Dark Descent - review

Author: Jerry Knaak

First Published: 2018

The Blurb: A New Beginning.

Elizabeth Rubis, ex-San Francisco public relations professional turned impulse-control-challenged vampire, may have escaped her rocky prison in an abandoned coal mine, but trouble keeps following her bloody trail. The unapologetic Elizabeth better get her act together and fast.

A New Ally, A New Enemy.

Finding a surprising ally in San Francisco police detective Jonas Dietrich, even as she continues stumbling through her transformation, is comforting but a new enemy has emerged - an actual church-trained vampire hunter.

A True Demon.

As Elizabeth discovers new supernatural powers along the way, she continues to evolve into a true demon of the night.

The review: Is hosted at Vamped.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Morbid Stories – review

Directors: Various

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

A portmanteau film, the wraparound follows Candy (Courtney Akbar), estranged after splitting from her partner and feeling a little creeped out in her house.

As she feeds the dogs and speaks to her mother on the phone strange things start to happen (such as the gas cutting out for the stove) and her cell-service dying. When she gets in her car the radio suggests there has been an attack on the States and, as she drives to try and find out what has happened, the reports become more and more outlandish – eventually mentioning attacks by vampires and zombies. The stories take place in the preceding 24 hours and two of them are vampire stories.

Tim O'Hearn the long haired stranger

The first story is one of these and starts with a man (Tyree Cobbins) stumbling down the road, his hand to his bleeding neck. A car, which has an inverted cross hanging from the rear-view mirror, seems to bear down on him. Elsewhere Jamie (Shane Smith) and Helen (Crystal Loverro) are woken by a knocking at the door. Eventually he goes to answer it – with a baseball bat in hand, just in case. Helen watches through a security monitor with orders to ring the police at the first sign of trouble.

too late

At the door a long-haired man ( Tim O'Hearn, Dry Bones) asks whether he can come in and use the phone. One of his companions holds the injured man and he weaves a tale about having crashed and having no-cell reception. He is insistent about being invited in but Helen notices something strange… they do not appear to be in the security camera’s feed. She tells Jamie to close the door but too late…

Helen fights back

The injured man sprouts fangs and attacks Jamie. Helen has to face four vampires on her own… To be honest, I was a little non-plussed by this entry, not so much in the actions of the vampires (that could have made a serviceable short, albeit with a simplistic narrative). It was actually the dialogue the vampires used that seemed to indicate a wider plot but led nowhere and left the short feeling unsatisfactory. That said I rather liked the lead vampire offering a free (and pointless) shot with a stake – an attack that failed because of the assumption that he had a heart.

meat

The other short is the final story and that was probably the best of the film. It begins with Morgan (Krystal Pixie Adams, Joe Vampire) with a plate of meat, but the meet does little good. She goes to the kitchen and gets a needle (with what looks like a syringe of blood) and injects herself. She gets a message from Jake (Eight The Chosen One), who is coming round and, as the injection does not seemed to have helped, she desperately goes out looking for…

the zombie

It won’t be surprising if I tell you it is for someone to snack on. She sees a guy on his phone but he is soon in his car and driving off and so she attacks a guy shuffling along. She bites his neck, from behind, but he grabs her arm, pulls it to his mouth and bites. As he turns, we see the injury to his face. Of course, he is a zombie. She runs home and the bite on her arm is already black and weeping and, just after she changes jumper, Jake has arrived.

zompire

The dialogue tells us that she has avoided him for two weeks and, given that he also brings her a favourite sandwich on garlic bread, the implication is that she is fairly newly turned and has been avoiding him because of it. However the zombie infection spreads quickly through her, causing her flesh to rot and her behaviour to become feral… she becomes a zompire and he is in the house with her…

portmanteau vampire

Just to mention that the wraparound features a vampire also and so there is a lot of vampire action in this portmanteau but, despite nice photography for an indie (which was consistent across the films), I wasn’t massively impressed with the stories. The last one worked because it was simple, had a point and a nice gore level. The others were perhaps more narrative lacking and the way they fit into the over-arch was unclear (as was the actuality of what was happening). That said it was serviceable enough and I am only scoring the vampire sections 5 out of 10 reflects that the zompire tale was worthwhile, whilst the home invasion tale was frustratingly wider-narrative light and the dialogue teased but meant little.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Teeth

When I read Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture by Sorcha Ní Fhlainn I was struck by her reading of the film Teeth as a vampire film. Teeth was a satirical horror film directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein and released in 2007, and it centred on the myth of vagina dentata – literally vagina with teeth. The reading clearly sits within the realm of the othered woman – just as the vampire generally is othered, and warranted some thought and a ‘Vamp or Not?’ for the film.

Ní Fhlainn admitted that “critics may feel uncertain about Teeth belonging to the vampire genre”. In fact, she recognised that, even if not, the use of the text was important to the argument made but did cite Barbara Creed who, in her book The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, argued that the vampire, archetypally, is a mother figure. If, in Creed’s reading, the male vampire becomes a fetishized vision of the mother, he perhaps also represents vagina dentata. Creed then argues that this imagery is most clearly drawn when the vampire is female, dispensing with the need for the shadowy form of the male, especially when the camera lingers on parted, blooded lips with sharp fangs in view.

Jess Weixler as Dawn

This film follows Dawn (Jess Weixler) but begins when she is a young child (Ava Ryen Plumb) in a town dominated by giant cooling towers (there is an undercurrent that these, a visible symbol of a nuclear power station, represent the cause of her mutation). Her mother (Vivienne Benesch) and step-father (Lenny von Dohlen) sit on the porch whilst Dawn and her step-brother, Brad (played young by Hunter Ulvog), are in a paddling pool. Hidden from the viewer, he shows her his, as it were, and then tells her to show hers. There is a scream and his finger is bleeding.

John Hensley as Brad

Memory fades, of course. Whilst her mother is very ill, both mother and father are very proud pf Dawn, who is now a spokesperson for an abstinence group. They are less proud of Brad (John Hensley), who is now a bad boy. It is telling that he will only have anal intercourse with his girlfriend, Melanie (Nicole Swahn), (indicating fear of the female and castration anxiety, which the concept of vagina dentata represents) and is – we later discover – sexually obsessed with Dawn. An obsession that might be likened to the obsession that is often shown between the bitten victim and the vampire. Dawn meets a boy called Tobey (Hale Appleman) and they are attracted to each other.

before the attack

I won’t go too deeply into the detail of the film as it isn’t necessary for the investigation. Let it suffice to say that Dawn and Tobey decide to avoid each other but give in to their attraction and, subsequently, he rapes her and her vagina dentata protects her by castrating him. Dawn suffers more sexual abuse as the film continues, and is defended by her unique biology, but has also been abused by a misogynistic society, which even covers up the diagram of female genitalia in a biology text book, but not the corresponding male diagram – leaving her unsure as to whether the teeth are normal. It also becomes apparent that they are defensive, that when she consents the teeth do not bite (though that consent can rightly be withdrawn at any point).

Melanie and Brad

This defensiveness of a vampire’s bite to sexual abuse can be seen in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. In the film the drug dealer and pimp Saeed forces his finger into the Girl’s mouth in a moment of non-consensual penetration. The scene is a mirror image of an earlier one where he forced the prostitute Atti to give him fellatio, but here the Girl, fangs apparent, bites his finger off. This scene in AGWHAaN can be read as a moment of vagina dentata and ties nicely with Teeth in that sense. Equally, whilst Blade Trinity is the weak link in the Blade franchise there is a moment of misogynistic insults where Hannibal King says to Blade “Her name is Danica Talos. You met her earlier. And unlike typical vampires, her fangs are located in her vagina.” Whilst she is a bad guy vampire, the insult is tellingly that of a man attacking a stronger woman who he feels emasculated him.

Dawn

So, is Teeth a vampire film? If one accepts that the vampire can be a representation of vagina dentata (and vice versa) it can be read that way. Certainly, there are similes to be drawn with other vampire films as I’ve shown. Whilst not every vampire film shows the vampire feeding, however, to me it is the lack of feeding here that also adds weight to the other side of the debate. Without a doubt the film’s central trope is one that can resonate with vampire tropes but, ultimately, I think that is about as far as it goes. The film, however, is certainly worth watching as a brutally satirical piece.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Montrak – review

Director: Stefan Schwenk

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

Montrak is an ambitious film, no-one can take that away from it. Of German pedigree, it is clearly a budget production but often looks great with a couple of cracking stunt shots and a very credible gore/sfx. It is also a leviathan of a film, coming in at just over two hours and that was where I felt it was too ambitious.

Set across five chapters and three time periods (though two are medieval periods 25 years apart) it is the narrative where the film becomes problematic, having to introduce new characters, some of whom perhaps we are less than interested in, and whilst it looks to build the characters they were, perhaps, not as dynamic as they might be and the film drags for it.

Sönke Möhring as Montrak

So, the first chapter is set in a medieval period and we meet the Count Montrak (Sönke Möhring), a voice over tells us that he was a good Christian aristocrat until anger entered his heart and he turned to Satan. Now the reason for this isn’t told here – we get the story, that his wife (Cosma Shiva Hagen) became ill and he was tricked into a Faustian deal to save her, later and one wonders at why it wasn’t put in this section. Nevertheless, Satan makes him immortal (as a vampire) and gives him a ring of power.

Adam Jaskolka as Wladislaw

He hid away, however when the land was invaded he was discovered and came up with a plan (or Satan did and he relayed it). He ordered his second, Wladislaw (Adam Jaskolka), to take his ring and he would die – his death signalling the vanishing into myth the legend of the vampire. Wladislaw could not be his heir, however, as he was already evil. Rather they would find a mortal man, give him the ring, tempt him from innocence to evil and he would become the commander of a vampire army (that Wladislaw and Caspar (Florian Freiberger) are to build) and use that to conquer the earth for the devil. At the end of the spiel the crypt is invaded, there is a huge fight, all the vampires are killed (except Wladislaw and Caspar survive, by plot necessity) and Montrak dies.

Wilhelm and Elizabeth

You read that right, Montrak dies… the film is named after him but he is dead (bar a flashback to his story with his wife) he spends no more time in the film eponymously titled for him. We then jump forward 25 years for the next chapter and meet the peasant Wilhelm (Matthias Reichstein). The peasants are having a hard time, the harvest is poor but Wilhelm announces his proposed marriage to Elizabeth (Nadine Badewitz). That night the farmer camp in the fields is attacked by vampires led by Caspar, and Wilhelm is captured as he fought with anger and this makes them think they can turn him to evil. He is released after 4 days but the village turn on him and he is exiled, with Elizabeth seemingly turning on him too. However, by the end of the chapter his anger has activated the ring but he has refused to put it on (though refusing meant that the vampires attacked the village and Elizabeth was killed).

Ralph Stieber as Frank

Then the film moves to modern day and this is illustrative of the primary problem with the film. We meet Frank (Ralph Stieber) and have a chapter dedicated to him. He has lost his job, has an unrequited crush and is living back in the parental home. We spend time with him failing to get his unrequited love (she has a boyfriend), stumbling across vampires and meeting Nicki (Nadine Petry). Nicki is a vampire who only drinks blood bank procured blood and tries to help him escape the vampires – this ends up with them having sex (there is little chemistry to make this convincing, indeed Frank is a bland character). What is interesting in this is the idea that feral wolves are being blamed for attacks across the city. However, our protagonists are captured and we don’t see them again until the end of the film.

infected

The fourth and fifth chapters are about Harry (Dustin Semmelrogge), who is drawn into the underground world of the vampires when his sister is attacked and hospitalised. It is clear that the hospital knows what is actually going on and Harry is recruited by a government sponsored team of vampire hunters. Interestingly they are only aware of a feral vampire type (which are described as mutants) and any suggestion that there might be intelligent vampires pulling the strings is dismissed by the Government liaison. Harry is much more of a dynamic character than perhaps Wilhelm and definitely more so than Frank and his story becomes more interesting.

captured feral

To be honest, I possibly would have cut out the Wilhelm section and the Frank section (bar the Montrak flashback that I would have put into the Montrak section) and cut the run time considerably – perhaps even having further footage in the Harry section to expand around his story. The film, as structured, is quite a laborious watch. The fight at the end is fun, we needed to see more about the feral vampires (and the techniques of the hunters – who had got information out of a feral, not sure how that worked).

burning

Lore-wise we are sparse. A bite appears to turn but the turning process seems to be a long old job if Harry’s sister is anything to go by. They are fine in sunlight – but that is a relatively new development from 60-70 years ago and we get a visual shot of a vampire burning in the sun from the past. Head or heart to kill and they use silver bullets on the vampires. I never got the sense of the massive vampire army/sleeper agent network that was referred to. Breaking the curse of vampirism involves breaking the devil’s ring.

Let’s be fair, the filmmakers had big ambitions but, to me, their ambitions were too big. The film needs honing, editing and currently I’d say 4 out of 10 is pretty darn fair. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Bright Lights, Dark Shadows

So, this 2019 short, directed by Ryan Justice, was something of a conundrum as it is primarily a music video for the track All Night by retrowave band Tokyo Rose. However, I first came across it on Amazon Prime as a short film and it does have an IMDb page. Given an internal narrative (albeit a simple one), narration and a whole lot of style I have decided to feature it as a short film (coming in around the 7-minute mark).

Paul Wilson as the Hunter

The story is simple. A man, Julian (Sean Michael Gloria), sits in a bar feeling despair when he makes eye contact with a goth/rock styled women (Kaylee Giza). She leaves, he follows and another man watches – that being the vampire hunter (Paul Wilson), it is later confirmed, who amusingly wears a Van Halen belt buckle and T-shirt (VH, geddit?) Julian catches up to the girl, she leads him to a room and she chows down on him.

fangs

We then get a scene of them both hunting; him after a woman, Daphne (Hadley Green), and her after a biker type dude (Jorge Diaz). This time the hunter won’t be so passive… What will happen, well the answer is embedded below but just to say that the filming is very stylish, some great vampire moments captured. As for the music, well the moniker retrowave suits the band but for me it is quite generic but not unpleasant. The Vampire Hunter uses a gun and in the structure of the short we never discover why it is effective.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Rick and Morty: One Crew Over the Crewcoo's Morty

It is an absolute pleasure to be able to feature more Rick and Morty on TMtV (I previously looked at the episode Big Trouble in Little Sanchez). The show has to be one of the edgiest and smart programmes out there and this episode from 2019’s Season 4, directed by Bryan Newton, is up there with the best.

The episode is a riff on the heist genre and to try and explain the multi-layered twisting humour would be to do it an absolute disservice. Suffice it to say that the universe’s smartest man, Rick Sanchez (Justin Roiland) and his grandson Morty (Justin Roiland) pull a (short lived) heist crew together.

Truckula

So why the mention. Due to the fact that one of the crew is Truckula… absolutely and unashamedly a riff on Dracula. We see his truck bite another vehicle and we see him walk into Heistcon with the rest of his crew and, other than a twist walk on later, that is about it. No real vampire action but a pair of fangs and a mention here for Rick and Morty.

The imdb page is here.

The Extinction Parade Volume 2: War – review

Author: Max Brooks

Illustrations: Raulo Caceres

First Published: 2014

Contains spoilers


The blurb: New York Times bestselling author Max Brooks returns to the frightening world of zombies versus vampires in his groundbreaking follow up series: Extinction Parade! The subdead were always a joke to the aristocratic vampire race. But now the human race is facing extinction and should they succumb, so too shall the vampires disappear beneath the waves of rotting walking dead! Now the vampire race has mobilized ...but is it too late?

The review: I really enjoyed the Extinction Parade Volume 1, which told the story of the zombie apocalypse through the eyes of the arrogant, disconnected vampires.

As we go into volume 2 the apocalypse continues apace, the subdead (zombies) have become an endless stream (or parade) and solbreeders (humans) look to be facing extinction. We remain with vampires Laila and Vrauwe as they spend night after night destroying subdead and avoiding contamination from their poisonous fluids.

Except that really is about it for the volume. A stream of zombies and vampires killing them, remembering that the subdead do not even register that the vampires are there so the fight is absolutely one-sided. There is an evolutionary aspect to this. Vampire Adilah joins the other two and shows them her new ballet like martial art she uses, then they meet a group with melee weapons and use them, then they get guns and eventually join a vampire army with fire arms – though the vampires miss key fact and strategy due to their continuing arrogance.

But it feels repetitive, as though there was a lull in ideas. The art is still wonderful but the story did not engage as much as volume 1. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like to see where this ultimately goes – I would. Unfortunately I cannot see that a third season was ever done.

For volume 2, however, 6 out of 10 – dropping marks from volume 1 due to repetition. However many thanks to David for purchasing this as a present for me – greatly appreciated.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Pray for Daylight – review

Director: Tony Bruno

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers


This film is most definitely a micro-budget affair – but one that I felt had a neat little premise it played with and one that had heart. Whether it had decent sfx, well the poor video print disguised that so I can’t say, and the casting seemed to be more what was available rather than ideal… but no-one can take away that feeling of heart.

It is, in short, one that was a bit of a guilty pleasure and, after one of the more often used Nietzsche quotes, it starts in 1994.

testing the dhampir

We are in the Carpathians and a group of children are in a tent, with a woman (Sarah Martin) and a man (Rocky Lhotka) – she begs the man not to do it. He drops a blade to the floor and leaves and a second man (Conrad Zero), fanged, enters. He feeds on the woman and turns his attention to the children. One, a girl named Syeria (played young by Katherine Bruno) keeps calm, grabs the knife and attacks him. We see her eyes fade into her older eyes in 2006. What we discover later is that Syeria (Sasha Walloch) is a dhampir and the event a dhampir test.

Kristi Bruno as Cassie

In a bar, the barman (Joshua Kattelman) notices the present that Aiden Garrett (Trey Simmonds) has with him. He is meeting an old friend, Cassie Banning (Kristi Bruno), who vanished out of town three years ago. He tells the barman (and therefore us) about her family being slaughtered and that (essentially) she became a vigilante. The fact that Garrett is a cop should have been a factor between them but she actually became a vampire hunter and he is aware of the creatures. She arrives.

Saveau and Cassie

What we get then is a story about her becoming a vampire hunter but working for Eric Saveau (Rick Sullivan) – a vampire and ruler of the city’s vampires. She would hunt those who had gone bad (as Garrett points out, also his political enemies). She left after she beat a human hunter to a pulp, who was torturing a vampire girl. The girl didn’t survive. She has spent three years travelling and researching.

Lucretia and Syeria

Saveau is aware that she is back and so is his rival Lucretia (Robin Marie Whitt). When Cassie left, Saveau lost face and Lucretia is older than him and, though he is too old to be mentally controlled by her, the younger vampires are in her thrall. Cassie is rare, in that she can’t be mentally controlled by a vampire. Lucretia has another rare hunter – Syeria the dhampir, who she mentally dominates. She wants Cassie gone. It was this use of hunters by the vampires, the rare gift of being immune to their charms and the utilisation of a dhampir that worked for me, building some nice lore into the low budget flick.

the eyes have it

As I intimated above, the casting seemed to be based on who was there, rather than who was suitable for a role. The acting wasn’t necessarily brilliant either. However I was carried along by the lore. As I mentioned, the photography seemed poor but the terrible print (and resolution set at 360 p) disguised much in the way of poor cinematography. That said, the film is on YouTube so you can see for yourself; it is not on IMDb however (at time of writing). I feel churlish giving a free watch a score but problems on one hand, interesting story elements on the other – I’ll give this 4 out of 10.

Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture – review

Author: Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

First published: 2019

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture is the first major study to focus on American cultural history from the vampire’s point of view. Beginning in 1968, Ní Fhlainn argues that vampires move from the margins to the centre of popular culture as representatives of the anxieties and aspirations of their age. Mapping their literary and screen evolution on to the American Presidency, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, this essential critical study chronicles the vampire’s blood-ties to distinct socio-political movements and cultural decades in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through case studies of key texts, including Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys, Blade, Twilight, Let Me In, True Blood and numerous adaptations of Dracula, this book reveals how vampires continue to be exemplary barometers of political and historical change in the American imagination. It is essential reading for scholars and students in Gothic and Horror Studies, Film Studies, and American Studies, and for anyone interested in the articulate undead.

The review: Taking the Nina Auerbach principle that “every age embraces the vampire it needs”, Sorcha Ní Fhlainn tracks socio-political development through the decades via the vampire films and books of those decades. Now, it is true that the genre is so wide that you can always find a vehicle for your premise but the author really concentrates on some of the essential vampire texts for this. The fact that this is American socio-political development is understandable given the author’s background – though perhaps I expected a more wide-ranging, less America focused exploration given the title. Not that it is a problem with the book and it is clearly identified in the blurb.

The writing in this is very strong, thought provoking and interesting. Indeed each page had food for thought and sometimes debate. As a for instance, the reading of Dan Curtis’ Dracula in terms of Nixon (and the transposing of Holmewood as a primary rather than Harker) was inciteful but overlooked the fact that the same character transposition occurred in the 1958 Horror of Dracula. Does it negate the reading, not at all, but the sourcing of the character transposition becomes the earlier film.

A couple of very interesting readings were included. The first was of Hannibal Lector as Dracula – this is not a new reading, indeed several people have identified such a reading before now. I am a big fan of all the Lector films and the TV series and may look at this at some point. The other, which the author herself recognised might be a controversial reading, was of the vagina dentata film Teeth as a vampire film – that will form the basis of a ‘Vamp or Not?’ at some point in the not too distant future.

I love it when an academic book sucks me in and this one certainly did. America studies are not my area of expertise but that was no barrier to enjoying this lively sprint through the decades. 8.5 out of 10.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

The Shed – review

Director: Frank Sabatella

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

Whilst a film getting everything very wrong is painful it can be more frustrating to watch a film that does some things very well and yet manages to get other things very wrong. A film that manages to include issues that prevent it from being a classic, and this is the problem with the Shed.

A vampire in the garden shed was a conceit I could live with, though its inability to escape was somewhat problematic, however the film’s biggest problem lay in characters who managed to act in ways that just wasn’t credible. And yet there was some good acting, a decent layer of yarn and a pretty good vampire.

the ancient vampire

The film starts with Bane (Frank Whaley), a local farmer, going through the woods, clutching a gun and apparently bleeding at the neck. Stalking him is a vampire (Damian Norfleet) who gets him, the gun having been dropped, and bites him. The vampire holds his head back, in a creature of the night pose, unfortunately the sun rises and the vampire burns. Bane’s hand is touched by the sunlight and smoulders. He runs through the woods and sees a shed out in the open. Covering himself he makes a break for it and gets inside.

Stan and his grandfather

Stan (Jay Jay Warren, Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred) is woken by his mother, though the room he is in seems decorated a little too young for the teenager. She has made breakfast and so, even though it is Saturday, she expects him to get up. He goes downstairs, where she and his dad’s loved up antics cause him to declare them gross and his dad suggests a father/son trip. Suddenly the scene shifts, she looks eaten away by disease, his dad kills himself. Stan awakens, an orphan looked after by his grandfather (Timothy Bottoms).

Stan and the Sheriff

When I say ‘looked after’, I mean that in a loose sense. His grandfather is abusive (and we hear later a drunk). Out of the house, he rides his bike but is distracted by local bully Marble (Chris Petrovski, All Cheerleaders Die), and manages to hit the truck belonging to local Sheriff, Dorney (Siobhan Fallon Hogan. Also Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred & What we do in the Shadows). This is where we get the pluses and minuses of the film in one scene, with Dorney being an excellently drawn character but her companion Deputy Dave (Mu-Shaka Benson) being a cipher to allow exposition about Stan (and the fact that he has been in juvie and is expected to become/remain a bad apple as he turns 18) and not used further – even though it is certain he would be involved later if the film followed the storyline logic it should.

Roxy an Stan

Anyway, back at home he has reason to go in the shed and finds teeth expunged from the vampire’s mouth before being lunged at. He manages to get out, sends his dog in – which is killed. His grandfather then goes in and is killed and Stan locks the shed up, eventually boarding the windows also. He is about to call the authorities but his conditional release from juvie looms large and he doesn’t. That reaction I could handle. However the reactions later often seem silly, including the reaction of his best friend, Dommer (Cody Kostro), and the girl he fancies, Roxy (Sofia Happonen). Not that there is anything wrong with their performances, it is the narrative that often seems unrealistic.

breaking through the door

If one thinks too hard the fact that the vampire doesn’t get out overnight seems strange too. Whilst I can accept that it would stay hidden from the sun, once the sun went down; he is in a shed with tools (one expects) and it isn’t going to have the strength of a stone prison. Indeed, it manages to smash through the wood of the door at one point, trying to get to Stan on the other side, creating a hole that has to be patched – why it couldn’t rip the place apart after the sun had set was beyond me.

Cody Kostro as Dommer

Then again there is a reading of this that the vampire is metaphorical – representing rage, anger or teenage angst, perhaps. Indeed the vampire could represent loss of control, and that fits in with the Stan character well – it is Dommer who is bullied but whilst Stan intervenes, he has never given over to violence as a solution (until later in the film that is). The shed, metaphorically, is where his rage hides – whilst he tries to take the slings and arrows of Marble and his grandfather.

the shed

It is nice to be able to get a deeper reading of a fairly standard horror flick. The primary actors keep this going along nicely and it is actually a pleasure to follow Stan’s journey. But the decisions made by characters ring untrue (as mentioned) and the premise is a better metaphor than actual scenario. That said this was a fair enough watch that I rather enjoyed but had they tweaked the motivations, had they used characters like Deputy Dave as characters rather than ciphers and had there been either a shorter timeline (ie taking place over a day) or a reason for the vampire’s inability to escape the shed and we might have had a classic. 6 out of 10, however, for a blooming good effort generally.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

Sacred Blood – review

Director: Christopher Coppola

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

Christopher Coppola is no stranger to the vampire genre, directing the 1988 film Dracula’s Widow. This film suffers for lack of budget and some spotty performances but makes up for it in vision and a sense of hankering back to Italian horror of yore.

I felt the narrative could be tightened up also, but I’ll cover that as we go along and so, after the opening credits, we see images of the ocean, hear a storm until the scene calms into the safe haven of San Francisco harbour.

Natia arrives

Out from under the Harbour sign walks a woman; pale, pained and almost ill looking – Natia (Anna Luca Biani). As she walks past the window of a coffee shop/art gallery she is seen by resident struggling artist Luke (Bailey Coppola) who chases after her and then follows her on his pushbike until eventually losing her. Elsewhere a woman called Lilly (Bai Ling, The Breed, Three Extremes & Dumplings) is in an eatery when she too spots Natia.

Lily and Natia

She also follows her, but keeps much closer than Luke did. When Natia confronts her, Lilly reveals that she knows what she is, suggests that Chinatown is her turf and she won’t be so nice if Natia returns. However, the girl seems vulnerable, new to being the vampire that Lilly recognises, and so Lilly then offers her pointers for money. Natia has none and Lilly suggests she attend to some business with her. They go to a bar where a business man (Steven Wiig) drinks alone. Lilly takes the casually racist man back to a room – with Natia – where it soon descends to a feed.

eurohorror

What struck me here was the use of off-kilter camera work – especially when Lilly and Natia meet, which had a nice feel but was perhaps sparingly used through the full film. Also the lighting/filters in Lilly’s room was highly effective, giving a Eurohorror, perhaps more specifically an Italian feel. When Natia attacks she sounds and looks feral, a sense we don’t get from Lilly who feels under control.

circus act

The film then moves to the country of Georgia and we get a little of Natia’s past – however I felt the narrative structure failed to distinguish the geography and the time-gap as well as it might. This is perhaps amplified by Anna Luca Biani whose Natia feels like a different person in these scenes, a fact that speaks highly of their acting ability but doesn’t help the narrative. Natia is running the family circus and performing as a sharp shooter but the circus is failing. In desperation she gives a job to Sasha (Konstantin Kryukov, Vurdalaki), a dog trainer with a single dog.

sisters

What we then get is, in flashback, a backstory of a family in crisis – the father is an alcoholic after the death of the mother in an accident. This has a nice symmetry with a primary storyline as I’ll mention but, symmetry aside, adds little to the primary narrative. Sasha is a vampire and his dog is too – able to jump unnaturally high. He is on the verge of turning Natia’s sister, Dedika (Natalia Diasamibze), when Natia bursts in with a gun and the dog, protectively, bites her. Natia turns, her sister does not but the Georgia story ends there with Natia fleeing to protect her family.

Michael Madsen A bRENNAN

In the States we discover that Luke followed her as he was inspired to paint her portrait and, of course, they fall in love. Natia manages to slaughter a pimp and his brother (plus heavies) so that she can both protect some prostitutes and get money (to send home). She also slaughters a couple of muggers. The mayhem brings her to the attention of detective Brennan (Michael Madsen, the Bleeding, Vampires Anonymous, 42, the Tomb & Bloodrayne) – Luke’s alcoholic father who turned to the bottle after his wife developed dementia and who is disconnected from his son, not understanding his desire to be an artist. This is the symmetry I mentioned.

Rob Nilsson as Ruthven

She also comes to the attention of the top vampire, Ruthven (Rob Nilsson), who insists she works for him. There is an odd moment that suggests a psychic attack when she resists but is not spelt out and Ruthven (pronounced incorrectly, as normally happens to be fair) is apparently Scottish (he’s lost his accent) and obsessed with wine making. This then leads to the film’s tagline “From the Vine to the Vein”, which is not explored in any meaningful way but a vampire’s obsession with wine does riff nicely on “I do not drink… wine”.

Bailey Coppola as Luke

There are issues as this becomes a mood and character piece (which are the strength of the film) but doesn’t quite pick up on any horror (despite the feral growling and butchering of villains) and the storylines fail in the main to go anywhere. That is not true of the central romance but the police investigation and the winery (even the circus to a great degree) just feel like they are hanging. The acting seems uneven. I mentioned Anna Luca Biani being very different before and after turning and Bailey Coppola is great in the role. Madsen and Bai Ling have their moments, as one would absolutely expect, but much of the supporting cast are less impressive and I thought Nilsson miscast.

blooded

The action, I think, is lost in budget and more could have been done around the gore (the first feed is impressive due to filters/lighting but perhaps other attacks are lacking). I did think the guns sound lost and hollow in the soundscape and whilst we know shooting at a vampire will have no impact it will impact the clothes at least. The character studies/mood could have been a massive plus to a strong narrative, but the narrative needed tightening up. Yet it isn’t all bad, far from it – aspects like the symmetry between Bailey and Natia worked well, the mood was there and there were good performances and the visual atmosphere worked. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.