Creepshow: Meet the Belaskos – review

Directors: Justin G. Dyck & John Esposito 

First aired: 2023 

Contains spoilers

Into season 4 of Creepshow and, honestly, I thought the season as a whole was weaker than previous ones. Nevertheless, it is still a solid piece of spooky entertainment in the Lonesome October and that’s what matters.

In the fourth episode the first segment was our vampire part and it starts with a vampire hunter attacking a vampire woman in her coffin. 

staking

The staking is really rather well done with the vampire haemorrhaging into the coffin, filling it with blood, which is – of course – a folkloric type of stake response. The attack is a dream and Chuck Belasko (Brendan Taylor) awakens next to his wife, Helena (Lisa Durupt) – they are in a coffin made for two. He gets up and goes to a nearby coffin containing his daughter, Anastasia (Karis Cameron), telling her to put her phone down and go to sleep.

young love

They are in a moving van going to their new home and this is a world in which vampires are out of the coffin – indeed they are described as Vampire Americans. They have moved because Anastasia, or Anna, had been attacked in their old town (and bears a cross shaped scar as a reminder). The new town is meant to be tolerant but proves not so much so. Their new neighbour, Doug (Donavon Stinson), clearly doesn’t like them because they are vampires – though his son, Alex (Matthew Nelson-Mahood), seems rather taken with Anna. Equally, the local coffee shop is hiring but vampires need not apply.

bat creature form

Unfortunately, Doug doesn’t take kindly to the new relationship and this leads to both a tragedy and a rather cold revenge. The vampire elements in this are fun. They can turn into bat-creatures, they burn in the sun but it is a fairly slow, painful process, and they appear as dead things on camera. This is a world with all sorts of blood supplements and there is a comment that a Belasko hasn’t bit a human for 100-years. This doesn’t necessarily bring a whole lot new to the party (though the division in America on both racial and political lines are obviously sub-texts) but it is solid vampire fun. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Enterfear The Next Wave – review

Director: Tim Wall

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

This is a sequel and, to be honest, I haven’t seen the first film but the opening of this gives a quick synopsis. A year before, a meteorite crashed near a TV broadcast tower and the radiation it gave off caused the broadcast to enter reality – in simple terms it brought forward a zombie outbreak. This was eventually quelled by Frank (Phillip Drake) and Rick (Hunter Bickham) who managed to zap the zombies with a remote and dampen the effects with a “radio virus”. The fragment was taken by the CIA.

Frank and Rick

One year on and Frank has a book signing, when a guy, Lucas (Ryan Reinike), comes to him with a messed-up copy of the book and wondering if the book told all or if there was facts missing. He then gets funny with Frank and declares him a fake. Lucas then meets some mobsters who he has been skimming credit cards for – though he hasn’t brought the required numbers. He’s threatened.

film

Lucas has kidnapped a janitor from a local lab and creates an ID so he can get in – the aim is to steal the meteorite – which he eventually does. He tries to tap into its power, when back home, but fails and puts on the video Vampirum King of the Night and promptly falls asleep. The meteorite powers back up and Vampirum is created – wanting to break the virus that’s holding back the meteorite’s power and take over the world. Vampirum possesses Lucas and they can swap between identities. The possession aspect means that the remote-control trick won’t work.

Ryan Reinike as Lucas

After turning one of the mobsters into the wolf man (Chase Waters), Lucas tracks down Rick at his TV repair shop to try and find the laptop that carried the virus. Rick doesn’t have it but realises things have started again, discovers that remotes don’t work, and tries to warn the new sheriff (Jeremy London), who doesn’t listen. He then gets Frank and together they search for the original Sheriff, Clooney (Wayne Rodolfich), who (they realise) must have the laptop. It is up to the three of them, plus detective Rebecca Wilder (Faith Stanley) and officer Chang (Cuong Alex Do) to stop Lucas/Vampirum.

Vampirum gets the laptop

This was actually quite good fun – though watching the first film would probably have been useful. I was genuinely amused and the Frank and Rick characters worked well. Vampirum was a tad rubbery to look at, but then he was the recreation of a b-movie vampire, so that actually worked, There wasn’t a huge amount of lore with this for the same reasons but it is worth watching as a B but more so as a pretty effective comedy. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Interplanetary Revolution

This is a just over seven-minute-long Soviet propaganda movie from 1924, with the distinction of being only the second animated film made by the Soviets and the first sci-fi. It was directed by Nikolay Khodataev, Zenon Komissarenko and Youry Merkulov. I have to thank David Annwn Jones for bringing it to my attention.

Now, before looking at why this has got a mention, I have to just remind that Marx did use the vampire as analogous to capitalism. Indeed, most famously the line in Das Kapital, “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”

sucking the lifeblood of the worker

So, to the mention. The cartoon suggests that (in the near future of 1929) men will have colonised Mars and that the evil capitalists will be sucking the lifeblood of the enslaved workers there until Comrade Cominternov saves the day by going there and sparking revolution. The cartoon shows two capitalists becoming gorged upon sucked blood. We can also see that one has a swastika on his brow – showing a Soviet conflation of fascism and capitalism (the swastika was adopted by the Nazis in 1920 but also by other far right nationalistic organisations of the time). It’s this scene that gets the cartoon its mention, but take away the Soviet propaganda aspect and think about (a hundred years later) whether there are today capitalist demagogues who have eyes set to Mars (or space generally) and play to the worst of the right-wing popularist tropes, whilst treating their workers as disposable means to capital…

The imdb page is here.

I have embedded probably the best resolution I can find on YouTube but there are versions with English subs added that can be found through a quick google.

Handbook of the Vampire: Introduction to the Handbook of the Vampire

This is my First post looking in an in-depth way at Palgrave’s Handbook of the Vampire, a monumental reference work that has an introduction and 97 chapters concerning all aspects of vampire study. It is published as an e-book with the chapters available through institutional logins and being published as a two-volume hardcopy. I am lucky enough to have provided two chapters for the handbook (which I won’t be writing blog posts on but you can find links to the Handbook pages for each chapter I provided on the Handbook Page I have set up).

This first post concerns the Introduction, written by editor Simon Bacon. Of course, the chapter is an editorial, it outlines the scope of the project and what the reader can hope to find within. He suggests that “So much more research and study are required to understand and recognise the full implications of what we are saying when we say ‘VAMPIRE.’”. This is fitting coming from Simon – he and I indulge in frequent correspondence and have collaborated a few times, but his output into the arena of vampire study is vast (as both editor and author) but his definition of vampire is wide also and it is this width that allowed him to catch a vast net to snare the cornucopia of treasures within the Handbook.

I also have to give a moment of thanks for the fact that one of my entries for the Handbook was actually cited within the introduction.

As I continue to look at the Handbook, I will point out interesting ideas, new sources of vampire media and even where I disagree with a proposition within a chapter. This project, to map each chapter, over time, here at TMtV will undoubtedly take a long time. I will read the chapters over time and then have to write the article and schedule it for posting, of course, but it is a journey I think will be worth taking.

Dragged Beneath the Shadows – review

Directors: Jasper de Bruin, Xavier Hamel & Dustin Curtis Murphy (segments)

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Creating an anthology film by tying shorts together is very much a thing at the moment and they often vary in quality. The shorts in this case, one of which I have previously looked at in its own right, vary on story quality but are all good quality shoots.

The film has six shorts in all and three of them are vampire shorts. I do have to give a shout out to the first short, however, which is a witch orientated one, simply because it was so well done. Shot by Sofìa Carrillo in Black and White it is called the Wandering Witch. A lovely sequence is included where two witches in the film both transform into cats as they prowl and fight in that form and as humans but with fangs.

The Hunger

The first vampire segment is the Jasper de Bruin directed short Nightingale, which still holds its own as a short and, indeed, I think was ultimately the most satisfying of the three vampire shorts. The next was called Forever & Ever and was directed by Xavier Hamel. It is narrated by Kate, a girl at high school who becomes invisible to all until Vicky sees her. When we first see them together they are led under a The Hunger poster. Vicky takes Kate to the prom and there is homophobic murmuring and Vicky dances with one of the mean girls but, when she lures Kate into a room, she reveals her vampire nature, turns her and a massacre ensues. The short was very short, quite classy in its cinematography though it showed very little and the story was absolutely basic.

survivor

The final vampire segment was Dustin Curtis Murphy’s The Last Confession in which a priest visits Franz, a dying man who had been a guard at a concentration camp. He is unrepentant but tells the priest that he did one selfless act, taking a girl who somehow survived the gas chamber and hiding her from the Nazis. Of course there is a reason she survived the industrialised slaughter and she has been in touch with him recently… This one worked well, mentioning her nature is a spoiler (but when the vampirism is the twist its hard not to spoil) and the thought that a selfless act amongst all the evil was an evil act in and of itself was interesting.

bitten

The collection is worthwhile and it’s nice to see vampires taking centre stage. In fact, the short Family History by Mark J. Parker could also be argued to have a vampiric aspect also but with three of the films being traditionally vampire stories I haven’t covered that one off. The scores for these are for the vampire segments and Nightingale strengthens this to a solid 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vampire Stories: Bluttanz – review

Director: Max Schaller

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

A German film, which started filming pre-pandemic, IMDb suggests that filming was completed over the pandemic and this might explain the sparseness of scenes as the film felt quite empty of extras (bar a dance recital audience). This, of course, may also have been deliberate but the entire film felt a little empty.

It starts with a pair of cops, the older Richard Hess (Klaus Schweinzer) with his rookie partner Jan Marcus (Randy Bernd), who are investigating the death of Belgian pianist Haral Koffier, who has suffered fractures and bites. There was very little blood, but his intact wallet suggests robbery was not the motive. He was attached to a particular Ballet House but they are soon ordered off the case as the forensics suggests an animal attack.

Michael Diekers as Blomstaed 

The replacement for Koffier is Valentin Blomstaed (Michael Diekers). He meets the director of the House who tells him that the House have employed Vivienne Denieu (Agnes Pock), the granddaughter of a famous ballet teacher, to perform the “Blood Dance”. Written by Jean-Andre Bordeaux (Matthias Sommeregger), it is a piece for a single dancer to perform to piano and is deemed nigh on impossible – later we hear that 30 directors have tried to stage it in the past and the staging has failed, leading to their unemployment.

Agnes Pock as Denieu

Denieu has concessions such as being able to practice exclusively at night – much to the chagrin of lead teacher Olga Vadimovich (Sabine Schink), who was a student of Denieu’s grandmother and thought her a bully. Vadimovich actually doesn’t think Denieu is up to the dance, and we see her fall whilst rehearsing. Blomstaed hasn’t practiced the “living” music and Denieu is not sure of his abilities. Suddenly, however, the music comes naturally to him and the two start to fall for each other. I have to say that neither the music nor the dance (when we see part of it) seemed anything special – how one might give such an illusion on film is quite the question, however.

Randy Bernd as Jan

Anton Bowicz (Sidd Hartha) contacts the cops about the killing. He is an academic, who has written books on “night eaters” – what we might crudely (as he puts it) call vampires. He is convinced that Koffier was killed by a vampire and, after Jan reads one of his books, is able to convince the rookie cop. He also convinces him that it is Denieu (who was, of course, the grandmother). They eventually hatch a plot to kidnap her after the performance and kill her.

vampiric eyes and fangs

We do see, in flashback, Denieu married to Bordeaux, who wrote the piece for her. She, however, was suffering from polio and, to cure her, he arranges for a vampire to turn her, with a price of him giving his life (essentially the vampire drains him). It isn’t much of a backstory, we have no real motivation (that I could discern) for the vampire doing this and a whole question around why she was still struggling to perform the dance if she had three generations to practice it (presumably it had been written to her skill level by her husband).

attack

I hate to say it, but I struggled with this. The film absolutely failed to keep my attention and so I struggled to watch it. The premise could have led to a vampire version of Suspiria but, instead it just bobbed along at a dreadfully slow pace. I didn’t buy either artist as the top tier performer they were drawn as, probably not helped by not really seeing or hearing anything that felt particularly complex (this is me speaking as a bit of a heathen, however, and I am quite prepared to hear how difficult the piano – replaced for a synth in the recital – and dance was). Not for me, I’m afraid – 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK 

Honourable Mention: Hansel, Gretel, and the Sensual Witch

This is the dubbed, cut down version of a film also known as Hänsel und Gretel Verliefen Sich im Wald (Hansel and Gretel Got Lost in the Forest) and The Naked Wytche. It was released in 1970, directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb and can’t really be called anything more than a sexploitation film – it doesn’t really manage to qualify as a bedroom farce.

It tells the story of Hänsel (Dagobert Walter) and Gretel (Francy Fair) a young couple who have been together nine weeks. She loves him, wants to marry him and is not ready to rush into sexual activity. For his part he is pressuring her quite badly.

The Countess with fangs

They are on a day out and relations cool after her refusing his advances. As they drive through a forest they find a tree across the road, wander into the woods, eat and then meet (before pitching to camp) the Countess (Barbara Scott). The Countess offers them a place to stay and they accept. Gretel options to sleep separately in one of the fairytale named rooms (the room is actually called Gretel). Hänsel is still determined to sow his oats but is rebuffed when trying to climb through her window.

looking drawn or dead

The Countess is the witch, and in this a witch is a sexually experienced woman who tries to lure of another woman’s man. She sets her sights on Hänsel and he is not that difficult to seduce. The scenes are tame (they might be cut, having not seen the original German release) but there is a lot of nudity. But why the mention? It is a fleeting visitation, Hänsel is having a psychedelic (and possibly hallucinogenic) dream and partway through he sees the Countess (who has not yet seduced him) bare fangs. This, of course, connects the vampiric imagery with the Vamp. Later on, some dark makeup makes her look drawn or dead. And that is all… it is free to watch on (UK) Prime but it really isn’t worth the effort.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Blood Machines – review

Author: J.K. Gravier

First Published: 2021

Contains spoilers

Blurb: Allison Drew is a smart and ambitious government agent whose career is stagnating. Then she is surprisingly assigned a high-profile case that could get her attention. But she isn’t prepared for the web of intrigue and corruption that confronts her when she tries to disentangle a wide-spread string of crimes involving too much murder and more than a little blood. As her investigation hits dead ends and questions proliferate, Allie is forced to face the possibility that the organization to which she has pledged herself may have a secret agenda. To survive, she needs to question everything she believes and revisit some demons of her own.

If you just want a good procedural, thriller or horror story, this novel is that. But if you're also dissatisfied with how bureaucracy works, feel undermined by increasingly illogical administration and are frustrated with your place in North America’s late-capitalist economy, you might identify with the challenges Allie faces as she tries to just do her job.

The review: This is a neat little thriller with a touch of the detective noir to it. This is a world where vampires exist – but they are not supernatural. Preferring the term sanguinarianism to vampirism, they suffer from a genetic condition that causes a chronic allergy to carbohydrates and sunlight (the latter identified as erythropoietic protoporphyria) but also the advantage of living longer (by about twenty years) and showing less aging than someone without the condition. It is genetic, through familial lines, but not from the actual vampire, as they are infertile also. What the author creates is a group of people who were often kept out of school (for obvious reasons of sunlight exposure primarily) and were a lower social class generally. There has been an attempt to integrate into society through the federal government, though some – often referred to as Primitives or Draculas – believe that there is a supernatural element to human blood (most modern vampires subsist on animal blood, especially lamb, and meats primarily) and live to stereotypes and there is a danger that they might forcibly drain a person.

To this end there is the VBI – the Vampire Bureau of Investigation – which is aligned to and under the remit of the FBI. Allison Drew is an investigator and is sent to Detroit when a blood den, where daylighters – as none vampires are referred to – have been murdered for their blood. The local police accidentally found it and three bodies, but VBI forensics have ascertained (from blood residue) that up to 10 may have been murdered there. But her superior thinks that there may be a corrupt element in the field office and that tracking data (from an experimental chipping system for paroled vampires called Domesday) has been compromised. The novel follows her investigation and the twists and turns of internal – and possibly deadly – politics.

I really enjoyed this. The move into a realm of living vampires with a genetic condition was a nice way of framing the lore for a change and the writing was crisp and kept you moving along with the story. I do also want to mention the proofing as I noticed nothing in the way of proofing errors that so often creep into independently published novels, kudos for that. One thing I really liked was a moment that showed the impact of intersectionality, with African American vampires and the double disadvantage they face. Drew was a great character – not drawn as too overly impressive, her investigation skills might be designated as solid (and at times brutal, sun torture is a standard VBI tactic), her dialogue was engaging and the author avoided stereotypes that might accompany a female lead character in some prose. Overall, this one is recommended with the caveat that it is not, and never pretends to be, supernatural, and it is a thriller and not a horror. 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Fear PHarm – review

Director: Dante Yore

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

This really shouldn’t be anything more than a slasher flick, with a family of killers (many wearing masks) and yet it put a twist into it that put the film on my vampire radar. How so? We will get to that (it is at the end of the film but it doesn’t spoil the film by revealing the concept).

The film starts with a naked woman, covered in blood, running around a corn maze at night. She gets out of the maze and a group of masked assailants follow, led by an unmasked woman, Gemma (played younger by Jenna Burd and older by Aimee Stolte, Verotika), and facing a woman. She runs, knocks the woman down and kills her (she hits her head on something). Ultimately she is killed in turn by Gemma and a machete.

The gang at the corn maze

15-years later. Brandon (Houston Stevenson) is sexting his girlfriend Wendy (Emily Sweet), who happens to be hiding under his bed and wearing the cheerleader outfit that he really wanted her to model. They are about to get it on when his mom (Jenn Tripp) walks in and their friends, brother and sister Rustin (Chris Leary) and Melanie (Tiana Tuttle), follow in. Trying to work out what to do with their day, Wendy suggests a haunted corn maze. Rustin says no, it was the scene of satanic murder 15-years before (this leads to a wonderment as to how the family got away with murder, since apparently the police were involved?) Eventually they decide to go.

John Littlefield as Herschell

The film is self-aware. There is a comment about not having exposition on the journey, for instance and the maze insists on mobile phones being handed in before entry. They get to the maze and a mark put on when paying and scanned on maze entry sets a scanner off for one of them. This indicates that one of them is the 10,000th visitor. Owner Herschell (John Littlefield) turns up and invites them to the VIP maze, where they can win $5000 if they solve it quickly enough (the prize actually jumps to $10k whilst they talk if they solve it even quicker). They are taken off into the maze and, clearly, will be hunted – Herschell is the family patriarch.

Gemma with brother

The trope of splitting up is deftly done. There are five separate maze paths and, by splitting up (not taking the middle path at Herschell’s suggestion) they have more chance of winning the money. After a bit of lame haunt moments (with staff not part of the family) they are attacked and taken in (preferably alive and intact – though this is clearly not the case with one of the friends). Why? Here is our vampiric bit and, to be fair, some strange pseudoscience. Apparently, the woman killed at the head of the film by the naked victim was the clan mother and a geneticist. She discovered a new gene that has been appearing only over the last 30-years.

harvesting skin

This gene is in the skin and so the victims are wanted for skin harvesting, which is then treated, turned to liquid and made into a face-cream that literally halts aging. So, it is science creating a fountain of youth through the death of someone. One of the friends is a predicted super-host (the real reason for the mark on the hands). That person needs to be kept alive to work out why the skin has so much of the gene. If they die the skin fights to stay alive, using osmosis of anything in the environment that it can (which will spoil any experimental results) and can stay alive weeks after death. Gemma is now the scientist and they have only just managed to replicate mum’s results it seems. The beauty cream aspect and experimentation is somehow undermined by the farm location (despite a brief shot of some lab-coated persons). It does offer a vampire as capitalist aspect (which is foreshadowed/underscored by the kids claiming to be children of Republicans and “all about the Benjamins”) that is expanded on in film 2.

masked killer

The whole set-up seems really convoluted (there must be an easier way of getting victims) and the science utterly pseudo but it was something different to the norm for a slasher. The film is fairly short, the characters absolutely stereotypes (and knowingly so), there are some nicely sassy lines (cf. Gemma remonstrating with one of her masked brothers at him calling someone a lesbian because she is deemed a strong woman). It is pretty nicely filmed too. It won’t set the world on fire but there is a vampiric science here. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Blood Lust – review

Director: Christopher McCleod

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

I have used the title of this as listed on Amazon Prime Video, but the IMDb page names the film Blood Thirst and the actual title screen does the same. Obviously, both titles are ones that have been used in the vampire genre before. The spelling of the director's surname is from IMDb, the actual film credit lists the director as Christopher McLeod.

This is a fairly short (71 mins) feature that was actually rather engaging. I thought it needed extra – length for character building mostly – and it had its flaws but did quite well for a budget piece.

baring fangs

It starts with a cityscape and then, in a parking lot, we see a car on its own in the centre of the lot. Approaching it is a woman in scrubs, Vanessa (Lindsey Mitchell). As she gets there a couple of guys start hassling her but they have picked on the wrong woman. She fights them off, hissing and baring fangs. She breaks the neck of one and feeds on the other and then, calmly, gets trash bags out of her car. We see her drive away and fly tip the bags, then go to a garage, wash blood off her car and, when driving home, lick blood from her hand (that was a detail I disliked, given she had just washed the car with a high-power water hose and, even if it hadn’t washed away, it would have dried. It felt like a short hand moment but one we didn’t actually need).

Vanessa and Layla

The film cuts back in 1968 and a car picks up a hitchhiker (who clearly is Vanessa). The driver is Layla (Dorothy Hadley Joly), who tries to engage the young woman in conversation and then gives her an apple. We then see Vanessa asleep in the car and Layla attacking her and feeding. I did like the way that Layla is drawn as a 60s housewife in style, rather than being given a more genre stereotypical look and I liked how the style persisted into the present when we see her in the primary timeline. Cut to the present and another person, Bento (Sky Crystal), ditches trash bags in the same spot that Vanessa used. Vanessa gets home, her neighbour, Walker (Tim Michael Schmidt), sees her get home and notices the blood on her scrubs. He is a cop and seems worse for wear but gets a call and heads out.

Sky Crystal as Bento

Back to 1969 and Vanessa and Layla pick up a hitchhiker and Vanessa feeds on him. Layla congratulates her and mentions the next time (I did wonder at the intervening time and what had gone on between the end of 1968 and 1969). Vanessa denies there will be a next time, calls the vampirism a curse and Layla determines to abandon the ungrateful vampire. In the present, Bento carves at a teeth mould, whilst someone screams in the background. The cops are at the fly tipping spot and have decided there are at least three dismembered bodies. Walker arrives and he and his detective colleague spot Bento driving away, he has been sat watching, but put him down as a lookie-loo.

Tim Michael Schmidt as Walker

So, Vanessa works in a blood bank and gets herself blood from there. Walker visits her concerned because he saw the blood on her scrubs and is told that the blood came from a bag that exploded. She later visits him with wine. Bento works in a comic book store, opportunistically takes victims and whilst he mentions an iron deficiency does admit he simply likes the taste of blood. Coincidence has him follow Vanessa and then become very interested when she tries to scare him off by baring fangs. They all converge in the middle, as it were.

victim of a serial killer

The issue I had was mostly around the scripting. There were loose moments with chronology (such as Bento seen at home and then the next minute watching the crime scene – whilst it is time feasible, there is some strengthening of the relay of the passage of time needed). There was also a need, for me, to spend longer exploring the characters and the film felt like it was too short to allow proper character study. A moment when Vanessa’s first victim returns – as a memory or ghost – was not exploited as well as it might have been. On the other hand, I was engaged by the film, I found Lindsey Mitchell’s performance believable and appealing. I don’t know if it was the mannerisms or simply the look with the moustache but I could almost see Bento being played by Elijah Wood. Sky Crystal did well with what was there but the character needed expanding on and he needed more to do with the character and dialogue such as him being referred to as a ‘big one’ when he seemed slight in stature didn’t help. Nevertheless, as mentioned, I was engaged and I thought the photography was particularly good for a budget indie. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Junji Ito Collection: Fashion Model

From the Junji Ito Collection comes this short anime recreation of the manga Fashion Model, being one of two segments in the episode. The episode first aired in 2018.

The story starts with Iwasaki having a premonition that something bad is going to happen. He goes to a café and is flicking through a magazine when he spots a model within the pages (Miss Fuchi, though he does not know her name at this point). In contrast to the pretty, young starlets otherwise featured, the model has a singular look (one might say almost Addamsesque). Her image disturbs him so much that she invades his dreams and he is so pre-occupied he almost fails to write the screenplay that he and his student filmmaking buddies need.

in the magazine

As it is, he manages to start to forget her image, writes the script and the film wins a competition. With that success they are going to make a second film and decide to audition non-school actresses. Iwasaki’s sense of dread returns and, after identifying Tamae Mori as their likely lead, they open another application and it is Miss Fuchi. Despite Iwasaki’s sense of foreboding the others decide to hire her, as well as Tamae Mori, because Miss Fuchi is a professional model and so might raise the film’s profile.

Miss Fuchi

They meet their stars; Miss Fuchi is hugely tall, monstrous in feature and, given the sense of unease that accompanies her (for Iwasaki, at least) I think we could describe her as unhomely, in a Freudian sense, her career anomalous (and Junji Ito was clearly commenting on a monstrousness at the heart of the fashion industry, made manifest). As they drive to location she laughs, revealing a maw of wicked looking fangs. When the crew concentrate their attentions on the pretty lead, she deals with her in a particularly cannibalistic way (assuming Miss Fuchi is human).

her bite

This brings the Fuchi story to life, in colour, animated and with voice acting. The collection as a whole is definitely worthwhile, especially if you love Junji Ito’s work. The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Van Helsing (2023)

This is a computer-generated animation that starts with a battle on the moon. But… You said it’s called Van Helsing. And that it is… Jack Van Helsing (Ernesto Galan), whose grandfather was THE Van Helsing. So, we get a vampire mentioned in passing, saying how his grandfather destroyed the fiend, and an image of it. Plus an image of Vlad Ţepeş because… yup, Dracula was Ţepeş in this never returned to backstory.

Essentially it looks at the end of the world, and has a preachy bit about devastating wars ignored because we’re all looking at phone screens (I very much doubt we’d ignore warfare on the doorstep, even if we ignore warfare in other countries often). Then it became nuclear.

vampire was mentioned in passing

We get some survivors – Jack appears in a hazmat at first and manages to get those survivors killed, then he gets to the moon (by stealing a space shuttle) and teams up with a colony there lead by Lilith (Jennifer Fourteen) – who is Lilith in name only. They then get killed, though he survives again. The transitions from a contemporary world destroyed by nukes, a moon base and then space-faring people and space warfare are jarring.

Jack Van Helsing

Of the enemies, one is a zombie (for that read more like a ghoul from the Fallout series) who stole a space shuttle! Yes, NASA just leaves those things hanging around with the keys in the ignition (so to speak)… Anyway he becomes a galactic despot and the moon base was destroyed by Xterminator (Edson Camacho) – an anti-human AI driven robot… kill all humans… Who gets a galactic taskforce… His faction also create a rebuilt, cyborg (with the memories of the human, but with loyalty to the AI) Lilith. Not much happens with that storyline as Jack goes to meet her on the recovering Earth, in the strangely still functional Hong Kong…

a bat creature

If it sounds a mess… well it is, as is the animation. Some looks detailed, other bits look terribly untextured. I’m not sure how it was built (and doing a budget driven cgi is brave) but it doesn’t look consistent. The voice acting style is melodrama 101. The storyline just seems to stitch ideas together with no thought as to the logical viability. You never see Jack’s face (though you do see Abraham) rather he is behind gas masks or helmets. Not great but genre connected (oh and a big bat creature at the very end).

The imdb page is here.

Vampus Horror Tales – review

Director: Piter Moreira (segment)

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

This is a Spanish portmanteau film, with the wraparound featuring the Gravedigger/robber Vampus (Saturnino García) aka Mr. Fettes, a name he doesn’t wish to be known by. He buries them by day and unearths them at night – to feed to his ghoulish pet Tobi (Alberto Rivas). He also feeds Tobi fresh meat from victims who happen along to the cemetery.

The whole film is shot in black and white but each segment showcases a new director. The vampire segment is entitled Lineage.

blame the hot dogs

A man, Marco (Federico Repetto), who wears hazard clothing drives with his wife, Cami (Vicky Jorge) as the radio speaks of handing infected over and the sacrifices that must be made. If it feels familiar then it is, being that viral outbreak film that owes its lineage to I Am Legend and, in this case, it becomes apparent that the film is indeed focused on a vampire apocalypse. The radio mentioned tainted meat in a hotdog and later we see a newspaper that says much the same – this is a nod to the wraparound, where at the end Vampus starts making money on the side selling hotdogs made from flesh he has gathered.

stake

Marco gets to an abandoned house in the country and carries Cami in but the virus has developed in her and she turns on him. He gets out and she licks blood that has smeared onto a refrigerator as he sits in front of the door, she is trapped behind, holding a stake. If we needed more indicators of the vampiric nature of the virus we get it when we see that she burns in sunlight, turns the fridge on its side and uses it as a light tight coffin, develops small fangs and only calms when fed.

Vicky Jorge as Cami

The film follows the couple as he looks to keep her fed and preserve the woman he loves… And, as a segment, it's alright. The black and white is effective and the photography nice and there is some nice vampire imagery but the story denouement is obvious and it doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before in countless vampire/zombie apocalypse films. Not that every film needs to have original aspects to be good but this barely fleshes out the characters and is pretty average in its storytelling. For the segment, 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.