Short Film: Bandit Blood be Bitter

From 2022 and coming in at 10 minutes, this short film directed by Asdis Guðrún Ragnarsdóttir manages to tell its story without dialogue and a cute, self-contained little tale it is.

It starts with wanted posters and, particularly Monty Sprout described as a wily bandit. It cuts to whom I assume is Monty (the character names gave no real indication when checked in the credits) who takes a deep breath that is, almost, like he is coming back from the dead – and I assume that is what the filmmakers wanted the audience to guess.

1st vamp

As he trudges through the snow, we move elsewhere and see a man with a bandaged face. There is a trail of blood in the snow and, whilst vocalising inarticulate noises, he sniffs and then tastes the blood. The blood is a trap, however, and a vampire hunter comes for him at which point the maw of sharp teeth becomes apparent. We see the hunter cleaning off his stake and he takes the vampire’s coat. After moving away from the kill he cuts his palm and bleeds into a canteen.

Monty the bandit

He takes the canteen and leaves a new trail that will lead to the blood-filled canteen that is hanging on a branch. Then, leaving his bag (with his gun and stake) with the canteen, goes to toss holy water around the blood trail (I assume to keep the next vampire on the trail). Whilst the hunter’s actions can be pieced together some make little sense – for instance, why take the first vampire’s jacket? Well Monty comes across the bag and, after putting the bullet-holed jacket on and trying the “water” canteen, spitting out the blood but getting blood down his chin, he does look suitably vampire-like when the hunter returns… but Monty has the vampire hunter’s bag by him and clearly there is another bloodsucker on the loose.

the hunter and the 2nd vamp

As mentioned at the head this did tell a neat story and whilst there are narrative gaps/questions – first and foremost being, why sprinkle holy water around the blood trail, what was the in story reasoning or was it just to remove the hunter from bag but keep the holy water for story reasons – but the overall story was fun and the effects were nice – we have a good, visceral blood effect going on. The end credits are a homage to Dracula (1931).

The imdb page is here.