Dark Stories to Survive the Night – review

Directors: Guillaume Lubrano & François Descraques

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

The background to this – as I can piece it together – is that there is a French TV series entitled Dark Stories. Episode 7 of Season 1 is entitled Long Night, comes in at just over 100 minutes, and it is that episode, which has been packaged as a feature film. The film/episode is a portmanteau style story.

Kristanna Loken as Christine

To make things more convoluted I purchased the German Blu-Ray from Amazon UK. The page says that the languages are German, English and French… this is sort of true but not the whole story. In fact, there is a German dub and the film/episode’s original language is both English and French. However, the Blu-Ray does not have English subs for the French parts (nor French subs for the English parts). I then found the film (with closed captions) on Tubi under the title Dark Stories.

the jinn

The vampire aspect is in the wraparound (and I will have to spoil it to explain it). However the shorts within the portmanteau cover various entities including (but not limited to) a really well put together ghost story, ghouls that exist within paintings and which can both enter our world and pull their victims into the paintings, a zombie (though probably better termed revenant) and a jinn that causes sleep paralysis. Each segment had something to offer.

mechanically draining

In the wraparound we see a lab, where a man (who has been drugged) is strapped to a chair. He realises they are going to drain his blood and we see tubes going to a doll… In a house we see Christine (Kristanna Loken, Bloodrayne) fussing around the house as she gets her son ready for bed. There is someone knocking at the door and a package is delivered – she complains it is late. She takes the package down to the basement, opens it and gets out a creepy looking doll.

with the doll

The doll falls from the chair that she places it on when her back is turned, it starts to move slowly, to laugh and eventually is moving fast, gets a knife and cuts her. When it does it says, “I’ve gotten all your blood inside of me. I’m happy…” It wallops her one and she awakens tied to a chair. The doll realises that her child must be in the house and so, to prevent it leaving the room, she starts to tell it stories – the segments. Now this is pretty much a vampiric doll (or so it would seem) but towards the end of the film, when she seems glad to see the sun come through the window, it mocks her for thinking it a vampire. She then tells another story.

face splits

It is the story of a baby at an orphanage who refused milk and wouldn’t feed. After a while a nun cut her finger and discovered that the baby craved blood. Eventually she was caught feeding it and banished, which of course led the boy to go hungry because whilst she returned nightly she was never let in… until one day she found he had attacked and killed the occupants of the orphanage. She escaped with the boy and turned to her father, a scientist (and presumably the person from the lab we saw)… of course, she was the nun, her child the boy and (when we see him behind the blood filled doll) he has a face that splits open to allow feeding…

painting ghoul

And that is our vampire aspect – though the jinn is of genre interest given the sleep paralysis aspect. The inclusion in the wraparound would make me look at this as a fleeting visitation deserving of an Honourable Mention normally (and certainly I normally only score the vampire part). However, this was a really good anthology, which I thoroughly enjoyed and so I’m giving the whole thing a score. 8 out of 10 and remarkable as this is actually just one episode. The episode's imdb page is here.

Bite Night – review

Director: Maria Lee Metheringham

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

After writing this review I went and checked critic reviews on IMDb and wondered whether I had been harsh. My soul searching led to a conclusion of, no. This is a deeply flawed film and the fact that it managed to garner fairly positive reviews is just one of life’s mysteries. It’s also sad as I would like to support UK indie films, but not at any cost…

Bite Night, originally entitled Party of Valice, is meant to be a horror with a comedy soul but I, unfortunately, wasn’t laughing. Flat gags and poor delivery with a plot that needed more narrative and long stretches that should have hit the cutting room floor.

like From Dusk till Dawn

It starts in a club and a trio of ladies singing to an electro-beat synth-pop type thing, lead singer Valice (Rachel Brownstein) and harmonies from Katarina (Martha Niklas) and Zuzanna (Maria Lee Metheringham). Valice wears a white snake, bringing From Dusk till Dawn to mind, but without the iconic power of the referenced scene. During this there are high jinks (of the unfunny kind) with characters who won’t actually come into the film. Valice announces that 6 balloons, in a load to be dropped in the next song, will contain invites to an exclusive after show party at the group’s home.

the winners

The six who win – Ebeneizer (George Walker), Biffa (Peter M. George), Tash (Marcella Edgecombe-Craig), Ridley (Roland Martial), Axel (Ryan-Jay Jones) and Ronnie (Kian Pollard) are put in a limo. The scenes of it driving through a cityscape are too long, ponderous and pace sapping. The scenes inside are filled with stereotyped dialogue and flat delivery of humourless quips. It all feels a tad too amateurish. They find champagne and are all smashed by the time they get to the house. On the walk up the (very long) driveway a man (credited as Hunter (Wyn Hopkins)) grabs Ebeneizer, nicks his clothes and donning a (conveniently carried on his person) blonde wig takes his place. What Hunter is doing there is never answered.

dream of vampires

So they go in the house, are greeted by Sandra (Dani Thompson), the housekeeper, are left in a room for a bit, shown to bedrooms and… well its all a bit tedious and badly thought out. We do get a moment of vampire fantasy by Axel (recounting a dream) and Hunter vanishes whilst sliding down the banister (into thin air apparently). Eventually they go down for dinner (with a remonstration because Biffa hasn’t stayed in his allotted room) and Hunter is there but acting odd (we later see black makeup round his eyes indicating he has been taken over by the very bad thing). Dinner is a severed head and celery with Hunter dipping his finger in an eye socket and the others freaking out.

Martha Niklas as katarina

It is then revealed that the women are vampires but (having sucked Axel to death) Katarina bites Hunter and becomes ill – his blood now black… Something is in the house (when we see it a black, zombie-like creature that seems oily) and the kids are caught between the vampires and the creature – who can turn a vampire. What is it? The film doesn’t say – though there is a “to be continued” after the credits. All in all you’ll be left stupefied by the story, or lack of exposition thereof, and unmoved by the plight of the characters. I do have to say not all the acting left me cold and Martha Niklas injected her character with fun despite the script.

Valice teases

But it is too little too late. The film’s budget showed in most aspects and the inexperience of the filmmakers was readily apparent. If we class this as cutting their teeth then, of course, it is hoped that they learn, develop and grow but this did nothing for me. Yet despite all that there was clearly some effort to try and do something unusual. 2.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Klans Rules

This short film has a runtime of just over 23 minutes and was written and directed by Hilton Ariel Ruiz. The film does quite a bit for the short run time, despite this it is much more a set-up for a longer movie. It is also notable for the very professional cinematography, with the photography looking really good and crisp.

The film starts with a man (Brian Rogers) who puts a gun in his waist band and steps outside to light a cigarette. Nearby we see James (Fazon Gray) and Stacey (Denasia Starmecca Garris) who are having a romantic moment. There is a bang, maybe a gunshot, and James goes off to investigate and soon Stacey is on the move too.

Stacey and James

We see her enter an abandoned railcar so that she can hide, but the man gets on also – carrying a stake and mallet (note it is daytime). He gets to her hiding place ready to hammer the stake home (we cut to black)... James is chained and the man stands above him. He asks about Stacey – the man says she’s taken care of. The man suggests his family have been looking for James for generations – the inference becomes that the family were part of the Ku Klux Klan. He states James’ full name and says he was born in 1916 and was made head of the vampire clan (that later we hear the klan was hunting). He also says something about selling pills on the black market. James breaks the chains, the man holds a cross up as he backs away, and James says he doesn’t kill anymore, however…

imbibing blood

Cut to New York city and Abel (Jim Thalman) speaks to his sons, both in the same bed, both ill, before leaving the house. He is looking for access to “vampire pills”. He has a lead and manages to get the drop on Richard (Jordan Theodore). Richard managed to get some pills from the dark web – in return for a task he never completed, and therefore didn’t get the further pills promised. If Abel completed the task perhaps he’d get the pills?

wearing fake fangs

There isn’t a great deal of lore offered. A small capsule of vampire blood makes a person feel invincible and increases libido but those effects are fleeting – it does heal disease, however. They can clearly daywalk and a stake is not necessarily the end. A nice touch was a brief scene with James at a party, in vampire fancy dress including fake fangs. There were lots of story points raised through that could have stood wider exploration in a full-length vehicle but the short managed to hold the primary story together well.

The imdb page is here.

All the Moons – review

Director: Igor Legarreta

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

Filmed in the Basque language, All the Moons is a beautifully shot film and it certainly didn’t go in the direction I thought it might as I read the description of the film on Shudder. Indeed, it became apparent that (despite the streaming service it was on) this was far from a horror film. That’s not to decry the film, after all there are plenty of non-horror vampire flicks but, given its streaming home, the lack of horror might befuddle some on initial view.

in the orphanage

The film starts in 1876 during the third Carlist War – one of a series of Civil Wars in Spain. The narration is by a young girl – who is later named Amaia (Haizea Carneros) – who talks of first the darkness and then the lights – reporting on the explosions in the night. She is in what we can guess to be an orphanage, run by nuns, and the children are taken into the church as the battle rages outside – the nuns leading the children in prayer. Our narrator walks off to look at a picture on an angel when the chapel takes a hit. The children and nuns are killed, she is pinned under a fallen beam, her legs crushed.

veins pronounced 

She sees a cloaked figure (the cloaks, it transpires, are thick blankets). The injured girl asks the woman if she is an angel and says that she doesn’t want to die. She awakens away from the place, her legs a bloody mess. The woman, only referred to as Mother (Itziar Ituño), asks if she really wants to be healed and, when the girl ascents, she passes her a bowl with what is clearly blood in it and has her drink. When she wakes again she notices her veins on her wrist are pronounced. She stands and moves to open a canvas over the window and is stopped. It is dangerous to go out during the day, says Mother, and mentions the soldiers.

Haizea Carneros as Amaia

There are others hiding in the dark and one in particular does not seem pleased that Mother has chosen this child. As night falls, they are to go out – leaving the girl behind – following the lights. She follows anyway and sees one of the figures feeding from a fallen soldier’s wrist and it is clear that it is the light of battle they follow so that they might feed from the dying. The girl is told that she too may save someone but she should chose carefully as she will only ever be able to save one – meaning that these vampires can only turn one person.

soldiers attack

However, soldiers raid the vampires’ lair, causing them to run into the sun, covered in blankets. Some are burned by the soldiers or exposed to the sun. The girl and mother run into the woods but the girl runs into a tree and falls, losing her blanket and tumbling off a cliff edge into a ravine. Mother is convinced she has been killed but we see, as night falls, the girl emerge from the snow. She heads back to the lair but no-one returns and eventually finds her way to a natural shelter, killing a weasel as she goes in and partaking of its blood.

Amaia in water

Ten years pass and the girl is living like a feral creature, painting moons on a cave wall (the film’s title comes from the fact that the Mother suggested they would have all the moons together). One day she starts pushing her hand into the sun and holding it there, the light causing the skin to blister before she tugs it back. She peels the blistering away to reveal new skin. She stops painting moons and starts painting suns and, eventually (and with no explanation other than us see her exposing herself over and over), sunlight no longer bothers her.

the priest

She heads out from the cave and, eventually, sees a farm house and heads to it. She gets caught in a wolf trap and is rescued by the farmer, Candido (Josean Bengoetxea). Although she is strangely uninjured and does not bleed from what wound there is, he takes pity on the girl and tries to find out where she has come from. When there are no clues, he decides to adopt her, having lost his wife during childbirth and, later, his daughter to an accident – he gives the girl the name Amaia. Of course, her strange behaviours, along with a rash of attacks on animals, cause concern in the nearby village and with the local priest…

villager reaction

The film follows her time with Candido and beyond, with the pace being languid. I mentioned it is not a horror and the film fails to even offer moments of horror, rather it offers drama. Scenes of war and the reaction of the church could have been jumping off points for moments of horror (beyond simply playing the horror from her vampirism) but this prefers to study character, emotion and relationships. It is beautifully shot and, for a young actor, Haizea Carneros does a fine job of carrying the film. I expected the relationship with Mother to be the primary focus but, actually, it is the story of her time with Candido that proves to be the core of the story. The pace might be too slow for some but it is a class production. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK

Entwined – review

Director: Minos Nikolakakis

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

I watched Entwined on the basis that I would (hopefully) be getting a decent dose of folk horror (which it is, with an aura of the fairy-tale) but also discovered something that has a vampiric aspect. Whatever our lead character is (and I suspect she is based on a dryad, but there are is an element of siren also), she is most definitely an energy vampire also.

This leaves us with an impressive, lyrical, directorial feature debut for Minos Nikolakakis that also has some deliberate nods towards Dracula.

nearly a collision

Panos (Prometheus Aleifer), a doctor, decides to leave his city life behind after his father dies of cancer and, despite protestations from his half-brother George (John De Holland), moves to the countryside and specifically the village of Alyti. On the drive there, distracted by his mobile, he barely misses running over a young woman (Anastasia Rafaella Konidi), who runs into the forest. He is the first doctor the village has had and they seem unresponsive to him. At night he hears music playing.

Panos bored

One night he follows it, driving out of the village and finding a small house in the forest (the music coming from a phonograph). Inside is Danae, the woman he almost ran over. As he speaks to her he notices a patch on her arm, where the skin is scaling, and almost liked cracked bark. There is movement from another room, her father (Kostas Laskos) she says and tells him to leave but the old man, outside, nearly hits him with a bottle. In the village he has one patient, a woman with a gouged face who mentions the forest and who pines for her missing son.

the old man attacks

He returns to Danae during the day and enters the house but sees, through boards into another room, her having sex with the old man. The old man comes out and attacks him and Panos instinctively pushes him, cracking the elder's head open, and so rushes him to the village before heading back to Danae – though the village cop has mentioned to him the evil ones being marked so you can recognise them. He puts cream on Danae’s arm (later he discovers patches of the bark-like scaling on her back) and she gives him food and drink. Suddenly fatigued, she tells him to lie down, but when he awakens she says three days have passed.

Anastasia Rafaella Konidi as Danae

Panos tries several times to leave but the forest will not let him. It seems to grow thicker and the way to the road is lost to him, always returning to the house. Danae, for herself, suggests that she need to keep the house fire always burning as “It’s the life-blood that keeps the house alive” this felt a tad Dracula-like tonally, but it is later we get the real Dracula connection, when she says, about a locked cellar area, “I beg you, do not wander in any part of this house. It is ancient and has many memories… some that are best left unremembered. Besides there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely.” This, of course, is almost lifted from the novel, indeed, the last sentence being almost verbatim.

finding a mirror

Danae says this when he is looking for a mirror. We have seen subtle aging in Panos but, after consummating their love, we see him age rapidly, and later she marries him in a handfasting. The lack of mirrors (one of which he finds in the cellar when he steals her key) is to hide this from him. She is draining his youth away and we see her, at one point, literally draw the breath from him. That and the fire (burning wood) allow her to remain in human form – “you and only you that prevents me returning to my roots” – with the bark coming through occasionally and the handfasting taking place at the tree she says she originated from. It is for this reason I mentioned thinking her a dryad, though the record she plays almost has a siren quality to it, the music seemingly travelling an impossibly long distance, drawing a lover and holding their attention.

Danae and Panos

I was really taken by this, it does feel like a fairy-tale – the photography lending itself to that aesthetic and the relationship between the two becoming co-dependent and weirdly abusive (beyond the vampirism taking place), with Danae emotionally attached to the man she is quickly killing. Of course, the viewer realises as Panos ages that the old man was the missing son mentioned by the villager, so her previous victim, and we do see him pass due to old age. A slow burn, for sure, but worth 7 out of 10, for me at least.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK

Short film: Wan Mei

Shown at Screamfest under the title Perfect, Wan Mei is a 15-minute short directed by Yiyi Yin and released in 2016. It is a very unusual vampire – though I would suggest still worthy of the name.

Xiao (Allen Theosky Rowe) is a broken man. Madly in love with Wan Mei (Wei-Yi Lin), as the film starts she had broken off the engagement and left him for another man (Michael Shenefelt). In response he has taken a mannequin, painted its nails and dressed it in her clothes and put a life-sized photo of her face on it.

Allen Theosky Rowe as Ciao

What he doesn’t expect is Wan Mei to turn up at his door, remorseful and hoping to start again. He brings her back into the house (the mannequin is still there, though hidden behind the bedroom door). She receives a text from Michael, the other man, and instead of fessing up, makes an excuse and goes out to see him. In his car he steals a kiss and Xiao sees this (though is not privy to the fact that it is stolen).

the new Wan Mei

Things come to a head, Wan Mei is killed as a goldfish bowl is smashed over her head but the mannequin is face down on the floor and her spilt blood flows to it, so the mannequin is face down in it. Magically this brings the mannequin to life – but is the artificial Wan Mei perfect? It is, of course, the fact that the blood brings the mannequin to life that made me tie this into the vampire genre (as Stoker wrote, the blood is the life) and this is an interesting little short that is beautifully shot and takes a ride into the Uncanny Valley.

The imdb page is here.

Theatre Macabre: The Vampire – review

Director: Stanislaw Lenartowicz

First Aired: 1971 (IMDb list this as a remake of the 1967 The Vampire, but it is likely the same film with Lee's wraparound and English dubbing)

Contains spoilers

Theatre Macabre was a Polish anthology series, which was dubbed into English for the US market, with stories based on classic short stories and introduced by the always welcome Christopher Lee. In this case the story was based on one by Alexis Tolstoy.

Famously, the Tolstoy vampire story that is used as a basis for film is Family of the Vourdalak but, in this case, the story is the lesser known The Vampire, written in 1841. When I looked at a Volume of Tolstoy’s work I suggest it was “a story that deserves a film”. This is not that film, unfortunately, cramming the story into under 25 minutes. It also changes the lore somewhat but the changes themselves are interesting.

Dashka and her Grandmother

Starting at a ball, a gentleman is charmed by a young lady named Dashka. He is watched, however, by a sinister looking man named Riverenko who calls him over. He tells him to beware as Dashka’s Grandmother is, he confides, a vampire, as is one of her friends also at the dance. You can tell them, he suggests, by the sucking sound they make as a secret greeting (in Tolstoy's original this is described as a clicking sound). He warns the man that he is in mortal danger and that should Dashka stay with her grandmother she’ll be dead in three days.

Riverenko and the man

The man goes back to Dashka, as she talks to her grandmother. The Grandmother complains that Dashka never visits and then, to get her to visit her estate suggests he does also. Suddenly Riverenko is there and points menacingly at the Grandmother (he claims she killed his love at another point) and tells the man to meet him the next day in the Orthodox graveyard. When they meet he shows him a grave that has the Grandmother’s name and picture (but the man catches him out as he actually added the picture to the grave).

stabbing the shadow

Of course, the first evening at the estate sees him attacked by both vampires but he has been given a holy blade. Told that blades cannot pierce their flesh (though this blade subsequently does cut a vampire’s arm), he is informed that the only way to kill a vampire is to stab their shadow in the heart. When he does this we see the wall that the shadow falls on bleed. This method of killing is really interesting but different to the source story, which necessitates ramming a stake between their shoulder blades.

vampire attack

The short episode, unfortunately, does not carry the atmosphere that the story begs for and probably tries to do a little too much within the constraints of the running time. Plus, of course, dubbing does not help. However, it is great to see this Tolstoy story get some filmic love – even if it is not nearly as good as some of the films of the more famous story. Theatre Macabre itself is a mixed bag but consistently lovely to look at. I got the series as part of the Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee collection. The score for this episode is 5 out of 10. 

The episode’s imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Empire of the Vampire – review

Author: Jay Kristoff

First Published: 2021

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise.

For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.

Gabriel de León, half man, half monster and last remaining silversaint – a sworn brother of the holy Silver Order dedicated to defending the realm from the creatures of the night – is all that stands between the world and its end.

Now imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope:

The Holy Grail.

The review: Empire of the Vampire is epic – a 700+ page novel detailing a vampire apocalypse in a fantasy realm. The fantasy element has a medieval-like setting but the world is not our own, with different geography and details. The primary religion, for instance is clearly based on Christianity (and with aspects like the Inquisition, the absolute worst of it) but it is not – they have a Redeemer, and a Mothermaid but his symbolism is (for instance) the wheel, rather than the cross. It also, of course, has vampires.

It is a world where, on the event of Daysdeath, the sun was so weakened in the sky that vampires were able to walk in the day and started to impinge on humanity before invading in earnest. The vampires are split into four bloodlines, each with different gifts, though there is a fifth that is never spoken of. There are ancien (the book’s spelling) vampires, also those turned who are whole and powerful but by far the most populous are the wretched (or foulbloods), which are feral pack hunters – their brains decayed and normally cognisant of hunger only. They can be controlled, subsequently acting with more cunning, by the other vampires. Turning is random, some die and remain dead, others turn if fed upon. Drinking vampire blood can cause a human to become a thrall to the vampire.

The other order of vampire are the Palebloods, always male they are the sons of vampire fathers with mortal mothers and the order of the Silversaints are made up of these – clearly based on dhampirs (though that term is not used). They have the beast within them and smoke sanctus – dried vampire blood – to stave off their evil instincts. They carry the gifts of their father’s bloodline, though sometimes it is so dilute that the gifts don’t emerge and these are known as frailbloods. They are a religious order and vow celibacy to prevent fathering monsters. Their skin is heavily tattooed in silver with images earned as they train, kill their foes and take their vows, as they fight they remove their shirts and their faith causes the silver to shine. Their weapons are silvered.

Gabriel de León is a Silversaint, once the greatest, disgraced and captured by a vampire bloodline after he killed the King of Forever (the head of another bloodline). From what we can gather humanity has fallen and he is forced to tell his story. In this volume we get his origin story and the story of how he found the grail. The stories are intertwined, splitting the novels into books, one will cover one story and the next the other, swapping backwards and forth and revealing plot in an intelligent way. The Gabriel character is stunningly fantastic; seemingly broken in the bridging aspects (as he talks to his captors); idealistic as a new Silversaint initiate but stubborn, disobedient (to what he thinks is right) and proud; a drunken anti-hero when we hear the grail story. The whole range of characters are great but Gabriel is the lynchpin (as he should be). we do get a glimpse of some of the other terrors of the world - notably the mutated fungus/animal hybrids that are described in nightmarish tones.

The writing is crisp, dialogue (which interestingly adds a soupçon of French, as well as the guttural of the campaigning soldier) is convincing and the plot interesting and fresh. I was really very taken by this and considered maximum marks. The attention to detail in the hardback is great also, beneath the fly-cover the front board is printed with a silver coat of arms, illustrations pepper the volume but they are relevant as they are the drawings that Gabriel’s interrogator/scribe completes between transcribing his words. Quality of production aside, it is a great read but where to go with further volumes in the story if I give it maximum? Better to say 9.5 out of 10 – an impressive start that I hope will get even better in further volumes.

My thanks to Sarah for the volume, which was a Christmas gift.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Danni and the Vampire – review

Director: Max Werkmeister

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

I love it when this happens – I’d forgotten about hearing of this one before it appeared on Amazon Prime Video and, having watched the trailer, it looked fun enough. I watched it and discovered a great, madcap comedy that whilst it did have a romance at the heart, never descended into saccharine or anything like romantic comedy. In short it really stood out and I thoroughly enjoyed myself whilst watching it.

lacking afterglow

Danni (Alexandra Landau) is in her car, looking at maps that have followed her wandering. She takes off and ends up at a seedy bar that advertises Seedy Cindy performing. A guy, Matthew (Derek Ocampo), buys her a drink and eventually they leave together. We see the aftermath of the sex, he in bondage gear, surprised that she had all the gear with her in the car, her nonplussed by the lack of impact of the activity… that is until she gets up for a drink.

crypto research

Going into his kitchen area she sees cryptozoology papers and a file on her. He knew who she was and he calls her the Devil Slayer as Danni is thought to have killed the Jersey Devil. He is part of an organisation called CRIES, who monitor and detain supernatural threats. They have caught a vampire (Henry Kiely), he says, and he is due to go on trial but Matthew is part of a faction who believe there should be no trial, that a murderous vampire should just be killed. He wanted to recruit Danni to help the faction – she leaves.

captured Remy

She finds herself followed by a car and, having not lost the tail, she pulls over and confronts the driver. That driver is Posey (Lauren Reeder) and she says she is part of a rival group, #supnat, who want to preserve and save supernatural creatures. They have worked out (given the lack of remains) that Danni didn’t kill the Jersey Devil but let it go. She has also, rightly, worked out that Danni is trying to fill a fulfilment hole that the satisfaction of freeing the Devil has left. Remy, the vampire, is no killer, she says and successfully recruits Danni to infiltrate CRIES and free Remy.

escaping

Danni does just that and releases Remy – who goes on a bloody killing spree during his escape, killing all the members of CRIES bar Kaine (Scott Vermeire). The sight of Remy and Danni in her car, him blood-soaked, them bopping and the sense of fun reflected in their faces and looks between the actors lets you know (if you hadn't already worked it out) that this film is special. So, Danni decides she needs to help Remy achieve life goals – the main being to set up a vampire refuge and so they set their eyes on taking over a remote church in the hills and, as the film progresses, they develop a friendship that leads to a romance. Meanwhile Posey and Kaine team up (after he confronts Posey, and her realising Remy is not the non-violent vampire, she believed him to be).

strike a pose

It is the leftfield characters of Remy and Danni that makes this work so very, very well (and the performances that bring the characters to life). We see this when Remy shows Danni how he remembers some victims by using taxidermy on body parts – turning a leg (say) into a puppet – and Danni loves it. Her moral compass is entirely skewed from that of regular folks and its brilliant for that but also, at heart, they are both loveable (if homicidal) characters. The sheer chemistry between Alexandra Landau and Henry Kiely is palpable, they genuinely feel like good friends and the resultant romance feels totally natural.

Remy fed

As for the lore, sunlight has an impact but nothing a big hat cannot deal with and AB neg blood is simply the most delicious. How the film deals with religion is unusual – when we meet another vampire, Zelda (Megan Therese Rippey), we see she has a cross shaped scar on her cheek but being in church does not bother the vampires. However, the way they can be killed is not by stake to the heart but by being stabbed by sharpened cross – it’s a strange combination around the impact of religious items but it works within the film’s internal logic. When a vampire is dying, they cough up blood (the vampire equivalent of a dying human defecating).

This is one I really recommend. 8 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires – review

Director: Mike Mort

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

What the world needed, but didn’t know it, was a faux-80s action stop-motion animation. A piece that knowingly riffs that decade’s action flicks, in all their puerile glory. One created by a UK team so that they can really get beneath the skin of the US machismo such films represented. Yes, the gags will be underpinned by unapologetic juvenilia but there will be clever little observations that only stepping away from the source material will allow. Even the title has to be clarified (not only in what a trampire actually is, and we’ll come to that) with a character explaining that tramps, in UK English, are bums in US English… but bumpire wouldn’t work…

Trampire in the alley

We are in the world of Chuck Steel (Mike Mort), one of LAPD’s finest… he is a “maverick, renegade, loose cannon, lone wolf, cop on the edge, who doesn't play by the rules”. An action hero, not for the ages but for the 80s (or 1985 to be precise, but its no longer 1985, it's 1986). But, before we meet him we see a drunken posh couple staggering down the road. He is too cheap to get a cab and takes a cut down an alleyway. They are attacked by a pair of trampires. Both are bitten but she gets away and runs out of the alley to be knocked down by a police car. Cue the 80s hair rock soundtrack over opening credits…

waking from a nightmare

We are then on a roof top as Steel confronts a whole gang of ninjas whilst riding a motorbike (that fires lasers) – as the crime lord steals Steel’s wife, Lucy (Samantha Coughlan). After some (downright gory) mayhem, the crime lord is flying away and Steel pursues. He launches from an explosion off the roof and catches a rope ladder hanging from the escaping helicopter as Lucy is pushed out of the chopper. He grabs her as she falls, holding the chain of her crucifix but gravity is no friend and the chain snaps, Lucy falling to her death… Steel wakes from this recurring nightmare.

Captain Jack Schitt

Steel’s boss, Captain Jack Schitt (also Mike Mort), is looking over the crime scene but the drunk rich man’s body is gone – his wife in hospital. He wonders how Steel is coping with his new partner Koloswski (Sam Roe). We cut and see that the overly nice uniform cop has found himself in a deadly high-speed pursuit, whilst Steel tells him that he doesn’t like him but it’s nothing personal. The chase ends in victory for Steel, though the criminals are rather… dead… Back in Schitt’s office we discover that Koloswski has shot himself. He gets a new partner, on exchange from the Swedish police.

boo-yah

Steel is avoiding the new police shrink, Dr. Alex Cular (Jennifer Saunders) – the name, of course, a dead giveaway for us. By doing so he is, of course, neither confronting the truth about Lucy nor his irrational hatred of clowns. Her ministrations are 'helping' his colleagues though – each time we see the Captain he is an article of clothing further into cross-dressing, one colleague has so found his inner child that he now wears a diaper and carries a teddy, another has discovered his inner gimp. Steel, however, heads for the hospital where he finds a man attacking their unconscious surviving witness; he is arrested by Steel.

in sunlight

He is Dr Van Rental (also Mike Mort) and, oh yes, they did… so Van Rental explains the lore – vampires were proud aristocrats in Transylvania but the peasants revolted and they became down on their luck. They indulged in binge drinking and their metabolism changed so that they require blood with high alcohol content and now only attack drunks. No longer vampires they are trampires and can be killed by stake through the liver. They can also be killed with holy (sobering) coffee, are killed by sunlight (mostly), and are burnt by crosses (still). There is a prophecy of their leader feeding on a being called the puritan, which will cause everlasting night and all water to turn into cheap cider (that’s the UK version). The prophecy also suggests a chosen one who can stop them… the trouble is Steel is bitten on the nose by a trampire in the form of a bat and hasn’t long before he too will become a trampire.

getting to the heart of the matter

This was so much fun – I mentioned that it was juvenile, and it was – but sometimes you need that. This is the only flick I can think of where escape from the clutches of a vampire pig that has sprouted bat wings is achieved by pressing a cross to the testicles. It isn’t PC, it captures the machismo of the genre it primarily apes but it knows how far to push the gags without becoming a bore. The use of homeless characters as the othered vampire is non-exploitative as there is also a group of homeless who becomes the force of good. The stop motion and backgrounds are glorious and the voice acting works well. Great fun 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon UK