For the Road – Kickstarter

I came across this Kickstarter on Facebook and it is for a short film imagining of the Stephen King short One for the Road – a sequel to the seminal ‘Salem’s Lot. This isn’t the first time this has been done. It was filmed in (approximately) 2010 by Bulgarian filmmakers as Wrong Way. Whilst preparing this blog I also found another version from 2011 entitled One for the Road (and will feature that short here very soon).

However the fact that it has been made before doesn’t take away from someone making it once again – and I am looking forward to contrasting this new version with its predecessors.

For those who haven’t read the short the Kickstarter page carries the following synopsis: ““For the Road” focuses on the locals who drink away their sorrows and superstitions at Took’s Tavern. It follows Alex Booth as she recalls her last night in Jerusalem’s Lot, a small ghost town inhabited by vampires where visitors are lucky to make it out alive. Booth and her friend, Herb Tooklander, brave the dark to help Gerry Lumley, an out of towner whose family is stranded in The Lot during a storm.”

As with all Kickstarters, this is posted for information only – a decision to back the project is done at your own risk. The Kickstarter page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Zee-Oui

There is a type of serial killer who are dubbed by the press as vampires – leading to such monikers as the Hanover Vampire or the Vampire of Düsseldorf. To my knowledge, Si Quey – or as spelt in this 2004 Buranee Rachjaibun & Nida Suthat Na Ayutthaya Thai film Zee-Oui – was never called such.

He was, however, the first reported serial killer in Thailand (though he was of Chinese origin) and he was a cannibal. Now, as much as some people deny it, there is a sub-set of the vampire genre that involves the eating of flesh as well as the drinking of blood. Indeed, the drinking of human blood is, of itself, an act of cannibalism. It struck me that Zee-Oui (maintaining the movie spelling) would have been nicknamed vampire had it been a European case and, also, there were aspects of this film that brought the film M to mind as I watched. Finally, as we will see, the film connected his cannibalism with a concept that it brought him health.

arriving

We begin with scenes of butchery and then newspapers with headlines about child murders. We also see Huang Li Hui (Yihong Duan) taken to be executed. We cut to his memory, the scene settling on Bangkok in 1946 and a ship disembarking. One of the passengers is Huang Li Hui – he stowed away to get across to Thailand. He goes into the admin area but cannot speak Thai and the officer has to call a translator over. They ask for his name and the officer renders his familial name to Ung from Huang, Li Hui he renders as Zee-Oui – despite protest. When Zee-Oui (I’ll stick to this name for the rest of the review) cannot pay the 10 baht tax he has his head shaved and is thrown in a holding cell until a man (claiming to be his uncle, and we know of nothing to say he isn’t although we meet a different uncle later) comes to collect him.

stealing from the family

He is taken to work for a family in China Town and is expected to slaughter and pluck chickens. He is given just plain rice to eat and is tormented by the family’s children. When he threatens them the mistress of the house brains him with a wooden shoe. In desperation he robs the family and leaves the city, heading into the provinces. Around this time there have been a spate of child murders and these are being investigated by lady reporter Dara (Premsinee Ratanasopha), despite the fact that her boss, Santi (Chatchai Plengpanich) would rather she focus on entertainment columns. The other homicides suggest that (whilst he was a murderer) Zee-Oui was ultimately blamed for crimes he didn’t commit as well as those he did.

losing the medicine

His next job involves moving sacks (presumably of grain). He is ridiculed by his fellow workers as he does not have the strength to carry the sacks (and also, probably, because he is Chinese rather than Thai). The only one who seems kind to him is a very young girl named Mei, who pours tea for the workers and is the owner’s daughter. Zee-Oui has an illness that manifests as a persistent cough (and likely is sapping his strength). He does, later, tell his Uncle that he has Asthma but we also note that, later, he coughs up blood. That indicates it is not (only) Asthma; he could have a respiratory infection or, at the very worst, TB. He gets some medicine with the last of his money but it is taken by his co-workers and ruined.

Santi and Dara

In a delirium he has a nightmare of when he was a Chinese soldier fighting the Japanese and his squad taking a village back from the enemy. He is clearly petrified and his commanding officer makes him kill a wounded Japanese officer with his bare hands. There is a point around this that he likely suffered from PTSD. Unfortunately Mei tries to wake him (with a flower) and, in his sleep, he grabs her and throttles her. Realising what he has done when he awakens he takes the body and dumps it. The resultant find brings Dara to the province and she does meet Zee-Oui and sees the knife his mother gave him. Zee-Oui loses the job, due to his inadequacy, and moves on.

luring

He then starts farming (and children torment him again) but a monsoon destroys his crop. His cough worsens (possibly due to the climate). Eventually he becomes desperate and, at a fair, lures a girl with a balloon and murders her. It was the scenes of him luring, especially using a red ice treat, that reminded me stylistically of M. He mutilates the body by taking an organ (eventually we see it is the heart). He makes a broth with it for his cough. In flashback through the film we see that he was sickly as a child and his mother fed him broth made with the heart of an executed criminal to cure him. We also see his commanding officer trying to force him to eat a raw heart taken from the enemy, to gain the strength it contains.

cooking the heart

Dara realises that the police are conflating two killers and when Zee-Oui drops his knife, whilst escaping the scene of a murder, she recognises it and is able to confirm his identity and give the police a description. The film doesn’t explicitly tell us if he is tried for all the murders or just those he committed though Dara suggests that he was as much a victim as a villain. In fact the film does exceptionally well at making us have sympathy for this man who is clearly damaged and tormented.

heart broth

As for the real-life killer, online details are contradictory but his corpse is mummified and on display at the Songkran Niyomsane Forensic Medicine Museum. The case is labelled Si Quey but some sources name him Si Ouey Sae Urng. Some sources suggest he was executed by machine gun, others that he was hung. The film puts his date of execution as 16/9/59. The sources tend to agree that he ate the hearts and livers of his victims.

Not a vampire movie, as such, but certainly part of the serial killer sub-section that is of genre interest. The imdb page is here.

Expressionism in Cinema – review

Editors: Olaf Brill & Gary D. Rhodes

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: One of the most visually striking traditions in cinema, for too long Expressionism has been a neglected critical category of research in film history and aesthetics. The fifteen essays in this anthology remedies this by revisiting key German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), and also provide original critical research into more obscure titles like Nerven (1919) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), films that were produced in the silent and early sound era in countries ranging from France, Sweden and Hungary, to the United States and Mexico. An innovative and wide-ranging collection, Expressionism in Cinema re-canonizes the classical Expressionist aesthetic, extending the critical and historical discussion beyond pre-existing scholarship into comparative and interdisciplinary areas of film research that reach across national boundaries.

The review: Whilst expressionism covered a range of films, readers of the blog will be aware that there was a prime example of expressionism in the vampire film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. This book does, obviously, cast its net wider than I would normally look at for review but it has (as well as mention of Nosferatu in several chapters) a chapter on Nosferatu specifically, as well as Genuine – a tale of a vampire and Drakula Halála (1921).

Drakula Halála was a Hungarian film from 1921 directed by Károly Lajthay and is a lost film with just a few stills surviving. The title means The Death of Dracula and it is the chapter on this film I will concentrate on (although the other two mentioned chapters are very worthwhile – as is the volume as a whole). What Gary D Rhodes unearths for the chapter is both astounding and absolutely essential to the student of the Media Vampire.

The first thing we see is from a trade publication announcement for the film, in 1921, posted in Képes Mozivilám that incorrectly attributes the novel Dracula to H G Wells. He then teases us with a set report from a journalist from the publication Színház és Mozi. One thing that struck me was the likening of Dracula “a phantastic creature” to “some kind of modern Bluebeard” then he tells us of Dracula’s aversion to the cross as he tries to marry the heroine (of the film) Mary Land in a hall where “Beautiful women parade through it, all dressed in dreamlike costumes, all of them being Drakula’s wives.” This is, to my knowledge, the first use of the word wives in association to the women in Dracula’s castle – though there are certainly more than three brides in this film.

However most exciting was the fact that there was a novella written to tie in with the film and although the film is lost the novella is not, and the author translated it in full for the chapter.

Within the novella we get a mystery. Mary Land goes to an asylum for the insane to visit her father, who dies in her arms. However she sees a man in the asylum she believes to be her old music teacher. He claims to be Drakula the immortal. After being accosted by two other inmates who pose as doctors Mary is persuaded to stay at the asylum and rest before travelling home. Is the resultant kidnapping by Drakula just in her head, a figment of imagination brought on by the shock of the attack and losing her father and projected into her nightmares?

Drakula claims to be immortal and fears the cross – rearing from it. Of course the idea of pulling away from the cross was previously shown, cinematically, by Georges Méliès in 1896, though it was Mephistopheles who was so affected. Drakula is called the Devil’s son in this and has hypnotic eyes – in Stoker's novel it is Van Helsing who uses hypnosis and this, to me, seems to draw a simile between Drakula and Svengali (incidentally Paul Askonas, the actor who played Drakula, had played Svengali in the film Trilby (1912)) as well as introduce the vampire’s hypnotic eyes to the cinematic vampire. Whilst Nosferatu introduced the vampire being vanquished by the rising sun it seems Drakula Halála moved towards such lore when Drakula exclaims “I hate the sunlight! It forces me away. But I shall see you again, tonight!”

What we don’t get is overt vampirism. Drakula will make Mary his bride with a kiss – and, of course, a kiss was used in Dracula (the novel) as a euphemism for a bite – but we do not see a bite or a reference to the drinking of blood. The poster for the film, however, did depict Drakula with fangs. The living dead are referred to but then this is used to describe the asylum’s inmates – perhaps Mary’s struggle with Drakula is her own struggle to maintain sanity and thus not join the ranks of the living dead/insane? Interestingly the inmate who claims to be Drakula is killed – hence the film’s title – by means of a bullet, but the bullet does pierce the heart.

Rhodes has given us a treasure and whilst the volume is expensive, as it is an academic reference book, the chapter makes the volume absolutely essential for the student of the media vampire. 9 out of 10 reflects this and reflects the quality of the other chapters.

Mother May I Sleep with Danger – review

Director: Melanie Aitkenhead

Released: 2016


Contains spoilers


The original Mother May I Sleep with Danger (MMISWD) was a 1996 thriller starring Tori Spelling about a killer who targets, isolates, abuses and finally kills female targets and about his latest victim being saved by her mother. James Franco reimagined it twenty years on as a vampire film but also decided to take one of the potential subtexts of the vampire (and other monsters), the queer, and play with that as an overt theme.

This was not necessarily entirely successful – as I may not agree with some of the points made, especially around Dracula – but debate is always good and the fact that there was a conscious effort to hold a discussion through the medium of the film warms me to it in the very first place. As I intend to look at the points made I will, by necessity, spoil the film further than I normally would.

nightwalker attack

The film starts with a blonde girl (Emma Rigby) getting out of a car, entering a house and lighting candles. She receives a call and assures the caller that she will do it tonight. Pearl (Emily Meade) arrives and it is clear that the two are lovers. Pearl expects to go out but the other (she isn’t named in film or in credits) says her parents are out, gives Pearl a ring and suggests that Pearl photograph her – after she does they lie together and Pearl confirms she loves her. A confession follows, the girl is a nightwalker… kind of like a vampire (or exactly like, especially if you just take the fact that the character is credited as a vampire).

staked

She shows her fangs and Pearl freaks, trying to run from the girl. They fight through the lounge, smashing a window and, eventually, the vampire bites Pearl. The deed done she sits back, suggesting she never wanted to hurt her but Pearl grabs a shard of glass and stakes her. We get some lore through this and a necessary story point. The vampire tells Pearl that they chose her to be a nightwalker – it was a direct attempt to victimise or empower (depending on viewpoint) Pearl. The fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the fact that the vampire fell in love with her. Nightwalker lore suggests that should a vampire find her one true love they can feed off each other for eternity, negating the need to kill humans. Pearl escapes the house, has a moment of pain and spasm, then turns and sees the three other vampires approach with a bound and gagged man.

Ivan Sergei as the teacher

So, the film has not only been transformed into a vampire movie but it has also directly focused on LGBTQ issues by making the focal cast members lesbians. This is less underscored and more shouted from the rooftops as the film jumps to five years later and a teacher (Ivan Sergei, Crossing Jordan: Revealed, Kindred: the Embraced & Vamps) talks about vampires and sexuality in class and how Dracula represented the queer. Note here that Ivan Sergei played the killer in the original MMISWD. The discussion suggests the vampire (and the monster) oft represents the queer and Van Helsing’s actions were to hetero-normalise the situation. That is a very 21st Century take on the situation. Despite the oft-quoted line “This man belongs to me”, Dracula preyed upon females. The three vampires in the castle represented a wanton aggressive female sexuality that rejected traditional female roles (they devoured the baby in the sack), Lucy became, post-mortem, sexually wanton and had to be symbolically gang-raped and killed to “free her” and Dracula cuckolded Jonathon Harker as he shared fluids with New Woman Mina and presumably would have ultimately inspired the same sexual wantonness. Dracula was not killed to establish hetero-normality but to re-impose Victorian patriarchal misogyny and put the women back in their collective place.

Leah in class

In the class is Leah (Leila George). Unlike Laurel (from the original MMISWD) who was a track star but suffered from an eating disorder, Leah seems together. She is clearly a favourite of the teacher, she has a podcast and she seems popular. There is a darkness in her past – her father was murdered six years before – but she seems well adjusted when it comes to that. In the class discussion, as someone disses Twilight, she is quick to defend the first book suggesting that it made teen sexuality dangerous again. That Edward possessed a danger to Bella that had been lost in a more sexually open and condom savvy generation – she does dislike the further books however. There is an irony inherent in this, given the danger she will face from the guy who waits behind for her after class. Bob (Nick Eversman, Vampires Suck & Hellraiser: Revelations) is infatuated with her (she later dismisses him as “just this guy that has a crush on me”) and is trying for Macbeth in the college play – assuming Leah is trying for Lady Macbeth.

Macbeth audition

When it comes to the audition Leah actually tries for Macbeth – with a girl playing Lady Macbeth with her. The display not only gender swaps the character but also is played with a lesbian eroticism that clearly interests the director (James Franco). Leah may have a dorm room but does laundry at home (actually she seems to spend more time there than at college). Her Mom (Tori Spelling) is disturbed about her taking on Macbeth (she deems the play as bloody and references obliquely her husband’s murder) but soon is distracted when Leah says she wants to bring someone special home to dinner. We later discover that she has assumed Bob (she knows Bob’s parents). We meet her someone special and it is Pearl, whilst Leah is with her she discovers she has been cast as Macbeth. The scene where we meet Pearl again takes the form of a photoshoot and reminded me a little of Embrace of the Vampire (1995).

Tori Spelling as the mom

So the basic story now goes that Leah has been chosen to be a nightwalker and the other three (unnamed) vampires have decreed that Pearl owes them (a new nightwalker to replace the one she killed). Bob, of course, sees Leah with Pearl and is jealous (and humiliated as his friends are there and they spot the girls kissing). Pearl has fallen in love with Leah (the one true love bit seems a bit twee, especially as she loved the previous vampire). Leah’s mom has a conservative American reaction to the idea that her daughter is gay – starting with denial and moving on to anger and forbidding them to be together.

on the hunt

The vampires are interesting in that they predate on men who have done women wrong. Whilst there is indication that their sisterhood has a Sapphic baseline (one of them kisses Pearl in a passive aggressive way), we get a clue to what they actually represent in film when they are cast as the witches in Macbeth. The witches have been said to represent many things including the external force that tempts humans and also the darkness that lies in the heart both of Macbeth and mankind generally. The rehearsal with the witches is, again, highly sexualised and yet the characters – depicted as attractive young women – are gender swapped, in a way, as in Macbeth they are described as bearded. “You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.” When we see them hunting, they attack a jock clearly about to rape a drunk/drugged girl – a foreshadowing of events later in the film and quite topical at the time of release of the film.

Bob dressed as a vampire

Leah’s mom works on the annual Country Club Halloween bash, a club Bob’s parents attend. He has already made Leah’s relationship with Pearl all about himself, told Leah’s mom that Pearl is part of a bad crowd and attends the party dressed as a traditional (Lugosi-esque) vampire. He spikes Leah’s drink, watches her with Pearl and, when the drug kicks in, gets her outside where he intends to rape her. This is interrupted by the vampires (who are wanting to forcibly transform Leah at this point, a form of rape itself) who attack Bob. Their feed is interrupted by Leah’s mom who finds her daughter – Bob has vanished.

Nightwalker Bob

Bob turns and, on the surface, it does seem strange that the nightwalkers (bar Pearl) would now side with him, but they do. He tries to kill Leah on stage (during the Macbeth and Macduff combat) and they run from the theatre. The female vampires also give chase, flank him as they march upon her and pin her down for him to attack. Bob announces “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time!” (at which point her mom enters the scene and Bob turns from Leah to attack her). The statement, when he has been a vampire for one day, underscores the fact that the bite is a penetration and a surrogate for sex. Pearl will only do it if Leah is willing (especially as she was forcibly turned) but Bob has no such qualms. Why are the nightwalkers helping, given their normal hunting pattern? Probably because they are distinct from Pearl as a group (none of them are named as individuals) and primarily symbolic. They are the darkness that the witches represent and, with Pearl, that darkness is directed into a vigilantism against sexual predators but with Bob it becomes the dark heart of the sexual predator.

Día de Muertos

There isn’t a lot of lore available in this (other than the true love and feeding). Staking kills but otherwise vampires heal but do not regenerate, and so the healing might be ugly. Pearl and Leah, between them, damage the three nightwalkers and Bob in various ways (plucking eyes out, ripping a throat out, smashing a head with masonry) but at the end we see them, a dark force majeure, entering a party a year later. They are initially dressed as skeletons (reminiscent of the Día de Muertos) and then revelling amongst the party goers who are oblivious to their (revealed) injured faces. The danger was still present, mirroring the coda of the original MMISWD. As for pearl and Leah; Leah willingly submits to the turning as Pearl’s one true love. The turning process seems painful – more so than for Pearl it would seem (and much more than for Bob, who turned off screen and, presumably close to the attack, soundlessly) – and perhaps the pain in some way represented labour as the turning led to rebirth.

gore

So the film played with gender reversal and made the lesbian relationship positive and love based but also played a definite card of teen sexuality can still be dangerous. It made that danger the male misogynist who forces himself upon the unwilling, resorting to drugging to have his way if need be (and given certain US court cases in 2016 this proves to be poignant). It rallied against conservative America as represented by the mother – a woman, yes, but white and affluent who misreads the danger and where it sits (unlike the mother in the original MMISWD) due to her own prejudices. This prejudice was much like the prejudice that was at the core of Dracula (bowing to a patriarchal view) and so the opening discussion may have added a queer analysis of Stoker, which doesn’t wholly stand up for me, but was the ideal place to start this conversation.

feeding

And there I’ll park the analysis but it is great to have a movie that begs analysis. It wasn’t perfect, in some ways this was not the vehicle to have the discussion meaningfully – people would expect a camp, vampire flick along the stereotypical Lifetime style. There was some mixed signalling in the way the nightwalkers reacted to Bob. I did think, amongst everyone in the film, that Nick Eversman needs a mention as he shifted from smiling guy (at the very beginning he does almost seem harmless) to violent villain with ease and believability. I liked the film as anything that makes you think is worthwhile, but as a vampire story and film it wasn’t up there with the greats. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: National Lampoon’s Class Reunion

Released in 1982 and directed by Michael Miller this was a film written by John Hughes and comedically, for me, falls flat (it definitely has not aged well but I suspect it was flat back in the day). Hughes combines high school reunion tropes with some by-the-number horror tropes but never finds a particularly easy sit between the slasher orientated main story and the more supernatural elements he puts into the story.

The film starts ten years prior to the feature and it is the class party for the graduating class of 1972. Their school is Lizzie Borden High and they are all around a camp fire getting drunk/stoned. They get Walter (Blackie Dammett) to chug some booze and then he is taken to one side by Bob (Gerrit Graham) who says that the homecoming queen, Meredith ( Shelley Smith), is waiting for him in a car – but Walter and Meredith must both wear bags over their heads. Walter agrees but it is a prank – the bags are ripped off their heads during a hand job – we don’t see the partner's face...

Year Book entry

We get our first hint of vampirism during the title sequence where we see year book entries. Egon Von Stoker (Jim Staahl) had the nickname Jaws and was an exchange student from Transylvania High. He was elected "Most likely to be home before sunrise", was the chairman of the Borden Blood Drive and was founder of the Eternal Life Society. The film then goes immediately into the class reunion. Lizzie Borden High has been closed and the reunion is in the dilapidated school. The primary story is of Walter having escaped for a mental institution and out to kill his tormentors.

Memories of the Borden Blood Drive

However, I mentioned some supernatural elements and the primary one surrounds Delores Salk (Zane Buzby). In high school her legs were in iron braces but she has sold her soul to walk unaided. She is now possessed, can summon fire and winds and there is an element of the Exorcist to all of this. This supernatural element sits uneasily in the film but the script looks at Delores a little more than Egon, making this work slightly more than the vampiric element.

do not disturb

Other than running the blood drive all we really know about Egon is he has fangs. He has very little screen time but uses that to use the same chat up line on various women. It eventually works on Mary Beth (Marla Pennington) and they dance. The music, provided by Chuck Berry, has ended by this point and so Egon hums a tune – sharp ears will recognise it as a theme from Dark Shadows. Later Mary Beth and Egon claw at Walter as he opens an upright coffin that they are in. And that is it – barring a quick gag over the credits about eternal life and beauty parlours that was as unfunny as you may suspect. At best I think we could call it a fleeting visitation but it is there nonetheless.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is a 2016 anime series directed by Tetsurō Araki and it is steampunk in tone and setting. Ian contacted me and suggested it as a “Vamp or Not?” and it was a good call.

The primary creature within the series are the kabane and, on the surface, these fit the mould of the zombie and we have essentially a z-apocalypse in a feudal Japan that was just passing into the industrial revolution. This has led to walled cities (or stations) linked by a railway line with travel between the outposts by steam train only.

steampunk

So, zombies then? Well it isn’t that simple. Whilst most in the series think of the kabane as a curse, it is recognised by some in the series that a virus is to blame. The virus is virulent being passed by bite (and later through blood), takes control of the host, killing it to rise as an undead carrier. These kabane then seek out the non-infected, attacking them aggressively, feasting on the flesh and passing on the plague. Survivors of attacks, who don’t appear bitten, are quarantined for three days to ensure that they aren’t infected. So far, so zombie.

Kabane

However there are some differences. The kabane can only be killed by losing their heads or being stabbed in the heart – the heart leading us more towards vampires. The heart is protected by a glowing iron shield and the steam guns of the bushi (soldiers) and swords have a hard time penetrating it. In fact, someone who is definitely bitten is expected to use a suicide device that destroys their heart before they turn. This iron heart, along with “Veins” and eyes all glow in a wonderfully stylised way. We also notice that some of the kabane seem to develop fangs and some later are shown to have learnt how to use swords effectively. Blood can be used to draw the kabane.

attack

If we were to concentrate solely on the kabane then we would recognise that (beyond the steampunk element) we have a core that resembles the vampires developed by Richard Matheson in I am Legend, which then fed in to the zombie genre via Romero/Russo. In short we might have edged towards zompires. However the show is called kabaneri and not kabane. In the first episode we meet a steamsmith called Ikoma (Tasuku Hatanaka). As well as working on locomotives that come into his station he is secretly developing a steam gun (or more properly the ammunition) that can penetrate the kabane’s heart with a single shot. He is also studying the kabane as a species.

Ikoma infected by black blood

When the station is attacked he proves his ammunition works but is bitten in the process. He manages to stop the spread of the virus to his head by iron braces that block his carotid arteries. He then transforms into something between human and kabane. Mumei (Sayaka Senbongi), a young girl similarly transformed, tells him they are kabaneri. They are artificially produced (we get her back story later) and keep their memories and personalities – though they live with the fear of eventually becoming kabane. Male kabaneri are very rare, it transpires, but both sexes heal quickly (though they do not regenerate and therefore lost limbs are forever lost) and both need to drink blood to survive.

the Black Smoke

Later we see the “black smoke” a hive of kabane that becomes a creature in its own right. The heart of the black smoke (which again must be destroyed to stop it) is a female kabaneri who has been treated with so called black blood. A male kabaneri, so treated, would just become more powerful and burn out quickly. Both could be cured by being injected with white blood. These blood serums have been developed by scientists in the employ of the show’s primary villain.

apocalypse, streampunk style

And this is the crux of any issue around the show. The animation is excellent but the plot is thin. It is essentially a steampunk apocalypse and whilst we known that there is a virus at the core it doesn’t explain why the undead have glowing iron parts, we must take that on trust, and it doesn’t even attempt a pseudoscience explanation around the serums – they just are. The main villain’s motivations are almost puerile and struggle to withstand scrutiny. That said the fighting is excellent and the action engaging. But is it Vamp?

If there were just the kabane then I think we’d lean towards zompires but the kabaneri are definitely vampire. They are stronger and faster than humans, they need blood to survive and they are derived from something that produces the undead. The imdb page is here.

The Devil’s Mistress – review

Director: Orville Wanzer

Release date: 1965

Contains spoilers


The Western Horror, and more specifically the Western Vampire Movie, are a fairly rare breed – although there are some excellent examples. The Devil’s Mistress is not the best example of the sub-genre but it almost makes itself essential by its obscurity.

A note, that the version I saw was from rare film store Trash Palace and the print has a huge amount of colour fade and fuzziness to it, however the film is obscure and this may be the only state you’d get to see it in.

Will and Joe

The film starts with riders and, as we watch them, we hear a voice over. The quotes are from Deuteronomy, possibly slightly amended. The first quote is 32:17 “They sacrificed unto the devil and not to God” and the second is 32:24 “They shall be burned with hunger, and devoured with passion and bitter destruction: I will also send the poison of the serpent and the mouth of the beast upon them”. The quote seems to become quite literal within the film.

Forrest Westmoreland as Charlie

The four riders camp. They are the apparent leader Will (Oren Williams), young and naive Franky (Robert Gregory) and the rather bad desperados Charlie (Forrest Westmoreland) and Joe (Douglas Warren). What the four have done is not made clear but obliquely we can suppose there has been a robbery (they talk about shares), someone has been killed (*he had to do it* is mentioned) and they fear they are being pursued. The campfire talk between Charlie (who giggles evilly) and Joe is about finding a squaw, raping and murdering her. Franky is a bit lost in the conversation and Will distances himself from the two men. They do decide it won’t actually happen, as they are in Apache territory, they need to keep moving and hopefully they will pass through unhindered.

Jeroboam and Liah

The next day, low on food with a four-day ride ahead of them, they spot a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. Will is cautious but the other three want to explore. The place seems deserted but suddenly a man, Jeroboam (Arthur Resley), appears in the doorway. Guns are pointed at him but he disarms them with a friendly manner and the news that his woman, Athaliah (Joan Stapleton), known as Liah, was preparing food and it being offered to the riders. Will is sceptical.

stuffing faces

We see three of the four sharing a meal of stew and bread. Will is not there, Liah serves and Jeroboam does not eat. Charlie and Joe eat like animals but Franky, at least, seems to have table manners. Jeroboam explains that they left Salem to escape religious persecution. He also explains that Liah is mute. Eventually Will comes in and is offered food but he is sceptical. Where did the food comes from, what is in the stew and where are the vegetable gardens that would be needed for sufficiency in the wilderness? He gets the riders to leave and Franky and he do ride off. Charlie and Joe decide there must by money hidden, call Jeroboam out of the cabin and shoot him dead, fail to find anything and so set to rape Liah.

sealed with a kiss

They catch the others up, with Liah in tow, and say they threw Jeroboam’s corpse into the bone dry well. Later that night Charlie starts to kiss Liah. Suddenly her hands grip to him and she kisses him back. We see her sat, licking her lips and him stagger. The next day he feels like he has no energy and falls behind in the ride. He eventually slumps in the saddle, falls and dies. Liah, it seems, is an energy vampire. As they ride on the others will fall to her (only one more in terms of energy vampirism). Meanwhile she is always looking back at a silhouetted figure only she can see.

going for the neck

Her other vampiric attack not only involves her kissing but also her putting her mouth to the neck and sucking. The figure following is Jeroboam, his beard shaved and bedecked in a splendid cloak. The cloak may well make a viewer think of Dracula but Jeroboam seems to be more the devil himself. Liah seems to have powers over animals – making use of a rattlesnake, sat conveniently where some herbs are growing, and a horse. The rattlesnake fulfils the “poison of the serpent” and her sucking of energy through a kiss I would say is the “mouth of the beast”. There is a moment of sacrifice also, but that is the climax of the movie so I won’t spoil further.

cloaked

It isn’t the best acted of films – but there are quite a few dialogue moments between the cowboys and these feel natural enough. Of course, the colour fading was a shame, but the muted yellowy/brown actually suited the film to some degree. It isn’t necessarily the zippiest of films, despite its short 65-minute running time, and yet there was something compelling about the film. Perhaps more necessary for its obscurity than its content, however there is something nice about making her an energy vampire. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Spooky Kids – review

Director: Tony Randel

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

There has to be something said for a film having a good title. Whilst, of course, content is much more important the title can draw a potential audience. Spooky Kids (the UK release name) is not a great title but it sure as Hell beats the original US title The Hybrids Family. Seriously, that was one ugly title.

Of course the title draws us to discuss the hybrids within – in this case it is a witch/vampire hybrid set up. However I am more interested in a connection that, whilst I know it was in my mind and not the filmmakers, came to mind as I watched. If we cast our thoughts back to Disney kids’ film Mystery in Dracula’s Castle we had a young boy who wants to film a vampire movie – in this the boy, or more accurately teen, is Blaz (Mojean Aria) and he is a vampire (or hybrid) who wants to film a movie. Whilst the stories are entirely dissimilar I find making a parallel of the two movies – and the move of the central character from simple fandom to being the vampire – fascinating.

Paul Sorvino as the Count

The film starts with a backstory narrated by the ‘originally’ named Count (Paul Sorvino, Airship Dracula) who tells that for centuries witches and vampires have hated each other. However the Count moved from Transylvania to Italy after his wife died. A witch there, Aradia (Carolyn Hennesy, True Blood), cast a spell to help her daughter Valantina (Anne Leighton) find her true love. That happened to be the Count’s son Todor (Philip Willingham). The two eloped and had two children, the aforementioned Blaz and his sister Velana (Leanne Agmon), the world’s first hybrids.

Mojean Aria as Blaz

Into the film proper and Blaz is in a library and online. He is looking at a college in Florida and specifically at a video of film student, Maria (Lauren Lakis), as she announces her assignment subject and is decried by her teacher (Rawle D. Lewis) as it is in the horror genre. She is looking for crew – and this all has a touch of the ‘vampire as creepy stalker’ to it, but we’ll get to that… For now Blaz goes out of the college and is attacked by two toughs, Tug (Chris De Christopher, Vampire in Vegas) and Vinnie (Chuck Ardezzone), who try to kidnap him. Blaz vamps out and fights them off (he seems to not have much in the way of strength until he lets his vampire side out). We discover that the two men are working for Prater (Charles Noland) and they may not have the hybrid but they do get his dropped phone.

Leanne Agmon as Velana

Blaz gets home and Velana sees him and realises he is injured (he has a cut to the forehead). He explains about going to the library and that he has found a college in Florida. Velana is shocked – mum and dad would never let him go, they’ve even been home schooled. Blaz’s psychic tantrum wakes up mom and dad who are shocked by the fact that he has been attacked. By the time they get up in the morning (the vampire schedule has stopped being nocturnal, apparently, and they now drink wine and love garlic) the two kids have run away. This is the crux of the film – supporting your children to follow their own path. Strangely Valantina tries to communicate telepathically and is blocked by her strong daughter but… given they have no friends and the supernaturals can communicate telepathically one wonders why Blaz had a phone.

Maria and Blaz

So the film has three strands. The parents trying to track their children and getting the grandparent’s help (leading to the plot-inevitable romance of the older generation), Prater hunting the kids to force Valantina to reverse a curse cast on him when he was hunting the parents, and the kids making a life. This is where the simplistic formula of average kids’ programming lets us down. How easy was it for Velana to just walk along and get a job? How convenient that they squat in a house for sale but no one notices? How easily does Blaz walk into Maria’s life? Further is the fact that he has watched her on video and then sought her out and she falls for him. Ok it has that simplistic teen romance element but he essentially is in the Meyer’s creepy stalker mode as he watched her, chose her and then takes over her film project (convincing her in about 10 seconds to turn the romance between two zombies into the romance between a human girl and a zombie… mirroring the romance he wants human to monster).

Charles Noland as Prater

The film is done in a comic way, the comedy centring on the villains. Yet even then they are cardboard cut-outs and apparently better at being detectives then the super-powered parents. Prater goes back to the library (having threatened mum and dad by calling from Blaz’ phone) and pretends to be a detective, gets information (despite not showing ID) from the librarian, opens the PC Blaz had used the night before and sees the page he was looking at re the college! It is this overt simplicity that not only makes this poor for an adult viewer, it insults the intelligence of the target audience.

Todor reflected

Ok let’s talk vampires. Well we see very little in the way of fangs – a couple of moments and no biting. The hybrids seem to mainly use magic to transport themselves but vampires can also dissolve their physical body and transport themselves vast distances. A vampire like the Count can easily project an simulacrum of himself also. They walk in daylight and have reflections. The most vampire like activity is the turning in to bats – meaning we do get a lot of CGI crap bat moments.

fangs on show

As for the film, well it is inoffensive I guess – love conquers all, diversity should be embraced, make the most of your talents, etc… However it has the simplistic elements, too much wish fulfilment at its core and that underlying stalker bit that I don’t think was purposeful, just a lift from the teen romance vampire part of the genre. I think it more interesting in that it is a great example of the mainstreaming of the supernatural/horror genre (and vampires specifically) via a kids’ product. I use the word product purposefully, however, as it is less art and more a commodity. 3.5 out of 10 feels harsh but a score of 4 felt too generous given the flaws.

The imdb page is here.