Portraits – review

Director: Stephanie Paris

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

This modern-day retelling of Carmilla (perhaps more a sequel than retelling, to be fair) does much right, with a definite nod to 70s horror – very telling within its deliberately languid pacing – but is perhaps guilty of throwing too much in that is underused and rushing ungracefully at its climax.

That said there is much to be enjoyed in the film, as we will see.

attacked

The film begins with a woman, in burlesque style underwear, backstage and getting changed. The lights go out. She shouts that there is someone still there and approaches the stairs. At the top a figure moves aside, keeping out of view. She returns downstairs and dresses in the dark, suddenly the lights go back on but too late to help her dress. She is going to leave when she is grabbed and stabbed, we see blood but not the assailant.

Mira and Lauren

After the credits (which includes some details of Victorian style corpse photography) we meet Mira (Olivia Bellafontaine) who is in her new apartment. She tries to open a bottle of wine with a knife and cuts her hand between finger and thumb. She goes to the apartment opposite and meets Lauren (Elissa Dowling, Dracula in a Women’s Prison, the Last Revenants, Live Evil & Dracula’s Curse). Mira asks for a corkscrew but Lauren insists on washing and band-aiding the wound. Lauren is a model (we discover Mira is a photographer) who runs an S&M phoneline on the side. She gives Mira a dress (that she was sent for free) and takes her to the in-building bar.

Irena Violette as Madeline

The bar also has a stage with an ongoing burlesque – Mira seems fascinated by the performer. Lauren takes her out to a smoking area where another photographer blows Lauren off, rejecting her for a shoot. Lauren leaves Mira on her own and she meets the burlesque performer, Madeline (Irena Violette, Transylmania & Metamorphosis). Madeline asks what Mira is short for and is told it is Mircalla. She takes Mira backstage to meet the other performers; Olivia (Rebecca Summers), Ruby (Paola Carleo) and Violet (Camille Calvin). Mira is invited to a birthday party the next night (sans Lauren).

bite

As we follow Mira we discover that she has inherited the apartment building and land from her Aunt, she has escaped a bad relationship (back home in New Orleans) and wants to make it as a photographer. She passes a Victorian photograph off as her own to get into a Day of the Dead exhibition. The picture was found in a time capsule of a set of rooms that taciturn handyman Emmerson (Jack Bennett) uses as a store room. Later she realises that it is the scene of at least one Victorian death photograph. Mira also begins to feel strange (a burning like hunger but not hungry, dizzy spells and vivid dreams) and all this starts after Madeline bites her wound (an act Mira doesn’t recall).

a vision of vampirism

The slow build-up worked well as this really nodded towards 70s Euro-horror at times and Emmerson seemed to have stepped from many an old Grindhouse flick. However there was something just a little off – there are murders and missing persons flying around but, whilst there is a connection, they are not explored fully, equally the building relationship between Mira and student photographer Nick (Michael Tribby) could have done with some extra building. Mira’s visions fit but are under-explored, especially around the death photography that seemed important and yet was woefully unexplored.

Mira and Madeline

Probably the aspect that worked least well was the sudden acceleration of plot at the end, taking place in coffin strewn underground tunnels that seemed a tad out of place. That said the film holds your attention and has a nice twist on lore (with a theme of reincarnation that was a little off-kilter from the more commonly used variety of the trope). The background history might have been explored a little more. None of the performances are poor, though Bellafontaine seems a tad lost at times – possibly due to the amount of scenes with Violette who comes across as very natural and offers a good, solid performance.

I liked this, I really did, but some tightening and expansion (or loss) of threads would see the film improving, possibly all the way to a classic. As it is, the film deserves a solid 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Blood Bat Terror!

This was a 4-minute film, copyrighted to 2018 and directed by Jeff Frumess, and whilst there was some success in the nature of the photography (and the black and white with grainy effect), the chief reason for watching this is for the crap bat that the title subtly promises and the film subsequently delivers.

It begins with Shiv (Peter Panic!) sharpening stakes. He leaves the house with a large stake strung over shoulder and a bag of smaller stakes and runs through the countryside. The film is silent but the blurb lets us know that he is racing to rescue his bride (Einav Dahaman Fruness).

crap bat syndrome

As he runs through the woods he is attacked by a series of vampires, dubbed Shadow Fiends in the credits, which he overcomes with the smaller stakes. Eventually he faces a bat that is, well the only description is crap but wonderfully so. Of course, the trouble with rescuing anyone from vampires is that you don’t know what state you’ll find them in.

At the time of writing I could not find an IMDb page.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Palace of the Damned

This is a film listed on IMDb as being from 2013 and directed by Antony Szeto, and is a bit of an oddity. The film begins with a period piece, but that turns out to be from a filmset. Flashback moments to events are performed by the actors playing the modern-day actors. Confusingly, there is a further film entitled Shen Gong Yuan Ling, which is dated as 2017 and also directed by Szeto, and the IMDb trivia for it mentions lifting footage from this, the cast list is the same and the description sounds like the period film. This film then throws into the mix a storyline about an American film crew making a documentary about the Chinese Ghost Festival.

One feels like three films are mismatched together. There is a hint of possession of one of the actresses by the vengeful spirit of the character she plays, but that part of the film leads to a strange non-supernatural conclusion. Separately the American crew end up being attacked by the supernatural. Never the twain shall meet, it appears.

the jiangshi

The reason for looking at this was the blurb that said, “Legend has it that the Chan Ju Chi has risen to become a "jiangshi", killing innocent people in the hope of taking over their bodies.” So the jiangshi is what I would normally term as kyonsi and is best known in a cinema sense as a Chinese hopping vampire. They are not necessarily known for possession (and honestly, I didn’t get a sense in this that people were being killed to have their bodies hijacked).

removing the tongue

Starting with what appears to be a period piece we discover that Chan Ju Chi (Yixin Li) is a concubine of the Emperor and set to become the favourite as she is pregnant and astrologers predict that the child will be a son. This does not sit well with current favoured concubine Ping Wei (JuJu Chan) who leads her rival to a bed chamber and has a soldier brutalise her to kill the child. To stop her speaking out she has her tongue removed but the girl can write, so it’s a case of cut off her hand and then, for good measure, throw her down a well.

Katie Savoy as Rebecca

The actress playing Chan Ju Chi seems jealous of her co-star and has recently been in the tabloid press due to sexual pictures being leaked and goes a bit off the rails, but seems to be possessed by her character. By the end of the film many she thought had been killed were not dead at all and its all an elaborate plot by her shrink to heal her! However there is also an American documentary being shot and writer/anchor Rebecca (Katie Savoy) becomes somewhat obsessed with the concubines’ story.

taoist ritual

So it is that the American crew seem to be on the fringes of spiritual attacks taking place until eventually they are right at the centre of the supernatural storm. But are they facing a vampire? Jiangshi is used as a phrase occasionally and the spirit is able to become corporeal and uses long talons to dig into the necks of those she kills. She also has, on demand, sharp pointed teeth. When we see her being tackled it is by a Taoist priest – often used in Chinese vampire movies but not exclusive when it comes to the creatures of evil they’ll battle.

fangs

What we don’t see is anything resembling blood drinking and there is a large amount of non-corporeality. The spirit of the concubine may (or may not) be possessing the actress. This feels more like a ghost than anything (on the US documentary shoot at least) but the use of jiangshi makes this of genre interest I suppose. That said the film is as confused as the lore and pretty poor. The imdb page is here.

Subspecies – review

Authors: Cullen Bunn & JimmyZ

Art: Daniel J Logan

First released: 2018 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Michelle survived being attacked by the vampire Radu, defeated him on more than one occasion, and has been living with the fallout for years. Her life forever changed since she was infected by him, she has adjusted to her existence as a creature of the night. Now, though, the unthinkable has happened. Radu has resurfaced... only now there appears to be FIVE incarnations of the fiendish vampire.

The review: Despite being low budget, there is something satisfying about Full Moon Pictures’ Subspecies series (see my reviews of films one, two, three and Four) – though the series did begin to seriously lag by the fourth offering. One of the reasons is that main villainous vampire Radu was such a brilliant character, warping from antagonist to almost (but not quite) an anti-hero. That said I was rather excited by the news that a fifth film might be in the offing and, until then, we have this graphic novel (and many thanks to reader NerdyWillowTree for mentioning its existence in a comment recently).

vampire detection

The story takes place at some unspecified time after film four and Michelle is still in Romania, working as a nurse and quenching her thirst for blood through the bloodstone – a mystical artefact that produces blood. Her world is turned upside down when Radu reappears (he was killed, again, at the end of film four) but – as the blurb reveals – there are five versions of him. We discover that there were five of the subspecies minions – homunculi that Radu created through his blood – abroad when he died. They, on his death, began to grow into clones of Radu, each with a different part of his personality and different powers. One of them feels guilt for what Michelle has been through and wants to help her.

The graphic returns to Radu’s castle and we see, again, the festival with a vampire detecting horse that we saw in the first film. We also get a line about a town in Alaska with no daytime for 30 days, in a nod to 30 Days of Night. The story, unfortunately, is thin – spread over three comic issues it doesn’t have the length to really get going. However it is fun to see Radu and Michelle again. It was produced by Full Moon and so is, apparently, canon – one wonders if it will be a bridging story to the new film? The art work worked well and suited the setting and story. It could have just done with being padded out but many thanks to Ian for the gift of the volume. 5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: the Man from the Diogenes Club

The Blurb: CAN'T ELIMINATE THE IMPOSSIBLE? Send for the man from the Diogenes Club!

The debonair psychic investigator Richard Jeperson is the Most Valued Member of the Diogenes Club, the least-known and most essential branch of British Intelligence. While foiling the plot of many a maniacal mastermind, he is chased by sentient snowmen and Nazi zombies, investigates an unearthly murderer stalking the sex shops of 1970s Soho, and battles a poltergeist to prevent it triggering nuclear Armageddon. But as a new century dawns, can he save the ailing Diogenes Club itself from a force more diabolical still?

Newman's ten mischievous tales, with cameos from the much-loved characters of the Anno Dracula universe, will entertain fans and newcomers alike.

The Mention: This 2017 volume collates the series of short stories that Kim Newman has written, over the years, about Richard Jeperson – the Most Valued Member of the Diogenes Club, or master spy of the esoteric realms to you and I. Being a collection of stories there isn’t an overarching story (bar Jeperson himself, and the club) though some characters do reoccur. Now, I must admit that I have a soft spot for Newman’s work and this, whilst starting in the 60s, is reminiscent of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in concept if not content. Jeperson is a sensitive, rather than super-powered (though there is a touch of the Austin Powers to him – something mentioned in a story set chronologically leter) and there isn’t the host of monsters that LXG can throw in. It does, however, contain one specific “monster” that interests us.

This book is not set in the Anno Dracula universe but it does feature Geneviève Dieudonné and whilst she does little that would reveal her as a vampire and the narrative doesn’t state it, she clearly is one; we do get little moments such as immunity to cold, immunity to mind reading, rapid healing and nearly being staked by an icicle. She only appears in the one story but Newman does suggest a multiverse of possible worlds and thus there will be another England where Anno Dracula occurs (indeed it is referenced at one point). In this book, however, we just have Geneviève offering a fleeting, though important, visitation. Thanks to Ian for buying me the volume.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Decades: Marvel in the 70s – Legion of Monsters

Author and artists: various

First published: 2019 (collection)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Celebrate 80 years of Marvel Comics, decade by decade - together with the groovy ghoulies of the Supernatural Seventies. It was an era of black-and-white magazines filled with macabre monsters, and unsettling new titles starring horror-themed 'heroes'. Now, thrill to Marvel's greatest horror icons: The melancholy muck-monster known as the Man-Thing - whosoever knows fear burns at his touch; Morbius, the Living Vampire; Jack Russell, cursed to be a Werewolf-by-Night; and the flame-skulled spirit of vengeance, the Ghost Rider. But what happens when they are forced together to become... the Legion of Monsters? Plus stories starring Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Manphibian, the vampire-hunter Blade... and never-before-reprinted tales of terror. Collecting: Legion of Monsters (1975) 1; Marvel Preview 8; Marvel Premiere 28; Marvel Spotlight (1971) 2, 5; Frankenstein (1973) 1; Tomb of Dracula (1972) 10; material from Savage Tales (1971) 1

The review: The decades series are a series of highlights from the Marvel back-catalogue from a specific decade – in this case the 70s and the horror comics produced then and, in truth, I’m a little divided over it.

On the one hand it is a nicely balanced collection with a range of characters (as listed in the blurb) and from this page’s point of view we get Dracula, Morbius and Blade featured. The book is half black and white and half colour and for Morbius we get an original black and white (that I had not read before) and a colour legion of monsters that also features Werewolf by Night, Man-Thing and Ghost Rider. Indeed I hadn’t read any of the stories featured before bar the two Dracula ones (the black and white being a chapter of Marvel’s graphic version of the novel, Dracula Lives!, and the colour being the opening of the Tomb of Dracula - a note here that page 50 and 51 are reversed accidentally, one for a future errata sheet). That said we were dipping in and out of things that were clearly suited to a larger story arc at times and that was slightly frustrating.

All that said, Marvel, monsters and a trip to the 70s. It perhaps has to be done – thanks to Sarah for the gift of the volume. 6.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Short Film: The Vegan Vampire

Fear not when this film suggests that the recovered 1928 film is 142 minutes in length – this 10-minute short (that seems to have the celluloid break at the end) is actually a 2010 creation directed by Suzi Terror and made for the Time Capsule competition from the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival (Imagine).

There is little in storyline, to be honest, but absolutely plenty in style but let us address the concept of the veganism suggested by the title. Vegetarian vampires are not an uncommon concept. Sometimes this is a restriction to vegetables – be that carrots for Bunnicula or vegies generally (due to a resurrection faux pas) for (one incarnation of) Duckula as examples – and sometimes it might be a disparaging description of a vampire forgoing human blood for animal blood… but vegan? Well bunnicula probably is, in this case we never find out because the film doesn’t go that far.

Mirte Eggenkamp as the vampire

Rather we have the vampire (Mirte Eggenkamp) rise from her deathlike slumber and go hunting. The first thing to notice is the filter heavy black and white photography looks brilliant. Along with the makeup the photography makes Mirte Eggenkamp look magnificent as the vampire and the short can be screenshot like crazy because it all looks so good. She climbs stairs and enters a student’s room, biting her. However, her body rejects the blood that is meant to give her life.

attack

The feeding scene was bloody (within the confines of black and white) and the subsequent vomiting of blood is incredibly visceral. The vampire becomes more and more hungry – she preys on a mother playing in an abandoned church and the same thing happens, her body rejecting the blood. Weak with hunger she begins to hallucinate and let me say that even the hallucinated rubber ducks worked visually. The orchestral score had worked thus far and becomes demented during the hallucination scene.

There isn’t really more to say with regards this one, except that I recommend you give it a watch and note that it is embedded below. The film’s facebook page is here, and the imdb page is here.

Queen Dracula – review

Director: Curtis Everitt

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

Oh lord… This flick recently appeared on Amazon Prime and, of course, I gave it a whirl. Aside from gender swapping the antagonist (and thus altering relationships with said antagonist) this really was a poor effort. Indeed, the gender swap is rather interesting, though not explored in a particularly meaningful way, and the original source of the vampirism was interesting also.

Beyond those points things are mired in awful dialogue, budgetary malaise and rather poor acting – all of which we’ll come to.

'daylight' bulb

So, the film starts in 1987, at night with not great night photography and a cheesy electro soundtrack, and we see a man enter a house and replace a bulb. He sits outside until a woman returns home. He says he is a fan, and a detective, and mentions missing kids. He asks if he can come in, comments on how dark it is once indoors and she switches the light on. Presumably the bulb replicates sunlight (though it is not a UV light) as she falls down in pain (and off-screen). Eventually she predicts that *she* is coming and he finishes her off by placing his hands on her (below camera line so we see nothing) – they’ve been dipped in holy water.

postcard from Transylvania

We get some moments with Miranda Harker (Susan Fowler), a bible quote and a cemetery – she’s dead (we get no real timescale for this – her husband acts like it is recent, her eldest daughter said it happened whilst she was at school and she is 30). We then get a caption telling us it is present day. The Harkers are sitting down for dinner, Jonathan (Danny Zanelotti) is dad and refuses to say grace as Miranda is dead, his daughters are Mina (Abigail G. Holmes) and Lucy (Emily Miller). Jonathan gets a postcard from D (Leslie Stewart), his ‘friend’ in Transylvania (a ghost town apparently, not the European principality). Not knowing who D is, he decides to go there and find out (good job he didn’t get an email from a Nigerian Prince).

Mina and Lucy

A guy turns up at the house and introduces himself as Jack Seward (Jonathan Dixon), looking for Mina who (he has heard) is the fairest girl in all the land (honestly the dialogue was that tritely written). Lucy has answered the door, however, and realises he has heard about the dowries set for the sisters and sends him off with a flea in his ear. Mina is later chatted up by Arthur and then picks up a message where he accidentally records himself suggesting she is gullible, not his type but there is the dowry (Miranda left them both a large dowry in her will, I’ll return to this).

thick fake blood

Meanwhile Jonathan gets to Transylvania and meets D – or Dracula – and her minions. She overcomes his will by removing his wedding ring (though his lack of alarm as she started to seduce him with her chin covered in blood was telling) and we get a bite scene where the fake blood is so thick a clump falls off his arm! He comes back and tells the girls he is getting married. Lucy goes nuts and attacks her, ending up being placed in Seward’s asylum for her trouble. Eventually, however, she is rescued and Mina has also met a bounty hunter, Van (Aaron Mitchell) – yes, that would be Helsing to you and I.

meeting D

So, aside from the terrible dialogue there was a strange undercurrent of casual misogyny that one wouldn’t expect in a gender-swapped concept and I can’t help but feel it unconsciously seeped in. For instance there is an inference in dialogue that Lucy is a lesbian until she suggests (when the right boy comes) that she acts that way to scare men off (in other words there is a reading, which can be made, that the right boy ‘cured’ her – indeed he is the one who ultimately rescues her from the asylum), and then there is the dowry business; mom bequeathed them to take care of the girls, ensuring they wouldn’t be alone (inferencing that a woman needs a man to be whole – there is also an inference in dialogue that matrimony is a purely heterosexual institution, although it isn’t directly stated – and that being sold to a man, essentially, is more important than providing independent financial security). Of course the men (Arthur and Jack) are acting like gold diggers, inverting that stereotype somewhat, but the way they are acting around the girls is equally reflected in D – she mentions Jonathan’s resources and Van suggests she’ll use him up as a sex slave (he also suggests there won’t be a marriage as it is “holy matrimony”, forgetting registry offices and the civil source of marriages).

Van and Mina

This takes us to how D became what she is. We see her as an older woman (Melanie Calvert Benton) because Mina and Van kill her minions, bar Jonathan, and there is inference that she has a symbiosis with her minions (eternally feeding from them), and it should be noted that they are of both genders (in terms of the reading above, evil is thus equated with bisexuality). When she tells her story, she becomes young (Meredith Mohler) and says that she was a captive (in the age of exploration) who wasn’t fed enough and used for sex. She took to exploiting her captives and sucked their blood to drain their life-energy – calling it a shared interest, indicating the symbiosis again – and then she started to change. It is the most interesting part of the film but the film struggles to explore the theme meaningfully.

red eyes

With the budget, bad photography, some ill-fitting soundtrack choices, atrocious dialogue (it isn’t even stagy, just poor) and poor acting this film is rubbish but… beyond not thinking itself through (ie the casual misogyny), it does have an interesting source for the vampirism and an interesting use of symbolism (Jonathan being susceptible to D’s power when his ring is removed might ignore the secular source of marriage and focus on the religious, but there is a reading that can be found of the overwhelming power of love over lust/exploitation). This pushes the score up for me but it isn’t enough to make the film good. I need to mention the large amount of backdrop green-screening that appeared to take place, this didn’t actually detract and might have been an interesting style choice had the film got more right. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Bloodsucker’s Planet – review

Director: Mark Beal

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

Mark Beal is the director behind beat-arthouse/grindhouse-noir flick Enchiridion, which was rereleased as Bloodsucker’s Handbook. Mark contacted me to ask whether I wanted to take a peek at his new film, Bloodsucker’s Planet, and I jumped at the chance.

The film is brave, there is no doubt about that, to make a space opera on such a low budget needs guts and whilst you can see the joins, well that has been incorporated as part of the joy of the movie rather than detracting. It is related to the previous film – though I won’t spoil how. However I will say that one of the first things that struck me, from seeing a spaceship in the film’s opening, and the crew's outfits, was that the film seemed to be offering a definite nod to Mario Bava and his film Planet of the Vampires.

zero-g card tricks

Before we see said ship, we get an emergency broadcast where Cooke (Cory W. Ahre) asks anyone who intercepts the signal to send it on to the Linus Corporation as there is something wrong on the planet Mara and suggests that “there is something in the mud”. Opening credits follow, with a really great credit soundtrack selection and then we are on the spaceship. Doc (Joel Jeremy Herrera) sketches whilst Danvers (Logan Hooks) does zero-g card tricks for Paulina (Adrienne Dobson). Flying the spaceship are Captain McDermott (Allen Menefee) and Clarissa (Leni Mex), she picks up the distress beacon (though they don't see the video message at that point).

Mara bat attack

They investigate, landing on the planet and McDermott, Doc and Paulina take a surface vehicle, with Danvers in a jetpack, leaving Clarissa to watch the rocket. Mara was a mud farming colony but the industry seems to have stopped. Danvers takes a trip into the atmosphere trying to lock into an energy signature when the vehicle is contacted by Mr Bartlett (Joe Grisaffi). The distress signal was an old one that he wasn’t aware of, the factory has been mothballed and he is the caretaker of the facility. He invites the crew in. Danvers descends and ends up having an alien creature attached to his helmet. It felt like an alien rendition of a bat – a good thing as it is later described as an indigenous Mara bat.

Jessica Bell as Adrianna

They are met by a person, stood outside a graveyard, not wearing protective gear. She is Adrianna (Jessica Bell), a robot. The crew go into decontamination and a Mara bat appears, having been stuck in Danver’s gear. It flies around the chamber until it is sucked out of the chamber. A hot meal is forthcoming but Danvers becomes ill – it is apparent he has picked up a parasite from the Mara bat – not to worry, the parasite has a short lifespan and is not deadly, though he will be in for a rough time. The crew are forced to stay (with the Captain promising Clarissa a doggy bag when they get back to the ship, when he radios in) – but there is another parasite close by, more deadly than those carried by the bats.

Catalina Querida as Mother Vampire

And I’ll leave the blow by blow there. Being a Beal film there are some psychedelic moments with a stop-motion alien ‘roach (Israel Koite) that would seem to be part of Danvers’ hallucinations until we discover it is the last of an indigenous species. There is also the vampire and this is an alien vampire – a species that was, at one-time, winged and reminiscent in part of a medusa, though with coils of hair not snakes, with an overtone of the primary Bride in Dracula (1992). Credited as Mother Vampire (Catalina Querida) she is able to turn those she bites into vampires like her.

let me in

The house interior itself looks pretty much like a house dressed up a bit – for instance with portholes added to the windows and a space scene beyond – rather than a space-age simulacrum, and my reason for picking up on that was to highlight the budget restraint and the fact that it didn’t actually detract from the viewing experience, there was plenty within the film to keep the viewer engaged. It is also mentioned as a segue to the scene of a vampirised Danvers, floating at the window, which carried a homage vibe of ’Salem’s Lot. The crew’s reaction to a crew-mate outside with no helmet might seem strange but was in keeping with the psychedelic, hallucinatory atmosphere.

Clarissa and McDermott

Indeed, the film carries that psychedelic overtone from Handbook and continues with it – though the sci-fi setting changes the tone of it slightly, having to work harder one feels to achieve the same. But it does achieve it, and thus the viewer feels smug when we pick up mention of a Master and the crew does not, rather than wondering why. The idea of toad licking is still part of the film, by the way. The film is short (around the 60-minute mark) and so doesn’t outstay its welcome. If you were a fan of Bloodsucker’s Handbook then you’ll love this too – though a space opera rather than a film noir – and fans of off-beat, low budget sci-fi will definitely have fun. Referential and engaging, 7 out of 10.

At the time of writing there is no IMDb page. The film's homepage is here.

Playing with Tropes: Pretty Dead

When I sat down to watch this, I wasn’t expecting to feature it on TMtV. I expected a riff on the zombie genre and, more specifically, the perspective of someone turning into a zombie. Its other name, the clumsy “Human Meat - Mörder. Kannibale. Zombie.” did nothing to make me think otherwise. It was a 2013 film directed by Benjamin Wilkins and despite our zombie being able to speak and function I wasn’t even tempted towards zompire as the condition was cognitively degenerative.

However, as the film started laying out its own internal logic I sat up, my metaphorical ears pricked. The point that focused my attention was the source of the infection – a fungal infection – that made me think of I am Legend. Now the source of the infection in that was bacterial, rather than fungal, but it just felt that the same trope was being explored.

ready to suicide

So, the film follows Regina (Carly Oates). We see her, as things start, recording a video for her father (Kris Thordarson) before she kills herself. Her complexion is not great and she plays with a gun as she outlines that she is a monster and that she is dead, she just needs help lying down. The screen goes black and an intertitle appears that tells us that, in 2007, Regina killed and cannibalised at least four men but never stood trial. The film is the remaining evidence.

interviewed by Romera

The film then cuts to her being interviewed in an asylum by Dr. Romera (Quantae Love). He tells her that he will have her facial wound (from her botched suicide attempt) looked at but is convinced she is schizophrenic, with a side order of cotard delusion, and lays out why that is. She states that she is infected and repeats that she is already dead. She suggests that she and her boyfriend Ryan (Ryan Shogren) had done tests and then we cut back to the events.

nose bleed

We see footage of her and Ryan together – she is a soon to graduate med student, he is a paramedic. We then see them out with friends and she is convinced (against Ryan’s advice and approval) to try coke (from a source that seems ropey later). She has a nose bleed and collapses in the toilet. Ryan – we find out later – performs CPR and brings her round before they go to hospital but when we first see this we actually just hear a voicemail he leaves his friend suggesting she had some sort of reaction but is stable.

bitten chest

So what then happens is, on a busy morning (with Ryan trying to propose), she can’t stand the food there for breakfast – it all tastes off. That is until she finds bacon in the fridge and eats it raw. He does propose but their subsequent make-out is cut short when she bites his chest. We hear that she had to excuse herself from rounds as she felt ill (and hungry) and smelt someone in a nearby bathroom stall remove their tampon. She explains that she can’t remember retrieving it from the trash but found herself sucking on it. After that she starts stealing human bio-waste to eat.

liposuction fat

She convinces Ryan they have to document this as she now heals quickly, can’t sleep and can only eat either human or pork flesh (and raw at that). We see her drinking liposuction fat. They find a parasitoid in her blood – in fact a variant of Cordyceps. Now that is the fungus that has the famous variant which hijacks the minds of ants to follow its own life-cycle (the film shows us a snippet of documentary on this). A parasite fulfilling its lifecycle and causing vampirism was used, as an example, in Scott Westerfeld’s Parasite Positive and, of course, it is the bacterium infection in I am Legend that causes the craving for blood and other vampiric effects (such as healing).

In this the fungi hijacks her, in the first instance, to drive hunger and to make her crave what the fungus needs (flesh). Why it drives that particular need and not just food for energy I don’t think was clearly explained (or indeed explained at all). What we also see is that at times she blanks and Romera suggests this is like blank moments in schizophrenia. We see her at one point walking a child off (to attack off-screen; the child survives, she blames a dog for the wounds) and at another point her actually attacking someone – so we know the fungus has some level of control. She fears that if she doesn’t feed the fungus will spore.

degenerating

It is an interesting idea and she does seem more zombie (especially given the blank moments – one victim actually comments that she is a zombie before she attacks) but the use of a parasite/infection is a trope used in vampire media. Other things to note is the impact on her complexion, giving her a zombie like look, which doesn’t fit to the quick healing necessarily. Why she doesn’t sleep is unexplained – it might be to weaken her resolve so that the parasitic takeover is more easily attained. There was an interesting thought that this might be a natural pest control limiting the host species if it becomes too widespread and impacts the ecosystem. She starts off with low heart rate and blood pressure but, eventually, there is no pulse and a nurse thinks her blood pressure machine is broken – hence Regina believing that she has actually died and it is the fungus that is keeping her moving.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Crazyhead – review

Directors: Al Mackay & Declan O'Dwyer

First aired: 2016

Contains spoilers

Crazyhead was a short-lived British TV series that ran for a short 6 episode run. I didn’t pick up on it when it aired but it has recently dropped to Netflix and it was an impromptu watch.

Filmed in Bristol the show follows Amy (Cara Theobold), a young woman who had been medicated due to hallucinations. She has finished treatment and is taken of her meds but immediately "hallucinates" again, seeing a man’s head change – looking rotted and as though it is burning from the inside. Soon, however she meets Raquel (Susan Wokoma), a demon hunter who tells her that she is a seer – one of the few who can see when a person is possessed by a demon (we later discover that Raquel is not a seer but even rarer, she is half-demon born of the almost impossible circumstance of a mortal woman being impregnated by a possessed man).

Amy and Raquel

The first episode begins with a scene set after that meeting, with Amy and Raquel manhandling a bound and gagged woman, Suzanne (Riann Steele), from the boot of a car. We then follow the run up to that event with Suzanne becoming accidentally possessed when she knocks over a demon chasing Amy, with her car, killing the host and the demon possessing her. The two are taking the captured and possessed Suzanne to try and exorcise her. They succeed in this but, whilst the demon is driven out, Suzanne dies.

feeding

They bury Suzanne out in the woods but soon she is back, covered in mud from the shallow grave and with an overwhelming desire for blood. Raquel does further research and discovers that the exorcism failed because of her presence (as a half-demon), which then drew back Suzanne’s soul into her dead body and she now craves blood to replenish her lost lifeforce. They name her as a revenant rather than vampire and the lore is fairly simple, a need to feed, impervious to a lot of damage (as she is already dead) and that is about it.

captive and starved

It isn’t long before leader of the demons, and psychiatrist, Callum (Tony Curran, Eat Locals, Blade 2, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen & Underworld Evolution) is trying to use Suzanne to get at Amy and Raquel. The series was actually rather good fun. There is a tendency with some British series to develop, what I would call, a BBC-syndrome – dumbing down narrative and character dialogue, whilst simultaneously adding a childish humour to a show. This had humour (driven often through Amy and Raquel’s dialogues but ably supported by other cast members, not least Curran as Callum), which was in part sexually based, in part absurdist but never to the point where it felt like it derided from the show but rather complimented the dark fantasy setting. Worth catching as a short watch. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Die Jägerin

Posted onto YouTube in 2014 this is a fan film created by Kurt Kliebisch and Kevin Schmidt and was brought to my attention by Alex Malkavian on the Facebook Group Vampire Fans. I’m looking at this as a short film but rolling in at an hour it is almost a feature in its own right. It does something wrong but plenty right as well. Filmed in German (and set in Germany) the filmmakers added a version onto YouTube with English subs to get a wider audience (I understand).

As I just said the film is set in Germany but is part of the Buffyverse. Sensibly they avoid adding characters from the series and use original characters with the film set 10 years after the conclusion of the series. Of course, in that we saw a spell that turned all the potential slayers into actual slayers and that is still the case in this.

shadow puppets

We start with a slayer, Nora, looking beat up and moving through the night streets. She rests and is grabbed, chloroformed and taken – her stake dropping to the ground. We get the history of the first slayer in a shadow puppet type animation and briefly meet watcher Gabriel and the members of the Watcher council he works to. Then we see a car drive along, and in it are three slayers – Leni, Robin and Lilli – with David, Leni’s boyfriend it seems. They are going to meet Gabriel and his slayer Miriam. Robin is sceptical but Leni thinks there’ll be strength in numbers (we later hear that the watcher’s council is stretched so thin that many slayers are without watchers).

dusting

When they meet them they are with Elias, Miriam’s brother and sufferer of visions. They are soon at work with Miriam taking Leni on patrol to show her the area. They are knocked by a running vampire, who turns around and attacks. He is quickly dusted and I have to say the dusting effects were really well done for a low budget fan film. They follow a group of vampires and report back – Gabriel has long suspected a vampire club that the slayers will raid but slayers are being kidnapped and there is an evil influence that is closer to home than anyone would like…

ready for action

If the dusting effects were good then the interactions between the characters and the building of said characters were done well also. However I do have to mention – before you watch the fan flick – that the combat was atrocious, looking ineffectual, ill-choreographed and amateurish. Now the interesting storyline does work to overcome that but you have been forewarned. All in all these guys did much with very little and the story made a sense to the series (though might be out with the canon comics, I understand). At the time of writing I couldn’t find an IMDb page.