Short Film: Love in Vein (2020)

I haven’t spotted an IMDb page (at time of writing) for Phillip Brown’s Love in Vein – however an interrogation of the film’s Facebook page suggests this dates to 2020 and was the director’s film school opus, which they funded through crowdsourcing. Set in Brighton it connects the vampiric hunt with dating apps and runs at just under 15-minutes.

It starts with the dating app Winked-In being flicked through then we see a man reclined (possibly dead) on a bed and, in the bathroom Evelyn (Ell Hope) cleans her teeth and we see blood in the sink. She flicks her fang with a tongue, we notice her lack of reflection and we can make out bite marks on the victim’s neck. She gets a new date via the app.

Ell Hope as Evelyn

Arranging to meet Josh (Sam Bates) in a restaurant, she is there before him – she checks her bag for a bottle within. He comes into the restaurant and they speak, his small talk seeming to flounder. Having got their wine, he orders a veggie burger, whilst she orders a steak. She points out a painting on the wall as a means of distraction as she doses his wine – though he apparently knows more about the artist then she does. She works nights in a pharmaceutical warehouse – he reveals he’s a vet.

Sam Bates as Josh

There is something in their conversation and she has a change of heart – switching their wine, which she then downs when he calls her a chicken for not drinking. The vomiting in the bathroom thereafter might be her bringing the drug up deliberately or it might just be a reaction to drinking something other than blood. The date, however, takes on a new meaning for Evelyn, though her need to feed is also piqued…

licking blood

One thing I did like about this, other than some extremely nice photography, was the confident use of tropes and the way they were visually captured. For instance, a woman (Johanna Worcester) is in the toilet with a nose bleed and Evelyn is left to face the blood on the porcelain wash basin. Her licking up the blood is a common enough trope but the actual shot was really nicely done. The short is embedded below.

Boy #5 – review

Director: Eric Steele

Release date: 2021  

Contains spoilers

There is a saying, “It’s grim up north”, a stereotype attributed to JB Priestley. Whilst his observations were about the North East, this film embraces a deep-set grimness and centres it on the North West of England – Manchester to be precise. Also known as Bad Blood, the film’s story is grim, the performances purposefully dour and the city feels claustrophobically squalid. This is not a feel-good movie.

Starting with a police radio and a call out to something that sounded like an animal in distress, the coppers find a boy, Nathan (Lennon Leckey), above an animal (later identified as a dog), with blood round the kid’s mouth.

Laura Montgomery Bennett as Marjory

Marjory (Laura Montgomery Bennett) is a social worker and is struggling. One of her cases, a teenager called Curt, recently killed himself with a deliberate overdose. She should have seen it coming, she believes, and is beating herself up. Her boss comes in and, having observed that she refused the offer of counselling, asks her to take on Nathan. He was trying to eat a dog, he says, and assaulted one of the officers when they apprehended him. She is reluctant but, having spoken to him, decides to take his case.

Lennon Leckey as Nathan

They have no last name for him and he is not on the system. She takes him to sheltered accommodation but cannot get much out of him. Eventually he says he wasn’t eating the dog (ie the flesh) but he wanted the blood warm – it's no good cold. As the film progresses, they begin to develop a relationship in which he can open up to her that little bit more, eventually suggesting he’d hunt humans if he could and her initial thought is that he has a delusion.

the stinger

She starts to read up on clinical vampirism, approaches some ‘real’ vampires for info and gets him to tell his story, which is about being caught in a battle (with swords) and hibernating to avoid those out to get him. Eventually she takes him to a doctor who finds, under his tongue, a hole that a barbed protuberance jabs out of. At this point she begins to realise that he is telling the truth, has developed a bond with him and seems all too willing to help him.

things get out of hand

The story is fairly simple, it also feels a little too lax around her motivations and, despite losing her previous ward, I felt her willingness to help Nathan demanded too much of a suspension of disbelief from the viewer. The issue wasn’t the performance, I think the character and narrative didn’t develop the attachment as strongly as they might have to allow us to accept that she would act the way she does. The film is, as I said at the head, dour but, I think, purposefully so. That said you are not going to watch this for its upbeat outlook. 5 out of 10 (and there is possibly a point for the stinger).

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Dreaded Light

I'd spotted a trailer for this film by director Mark MacNicol, dated to 2022 (according to Amazon, at time of writing undated on IMDb),  and I had my interest tweaked as there seemed to be reaction to sunlight and a mention of the “V” word in the trailer. 

What I watched was a taut, well shot thriller that touched into horror but, rather than go down the lines of gore, actually masterfully invoked an intensifying sense of the uncanny through its running time.

Rachel Flynn as Michelle

After an intriguing montage of scenes as the film opens, involving close shots of the grooming of a horse, we meet a father (Adam Robertson) and his daughter, Michelle (Rachel Flynn). She sits in front of a television which shows Nosferatu – the Vampyre as she recites the dialogue along with the film. This, of course, ties the film to the genre immediately and it is an interesting choice to use Herzog’s remake rather than the original film. To my mind it immediately helps invoke the sense of the uncanny that the vampire often represents.

hiding from the light

The incongruity of her, close to the TV, pulling her hoody up as he moves the curtains (despite it being night), and her rocking slightly backwards and forwards, matches the oddness of his actions as he says he is going to wash and strips in the kitchen and washes in the sink. Her action, hiding as the curtains threaten to allow a potential light into the room, also reminds us of the vampire, that connection underlined by the film she watches. He says that he is going to look for *him* again (their dog vanished three days before) and she goes with him but they part ways when she exclaims that the dog isn’t coming back.

Kirsty Strain as Jen

He gets to the indoor school of the stables he owns. A client who has been in for lessons, Jen (Kirsty Strain), is there and they make small talk. As he leaves, she says that she doesn’t normally do this but she has a message for him. With him confused, she explains that she is a medium and he reacts badly, accusing her of preying on the vulnerable and they part angrily. He has reacted that way because he has recently lost his wife to cancer and both him and Michelle seem to be coping poorly. He won’t go upstairs as it reminds him of her – hence washing in the kitchen sink and weeing in the garden.

Adam Robertson as the dad

For her part she has what the doctors believe is Heliophobia – a fear of light (sunlight in particular). However she goes further than that and, at one point, we see her use lotion on her hands because, she says, she forgot her gloves and she now has a rash. At one point he does make a barbed comment about her acting like a vampire. However, he starts to think there is something odd going on, especially when she threatens to kill herself but says “I’ll kill her” as though a third party refers to her body. In desperation he turns to Jen, asking forgiveness for his rudeness and desperate for her help…

manic

There isn’t much more to mention and to go further would spoil the film. There is a nice, deliberately built sense of the uncanny with Rachel Flynn’s performance really at the heart of it. Yes there is a freaky makeup moment but it is some of the quickly switched expressions that underpin the performance, with her offering at times sinister moments. But all three primaries make this work. There are scenes that sway the viewer to believe there is a psychosis (perhaps with both father and daughter), with the presence of Jen a reminder that there might be something more supernatural at play. Ultimately the vampire connections just help build that sense of the uncanny and frame the horror of the story in a familiar context, but this is a film worth watching.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

First Kill – Season 1 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

This Netflix series ran for eight episodes and, I have to admit, whilst on my watchlist I didn’t go immediately to it. When I did, I broke off and went back to it later (which doesn’t bode well for this review, I realise) and by the time I finished watching it the series had already been denied a second season and had been cancelled. I’m sorry to say that, despite some good things going for it, I can’t say I was surprised.

Calliope and Juliette

The series follows two main characters – Juliette Fairmont (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Calliope Burns (Imani Lewis, Vampires Vs the Bronx), known as Cal. They go to the same school, where Cal is the new girl and Juliette has a crush on her. Juliette is taking pills provided by her family to stave off symptoms as she heads towards her first kill – she is a born vampire. Cal, we discover, is from a family of monster hunters just moved by the hunter’s guild into the area.

staked

At a party, when they get to the point of their first kiss Juliette loses control and bites Cal as Cal stakes her. As things go, Juliette ends up fine – she is a Legacy Vampire, descended from Lilith and her grandmother (Polly Draper) is head of the matriarchal clans and protector of the serpent (presumably from Eden). So, Legacy Vampires can go in sunlight and are pretty much immortal, only silver proves an issue in that it burns. Cal’s bite marks vanish as a Legacy’s bite heals almost immediately.

Imani Lewis as Cal

The two girls draw close, despite it all (though Cal’s family believe that it is due to the bite, which ties victim to vampire), but it becomes clear that there are true feelings. Just in case we didn’t get the obvious analogy of star-crossed lovers from warring families, with one of them called Juliette, the programme lays it on thick with the school staging Romeo and Juliet. The great thing about this show, however, beyond the queer basis with a strong Black lead, was the chemistry between the two leads – it was believable.

Sarah Catherine Hook as Juliette

What was less believable was the world building. The viewer assumption was this was an urban fantasy where the supernatural is hidden from view (indeed, Juliette’s DA father (Will Swenson) and her sister (Gracie Dzienny) spend time hiding feeds) and the Burns family are unique in understanding the threat. Later there is a movement against monsters and we discover this is a world where monsters are well known and the town, at one point, was overrun and people couldn’t leave their homes at night. This felt bolted on and people reactions seemed false, therefore, not fitting the espoused paradigm. Indeed, late in the series the town has a shelter order, unless you happen to be characters going to a bar for plot related reasons, apparently. There is a feel of soap opera that cheapens the affair.

stretched mouth

What really let this down was the effects, however. The worst moment – a character eats another and we see the widening of a jaw, green eyes bits of cgi blood but no actual event. I get the budget might not spread that far but, if you are going to do it then you should consider how you’ll show it. A Korean series would have put the act on screen. I could have lived with the show cutting to black, after an approach of one character to another and then referencing but the noise, the non-dynamic nature of the scene – it was poor filmmaking and shows a lack of awareness of horror/the supernatural. Add to that awful CGI monsters that were clearly matted post-production and ill-textured, which doesn’t help either.

poorly matted cgi

That this is a doomed romance at heart wasn’t the part that put me off this – in fact that was the best aspect of the whole series. It was the ineptitude around the supernatural genre, the poor CGI, the poor world building etc. This might have had the best of intentions, and I get that budgets can be tight, but it just didn’t get there and the shame is that the two leads deserved a much stronger vehicle as they actually shone bright. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Le Bal de Dracula

A very short film, at just under 4-minutes, that was directed by Lucas Dupuy – this has a tremendous amount of style in the photography, forgoing anything other than a basic narrative (which is probably as well, given the length) for said style.

The film is set in Transylvania and we meet the Countess (Elo Cinquanta) and Count Dracula (Valentin Dupuy) who hold court with a group of vampires. A group of prisoners are brought before them. We see a flash of a bite and hear screams but then the Count asks the prisoners to dance.

the Countess and the Count

Will their fate be only to dance or is a more toothsome destiny in store? Not a difficult one to guess but you can see for yourself below. As I mentioned the photography (along with the lighting) for this one is quite sumptuous and, given its length, it doesn’t outstay its welcome. The imdb page is here.

Le Bal de Dracula from Elo Cinquanta on Vimeo.

30 days of Night: Blood-Stained Looking Glass (volume 2) - Review

Author: Steve Niles

Artwork: Christopher Mitten

First published: 2012 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Fright-master Steve Niles continues the all-new 30 Days of Night series!

As Alice Blood debates her future with the FBI, a new threat from the North comes to America. But as word of the Barrow Massacre reaches Los Angeles, Agent Blood knows she can no longer stay away from her duty. Something wicked is coming her way, and all the agents of Project Red will be unable to stem the bloody tide!

The review: I (belatedly) rather enjoyed the return to the 30 Days of Night universe in the first volume of this series. I wasn’t overly struck by the artwork (though it was not bad by any stretch) but visiting Eben and Stella again was like meeting old friends.

The subsequent volumes see a change in art direction with Christopher Mitten in the driving seat and whilst the style isn’t perhaps as detailed, it does have a dynamism to it that suits the vehicle. The volume starts with an attack on Barrow – but unlike the past, and despite the security in place, this one is devastating as the attacker is the one-time saviour of the town Eben. Stella was killed in the last volume and Eben has abandoned any pretence to humanity and embraced his vampire side fully.

From Barrow he aims to travel through to Los Angeles, building a vampire army and has his sights set on dominance.

Meanwhile Alice Blood, the FBI agent we met in the previous volume, struggles with some of the monstrous behaviours of her own Government.

This was a strong volume, preparing us for a showdown to come. The story wasn’t overly complex with a view to concentrating on action and horror. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Chupa – review

Director: Tom Hoover

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

This really is a low budget flick, the Tubi version being of a really low resolution – which I doubt impacted the experience too much. Yet it has a certain something about it and it is great when a low budget flick does that, when a film reaches beyond the sum of its parts. Does it mean it is good… not necessarily so but, in this case at least, it provides a solid entertainment if you know going in what you are going to get.

Of course, by the title you’d guess it was about El Chupacabra and you’d be right, sort of. However, we start with a car. It pulls up near woods and a man Dr Simon Westlake (Jim Lee Johnson) gets out…

Jim Lee Johnson as Westlake

In a house, a dog is interested in what’s occurring outside. The owner (Marci Paolucci) lets her out, the small dog runs out towards the woods and we see her through a red “chupa-vision”. The dog turns tail and runs back in. The owner asks several times what is out there (lady, the dog can’t answer) and then goes out to take a look for herself. She is attacked – though we see little of it, just a pov camera aimed towards her and the scream. Westlake drives away and, for sharp-eyed viewers, his presence does perhaps undermine the central twist later, at least a little.

lecture

We cut to conspiracy-theorist Seth Corralis (Russel Kunz) giving a lecture on El Chupacabra (one telling budget part, or perhaps a deliberate dig, was the fact that Seth’s artist impression slides are the most crudely drawn figures imaginable). After the lecture (having signed a book with the cover ripped off) he is talking about Men In Black to a couple of audience members when he is approached by a man in black and told there is someone wishing to speak to him. Oblivious of the irony (though the audience members are not) he meets a limo outside and is asked to join a taskforce being set up by the FBI to try and document a Chupacabra sighting.

meeting the team

The FBI person in charge, Grier (Dale Franks), has pulled in Marine Cpt. Lawrence (Pete Ferry) to be the field lead. Due to an operational faux pas his career is almost in tatters and he is forced on the mission. In the meeting is Westlake, who works with the FBI. They get to a lodge and we meet the rest of the team – rookie agents Angela (Tiffany Sandels) and Skip (Dan Sekanic), from the military Private Andy Johanson (Connor McGarvey) and not yet arrived (and forced into the team) animal behaviourist Dr Samantha Enright (Mary Mahoney). Also, along is FBI agent Frank Roundtree (Henry C Bishop). Whilst they assemble, we see a ranger (Aurelio Anastasio) killed by the Chupa in another part of the woods.

Jeffrey Lynn Hall as Gabriel

Their orders suggest they must be cut off from the world for the duration – no car keys, no cells phones and any comms/internet through a secure link via Quantico. They do find, later, the reports on the two victims that the coroner (Jack Bennett) has tried to bury and subsequently draft in Assistant coroner Dr Laura Coats (Jo McGarvey). She examined the bodies, which had throats ripped out, the blood gone, three distinct punctures in the torso and their innards liquidised. When Grier is told of this he drafts in a psychic, Gabriel (Jeffrey Lynn Hall), who has worked with the FBI in the past (and who Westlake actively dislikes). However, there is a suspicion that the creature might be too big to be a Chupacabra and they are not known for their attacks on humans…

finally revealed

So, the film has little in the way of budget and so sensibly keeps the creature hidden or just in indistinct flashes for the most part (it certainly does not look like the beast on the movie art). We do, at the end, see it in all its glory and it looks pretty darn naff so the choice was a good one. It also can shapeshift and take the form of humans (there is a conspiracy that it does this by drinking their DNA after liquidising the insides but then we see it in the form of someone still alive, and it can replicate wounds as well as natural features) and this also helps keep effects minimal. Actually, the practical effects for wounds is generally quite good.

chupa-vision

Acting-wise… I think it is best described as earnest. It isn’t winning awards but everyone seems to be giving their all. The story is ok but the narrative construction rambles a bit – the film is 1 hour 48 minutes and it's not that the plot is bloated so much as it takes a bit of a circuitous route and yet, again, it feels very earnest in what it is trying to do. I found myself surprised at the fact that I was not bored and wanted to stay with the film till the end, despite its limitations and that is great – there are plenty of high(er) budget films that don’t achieve that. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Frenzy 2

This short film, which comes in at just over 11-minutes, is the middle short of three directed by Chris R. Notarile that concentrate on the character Frenzy (Dani Scott) an immortal woman whose inability to die has, evidently, sent her mad. She seeks out that special someone who could end her life.

That is what’s happening at the beginning of the short, as we see her fighting a street thug (Dwight Taylor) who, when he fails to kill her, she murders.

She realises that she has been watched by a woman, Janet (Tess Speranza), and her bodyguard (Paul Anthony Turner) and also realises that the woman is not human. Janet reveals herself as a vampire. She has been following Frenzy’s career over the decades and has come to the conclusion that Frenzy has been cursed – something Frenzy had not actually considered.

Tess Speranza as Janet

Janet has an offer. She wants to take Frenzy and have the curse removed and then transferred to her. She wants to be actually immortal (and has a date with brunch and a suntan). Frenzy is not necessarily convinced but agrees to go with them – the threat of killing them, should Janet fail, hanging above them.

Dani Scott as Frenzy

The Frenzy shorts are good fun. I’m embedding the second one below – after all that is the one concerned with vampires – but if you go to the film’s YouTube page and click onto Blink500’s profile the other two episodes are also available.

The imdb page is here.

Day Shift – review

Director: J.J. Perry

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Made for Netflix, this feature was directed by J.J. Perry, a stunt coordinator who worked on John Wick: Chapter 2 and so the action sequences (especially the fights) are really nicely put together, as one would expect. However, this is not just an action flick and is listed as an action comedy and it perhaps falls a little flat in that ambition. It introduces some unusual lore but doesn’t explore that in the depth that might have pushed the film that little further.

break in

Staring in the San Fernando Valley, the camera takes in LA sights before following a pool cleaner’s truck. The truck is driven by Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) and we see him cleaning a pool until he spots a car leave a nearby house and takes a box of cleaning products across to the other house. The crate has a false bottom and he retrieves weapons and house-breaking equipment.

revealed as a vampire

Inside the house he starts to look around, setting a wire across a doorway and is in a bedroom when an old lady (Danielle Kennedy) walks in from the bathroom area and asks what he is doing in her house. He shoots her, through a pillow, with his shotgun. She starts twitching and twisting, standing, her wound healing and her fangs on show. There follows a long fight sequence, during which Bud is pierced with a rogue piece of glass that he pulls from his shoulder but, eventually, he stakes and beheads her. A male vampire runs in towards him but the earlier set wire decapitates him. Bud retrieves their fangs.

Karla Souza as Audrey

At a building site a vampire is chained down in the foundations, burning and regenerating in the sun. He is watched by Audrey (Karla Souza) who says he is of the old ways and she represents the new ways. She holds her arm out of the shade of her umbrella and the flesh burns slightly. She allows the vampire to be encased in concreate. We see a sign that suggests she is a realtor and we later hear about her product, which is a suncream that allows daylight exposure, along with her plan to buy up properties around the city and embed vampires everywhere as a prelude to taking the city.

Jamie Foxx as Bud

Bud goes home and showers, supergluing the wound from the glass and rubbing an orange powder into his skin. This is later explained as a home-made concoction, necessary as vampires release a gas on expiration that attracts other vampires. There is virtually nothing done with this as a piece of lore, bar a weakly delivered gag about not getting it in an intimate place. Bud then picks his daughter, Paige (Zion Broadnax), up from school, takes her for frozen yoghurt and then takes her to his estranged wife’s house. There he discovers that Jocelyn (Meagan Good) intends to sell the family home and move her and Paige to Florida – Bud tries to convince her otherwise but unless he comes up with $10k for school tuition and braces in a week she’s going.

Snoop Dogg as Big John

This, then, is the story. Bud needs to make money. The money in vampire hunting is in the fangs (later we hear that removal of fangs condemns a vampire as it is the one part of their body they can’t regenerate. It doesn’t explain why as they might be convenient for feeding but there are other ways to open a vein) and the older the vampire, the more valuable the fangs. He goes to a trader, Troy (Peter Stormare), but the money he offers is too low. Bud has to look to re-join the Union (of vampire hunters) – an organisation he was removed from due to code violations. Top hunter Big John (Snoop Dogg) vouches for him but he is told to take bureaucrat Seth (Dave Franco) with him (who is there to catch him out). It also turns out that the old lady was Audrey’s natural daughter and she has Bud’s scent from the glass with his blood on it.

odd couple

So, whilst neither this, nor the film I will subsequently mention, are cop movies, this is essentially a buddy cop film in format. Unfortunately, the scriptwriters could have well done to watch Midnight Run (1988) prior to writing this because, for me, that sets the benchmark for an odd couple comedy in that genre and this falls very short of that benchmark. Neither Foxx nor Franco have a huge amount to work with and they never get the chemistry running that the older film had in spades. Foxx does what he can but his character often just comes across as overly gobby and a tad obnoxious, despite his best efforts, and that lets the film down. That said, Foxx works the action well and it isn’t that his performance is bad, but the character is written, if not weakly, then without much depth.

plenty of action

The other thing that lets it down is superficial lore. So, we get the “death gas” but no real use of it, the film deliberately shows us some grenades and then makes Bud explicitly describe them as garlic grenades (and he doesn’t know if they’ll work) but then doesn’t use them. A vampire, Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), turned by Audrey is sent as a honey trap to discover Bud’s weaknesses, but they have a conversation that reveals nothing of use and makes the ploy dramatically pointless. When Bud confronts Heather later, she says she had no choice as Audrey made her (touching the megatext idea that a vampire controls those they turn) but she then immediately turns good and Bud accepts her (and another vampire) as they go against Audrey. There are five types of vampires but nothing of meaning is done with that except to suggest that an uber-vampire (type not age) can survive beheading. The five types should not coexist and are found in a nest together but that does not lead to any detective work.

Big John has big guns

There are references to vampire films with a mention of the Twilight franchise that actually didn’t attack the series, which is a refreshing change, and a nice the Lost Boys reference at the end of the film. In a world-building sense, one feels the writers had an idea of what they wanted to do but perhaps that world isn’t as well communicated as it should have been. However, whilst I may have pointed out failings, one can say that the film was fun in an action sense – especially around the fight sequences. It is close to two hours (notwithstanding almost nine minutes of credits) and it didn’t drag because of those sequences. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Blood of the Dinosaurs

This is a 19-minute short, first released in 2021 and currently doing the festival circuit. In fact, it was due to the occasion of it being featured in the 2022 HollyShorts Film Festival that director Joe Badon contacted me and asked whether I wanted to run something based on the film. A quick look at the trailer and I picked up on a vampiric element.

The film itself is a surreal, and in places disturbing, montage of imagery and concepts that serves as a prequel to an upcoming Badon project entitled the Wheel of Heaven, and this film is bookended with, at the head, the director being asked what his film is about and talking, at the end, with an actress about her character.

opening

Following the opening question, the film uses plastic dinosaurs to recreate their extinction event before we go to the public broadcasting service kid’s show “Uncle Bobbo’s Christmas Kwanzaa Happy Hanukah Winter Solstice Annual Sacrifice Holiday Special!” Uncle Bobbo (Vincent Stalba) is truly disturbing and played to perfection by Stalba. But the strangeness does not end with the show and there are so many wtf moments but the viewer is drawn in despite it all.

Grandpa Univerese

So, why inclusion here. When Uncle Bobbo is explaining what oil is and how we suck it out of the ground, offering the creepiest sucking sound since… well ever… we get the appearance of a puppet character called Grandpa Universe (John Davis), whose form is based on Count Orlok. He appears for a short period (reappearing again later, just for a moment) and it is the fleeting visitation that has lead to this honourable mention. Overall, Joe Baddon has managed to create something unique and truly uncanny and it is worth a watch if you can get to see it. The imdb page is here.

Renfield: Slave of Dracula

Author: Barbara Hambly

First Published: 2006

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: A fresh take on Bram Stoker's Dracula focuses on the obsessive devotion of Renfield to his vampire master, embarking on a personal mission to hunt down Van Helsing and his companions that sets the stage for the ultimate confrontation between the living and the undead and takes him from Dracula's castle into the horrific darkness of his own mind.

The review: Re-visiting the Dracula story from the point of view of Renfield has been done before – most notably Tim Lucas’ the Book of Renfield, which was published just the year before this novel. I missed this one at the time of publication, but have now read it and what we have is a solid reimagining that actually (sparingly) incorporates some of Stoker’s text and becomes almost a semi-epistolary novel, with some of Seward’s notes, Renfield’s tallies (of creatures devoured) and letters to his wife (which we later realise were never written, simply composed in his mind). The book also, then, adds in standard prose – which has the advantage of being able to delve into detail with a greater ease.

The lore, mostly, follows Stoker (though the author changes the nature of the earth the vampire must sleep in) and she actively makes Dracula the historic Vlad Ţepeş. We get more of a view of Seward’s (failing) attempt to court Lucy but the biggest change is in the character and background of Renfield, shifted from colourful but 2-dimensional psychic barometer to an actual character – as one would expect from a book based on him. We also get a(n unsanctioned) incursion into Britain by the Brides, angry at being abandoned, and jealous of the idea that the Count is creating new vampire brides. One of the Brides is moulded into a more rounded character also – but the other two remain 2-dimensional.

Whilst the prose is good and the story fits well into the source material, I do have to say I preferred Lucas’ novel. That said, I’m not suggesting that this is a poor cousin, just not my favourite of the two. 6.5 out of 10.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Mutant Vampires from the Planet Neptune – review

Director: Calvin Morie McCarthy

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

With a title like this we can expect some B movie beats and we certainly get them with this indie offering. It perhaps offers a little less in the way of expected mayhem but it tries its hardest, but is trying actually enough? Read on…

The film starts with Billy (Rollyn Stafford) and his gal camping and fooling in the woods. Overhead what looks like a meteorite shoots through the skies (misidentified throughout as a meteor) and crashes into the woods, which Billy’s gal notices but they are quickly fooling around again.

into the tent

At the crash site we see that it is actually a spaceship and a figure (Steve Larkin) in a spacesuit appears. Back in the tent the fooling around continues but is then interrupted as a branch is (deliberately) broken. Billy gets sent out with a knife but a passing escaped asylum patient (Calvin Morie McCarthy) puts an axe in his head. The axe murderer goes after the gal but the spaceman – now without helmet and looking a tad batlike in features – grabs the axeman.

Yuri's friends

In the city Starr (Jax Kellington) meets up with friend Cassi (Chelsey Falbo) and they go and get coffee. Starr is in a relationship with Buzz (Luke William Nelson) and Cassi has been dating Buzz’ best friend Yuri (Alex Onda) for a couple of months – though they haven’t taken things to a physical level. Buzz and Yuri are doing a stocktake for the camping trip they aim to go on – the essentials being booze and drugs, optional items being actual camping gear. They go and pick the women up.

Julene Fontaine as Larissa

Also in the car is Larissa (Julene Fontaine), Yuri’s bookish little sister who is currently reading Dracula. They head into the mountains, smoking dope as they go (with the exception of Larissa). At this point we have seen one particular issue with the film already – extraneous detail. For instance, I suppose the axe murderer at the head of the film was meant to be funny but it was an addition too far. Simply using the vampire would have worked better.

Alex Onda as Yuri

Likewise the detail around the characters – I think there was an attempt to build character but it was detail without character building. Yuri has a story about being lost in the mountains but, despite itself, it adds nothing to character. When at the cabin they are staying in, Larissa hears Starr bad-mouthing her for being boring and immediately joins in with the boozing (that might happen, true) but suddenly, in a later scene, just goes to bed mad at the comments Starr made. The details needed to dovetail into character and action and they didn’t seem to and the characters remained fairly two-dimensional.

eye mojo

The film itself spends a long time with the vampire following the gang (and other people, and we see through its purple vision) but it all takes too long. There is a random attack on hikers (and a chopped off penis) but it adds not much to the proceedings. There is a pace sapping montage scene on the hike and a further one of them partying. Eventually Larissa bogs off, goes for a bath (to provide a gratuitous boob shot I suspect) and to read Dracula. Out of the bath she sees something (the vampire) from her window and goes outside to investigate… this is perilously close to the end of the film and so the denouement of the attack on the cabin/friends is rushed and pretty tension free. It is also strange as there is mist that comes under her door, indoors, but the vampire is still outside. In the same scene they put a light across the vampire’s eyes, ala Dracula but there is no actual hint that they are hypnotic.

a bite

It’s a shame as, with a bit more connectivity to the plot and less stereotype, the characters could have been built up. Alex Onda, in particular, came across as personable and there might have been a good tension built with a protracted siege (the space vampire does not appear to have much in the way of tech despite having come in a space ship, so the siege could have been drawn out). Rather we get an attack on a random redneck threesome – drawn for humour, but drawing away from any focus. We see the vampire bite a neck and it is intimated (though not shown) that it laps blood from an axed skull. There is absolutely no background to the vampire, though one character stumbles onto what appears to be a communication link, and so we know there are other vampires that we see through that. The creature sfx actually works well in a B sort of way. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.