Short: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Wax Works

A Universal cartoon from 1934, which was directed by Walter Lantz, who also voiced Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, this sees a little boy (Bernice Hansen) abandoned in a basket on the doorstep of Oswald’s wax museum. At first he wants to put the lad back out in the storm but to no avail and so he takes him in.

Dracula

In the night the boy needs the toilet and then discovers that the waxworks have come to life. Which is great when it is Napoleon, Groucho and Romeo and Juliette but not so great when he is pulled into the Horror Chamber by the Hunchback of Notre Dame and is spooked by various characters including Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula. My thanks to Kim Newman who featured this on his Daily Dracula feature. The imdb page is here.

Salvación – review

Director: Denise Castro

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

I have previously reviewed the Denise Castro film Drácula de Denise Castro and I had heard of this film when I did, but the Salvación DVD seemed to be (according to Amazon) without English subs. It stayed on my radar (and wishlist) and recently appeared cheap as a second-hand copy and so I ordered it for the collection and, to my delight, it actually does have English subs. It also has a couple of vampire shorts by Castro that I’ll cover separately.

This is a very different film to the to the other feature, which was very meta. This is actually a fairly standard narrative, which works well.

fainted

We start with Cris (Marina Botí) who has got home carrying a hot chocolate when she collapses. Later her mom, Ana (Laura Yuste), gets home and finds her on the ground. When Cris come round she is in a hospital bed with a drip. Ana says that she had fainted and the drip is giving her medicine. Cris wants to leave and Ana promises soon but then a doctor takes her out to speak to her. Cris has a congenital heart condition and it has not fixed itself and she needs to remain in hospital for further tests (which will later confirm that she needs an operation).

meeting Victor

That night, with Ana asleep in the room, Cris gets her cardigan and bag and sneaks out. She notices pills on the corridor floor that roll away, unnaturally, and she follows them down the corridor to a room that has restricted access. She goes in and sees a young man (Ricard Balada, Drácula de Denise Castro) in bed. They speak and he tells her that he is a vampire (later he will give his name as Victor). Just a comment on age, Cris is drawn as thirteen years old and looks around that age. Victor, it is suggested, is the same age but actor Ricard Balada looks the young adult he is. Whilst their romance is chaste it feels slightly off.

hiding on the ceiling

So, is Victor a vampire? His father (Francesc Pagès), met towards the end of the film, suggests his son is anaemic but calls himself a vampire. We, however, see powers. When a night nurse comes in he hides Cris by telekinetically lifting her to the ceiling and we also see him take over the mind of the same nurse and make her take a sleeping pill. We see him drink blood from the blood bank and also from a sleeping girl, who does not wake up whilst he feeds. However the film can be interpreted in a couple of ways, one might be he is really a vampire, another that the more supernatural events are a shared delusion or fantasy by the pair and it is acting like a vampire coupled with a belief in them.

feeding on blood

The film works towards Cris having her operation and, in some respects, Victor is the pathway to escape her anxieties – anxieties exaggerated by the well-meaning but inciteful older cancer patient Berta (Alzira Gómez). There is not much in the way of lore – blood drinking and immortality (a suggestion undermined by his illness), a sharing of blood being needed to turn and we do see burning in sunlight but within a dream sequence. Cris, in some respects, is made a vampire by her operation – her heart stopping during surgery meaning she is dead and returns, blood needed during surgery is taking blood from another.

Ana and Chris

Aside from the inappropriateness of the perceived age difference (despite, as I say, the story suggesting them as the same age) this is a well-constructed drama (and it is a drama, not a horror at all). The acting is believable, the story makes a narrative sense and the more outlandish aspects (of being a vampire) work in that contested space of interpretation (of him being what he suggests and of it being a shared delusion/fantasy). This was a solid little movie. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon UK

#DRCL midnight children, Vol. 1 – review

Art and story: Shin'ichi Sakamoto

First published: 2023 (UK)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Dracula meets manga in this surreally beautiful and chilling retelling of Bram Stoker’s quintessential horror classic.

In this beautiful, evocative, and often surreal retelling of Dracula, a fearsome enemy comes from the east, bringing with it horrors the likes of which have never been seen in the British Empire. Standing opposed are Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray and her stalwart companions, united in a cabal that eclipses gender, nationality, and station until they can achieve victory.

The work of the devil dashes Russian cargo ship the Demeter upon the cliffs of Whitby Harbour, unleashing a demonic plague onto the unsuspecting students of Whitby School. Meanwhile, Mina struggles to find her place as the only girl at the male-dominated academy. She will have to prove herself when this unspeakable evil lays claim to her beloved companion Lucy Westerna.

vampiric vines

The review: I spotted this hardback volume, the first of a series, and was struck by the artwork. This is a retelling, a reimagination even, of Dracula and begins with the Demeter. It starts with the mate going to the captain having seen a shadowy figure on deck. The captain notices a growth covering the mate’s back, pulls on it and rips away moss, growing on him, the roots penetrating into his flesh, his blood… and I was hooked. This, for me, is a rewilding of the tale. Back to taking on the cargo and the ship has both several crates with the adornment D as well as plants bound for England. A Romanian sailor tastes the earth in one of the 'D' crates (it is rotten and he is now tainted), a cut hand drips blood, which causes sprouts to suddenly grow from the tainted soil. Eventually, with the voyage having taken a dark turn, the captain realises that indentations in the crates can be positioned to show a figure – as though Dracula is disaggregated across the crates. Those who are tainted attack the rest of the crew, as do vines that come from the crates, the captain is saved by his cross.

It is a stunning, wild opening with imagination playing with the contagion of vampirism in a wonderful way. The Crew of Light in this are all at a school in Whitby but are constructed differently from the novel; Arthur is still son of Lord Godalming though school age, Quincy is African American and Joe Sewa is Japanese. They all look down on Mina – a working class Lancashire lass, whose humble beginnings and gender draws derision (she is the first female student at the school, on a scholarship). Jonathan only appears in flashback, where he is a child in a wheelchair with Mina and may be her brother, and is mentioned as being in Transylvania, There is also Luke, drawn with a feminine form but coded male. At night Luke's spirit, Lucy, takes over and is coded female and friends with Mina (something not remembered when Luke) this adds a gender fluidity to the character and a queering to the attraction that Arthur feels. Joe looks after a student, Renfield, who is chained in his room and not only drawn female but also drawn wearing a nun’s habit. As you can tell this is a very different and surreal look at the story. Dracula, when we eventually see him, is almost a chthonic figure, a chaos taking form.

The art is magnificent all the way through, the story surreal and yet recognisably Dracula, the use of gender, class and race is interesting and will lead to the knowledge that the #DRCL infection “shall spread regardless of race, station, sex, or age” and it is likely that stepping beyond these distinctions will be needed to combat it. I am smitten. 8.5 out of 10.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Zombie World – first look

Director: ? (Fang Yinghua)

Release date: Possibly 2020

Contains spoilers

This is one of a slew of Chinese films, running in at just over an hour, that have appeared on YouTube through a couple of channels. The film, at time of writing, has no IMDb page. The Q1Q2 YouTube posting (now deleted) was 2020, and so that is what I have used as a date but this may be wrong. The Moxi movie channel page suggests that Fang Yinghua is the director. There is a director of that name (who did a couple of the Detective Dee films) but whether it is the same director or just the name used in vain I don’t know. The film is called Jiāngshī Shìjiè, with the Jiāngshī translated to zombie rather than vampire, but these are definitely kyonsi (to use a Japanese derivative of the word, and the word I have consistently used on TMtV).

Now, I will look at the film but I have decided a fully scored review is unfair as, whilst the film is usefully hard-subtitled, the English is a literally translation, without thought of form or sense and this makes the film hard to follow.

lined up

The film starts with a group of kyonsi hopping through woods and then lining up. We here a voice address them and already the subtitles make things difficult, confused even. It seems that humans are coming and that the damage was done to the kyonsi (and their king) 100 years before. It isn’t clear as to whether the subsequent Taoist attack is what they referred to but one of their number is protected and sent somewhere (equally, it isn’t clear if he is turned human and sent to the future or past, or just turned human). His mission is to kill the Taoist and his daughter, thus restoring the kyonsi king.

the robbers

So he wakes on a road, to the sound of weeping and mourning from nearby graves. He walks into town and is confronted by three robbers but is rescued by an intervention from Hong Pei Ling (known as Linger), the daughter of the Taoist priest Hong Tian Xiang. The robbers vow to get him later and he goes with her, saying he is looking for family as his parents are dead. She takes him to a house and suggests he bathes (and then is embarrassed when she later walks in on him).

Hong Pei Ling

His name is interesting, suggested at one point as Ah Rong it often comes up in the subtitles as Aaron. She gives him food once out of the bath and he questions what it is, to be told it is gelatinous rice (or sticky rice). He, of course, doesn’t eat it as this is a traditional anti-kyonsi foodstuff and, indeed, it was used due to the kyonsi attacks in the area. He has given the family name Qin as his distant uncle’s name (the name of the kyonsi king, and the same actor plays both roles), and he is introduced to a man of that name and calls him uncle. When her father arrives he realises that Linger and her dad are those he is meant to kill.

Kyonsi King

He does try to attack her a couple of times but always stops himself, due to circumstance, and – of course – with him currently human he falls in love with her. We get a group of kyonsi hunting police who are the comedic element in the film (though the dialogue based comedy falls flat due to the literal translation) and when they (nearly) capture a lone kyonsi, which then seems to bat off the Taoist’s moves, it manages to transport Ah Rong away, so they can have a conflab – in subtitled growls. He fakes an injury at that point, leading to being made to bathe in rice water (which steams when he is in it).

conversing with the kyonsi

I finally want to mention the ending, which seems to jump to a point where the Taoists (though perhaps they are no longer of that religion) have captured a kyonsi – or monster – in the graveyard and Linger is there in uniform with a troop also in uniforms. She suggests that the communists are going to wipe out all freaks and monsters and they lead a ‘burn him' chant, after which the film ends – which I guess was a little bit of pro-government posturing at the end of the film. Beyond the rather strange ability to appear as human, the lore sees black dog blood and sticky rice being used, prayer scrolls deployed (at the end of the film) and the kyonsi cops dressing as vampires and using kyonsi oil so they appear not to be human to the actual vampires.

Short Film: Jackal

This is a 12-minute short film, released in 2022 and directed by Will Patrick Roberts. My thanks to Everlost for putting me on to it.

It begins with the famous quotation from Bürger’s poem Lenore, “Denn Die Todten Reiten Schnell” {for the dead travel fast}, which is forever embedded into the vampire genre as Stoker quotes it in Dracula. Speaking of whom, we then see the caped figure of the Count (Samuel Falkingham). The year is 1822 and we are in the Land of the Phantoms (taken from Nosferatu) and we see a cloaked figure walking the landscape.

Alysia Dyke as Alina

As he enters a forest a man (Landon Sweeney) says “don’t move”. The man turns, removing his hood and revealing his face. He is Jacques (Bobby Sirrah) and he is less than impressed with the old-fashioned pistol aimed at him. The man doesn’t see a woman, Alina (Alysia Dyke), approach from behind and strike at him with a branch and once more to ensure he stays down. She picks up the flintlock and, despite protestation from Jacques, she shoots him.

Samuel Falkingham as the Count

There are more men in the woods and Jacques takes her through to a cave to hide. He knows the area and eventually tells her that the place used to be his home. He and his brother were imprisoned as conspirators but his captors needed a soldier who knew the land. His brother will be released if he succeeds in assassinating a mad Count. Alina is looking to escape but the Count seems to talk to her in her sleep, night is setting and folk may not be whom they seem…

The imdb page is here.

Interesting Short: Rumors

As mentioned in my look at the Soichi collection, Rumors was a Sochi story by Junji Ito. It was featured in Souichi's Diary of Curses, which was published in 1997, but I have seen a date of original publication of 1995 also.

In the story Soichi discovers the power of rumours, spreading them to make himself popular and also, part way through the story, he sees an advert featuring Miss Fuchi from Fashion Model and spreads the rumour that she is in town (he actually seems rather impressed with her pictures in the magazine). The story of her being in town, within the rumour, takes on a form not dissimilar to the urban legend of Kuchisake-onna, the slit-mouthed woman (indeed a teacher references that urban legend). When we see her mouth in the telling of the story by the schoolkids she has side fangs rather than her actual maw of shark teeth.

detail

Her actual appearance in the comic is at the end of the story. Soichi has spread a rumour that the swamps nearby are good for beauty if one bathes in them, to get revenge on Midori, a girl who slighted him. However, Miss Fuchi is actually in the swamp and emerges from the waters. This story is worth mentioning as she is unusually tall in Fashion Model but in this story she is a giant and this would fit in with the vampire ability, noted in Dracula, “he can grow and become small”. As the story ends she notes that Soichi’s “flesh looks tender and tasty”...

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Mandrake – review

Director: Tripp Reed

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

First things first, this is a Syfy film and so you can gauge the quality on that fact. I watched it primarily because I thought it might fall into the realm of vampiric plants and it does, kind of, it is arguably a vampiric landscape but… And there is a but… we might see some death by plant but there is little indication of blood drinking. The dialogue does steer us that way though.

It starts with a woman running through the jungle. After a while she backtracks carefully, to hide her retreat by stepping backwards onto her footprints and then peels off to the side. She is being hunted by two somethings and they appear to be monstrous – later they are revealed to be Yambarri (the indigenous tribe) warriors in elaborate helmets etc. Despite her ruse she is caught.

the team

A group of travellers arrive at a small Latin American airport, they have been paid to help locate treasure in the jungle and so one, Lin (Wayne Pére), is an archaeologist and another, Carla (Jon Mack, Drakul), an anthropologist (and linguist). The third is a soldier for hire, McCall (Max Martini), and it is he that the border guard are not happy about until their contact, Santiago (Nick Gomez, Vampire Riderz & Vampires Suck), greases the wheels. The area they are heading in to is contested ground between government and rebels but the rebel leader has given an undertaking to be out of the area for a couple of days.

the dagger

They don’t head to basecamp, rather they are sent orders to go straight to the area where the artifact they are looking for is meant to be. That artifact is a conquistador’s dagger that the businessman who has bankrolled the expedition, Harry Vargas (Benito Martinez), covets as it belonged to an ancestor. They reach the area and find an indigenous graveyard and find the one tomb mispositioned (laying North/South rather than East/West. It has glyphs on the stonework but Lin doesn’t wait for Carla to translate and opens the tomb. Inside is the remains of the conquistador and the dagger buried in the position of the heart.

stabbed by vine

Removing the dagger causes something like a seismic shock to hit the area, Lin ends up strung up in a trap and Yambarri warriors attack them. The group gets split up and McCall is dismissive of reports of the jungle attacking the others – until he sees it himself. So, what’s happened? The story as it comes out is the Yambarri were invaded by the conquistadors and so their shamans summoned something to save them. This appears to be the jungle brought to life in the form of a kind of plant/animal hybrid. Having said that it also appears that the jungle itself attacks the invaders. However the creature was a killing machine attacking invaders and Yambarri alike and so they created a totem using the hilt of the conquistador’s knife attached to a Yambarri blade and, by stabbing the invader in the heart, they made the beast dormant. Removing the blade awakens it… so kind of a stake equivalent but using sympathetic magic (stabbing a sacrifice rather than the creature itself).

sacrifice

This doesn’t quite add up as the woman from the beginning was part of a team sent in first (that our guys didn’t know about). The team are dead and she was held – and then sacrificed to the creature (though, again it might be more to the jungle itself) once it was awakened but the inference was they sacrificed outsiders anyway. The sacrifice sees them tied to a sacrificial stone, the shaman (J. LaRose) summoning the creature and vines cocooning the victim who is subsequently ripped in half by the vines.

J. LaRose as the shaman

What we do not see is blood drinking, however we get reference to it. The shaman, when telling the backstory, translated by Carla, suggested the creature was summoned to drink the blood of the invaders. The warning glyphs mention this too but say that the jungle feeds on the blood of invaders. The team, at one point, use fire, which it doesn’t like but it doesn’t kill it (and as an avatar of the jungle, if that’s what it is, then it wouldn’t) – ultimately, they must find a way to make it dormant again. A couple of points, reminiscent of vampiric plant film Ruins had the area devoid of animal and bird noise and a person stabbed by a vine subsequently having vines moving below the skin.

the creature

It isn’t a great film, the creature cgi looks poor for a start, and it has some awful moments – such as Carla attending to a leg wound (where the vine has stabbed into a character) whilst saying she knows about field dressings and then applying a tourniquet below the wound rather than above. We also get a moment where a camp worker hears something in the undergrowth (that sounded like Keyop from Battle of the Planets) and is grabbed and dragged off. Was it the Yambarri or the jungle itself? The film doesn’t say. Incidentally the film didn’t seem to mention the (not indigenous) mandrake of the title, so I’m not sure why the film has the title it does. However, as a Syfy flick it is about right. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Woman Eater – review

Director: Charles Saunders

Release date: 1958

Contains spoilers

Another film I have to thank Simon Bacon for; this is an obscure British horror flick and has an interesting premise, a plot hole that a fleet of London buses can pass through and more 50s misogyny and casual racism attached to it than you can shake a stick at.

Not that it’s a totally terrible film, though this is mostly down to a sterling central performance by George Coulouris who plays the central antagonist role.

at the Explorer's Club

It starts off with Dr Moran (George Coulouris, Tower of Evil & A Clockwork Orange) going to the Explorer’s Club. He tells the story given by a dying explorer of a tribe in the Amazon, probably Inca in origin (who, of course, did not inhabit the Amazon Basin), who had a "juju" that could return the dead to life, and he was going out there the next week. He persuades a young man to go with him, despite another explorer warning that Moran is a strange fellow.

Marpessa Dawn as the sacrifice

In the jungle and Moran has jungle fever but they press on. They get to a clearing where a ceremony takes place. A native, Tanga (Jimmy Vaughn), plays Bongos as a witchdoctor dances and a woman (Marpessa Dawn) is mesmerised. The young Englishman charges in to stop the ceremony and gets a spear in the chest. The mesmerised woman is led forward to a tree with grasping arms and screams… An undisclosed amount of time later and other Englishmen recover Moran, now deep in jungle fever, and take him home. So, racism… it lies in the fact that the film codes anyone not white as part of a homogenous whole… there were Amazon tribes-people clearly of African heritage, the Incas, as mentioned, did not live in that part of South America and Juju itself is a term from Central and West Africa.

Jimmy Vaughn as Tanga

Anyway. Five-years later, in England and Tanga is playing the tom toms again, but in Dr Moran’s basement/laboratory and a woman is mesmerised until the moment before she is thrown into the grasping arms of the carnivorous tree. How Tanga and the tree came to be in England and more importantly why Tanga is working with Moran are points never answered – it becomes, however, the central plot hole as Tanga is, it transpires, only playing along with Moran. Moran for his part is having Tanga extract a fluid from the tree – produced after it has devoured a woman – which will bring the dead to life. He is then trying to boost its efficiency and testing it on a disembodied heart.

Jack and Sally

Moran is a mad scientist, yes, but also a representation of the misogyny in the film. He states at one point, when talking about his goal and the women he is sacrificing, “What's a few worthless lives compared to what I'm giving the world. It's turning death into life.” Women, to him, are worthless then and he treats his ex-lover turned housekeeper, Margaret (Joyce Gregg), with absolute disdain. Into the household comes Sally (Vera Day), a young lady looking for work. She is treated shoddily by her recently met beau Jack (Peter Forbes-Robertson) but agrees to marry him (though Moran has designs on her himself). The police are looking for a missing girl as well.

tree with victim

The tree is, one suggests, vampiric vegetation. It eats people, yes, but is more than just carnivorous as Moran suggests that those eaten become one with the tree. It then, as mentioned, produces a liquid that can bring the dead back to life. What Moran does not know is that Tanga and his people have only revealed half the secret and the body returns but not the mind – creating a zombie. Fire is effective against the plant given its nature. The plant does not give an indication, in film, of being conscious or sentient but it doesn’t attack the men when stood by it and only seems to go for women. It is worshipped by Tanga and his people as a God (so, again, how did Moran manage to get it). Despite the serious issues, however, there is fun to be had and George Coulouris, as mentioned, gives a sterling and deranged central performance. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

The Ruins – review

Director: Carter Smith

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

Thanks to Simon Bacon who put me on to this, suggesting it contains “all manner of vampy vegetation”. Based on a novel by Scott B Smith this does, in my opinion, if not owe a debt, certainly brings H G Wells’ The Flowering of the Strange Orchid to mind. That is no bad thing.

The film begins with a woman in the dark, terrified and alone. Soon something pulls her deeper into the dark. After scenes of rain forest we are by the pool in Mexico where best friends Amy (Jena Malone, the Neon Demon) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) are with their boyfriends Jeff (Jonathan Tucker, Masters of Horror - Dance of the Dead) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore).

Jena Malone as Amy

Amy realises she has lost one of her favourite earrings when German tourist Mathias (Joe Anderson, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2) approaches with it. They get talking and he mentions being there with his brother who has gone off with an archaeologist to see a Mayan temple that isn’t on the maps and he is going out to find them the next day. He invites the gang along. That night Amy gets very drunk and, when Jeff goes to bed, dances with and then tries to kiss Mathias until Stacy stops her.

the ruins

The next day Amy is rather ill and doesn’t want to go but Jeff persuades her. They travel by bus, Greek Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas) going with them (his fellow travellers left behind as they are worse for wear after a boozy night). They take a taxi (read pickup truck) the rest of the way, the reticence of the taxi driver (Patricio Almeida Rodriguez) overcome by money. They are dropped by Heinrich’s truck and make their way on foot – Amy, in flipflops, not impressed. By a river they see a couple of Mayan girls on a cliff above them and Mathias moves foliage revealing a hidden path (the nature of it giving Amy bad vibes). At the end of the path they reach the pyramid, which is covered in vines with red flowers, with only the steps upwards clear.

the Mayans

They move to it when a horseman (Sergio Calderón) rides in. He dismounts and starts yelling in Maya language whilst waving a gun. More armed riders arrive and the gang desperately try to communicate. Amy takes a snap of him and he becomes angrier and Dimitri takes the camera and tries to take it to him but, as he approaches, a bowman fires an arrow into him and the leader shoots him in the head. The gang run up the pyramid and find the archaeologists’ camp, but no people, on the top and a shaft down into the structure. At the foot of the structure more Mayans arrive and create a camp. So, what’s going on?

at the top

As the story progresses, we discover that the vines are vampiric, and intelligent it would seem. They cover the pyramid, encroaching onto the top, and are also lining the shaft and spread throughout the inner temple – one might question how, given the lack of sunlight, but it is as well to read that the consumption of blood replaces the need for photosynthesis. The vines themselves seem to have spread – by touch – spores onto the clothing of the gang, which is growing like mold. The Mayan villagers are essentially quarantining the gang to stop any spread (we see them salt the earth around the pyramid), they kill if one of the quarantined move away from the pyramid but otherwise are content to leave them to the vines.

stealing amputated legs

The vines are fast moving and, in the night, Stacy gets one wrapped round her leg and feeding from a wound she sustained. They think they pull the vine out of the wound but later we see tendrils moving under the skin and spreading. Mathias breaks his back early on and Jeff (a med school student) decides he needs to amputate his injured and vine attacked legs (after incorrectly suggesting septicaemia is a bone issue). As soon as the lower limbs are removed (below the knees) vines reach out, grab the limbs and pull them away.

sucked dry

The vines can also mimic, through the flowers vibrating, luring into a mass of them by emulating a cell phone ring (which they believe is Heinrich’s) and also emulating voices and other sounds. It seemed that they were also able to manipulate Stacy, once inside her, making her think she hears the sound of Eric and Amy having sex (or possibly that was simply the result of her descending into madness because of the things moving inside her). We do, at one point, see the archaeologist who seems drained to a dried-up husk – so at times we get a sense of flesh eating but at others a sense that it is the bodily fluids (primarily the blood) that are wanted. There is an observation that birds and animals avoid the pyramid and one wonders then (given its remoteness and lack of knowledge of its whereabouts) how the vines manage to sustain life – they might fall back on photosynthesis perhaps, but it isn’t a question addressed in the film.

sent mad

This was actually rather fun and one I hadn’t really considered for watching until Simon mentioned it. Of course, it is good to see vampiric plants once in a while and I think this should get 6 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Up-coming: Plant Week

For the next week on TMtV I will be concentrating on three films that fall under the banner of Vampiric Plants. Plants and vampires being conflated is nothing new. In folklore, ethnologist Tatomir Vukanović suggested that there was a belief in vampire watermelons. His findings (reprinted in Jan L. Perkowski’s Vampire Lore) suggested:

The belief in vampires of plant origin occurs among Gs. [Gypsies] who belong to the Mosl. faith in KM [Kosovo-Metohija]. According to them there are only two plants which are regarded as likely to turn into vampires: pumpkins of every kind and water-melons. And the change takes place when they are 'fighting one another.' In Podrima and Prizrenski Podgor they consider this transformation occurs if these ground fruit have been kept for more than ten days: then the gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like 'brrrl, brrrl, brrrl!' and begin to shake themselves. It is also believed that sometimes a trace of blood can be seen on the pumpkin, and the Gs. then say it has become a vampire. These pumpkins and melons go round the houses, stables, and rooms at night, all by themselves, and do harm to people. But it is thought that they cannot do great damage to folk, so people are not very afraid of this kind of vampire.

Vukanović was unique in reporting this belief and there is, of course, a chance that those he spoke to were having fun at his expense. Stepping out of folklore and into literature, there is the fine example from 1894 in the form of HG Wells’ The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, a story that can be read as a cautionary tale warning that man cannot tame nature but there is a reading where, like many of the fin de siècle vampire tales, the story represents a fear of reverse colonialism. Fitting, perhaps, as all the films we will see in the coming week have an aspect of colonial (or post-colonial) invasion.

Illustrative images from Little Shop of Horrors and the Creepshow episode Mums.

Fiona’s Guardians – review

Author: Dan Klefstad

First Published: 2020

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: When a vampire seduces you, death is minutes away. When she hires you, you'll soon wish you were dead.

It’s a truth known to every guardian who worked for Fiona, including Daniel. Aside from managing the day-to-day chores and keeping her protected, he manages an investment portfolio to buy stolen blood from hospital workers. The 250-year-old Fiona needs 10 pints of human blood every night. As a result of this, Daniel and Fiona are always on the lookout for police, but fail to notice their gradual encirclement by Mors Strigae, an ancient order of monks dedicated to the extermination of vampires. Gone for a century, the monks start a new war when they destroy Fiona's sire. This time, her vampire family is pushed to the edge of extinction -- and the humans who serve them are hunted and executed.

After 35 years, what keeps him loyal? And will he ever be allowed to leave?

The review: Setting a vampire story from the viewpoint of the human helper can often help to keep the vampires themselves a little more mysterious for the reader and that is something that author Dan Klefstad achieves well in Fiona’s Guardians. Of course we do get some lore and this is a world where the vampires are very powerful – fast, strong, able to fly and constantly reading the minds of the mortals around them. They are, of course, vulnerable during the daylight hours and the guardians act as watchdogs as well as the provider of sustenance (these vampires drink a lot each night and I liked how the corruption of death came when they hadn’t drunk, starting with the smell of a corpse) and managers of their affairs. Of course, it is a job offer that can’t be refused – once a person knows about the vampires it is serve or die.

The book follows Daniel, long-serving guardian to the vampire Fiona and his replacement Wolf. However, Wolf is recruited right around the time when the Vatican has reinvigorated the martial order Mors Strigae and they have started hunting down the vampires, using modern tech to help with this (for instance reconnaissance with drones, equipped with thermal imagining as the vampires are cold, dead flesh). I said about using the point of view of the guardians and that is only partly true. The author does use multiple perspectives and jump through timeframes. I commend the author on the clarity with which he did this. Ofttimes, moving times and perspectives (especially within chapter) can disorientate the reader. Not so in this, with each shift done with clarity and skill. Negatively, you did have to suspend belief; obviously we walk into a vampire story doing that anyway but I felt that some of the loyalty shifts were taken at face value and, as the reader, I expected more suspicion. However, this is a minor quibble. The prose is fast paced and sprightly in timbre, which suits the story well. I really did devour this and 7.5 out of 10 feels right for this opening salvo into the world of Fiona.

On Kindle @ Amazon US

On Kindle @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Soichi

My journey into the work of Junji Ito continued with the collection Soichi – primarily because the last story, Rumors (which I will cover as a story in its own right), features an appearance by Miss Fuchi from Fashion Model. The collection all feature titular character Soichi, described in the collection’s blurb as “the unhinged second son of the Tsujii family”.

Sochi is a loner, egoist with dark shadows around the eyes, who curses those he does not like (who demonstrates actual magical abilities at times), and who chews on nails – a couple of times rationalised by adults as him doing so due to iron deficiency. He also adopts a vampire persona from time to time. In the story A Happy Summer Vacation, he threatens his cousin Michina by putting the nails in his mouth in a fang position and wearing a cape and saying “…I suck warm blood from girl’s necks. After I suck your blood, you won’t be able to ignore me ever again.” He lunges at him but she hits back, causing the nails to pierce through his cheeks.

read right to left

The next story in the collection, A Happy Winter Vacation, sees him menace a stranger, Yumiko, the family rescue from the snows. It appears that he does bite her neck (there are marks) and claims the sauce he has for flaked ice is her blood – it’s actually strawberry syrup. In Soichi’s happy diary he returns to menacing Michina by cursing her (so that tentacles grow from the same parts of her face that his face is scarred – from the nails incident). She is bitten by a mosquito in the three spots and, at the end of the story, admits that the mosquito had Soichi’s face – whether it was implied that he became the mosquito or it had his face as it was part of his curse is down to reader interpretation. I mention this story just because of the mosquito’s normal association with blood sucking.

The story Coffin has Soichi’s grandfather making his own coffin just before he dies. After he makes it Soichi demands he make a western style coffin for Soichi as he wants to sleep in one explaining, “you know there’s always that scene in foreign movies where the vampire’s sleeping in a coffin? That’s the dream.” He wants one “Like the one Dracula uses.” Unfortunately, Grandpa’s efforts fall short and then he dies and so Soichi uses magic to bring Granpa’s corpse back, restless until it makes a coffin to Soichi’s liking. Finally Rumors has a brief appearance, at the end, by Miss Fuchi, as I mentioned. Although Soichi seems possessed of powers, he more acts like a vampire in these stories and the moments are fleeting enough for this to be an honourable mention.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Pandemic Thirst – review

Director: Chris Woods

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted all our lives, in one way or another, and so it is logical that it would also impact movies. More so for the vampire genre. As a metaphor for disease, anyway, the vampire could naturally be used to represent societal anxiety about the virus but, also, it seems to be a natural narrative route to contemplate how the virus might have affected the vampire.

We have had a couple of films here already. Short films Online Order and Open Up examine the impact of lockdown on the vampire, and the feature Vampirus uses the pandemic as a backdrop. This film actually actively uses the virus as part of the plot.

the woman and Willow

To start off, however, I have to note that the film is certainly one done on a budget and the cracks therefore show but I did surprise myself by thinking the film also had more heart than I expected. It starts with the sound of pandemic newscasts and then a voiceover (reading an intertitle) that talks about Covid-19 and the impact it has on another breed – beyond humans. The camera then shows us a young woman, wearing a mask and pulling a suitcase.

attack

She is accosted by a homeless guy and tries to get away, subsequently bumping physically into another woman, Willow (Sushii Xhyvette Holder). Looking round for the homeless guy, he seems to have gone and the two get talking. Willow observes that the other seems to be travelling and she says that she is heading West. Willow is headed to the open spaces of Texas, she says, and the two decide to travel together and go to the already checked in motel room. In there they talk for a while, Willow mentioning horror movies, which the other is not keen on. Eventually Willow unmasks and bears fangs, attacking the other. After the first bite, Willow strips – I assume because blood – why she strips the other would seem to be because titillation.

coming down with covid

Elsewhere and Cynthia (Lixy Lestat) and Sarah (Katie McKinley) are lovers and we get a bedroom scene that, oddly, interjected a man, Harry (Anthony Wayne, Joe Vampire). At first I thought he was watching them, then he exhibited violence against them but it all seemed to be context but not real. Harry is sending the pair out to get drugs from Mexico. Sarah is his wife, we hear later, and she and Cynthia have cooked up a plot to steal from him and head North. Sarah sends Cynthia North as part of the plan but as she drives she begins to feel unwell – she has caught covid-19. She manages to get to a hotel.

Cynthia as a vampire

In the meantime, we have seen Willow prey on a trucker (and bite his willy off). Cynthia, having checked in, goes to her car to get her stuff and bumping into Willow on the return faints. Off screen, Willow carries the girl to her room and puts her to bed. Then she strips herself , removes her blonde wig and bites Cynthia… When Cynthia awakens she is freaked out but the virus has gone as she is a vampire – Willow unable to exactly say why she purposefully turned her (though later it is said that she must really have liked her). However, after they lure Cynthia’s first kill back to the room and get her past Cynthia's reluctance to kill, Willow vomits blood and becomes ill herself.

new breed

Vampires are not meant to get sick but this is a new virus (for a similar idea of a virus suddenly impacting the undead see the low budget Requiem for a Vampire, which used HIV/AIDS) and the dialogue does question whether this one was made in a lab (but doesn’t dwell on it). However there is always the possibility that it is making her something new (again, changing a vampire through disease was done using Mad Cow Disease in the Dead Undead and by genetic manipulation to become a new breed of vampire that feeds on the undead was at the heart of Blade 2). As well as this, there is also the plot against Harry that needs resolving, where everything isn’t quite as it seems.

supreme vampire

There is flesh on show here really for the sake of it, pushing this into an exploitation space, and plenty of gore, which is surprisingly well done at times. The dialogue isn’t the greatest and the delivery has its roots in budget filmmaking. The sets also betray the budget, being limited in scope. However, I did get the sense that there was a huge amount of heart here and that counts for a lot. At 64 minutes it really doesn’t outstay its welcome. I see a low budget sexploitation that aspires to be more than its budget would suggest. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK