Michael – (K)ein Harter Vampirfilm – review

Director: José Hidalgo

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers


I have previously looked at short film Fang, which serves as a prequel to this film and was an extra on the DVD. The DVD was a gift from Matt who runs Vampire Film Reviews, who receives my gratitude for enabling me to see these films. If you wish to read Matt’s take on Michael it can be found here.

The title translates to Michael – (not) a Hard Vampire Film and the reason will become all too clear, but before we get to that we have a prologue piece.

Klaus Thiel-Klenner as Engelbert

We see a priest, Engelbert (Klaus Thiel-Klenner), running through a graveyard and heading to a church. He gets there and we notice that he has an ornate dagger in hand. He nips through to a stairwell and is met with Sina (Jerina Beqiri), a vampire Queen. He declares that it will end that day and brandishes a net bag of garlic bulbs. She plucks them from his hand disinterestedly and climbs the stairs to the attic.

Jerina Beqiri as Sina

Up there he faces her again and wields his dagger, which she causes him to lose with a wave of the hand, he then brandishes a cross and she causes it to crumble in his grip. He considers holy water, but he has none, and asks her if silver will work on her but dismisses the notion himself as he rationalises that it is for werewolves. She is ready to finish him off and he asks her age; she doesn’t say but suggests she is in 4 figures. Her great age must be why she has lost all sense of time, he submits, before kicking open a hatch and catching her in sunlight. We see flames at the corner of the screen indicating that she is killed by the sun but the death remains off-screen (clearly for budget reasons).

at the doctors'

Michael (Jörn Guido) wakes in a woman’s flat and leaves, we will discover, somewhat embarrassed. He travels across town to visit his half-brother, Mumu (José Hidalgo), but calls him before knocking on the door. He tells Mumu he needs his help and no, it isn’t help with his Prince Albert. When Mumu lets him in, he admits that he is suffering from erectile dysfunction (and now the title should make sense). Mumu’s girlfriend, Lola (Simone Kaufmann), thinks this hilarious and Michael is able to say exactly how long for, to the minute (with an hour error due to daylight savings). It has been weeks and they take him to see a doctor.

vampire hunters

Long story short, they discover that he is lacking blood and his vital signs indicate that he is, well quite frankly, dead. He has been bitten by a vampire (down below, it turns out) and, as a result, doesn't have the correct quantity of blood to enable erections. They work out he was bitten on the full moon and, so, they have to find the vampire who bit him and kill her before the next full moon or he will turn. They also discover that he has already lost his reflection. When they work out the film’s internal lore they discover they need a priest to give the vampire absolution and hence Englebert being involved (who is a drunk, horny priest and Michael’s dad, it turns out).

dream of the vampire girl

What follows is an endless parade of smutty one-liners and innuendo – it is like we went back in time and Benny Hill made a vampire movie. However time has moved on and the endless cock gags just aren’t funny. There is some degree of reversal on the guys (at one point, for instance, Michael’s crew of man-sluts interview women in a club to discover if they have pubic hair and therefore might be the one Michael is looking for, which leads to *some* sassy comebacks) but all in all the film just revels in Michael’s misogyny and even feels it has to explain some of the jokes (the professor (Georg Gröling-Müller) and his breakfast springs to mind).

inept staking sequence

Moments make no sense – like a run through a (vampire) club to come out inside Englebert’s church but there are also some fourth wall breaks that were an interesting choice. Jörn Guido does his damnedest to make his character personable, and might have succeeded had the character not been written so sleazily. Simone Kaufmann offers the most personable character though it is a shame that her solo action moment was against another woman – I’d have liked to see her kick a man’s butt. The film does offer us the ineptest staking I think I have witnessed but even that becomes a problem. When the vampire does not die one assumes it is because the stake is too low, but apparently the heart was that low and it just needed pushing further in.

Simone Kaufmann as Lola

When it comes to budget films, especially, there is always a part of me that feels for the filmmaker when they have made the effort to make a film, as José Hidalgo has here, and it doesn’t come off. There is always the thought that, at the very least, they tried. Unfortunately the trying here was absolutely in the wrong direction and one long cock gag wore very thin, very quickly. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Fang

Fang is a 15-minute long short film directed by José Hidalgo and released in 2012. It is an extra on the DVD of the film Michael – (K)ein harter Vampirfilm and serves as a prequel to the film. The DVD was a gift from Matt who runs Vampire Film Reviews, who receives my gratitude for enabling me to see these films. If you wish to read Matt’s take on Fang it can be found here.

Michael (Jörn Guido) is a bit of a… well he would say player but I’d say a misogynist dick who seems to have managed to pick up two young ladies. We get some preamble with him on the phone, and likewise his friend and mutual misogynist lothario Billy Boy (Joachim Foerster), as they make excuses to other women about their behaviour. Having met Michael with the two girls, Billy is desperate to pick up a new conquest and sees a woman (Amanda Da Gloria) walking down the street.

Amanda Da Gloria as the woman

He comes on to her in the most slimy of ways, not taking her refusals for an answer, until eventually she seems to give in and invites him back to her apartment. She leaves him in the living room as she vanishes off for a moment and returns with glasses of wine, which he downs quickly as she sits alluringly on the sofa. Then he is on the sofa and she twists around straddling him…

attack

And at that point I would leave the descriptive walkthrough, but the saving grace of this comes in the twist. Billy Boy awakens on the sofa and calls out to her, but gets no response. He retrieves his underwear and goes looking for her, finding her in another room, sat atop another man, fangs out, attacking him. Billy Boy moves to intercept her but passes through her. Yes, he’s a ghost and when he moves back to the living room he finally sees his own corpse on the floor by the blood spattered sofa.

seeing his own corpse

It was this ending that made the short for me because, up to that point, I really had struggled with it. Not the low budget nature, not the amateur cinematography but the out and out misogyny. The two characters Michael and Billy Boy were simply horrible and, as for Michael, well the coda to the short is Michael meeting the same woman and trying the patter that got Billy Boy killed.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: My Boring Zombie Apocalypse

My Boring Zombie Apocalypse is a short film, coming in at around the 40-minute mark, released in 2015 and directed by Kevin Perkins. It is a comedy clip show set around David (Charlie Dreizen) who is constantly being asked to take the trash out through the film.

David was always ready for the end of the world, convinced that he, and only he (well him and a bevy of beautiful women to repopulate the earth with), would survive. As he explains the actual end of the world, it becomes clear that the apocalypse he got was not the one he hoped for and it consisted of slow moving zombies. David concedes that there were many casualties at first (often from those who hadn’t seen a zombie film but also from those who didn’t believe it real or thought it Halloween). But soon life returned to normal...

a fleeting visitation

So, vampires? When musing over what a "proper" apocalypse might have looked like, we get mention of a few possibilities, including a vampire apocalypse. For a few seconds we get a vampire appearing on screen and that’s it… very much a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud

Leila contacted me and asked if I had seen this flick, suggesting it “Plays with some vamp tropes” but was essentially a zombie flick. The film was directed by David Irving and released in 1989 and, at first glance, has little to do with the original film. In that the C.H.U.D.s were Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers and the film was pretty much a creature feature.

In this the creatures do not appear However it becomes apparent that the US military (personified in this by Colonel Masters (Robert Vaughn, Transylvania Twist)) have used an enzyme from the original creatures to try and make a super soldier serum. Unfortunately, it has had side-effects, the enzyme kills the individual and then restarts them as the walking dead and then gives them an uncontrollable need for meat.

Robert Vaughn as Masters

The military have one experimental C.H.U.D., Bud (Gerrit Graham, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion), left. He tries to escape but is caught and frozen. Masters decides that he will keep Bud on ice and then use electricity to revive him at some point in the future. What could go wrong?

Kevin and Steve

We then meet classmates Kevin (Bill Calvert), the smart one, Steve (Brian Robbins) the rebellious prankster and Katie (Tricia Leigh Fisher) their female friend. Steve gets a detention for him and Kevin and they have to sort out the biology lab’s store. Unfortunately they come across a cadaver on a trolley (that is due to be brought into their class) and accidentally send the trolley rolling off, out of the school and down the highway. So, to cover their own backs, they go to a hospital (and centre for disease control) and steal a new corpse – the frozen Bud.

Bud awakens

They get the corpse back to Steve’s and eventually it ends up in the bathroom – indeed in the bath – and, after an accident with a hairdryer, is revived. Steve thinks that this a sure-in A for biology (assuming that the electricity and chemicals in the bubble bath have revived Bud) but soon Bud is out and doing what revived corpses always do, chowing down on meat (at first a dog and then other humans). In this a bite introduces the C.H.U.D. enzyme into the one bitten, which then kills and reanimates them in turn. So far, so zombie – so why ‘Vamp or Not?’

a frozen C.H.U.D.

Well… the C.H.U.D.s all develop sharp teeth and fangs for a start off, and this then goes along with their desire for meat – a desire that seems to be more for spreading the condition than actual feeding but, nevertheless, they do often call out for meat… Indeed they do speak from time to time and Bud changes attire and looks to get a haircut. They have memory and Bud falls for (a photograph of) Katie – in fact he physically offers her his heart during the finale, ripping it out of his own chest. The C.H.U.D.s have evolved also, when they are frozen they are able to raise their body temperature and unfreeze themselves.

Katie lures the C.H.U.D.

These things are hard to kill. They survive a rocket attack on a building (with the army mistakenly believing it will have dealt with them) and when one loses its head, the body continues to walk around and the head is reattached later. In the end the way to kill them turns out to be to freeze them and, whilst they are defrosting themselves, introduce electricity (strange as that was essentially how Bud was revived). We also see that they can drive and make decisions.

crashing the school dance

As a film it feels in the same realm of Return of the Living Dead, but I don’t think it matches the earlier film’s brilliance, or maintains the comedy as well. As for what sort of film it is, well it all starts feeling rather zompire – they are undead, they are driven to bite (at the very least) living humans, they retain personality/intelligence and they develop sharp teeth/fangs. There is certainly a genre interest and a use of some tropes, as Leila mentioned but, overall, I am going to stick to the zompire line. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The House that Dripped Blood – Blu-Ray – review

I have reviewed the content of the portmanteau film The House that Dripped Blood previously, this is a review of the Blu-Ray release from Second Sight Films. Before I look at that, however, a note about the vampire segment.

I re-read my original review before writing this and, in light of watching the film again, have to admit that I think I was a tad harsh. I based my previous score around the fact that the comedy of the segment stood out garishly against the more sombre tones of the rest of the film. However, when the comedy doesn’t sneak up on you – in other words when you expect it – the segment starring Ingrid Pitt and Jon Pertwee is rather good fun. I’m not going to amend the score of the original review but should you wish to watch the film, warned in advance that the segment is played for comedy effect, I think you might find it more fun than the score admits to.

Carla about to fly

That aside, this is a new Blu-Ray edition, which is the budget edition following an earlier special edition Blu-ray that had a hard slipcase and substantial booklet. This eschews the booklet and comes in a standard size plastic box. The cover is that from the aforementioned slipcase with fabulous artwork by Graham Humphreys, but is also reversible to show the original film artwork – though, to be honest, I can’t see why you’d want to reverse it.

Ingrid Pitt as Carla

The transfer is lovely and crisp, the colours perhaps muted but that was the style of the original print. The soundtrack is mono but is clear and well balanced and there are English subtitles for the hearing impaired. There are two audio commentaries, one with author Jonathan Rigby and the film’s director Peter Duffel and the other with film historian Troy Howarth. There are theatrical trailers, radio spots and a stills gallery.

fangs on display

There are also two short featurettes; one is a documentary entitled “A Rated Horror”, a vintage film with interviews with Duffel and some of the film actors and the other an interview with Mike Higgins who was the film’s second assistant director. Of the two I found the short documentary the most fun but the interview does contain some nice anecdotes also.

out of the casket

All in all, this is a good set – aimed at being more accessible than the higher priced limited release. Of course, the set misses the booklet, which is a shame, but for fans of the film, or aficionados of classic British horror, this is an excellent release on region B. 7.5 out of 10 for the set.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Space Vampire

Director: Chris Alexander

Release date: Unreleased

Contains spoilers


Writing this is quite an honour but also rather strange. This film by Chris Alexander is unreleased at the time of writing (December 2019), indeed in correspondence Chris told me that, “No one has seen it.” This is clearly why it is an honour to look at it and many thanks to Chris for the opportunity. But it is strange as it is not a film that should be reviewed, at least not in a marking it out of 10 way. Again in Chris’ words “it's not REALLY a "movie", more just a waking dream.”

blood at mouth

As such this is almost like a piece of Über-Alexander, taking perhaps his most experimental films, Female Werewolf for example, to its most pronounced. It is a full-on experimental piece with overtures of vampirism and, for some reason, it also reminded me in places of Under the Skin - though this had less (to no) narrative but there was just a feel, a spark, that felt familiar.

coalesce into the vampire

The film has an, at times, jarring soundtrack that has a sci-fi theme with an almost techno to industrial heart and, on opening, that theme dominates as we see a pattern of pink on blue shapes that become dominant pink and coalesce into the face of the vampire (Ali Chappell, Necropolis: Legion) we then get a brightness, which becomes the sun across a snowy country landscape, with her walking towards us – the sheer black catsuit and boots contrasting against the snow.

blood in shower

As Chris described his own work, it then becomes a waking dream. We see her approach a house, and a victim (Cheryl Singleton, Queen of Blood, Blood Dynasty and Female Werewolf) therein. There are moments of blood, splattered across the vampire’s face or covering it when she showers, washing it away. There is no real linear aspect; the film touching on events that could be past or even to come. The camera often swoops around her, but occasionally takes her point of view or holds her static in portrait.

swooping camera

This is where the film would be difficult to score. This is the director playing within his style, exploring the boundaries having eschewed the restrictions of a communicated narrative. I understand that the film is to be projected in a gallery installation at a future date. However the director has confirmed that there is no intention to release it in its own right (though it might yet be an extra on another Alexander release). For now, however, you’ll just have to take my brief explanation of a cinematic meditation with a vampire theme.

The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: Female Werewolf

I must admit that despite a soft spot for the films of budget arthouse auteur Chris Alexander, I’d let this 2015 flick gather dust – possibly because of the word werewolf in the title. This is a shame because it was released prior to the third of his Irina films, Blood Dynasty, and in many respects shows us the experimental bridge between the later films of the series.

Like the Irina films it is most definitely experimental, a psychosexual drama that explores a psychosis embodied in a female character but, in this case, the central character – billed as She and played by Carrie Gemmell, who was also in Alexander’s Blood for Irina and Queen of Blood – is named as a werewolf rather than a vampire.

fangs

I say that but the imagery and tropes through most of the film is more reminiscent of a vampire film and we must remember the words of Bram Stoker, “The Wehr-Wolf is but a variant of the Vampire.” (Lady of the Shroud). When we meet the mostly silent She (the first words of dialogue do not occur until just before the half way point) we are aware of her own sexual urging and frustrations. In a motel (by the establishing shot, though the layout is more like an apartment) she dreams of an encounter, we do see fangs within that sequence, but she wakes alone.

feeling eyetooth

When she wakes, her trip to the bathroom tells us that she feels that she is changing, feeling at an eye-tooth which is no sharper than anyone else’s. This is perhaps where we get one of the unexplained doubts – is she changing? Is it all in her head? Is she psychotic? One thing we can say is the thought of the change is something that she finds erotic, cupping her own breast immediately afterwards and, to me, the werewolf myth is less likely to have a noticeable change like a sharper tooth (outside of the transformation) and feels more like a vampire trope. The referenced eroticism is also closely connected to the vampire genre.

Carrie Gemmell as She

That said the film also connects her to the moon (originally a vampire trope – in the early literature – the werewolf connection is, of course, well established) through both the physical satellite and in her menstruation whilst in the shower. Again, the blood swirling at the plughole is a staple of many a horror subgenre. I have to mention the shower sequence as being noticeably modest, deliberately so – Alexander might be exploring a psychosexual drama but there is nothing sexploitative within it. Other thoughts that might occur to the viewer is a connection between the beast and fertility but also the popular connection between the full moon and psychosis.

Cheryl Singleton as the office worker

If this is a psychosexual exploration the erotic aspect seems perhaps cold at times, sterile even. If we take the object of desire, an office worker (Cheryl Singleton, also Queen of Blood & Blood Dynasty), they look at each other without words but the stares are almost dead and the stalked woman expressionless – as though mesmerised (again probably something more associated with vampires than werewolves). Eventually she comes, willingly if trance-like, to She’s rooms and is set upon (a comment about the TV not working one of the few dialogue lines).

seems vampiric

As She attacks, we see fangs and, watching this scene out of context and without the film title, one would immediately associate the scene with vampires. There is some clawing at the torso but this would not be out with a vampire film either. What we do not see at this point is any form of hairiness, as one would expect from a werewolf. Perhaps werewolf might be used more in the form of a killer (the moniker of werewolf and vampire have been attached to serial killers)?

transformation

There is a transformation at the end of the film and, given the budget, it is remarkably done. Using exposure, filters and (I would guess) superimposed imagery we see the wolf emerge and then it becomes clear that the head is emerging from her open mouth (reminiscent of A Company of Wolves). Yet even then we are left to wonder whether the transformation is in her head, allegorical or real. The connectivity to nature, perhaps fertility, remains but her love is for the dead.

with Irina

I have indicated that one may read the text of Female Werewolf in a variety of ways; fantasy, allegory, supernatural, psychotic. However, there is a tell in film that I missed until pointed out to me and after I had written the main body of this article. When we meet She, we become aware of her fantasies as we see, within the heavily filtered sequence, another woman. Credited as dream woman, she is played by Shauna Henry – star of the Irina cycle. In a correspondence with Chris Alexander he revealed to me that the dream woman is, in fact, Irina and she infects She – making that werewolf/vampire connection stronger, making this a vampire film (in fact, though I will stick to the ‘Use of Tropes’ exploration), and making this not only a bridging film within the Irina cycle in a stylistic sense but making it a film directly connected to the cycle.

aftermath

Like the core Irina cycle, this is not going to be the easiest of watches for viewers. For the casual viewer it will seem, vague, without narrative. For the gore-hound it will barely satisfy. For the person looking for sexploitation and titillation it will miss the mark. However, for the Chris Alexander fan it will speak volumes, it has depths to explore and consider and it marks a moment stylistically in the Irina volumes where they moved to their most experimental.

The imdb page is here.

on Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Necropolis: Legion – review

Director: Chris Alexander

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers


On the surface this film, a new release from Full Moon Features, might not seem like a vampire film – indeed I considered doing a “Playing with Tropes” for it. However, it is a reimagining of the 1986 flick Necropolis, which I class as a vampire film – albeit a vampiric witch. Like the original there is some (brief, in this) evidence of energy vampirism. Plus, the blurb on IMDb describes antagonist Eva (Ali Chappell) as a “satanic vampire sorceress”.

bearing a cross

The film is also directed by Chris Alexander, whose arthouse vampire films are: Blood for Irina, Queen of Blood and Blood Dynasty. I have a soft spot for these films and Alexander’s use of symbolism and inference. I have to say there is a tension I detected in this between Alexander’s love of arthouse and Euro-horror and the need to create a cohesive narrative for a Full Moon Feature schlock-horror.

ripped out heart

Starting in the past we meet Maynard Gandy (Joseph Lopez) holding a portrait of Eva, his wife. A farm hand (Adam Buller) comes in to tell him that the barn is secure and he will make his way home. He then decides to tell Gandy about Eva, suggesting that he has seen her go in the chapel and this is not the first time. He leaves and then Gandy seems to enter a vision and the farm hand returns holding out his ripped-out heart.

Joseph Lopez as Maynard Gandy

In the chapel Eva stands above a sacrificial victim (Goldie Rocket), and flanked by two neophytes referred to as gatekeepers (Zoe Georgaras & Stephanie Delorme). Her somewhat risqué outfit reveals that her breasts have mouths, with sharp teeth, rather than nipples. This is reminiscent of Eva in the original film, who has six electoplasm-producing breasts, and (much) later this Eva’s breasts will gush milk for her neophytes. She intones about “she who must live”. She cuts the hand of the victim, licks up the blood and then holds her to a breast – the mouth seeming to suck energy from her before it gnashes the flesh for the blood – yes, it’s a rare sighting of a vampiric breast.

eyes turn white

Gandy comes in and tries to ward her by holding out a cross. She comes forward and he starts to recite (what I assume was) an exorcism. Her eyes turn white and he stabs her in the heart… Modern day and Lisa (Augie Duke) comes around from what may have been a dream. She is in a bookstore about to do a signing of her book “Beyond Darkness” but her real reason for being in the town is to research Eva. She is approached by Zia (Lynn Lowry, Mostly Dead, My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?! & Rabid), who cuts the line, to warn her of uncovering Eva’s story – even mentioning her name gives her power. Lisa, of course, doesn’t listen.

Augie Duke as Lisa

Indeed, she is staying at Gandy’s farmhouse – and we get a cut foot dripping through the floorboards and causing a beating heart to reform (rebirth through spilt blood, of course, is heavily a genre trope) as well as possession. However, I don’t want to go any further as, with a short 61-minute run-time, we are quite a way into the film. Knowing the director’s work, it was clear this was a Chris Alexander vehicle, relying on his lead actress (with precious little dialogue) to project the narrative through actions, expressing her descent physically. However, there is more dialogue in this than in his previous work. It does suffer from not expanding on the story more conventionally – we don’t see any backstory to Eva becoming what she is (was she possessed, seduced, always demonic and married to Gandy for reasons known only to her dark heart?) EDIT: Chris Alexander has contacted me to say that the Eva backstory is given in a one-shot comic.

reforming heart

That said the effects are interesting – perhaps some of the fast cut moments, designed to be nightmarish, are much as one would expect relying on the disorientating impact of the editing as much as anything, but the heart reforming (for instance) looked great (perhaps a tad too much blood for a small cut in the foot, but who cares, it looked fab). The greater use of effects – and, of course, who can resist the idea of vampiric breasts, Ken Russell couldn’t – give this a fuller feel than perhaps his Irina films.

Lynn Lowry as Zia

This has clear elements that are related to the original film but it is definitely a reimagining rather than a remake. I can’t help but think that some viewers, searching for schlock, might be put off with the more Alexander-esque elements – but conversely it was actually those elements that did it for me. That said I stand by the idea that it needed a more expressly broadcasted narrative (and it had plenty of potential running time it could have used to do so). 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK (Full Moon Channel)

Themed Week

I have previously looked at the three films by auteur director Chris Alexander in his Irina trilogy; Blood for Irina, Queen of Blood and Blood Dynasty. His films have been likened to Jean Rollin and Jess Franco – certainly I have seen aspects of both in the films, but they are not for everyone and are absolutely aimed at arthouse.

Marmite as they are, there is something in Alexander’s work, something that keeps me going back to them, and in many respects constantly harking back to the two directors mentioned above is understandable but perhaps unfair as mostly they are Chris Alexander films. As a director he has his own thematic direction, his own mediation and vision.

Next week on TMtV I am having a week looking at three other pieces by Alexander, starting tomorrow with a new film created for Full Moon Features and ending with an exclusive for TMtV.

V-Wars: Season 1 – review

Director: Various

First Aired: 2019

Contains spoilers

This is a hard one to review. Overall I enjoyed watching it, and did so as a fan of the novels, but the movement away from some of the premises built in the book proved a weakness for the series overall – I get that often the filmed media has to take liberties with the source material but it was a difficulty on several grounds.

The first difference was slight, that the infection reactivating junk DNA was a prion rather than a virus. Once infected then someone with a certain ‘predator gene’ would start to transform into a vampire. The show concentrates on the initial outbreak, rather than pitching through different moments in time as the books do – this was a change that I understood.

arctic suicide

The series begins with a suicide in an arctic research centre. Doctor Luther Swann (Ian Somerhalder, the Vampire Diaries) is sent to find out why contact has been lost and takes his best friend Michael Fayne (Adrian Holmes). They both become ill but Fayne has the predator gene, Swann does not. This was an unfortunate series of changes – Fayne is patient zero in the books but is an actor who becomes infected on a shoot in Alaska. Swann is a folklorist and this makes him valuable to the Government in understanding the threat they face – making him a whizz scientist made the occasions he went out with the troops seem implausible.

Wurdulak bites

The issue (and the biggest change book to screen) with not having him a folklorist is that the vampires are for the most part rather generic; they have improved senses – seeing the blood rush under the skin, for instance – and a maw of fangs. There is an absolute lack of variance, however. We do meet a pair of wurdulaks – Danika (Kimberly-Sue Murray) was a casual lover of Fayne and gets infected that way. She infects her sister Mila (Laura Vandervoort, Dresden Files: Bad Blood, Mom’s Gat a date with a Vampire & Rabid). The wurdulak’s are shown having more traditional fangs and described as injecting a narcotic venom in their victims to keep them alive and pliant (rather than murdering their prey).

Laura Vandervoort as Mila

Whilst it was nice to have a general difference they are described in show (and in the books) as only preying on loved ones – having to forge an emotional bond with their victim before they can feed. We get that and yet Mila is able to eschew feeding for drinking blood bank acquired blood. Admittedly she looks like she is not enjoying it but a wurdulak should starve is they have no loved one to feed from and that was not covered at all. We get a sense that Mila is going out killing other bloods (as the vampires call themselves) but that thread was not taken far enough – but her hatred for her sister was a series highlight.

Adrian Holmes as Fayne

Other than that – as mentioned, the bloods are generic and that was the biggest miss – the programme makers could have had a different vampire per episode and that would have made this much more interesting. Instead we get a conspiracy by the DNS, rapidly constructed internment camps (that did nothing to quarantine people, indeed where was the CDC quarantine) and a villain in the form of Calix Niklos (Peter Outerbridge, Forever Knight) who is less sinister than he might have been. Indeed, the full Government conspiracy seemed somewhat contrived.

Ian Somerhalder as Swann

Not as contrived as the constant Deus ex Machina that leads to Swann miraculously escaping danger very often. Swann has been forced to kill his second wife (Jessica Harmon) and so his son, Des (Kyle Breitkopf, Being Human), is his primary focus – it is a shame therefore that Des is played through as a story cipher often, unfair on the actors who might have built a lot more of their relationship if the script had allowed for it. The last scene we see Swann in is, unfortunately, blooming ridiculous looking.

a vampire

However, if you put all the issues listed above aside, I found myself enjoying this little slice of nonsense. The disappointing part is that it could have been so much more. I hope, if they get a second season, they start exploring the vampire types in much more depth. I also hope that they forget where they took Swann in that coda because it isn’t conducive to an interesting, flawed but rounded character. Because I enjoyed it, 6 out of 10 reflects enjoyment versus the issues listed – not a bad score but given how highly I rate the books, a pity.

The imdb page is here.