortunately ending up at the plant. The source of the accident reveals itself to actually be wolves breaking in through a pipeline in the forest and looking for food. Bunnicula (out of sight of the cat and dog) reveals it has the ability to sprout batwings, have glowing red eyes and use telekinesis as it saves the cat and dog. That mystery solved, the Munroes then realise that the kids had not been feeding the rabbit and the drained vegetables were due to hunger, Bunnicula sucking the juice as it is a baby, which is accepted as a reasonable explanation and deposits us at the end of our journey.

The animation was passable, the story was just plain silly (and it feels strange to complain about that when the premise was a vampire rabbit) and, if we take the premise as read, the exposition around it was lazy and ultimately, as I say, silly. That said, it did have a degree of charm.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Ravenous

Recently I received a message from Leila, who suggested I watch Ravenous with a view to a ‘Vamp or Not?’ The film was from 1999 and directed by Antonia Bird and I was aware of it, however I always assumed it fell simply into the cannibalism camp.

As it stands that is sort of correct, in fact it features a windigo (or wendigo) – a cannibalistic creature from Native American traditions. Given the tendency to link vampires with many other mythological creatures it is surprising that the wendigo is not tied to the vampire myth more often. Certainly the usual suspects – be it Summers or Bane – do not feature the creature in their volumes. That said they were tied together in the film Dracula, Lord of the Damned.

getting a new posting

After a Nietzsche quote, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster” and a further anonymous quote that says “eat me” the film begins. It is set in 1847 and Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is being awarded a medal for his efforts in a battle. Following the ceremony the men are all given steaks but Boyd can barely look at his. As he cuts into the rare meat his mind flashes to bloody images of war and he runs from the table to vomit. The general, Slauson (John Spencer), tells Boyd that he is no hero and he is sending him as far away as possible – that being Fort Spencer in California. As we stay with Boyd he appears to be suffering from PTSD.

buried under the dead

Boyd arrives at the fort in winter and meets the forts oddball personnel – ably commanded by Col. Hart (Jeffrey Jones). We discover Boyd’s history. He was in a battle against Mexican soldiers but froze. His company were massacred and he played dead. He was dragged off and placed in a pile of bodies, the blood from the dead running down his throat. He pulled himself out of the pile but something had changed. We see him, in flashback, break a guard’s neck with his bare hands and he then took the fort.

Robert Carlyle as F W Colqhoun

Things change when Boyd spots a man in the dark, starving and exhausted. His name is F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) and he tells the tale of settlers, lost as they were misguided by a Col Ives, and stuck in a cave through winter. He says that they ran out of food and, whilst he was out of the cave, one of the settlers died and he returned to find the others cooking the dead man’s legs. They ate their erstwhile companion but Ives changed and quickly their numbers dwindled. Colghoun left the last remaining woman with Ives and escaped.

the wendigo

Hart decides to investigate and takes a contingent out to the cave but they soon discover it was a trick and Colqhoun has led them to a place of slaughter. Before they go George (Joseph Runningfox), a Native American, tells Boyd that he believes this to be a tale of a wendigo and shows him a picture of the creature. When pushed he suggests that white men eat the flesh of Jesus and the skin with the picture on has Christ on the reverse, indicating a connection of sorts. Also, en route to the cave, Boyd actually asks Colquon if he felt different when he had eaten flesh and he affirms this, suggesting an increase in strength.

Guy Pearce as Boyd

Boyd ends up the survivor of the party, having shot Colqhoun and watched him sit up immediately afterwards. He leaps from a cliff to escape (or perhaps kill himself) and survives as trees break his fall – though he breaks his leg badly, with the bone stuck out of the flesh. We see him physically push the bone back in and then he eats of the flesh of another soldier. We then see him walk back to the fort – injured, yes, but able to walk on what is a severe break.

Cross on head

Later Colqhoun – under his alias of Col. Ives – suggests that he had been dying of tuberculosis and suffering from depression when he heard of the legend of the wendigo, how a man eating the flesh of another man would absorb that man’s spirit and become stronger but also filled with a terrible unending hunger that only gets worse with each cannibalistic meal. When Ives and Boyd have their showdown Ives paints a cross on his brow in blood and is always wearing a crucifix around his wrist, tying in the Christ (or perhaps antichrist) aspect.

blood on lip

So… is it Vamp? Well vampires are known to be flesh eaters as well as blood drinkers, on occasion, and Boyd was changed by drinking blood rather than full on flesh eating and, symbolically at least, came back from the dead. The film suggests a supernatural aspect with the quick healing (later we see Colqhoun’s bullet wound has not just healed but vanished without a scar) and increased strength. There is the theme of the endless, increasing hunger that is a common vampire trope. On the trail to the camp a man is injured and Colqhoun cannot resist and licks the wound whilst the man sleeps – waking him and forcing them to bind him. I can’t help but think that the reference to tuberculosis was purposeful given the US connection between the disease and vampirism.

a mad glint in the eye

I said that the usual suspects of the widened vampire myth do not seem to cover wendigos but some writers do. Grace L Dillon in the Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters suggests “The windigo’s cannibalistic behaviour recalls the vampire, the zombie and the werewolf. ‘Like the vampire, it feasts on flesh and blood,’ writes Columbo.” (pp 591-592) In this case we have a change in men just by eating flesh, but that change is supernatural and confers some of the traits often seen in vampirism – hunger, increased strength and rapid healing.

Boyd at Fort Spencer

What seemed strange, within the plot, was the small intake that was necessary to turn. Whilst Colqhuon clearly had eaten of many, and we could (from a cannibalism perspective) almost assume a contraction of Kuru, Boyd seemed to have become wendigo from a small amount of blood entering his system – this gave him the strength to overcome his fear and take the enemy fort. One thing that seemed strange was the fact that cooked flesh was just as effective when it came to healing and also (implied) for turning - especially as the flesh seemed to be a conduit for energy vampirism given the comments about absorption of spirit. Whilst that indefinable something that would have screamed Vamp was not there, on the evidence in film I think suggesting that this is, in the broadest sense, Vamp is fair.

raising a glass

As for the film itself, it was a revelation. Carlyle and Pearce are as good as one would expect. There is a quirkiness to this and black comedy that belies some serious themes – such as PTSD and other mental health impairments (when we consider that Colqhoun was clinically depressed). The oddball unit reminded me just a touch of MASH. I’d seriously recommend this one.

The imdb page is here.

Coming Soon: the Slayers

Be on the lookout for this indie UK vampire flick due in 2016, which was part of a crowd-sourcing exercise.

The Slayers is the brainchild of John Williams and takes us into a clearly dark comedy arena, which they describe as a cross between Dumb and Dumber and Fright Night.

The blurb goes a little like this: The Slayers follows two cult members as they break ranks and decide to go on an adventure road trip to make the most of, what they believe to be, the last two weeks on earth. The two hapless men plan a bucket list and head off in an old motorhome to the mountains of Scotland to camp, skydive, meet girls and drink. It isn't long before Nigel and Job start to encounter strange characters who claim to be vampire slayers. Believing it to be a test from god, they follow the slayers into battle with vampires and the boys’ own stupidity.

You can find the homepage here and give their Facebook page a like here

Dr Zitbag’s Transylvania Pet Shop: Season 1 – review

Director: Tony Barnes

First aired: 1994

Contains spoilers

Don’t worry if you’ve not heard of it. This was a fairly obscure UK/French children’s cartoon from the 1990s and I don’t recall having ever seen it at the time it was released. I stumbled over it on Amazon Instant Video (UK version).

Compared to other cartoons, then, it really didn’t get the cult following that many did and that probably has much to do with the fact that unlike, say, Count Duckula it did not have a more universal appeal that could make it open to adults. The jokes are puerile, the situations vanilla and the characters as 2D as their drawings.

Dr Zitbag

You have mad scientist Dr Stanley Zitbag (Kerry Shale) who, having lost his job decides to open his own Pet Shop. He finds a Transylvanian castle in which to house his endeavour and discovers the owner of the castle is the dog, now dead and possessing his own bones. Horrifido, as the skeletal doggy is known, becomes his assistant. His neighbours are the Exosisters (both voiced by Nicolette McKenzie), Sinista and Bimbella, who Zitbag wants to woo. His on-running enemy is Officer Deadbeat (Christian Rodska) who wanted the castle as the new police station, though he also has a mad scientist rival Professor Sherman Vermin, who is an occasionally used character.

vampire froggy

So vampires… Well the opening theme introduces us to our first one – a vampire froggy. Zitbag uses his mad science know-how to create hybrid pets and some of them are listed in the title song. Later in the series he makes a swarm of vampire rodents. We also get a lot of random vampires popping up, be they shoppers in a supermarket, coming in to the pet shop or being the news anchor on TV. Lots of the episodes have random vampires making fleeting visitations.

the Exosisters

Then there are the Exosisters. Whilst clearly designed visually on the Bride of Frankenstein, they both sport fangs and it is clear that they are both vampires. They appear in virtually every episode to a greater or lesser extent, often as the story catalyst as Zitbag wants to impress them. Sinista (who has purple streaks in her hair) is dismissive of Zitbag but Bimbella (white streaks) seems to want to give him a chance. They do not do anything overtly vampiric, however, and the kid-friendly nature of the show is always maintained.

a random vampire

It seems cruel to attack this, especially as it might be a rose-tinted childhood memory for some, but I really struggled to drag myself through the short season. 3 out of 10 is probably fairest – it did have a horror film basis, even if it was watered into nothingness.

The imdb page is here.

Sifu Vs Vampire – review

Director: Daniel Chan Yee-Heng

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

Sifu Vs Vampire is a kyonsi movie, that ties in some European vampire tropes and even has a touch of the zompire to it. It perhaps does nothing new and relies on that a little too puerile humour that sometimes plagues this type of movie but it is fun in its own way. A popcorn movie one might say.

However, as the film starts you wouldn’t necessarily know that. It actually starts with quiet a classy edge. It begins with scenes that are clearly set in the Ghost Festival, with people burning Hell Bank Notes. We hear children singing Ring a Ring o’ Roses and see a woman (Michelle Hu Ran) enter a building and demand to know where her sister is.

ejected from the club

Then the tone changes. We see two guys literally thrown out of a club. They are Nicky (Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei) and Boo (Philip Ng Wan-Lung), their mission to get Boo to 'pop his cherry' obviously has not gone down too well. They phone their gangster boss, Snake (Tony Ho Wah-Chiu), for some back-up but get none and end up with Nicky trying to pull a woman, getting rid of Boo and being robbed by the woman who turns out to be a transvestite. He chases after the robber and a woman falls onto a car roof right beside him – she is the woman from the start of the film.

Tomorrow dying

He goes to the hospital with her, discovering that she calls herself Tomorrow and then gets a call. Snake’s wife (Winnie Leung Man-Yee, the Vampire who Admires Me) is possessed and has taken his manhood hostage (as they put it). Nicky has to get to the boss’ home quick but, on the way, he sees a book on Feng Shui by Taoist Master Charlie Chiang (Yuen Biao, Mr Vampire & Mr Vampire 2) and calls the man for help.

pulling out the demon

She really is possessed but Chiang comes and exorcises the demons from her. The gangsters go to see him the next day but are interrupted by TV executive AK Chow (Kelvin Kwan Cho-Yiu). Chiang’s father was involved in reburying AK’s grandfather (Law Kin-Ming) and the reburial has given 30 years of luck by draining the luck from other graves. AK knows that is about to run out and needs the corpse reburying again. Chiang refuses flat out to do it. Snake is commissioned to try and “persuade” Chiang to change his mind.

the kyonsi awakened

Chiang’s refusal is not solely because of the immorality of draining luck from other families. He was at the earlier reburial and it cost him his father as the corpse turned and became a vampire – attacking all at the reburial. He never got a chance to burn the vampire, as his dying father requested, and someone else must have finished the job. However AK eventually goes to another, morally ropey, Taoist called Leopard Man (Ricky Yi Fan-Wai) who also happens to be the one who killed Tomorrow. Nicky finds himself haunted by her ghost, as she wants him to get her ashes back off Leopard Man.

Kelvin Kwan Cho-Yiu as AK

AK becomes infected with vampirism but he acts much more like a Western vampire than a kyonsi. He in turn makes a bevy of vampire brides but you may be wondering where the zompires come into this? The studio is making a film referred to as vampire v zombies but also Walking Dead vs Twilight. I liked this as it poked fun at studios cashing in rather than shooting fish in the Twilight barrel. Late in the film it seems all the extras are turned but they appear and move more like a zombie horde, yet are stopped by a projected anti-vampire talisman, so are probably zompires.

regeneration

Other lore sees virgin blood being important to kill a king vampire and talisman symbols being drawn onto shotgun cartridges. There is the use of rice milk bathing to take away a vampire’s venom before someone turns (and one fang appearing during the turning process). The vampire himself exudes a dark mist and can regenerate lost limbs

vampire, kyonsi and zompires

As suggested, the film does a few bits new but mainly relies on old tropes. That said it puts it all together well, looks rather good (not as classy as Rigor Mortis but then again that is a fantastic piece of cinema) and is great fodder for an entertaining watch. Some of the jokes are well past the sell by date – holding breath as the vampire hunts them (as kyonsi are blind and hunt breath) and someone farts for instance (there is a logical faux pas to that one, if you think about it). The characters are kind of cookie cutter but do what they have to. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Night Moves

At 24 minutes, the Jeremy Cole directed Night Moves concentrates more on character than it does anything else and is successful because of that. It opens with a man, Ethan (Jared Walls), drinking, looking at a photo of himself with a woman and, eventually, making a call.

The call is to the Darkest Nights Escort Agency. He asks for a brunette and is informed that they only have one on that evening, a vampire. He answers that such an experience would be “delightful”. The film runs through a perhaps to prolonged series of establishing shots and then there is a knock on the door.

Isabelle Giroux as Abigail

Ethan tells the caller to come in but she says she needs an invite in. He appears more annoyed than anything with this but invites her in. Was this a game or a supernatural stricture? The film does not say but she is never bothered by the cross hanging from the door. He asks her name but she refuses to say, suggesting that she will be whoever or whatever he wants. Later in the film we discover she is called Abigail (Isabelle Giroux).

violence

What follows is a meeting of broken souls. He gets repeatedly violent to her, then falling into remorse, but whilst she retaliates occasionally she doesn’t actually seem to mind and suggests that she feels pain differently, that it fulfils her. At one point she bites his hand, viciously or instinctively, but then dresses the wound and hands him a knife, suggesting he can do to her what he can’t do to normal women.

Jared Walls as Ethan

After he cuts her, accidentally, and it heals he knows that he is not dealing with a mortal woman and yet he seems un-phased. He breaks through her emotional shell accidentally when he plays the Roy Orbison song In Dreams, something that makes him more violent (he is role playing that she is his ex-wife), but has a painful memory attached for her also. However the deeper they dig the darker the depths they’ll find.

fangs

By concentrating on character this shows that there is no need to move out of the small stage the film sets. The two leads work well, I thought Jared Walls looked familiar but this is his only IMDb credit. A satisfying little piece.

The imdb page is here.

Strasek, der Vampir – review

Director: Theodor Boder

Release date: 1982*

Contains spoilers

*The film, which is of Swiss origin I believe, does not have an IMDb page at the time of writing this article. The copyright is listed as 1982 and 2014 and so I have used the former as the release date. Of course it is always great to find obscure new films (even if they are old) but this one doesn’t have an overtly vampire aspect.

Rather it uses vampirism as a metaphor for the other – which is one of the strongest tropes found in the media vampire. It is also a very arty film, it unashamedly draws its feel and inspiration from Vampyr and actually dedicates the film to Dreyer.

Klaus Stangier as the narrator

The filming is done in such a way that it emulates the over-exposed film stock used by Dreyer for his masterpiece. Like Dreyer it relies on mood rather than plot (the plot is incredibly thin) but it fails to place the exposition in, which Dreyer achieved through the book the audience reads during the film. It begins with a narrator (Klaus Stangier) saying that he is convinced that Stefan Strasek (played young and older by Oscar Olano & Francois Aubry) is alive. In 1910 the narrator went to Serbia to investigate and was told that Stefan had moved away.

new born

Stefan’s mother Milena (Marianne Burger) met and married a Count Strasek (Jackie Steel) in 1898. The marriage only lasted a few months, the Count leaving when she gave birth to Stefan. He vanished off the radar, though a messenger would regularly come with money for her. What I noticed with the filming style here was that we went into fixed camera looking at a very limited set, as though it were a painting with only the character moving within it (and sometimes remaining still). It was an interesting method of composition. The actual photography was very well done.

the Count returns

Eventually Milena dies due to the stress of worry chipping at her health. On her death bed she tells Stefan to refuse to go to his father, no matter what. Stefan, we discover, was meant to have been taken in by a family but he has remained at his mother’s house. One night he hears her voice from the attic (whether this is internal or whether she is a spirit isn’t gone in to and is not actually important to the narrative). That happens to be the night when the Count comes to take him away – Stefan refuses him. However the boy is accused of stealing (scapegoated) and runs away by stowing away on a train. The narrator loses all sense of his whereabouts and we have gone 40 minutes into the 1 hour 9 minute film.

a coffin?

The film jumps forward in time but gives us no timeframe; I suspect that more years had passed than Stefan’s apparent age would allow for. A journalist (Simone Hänggi) has gone into the alps to write a piece about the mountains and meets a strange young man living in an isolated spot. Stefan really is the outsider now but we have seen nothing that would suggest vampirism. She, however, notes his nocturnal habit and finds him sleeping in what I assume was meant to emulate a coffin but, seriously, it was hard to tell. She disturbs his tranquillity and, later, admits to a priest that she has done him a great wrong. His answer is to run into the mountains, avoiding the men and tourists that might come.

reminiscent of Cesare

So, a strange tale and as I say the story is gossamer thin, the entire piece relies on mood. The cinematography is reminiscent of Dreyer but Stefan as an older character reminded me as much of Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as anything else. There are also moments that remind the viewer of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, especially him found asleep as an adult and, when a child, him climbing the attic stairs and his mother on her deathbed. The acting, much as in Dreyer, relies on the actors looking the part, rather than them emoting their characters' personalities. The soundtrack was idiosyncratic in that it was more a synthesised tonal affair than anything else. To a degree I was also reminded of the Chris Alexander films Blood for Irina and Queen of Blood

Simone Hänggi as the journalist

There was, however, a big difference between those two modern films and this. In the Alexander films there is a definitive amount of vampirism. In this it might have qualified as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ candidate but for the fact that it is more than clear that the atmosphere of the (early) vampire film and the symbolism of the outsider were being directly manipulated. We are left with an arthouse film that fans of Dreyer may appreciate but will not be the cup of tea of many viewers. I did enjoy what I saw and I think 5 out of 10 balances out the experimental aspects that may put many off.

The digital version of the film can be rented here.