Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments – season 1 – review

Director: various

First aired: 2016

Contains spoilers


The YA series of books by Cassandra Clare has already been adapted into a film, and I looked at that here. It received an Honourable Mention because its vampire activity was minimal and quite low key.

One of the things this series (which was a Netflix Original in the UK) does bring to the party is a much larger role for the vampires and so the series gets a review – unfortunately for the series.

Jayce and Clary

The story is pretty much the same as the film – following ordinary art student Clary Fray (Katherine McNamara) who discovers when she turns 18 that she has always been special but her mother, Jocelyn (Maxim Roy), had a warlock called Magnus Bane (Harry Shum Jr.) block her memories. Clary’s parents were both Shadowhunters – essentially Nephilim, who carry the blood of angels and who are meant to protect humanity from demons. Her father, Valentine (Alan Van Sprang), was a rogue Shadowhunter who went against the Clave (the ruling body) and wanted to destroy all downworlders – vampires, werewolves etc.

Nephilim

Jocelyn stole the Mortal Cup – an angelic instrument that can create more Shadowhunters and took their daughter into hiding. As her perceptions of the shadow world grows Clary starts to see things her mundane friends (mainly Simon (Alberto Rosende)) can’t see. Her mother is placed in a magical sleep and stolen by her father and she meets three young Shadowhunters: Jace (Dominic Sherwood, Vampire Academy) and the brother and sister Alec (Matthew Daddario) and Isabelle (Emeraude Toubia).

David Castro as Raphael

The vampires play a larger part, as I mentioned, at first run by Camille (Kaitlyn Leeb) until she is usurped by Raphael (David Castro). Simon is turned in this series. It is here that the show runs in to the trouble that mars it – the characters. There is little in the way of character development and they just tend to spend the episodes whinging. So when Simon thinks he’s turning we get to see that his mother (Christina Cox, Blood Ties & Forever Knight) and sister (Holly Deveaux, Hemlock Grove & Lost Girl) are concerned about him – and suspect drugs. Once he is actually turned they are never mentioned again.

drinking blood

None of the characters get to be properly rounded, centred or developed. The show does do some interesting things – they make Isabelle a strong, female character, they have an accidental incest moment that is left unresolved and they have an openly gay (and bisexual) blossoming relationship with no fuss around it bar the question of marriage for power and the path of the heart. But for these great additions the series stumbles along with the characters, making choices both unbelievable and jarring as important issues are suddenly dropped and ignored, and the incessant whining is just too much.

The braver aspects earn this 3.5 out of 10 – but it was nearly lower.

The imdb page is here.

Lexx – review

Director: various

First aired: 1997*

Contains spoilers

*IMDb suggests that the first episode may have been released on home video in 1996, in Germany.

Lexx started out life as a 4 part mini-series. Set in a universe called the Light Universe. The universe is ruled by a tyrannical despot known as His Divine Shadow (Walter Borden) who passes his essence from host to host. Starting 2000 years before the main events of the series the viewer was shown Kai (Michael McManus), the last Brunnen-G warrior, dying as he attacked His Divine Shadow and thus seeming to break the prophecy that he would destroy His Divine Shadow. Cutting forward we see a world where heretics are trying to steal an organic ship, the Lexx (voiced by Tom Gallant), the most destructive force in the two universes (the other universe being the Dark Zone).

Xenia Seeberg as Xev

Into this was drawn Stanley H Tweedle (Brian Downey) a former heretic and now lowly security guard on the Cluster (the seat of His Divine Shadow) and Xev (Eva Habermann, in the mini-series), a wife punished for not performing her wifely duties by being transformed into a love slave but without the neural programming and with, accidentally, cluster lizard DNA. Kai is now a Divine Assassin – his dead body decarbonised and run on proto-blood, with no memories of his life. He gets his memories back and along with 790 (Jeffrey Hirschfield), a robot head with the love slave programming intended for Xev and thus obsessively in love with her, we have the primary cast/crew.

historical evidence

The second series was a space opera and had fairly standalone episodes with an over-riding story arc and Xenia Seeberg took over the role of Xev early in that series. The third series takes place in the Dark Zone entirely on two interlinked planets, Fire and Water, some 4000 years after the second series. The final series sees most of the action on Earth – in a broadcast contemporary setting. It is two episodes in season 4 that we are interested in. Namely, Walpurgis Night and Vlad. In the first of the two Kai has shown an interest – due to pictures he has seen of a mysterious figure and the recurrence of the symbol of the Divine Order in Earth art – in going to Transylvania.

Keith-Lee Castle as Renfield

What we get is an ode to classic horror movies especially those by Hammer. Xev, Kai and Stan encounter bats, a tavern with a creepy barman who is actually Joseph (Peter Guinness), last of the Van Helsings, and a trio of Goth girls. It is Walpurgis Night and the owner of the castle, Count Dracul (John Standing), always holds a feast for visitors. His servant Renfield (Keith-Lee Castle, Urban Gothic: Vampirology, Vampire Diary & Young Dracula) takes the Goth girls and the crew there – though Kai quickly slopes off on his own.

Vlad, aged

The episode ends up revealing that Count Dracul is an actor and insinuates that Renfield is the power behind the throne. In actual fact the three Goth girls are servants of the true “vampire”, Vlad (Minna Aaltonen) – which is the name of the second episode. The source of earthly vampire legends, she is kept functioning through the use of a cryo-pod, located at the heart of the castle. When we first see her she is old (played by Anna Cameron) but the girls have stolen Kai’s supply of proto-blood (the substance that animates Kai) and she quickly becomes young again.

Vlad showing fangs

It transpires that she is a Divine Executioner – a being created to destroy Divine Assassins gone rogue. She does have fangs and uses these to bite the living – this is not for the purpose of sucking blood but to inject them with an enzyme that makes them her slaves. She can fly, using a technology within her uniform, has an extending tongue (for no adequately explored reason) and has a tentacle appendage that she can use to suck proto-blood out of Divine Assassins. These are the primary two episodes she appears in, but she does appear a few more times in minor roles/visions.

zompire divine predecessor

I do want to mention one other episode, however. In the Season 2 episode Twilight we get a planet that was a necropolis for the hosts of His Divine Shadow once his essence had moved on. The Divine Predecessors’ brains were kept as advisors on the cluster (and then moved onto the Lexx) but the bodies were taken here. They are animated and rather zombie like – seeking to attack, bite and (I assume) eat the living. However there is a zompires element to this as they appear to be dormant through the day, have fangs and a bitten Xev seems to become one of them.

Vlad's tongue

I really like Lexx, it was one of the most imaginative series I think that has aired. The production values were low but that added a kind of a charm in the same way as original Dr Who’s (even) low(er) production values added a charm. The two principal vampire episodes were great fun – Keith-Lee Castle was a blast in the first one, as he always is. The primary cast were strong – as they always were – and the episodes are definitely worth tracking down. It is a shame that the region 1 DVD release has not been remastered in any way, leaving a fuzzy feel to things. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Bite Me Darling – review

Director: Helmut Förnbacher

Release date: 1970

Contains spoilers

Also called The Amorous Adventures of a Young Postman, this was a German Sex Comedy. The version I saw had no overt sexual scenes and was clearly the cut version. It was dubbed into English and was a very poor vhs rip, therefore I apologise for the quality of the screenshots.

The alternative title is probably the more accurate of the two but before we get to meet the postman in question we meet two animated and very crap bats – Stan and Ollie, yes one was thin and the other fat and they comment on the film, not just over the credits but through the film where their animated selves flit onto screen from time to time.

Patrick Jordan as von der Wies

They tell us that the local Doctor Hartlieb von der Wies (Patrick Jordan, Lifeforce) runs a sex clinic and is a descendant of Count Dracula. Then we meet a postman – not the postman of the title but one named Verkäufer (Dieter Augustin). Through him we meet the various people in the town, including the sadistic lady dentist (Brigitte Skay), the gay guy, Wagner (Ralf Wolter, Dracula Blows his Cool), who is the butt of jokes regarding his sexuality and the old woman who believes she births garden gnomes. At its best it reaches the level of a low grade Benny Hill.

Dieter Augustin as Verkäufer

On his round he is interviewed by von der Wies regarding any amorous adventures he might have on his rounds, but he denies any such thing – it is against post office rules. There are also a group of kids who are plaguing the poor postman. They pelt him with snowballs, let the air out of his bike tyre and eventually leave a rope out to trip him – he breaks his leg. The post office send cover for him in the form of Peter Busch (Amadeus August) a young man clearly popular with the ladies – before too long he is servicing several on his round.

Amadeus August as Peter

When he is asked why he is a postman (or asked to leave the job) he tells a detail shifting story about the Bishop of Salzburg laying a duty on an ancestor that all the Busch male line will be postmen. When interviewed by von der Wies, who realises that he has lost half his female clients since the postman arrived, Busch suggests that this pact also bestows superhuman sexual potency. Von der Wies has some issues however, beyond losing clientele, he has developed fangs (which the dentist files down) and his niece, Sabrina (Eva Renzi), has fallen for Peter.

boomerang for assassinations

The Doctor tries to assassinate Peter several times, culminating in him adding poison to whiskey. He gives Peter the wrong whiskey and kills himself – before he dies he tells Peter to take over his practice and marry Sabrina. He does this (despite her warning him of vampirism in the family). He happily leaves the postal service, she happily pimps him to his clients but von der Weis does not lie quiet in his grave…

fangs and animated bat

Now it needs to be said, getting in and out of his grave night after night was easy enough – given no-one bothered to fill it. The lore used is very bog standard, warded by crosses and garlic, the vampire must hide from the sun and is killed by stake (cremation helps make sure). However this entire rising from the grave business is quite a way into the film. Before then we have virtually nothing vampiric – bar the panic over fangs, which are filed and not mentioned again pre-death.

staked

The jokes are at seaside postcard level for the main. One joke about a dog losing the war for Germany (the dog is called Adolph) fell flat and I imagine fell flat at the time of release. The jokes around Wagner show a homophobia that was telling of the date of filming. The film hasn’t really got a huge amount to recommend it, to be honest. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Cult of the Cobra

Perhaps I should make a new series of articles entitled “distant cousins”? This 1955 movie, directed by, Francis D. Lyon is not a vampire film but it does have a lamia in it and there is a lot of interconnectedness between the lamia and the vampire. Many cite Keats' poem Lamia as a vampire poem (it isn’t).

I watched the film after discovering it was about a cult of Lamia and it was one of those 50s films (it double billed with Revenge of the Creature) that just had to be shared. The connection is loose, I grant you, but indulge me.

in the bazaar

A group of six GIs are doing the tourist thing around an Asian bazaar, just before shipping home at the end of the war. They spot a snake charmer, Daru (Leonard Strong), but reach him after he has finished his act and so they persuade him, for a fee, to have his picture taken holding the cobra. One of the GIs, Paul (Richard Long), recounts that he has heard stories of the lamian cult, Daru pricks up his ears.

Richard Long as Paul

Paul suggests that the rumour is that cult members can transform into a snake. Daru confirms this and says that he is a member of the cult but is also desperate for money. For $100 dollars he will sneak them into a ceremony that night. When one of them, Nick (James Dobson), suggests it would be a photo worth having he is lambasted by Daru who is strict that cameras cannot be taken into the ceremony. They arrange to meet later that evening.

Leonard Strong as Daru

The GIs get drunk waiting for Daru. During the conversation they have, Paul tries to convince them that shapeshifting may be possible mentioning that “the werewolf stories in Germany or the vampires in Transylvania” give such ideas credence. Daru takes them to the temple, gives them robes and, before they go in, reminds them to be careful – if they are caught the cult will kill them – sending a shapeshifting assassin if necessary.

They'll never notice!

So in they go and there is an interesting danced psychodrama about the first visitation of the snake goddess to save the lamian people. Nick seems to be missing but actually has got his camera out – remember, just after the Second World War, the camera has a giant old flash on it… but he’s drunk. Chaos ensues, there is a fight, Nick steals a cobra basket that one of the dancers emerged from and a high priest curses them all as Daru is killed.

The woman

They drive off suddenly realising that Nick isn’t with them. Up ahead they see a shape in the road and a woman running off. The woman escapes and the shape is Nick, next to the cobra basket. One has presence of mind to suck the venom out and they get him to the hospital. He responds well to anti-venom and treatment and is going to ship out with his buddies but a snake gets in his hospital room (and we see through the snakes point of view) and bites him again, killing him. The others are shipped home to New York.

Tom and Lisa 

A few weeks later and Julie (Kathleen Hughes) who had been dating squad buddies and civilian roommates Paul and Tom (Marshall Thompson, Fiend Without a Face, It! The Terror from Beyond Space & First Man in Space) has chosen Paul. Tom is a little out of sorts but feels better when he goes to the rescue of new neighbour Lisa (Faith Domergue) – especially as he seems to fall for her straight off. Yet we see that animals respond negatively to her and their other friends from the squad start dying off.

In cobra form

So, Lisa is our lamian (c’mon that was hardly a spoiler) and she actually does transform from woman to snake. The transformation is shown in silhouette once and is shown from snake back to human once as well (it isn’t a great effect, to be fair, but they had a crack at it). In snake form she is the size of a normal cobra and she has her normal human intelligence. She does bite, but to administer venom rather than to feed.

Transformation

The film is actually really good fun. As I said at the head, it isn’t vampiric in any way but the close association of vampire and lamia makes this of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Dracula of Exarcheia

It might seem silly to have a film with the name Dracula in the title as a ‘Vamp ot Not?’ but really this felt the best way to go for this Nikos Zervos directed 1983 slice of Greek surrealism and music. The film has the alternate title O Drakoulas ton Exarheion.

The film is a political and social satire, I'd guess, and the reason I say that I guess is because I am sure some of the commentary means more if you are aware of Greek culture. It also, for me, slams synthetic pop/pop culture and the tendency to push financial gain over art in the music industry.

Konstantinos Tzoumas as Victor

We begin with Victor Papadopoulos (Konstantinos Tzoumas) walking towards camera. He eventually comes to a tree branch that overhangs the stairs he is walking on and grabs (what is clearly meant to be) an insect from the foliage. He opens his hand, swats it with a newspaper and eats it. So, at this point, I was thinking Renfield.

Graveyard ciggie

He is picked up in a car driven by Aphrodite (Johnny Vavouras) and is in the car with Stoneheaden – who looks like a member of the Blues Brothers. As they drive Victor has Aphrodite put some Talking Heads on, though Stoneheaden appears not to like it. They arrive at a cemetery and start grave robbing (a right hand for the bass player, a head for the singer and 20 fingers for the guitarists says Victor). When I say they, Victor is listening to music and Stoneheaden is smoking, only Aphrodite digs. Suddenly there is a moaning sound, they’ve been rumbled and leg it.

Zombie activist

Zombies rise from the graves. They have a zombie union meeting and one zombie believes that they must take action against Victor. The entire thing is based on a left wing meeting but what we do hear is that Victor is robbing the graves of musicians to steal their body parts. The zombies decide to hold a protest concert at a festival. They go on the march, with placard held high. Some of the zombies are determined to eat the living.

Making a band

Meanwhile Victor gets home. He asks the maid, Ophelia, if his daughter Ioulieta (Isavella Mavraki) has gone to bed. Victor is creating a band. He places the bodies he has collected together in a vat and is making them listen to 48 hours of contemporary music as part of the process… So he is not Renfield, he is Victor Frankenstein? It would seem not. His daughter is sneaking around the lab as she is making a doll (which her father cannot find out about) and wants to know what he uses as a battery for his musical creations.

Musical interlude

Over dinner that evening we get a further clue as Victor is less than happy when Ophelia leaves a soup spoon over a knife forming a sign of a cross. We hear that he travelled from the Carpathians to move to Greece (and become a music mogul, it appears) and we see that he sleeps in a coffin. So, Victor is the Dracula of the title apparently. As it is things go wrong with the band (Music Brigade, an actual Greek band) as Stoneheaden plays something unsuitable in earshot and Ioulieta runs away with them. Victor sends Stoneheaden after them and we don’t see him again until the end and then he is simply watching their concert on TV.

Mermaid moment

The rest of the film has the band playing to a feminist collective that turns into an orgy with raiding police. Aggressive marketing in a supermarket. Stoneheaden going into disguise both as a meremaid and (at the feminist collective) an unconvincing woman. There is coffin sex and occasional zombie attacks and, of course, there is the benefit concert. It’s a heady, surreal cocktail of strangeness that will be off-putting to many and cult viewing to some. But is it Vamp?

Zombie attack

Truthfully there is nothing traditionally vampiric within the film. However, the character Victor is meant to be Dracula and Konstantinos Tzoumas has a presence that works well. If we take the vampire to be an agent of capitalism, though, a creature who takes the dead and uses it as cheap means to make a buck – exploiting culture and heritage for the sake of manufactured pseudo-art then Victor is a real vampire.

The imdb page is here.

Crowd-sourcing: Vampire Playing Cards

Something a little unusual today. I have brought you, in the past, crowd-sourcing campaigns for films and books but this is the first time I think I have brought you playing cards.

Kirk Slater, who is behind the deck, had this to say: The Sisterhood of Blood is a custom designed deck of poker sized playing cards, printed by The Expert Playing Card Company (EPCC). 

The theme of this deck is based on London vampires from the Victorian era. As with my previous project, The Coven, this deck also features an all female cast of court cards. Each of them have a different story to tell, but together they become The Sisterhood of Blood. 

Each of the vampires have names and backstories that help to bring these beautiful monsters alive. Along side this, each of the groups follow a theme, the Jacks have just fed, the Queens revel in their malice and the Kings immortality is coming to a close.

If this sounds like something you'd like to get behind, the kickstarter page is here. As with all crowd-sourcing, backing is at your own risk.

Honourable Mention: Curse of the Devil

Regular readers will know that we do like a Paul Naschy film here at TMtV, so when friend of the blog Ville contacted me and suggested I looked at this 1973 Carlos Aured directed movie starring the Spanish horror movie great I was a tad confused as to why I hadn’t already looked at it.

Checking it made it very clear that I had seen the film and, as Ville points out, it does feature María Silva as Elizabeth Báthory and that would normally guarantee a feature. All I can think is that her role was so very small in the film that I then overlooked posting – a terrible omission and one that is being rectified with this post.

Bathory's head

It begins with two knights facing off, one a Báthory and the other Irineus Daninsky (Paul Naschy). Irineus states that the magic that Báthory is known for will not aid him against Daninsky’s sword and this proves to be true. Watched in secret by Elizabeth and her companion, Daninsky fairly and squarely beats Báthory and then cuts off his head. Elizabeth heads back to the castle, though she knows that Daninsky will come for her.

Drinking blood

At the castle she indulges in a black magic rite that involves blood sacrifice and drinking of said blood. Just as she’s taking a gulp from the goblet one of her guards comes in, an arrow in his back, closely followed by Daninsky and his men. The companion escapes but Báthory and her handmaidens are captured and executed – they by hanging, her by being burnt at the stake. Before she dies she offers one of those convoluted curses to the effect that when one of Daninsky’s descendants draws blood from the firstborn of one of her descendants then that Daninsky and all his issue will be cursed.

The wolfman

That is the last we see of Báthory but when, centuries later, Waldemar Daninsky (also Paul Naschy) shoots at a wolf (with a silver cartridge his servant puts into the gun) but finds the body of a gypsy, he sets the curse into motion. The gypsies ensure that Waldemar is cursed to live the living death of the werewolf. However we don’t get the ghost or revenant of Báthory showing up and hence she has only a fleeting visitation in the film and this is the honourable mention of that visitation.

There

The Borgo Pass

is another aspect that genre fans will like, however, and that is the proximity of Daninsky’s estate, in this, to the Borgo Pass – highlighted only by a road sign to that effect. There is also a scene of the corpses of victims being treated and about to be cremated to prevent a possible return – but they don’t return and so whether this would have been as werewolves, vampires or zombies is not actually touched upon in any meaningful way. However, standard werewolf myth be that only survivors become werewolves in turn.

The imdb page is here.

The Empire of Dracula – review

Director: Federico Curiel

Release date: 1967

Contains spoilers

Oh, you just have to love Mexican Horror Cinema. Even when it begs, steals and borrows, and even when it isn’t the best example, there are more often than not moments that make a vehicle worthwhile.

The Empire of Dracula would appear to be quite a rare example and I have to say that in its ‘begs, steal and borrow” way it did manage to pilfer aspects that were rather reminiscent of the Hammer film from just two years before, that being Dracula Prince of Darkness (DPoD) of course.

the castle

The credits tell us that this is based on the novel by Abraham Stoker as a sombre piano plays. However as we see the Grey Mansion (the exterior establishing shot, clearly a model, is a castle but the interior and courtyard shots suggest hacienda) and we discover a little background we are told that the vampire of our tale is the Baron Draculstein (Eric del Castillo).

staking Draculstein

After seeing a cloaked shadow and fangs we hear a scream. A portly gentleman (Víctor Alcocer) runs for his life, however he is wont to stumble and fall – meaning the Baron is able to follow him at a walk. He is caught and has to fight for his life. Eventually, in a room, he fights the vampire off and grabs a curtain. The vampire retreats and hides behind his cape in a corner – though viewers might recall that the ripping of a curtain to kill Dracula at the end of Horror of Dracula was shown at the head of DPoD. The man grabs a poker and stakes the vampire with it – he turns rapidly to a skeleton.

the family

Madam Brener (Rebeca Iturbide) has told the story to her son Luis (César del Campo) whilst she lies in her death bed. The portly gentleman was his father and he gave his life to rid the world of Draculstein and banish him from the Grey Mansion (which belongs to the Brener family). Round her bedside are Patricia (Lucha Villa), Luis’ wife, and Patricia’s sisters Diana (Ethel Carrillo) and the mute Lily (Robin Joyce). Luis wants her to rest but she insists in telling him that she knows Draculstein will be reborn at the next New Moon and Luis must return to the Grey Mansion, find the cross of oak and destroy him forever. Luis doesn’t believe a word of it and Mrs Brener dies.

Fernando Osés as Igor

It is the 1st of October and a couple are walking beneath the New Moon… ish… because it isn’t a New Moon, despite being referred to as such, it’s a Full Moon! The man says it symbolises love or death. They walk for a bit and then she starts to shiver, so he returns to their buggy to get a coat for her. A black coach with black horses comes out of the night and runs the man down. The woman returns, finds her lover crushed and then is grabbed by the carriage driver, Igor (Fernando Osés, Santo Vs Baron Brakola).

bleeding the victim

She is taken to a crypt and tied above a sarcophagus. Igor stabs her and her blood spills on the sarcophagus, causing it to open and revealing the bones of Draculstein, which then reform into the restored vampire. A couple of points struck me. Whilst the victim was a different sex and had been kidnapped from outside, this was reminiscent of resurrecting Dracula in DPoD – though nowhere near as impactful as Hammer’s scene. The other thing that struck me was why has the servant waited so long (Luis was a child when his father died and the vampire was staked, a goodly time has gone by)?

Robin Joyce as Lily

Anyway Luis returns to the Grey Mansion but their carriage breaks down. The black coach appears, without a driver, and the women get in, whilst Luis drives it. When they arrive there is food put out for them and their luggage manages to find its way to their rooms (again, lifting from DPoD). Housekeeper Maria denies having put the food out or moving the luggage and claims that Igor died a few months ago – actually her role in the film is confused as to whether she is helping the vampire or hindering him – she gives one character an apotropaic. Very soon Diana goes missing – no one seems too bothered, assuming she upped and left, though we know she has been vampirised – and the whole family are in danger.

a shadow of two swords

The vampires fear the sun and are warded/burnt by crosses. The oak cross doesn’t seem special, to look at, but is rather destructive. Draculstein is a bit of a big wuss, to be honest. At one point he fights Luis with swords and they cross, causing a cross shape shadow to fall over Luis’ face. This elicits a scream from the vampire and he legs it! Rather than garlic, mandrake has an apotropaic effect and there is a whole patch of it planted outside the Mansion. There is a nice mirror moment with the vampiric Diana appearing in the mirror and stepping through to Lily’s room.

emerging from the mirror

The story is weak, to be honest, however there are nice moments (such as the mirror just mentioned). Eric del Castillo does not make a very threatening vampire and the fact that they just walk after victims seems plodding rather than menacing. A little more clarity around the roles and motivations of the staff would have been nice and a slower build to the attack on the family would have built a tension that was sadly lacking. I saw it in Black and White, apparently there was a colour version also but black and white probably suited the film more.

However it is a nice Mexican rarity and has worthwhile moments amongst the pedestrian pace. 4 out of 10. The IMDb page is here.