Adventure Time: Stakes – review

Directed by: Elizabeth Ito & Andres Salaff

First aired: 2015

Contains spoilers

I gave Adventure Time season 1 an honourable mention as it contains episodes featuring recurring character Marceline the Vampire Queen (Olivia Olson generally, but in this we see a young Marceline voiced by Ava Acres).

To date I haven’t caught up with further seasons – they’re great fun but there is only so much watching time available. However, when season 7 included a miniseries about Marceline called Stakes my ears pricked up and when that miniseries was released as a separate DVD, well… it had to be done.

riding a bat

Adventure Time as a concept follows Finn the human (Jeremy Shada, Batman: the Brave and the Bold) and Jake the (magical) dog (John DiMaggio, Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust, Futurama & also Batman: the Brave and the Bold) as they have adventures in the Land of Ooo a post-apocalyptic world, and certainly a mash up of science fiction and fantasy, all rolled up in a surreal or absurdist vibe.

burnt fingers

The story begins with Marceline in a dessert, shaded from the sun by a tree. Her umbrella has fallen out of the shade and the sun is burning her fingers as she repeatedly tries to grab it. Eventually she remembers the sun cream (factor 10 million) in her pocket and she has enough to cover her hand and grab the umbrella – which then blows away before she can get it. Meanwhile Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch) – having lost an election – is living on a farm with the Peppermint Butler (Steve Little). Marceline, with uprooted tree, comes through the window.

Bubblegum and Marceline

Marceline tells bubblegum that she wants to try the procedure… They have spoken previously and Bubblegum has theorised a way of making Marceline mortal again. They try the procedure and, though they are unaware whether it has worked or not, they have a bucket full of her vampire effluence. As she sleeps she has vivid dreams, including attacking animals (Marceline only sucks the colour red as a vampire) and wakes to find she has sleepwalked and there have been animal attacks.

the five reborn

A farmer has called Finn and Jake to investigate. Jake assumes Marceline’s guilt but eventually discover a vampiric creature (Dee Bradley Baker) attacking the animals. However the farmers have already turned on Marceline. They have tied her to a windmill sail to fry in the morning sun. However she doesn’t, she is cured, but the vampiric creature evolves and becomes the 5 powerful vampires that, years before, Marceline had defeated. The miniseries then sees her having to destroy the vampires again and, as the series develops, we also get to see her past.

vampire attack

Her past takes us both to a time when she was still with her mother (I assume pre-Mushroom War) and post Mushroom War. Marceline was the daughter of a human and demon coupling – her father being the demon. In the debris of a wrecked world she hunts down vampires that have come to prominence, helping the surviving humans (who all wear animal hats to try and disguise themselves and avoid the vampires). Her heritage from her father is the ability to suck souls and thus when she kills a powerful vampire she sucks in its essence and gains its powers – be it flight, shapeshifting, healing etc.

a mortal Marceline

I won’t spoil how she actually becomes a vampire or what happens in the hunt for the reborn vampires. However, beneath the psychedelia and surrealism is a tale of history repeating and cyclic philosophy. It is quite a deep undertow for such a fun programme. The voice acting is top notch and the stylistic artwork is as fun as ever. Each of the vampires follow their own rules but one specific vampire, the shapeshifting hierophant (Paul Williams, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula) is old school and follows more standard rules such as needing an invitation to enter a house.

Great fun, 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Therapy for a Vampire – review

Director: David Rühm

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

Therapy for a Vampire, also known as Der Vampir auf der Couch, is an Austrian/Swiss production and is a comedy. We have been blessed over the last few years with some truly funny vampire comedies from various parts of the globe be it Belgium’s Vampires (2010), the American Vamperifica and the New Zealand What we Do in the Shadows , giving this a high bar to leap.

Of course comedy is – as I always say – a very subjective thing but I was lucky enough to get to view a screener of this and, you know what, it certainly didn’t disappoint. It also, quiet marvellously, indulged in a little used piece of lore and that is something we will get to shortly.

the sets are lovely

The year is 1932 and the camera guides us through a graveyard towards a mansion that is, allegedly, to let. The scenery and photography are gloriously Gothic and set the standard for the entire film. A thief, replete with eye mask, starts going through possessions piled outside the house, unaware of the figure looking down from above. As he gazes in the mirror a woman’s hand touches his shoulder – of course he cannot see her in the mirror. He turns around and, off camera, is gutted. We see the gore hit the mirror and it is fantastic, visceral and a practical effect rather than cgi.

Dominic Oley as Viktor

The painter Viktor (Dominic Oley) is putting the finishing touches to the portrait of his girlfriend Lucy (Cornelia Ivancan). Lucy has dark hair tied up and wears trousers. He tries to hide the finished painting but she sees it and he has painted her blonde, her hair loose and wearing a dress. Apparently this is not the first time he has painted her more as his fantasy of what he believes she should be, rather than who she is.

Tobias Moretti as the Graf

Viktor is working for Sigmund Freud (Karl Fischer), making sketches of dreams that the psychiatrist relates to him. He tries to pass the portrait off as a gift to Freud but the doctor is aware of exactly what occurred when Lucy saw the picture. After he leaves Freud is visited by Graf Geza von Közsnöm (Tobias Moretti). The Graf had donated monies that saved the Doctors publishing endeavour but has come to Freud as he is feeling his years and has lost his thirst for life. He knocks some pins over at one point and quickly picks them up whilst counting them – the vampire’s obsessional need to count is part of the lore of this film.

Cornelia Ivancan as Lucy

Eventually he sees the portrait of Lucy and she is the double of Nadila, the one who turned him and who was killed centuries before by dervishes. She promised him she would return reincarnated and he could awaken the memory of that past life if he bites her new incarnation and drinks her blood on the first full moon after meeting her (not before or after). It also has to be done with her consent and of her own free will. Lucy, in the meanwhile, has had her hair done like the portrait in order that she might turn Viktor’s obsession round on him. The underpinning theme of being true to oneself cuts through the film at various levels.

Jeanette Hain as Elsa

The Graf has a problem, however, in the form of his wife, Elsa (Jeanette Hain, the Countess). Any feelings he had for her seem dead and he seems especially tired of her obsession with her looks – distraught that she cannot see herself in the mirror and dead long enough that the memory of her own face has faded. The solution seems to be to distract both Elsa and Viktor by having him paint her portrait and it is in this that the little used piece of lore is brought in.

the brush refuses the canvas

In his notes for Dracula, Bram Stoker wrote, “Painters cannot paint him – their likeness always like someone else”. This was a proposed aspect of the novel along with not being able to be photographed that he, eventually, did not use. He did use the idea that vampires would cast no reflection, however. The photography trope does come up quiet regularly but not the painting trope. In this David Rühm does use the trope but actually goes a step further and has the painter actually unable to paint her at all, with the bristles of the brush turning away from the canvas as if pushed by an invisible force. Absolutely marvellous.

considering divorce

Other lore we get is the fact that the vampires can leap great distances, they can shapeshift (Elsa prefers to transform into a wolf and Geza into a bat), they hide from the sun – though how damaging it would be we do not really know, a stake through the heart will kill and alcohol in blood will get them drunk. They are able to hypnotise and this proves to be more of a hindrance than a help in the run of the film and the obsession with counting is used as a plot device. A bite will turn – but not the bite of a newly turned vampire, which has side effects but doesn’t turn the victim.

a victim

The film is a joy to look at, it has a beautiful style of photography and the sets are absolutely perfect. The cast are all excellent, for the main playing the roles straight and allowing the comedy to emerge from wittily written dialogue, the situations and some degree of physical humour. There are flashes of gore that are visceral and yet almost tasteful, building into the aesthetic. All in all this is one for all genre fans. 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Mansion of Blood

Where to start? From what I can gather Mansion of Blood has had a turbulent genesis. News reports about the production date from 2011 and yet Mike Donahue’s film (that does contain some genre staples) didn’t see distribution until 2015. There are reports of Gary Busey (Frost: Portrait of a Vampire) being fired from set and then denials of such by the producers.

The likelihood is that the film didn’t receive distribution for so long because it is a mess of ideas thrown together without cohesion and the fact that the vampire element is so small within the film allows me to sidestep the sticky issue of a score and concentrate on mentioning the vampire element.

Samuel and Trixie

So what is the film about. Essentially there is a mansion in town called the Mayhew Mansion. In the opening we see owner (and later, it is confirmed insurance confidence scammer) Morgan Mayhew (Tom Tangen) killed by person unseen (though as he addresses the person as Maribelle (Carla Laemmle, Dracula (1931)) we know it is his wife). Cut to 2013 (though later dialogue suggests it is before then) and new owner of the mansion, Mason Murphy (Ray Quiroga), is throwing a party in the restored house planned by planner and catering team Samuel (Robert Picardo, Morganville Season 1) and Trixie (Lorraine Ziff).

the guys

Everyone seems to have been invited to this party but the film concentrates on two groups of three, young men and young women. This is fine but as it progresses the film divides it attention between these and many other characters, too many in fact. The film doesn’t give itself room to breathe, guests we barely know are killed, more are introduced and then killed and a slew of monsters are thrown in for fun. What could have been a taught murder mystery nosedives into a soup of under-explored ideas and bad cgi (honestly, the cgi bleed outs are some of the worst cgi blood effects I’ve seen).

the blood moon

So one of the three girls is a witch and she does a spell to summon the spirit of her ex (presumably wanting to tap into the vibes of the mansion) to discover whether he bought a missing winning lottery ticket. Also that night we have a lunar eclipse leading to a blood moon. The eclipse doesn’t end and the monsters appear as the mansion becomes trapped in time (due to the spell, it is implied). Be it trampled by the worst spectral horses effect I could imagine or eaten by zombies no one can leave the area (though people can enter the area) and several of the guests display homicidal or monstrous sides.

bitten

Take Aaron (Brett Davis) a barman who is late getting to work at the party – and I didn’t overly pick up on it when it is implied he slept the day away at the beginning of the film. He picks up a girl and they sneak off for sex. Despite the film containing a few sex scenes and topless parts – especially from the escorts hired to entertain from the hot tub – this scene is chaste in that we see no rumpy pumpy and the woman, at the end, still has her bra and trousers on. He has to go back for work, she says she’s hungry and asks him to say. To be fair I thought for a second she would be revealed as a vampire but, no, it is he who bites her.

spitting dust

Later we see him attack a cop and escort who have been upstairs together and who have stumbled over some bodies and then we see him a final time when a mummy (Tom Atha) comes to life and attacks construction contractor Gunner (Bradley Dodds, True Blood & Vampires Suck). Gunner becomes trapped between the two and, in one attack, Aaron misses and bites the mummy – spitting out a mouthful of dust. Gunner manages to destroy both monsters – Aaron is staked.

bat like demons

There are other monsters – a werewolf, demons that looked like they might have been something to do with bat formed vampires but are not classed as such – as well as ghosts, homicidal retirees and murderous little people. It’s a mess, though quite hypnotic as a mess, and an abject lesson in why films need to focus on character, narrative and plot – even just a little.

The imdb page is here.

Killing Ariel – review

Directors: Fred Calvert & David J. Negron Jr.

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

There is a thin line between vampire and succubus and, depending on which side the vehicle sits on, I like to feature succubus films here. The succubus may be a sexually orientated demon but often it is depicted as drawing the lifeforce of the victim too – a vampiric act.

One thing I liked about this vehicle was the fact that the filmmakers kept the connection between the incubus and the succubus – all too often missed. The other thing was that they were absolutely aware of the thin line I mentioned and, indeed, played with that line.

young Ricky

The film begins in the summer of 1933. A small child, Ricky, awakens to noises in the house. He lights a candle and we can hear a man, his father (Bradley Whitfield), and woman, his mother (Stacey Martino). There is the roar of a gun. When Ricky peeks through the doorway he sees his father dead in his wheelchair and his mother turns the gun onto herself. After the suicide a man appears, her lover and an incubus (Joseph Gatt, the Dark Path Chronicles), and suggests that his mother was too highly strung to hang in there. Ricky runs to a closet, is haunted by the demon and then found in the morning when the house is searched.

Michael Brainard as Rick

Cut to the present day (I will mention timelines at the end) and Rick (Michael Brainard) is led from his hospital room by an orderly. He is with a psychiatrist (Miguel Nájera) and says that he read his father’s journal and his mother had cuckolded him for years with the man, his father knew he was an incubus. Rick’s story then goes back to 1973. Rick goes to a house where a hippy doctor (Sal Romeo) tries to get him to indulge in some free love. The woman, who he turns down because he is happily married, is the Doctor’s wife but Rick wins the insurance contract.

Ariel and Rick

Rick is married to Nancy (Shana Betz) and they have two kids. That night Rick turns down fooling around but wakes to find himself being ridden by a woman with glowing eyes (Sukunya Wangsomnuk) whilst his wife sleeps. Rick says that this succubus visitation twists his thoughts but it appears he is going through a mid-life crisis; he dyes the grey from his hair, buys a Porsche and is overly interested in female joggers when he is out running. Nancy clearly knows something is wrong and is upset when he suggests that he is going away for the weekend to the Mountain House – his parents’ old place. So she should be as he takes Ariel (Axelle Cummings).

Ariel dead

Ariel is flirtatious, young (enough to be his daughter, he says at one point) and knows Rick is married – she actually suggests that she is a sex demon, though the statement might be as allegorical as taken or an admission. However their weekend affair doesn’t really go to plan as Rick starts to have strange dreams – he sees his wife dead, for instance. The incubus also appears and, when he tries to shoot it, he shoots Ariel instead. Now that brief description doesn’t do justice to the excellent weave of weirdness that the filmmakers put to place. Let it be sufficient to say, however, that every time Rick buries Ariel she somehow comes back, alive and apparently without knowledge of her death. Her corpse also regularly speaks to him pre-burial.

the incubus

Let us talk incubus and succubus, however. At one point the incubus speaks to him in Ariel’s voice and talks in such a way that it becomes apparent that the succubus and incubus are one and the same. This is sometimes reflected in folklore. At one point he puts Ariel in a trunk and her corpse begins to speak to him as he gets rid of it. He tells the psychiatrist that this made him happy as it proved she was still in it and he knew that they can get out and start “sucking on your soul again”. So we have the allusion to energy vampirism right there.

Ariel staked

However I said at the head that the film knowingly played with the thin line between vampire and succubus. In a couple of scenes, whilst just murdered again, Ariel has fangs. Rick does wonder whether she is some sort of vampire and in response to that carves a stake out of a wooden spoon, puts it through her heart and then dismembers the body – burying the parts separately. Whilst we have this we do not have any actual blood drinking.

dead, animate and fanged

Finally I said I’d mention timelines. Rick was a boy in 1933 – quite young but that would make him in his forties in 1973 and he looks about the right age – though clearly he and his wife had children late in that case. As for the present day, well we don’t know the date but if it is contemporary with the film’s release it would have him in his eighties. The aging makeup (which we see late on) was very well done but I didn’t think he looked that old and I did occasionally wonder about the timelines as I watched the film. Not so much that it jarred but it did niggle.

more fangs

One reason why it didn’t jar was down to the two leads distracting the viewer from such concerns. Michael Brainard and Axelle Cummings make this good fun, with a real chemistry going on even when Rick’s killing her, again. The twists in the story are nicely done and the viewer is completely comfortable with the directions the filmmakers take us in. This is a great little indie film, really worth tracking down and definitely worth 7.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

A Virgin Among the Living Dead – review

Director: Jess Franco

Release date: 1973

Contains spoilers

A suggestion by Ville, I had never considered looking at this movie as I had got it into my head that it was a zombie film. There is a version with additional footage shot by Jean Rollin that features zombies but the version I watched for review was not that one.

The version I watched was on Arrow Film Distribution. It was in French with English subtitles (hard-coded) and looked like it had been dropped onto disc from a VHS source. The film maintains a lot of nudity, it does not have the hardcore scene that one version does nor did it have the rape scene that is in other versions.

starting when the castle is mentioned

It begins with the camera panning across scenes of Honduras (according to the DVD blurb) and it is typical Franco fare. Then we meet Christina (Christina von Blanc) a young woman who has just travelled from London to meet her family and hear the reading of her father’s will. The woman at the inn starts when Chrstina mentions Montserrat Castle and tells her that no-one lives there or the surrounding valley. She dismisses this as she has been in correspondence with her family there, indeed she has a letter telling her when she’ll be picked up.

Christina von Blanc as Christina

The close atmosphere interrupts her sleep and she heads down from her room, where a female doctor (Nicole Guettard) is writing notes. They speak briefly when the door opens and the mute Basilio (Jess Franco) is there with a note from her Uncle Howard (Howard Vernon). As they are driven to the castle Christina is filled with thoughts of foreboding. They arrive and she finds Uncle Howard playing the piano. He suggests that he is her eternal uncle and when she kisses his cheek she exclaims that it is ice cold.

Christina with Carmencé

When she asks about Herminia she is told that she is on her death bad. Christina doesn’t understand why Uncle Howard is playing waltzes at such a time but he retorts that Herminia likes them. Also in the room is Carmencé (Britt Nichols, Tombs of the Blind Dead, Daughter of Dracula & Dracula Prisoner of Frankenstein). When Christina goes to kiss her cheek the woman deliberately turns so they kiss lip to lip. Christina takes her leave and goes to see Herminia, who grabs her and tries to say something as she dies. Christina’s Aunt Abigale (Rosa Palomar) is by the bed side.

Jess Franco as Basilio

The film descends into a nightmarish landscape. Christina hears arguing between Howard and Carmencé and we see him slap the woman but the violence seems to be more like foreplay for them as they come together carnally. A blind woman, Linda (Linda Hastreiter), suggests that she can see souls and Christina’s is good so she should leave. During this sequence we hear that Christina’s mother died when she was a baby, her father (Paul Muller, La Vendetta di Lady Morgan, I Vampiri, Count Dracula, Nightmare Castle, Fangs of the Living Dead & Vampyros Lesbos) was always away on business and so she went to a boarding school and later he remarried, Herminia being Christina’s step-mother. Later we see Linda with Carmencé; both naked, Carmencé has cut the other’s breast with scissors and drinks the blood from there.

desiccated bats

When out walking Christina decides to skinny dip and is watched by two creepy guys (until a young man intervenes) and one says he would like to bite her to the bone. When she walks with the young man they find the closed chapel of St Cecilia and a man, waiting outside, states again that the castle is empty but is haunted by its former owners. Again Christina dismisses this and persuades the young man to come to the castle. Howard chases him off and slaps her for her trouble. There are moments with desiccated bats on the bed and Christina starts seeing her father, a suicide, with a noose around his neck and blood at his mouth. He is enslaved to the Queen of the Night (Anne Libert, the Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, also Dracula Prisoner of Frankenstein and Daughter of Dracula).

Christina's father

This one has me torn. It is, in parts, one of Franco’s better efforts. It carries the themes of nightmare and the merging of dream and reality forward really well. However it struggles, as ever, to build a strong narrative and whilst there are psychosexual moments (such as Carmencé drinking Linda’s blood) that work well Franco fails to capitalise on them. Of course multiple edits don’t help for we are never sure whether we are seeing a definitive version or not (if there are zombies, however, the answer is not). Perhaps vampires (they are dead and drink blood, not eating mortal fare) maybe vampiric ghosts, I think one can look ahead from this to the spectacular La Maison Nucingen for a vision of how this might have been more competently drawn. Nevertheless, it is on the better end of Franco’s vampire films. 4.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Dybbuk

Before we start, the Dybbuk is not a vampire film. Hell I’m not even sure whether we can class the folklore it is based on as a type of vampirism. However the dybbuk is listed as a type of energy vampire type in Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampires. Bane says:

“For the dybbuk to survive, it must gain entry into a human body. It may allow itself to be breathed in through incense or it may embed itself in a piece of food about to be eaten, but typically it will make its own way into the body, by force if necessary through the nostril, although any orifice will suffice. Once it has gained access, the dybbuk will possess the person and begin to feed off the person’s life-force, taking up residence in one of the pinky fingers or one of the toes…”

graveside

This seems to be the only one of the main encyclopaedias that lists the dybbuk as a vampire type (Curran lists it in the Encyclopedia of the Undead but not in the vampire section), however the Bane inclusion gives me the excuse to feature – as something of genre interest – this astounding piece of film history. (As an aside Marcin Wrona’s film Demon, about a dybbuk, would seem to have the potential to fall more into the vampire arena but is, at time of writing, unavailable.)

Sender and Nisn

From 1937, this Polish film by Michal Waszynski was based on the play by S. Ansky and filmed in Yiddish. Hauntingly the type of Polish shtetl it depicts would soon be utterly destroyed by the evil of the Third Reich. The story sees two friends, Sender (Mojżesz Lipman) and Nisn (Gerszon Lemberger), trying to tell the Rabbi Azriel (Abraham Morewski) of the decision they had made. They are best friends but now live distantly from each other and both their wives are expecting. They have decided that – should the babies be a boy and a girl – the children will be betrothed.

the Messenger (left)

Through the film is a messenger (Ajzyk Samberg) of mystical origin (he does not age, seems to be able to vanish and appear and can travel great distances quickly) who suggests that you cannot pledge that which is unborn. Sender gets home to find that he has a daughter, Leah (played as an adolescent by Lili Liliana), but his wife has died in childbirth. Nisn is crossing a lake or river in a storm and is knocked overboard and drowns and so never meets his son, Khonnon (played as an adolescent by Leon Liebgold).

Khonnon and Sender

Cutting forward through time, Sender becomes a wealthy man and, through the actions of the messenger, meets Khonnon as the young man travels to the shtetl. Sender gives him a lift in his carriage and even invites the young man to take meals in his home – shared with his sister, his daughter and his servant. He never realises that Khonnon is his friend’s son but the two young people fall in love almost instantly. Unaware of this Sender looks to find his daughter a husband and Khonnon, who prefers the kabbalah to the Torah, turns to arcane arts to win his love. When warned by a fellow student Khonnon suggests that every sin is holiness.

calling on Satan

Sender eventually hears Leah singing a song that Khonnon taught her, which he recognises as being written by Nisn, and realises who the boy is – however he has just accepted a groom for Leah and the parents are about to arrive. On hearing that Leah is to be engaged, Khonnon calls upon Satan from the synagogue and dies. It is his spirit that is the dybbuk and he possesses Leah – by invitation, it has to be said – and disrupts the wedding. The girl is taken to Rabbi Azriel to free her from the possession.

at the wedding

The film is not a horror, it is a tragedy with a supernatural basis and the dybbuk is not the evil vampiric creature of Bane’s description but a desperate man in love. However the film is a must watch for several reasons – one being the fact that in just two years the Germans would invade Poland and the Nazis would attempt to eradicate the Jewish culture the film depicts. The wedding scene in particular is a spectacular example of expressionist cinema and the traditional Jewish singing is beautiful (the Song of Songs is sung twice in film).

I do like to bring things here of genre interest, even if the vehicle has no vampiric aspect. This one was a push but worth highlighting I think.

The imdb page is here.

The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend – review

Editors: Barbara Brodman & James E Doan

First published: 2013

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early nineteenth century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires.

A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? In this collection of sixteen original essays, the contributors shed light on this question. One essay traces the origins of the legend to the early medieval Norse Draugr, an “undead” creature who reflects the underpinnings of Dracula, the latter first appearing as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.

In addition to these investigations of the Western mythic, literary and historic traditions, other essays in this volume move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual, as well as the existence of similar vampiric traditions in Japanese, Russian and Latin American art, theatre, literature, film, and other cultural productions.

The female vampire looms large, beginning with the Sumerian goddess Lilith, including the nineteenth-century Carmilla, and moving to vampiresses in twentieth-century film, literature, and television series. Scientific explanations for vampires and werewolves constitute another section of the book, including eighteenth-century accounts of unearthing, decapitation and cremation of suspected vampires in Eastern Europe. The vampire’s beauty, attainment of immortality and eternal youth are all suggested as reasons for its continued success in contemporary popular culture.

The review: I do like books like this but they come with two problems. One is the price tag – though I understand that an academic piece is not going to sell as well and that influences the tag. The second is a variance of quality between contributors’ pieces and the Universal Vampire is no exception when it comes to that.

Looking at the blurb, for a moment, the premise of the book is looking for universal roots within the vampire genre. The book doesn’t actually do that, in totality at least, though it does take us on an international journey.

However the first chapter, Draugula by Matthias Teichert, certainly did this and I find the exploration of both Draugr and Revenant myths and legends fascinating. It is clear that there are heavy similarities to the vampire myth that developed amongst the Slavic nations. The biggest difference was the vampire seemed to have a fixed focus on blood drinking (often, it seems, assumed due to the corpse state when exhumed) and the other types not so much. Blood drinking and flesh eating do appear within some of the myths, but not so much in this essay, which nonetheless was informative and thought provoking.

Flying to the other end of the spectrum, the piece Biomedical Origins of Vampirism by Edward O. Keith could have been left out of the book altogether. A tired re-hash of the discredited porphyria theory (with an almost embarrassed admission that the theory does not fit) is followed by equally tired looks at Pellegra and Rabies. This misses the point that illness as a source of the myth does not rest with a condition suffered by the accused vampire (as they are dead by the time an assumption of vampirism is reached) rather it is with the victims. As such this chapter managed to completely avoid tuberculosis – a disease that we know certainly did influence folk opinion in the 19th century American panics. It was amusing, therefore, that the next chapter, Evidence for the Undead by Leo Ruickbie, shot down Keith’s chapter in a couple of paragraphs. The Keith Chapter also showed a lack of remembrance or knowledge of Dracula with suggestions that the Count avoided daylight (he certainly was abroad in daylight and one of the supporting quotes for this assertion is misattributed to the Count when it was Van Helsing’s dialogue) and only preyed on women prior to their marriage (Mina was married before she attracted the Count’s nightly visitations).

If that chapter is the low point in the book there was a Lilith chapter that was pretty light and a view that Stoker (and subsequently Dracula scholars) got details of Transylvanian society and cuisine wrong was met with a mighty shrug of the shoulders as it is clear that Stoker only used travel books to research that setting. In honesty the argument was very sound but the point of the debate was lost on me.

As well as the Draugula chapter and Ruickbie chapter particular favourites included a chapter by Ridenhour comparing Carmilla and Let the Right One In and Ruthner’s look at Visum et Repertum, the report of the Arnold Paole case.

All in all, for the full volume 7.5 out of 10.

Kwaidan – review

Director: Masaki Kobayashi

Release date: 1964

Contains spoilers

Kwaidan was an anthology film based on Japanese ghost stories, specifically those collections of Japanese folk tales compiled by Lafcadio Hearn. The film would go on to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1965 Academy Awards and win the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival. The DVD edition I used for this review was the Masters of Cinema release, which incorporates 21 minutes of footage not previously released to Western audiences and brings the running length to 183 minutes.

I saw this listed as a vampire film and wondered if that might be due to the segment Hoichi the Earless as it concerns a blind temple singer performing the death verses for a ghostly court. It is suggested that the Court is draining his life away but I didn’t get too much of a sense of that. The other two segments that are not our vampiric part are In a Cup of Tea, which is a strangely rewarding tale, and The Black Hair, which has a strongly moral centre but, despite some accelerated aging, is not particularly vampiric.

caught in the snows

The segment that concerns us is The Woman of the Snow. Two woodcutters, the old Mosaku and the young Minokichi (Tatsuya Nakadai), are caught in a snowstorm as they travel back to their village. The storm is particularly harsh and when they get to the river that they have to cross to get home they find that the boat has been left on the other bank by the boatman. They take shelter in a fisherman’s hut with Minokichi propping a branch against the door to keep the elements at bay.

stood over Mosaku

He wakes in the night to see a woman (Keiko Kishi) standing over Mosaku. There seems to be a glow and she breathes her icy breath onto the old man, freezing him. She turns her attention to Minokichi and moves to him. There is the same glow and he turns his head but she stops. Because he is young and handsome she decides to spare him but she warns him that if he ever tells anyone what happened that night she would know and she would kill him.

the Yuki-Onna

The woman is a Yuki-Onna and that is the name of the segment in the original Japanese. A Yukki-Onna is a Snow Woman and they are a yōkai – we have come across them before in such shows as Rosario +Vampire. The vampiric aspect may not be immediately obvious, but Bane lists the Yuki-Onna in her Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology and suggests they are a form of energy vampire.

Yuki

In this we don’t necessarily see that but what we are told is that Mosaku’s body was not only frozen but also drained of blood. Later Minokichi suggests she was “hungry for warm blood”. Before that, however, he does not speak of the events – not even to his mother (Yûko Mochizuki). Eventually he meets a woman called Yuki and they have three children together. It is during a snow storm that he looks at his wife, who the villagers have noted never seems to age, and is reminded of the Woman of the Snow. He is not sure that the events were anything more than a dream and so tells his wife his story…

Tatsuya Nakadai as Minokichi

This was a beautifully shot segment, the painted backdrops during the snow storm segment was nothing short of gorgeous and added an eerie, overworldly aspect to the scene. In fact I would say this was my favourite segment in the film, though it was shorter than some (most notably Hoichi the Earless). This is most definitely one for cinephiles, lovers of ghost stories, lovers of Japanese movies and vampire fans alike. 7.5 out of 10 for the segment The Woman of the Snow.

The imdb page is here.