Taliesin meets the vampires

Doctors Wear Scarlet – review

2012-01-30T09:47:00.000-08:00

Author: Simon Raven

First published: 1960

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Be warned…

Doctors Wear Scarlet has a distinctly macabre and spine-chilling theme. It starts, harmlessly enough, with a young man’s infatuation for a beautiful Greek girl. Their relationship was strange, to say the least. Some might say perverted. Its exact nature could be summed up in a single word – vampirism.

The review: I had wanted to read Doctors Wear Scarlet for some time and, back in 2009/10, it was thanks to the blog Mondo Vampire that I at last got around to reading it when I was offered a guest blogger opportunity. Unfortunately Mondo Vampire is no more and so I have republished the review here. When it comes to the actual book, mine is a second hand copy and proved to be the most bizarrely decrepit and brittle book I have come across arrived – but it is not the actual physical book but the words contained therein that are ultimately important.

The words, in this case, carried a good reputation but had led to the rather poor film Blood Suckers. Despite actually following the plot of the book fairly accurately the book succeeded where the film spectacularly failed and that boiled down to one thing – characterisation.

The book gives a back story to Richard Fountain, the subject of our story, which fills almost half the volume. Such attention to detail might be frowned on by today’s publishers but, given that the explanation for the vampirism is (sort of) psychological, it is rather important in this.

I say that the vampirism is psychological because Raven actually makes a good job of giving half hints that the superstitions that this cult – for it is seen as part cult, which initiates into its ranks, and part infection – might actually be supernatural in basis. I’ll explain.

When we, eventually, get our lore we are treated to the traditional side of vampirism and the superstitions that surround it (though I must point out that Raven was erroneous in some of his traditions, which were more cinematic/fiction based). We are then treated to a psycho-sexual explanation and a level of sadistic and masochistic interplay is blamed. Yet we are aware that there is some degree of hypnosis involved – this is explained as those who are chosen for initiation have such abilities inherently, but such ability would also seem to be a rare and supernatural power. Also we get omens offered through dreams and by the king of the Gods; again this would seem to be perversely superstitious and unnervingly supernatural.

I felt that Raven was aware, as an author, that he was deliberately obfuscating the explanation and, despite offering a rational explanation for vampirism and setting his book deep in the heart of English learning, all those who are possibly infected and subsequently die are staked through the heart before being buried… suggesting that man cannot escape the supernatural no matter how rational he believes he has become.

There is a lovely passage that I wish to share, describing a vampiric attack; “…her mouth was still caught in the hideous grin which she had worn as she struck her face a her victim; and spread over her cheeks and lips, dribbling from the bared white teeth, was the blood, wet and shining red…”

This brings us neatly to the prose. Raven’s writing is strong but I was thrown off stride as I read it. Firstly, the characters, whilst well developed, annoyed me in their arrogance. These are the sort of over stuffed academics and public school chaps who once (and still) controlled England – a group of over-inflated traditionalists, overbearing with their arrogance… but any issue within that should be my own problem and not the book’s.

However one passage struck me as very odd was a misogynistic passage that described a secretary. “…in any case diversion was now provided by a young slattern, who brought in a tray with three cups of coffee on it and some damp biscuits.

“‘Made out of some vile essence,’ said Holmstrom. ‘Get out this second, you frightful slut.’

“Whining something about no need to be personal and coffee essence saving trouble, the depressed daughter of humanity slopped through the door.”

This single passage made me sit up and wonder about the whole of the book. Raven wrote a book of vampirism as a form of sexual sadism and one wonders whether he looked inwards or looked, in disgust, out towards the halls of academia. For it struck me that we only really meet two women in the book in any (light) detail. There is Penelope, supposedly the fiancé of Fountain but actually a tool of manipulation for her father (who is controlling of Fountain and his life), not really liked but (barely) tolerated by the narrator; she is a cipher for her father’s machinations and little more. Then there is Chrisesis – drawn as a vamp, a devil, a sadist and Fountain’s corruptor. We get a disparaging comment towards the end regarding women being allowed to observe college feasts and the unwarranted attack on a woman quoted above.

With generosity I chose to believe that Raven was commenting on the cloistered world he set his book in, rather than celebrating it. Perhaps the book was just a product of its age.

Never the less, it is an interesting view of vampirism and, draws rounded if disagreeable (male) characters. My own critique and discomfort aside (and no one said that a book had to be comfortable to be essential or well written), I’ll say this is an important book within the vampire cannon, 7 out of 10.

Originally published on Mondo Vampire

Vamp or Not? The Disappeared

2012-01-29T06:21:00.000-08:00

I don’t know how The Disappeared ended up on my radar, but end up it did and this ‘Vamp or Not?’ may seem a little forced and yet I think, despite some areas of reading in, examining this film was worth it. It was released in 2008 and I understand that director Johnny Kevorkian specifically stated that the aspect that we will examine was deliberately kept vague so that the audience could make their own mind up.

However it should be noted that this is, primarily, a ghost story and a good one at that. Set in the seedy underbelly of council estate London, Kevorkian creates a dour atmosphere that suits the film, with muted colours and what feels like a grey sky permanently hanging over main character Matthew Ryan (Harry Treadaway).

The film begins looking at Matt, as he is known, sat in a waiting room whilst we hear his father, Jake (Greg Wise), talking to a doctor – asking whether it is really wise to let him home. The doctor says that they have done all they can and says that his treatment will continue via out-patients and through his social worker. Matt is being released from hospital having received psychiatric care. Matt, it has to be said, is played with great skill by Treadaway who gives a marvellous physical performance throughout.

Harry Treadaway as Matt

They get home and Jake has to go out, saying he will bring fish and chips home and giving Matt his key to the flat. Matt goes to his room; there are two beds and a few scattered children’s toys. We flashback to a party Matt threw for his birthday whilst Jake was out. Matt and his friends were getting drunk and stoned when his twelve year old brother, Tom (Lewis Lemperuer Palmer), came in and said he was bored sitting in Dad’s room and went to the estate’s playground. Matt snaps out of the memory and picks out a box with tapes and press cuttings concerning his brother’s abduction from the playground.

TV appeal

He plays a video of a TV reconstruction and an appeal by his father, to the abductor, begging for Tom’s safe return. As the newscaster mentions Matt’s name he also hears Tom call him. He plays it back twice more, the same thing happening both times. When his father comes home he tries to play him the tape but Jake punches a glass cabinet door at the crucial point, overwhelmed by the frustrated anger that the tape has provoked and scared that his remaining son is still unwell. There is a knock on the door and it is social worker Adrian Ballan (Alex Jennings), who happened to be passing.

Ros Leeming as Amy

The next day Matt awakens from a dream of being buried alive and we see the scars on his wrists. His dad throws the tapes and cuttings out, but Matt retrieves the appropriate video – disturbing a crow, which the viewer begins to notice as a recurring creature. Matt doesn’t hear Tom this time, possibly because of the sound of arguing coming from next door. He goes out and meets a young woman, Amy (Ros Leeming), who moved next door when he was in hospital (or so he figures). Later he sees her at a quayside but she doesn’t hear his calls and when he gets to where she was, she has gone. He also sees, in a shop window, images of missing children shown on a TV and then a reflection in the window of Tom stood behind him. When he turns no-one is there and then a gang of kids on push-bikes ride past him, making him jump back.

DIY EVP

His friend Simon (Tom Felton) clearly doesn’t believe Matt when he tells him about the tape but does mention seeing a TV programme about recordings of the dead captured on tape (evp). Simon also tells him that a reporter tried to tie his dad into the disappearance, whilst Matt was in hospital. Matt takes an old tape deck to the playground and talks to Tom, but is attacked by a gang of kids (who were on the bikes earlier) who viciously beat him and smash the recorder. He is found by Amy. When he listens to the tape he hears Tom say that it is really dark and he is scared…

cold ghostly breath

And that is about as far as I want to go on the blow by blow as so far not Vamp and we do need to look at that aspect. However I can say that Matt starts seeing more and more, with Tom (and other ghosts) making their presence known, and is eventually led to find the killer. The twist at the end of the film is, in reality, no twist at all, as you’ll guess it early on – Amy is a ghost too. However, to discuss the ‘Vamp or Not?’ properly I need to spoil the identity of the child abductor – so if you don’t want to know, turn away now…

Alex Jennings as Ballan

It is social worker Ballan, who works from the church – and his position as a social worker seems odd as he seems more tied to the church than the council (who are never mentioned). It seems more he is just able to insinuate into people’s lives. So why suggest he is a vampire, as we see nothing overtly vampiric? Firstly – and this is pure supposition – the gang of boys I’ve mentioned reminded me of the Lost Boys. This is both in their riding around (on bicycles not motorbikes) and them being chased off by Ballan in a moment that was reminiscent of Max and the Lost Boys – after which he tells Matt that they seemed out for blood that night. Matt asks him, as he stopped them hassling a young boy hence them chasing him, whether they might have anything to do with the abduction and Ballan says he doesn’t know, but seems shocked by the question he then adds, “I do know that anything is possible these days, when people have lost their beliefs and their faith… what’s left?” There also seems a link put between the gang and the crows (subtle but it did seem that the crows and the gang were connected).

symbol burns

Matt comes across a symbol, an inverted cross, and ties it to a man called Edward (Jefferson Hall) who is a permanent resident in the psychiatric wing of the hospital. Matt speaks to him and then – Matt having been removed from the room by a nurse – we see a shadow move over Edward and him kill himself. The symbol marks an entrance into Ballan’s lair below the church, when he is defeated the symbol burns. Getting back to the shadow and we saw that same shadow pass by the door of a psychic, Shelley (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Matt goes to see. As it passes the whole flat goes dark. As it turns out, Shelley is dead and the flat a burnt out shell – but Matt sees the flat, her and her daughter (Tyler Anthony) as they were and is unaware of their ghostly nature at the point.

neck marks

Later he goes back to the flat to hide (from a psychiatric orderly after him to drag him back to hospital) and he sees what happened to Shelley and her daughter. He sees the daughter run in crying, there are two lines of blood at her neck – from a two puncture bite or just scratches we can’t really tell. We see the shadow move in (and Matt closes his eyes rather than see who it is, for some reason) but Shelley sees the person who enters. The daughter cries more and Shelley runs with her to a bedroom, locking the door. The fire was deliberate, they were burned to death; Matt discovers that Shelley scratched the name Ballan into a floorboard.

old photo

Whilst he is certainly a killer, the evidence for vampirism, so far, is at best circumstantial – bar the possible bites. I should mention that, as Matt goes through a store area of the church to find Ballan’s lair we see a Victorian looking picture of Ballan, suggesting he might be immortal. When we hear that the police, after Matt brains Ballan over and over again with a rock, found no trace of the imposter but did find the real Ballan – who had been dead for some amount of time – we wonder was the body they found the fresh kill, rotted on death, or was the Ballan we saw really an imposter? In that case how did he fool every one and how did he get up after having his skull repeatedly smashed? One answer, to either possibility, might be that he was a vampire.

Alucard's grave

The director does leave us with one interesting clue. Matt is being chased by the gang and he manages to get to the churchyard and hide. It is in the scene where Ballan intervenes and sends the gang away. However Matt’s hiding place, before the intervention, is behind a gravestone. If you look carefully (and it might not be too clear in the screenshot) the name on the stone is Angus Alucard. Yes, Dracula backwards! Methinks that might have been a big hint and at that point I am going vamp, though I admit some points might be stretched – the supposed immortality, the might-be-bite marks and the reference to Alucard seal the deal.

The film, by the way, I thought was well worth a watch and is a good modern ghost story beyond anything else. The imdb page is here.

Revealed: Mysteries of the Vampire Skeletons – review

2012-01-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

Director: Mark Fielder

Released: 2011

Contains spoilers

Narrated by Russell Boulter this documentary for UK TV Channel 5 looks into the latest finds of deviant burials that the archaeological community (or at least some within it) are suggesting might be vampire burials.

damaged legs wrapped around a boulder

Most famously, such a skeleton was unearthed in Venice. In this case the documentary concentrates on three deviant burials found in a dig in Kilteasheen in Ireland. At the dig – which revealed a large burial site – a skeleton was unearthed, whose legs had been wrapped around a boulder, in such a way – it has been suggested – to stop the corpse from walking. This was followed by the discovery of two skeletons who seemed to have stones thrust in their mouths. Interestingly, carbon dating put the skeletons as old as 720-760 AD, comparatively the Venice skull was likely from the 16th century.

skull with stone in mouth

Were these burials supposed vampires or revenants? One of the experts interviewed mentioned historical text, contemporary to the carbon dating, which suggested a belief in vampires, in Ireland, at that time. This source was a penitenitentia text, called the first synod of St Patrick, and the expert interviewed suggests that it says that anyone who believes in vampires should be put outside the church. As the word vampire would not have been in use (as far as we know) it is a pity that this was expanded on more.

reconstruction in cgi

There are pieces of English folklore that suggest a belief in revenants that are mentioned. These were the old woman of Berkeley, immortalised in poem by Robert Southey but originally told by William of Malmesbury (1095/96 – 1143), and also the tale of two men who were thought to have become Revenants in Drakelow, Derbyshire, in 1085. The documentary tells us of their bodies being exhumed, them being beheaded, their hearts removed and burnt (and interestingly two crows emerging from the smoke).

The documentary follows the beliefs into the vampire panics, telling us about the report by Johann Flückinger in 1732 and also looking briefly at the Petre Toma case from Romania in 2004, where the body was exhumed and the heart burnt.

With an obligatory mention of Bram Stoker and some footage of Whitby, which honestly seemed superfluous, the documentary does tread some very tired ground. However the main thrust is the deviant burials in Kilteasheen and this subject is fresh and interesting. 6.5 out of 10.

At the time of review their does not appear to be an imdb page.

Guest Blog: Vamp or Not? The Nosferatu Scroll

2012-01-25T11:27:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Clark Nuttall with another guest blog, this time investigating whether the novel The Nosferatu Scroll is 'Vamp or Not?'.

Author James Becker

First published 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Bohemia 1741, On the Northern banks of the Vitava River an extraordinary event is taking place. Inside a private chapel a high-born Hungarian lady is being laid to rest. But not before her heart is removed from her body and she is buried beneath a layer of heavy stones – lest she rise again to prey upon her victims...

Venice 2010, Holidaying in the world's most beautiful city, Chris Bronson and Angela Lewis discover a desecrated tomb. Inside it is a female skeleton and a diary dating back hundreds of years. Written in Latin, it refers to a lost scroll that will provide the 'answer' to an ancient secret.

Soon corpses of young women, all killed in the same ritualistic manner, start appearing throughout the city. And when Angela disappears, Bronson knows he must find her before she too is slaughtered. But his hunt for Angela leads him to the Island of the Dead, and into a conspiracy more deadly than he could ever have imagined...

The 'Vamp or Not?': This novel does, pretty much, exactly “what it says on the tin” to use a phrase from British advertising.

It opens in the obligatory creepy castle, as a priest supervises the opening of a coffin, delivered 2 days ago from the Schwarzenberg Castle in Vienna. In the coffin is the body of the “high-born Hungarian lady”, the gloriously titled Princess Eleonora Elisabeth Amalia Magdalena von Schwarzenberg. The author describes in detail how the priest checks her body, slicing open the stitches down the length of her body, to ensure the heart had been removed, before splashing her with what we can assume to be holy water and sealing her inside a box which he then fastens inside a coffin. He then has the coffin transported to the church where it is taken underground into a side chapel rather than the family mausoleum, and it is buried in a clay concrete lined hole with large slabs of rock in order “to stop her rising”. He also mutilates a portrait of her, cutting out the head and burning that section of the painting. This, he believes, will end the curse that has plagued the area. This chapter ends with him thinking he was wrong about the source of this mysterious plague, hinting that whatever was happening had continued, but at this point the author flips to the present day, and this is the last we hear from that side of the story. Personally I was a little disappointed and wondered if the author could have continued this novel just along this story, developing the characters and giving us a full 18th century vampire novel, but we move to the present day now.

Chris Bronson and Angela Lewis are holidaying in Venice, and its early November. I must admit to never having visited this city, but from the author's description it seems to be an amazing place, and definitely a place for anyone who likes Italy to visit. They decide, as it's the 1st of November, to take in the Venetian Festival of the Dead and so visit the island used as the main burial area for Venice, the island of San Michele. Whilst joining in, and watching, the torchlight procession through the graveyard, which, upon this of all nights, is misty, they hear a scream.

Bronson, it transpires, is ex-forces and now a policeman, and Angela an archaeologist for the British Museum, so of course they head towards the sound and discover a crowd around a dead body. This is not just any old dead body though......a tomb has broken open and the ancient corpse has fallen out. Whilst they wait for the police to arrive Angela sneaks a look inside the tomb and finds an ancient diary which she secretes about her person. She also notices that skull had been removed and placed between the feet and also that it had a rock jammed in the jaws.

The next morning we hear that a young woman has gone missing, and that she is by no means the first. Bronson, as a policeman, albeit British and far outside his jurisdiction, finds this interesting, whilst Angela finds the diary even more so. Angela explains to him that the tomb they saw last night was that of a vampire, hence the removal of the head and the rock in the jaws. Of course, they both agree, vampires don't exist but times were different when this person died and superstitions then are scoffed at now.

Angela gives Bronson a potted history of the vampire, from the ancient Egyptian god Shezmu through to the likes of Dracula. I won't go into detail about it as anyone reading this will be conversant enough with the vampire genealogy anyway. She does however state that stakes, crucifixes, garlic, sunlight and mirrors are likely inventions of later people, in particular pointing a finger at Bram Stoker, and linking their rise to the Black Death.

Whilst they discuss this Marietta Perrini, the latest young woman to disappear finds herself chained in a room deep underground, with no light whatsoever. Meanwhile Inspector Bianchi, tasked with the investigation into the missing women also meets Bronson and Angela to take statements about the previous night's discovery.

The story moves on from here, Angela translating the Latin script, in the process learning it gives indicators as to how to “make” a vampire. Unfortunately for her, it is missing a key part, the scroll of the title. Other people are also interested in this, and whilst they are out enjoying the sights Bronson is knocked unconscious and Angela kidnapped. Bronson is warned by Bianchi to let the police do their job and find Angela, of course we know this won't happen.......and it doesn't.

Angela finds herself on one of the numerous small islands scattered about Venice, where she is forced to fully translate the diary. She is also told that as she has seen the faces of the people holding her, when she has outlived her usefulness they will kill her. Knowing this, and believing Bronson to be dead, she duly translates the diary. Thankfully it is indeed missing the scroll, but there are clues as to its whereabouts, thus giving her a reprieve for the time being.

Bronson, as we know, is not dead and is hunting for her all over Venice. He by chance returns to San Michele and recognises the person who assaulted him, giving him the break he needed. He reports this again to Bianchi, and again is warned about interfering in an on-going police investigation, so takes matters into his own hands.

Angela is taken to another remote island, and in a clock tower she finds the missing scroll. This is a bonus, as she stays alive in order to translate this to the captors, who include a hooded man who never speaks, has prominent canines and smells strongly of rotting flesh.

In order to save the review being the length of the novel, things now move apace and Bronson manages to tail the kidnappers to their lair, reporting this to Bianchi, who sends a launch to investigate, only to discover it is the wrong island. However Bronson sees another behind it and sets off to rescue Angela who has, by this time, translated everything and is taken into a cellar, where she meets Marietta. The scroll has provided the missing instructions for the creation of a vampire, and Marietta is a key ingredient.

Bronson hides on the island and sees a group of men, immaculately dressed, arrive for a ceremony. He phones Bianchi, and is astonished to see one of the figures answer the phone. Bianchi, it would appear, is one of the vampire cult, which leads Bronson to assume that is why his help wasn't wanted or encouraged. He gets into the cellar by knocking out one of the cultists and wearing his robe, where the ceremony is about to take place. We know that he won't stand by and let this happen and of course he doesn't. A gunfight ensues, and the Italian armed police also burst in to capture the cultists. Bianchi it now transpires was an inside man and had arranged this in order to arrest them all.

As the smoke clears he finds Angela, and the hooded vampire have gone missing. Bronson finds the obligatory secret passage and a chase in speedboats across the water of Venice ensues as we rush towards the climax. Bronson shoots the hooded figure at close range and it falls into the water, he gets the girl, the police break up the murderous cult and everyone lives happily ever after. Or do they? The author ends with no body ever being found, but a few months later an abandoned building becomes a place of fear as strange sounds emerge, and the smell of rotting flesh becomes stronger.

This book is definitely not an actual vampire, more vampire cult, but as I stated earlier the opening chapter cold have been the start of a traditional vampire novel of some promise. The rest of the novel is a conspiracy theory/Dan Brown-esque adventure thriller featuring a cult who believed they could create vampires.

As a last aside however, the author did have an interesting idea I hadn't come across for this actual creation (and I stand here to be shown up by my ignorance). The ceremony involved 2 human victims, in this instance Marietta and Angela. One had to be of noble, indeed vampiric lineage (Marietta) and the other just a common person (Angela). Both were force fed the milk of a she wolf before being raped and murdered. They were then to be bled and the blood collected, mixed with the powdered skull of a vampire and drunk. This would lead to the creation of a vampire. As I say, not a concept I personally have come across before, and an interesting one that may have worked better in a traditional vampire story.

Not vampire, but enjoyable enough as an adventure story.

Taliesin’s Thoughts: Clark is correct when he states that there isn’t actually a vampire in this, however (without having read the novel) I personally would class it as ‘Vamp’ due to the belief in vampires.

What is interesting is that James Becker has clearly conflated two real world storys that have recently been documented in a televised form. The story of Princess Eleonore Elisabeth Amalia Magdalena von Lobkowicz was investigated and theorised upon in the documentary Vampire Princess and the skull with a brick was found in a Venice plague pit and examined in the book Vampire Forensics, itself a companion to a National Geographic TV documentary of the same name.

Interestingly the author has clearly taken Princess Eleonore’s habit of taking wolf’s milk (as a cure) and conflated it into a vampire creation myth – like Clark I haven’t seen this occur before.

Déjà vu – review

2012-01-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

Director: Poom Opium

Release Date: 2011* (assumed)

Contains spoilers

I ordered this Thai release with hope, given the cover, that it might be rather good – yes, yes, I know… never judge a book and all that jazz. But, to be fair, it looked funky and how often do you get the concept of a naga in a film?

What, before we start, is a naga? In various traditions it is an entity that takes the form of a giant snake. More importantly in Thailand and Laos, along the Mekong, the Nāga is still revered and believed to rule in the river – This is where some of the film takes place. The film also involves vampires – hence being reviewed here.

mereman

As the film begins we see people on jet skis. Masked men fire submachine guns at a woman –Janjira Nakjit, known as Jane – who falls into the water. She is rescued by a mereman, who places something (later revealed to be the naga pearl) in her mouth and this revives her. Has this taken place? Probably not; when we meet Jane in the next scene she is a cop, transferred to the Déjà vu research centre, and doesn’t believe in occult phenomena. Yet she keeps dreaming this scene – a premonition then? If so it doesn’t actually happen in film, beyond her dreams – though she does meet the mereman in human form.

blood everywhere

A woman sits on the edge of a bath as a man drinks a brandy. The woman, Camilla, sprinkles water on her cleavage and skimpy clothing and I assume that showing her nude and in the bath was a step too far for the filmmakers. The man approaches her and they end up on the bed, her straddling him but, before the clothing can come off and the censors get upset, she produces fangs and kills him, getting blood everywhere.

Dr Chamnong and Jane

At the research centre Dr Pakorn Chamnong shows Jane an orientation video as he explains that Déjà vu investigate weird occurrences – a picture of Sir Christopher Lee as Dracula is one of the images that flash up on the screen! He shows her a picture of a corpse that has been cut at the throat and drained of blood. This was done, he says, by what they call a “suck blood monster” or vampire. He thinks it has something to do with a picture found at the scene. The picture is a real picture often found in Thai bars and restaurants and inscribed with the legend “Queen of Nagas, seized by the American Army, Mekong River at Laos military base, June 27th 1973, with a length of 7.80 metres”. Actually the picture is a hoax and is of a group of Navy Seal trainees with an oarfish they found, in California, in 1996. This, however, is the basis of the film.

fangs on display

So what is going on? That is difficult to say as the film wasn’t particularly forthcoming plot wise and the subtitles were poor, to say the very least. Camilla is known to Déjà vu, she is from Romania – a child of a Romanian and a Thai parent. She contracted vampirism and must feed on a full moon. Although she seems to feed more regularly, she gains her powers from the act of blood drinking at the specific point in the lunar cycle. The vampires are daywalkers but they are mortal and need the naga pearl to become immortal.

Lara... oops... I mean Jane

Now, when they said mortal I can only assume that they will age and die, because they were impervious to bullets. They can turn into crap bats and Camilla’s hands pass through a mattress, at one point, from under the bed in order that she might strangle Jane. They move at jerky fast speed and yet must chase down enemies – so they aren’t really going that fast.

mind holograms?

They are tracking down anyone who might know, or have been involved with, the capture of the queen naga and this search takes them (and Jane as well) to a certain Mr Rachain – the son of the captain of the fishing expedition, and a mereman it transpires. As for what else is going on… I don't really know. We can take the character Frank as an example of the film's inability to explain events. He is Jane’s partner in déjà vu and is a computer geek who at one point is asked to look at something... and seems to create a holographic aquarium, which fills the tent the characters sit in, with his mind. Jane touches a fish and is told not to touch anything else but we are not told what has happened, how it has been done or what its relevance is.

a batfink moment

Jane comes across like a Thai version of Lara Croft, complete with short shorts, vest and thigh strapped gun. Camilla at one point raises a cape to deflect bullets ala batfink, at another point stopping them with bullet time effects and yet, when a vampire is hit by a bullet they are not even phased. The good and bad guys are the worst shots ever, it seems, releasing clip after never-ending clip with a hit rate less than the A team and Jane seems to have access to a ready supply of grenades (though where she kept them is probably best not contemplated).

Camilla

When the ending came around (which involved a trip to another dimension – where they would never return from – to walk through a jungle, avoid two wooden traps and then return to our dimension) I was left wondering what the Hell had just gone on. Badly shot, badly acted, bad subtitles, poor effects and no proper story. Oh dear, oh dear. 1 out of 10 (as Camilla is hot).

At the time of review there is no IMDb page for the film.

First Impression: Underworld: Awakening

2012-01-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

This is the fourth episode of the Underworld series, directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, and I went to see this at the cinema last night.

So, of course, previously we had Underworld, which introduced us to the hidden war between vampires and lycans and the warrior (or, in Underworld parlance, deathdealer) Selene (Kate Beckinsale, Van Helsing) and at the end of that film we get the first Lycan/vampire hybrid in the form of Selene’s lover Michael. The second film Underworld Evolution sees a further hybrid in the form of ancient vampire Marcus and Selene manages to get herself some handy dandy immunity to sunlight. This film gives us a potted history of these two films at the beginning, ignoring the third film, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, as it was a prequel to the first two films and did not feature Selene.

The film then introduces the idea that humanity discover the existence of vampires and lycans and wage war on the two… here the film gets confused in its language, at times calling them separate species and at other times referring to the infected. They are, of course, infected – the two strands being different mutations of a virus that began (in the distant past) with Alexander Corvinus and diverged when his two infected sons were bitten by a bat and a wolf respectively. Whatever the language might suggest, however, we have the fact that humanity go on a full out killing spree. Selene and Michael are trying to escape the city but things go wrong…

icy but modest

Twelve years later (as we soon discover) and an alarm goes off in a facility, allegedly a research facility dedicated to finding a cure to the two infections. Subject 2 has escaped from a cell and releases subject 1 from Cryo-stasis before heading out of the building to freedom. Subject 1 is, of course, Selene. The old Underworld modesty rears its head here as a naked Selene falls out of the Cryo-stasis pod and dry ice conspires to keep any nudity well hidden. For some reason the facility decided to keep her gear stored in the same room, so she is quickly dressed and then is also escaping. Positively, during her flight from the facility sequence, she does actually bite someone (there is way too little vampire bite moments in the series).

India Eisley as Eve

Actually she is allowed to escape, the order coming from head scientist Dr Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea, Interview with the Vampire) as she will lead them to number 1 – Lane goes on to conspire to keep the escapes a secret from the police. When Selene goes and finds the scientist who took the order (as she heard it) she is told that her and the other subject’s minds are somehow linked – in ways the scientists don’t understand – hence blasts of visions she was having, she is literally seeing through the other’s eyes. When she finds subject 2 it is a young girl, credited as Eve (India Eisley), and not Michael as she had assumed. She also meets David (Theo James) a member of a hidden vampire coven.

a Lycan

The coven is run by David’s father, Thomas (Charles Dance, who is doing his best Bill Nighy impression), and he is less than impressed. Selene is a traitor who loved an abomination and killed two of the elders (not forgetting that one of those elders was, by that logic, an abomination also) and, as he realises what Eve is, he believes she will bring humanity to the coven’s door. And yes, they are attacked… however it isn’t humans but lycans including a super-giant-lycan. It isn’t much of a spoiler to reveal that the facility is really run by lycans, using the hybrid to cure their weakness to silver. In doing so they have turned Lane’s son, Quint (Kris Holden-Ried, The Death of Alice Blue), into the self-healing, silver immune and giant super-lycan. They get Eve back and Selene is off to rescue her, with the help of human cop Sebastian (Michael Ealy).

So, first impressions… a good action film, take your brain out and watch the explosions and acrobatics… However, if you re-engage your brain the film begins to fade more and more. How did the lycans know about the coven’s location? We see the van Selene and David use to get there on an empty road, so presumably they weren’t followed. Perhaps the lycans always knew of the location – we’re not told. Indeed, why hadn’t the facility added tracking devices to its test subjects? You know, on the off-chance they escaped.

Michael Ealy as Sebastian

All the characters, bar Selene and (to a lesser degree) Eve, are ciphers, walking plot devices. Sebastian hides evidence of Selene and berates his rooky partner (we do hear that his wife had been turned and self-immolated when the feds turned up at the door, during the purge). His motivation, thus, seems obvious but not so when he ignores a potential lycan kill. Much more could have been done with this, adding suspicions from his partner and a whole sub-plot. Indeed wouldn’t the force be suspicious of a man who harboured a vampire, albeit his wife? Even more pertinent is the question, why did the purge happen? According to the first film the vampires were living on synthetic blood, was the purge just in that city (an undisclosed mash up of an Eastern-European and US location)? Wouldn’t some countries have gone down the route imagined in True Blood?

action, pvc... but where is the story?

These are just the ones on the surface and I am sure more questions would occur if I put some effort into thinking about it. The key, of course, is not to think, it is to watch the action sequences and Kate Beckinsale and leave all else at the door. Unfortunately a lot of the intricate history and backstory, once a cornerstone of the Underworld franchise, has also been left at the door by the filmmakers.

I should say though, for all those who despair about Twilight, that this film does have a sparkly vampire in it… ok, it’s Kate walking through a cloud from a silver nitrate grenade but… she sparkles. As for the 3D, it didn’t give me the headache that sometimes comes with some films but I wasn’t particularly impressed with it generally, it seemed a bit pointless really. A full review will be looked at when the DVD release is available. The imdb page is here.

Kronos – review

2012-01-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Author: Guy Adams

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

The blurb: 'What manner of monster can wreak such damage? I only hope you know how it can be stopped.'

The peace of an English village is shattered when a young girl withers before her friend's eyes, becoming but dust and bones. Witnessing this terrifying transformation, local physician Dr Marcus fears the village has been cursed by the presence of evil. He immediately summons his old army friend, the mysterious but powerful vampire hunter, Kronos.

Together with the help of his assistant Professor Grost, Kronos has dedicated his whole life to destroying vampires. He knows that there is nothing so varied and deadly. With a vampire nothing is certain, especially how one might be able to kill it.

As more and more villagers fall prey to this deadly curse, time is against him. And when it comes dangerously close to home, Kronos is faced with a terrible choice...

The review: Having been a tad underwhelmed by the novelisation of Twins of Evil I perhaps approached the next classic Hammer novelisation with a touch more trepidation. Kronos is the novelisation of the 1974 classic Hammer movie Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter. The book has a foreword by writer director Brian Clemens, and hee tells us that there were things he would have liked to do in the movie that budget wouldn’t allow. The specific example was having Kronos sleep in a gold coffin to help him think like his foes. This is introduced in book.

Indeed Adams changes quite a few things in book, though the novel follows mainly the story line of the film. Kronos’ sidekick, Professor Hieronymus Grost, suddenly changes his name to Herbert Grost – for reasons unknown. The film was set in an undisclosed European setting, in the book it is made clear that the place is England and that Kronos had previously been part of the New Model Army (despite this fact, his ‘chinese herbs’ are also more accurately described and are perhaps not what an officer in the NMA might have indulged in).

There are also lore changes. When going to face the vampires the cross painted on the necks is made of wax from a saint’s blood candle, rather than garlic, and a concoction of garlic and wolfsbane is smeared on the neck in addition to this. We have confirmation that the latter works as a ward. Rather than the efficiency of crosses as a weapon against the undead being down to the bearer, it is down to the religious nature of the vampire and, most importantly, the entire lore about the vampires met in this adventure being killed by the holy cross (forged into a sword) is gone replaced by another method; in the Kronos universe the effectiveness of any item depends on the particular breed of vampire.

What I thought was brilliant was that Adams wrote the book first person but switched through a variety of characters chapter to chapter, some of these characters being minor players in the story or little more than observers. This way the book is enriched with detail and interesting perspectives, especially as Adams maintains individual voices for his narrators. The climax plays out slightly differently to the film ending, but was both thrilling and would have made a brilliant movie ending.

Clemens offers his wish that the book might prove popular and then, perhaps, lead to another movie. As I read it – and bearing in mind that one concept, at the time the film original came out, was for a Kronos TV series – I actually thought that perhaps Hammer might consider an entire Kronos reboot. So long as they can find a lead as charismatic as Horst Janson, I think the film could be remade as the first of a film series or the pilot of a TV series. The genius of Kronos – and the clue is in the name – is that this could take place jumping through time periods. At the very least Adams should be commissioned to create some original Kronos tales. For now, however, I give the book a strong 8 out of 10.

Twins of Evil – review

2012-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

Author: Shaun Hutson

First published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Karnstein castle stands like a bird of prey on the highest point of the hills that surround the village below. A huge monolithic reminder to all those who see it of the power of the family who have lived there for centuries.

By day, the village of Karnstein is a peaceful place, but by night, an unimaginable evil roams free. Villagers are found dead, their throats ripped open and bodies drained of blood. Young girls disappear and are never seen again. Rumour has it that they are taken to the castle for the pleasure of the Count Karnstein, the last surviving member of the family.

Into this strange place come beautiful identical twins Maria and Frieda. While Maria lives a blameless life, Frieda is drawn to the castle and Count Karnstein. A man rarely seen in daylight, a man steeped in Satanic ritual and the blood of beautiful young girls.

Before long Frieda and Karnstein unleash a reign of bloody terror on the villagers, and no one, it seems, is strong enough to stop them.

The review: Shaun Hutson is no stranger to the blog, we looked at his book Erebus and he had a cameo appearance in the film Forest of the Damned. In 2011, Hammer released some movie-tie in books including two of classic vampire movies, Hutson wrote the novelisation of Twins of Evil.

I was fairly excited as I hoped Hutson would move beyond the film and, indeed, he did, creating scenes that were never filmed. One scene that I found exciting, from a geeky point of view, was when we entered the tavern and the innkeeper remembers strangers passing through in the form of the English couple called Kent and a Father Sandor – a reference to the film Dracula: Prince of Darkness (of course, there were actually two couples, both called Kent, in at that time). He then recalls trouble at a girl’s finishing school tied into a student called Mircalla, referencing Lust for a Vampire.

This was great but later as he has the doomed school teacher, Ingrid, meet the Harcourts – hapless victims in Kiss of the Vampire - it went from referentially cool to annoying. The Harcourts suggest they are visiting Dr Ravna and it just didn’t sit right, it was too tied in and (of course) the Harcourts travelled by car not coach. We still do not know exactly how Ingrid met her fate, just that she did after the coach stopped because of something blocking the road.

The lore is much as laid out in the film, though Hutson introduces a direct sunlight rule that is not present in the Karnstein films. He does suggest, however, that the count can walk abroad on overcast days.

Niggles aside this was a fair enough novelisation, but it isn’t Hutson’s best work and it didn’t rock my world. It did, however, dovetail nicely with my love of the Hammer films. 6 out of 10.

Guest Blogging

2012-01-16T12:44:00.000-08:00

There’s no post here today, instead I am guest blogging over at Bloody Good Vampires, a site run by Carole Gill. You might remember that I reviewed Carole’s novel The House on Blackstone Moor and she was kind enough to ask me to do a piece on her blog. So… what're you waiting for… go on over and say hi.

Bloodlust: Vampire Shadowhunter

2012-01-14T03:27:00.000-08:00

There are precious few specifically vampire games out there, given the size of the genre as a whole, fewer still where you play the vampire and feed. Enter the game – currently in development – Bloodlust: Vampire Shadowhunter.

This is an indie game and promises a non-linear single player role playing game. The basic story is as follows:

”Varic and Vista, two silent, dark, and solitary "ShadowHunters" find themselves resurrected into a lost city terrorized by the all-powerful "Emperor" Ranior, a monstrous vampire lord. Haunted by visions of darkness and tormented by their ghosts from the past, Varic and Vista struggle daily, though they always continue to move forward. With each victory they grow stronger, increasing bloodline and skills in the "Dark Arts", but all at the cost of their humanity. With each new bloodline, they find themselves turning more into the vampiric monsters they were resurrected to destroy. In the end, their great power will be challenged only by themselves, as they will have to face the source of their own immortality and decide whether to embrace the darkness or destroy it.

“What would you choose?”

There is a demo online and, having played it, I am thoroughly looking forward to the full game being developed. Now, a word of caution, the game is an indie development and, as such, it isn’t as graphically polished as perhaps some games out there from the big studies. That said, it still looks pretty darn good. The game demo and more details can be found here. My thanks to Everlost and Vampire News for putting me on to this. I’ll leave you with a gameplay video:

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night – review

2012-01-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

Director: Kevin Munroe

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

So a long, long, long time ago I put a pre-order in for the Dylan Dog DVD at Amazon UK. After a while I got an email saying the film had been put back, and then a further email to the same effect every so often. Eventually, having been determined to buy the UK disc, I cancelled the order and ordered the US disc – after all, by that time it was cheaper than the UK pre-order price. Is there a moral to that story? Not really, unless it is to point out to the various companies involved in film production and distribution that messing your customers around is uncool.

Brandon Routh as Dylan

What else was meant to be uncool was Dylan Dog itself. I had heard bad reports, especially about leading man Brandon Routh. Well I didn’t find it all that bad, to be perfectly honest. It isn’t the best movie ever made and Routh isn’t the most charismatic lead (though as it is played like a noir he doesn’t have to be that animated), but I have seen much worse.

Anita Briem as Elizabeth

The film begins with a woman, Elizabeth (Anita Briem), cooking dinner for her and her father. She puts out a plate when she sees blood drip onto the porcelain, pooling from the ceiling above. She runs upstairs to find her father dead and something furry burst through the window and escape into the night. We then get a Sam Spade like voice-over about things that die and come back and how you would call Dylan (Brandon Routh) or you used to, but he is out of that game now. Once, however, he had been the line between them and humanity.

Sam Huntington as Marcus

Dylan, in the here and now, has a gun aimed at his head. The gunman is a husband that Dylan caught and photographed cheating on his wife and he blames Dylan for the fact that he is going to lose everything. Dylan has little sympathy but when the man suggests that his wife cheated first he offers his services… at the right price. Marcus (Sam Huntington, Being Human (US)) comes in with a new camera for Dylan. He wants to be Dylan’s partner, rather than a general dogsbody, but Dylan doesn’t want one. There is a new job in the Garden District (the film is set in New Orleans). It turns out to be Elizabeth, who was given his card (from the old days) by a priest. Dylan walks away.

vampire blood is a drug

Next we visit the vampires of the film. The vampires are marketing their own blood as a designer drug that you inhale through a nebuliser and it makes the user, strong and – if the person we see is anything to go by – really rather annoying. Later we hear that humans addicted to vampire blood are called ghouls. The leader of the vampires, Vargas (Taye Diggs), is informed that there has been a werewolf murder, a fact that doesn’t interest him until he hears that the victim had imported ‘the heart’ from the old country – this is the artefact at the centre of the film.

wake up dead

Marcus is at the office and is attacked by a zombie and killed. Now one thing I did like was how they did the zombies in this. Flesh-eaters become ripped super-zombies (that didn’t work awfully well visually to be honest) but the normal zombies are worm eating undead that maintain thought and personality. They do, however, rot. Enter the bodyshop – a place where zombies can buy new parts (arms, legs, heads!). Marcus comes back as a zombie and some of the best moments of the film surround him coming to terms with his condition.

Peter Stormare as Gabriel

As for Dylan, he take the case – following Marcus’ murder – and is sent down a path where he has to confront the head of a werewolf family, Gabriel (Peter Stormare, the Batman Vs Dracula), run in with Vargas, confront both his past and a killer zombie, face a monster hunter and defeat the ultimate undead. All in a day’s work! Seriously though, the film had promise that it doesn’t achieve but it is quite fun for all that.

burnt by the sun

Vampire wise we discover a few bits and bobs. They can be staked to be killed and sunlight does burn them. One punishment they might give to one of their own is burial, which can lead to insanity following the claustrophobia, hunger and worms eating through their brains. Ancient vampires might go into a hibernation and the vampire clans keep those vampires safe in storage.

staked

The special effects aren’t the best in the world in this, though they are ok in places. But I did like the overall premise. The noir aspect helps Routh get away with his deadpan performance but Huntington gives a nice, quirky performance. The film is based on a comic series and I really should pick the English translation up at some point and see if it achieves what the film should have. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: One More Time

2012-01-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

Now I have, many a time, stated that vampires get everywhere… and they really do. This is a 1970 comedy starring the wonderful Sammy Davis Jr. (Messiah of Evil & the Cannonball Run) as Charles Salt and Peter Lawford as Christopher Pepper.

It has much of what you would expect, a swinging soundtrack, mistaken (and assumed) identities and some bits that perhaps wouldn’t be put in a film nowadays. Aside from that it has the breaking of the fourth wall and some genuinely surreal moments in amongst the more mundane gags.

Christopher Lee as Dracula

The moment we are concerned with sees Charles Salt accidentally opening a secret passageway in a bookcase (the only book he could find of interest to read being the Kama Sutra and that is the secret switch). He looks into the dark passageway and is confronted by a cornucopia of horror characters that include Peter Cushing reprising, according to imdb, his Dr Frankenstein role (though I would have preferred to think of him as Van Helsing) and Christopher Lee as Dracula. Both actors were uncredited but both had a brief speaking moment.

Peter Cushing as Dr Frankenstein

Later, when trying to show this to Pepper, the secret door opens to reveal nothing more sinister than a booze cabinet. (At the end of the film it becomes the chamber of horror again, but unseen to the audience and only revealed in noises).

So, Sir Christopher Lee reprises his Dracula character again, if only briefly and vampires, yet again, get everywhere.

The imdb page is here.

Young Dracula – season 3

2012-01-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

Directors: Joss Agnew & Matthew Evans

First aired: 2011

Contains spoilers

I looked at season 1 and 2 of Young Dracula together and, for those unaware of the series, it was a BBC children’s series that surpassed normal standards by creating a well-acted, genuinely funny and ominously dark (in places) show that could be enjoyed by adults and children alike. Then it stopped, after two seasons, with a cliffhanger but no concrete plans for a further series.

Renfield and Ingrid

This, of course, was perilous. After-all there was a child/teen cast all growing older. However in 2011 the BBC decided to bring the show back. It shifted locations but sported the same key cast (for the Dracula family). The cliffhanger was neatly bypassed with just a comment that daughter Ingrid (Clare Thomas) had left her brother Vlad (Gerran Howell) for dead and her father, Count Dracula (Keith Lee Castle, Urban Gothic: Vampirology and Vampire Diary), trapped in a UV cage, ready to be ashed…

Vlad in his vampire outfit

A few years have passed, Vlad and his father have moved to a school that the Count has bought, a hiding spot from the Slayer’s Guild. Vlad has come into his powers – though they are not fully developed – and so must now avoid direct sunlight but he still steadfastly refuses to drink real blood (and so drinks a soya replacement!). The only other members of the household still with them, at first, are the hell hound Zoltan (voiced by Andy Bradshaw) and manservant Renfield (Simon Ludders), who has been mind-wiped and doesn’t remember that his master is a vampire.

Sydney White as Erin

Vlad is still the chosen one and vampire society awaits his coming into his powers to lead them to glory. Until he is 18, however, the Count is his regent and in charge. The slayers also know about Vlad and are hunting him and, as the series starts, he starts having visions of his sister being hunted (and the newspapers relay the fact that their castle in Stokely – from season 1 & 2 – has been burnt to the ground). He rescues his sister, who is ill with blood poisoning contracted from a victim. With her is Erin (Sydney White) a half-fang…

Clare Thomas as Ingrid

So, what is a half-fang? Answer, a person bitten but not yet come into their vampire powers. We quickly discover, however, that Erin is not a half-fang but a breather (full human). Her brother (Tom Gibbons) and her were slayers, Ingrid bit her brother (and caught her blood poisoning from him), and Erin has used stasis spray to hide her humanity from the vampires (taking away her human scent and hiding her heart beat). Her aim is to kill the Draculas to cure Ryan but soon discovers that such a cure is a myth; she and Vlad quickly fall for each other as well.

turning into smoke

The show follows the machinations of Ingrid, the Count and Bertrand (Cesare Taurasi) a tutor that comes to Vlad with a mystical book that only the chosen one can and must open, and how all of them try and manipulate Vlad (and each other), as well as the developing relationship between Erin and Vlad, his development of powers and the interest of the slayers. For the most part it worked exceptionally well, just like the first two series, with the characters all coming into their own – Clare Thomas and Keith Lee Castle often competing to steal the show but Gerran Howell definitely holding his own.

hunting on the ceiling

Lore wise we have garlic burning vampires, whilst staking and sunlight kill the vampires. Vlad has no reflection, turns into a bat (in order to save his sister, though he never wanted to use that power) and vampires have the ability to turn into smoke. The slayers have stasis spray and bands that control heart-rate if trying to pass for unconcerned humans. They also have UV bombs. Vampires have a variety of magic powers and also eye-mojo – but cannot hypnotise someone they love. Wall and ceiling crawling are in the vampire arsenal and woe betide any maiden who sings a Romanian folksong in earshot of a hungry Count!

Keith Lee Castle as the Count

There were two episodes that were nothing more than filler. They both contained a fluff story, barely worth airing, wrapped around clips from the first two series and this one. One might argue that a recap was useful from the first two seasons but the first occurred in episode 4 and contained clips from episodes 1-3 as well and was as much filler as back story, the other was late in the series and completely unnecessary other than to fill an episode. The character Wolfie (Lorenzo Rodriguez), Vlad and Ingrid’s young half-brother, and himself half vampire/half werewolf, left at the school by their mother after her brief sojourn in the series, seemed a little pointless as a character, I’m afraid.

Hunters

However they are the only real negatives. Otherwise the show was back, it perhaps lacked a little bit of the gore that the second series introduced (we don’t really see a bite, though they do happen).The comedy was there but much curtailed as the show's aim became that little bit older (along with the cast). The incongruities that the older cast might have offered were met head on when the Count insists that Ingrid enrol in the school and she points out that she is twenty.

the Count reading Twilight

When the humour did raise its head it often relied on Renfield (and his disgusting habits or desire for cross-dressing – indeed him doing a Britney Spears impression will haunt me and was less comedy and more nightmarish). However the sight of the Count reading Twilight and laughing his socks off was a memorable moment. Generally the show actually felt that little bit darker in places but never forgot that it was, ultimately, a kid’s show and, all in all, it was great fun.

So, BBBC, will there now be a three season boxset released? 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Bella Notte – review

2012-01-06T09:26:00.000-08:00

Author: Jesse Kimmel-Freeman

First published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Vampires? Check. Werewolves? Check. Death prophecy to hang over your head? Double check.

Seventeen year old Emma Hutchinson struggles to find her place in the world she has been born to as she tries to decide whether she should be with Michael, the boy she has been dreaming about since she was three or if she belongs with Dominic, her betrothed.

The review: Some books are just more difficult to review than others. Take Bella Notte; my difficulty reviewing it wasn't because it was a review copy (which it was) but because it isn’t the type of book I would naturally read.

Bella Notte is a teen romance and at 41 I am a little past teen and have never been much of a fan of romance, but (like it or not) romance (teen and otherwise) do have a legitimate place in the genre. With that in mind I find myself having to place myself into the mind of the target audience and judging the subject of the review (as much as I can) with their eyes as well as looking at it from a more genre standard perspective.

The book itself follows Emma. From a rich family, she herself is an outcast from the popular kids at school – much too goth for their tastes. A new boy, Mike, starts at the school and she recognises him from a recurring dream that she has had since she was three years old. He too recognises her too, and shares the same dream. They start a relationship, though both sets of parents seem a little less than supportive, though neither seem to actively damn the relationship.

Things become more complicated when Dominic, brother of her childhood friend Issy, comes over from Italy and she discovers that she is betrothed to him. Issy is not there due to a family scandal and her running off with someone they disapprove of. Despite being, initially, boorish Dominic soon shows her his soft side, especially when she has to take a trip to Italy with him. In the meantime Mike discovers that he has a betrothed too.

Jesse Kimmel-Freeman has developed a living vampire lore that sees the vampire as a blood-drinking, long living race. They can breed – in a bonded relationship – but a female will only ever have one pregnancy (though multiple births are not unheard of). Vampires can communicate telepathically.

As children they are just like human children and age at about the same rate, when their change comes on they become faster, stronger and colder to touch. The same is similar for werewolves (though they develop a higher than human body temperature) and vampire and werewolves traditionally are at war with each other – or live at arm’s length as the two families do. Later we do hear of more liberal set ups, but Mike and Emma’s families are traditionalist.

So far so Romeo and Juliet, with a third spoke added to create a love triangle – specifically around Dominic and the fact that Emma falls for him too. Unlike other, more famous, vampire/wolf-teen-love-stories, Emma actually has the capacity to love two beaus, for different reasons, and does not become hysterically dependant on any one. There is also the matter of a little prophecy, but the book only touches upon that and doesn’t explore it in depth. Perhaps Emma was a little too slow in becoming aware of exactly was going on around her.

When it comes to the writing I found the author’s style easy enough to read, indeed I tore through the initial part of the book, but I had a couple of niggles. Occasionally the dialogue seemed a little too formal and at others not so, and the differences didn’t quite gel – but this was a minor thing. I also found the last section of the book dragged a little – in comparison to the earlier sections. The author took the heroine to a stable place and things became too mundane (with the final days of school) or plot-light (a friend’s first modelling shoot). It was only at the very last moment that a stick was pushed through the spokes of the wheel of romance. During this final section one feels a little bit of judicial editing could have been entered into. Point in case, we see the composition of a valedictory speech – and so read the speech as well as those bits that would be edited out. A few pages later we get the actual speech, an almost identical block of prose. One feels an editor’s pen might have removed the second block of prose.

However, it must be remembered that this is a first time author, whose skills will grow and develop, and, as I say, the book was, overall, a nice read and I would guess ideal for its chosen market. I don’t think it carries a wider appeal, but then again it doesn’t need to. Taking that into account, however, 5 out of 10 – average in the wider genre, remembering that the book is rather readable generally, but will be very appealing to its target niche.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Ghost eyes – review

2012-01-04T09:19:00.000-08:00

Director: Kuei Chih-Hung

Release date: 1974

Contains spoilers

One of the more interesting convergences of genres is that of the ghost and the vampire and there have been so marvellous examples of Western ghost films that feature vampiric ghosts. However it is in Eastern cinema where the two are often confused with the word ghost being almost a catchall, that sometimes means vampire and at other times what we would more traditionally call a ghost. Sometimes this is because of translation as the word Guǐ means ghost but is also found in the kanji for vampire (which is suck blood ghost). In this case, we have a very early example of a Hong Kong vampire movie in which there does seem to be a purposeful confusion between a corporeal undead entity and a spirit based one.

In this the more familiar figure of the kyonsi is absolutely absent but some familiar tropes remain in the movie. What is also interesting is how this plays with a modern contrivance and places it within the world of the supernatural.

looking for a manicure

A man, Shi Jong-Jie (Si Wai), enters a barbershop looking to have a manicure done. He is led into the shop but notices that there are mirrors on both sides of the shop (except for the first seat) and aims to sit there. The owner notices that he didn’t seem to reflect in one mirror but dismisses the notion and, as we shall see, mirrors play a role later in the film. The beautician told to work with him needs to leave and so she asks Wang Bao-Ling (Chan Si-Gaai) to deal with him. As she works he discovers that she lives alone.

Si Wai as Mr Shi

After the shop shuts Bao-Ling is crossing the road when a car nearly knocks her down. She is shaken, rather than physically hurt, but has lost her glasses. These are retrieved by Mr Shi, but they are broken. In this scene we realise that Bao-Ling is very myopic. He suggests that contact lenses would be better than glasses but she replies that they are too expensive. It just so happens that he is an optometrist and would happily give her a discount and so, as she has a prior engagement, she arranges to go to his shop the next night. He gives her the address.

eye test

The prior arrangement is to meet her friend An-Pin (Lam Wai-Tiu), who is an hour late (having gone to buy a horror novel first) and so she makes him buy her an expensive steak. The next day she goes to Mr Shi’s shop and has her eyes tested and is given some temporary lenses and then a pair of prescription lenses are delivered at the barbershop. That night Bao-Ling is at home when there is a knock at the door, it is Mr Shi. He explains that a co-worker gave him Bao-Ling’s address and shines a torch in her eyes, that light becomes shining light from his eyes and she disrobes for him, we hear sounds of sex. In the morning she awakens, at first with no memory of how she got to her bed, naked and then remembering what she did, but not why she did it.

looking rougher by the day

Things become weirder for her, she starts seeing ghosts (unseen by others) and freaking out. Mr Shi turns up for a manicure and eye mojo’s her again. During the manicure he reacts violently when a man smokes near him and then he takes Bao-Ling to a house for sex. When she awakens the opulent house is a ruin – a tramp says that it is said to be haunted as someone burned to death in there. Her health becomes worse and worse, her skin drawn and sallow. When she returns to the optometrist shop it is a burnt out shell and she discovers that he died in the shop fire three years before.

using eye mojo

Bao-Ling cannot remove the lenses and, when An-Pin takes her to a doctor, she doesn’t appear to be wearing any – and only has mild myopia. Mr Shi tells her the lenses are part of her now. In some respects they were very much like the more traditional leaves, placed near eyes to see the spirit world in other Hong Kong movies, but these allow Mr Shi to control her. Mr Shi actually becomes bored with her and has her bring other girls to him who then vanish.

An-Pin comes to believe

So far, so ghost, despite her unhealthy appearance, which does make it seem like he is sucking the life from her, we see little vampiric activity. However, when An-Pin helps her locate the bodies of the two girls they have been drained of blood and the word vampire is often used. It is suggested that the ghost/vampire sucks blood to lengthen its life. It is also suggested that the vampire is not Mr Shi but uses Mr Shi’s body and can change host into another dead body when necessary. This is the confusing dichotomy of the ghost and vampire; the vampire seems to be both corporeal and spirit, a possessed cadaver and yet the cadaver itself.

showing his true face

The use of mirrors was mentioned and the reason the vampire would not sit between two mirrors was because of the fact that, should the vampire be trapped between two mirrors, its true face will be revealed. An-Pin tries to use a cross, but the vampire is dismissive of it. A Taoist priest doesn’t seem to be able to affect it with his paraphernalia. What does affect the vampire is smoke, be it the cigarette or incense smoke and, one assumes, this is because Mr Shi died in a fire. Now, as the vampire was not Mr Shi one might wonder why that matters, but then the vampire does have access to Mr Shi’s optometrist skills and this is back to the contradictions mentioned above and it does seem that the vampire could be described as a spiritual parasite that seems to take on the attributes of its host body.

trapped by smoke

Contradictions aside, this was an absolutely fascinating use of myth and lore, and I enjoyed the film itself and the unusual premises that underpinned it. Also interesting was the lack of any sentimentality in the film. Chan Si-Gaai’s performance is detached and haunted – as it should be. Definitely one that is genre necessary. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vampire’s Call 2 – review

2012-01-02T06:36:00.000-08:00

Director: Kabat Esosa Egbon

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Not a sequel to Vampire’s Call but a continuation (so do read the first review), the first film had the redeeming feature of showing us some Nigerian culture as well as some fine music. This does neither – indeed I’ll get to the soundtrack later.

After 1.5 hours of the first film, where very little happened, you might be forgiven for expecting this part to be a rollercoaster of vampiric action. You’d be wrong though. Long stretched out pointless moments are the order of the day… again.

Chioma beaten

So, as we left off, Lisa (Stephanie Okereke) is over in Nigeria having been plagued by nightmares of a fanged man we know, via the credits, is called Max (Muna Obiekwe). Her grandfather is telling her a story about the love of a warrior called Chioke (also played by Muna Obiekwe) for an outcast woman called Chioma (also played by Stephanie Okereke). This film starts with the last five minutes of the previous film. Anyway we then discover that the jealous priestess had a very pregnant Chioma beaten. She manages to give birth and extract a promise of everlasting love before dying. Chioke went to get revenge and died (off screen) and the baby was orphaned but the priestess sold herself to witches in order to curse the baby anyway (indeed all past the beating and birth is off-screen).

Lisa and Richard

As night falls Lisa goes off with a torch and feels Max following her. She calls to him to show himself. He offers to walk her home and says that he would never hurt her. The next day a man arrives. He is Richard (Collins Onnochei) and Lisa had been in a relationship with him in England before up and running off to Nigeria without a by-your-leave. The question could be, is the man who followed her a beacon of love or a creepy stalker… it doesn’t get answered but we get an interminable section of film with the two holding hands and wandering around the Nigerian countryside.

Lisa and Max

However Lisa is still sneaking off to meet Max, though at first their relationship is touch and go – especially when he hears a noise and vamps out and then tries to convince her that he won’t eat her. The dialogue is uniformly risible but there is a moment here that works despite itself. After a load of flannel about fate and destiny (and it was only surprising that oceans of time weren’t mentioned) Lisa looks at him and says “Stop sounding so melodramatic and stop talking rubbish.” Perhaps if more vampire media heroines said that we wouldn’t get quite so many doomed romance stories!

vamp out

Anyway, Lisa is torn between the love she feels for a vampire and the love she feels for a mortal man. When she discovers the prophecy of a chosen one (her) who will lift the curse from the vampire and make him mortal, with her blood, she naturally freaks… But can someone outrun their destiny… Or, given the pacing of the movie, slow plod ahead of their destiny, flicking two fingers at it because it is unlikely to catch up!

blood at mouth

Not a lot of lore. Max is not the child, he is a descendant of the child and Chioke reborn – how he became a vampire is never revealed. We know he has fangs, only goes out at night and drinks blood. He is also a bit of a wimp vampire, easily beaten up it seems. There isn’t a lot of lore and I’d have liked to have seen a traditional Nigerian myth figure with vampire like traits rather than a paper-thin Western rip-off complete with Dan Curtis’ reincarnated love trope.

dancing

I mentioned music. There is a moment with not one but two, absolutely awful ballads – one immediately following the other. They are cheese incarnate and during one Lisa eats fruit served by max and during the other they dance. These songs make Strange Love from Lust For a Vampire seem like a contender for both the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and an Oscar for best soundtrack and these two don’t have some lovin’ going on, on screen, to at least distract the viewer a little.

There is so little story that these two films could have been squeezed into one of around 60 minutes (max). It still wouldn’t have been a good film but the pace surely would have been better. Bad, bad, bad. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Vampire Hunters – review

2012-01-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

Author: Scott M Baker

First published: 2010

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Modern day vampire hunters wage a brutal battle against the undead in the nation's capital…

As former Boston cops, Drake Matthews and Alison Monroe thought they had experienced it all... until they found themselves tracking down a serial killer who turned out to be one of the undead. Stopping him cost them their careers and almost their lives.

Thanks to an influential and anonymous benefactor, Drake and Alison find a new job ridding the streets of Washington D.C. of the vampiric threat terrorizing the nation's capital.

Only this time, Drake and Alison are not facing a single vampire but an entire nest led by Ion Zielenska, one of history's most evil and twisted masters. As the vampires indiscriminately prey on humans, seeing them as nothing more than food to satiate their hunger, they create a wave of violence that threatens to engulf the city.

Orchestrating the carnage is Antoinette Varela, the mistress of the nest, whose vendetta against the hunters is personal.

The review: The first of a trilogy, the obvious thing to state about Scott M Baker’s take on vampire mythology is that he genuinely wants to put the evil back into vampirism.

He has developed a vampire mythology where there are two types of vampire and first we meet the 'minor' one. Known as snuffies these are the drained victims of a master vampire who rise and serve their master and they are tough. In the opening of the book we meet one who despite losing half his face in a shotgun blast and being engulfed in an inferno struggles on (despite the fact he is doomed), clinging to life. These vampires look like you’d imagine the undead to look, ghoulish, red-eyed monsters.

Then you have the Masters, made when a master feeds their victim their blood they blend in with humanity and have a vampiric face. Even tougher, they heal their wounds, are incredibly strong and generally psychologically warped.

Both types are described as soulless and evil.

The ex-cops, now vampire hunters, Drake and Alison are depicted in a very action-centric sort of way. Drake is a no nonsense, cigar chomping and bourbon swigging character straight out of an action movie, whilst Alison is sexy, sassy and secretly in love with her partner. It could have got a little to clichéd but Baker offers them additional depth. She has nightmares and he is clearly psychologically fractured. He suffers aches and pains and has a pet rabbit called Van Helsing. Humanising touches that lifted them from the stereotype. However this is an action book and it does not lose sight of that either, it rattles along at a pace with solid prose. The story occasionally diverts to the vampires’ past (and an alternate history) that helps add a further interesting element to the tale.

The vampires can be destroyed through stake, incineration beheading and sunlight. In a surprising move Baker made crosses ineffective and had vampires able to enter consecrated ground but also had holy water act like an acid (and it would scar the vampire in a way that couldn’t be healed). I wasn’t overly sure why one (holy water) would work whilst another (consecrated ground) was ineffective but it may be explained more in future volumes.

Unfortunately, if the character detail stopped the hunters from falling to far into cliché, the occasional muttering to Satan on the vampire's part felt a little clunky to me. This a very minor gripe, however and all in all this was an action book with vampires that were evil and dangerous and, in itself, this made for a good read and a refreshing move away from the maudlin vampire. I liked the idea of the collateral damage on a hunt invariably leading to the arrest of the hunters and their benefactor pressurising the city into releasing them – and I am actually look forward to seeing if Baker makes the wheels fall off that particular wagon in future volumes.

A solid beginning to the series that I am sure will be built upon. 6.5 out of 10.

Vampire’s Call – review

2011-12-31T07:35:00.000-08:00

Director: Kabat Esosa Egbon

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Vampire’s Call is a Nigerian vampire film… it has that in its favour as we have not (thus far) visited Nigeria in our search for vampire media from around the world. However Nollywood is one of the largest film producing industries in the world. Regional location often dictates whether the film is shot in the Igbo or Edo language, though Vampire’s Call has been shot in English. I apologise for the state of the screenshots through this review as the film was watched via YouTube.

So, being from Nigeria is in the film’s favour but little else is. The Nollywood output is shot on video primarily but the pacing, story and effects were all suspect, to be candidly honest. The worst offender was pacing but we will get to that after the description of the film… this will spoil a lot.

Stephanie Okereke as Lisa

At a village compound the women sit and gossip as a car pulls in. A woman, Lisa (Stephanie Okereke), gets out of the car dressed in a business suit. She is greeted by her grandmother (Nora Roberts). It is five years since she had visited, five years since her parents died. Later (talking to her Grandfather (Justus Esiri)) we discover that she has been in England – though he got England and the US mixed up – and she is a medical doctor. She asks where her Grandpa is, it seems her Auntie Maggie died and he and the menfolk have been to her – the women are waiting their return.

skeleton

Lisa has a sleep and dreams. In her dream she carries flowers into the graveyard but thunder sounds out and she drops the flowers and walks into the depths of the graveyard as though she is in a trance, as howls (suspiciously wolf like ones at that) sound through the night. She reaches a house and sees a skeleton stood before it, with a glowing heart within the rib cage, and the cgi so poor that it makes you wish they had just used a plastic skeleton. She awakens to be told by her niece that grandpa is back.

When the cars arrive the women fall into a wailing histrionic that I found fascinating because such funereal wailing is, presumably, cultural. Just as fascinating was the party that occurred that evening, a glimpse into Nigerian custom one hopes. I said that the film had little going for it but such glimpses are worthwhile, also worthwhile was some of the music played in the soundtrack, which was rather beautiful. During the wake Lisa seems to go into a trance having heard a voice calling her, she nearly walks out of the compound when her niece stops her. No one goes out at night.

Muna Obiekwe as Max

The next day Lisa goes to the graveyard to see her parents and is warned by her grandmother to get back before dark. She tells her parents’ graves that she is having strange dreams and is still there after night falls. She hears movement and a howl and legs it, seeing goats with their throats ripped on the way back. In a dream that night she sees a man, Max (Muna Obiekwe), he has fangs.

victim of the vampire

She goes to visit an Auntie (note I don’t know whether Auntie is an actual relative or a respectful title and have used it as the former). She hopes to see her friend Vera (Jennifer Uzoma) but is told Vera is dead. The flashback is much more detailed, clearly, than the tale Lisa is told and has details that Vera’s mother could never know but, essentially, Vera kept going out at night to look after the animals because something was killing them (despite being told not to, and beaten by her father for doing so). Eventually she vanished and, days later, several bodies were found with their throats ripped out, including Vera.

dream dancing

Lisa talks to Grandma, who says that something evil is in the village, leaving people drained of blood with marks on the right side of their necks. Lisa puts it all together and asks herself whether there is a vampire in the village and then dreams of a room both black and red, she wears red and Max comes to her in black and they dance. Lisa slips out at night and finds the house, sees the dancing room and a man led as though dead. She speaks to her grandfather, though says nothing of what she suspects or has seen, and he tells her a story of the past.

CGI monster

In this story there is a warrior called Chioke (Muna Obiekwe) and, at the same time, a cgi monster with no discernible texturing, which attacked men, women, children and animals. The warriors were called and asked to kill it but the one who survived would become next in line to be king and marry the priestess. Of course Chioke wins but is wounded and tended by an outcast called Chioma (Stephanie Okereke) – known as the scarlet woman as she became pregnant out of wedlock, was denied by the father and the baby miscarried. They, of course, fall in love and when he returns, Chioke’s decision to marry her greatly upsets the priestess (whose rant cuts of half way through for the credits).

Chioma and Chioke

Which, obviously, is where the film ends. No resolution, no proper reveal of the vampirism source (ok we know that Max/Lisa are Chioke/Chioma because we recognise them, but even that part of the story hasn’t been revealed to the viewer yet), indeed nothing much has happened at all. Bad storytelling, worse pacing. I am reliably informed that Vampire’s Call 2 is not a sequel but a story continuation but… as I write this I haven’t yet seen it.

hanging around the graveyard

Perhaps I shouldn’t review this in isolation but, given 1.5 hours of the film, it should stand up to individual scrutiny. Another 1.5 hours is not going to help the acres of interminable boredom that stretch through most of this, fended off by the occasional cultural glimpse or lovely piece of music scattered amongst the soundtrack, but encouraged by acting that is actually not acting but talking through the script, stilted, un-emotive and just plain poor. The bad moments of cgi should have been avoided altogether. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Dracula’s Journal

2011-12-29T03:21:00.000-08:00

The Blurb: Open at your peril!

Open Dracula’s Tomb – if you dare – to unearth his journals, filled with his horrible history, side-splitting secrets and ghoulish giggles. But be alert for Dracula making a POP-UP appearance!

The Mention: This is a 1998 children’s volume by Colin McNaughton and the reason for a mention rather than a review is that it is really aimed at a young audience and I doubted I’d do a review justice. It is, however, filled with all the bad vampire puns you (or your child) could want and I loved the way it didn’t sugar coat things – keeping things as horrible as a kid would demand.

Bright pictures – and a pop-up Dracula; it is the sort of volume I wish that I had found for my son when he was younger. However, let us be truthful, it’s the kind of guilty pleasure that many a genre fan would keep hidden amongst their book-case, a throw-back to childhood that we can sneak out and have a sly giggle about. With that in mind I’d like to thank Paul and Teresa, who purchased the volume for me for Christmas – duly read and neatly hidden in the bookcase for the next time I want to recapture halcyon days.

My Stepdad's a Freakin' Vampire – review

2011-12-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

Director: David Matheny

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

With a title like My Stepdad's a Freakin' Vampire you feel like you are going to get one of three things. Either a fun, campy romp that has cult written over it, or maybe a real stinker of a B movie or, finally, a Disney movie (okay the "freakin’" in the title is out of place but it otherwise fits into some of their pedigree).

What we actually got was none of the above. It isn’t a real stinker, not by real stinker values… that’s not to say it is a work of genius, just not a real stinker. It certainly isn’t a Disney but, by the opening credits, it seemed to aim for fun, campy romp, the credits wobbling away in such a manner that it seemed deliberate and hip.

Lahcen Anajjar as Rusty

The film is about Rusty (Lahcen Anajjar) and he isn’t exactly a n’er-do-well. His room is full of prestidigitator paraphernalia – it turns out that his dear departed father was a stage magician – and he certainly is wanting to be a showman. He has little respect for his new step-dad, Richard (Larry Peterson), who seems to dislike him (in a less than malevolent way, as the film starts, but given the title you know that isn’t going to last).

the other side of Richard

In the eyes of Stan, police officer and dad of Rusty’s best friend Travis (Brandon Martin), Rusty is disrespectful and gets Travis into trouble at school. The principle, known to Rusty as Mr B (Jeremy Spencer), dispairs – but then it is his own brother, Chuck (Casey Myers) , who has supplied the blade for Rusty’s science project trick guillotine. With mom out of town, however, Richard is going to show a new side of himself to Rusty.

a vampire

Richard is not only a vampire, he is the leader of all vampires. His vampire army are trapped in another dimension and the key was given to a bloodline of a knight to protect… that would be Rusty’s bloodline and the reason Richard married his mom. The vampire lore is a bit funky, however. Richard can walk in the sunlight – but his vampire brethren, when released, cannot.

impaled by broom

Gert (John Redmond), the school janitor, is a vampire hunter and runs a line in stakes. Indeed he rescues the boys from a turned Chuck by staking him with a broom. All well and good, but the stake doesn’t kill him, neither does self-impalement later. So, why the vampire hunter bothers with stakes… who knows, probably because they are meant to be used. They do discover that running a vampire down in a truck makes it explode in green goo. It is also the only film where you will see a vampire decapitated, the head continue to talk and then be microwaved (at least I think it is the only film, but stand to be corrected). At one point the dead are raised and you’d think they’d be zombies (as they are the long dead) but they seem to be vampires too.

hand from the earth

The problem with the film is threefold really. First is the characters. Teen boys run down someone and they think it is a Halloween reveller. They freak, of course, but as soon as they realise it is a vampire they are suddenly fine and dandy… the reaction didn’t work and I felt that a lot through the film, the characters were just slightly off-kilter. Next is the production and it is really a shame because I thought it teetered on the edge of being rather good for the budget, but stayed teetering and never quite crossed over. There is a mugginess to the film (which I can’t explain better than that, in honesty).

the raised dead

Finally there are the effects. Again, for the budget, they weren’t entirely bad. But… to illustrate… 15 year old number one son walked in as I watched the film and commented “worst effects ever”. Now he is being unfair (or, more honestly, I’ve not exposed him to the worst effects in other vampire movies), however the remark was telling. All I can really do is repeat that, for the budget, I have seen worse and that they gave them a go at least.

Which is the theme for the film, I’m afraid… they gave it a go at least… but I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been and the film gets 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention and a Christmas Indulgence

2011-12-25T06:46:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas one and all from Taliesin Meets the Vampires. I’ve just sat down to watch one of the greatest comedy/road trip movies ever constructed by the Film Industry – the Cannonball Run. A plethora of stars and silliness (and, unfortunately, different subtitles from the old VHS, for Jackie Chan’s bits, on the UK DVD – but that can’t be helped).

But why the honourable mention? It is a bit of an indulgence on my part as there is no vampire in the film but you might recall the Doctor that Victor (Dom DeLuise) secures for the ambulance that he and JJ (Burt Reynolds) take on the race. Well his name was Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing (Jack Elam).

An absolute indulgence on my part, but hey, it’s my blog… J …. Anyway, have a great day, may you and your loved ones be safe and less spurious programming will recommence after the holidays.

The Imdb page can be found here.

Blade – the anime – review

2011-12-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

Director: Mitsuyuki Masuhara

First aired: 2011

Contains spoilers

I really wanted to like this, I truly did. Blade was one of four Marvel Anime series produced for the Japanese market in 2011 – it is due to have a re-dub and be released in the US – and ran alongside Iron man, Wolverine and the X-Men. I haven’t seen the others but this review is of the Japanese release with English subtitles.

As I say I really wanted to like this, I love the Blade franchise but this just didn’t float my boat. The series follows Blade (Akio Ohtsuka) as he travels through Japan and other Far Eastern countries tracking down Deacon Frost (Tsutomu Isobe) – the vampire who turned his mother and gave Blade the curse of vampirism – albeit as a daywalker.

Blade's mother bitten

We get the background to Blade through the series – his past transposed to England, where he was found and helped by Noah Van Helsing (Osamu Saka), who developed the serum Blade uses to keep his blood thirst at bay and appears in occasional episodes of the anime (and also loans Blade his vampire hunting Dog, Razor). Blade is also accompanied by young vampire hunter Makoto (Maaya Sakamoto). At first she hunts Blade as he killed her father, after he was turned, but later they become vampire hunting partners.

fighting a Suikou

As I say their hunt takes them across Asia and, as such, we meet a variety of local vampires including Suikou, a feline based vampire that I can’t find a corresponding myth for, the Mandurugos, which is an aswang variant and is depicted as a bird like vampire, and the Manananggal, notorious for splitting its body in half. All work for Existence, Frost’s vampire network, and the series suggests that he has genetically manipulated these creatures into existence. Frost’s goal is to supplant the purebloods and become ruler of the world (and use Blade to create a daywalking strain of vampires).

Deacon Frost

One thing that was nice was that the series did go into Frost’s backstory and revealed a college professor who lost his son to vampires and sought revenge on them. In some respects he is not unlike Blade, but Frost clearly went mad, infected himself with vampirism (a strain he created, that has given him a distinctive four fanged bite) and twisted into megalomania. The normal Blade vampire rules seem to be in place with regards silver, beheading, staking and sunlight. They allergy to garlic has been removed but, whilst religion is not a normal factor, a shaman blesses some water which causes it to be deadly to vampires.

Blade and Wolverine

The purebloods seem arrogant but not actually effectual (though we discover they use familiar bats, giving a crap bat moment). Part way through the series Blade does run into Wolverine (Rikiya Koyama) but this is not as fun as it might have been and, I’m afraid, that is the moto for the entire series… not as fun as it might have been. The series bobbed along but never really carried me with it. Instead I forced myself to follow it downstream. Whilst accepting that Blade is meant to be stoic, I never really bought in to the other characters.

The animation itself was nothing to write home about either. So much more could have been done with both the animation and the story and it seemed a bit of a shame that nothing more was done with it. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Competition results and apologies

2011-12-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

Firstly, can I congratulate Scott Swisher who is the winner of the Discovery of Witches giveaway.

Secondly can I apologise that Taliesin Meets the Vampires has been a tad sporadic over the last few weeks. I have been in the last throes of finishing a Foundation Degree and it has eaten a lot of time up, and I haven’t as many backed up articles as I would normally like.

However a normal service should resume post the festive season and we have upcoming reviews of, amongst other things, the Blade anime and My Step-dad’s a Freakin’ Vampire.

For those wondering about my mentioned, in a couple of places, reference book on the vampire in the media, the project was put on temporary hiatus whilst I completed the degree. It is mainly completed, though following comments from initial readers I do want to add a further chapter in. Hopefully I will work on that over Yule for an early 2012 release.

Honourable Mention: Lady Blood

2011-12-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, in 1990 in fact, there was a film called Baby Blood and it was a French, gore-fest black comedy that played with the concept of the evil within. I rather enjoyed it, but did caveat my review with the fact that it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

Cut forward 18 years and a sequel is produced, directed by Jean-Marc Vincent. The film made it onto the first Bram Stoker Film Festival short list but was pulled from the festival by the time we arrived, by the organisers I understand. The film has received German and French DVD releases but nothing in the English language market. However, thanks to the power of fan-subs I have now been able to watch the film.

Emmanuelle Escourrou as Yanka

Positively it does have Emmanuelle Escourrou reprising her role as Yanka – transformed now from the ‘abused circus worker come murderess, pregnant with the baby from Hell’ into ‘mother and super-cop’. That said, this is an honourable mention, as I doubt you’d find much more than a flimsy vampiric aspect (a ‘cannibal killer’ is being hunted by the police) unless you had seen the first film. Indeed, I very much doubt a casual viewer would get what was going on if they were unaware of the first film. The film is also played as straight horror, this loses all the nuances that the black comedy aspect offered the first film.

Bénédicte Mathieu as Christine

The film begins with newspaper clippings regarding the events of the first film, and these will not serve to clarify Yanka’s connection to the creature, for the casual viewer, nor does it help those who know the first film as new characters are thrown into the fray including a woman, arrested it seems for the murders Yanka committed. The woman is named Christine Pollack (Bénédicte Mathieu) and she seems to have a psychic connection to the creature (why we don’t know) and her point in the film was actually fairly lost on me. She does say something that nearly hit the vampire bell, as it were. The fan-subs translate her words as describing the creature as “the thing that comes from the blood” – which made little sense, could it have been “for the blood” – I’m afraid my French is very limited so I can’t say.

the first host

The creature (or squid like baby) at the end of the first film escaped into the sea and it is from there it emerged, attacking a fisherman and then entering and possessing a swimmer. Where has it been for the intervening years and how did it survive? We don’t know and yet the creature offered a voice-over at the beginning of the first film and spoke to Yanka through the film. In this we are lost. The creature first attacks its host’s girlfriend, beating her and devouring her face. In the first film it was clear that it was blood the foetal creature needed, in this it seems to be flesh.

host looking unwell

The creature can pass from person to person (and we see a tentacle appear from the hosts mouth, passing to the new host). At first its hosts seem a bit zombified, certainly one of them has hanging skin that it staples to pass as human and the walking function is jerky. However there is the controlling intelligence behind them. Eventually the main tell is the consistent sunglasses, worn to hide the white eyes. There was no real sense of paranoia built around who could be the host and, indeed, Yanka had nose bleeds when in the creature’s vicinity but this early warning system wasn’t really worked on. When it vacated a body the flesh seemed to melt from the last host – this is not explored.

transfering

A sub-plot about gangsters seemed ill-founded and tagged on unfortunately, most of the other cops were just cypher characters. There was some attempt to expand on her new partner but both Yanka and he were little more than cardboard cut-outs of characters, Yanka a little more rounded because I had seen the first film. There were also some bizarre continuity/suspension of belief moments. The creature’s host having a blood stained mouth seemed not to raise a comment in a club he went to and the blood seemed to mysteriously appear on and vanish from his face between angle changes.

white eyes

This was, all told, an unworthy sequel to the original, it lost everything that made the first film memorable and became an average creature feature with a twist in the ending so clichéd that you just sat waiting for it to happen. If I were to do a cold ‘Vamp or Not?’ on this it would come out not, and the fact that it changed so much else within the film’s premise, story and genre meant that I didn’t want to review it as a vampire film. That said, if you know the first film then this possesses a genre interest, hence the honourable mention.

The imdb page is here.

Being Human (US – season 1) – review

2011-12-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Director: Various

First aired: 2011

Contains spoilers

When I first heard about a US remake of Being Human I was less than enthusiastic, after all the UK series was patchy in parts but had developed a great pedigree. The original pilot episode (which sinfully is not available on DVD) was a magnificent piece of comedy drama with more than a touch of Withnail and I and brought us the tale of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost sharing a house and trying to be human.

a touch of gore

The first season changed two of the main cast members but maintained the pilot’s background story. The comedy remained, but its focus and style shifted and it wasn’t consistent in its writing. Season 2 still had weak moments but had some marvellous moments, edging just ahead of the first season. Unfortunately Season 3 squandered its strong moments, more than the first two seasons, with some plot-holes as well as unrealistic and sensationalist writing.

werewolf, US style

So, a US version, the actors (by the initial publicity shots) seemed too polished – they weren’t, to be fair – and I wondered why the producers would bother. However, by the end of the UK season 3 we knew that the vampire character Mitchell was out of any subsequent series and recently (at the time of writing this review) it seemed the werewolf character George was not to be reprised by Russell Tovey – honestly, I am left wondering what the point of a fourth season would be but it also meant that the future of the franchise has to be placed well and truly in the US series’ hands.

unusual flatmates

Well, the series was both familiar and new. The series used the basic plot of the pilot episode and the first UK series, with some aspects lifted from the later UK series, but then really changed the show. The show was played straight, with some incidental humour, the character names all changed as did storylines, with character development and dynamics shifting because of the way the script writers changed the actions and events around. Mitchell became Aiden (Sam Witwer), George became Josh (Sam Huntington) and Annie became Sally (Meaghan Rath). Looking strictly at the vampire aspects; Aiden attacks and leaves his date, Rebecca (Sarah Allen), for dead at the head of the first show, falling from his not-live-blood wagon. She is turned on the orders of Bishop (Mark Pellegrino) – who is the Herrick equivalent - and Bishop then uses her through the series to try and get Aiden back into his vampire fold.

the Dutch during the day

The show changed, very much, the vampire dynamics. Bishop still plots for a vampiric uprising, as it were, but is going against the elders – Bishop may run Boston but it is at the whim of the Dutch. Interestingly they sleep through the daylight hours, either in coffins or suspended in burlap sacks (because it is traditional, not because they have to) and live a rural life that is a juxtaposition of an almost puritanical lifestyle mingled with truly monstrous appetites and vampiric behaviour, where the urban vampires are comfortable in the light and have blood dens where willing victims offer a taste of their blood.

no invitation

There was some major lore changes as well. Gone is the entire religious theme, which played a part in the UK series. There is no indication that a cross (or in Josh’s case a Star of David) can hold a vampire off and whilst a hospital priest does come into the story he does not repel the vampires with faith but is a vampire, recruiting new vampires for Bishop. Garlic comes into play but causes a mild allergic reaction that forces the vampires to show their true, vampiric face. Vampires who enter a domicile without invitation start to decay or burn away.

Mark Pellegrino as Bishop

Interestingly Juniper is added into lore, Juniper being able to cause a temporary, rigor mortis like paralysis in a vampire. Both a stake through the heart and beheading will kill a vampire and when they die they crumble into dust. To turn a victim into a vampire they must be fed vampire blood. Interestingly the Aiden character is significantly older than his UK counterpart – coming in at around two hundred – he also does an unfortunate line in being the maudlin vampire.

vampire on camera

Significantly vampires now have reflections and can be filmed. This changes the dynamic of the entire storyline (as it might have developed) as there is no sneaking in and out of places as Mitchell did in the UK series because CCTV wouldn’t catch him. The storyline of the young boy, Bernie (Jason Spevack) , being befriended by Aiden and taking a vampire porn disc created by Rebecca is still there but changes as the disc clearly shows a male and female participant – the mother simply separating Aiden from her son as a pervert, without the Daily Mail-esque false accusations of child molestation and the hysteria thereafter. This story also shows how the writers changed the show’s dynamic (with this and some other storylines) by having the story run over two episodes.

Sally is unwell

The acting is strong throughout, though Aiden is a bit of a whinger. Josh, as a character, is probably the most unchanged – though it is his sister and not his ex he meets in the early episode, leading to a reconciliation (of sorts) with his parents in this season (rather than season 3 of the UK storyline) and some of the other events of later UK seasons are introduced in this season. Sally’s backstory is much the same, though her character is drawn as intelligent rather than scatter-brained, but her ghostly interactions are more limited in this season, she has a ghost on ghost relationship briefly and her murderer tries to have her exorcised – which left her looking rather ghoulish for a while. One thing I did notice was that there was an obvious estrangement from nudity, even the vampire porn disc had a maintanance of underwear (and then an on-screen reaction to off-screen boobs) - that felt odd after a certain HBO vampire series.

Nora and Josh

Over all I cannot say that this was any better or worse than the best of the UK seasons – it was different and I think that the overall writing was more solid, with more realistic reactions/impacts than later seasons of the UK series. The dynamics and character development, I think, were so changed by the end of the season that I genuinely look forward to seeing where they take this. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q

Dominion – review

2011-12-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

Author: Scott M Baker

First Published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: The exciting conclusion of The Vampire Hunters

After being hidden away for centuries, the Vampyrnomicon, the Book of the Undead, is finally unearthed, and with it the terrible secret of the vampires' origins. The discovery of the Vampyrnomicon gives Drake Matthews the means to defeat the Master and eradicate the vampire threat, but it also provides Chiang Shih with the knowledge she needs to make her masters immortal.

Now more powerful than ever, Chiang Shih raises an army of the undead and creates a vampire nation in Washington D.C. Her attempt to assassinate Drake and his colleagues nearly cripples the hunters, but fails to kill them all. Driven by vengeance, and with his band of hunters swelled by unlikely allies, Drake leads the group into the infested city.

With the fate of humankind hanging in the balance, hunters and vampires wage the final epic battle in the streets of the nation's capital to determine who will hold dominion over the Earth.

The review: Dominion is the final book of the Vampire Hunters Trilogy, following on from the Vampire Hunters and Vampyrnomicon.

If Baker drew things down a notch, action-wise, in the second book, allowing his characters to grow and develop, then this volume reverses that pace change and accelerates into balls out action. I was genuinely very impressed with the pace that Baker lent his book, with any momentary lull nothing more than an eye in the storm.

The Hunters finally find the vampyrnomicon, in this volume, though they do not keep it for long. The book is revealed to be the vampire bible and Chiang Shih, the daywalking über-vampire from the earlier volumes, is revealed to be nothing less than the antichrist, born at the same time as Christ and living the opposite life, inherently evil to his good and daughter of Satan. The vampyrnomicon contains an incantation that will allow her to make all the vampires daywalkers.

It also reveals the way she can die, and that is by staking with wood taken from Christ’s crucifix – of course finding a piece of the true cross is going to be less than easy. There are new hunters introduced in the volume and they were perhaps a little thin character-wise, as Baker did such a good job rounding out his primary characters in the last volume, but the aim of the book is clearly one of charging to the conclusion at breakneck speed and so that can easily be forgiven. This was a very good conclusion to the series and is recommended. 7.5 out of 10.

The book can be purchased directly from Pill Hill Publishing or via Amazon.

Competition Time

2011-12-14T01:42:00.000-08:00

Towards the beginning of the year I reviewed the novel a Discovery of Witches a book centred around Oxford and on the shadowy underworld of daemons, vampires and witches.

The book receives a US paperback release on 27th December 2011 and to celebrate Penguin have promised one lucky TMtV reader a free copy of the book – there are no country restrictions with this giveaway.

All you need to do – to be lucky enough to win the book – is leave a comment on this post, with your name and an e-mail address. One lucky winner will be chosen at random, the competition closes midnight 21.12.11 (GMT). The judge’s decision (that would be me) is final.

Best of luck, and for those that miss out, the link to the Amazon US page for the book is below:

Blue Bloods – review

2011-12-13T13:06:00.000-08:00

Author: Melissa de la Cruz

First published: 2006

Contains spoilers

Blurb: They’re young, fabulous and fanged…

And they rule Manhattan from the trendy uptown clubs to the downtown boutiques. Fifteen-year-old Schuyler Van Alen has never quite fit in at her exclusive prep school – she’s more of a vintage than a Versace girl – but all that’s about to change…

Because Schuyler has just found out that she’s a Bluue Blood. The Blue Bloods are the city’s glamorous and secret vampire elite. They’re young, beautiful and powerful. But now they’re being murdered. And Schuyler must find out who – or what – is behind it, before she’s next.

The review: It was rather nice that the Amazon Vine programme coincided with my own passion for reading and reviewing vampire related material and, though this was clearly aimed at a teen market, it did a lot right – eventually.

This creates a level of lore that is rather interesting as the Blue Bloods are not just vampires, they are fallen angels. Their immortality comes through recycling themselves, dying and being reborn (from their blood) by choice and growing to age until their blood releases their memories of their previous cycles. They have laws governing how much they can feed from a human, they can choose to live beyond the cycle and they cannot die by any conventional means.

This is all well and good and explains why the first half of the book was so frustrating. Forgetting the fact that the idea of an Upper Class prep school was one that came across as alien to me and the fact that the book is written to the target audience (teen) and could have benefited from a much more adult orientation to the language. The reason it was frustrating was because it felt like de la Cruz was trying to hide the nature of these creatures, revealing nothing, hidden from the reader as it was from the main character. However the prose flipped perspectives to those who knew the truth and still it was purposefully hidden from the reader. This might have worked had it not been for the cover and the blurb… hardly the author’s fault but it was still frustrating.

I said that they could not die by conventional means (or indeed by any of the normal vampire slaying techniques) and yet they are being murdered. Because of this the young generation (who are the ones being targeted) are informed early of their heritage. The idea of the hunters hunted was nice, of a creature or creatures bigger and badder than the bogeyman – the identity of which I won’t spoil. It made me sit up and take notice, it brought a sense of urgency into the prose and it made me overlook some slight character issues.

These issues were mainly born out of the reactions and attitudes of a certain character who turns out to be a Red Blood (the name for humans) retainer to the Blue Bloods and yet the reactions that had earlier been described to us didn’t fit that role at all. Also, one wondered at teen vampires who suddenly gain the memories of countless past lives but not the wisdom of the ages, leaving characters perhaps as bratty and spoilt as they had been in their human-esque life before the blood took hold.

Nevertheless the book had me intrigued from the moment the unusual lore was revealed and I will certainly look to the other books in the series. 6 out of 10.

Honourable Mention: the Sorcerer and the White Snake

2011-12-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

The Sorcerer and the White Snake is a 2011 film by Tony Ching Siu-Tung that works on the premise that the technology now exists to put a lot of mythological and magical elements into a film that were impossible in the past. It doesn’t lead to a realistic looking film, per-se, but the look of the film works well in its unreality.

The main film concerns the white snake (Eva Huang), a snake demon called Susu. She and her sister green snake (Charlene Choi), who is named Qingqing, see a group of men picking herbs on a mountainside. Her sister decides to scare one of the men, Xu Xian (Raymond Lam), manifesting as a snake and making him fall from the mountain into a lake. There he would have drowned but white snake takes human form and dives in after him.

Susu the white snake

As she saves him she kisses him and passes some of her life essence into him, thus the two merge life essence and fall in love. When she later finds him they agree to marry but the local Buddhist Abbott, Fahai (Jet Li), captures demons and traps them so that they might meditate on their evil ways. He recognises Susu for what she is but also recognises that she has acted benevolently so far. He gives her one chance to leave the mortal realm. Of course she and Xu Xian are in love and she doesn’t leave, causing a tragic chain of events to follow.

bitten by a bat demon

That is not what this honourable mention is for, however. During the film we see a few demon hunts and the first to mention is the hunt for a bat demon. The bat demon attacks folks and bites their necks, drinking their blood – sound familiar? Fahai and his pupil Neng Ren (Wen Zhang) track the demon to a festival. Unfortunately Neng Ren’s demon detecting compass seems to be playing up, mainly because he makes a new friend in the form of Qingqing.

fighting bat demons

Eventually, however, he tracks the demon to a boat. He leaps atop it and fights some female bat demons who transform into flocks of bats. He defeats those but is captured by the main demon (who is in a man-bat kind of form). The bat demon bites Neng Ren. Fahai comes to his rescue and defeats the bat demon, capturing it as they fall into a chasm of fire (in another realm presumably).

Neng Ren changes

Unfortunately Neng Ren has been poisoned and, when Fahai gets him back to the temple, it is feared that he will die. His fate is worse than that. He starts transforming into a bat demon himself – growing fangs and long ears, his hands turning into one with three digits and large claws and, eventually sprouting wings. Worse, having run away and contemplated suicide, Qingqing tricks him into trying to bite him, eating meat and drinking blood – stripping away his monkhood.

fox spirits draining life

The bat demon was very vampire, with the bat-form, the blood drinking and the ability to mortals into its own kind. The other mentionable moment was when Fahai hunts down the demons plaguing a town. They are fox-spirits and these are a traditional Chinese myth form that most definitely often crosses into vampire territory (or vice-versa, to be fair). In this case, when in human form the foxes take on female form and suck the life force out of their victims.

I rather enjoyed the Sorcerer and the White Snake, it was a doomed love story but had a marvellous mythical landscape in which to play. The imdb page is here.

House of White Spiders – review

2011-12-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

Director: Gregg Taylor

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

House of White Spiders, well you have to love the name. This film is one of the new breed of low budget indie flicks that are distributing primarily through download, making the distribution of flicks significantly easier. In this case, the film is distributed through DistriFilm.

Of course, the ease of such film distribution means a lot of old rubbish can get through. I think to suggest that House of White Spiders is one of these totally rubbish films would be doing the film a disservice, it has some redeeming qualities but it also has some major flaws – not least in the running length that is way too long. It does, however, have a fabulous name.

Don Thoenig as Dr Marrek

The film begins with a man, later revealed to be Dr. Marrek (Don Thoenig), sat in a room, his ashtray overflowing and his poison of choice bourbon. The room is covered in crosses and (we again later discover) the windows are plastered with pages from the bible. Outside a storm begins to whip up, whilst inside he starts hearing a moaning sound.. As the storm starts to work a hanging basket from its mooring on the porch, he heads down to the cellar and feeds the unseen (bar a hand) inhabitant a mouse. The hanging basket is flung through a window, knocking away the cross that rested against the pane. He is confronted, as he heads back to his room, by a figure. We see a gloved and ringed hand, a knife, and his throat is slashed.

Jrssica (in photo) and Stephen

Stephen Kramer (William Rivera) is a struggling artist who lives with his girlfriend Jessica (Melissa Erhart). They are overflowing with bills and are due to be evicted from their apartment. He suffers from insomnia, watching old movies through the night and then trying to muster inspiration through the day, whilst she works as a waitress. You actually did get the sense of a couple in love but at breaking point through the actors.

sharing a cheesy moment

He has been adopted by a neighbour, Mrs Thomas (Ruth Ann Endress), who sends up food packages to him and buys him new pyjamas. However we know there is something wrong, given that her skin has a pallid grey tone and she steals a piece of kitchen roll with his blood on it. Unfortunately there was a tendency for Rivera and Erhart to act a bit too cheesily when together, it was done in a knowing (and thus I assume deliberate) way but it didn’t work that well. Anyway, Mrs Thomas becomes the answer to all his prayers when she tells them that a friend, Celia Watson (Beth Hoffman), is looking for someone to clean up a house for her realtor business and is willing to pay $5000 dollars for the work. More Mrs Thomas will lend him her car to get out to the country… what’s that phrase about Greeks bearing gifts?

leave this place

Well off he goes and the entire front end section of the film just took too long. He eventually gets to the house (which was Marrek’s place) having gotten lost, stopped at a derelict house (and not found the decayed body of a suicide, which was a poor effect all in all) and run into a redneck garage owner… who approaches him holding a stake. It was a good job he met him though, as the car breaks down as soon as he gets to the house. When he sees all the religious paraphernalia he is told that the previous owner was a nut, but then he had to invite Celia in (not that she needed invitation earlier, as it was her hand we saw), finds stakes and there is a sundial deely in the house that shows the hours to sundown and the time when it is unsafe (the night). Yet somehow his horror film geek didn’t trigger – and that didn’t ring true.

video capturing spirits

The film has interesting moments. There is a graveyard (and whilst I am no expert on US cemeteries, it seemed too large and well-kept to be a country cemetery, it looked provincial) and when he films it he sends it to Jessica and she sees people stood by the graves. Nothing was really done with that bar the Reverend (Bob May) creeping around trying to warn Stephen, when he was a spirit also. The fact that they were on the film (but unseen as he filmed it) could have opened up avenues of story. Incidentally, you might notice some white spots on the still with this para (when enlarged). These were unnoticed in the film as watched but appeared on several of the screen shots to a greater or lesser extent, some sort of digital stress I guess.

starving vampire

There are flowers shown that have odd petals – a rare nightshade we are told – that look like plastic spiders… indeed that’s what I believe they were. These are, of course, the white spiders of the title and the result looked fake but so kitsch it worked. Not so with some of the physical modelling, such as the half-starved vampire chained in the cellar. I’m afraid it looked simply bad (much like the aforementioned suicide) and jolted the viewer out of any suspension of disbelief.

on a porch in daylight

I did like the fact that Stephen is clearly a moron. The answers are all around him and he never twigs. He even has grave rubbings that spell the solution to the mystery out to him. A bloody stake, physically protruding through a door in the cellar, does not raise the slightest moment of enlightenment from him, despite watching old horror and vampire movies. As for the vampires much is hinted (as we barely see them until the end). They seemingly cannot stand sunlight (except that Stephen escapes from one stood on a porch in daylight), they need invitation (but Celia enters the house at the beginning) and they can be staked and starved – removal seems to fix the stake issues however. There was an indication that a circle (of what might have been) salt can keep them out or trap them within.

back foul demon

So bad effects, a little good acting (mainly the Stephen and Jessica interaction) and many cheesy moments, some telling day for night shots and way, way too long. Half an hour needs shaving of the running length. That said, this seems to be the first film for the director and all the principle actors and they did pull off making a film. I will say that there was a euro-horror heart in a US indie body and perhaps they needed to hang on to the heart a little more. I have seen worse, however, and it had some interesting aspects. Taylor needs to hang on to that and work with it. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Vampire Mob – season 2

2011-12-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

I looked at Season 1 of web serial vampire mob last year and found it to be a great, character driven series. The series ended on a cliffhanger and that is exactly where this starts off… so if you haven’t seen season 1, firstly why not and secondly, you might want to look away…

…So it ended up last season with hitman and vampire Don Grigioni (John Colella) being shot. As the season starts he is tackling the shooter – who he managed to get a shot into. The thing is, the shooter is human and dying, whilst he is healing. In fact the shooter actually states that they never said he was a vampire.

Don and Annie

Unfortunately he manages to lose the shooter and so has to get him identified and tracked down to discover who it was that ordered a hit on the hitman. But that is only part of the problem, the return of crime boss Frank has put a spanner in his feeding regime – or grocery shopping as he and his wife Annie (Reamy Hall) calls it – Frank has called a ceasefire and so Don isn’t getting any jobs… no jobs… no blood…

talking to camera

Worse than this is the fact that his mother-in-law Virginia (Marcia Wallace) is still living with them – Don turned his wife because he was hungry and she in turn turned her mother because she didn’t want her to die. To top it all off Don’s still human mother turns up unannounced for a visit. Oh, and the always unseen Mikey is still filming Don’s every move (which is the footage we see).

Father Eddie is not impressed

There are no further vampire rules revealed in season 2 but there are some marvellous bits – Don trying to convince a local priest to sell out the worst sinners from the confessional as dinner for him and his family, for instance. I love the way that everyone just seems to know about vampires and accept that Don is one. The performances and dialogue are as good, if not better, than season 1. If I had a complaint it’s that the two seasons are in total the length of the best part of a couple of TV episodes and, honestly, I think I could sit and watch this all day – if there were any justice in the world this would be picked up for bigger and better things. Writer/director Joe Wilson has every reason to be proud of his creation.

The series homepage is here and the imdb page is here.

Monster Mash (2000) – review

2011-12-05T09:23:00.000-08:00

Director: Guido Manuli

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

This was one that I perhaps should have reviewed around Halloween, but never mind… no time like the present.

Monster Mash is, of course, based on the Bobby Pickett number of the same name and, indeed, the song is featured along with other musical numbers. The film, itself, is animated and, on first glance it seems a little throw-away.

meet Frank...

Narrated by the skeletal dog Yorick it tells the tale of his three masters Frank (David Sobolov), Wolf (Scott McNeil) and Drac… yes the famous three monsters of Universal fame. At their height they were the scariest monsters around but folk began to connect them with having fun and this, of course, led to them being seen less as scary and more as entertaining. As such they became entertainers, playing malls etc.

...and Drac

When three modern monsters see them goofing around on National TV they are summoned to the monster’s tribunal and – as the jury is deadlocked – they are given one night to scare a typical family, the Tinklemeisters. When their attempts to scare them at home fail, the kids laughing at the black and white films they hack into their TV, they send the Tinklemeisters to their castle in Transylvania to scare them. This might have been going well if not for son, Spike, being a hard nut to crack and the new monsters being sent by the prosecutor (the grim reaper) to spoil their attempts.

the new monsters

On the surface, so throw-away. However there was almost a neat exploration of the old classic monster movies versus the new breed (at the time) of horror. The three new monsters are parodies of more up to date horror, there is Freddie Spaghetti a Jason/Freddie spoof, Chicky who is a Chucky spoof and the alien eater, a spoof of the Alien. As things move on we have, of course, the old monsters winning. The underlying theme is laid on with a shovel when Wolf complains that new monsters are created by toy companies and not spontaneous representations of subconscious fear and folklore – or words to that effect.

Let's not forget wolf

There are also various pop culture references. Towards the end, an electrocuted Frank says, “I needed that” – a reference to the Groovy Goolies - and we get a line about, “why did it have to be snakes”! But the film itself is paper thin for an adult audience, despite the underlying theme I’m afraid, and the animation was okay but nothing special.

That said, it is one you could safely leave the kids with, which is something. Overall 4 out of 10.

Bram Stoker’s Death Ship – review

2011-12-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

Author: Gary Gerani

Art: Stuart Sayger

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

There has been a promise of a film, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, for some time now and it never seems to emerge. Whether a film based on just one segment of Dracula would work remained to be seen – after all we know how it ends (the crew die, the Captain is lashed to the wheel and the ship wrecks at Whitby) and it sounds essentially like a 10 little Indians-esque story, on board ship with a vampire.

Thanks to IDW we can imagine what the film might be like as they have developed the comic book of the concept and this is a review of the trade paperback. And… it is essentially 10 little Indians-esque story, on board ship with a vampire, adding in a little Event Horizon-esque aspect as the vampire – Dracula of course – manipulates the minds of victims and either entices them with their desires or terrifies them with their fears.

It is through this aspect that the story was expanded further, to what was essentially 4 comics worth. As well as this, the barely described crew members from Stoker’s novel are – in some cases – expanded on but they are pretty much stereotypes – the evil first mate, the good captain, the innocent cabin boy etc. There are liberties taken with the Stoker story (the number of boxes is reduced and Carfax has transported - as often happens - to Whitby.) What makes the book for me, more than anything, was the beautiful artwork provided by Sayger.

This was an interesting foray into a story that is meant to be being filmed. Whether that one section of story stands alone is questionable, given that it is only a short passage from the original novel and a film - if ever forthcoming - will really have to explore character (and make them rounded) to stand scrutiny, methinks. Nevertheless, I did rather enjoy the graphic novel. 6.5 out of 10.

Farewell Ken

2011-12-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

On the 27th November 2011, auter Ken Russell passed away. Like Jean Rollin before him, his passing hit me more than I would have thought and it is down to the fact that we will never again see a new Ken Russell film.

He was behind the segment, the Girl with Golden Breasts in the film Trapped Ashes and, of course, Gothic. Of his non-vampire films I particularly enjoyed Crimes of Passion and Salome’s Last Dance. My favourite Ken film was, however, Lair of the White Worm. In tribute, I offer you a pictorial stroll through Lair of the White Worm…

Mr Flint, archeologist

dramatic reconstruction

spitting venom

hallucinated visions

Killing Kevin

struggle between light and dark

cut in half

Charming Ernie

ready to bite

The worm

The Night Eternal – review

2011-11-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

Authors: Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

The blurb: The nail-biting vampire thriller from the world-famous director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy.

The night belongs to them, and it will be a night eternal…

After the blasts, it was all over. Nuclear Winter has settled upon the earth. Except for one hour of sunlight a day, the whole world is plunged into darkness. It is a near-perfect environment for vampires. They have won. It is their time.

Almost every single man, woman and child has been enslaved in vast camps across the globe. Like animals, they are farmed, harvested for the sick pleasure of the Master Race.

Almost, but not all. Somewhere out there, hiding for their lives, is a desperate network of free humans, continuing the seemingly hopeless resistance. Everyday people, with no other options – among them Dr Ephraim Goodweather, his son Zack, the veteran exterminator Vasily, and former gangbanger Gus.

To be free, they need a miracle, they need divine intervention. But Salvation can be a twisted game – one in which they may be played like pawns in a battle of Good and Evil. And at what cost…?

The review: So, first there was The Strain, which I rather enjoyed. Cinematic in its construction, hardly surprising with the great director del Toro involved, with a CSI-vampire vibe. Then came The Fall. Running perhaps that tad better than the first book it was an excellent read.

Now we have had The Night Eternal, the wrap up of the series and… well… this is going to spoil the first two books so look away if you haven’t read them yet…

…At the end of book two the Master, the über-vampire controlling the apocalyptic outbreak, detonated nuclear power stations that had been built over the birth places of the other ancient vampires, consigning them to dust, and all their broods too as they are all symbiotically reliant on the first from their line.

It is two-years on and the world is enslaved, bar Britain (which was a cool if odd throw-away), the nuclear winter has caused sunlight to be limited to just two hours per day and the only thorn in the Master’s plan is the resistance (made up of the rather flawed characters from the first two books) who happen to have a sacred text that might be able to reveal the masters birth place, something he himself does not know, and thus allow them to do unto him, what he did to his brothers.

There was, of course, an underlying mythology to the first two books that strayed from the scientific. If it strayed then this has diverted. We discover that an angel went rogue at Sodom and Gomorrah, drank the blood of humans and then another angel. God had the angels chop him up and bury his body parts – and it is from these that the blood worms emerged and birthed the ancients and it is those parts being destroyed at the birthing sites. We shifted from a supernatural element to a full on theology and I have heard a lot of folks complain about this.

I suppose it does take some getting used to. Especially when, the once very scientific and now strung out junkie, Eph starts having divine inspired visions. However I could live with it. But…

There is no other way to describe it, the book was a slog. Perhaps I was in the wrong mood? It’s possible, but it was an effort to make myself persevere and I can’t really tell you why, just that it was. It wasn’t as though I didn’t actually enjoy the book when I was reading it, but put it down and I was reluctant to pick it up again.

This has left me feeling disappointed with the book, but I don’t know exactly why. However it is a book you’ll want to read if you have read book 1 and 2.

5 out of 10.

Damn Nation – review

2011-11-26T09:47:00.000-08:00

Story: Andrew Cosby

Art: J Alexander

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: The United States is locked down against a terrible threat. However, the barbed wire and border patrols aren’t there to keep an enemy out, but to protect the rest of the world from a devastating plague that’s transformed the nation’s populace into bloodthirsty nocturnal predators.

This land is their land… …from sea to shining sea.

Now, a team of scientists trapped somewhere outside of Buffalo claims to have found a cure, and it’s up to a Special Ops unit sent from the President’s current headquarters in London to retrieve it. Little do they know, not everyone wants to see America back on its feet.

From writer Andrew Crosby, creator of UPN’s Haunted and the Sci-fi network original series Eureka, and Eisner-award nominated artist J. Alexander comes a vampire thriller with surprises under every manhole cover, and the dark truth that not all monsters fear sunlight.

The review: Some blurbs are rubbish but this one actually takes the entire need to describe any of the story found within this graphic novel. A recommendation from Halek, this is another post-apocalyptic vampire story. However this is unusual in that the outbreak has been contained in the US and so the other Nations are still up and running.

After a brief prologue, sourcing the outbreaks origins, we follow the Black Ops run into the country, to rescue scientists who claim they have the cure. The blurb actually spoils the twist, I think, but it wasn’t one that you’d not see coming anyway.

We actually see little in depth with regards the vampires. Sporadic, violent attacks occur from twilight. UV rays attack the virus and so they emerge not when it is dark but when the sun is down. They are violent, driven, feral creatures.

The artwork is superb throughout with J Alexander really capturing a mood. However, my main gripe is the story, not in what is there but in what is missing. The book is thin; it felt we had just moved into a vast arena when it was all over. Clearly it was aiming for a sequel (the virus is mutating) but it could also have put some extra padding through the story we got as well. The brevity of the book keeps the score down but it was still worth a read. 5.5 out of 10.

Ninjas vs Vampires – review

2011-11-24T12:06:00.000-08:00

Director: Justin Timpane

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

Sometimes a low budget film has heart, it might not be the best film in the world but you can see that the filmmakers enjoyed what they were doing. Ninjas vs Vampires is like that, it does much wrong, some right but has a big old beating heart at its centre.

This is the sequel to Ninjas vs Zombies and, I must admit, I have not (as of the date of this review) seen that film. More regarding the ninja’s characters, how they became ninjas and other background is likely in that film. I am also aware that it was at the end of that film that one of the ninjas’ number, Lily (Carla Okouchi), was turned into a vampire (probably enough for an honourable mention in the future).That said, this lack of viewer knowledge did not trip the film up.

Aaron and Alex

After credits showing a vampire attack we meet Aaron (Jay Saunders) and Alex (Devon Marie Burt). He is messing with a video camera and they have been best friends for years. He asks her to be his girlfriend… and crashes and burns. His hurt is short lived, however, as then they are attacked by vampires. Just as it seems the end is nigh, ninjas appear and kick vampire butt.

staked

The first complaint comes in here. There was way too much reliance on cgi for blood and vampiric demise – especially as it looked cheap and nasty, but never mind. The ninjas kill all the vampires and one of their number, Ann (Melissa McConnell), who happens to be a witch teleports the ninjas and Alex out of there leaving Aaron down for the count.

Carla Okouchi as Lily

Why leave him behind? Plot expediency (and the excuse that there has never been more than one survivor before). Anyway, he goes to Alex’s home and she is there but has no memory of events past the point when he asked her out and, it transpires, cannot retain the idea of vampires in her head (this leads to some on-running gags). Aaron goes to his friend Reefer (Justin Timpane) who offers him a clue to the truth. He should go to the comic book store and watch the guy in there, Cole (Cory Okouchi). Aaron follows him and sees him with Lily and Ann. He is approached by Kyle (Daniel Ross, Mrs Amworth), and thinks Kyle is a delivery guy – when in fact he is the fourth ninja.

training

Aaron is caught, but leaves a panic stricken voice mail for Alex. They try and question him and realise that he cannot have his memory wiped. Alex turns up at their base, due to the voice mail, and Ann makes the decision, against Cole’s order, to turn Aaron into a ninja (this is an occult act and yet he then has to have weapon training, one would have thought the skills would have magically appeared in his head). Unfortunately the vampires, led by Seth (Kurt Skarstedt), are about to declare war.

bad sunlight fx

The vampires drink blood and fry in sunlight – but can wander about in daylight by the use of judiciously held blankets. Their headquarters has magic glass (which is a 1000 years old but looks like modern glazing!) that prevents them frying during the day. Ann has a pendant that Seth wants as it will make him invincible and truly immortal. Staking and chopping their heads off seem fairly good ways to kill vampires. They need inviting in, unless a vampire lives in the house, and take the memories and powers of their victims. Lily is weaker than other vampires as she does not drink human blood.

Maximillian and the Bishop

I have mentioned bad CGI. Dialogue-wise the filmmakers clearly tried to go in a Kevin Smith type of direction. This works for the ninjas, who seemed comfortable in their roles. However, if the acting was good on that side of the house, the vampires were pretty universally badly acted. The budget limitations are all around, in the cgi, in the day for night shots and in the costuming. One masked vampire, the Bishop (P.J. Megaw), looked okay. However the post-apocalyptic roman look for vampire Maximillian (Will Stendeback) looked awful, cheap, silly and plastic – the acting was pretty dire in that case as well.

Jay Saunders as Aaron

Despite the problems, however, as I said at the beginning the film had real heart. Jay Saunders has a wonderfully expressive face and the dream sequences he was given were genuinely funny. I think 4 out of 10 is on the generous side but the big ol’ heart deserves it. The imdb page is here.

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf – review

2011-11-22T11:54:00.000-08:00

Director: Eric Bross

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

This was a 2010 film that aired in the UK in 2011 and was made for Nickelodeon. As such it was a kid’s flick and relied on the famous ‘the boy who cried wolf’ storyline (though in this case, even if he had never cried werewolf (or more accurately monster) I doubt he’d have been listened to, but never mind).

Victoria Justice as Jordan

It starts off with Jordan (Victoria Justice) struggling into her house (which is for sale) with her bags of groceries. The lights in the house are out and, grabbing a torch, she heads down to the breakers. Once there she is accosted by her little brother Hunter (Chase Ellison) in a monster mask. He takes her photo as she screams – it is a typical Hunter prank. Jordan has invited neighbour Ms Carlsberg (Anna Galvin, Blood Ties) to dinner as an attempt to get her dad, David (Matt Winston), dating again. A further prank from Hunter puts paid to that.

brooke shields as Madame Varcolac

So, we have Jordan the ugly duckling (as it were) trying to act as woman of the household, Dad struggling to make ends meet and Hunter missing his mother more than he perhaps says. Then they get a document and letter left with them to tell them that Uncle Dragomir (who they had not heard of), over in Wolfsberg, Romania, has died and they are set to inherit his estate, including his castle – so it is off to Romania and into the care of housekeeper Madame Varcolac (Brooke Shields).

Jordan's eyes change

Jordan meets a boy – Goran (Steven Grayhm) – the only trouble is that he is a butcher and she is a vegetarian. David meets realtor Paulina (Brooke D'Orsay), who is saccharine sweet and looking to get him to sell the castle. When the internet router goes down Hunter and Jordan find a secret lab and, due to some messing around by hunter, a vial of blood is smashed and Jordan steps on the broken glass. The blood is from a lycanthrope and Jordan is infected.

the wolf

Hunter searches for a cure and Jordan starts eating meat, loses her allergies and becomes athletic and sassy. He discovers that she has to be cured before the end of the first full moon or she will be stuck as a werewolf forever. They find an ally in Madame Varcolac, who tells them that, as well as a scientist and the inventor of karaoke, Dragomir was a werewolf.

Paulina Vamps

They also discover that Paulina is a vampire and is trying to get the castle for herself. A thousand years before the vampires had tried to take over the world but Dragomir had defeated them with an army of werewolves – the battle taking place on the site where the castle was built. Paulina wants to take the castle and then the world. Will Hunter get his dad to believe him?

caught in the sun

In this the vampires are definitely evil and the werewolves good (and Britney Spears is a werewolf too). However the vampires are also drawn in quite a bungling, comic way. We discover little about them. There is a suggestion of garlic allergy and we see that they burn up in sunlight. Of course Varcolac is a variant name for a Romanian revenant but Madame Varcolac is not one of these.

The film was okay, from an adult perspective, it was fun to see Brooke Shields in her stern Romanian governess role but it was all way too predictable. However I am sure that the target audience will get a kick out of it. Unusually the werewolf effects were quite well done. We could have done with more vampires though. The score takes into account the target audience, 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Renfield the undead – review

2011-11-20T03:29:00.000-08:00

Director: Bob Willems

Release date: 2010

contains spoilers

I saw this at the 2010 Bram Stoker International Film Festival and really didn’t like it. Put on as the last film on one of the nights, the filmmakers had given a new cut to the organisers and it just went on and on. By the end I reckoned it needed about an hour shaved off.

From what I can tell the DVD edit seems to have half an hour shaved off but it is still too long, too ponderous. The trouble is that it is the flashback material, referencing loosely Bram Stoker’s Dracula, that could actually be easily cut and, unfortunately, that contains some of the most interesting stuff – if a rather unconvincing Van Helsing (K.R. Kretz).

resurrect the master...

The film is bookended by a woman in a bar being picked up by a man, who can read thoughts, going to his and her picking up the comic book of Renfield the Undead. The contents are therefore the film. It begins with a rather unconvincing puppet (or so it looked to me) suggesting that the way to bring the house of Dracul back to power would be to resurrect the master. The trouble is, where are his remains? Bayou City, USA perhaps.

Roxy Hixon as Mina

A couple are out, getting ready to make out on the blanket, on the ground – not to go getting all country on you. They fail to spot the vampire, Quincy Harker (Tyler Tackett), crawling all over the roof of their car until he engages them, tossing the man (Andrew Peacock) aside and attacking the woman. The man, for his trouble, is attacked by Mina Harker (Roxy Hixon). Yes this is Mina from Dracula and her son Quincy, Later we hear that Jonathon (Andrew Adams) left Mina when it became apparent that Quincy was part vampire. Mina refers to Count Dracula (John Stevens) as Quincy’s father.

Cranston puzzling over the crimes

Cranston (Paul Damon) is a Brit working homicide in Bayou City, for some reason. He has a violent phobia of bugs and the city seems to have been crawling with them recently. He is the lead on the Bayou City Butcher case – a serial killer in their midst. This is one of the things I disliked about the film… location. Cranston’s office looked like a converted living room rather than a cop’s office (and, to be ultra-picky, the whiteboard misspelled exsanguination). Cranston’s partner Landon (Calvin Lafiton) has a theory that perhaps the murders and the bug infestation are connected.

Renfield attacks

Out in the city a man picks up a whore. They go down an alley and, after some rapid head, she is about to leave and he tries to rape her. She stabs him, but is chanced upon by Renfield (Phil Nichols), now a vampire and still quite mad. He chows down on the woman and then takes her head… he is the Bayou City Butcher. The makeup re Renfield actually grew on me, whilst it looked fairly false at first it had a comic book quality to it and I liked the Nosferatu-esque quality.

autopsy on the Captain

The last main character to meet is pathologist (and friend of Cranston) Dr Bonnie Johnson (Keli Wolfe). When we meet her she is carrying out an autopsy on a Captain Max Schreck (Patrick Slagle) – yeah, I know, a reference too far. He has throat injuries, rope marks where he lashed himself to the wheel of a ship, a crucifix still in his hand and has been drained of blood. Bonnie suggests it’s like something out of a vampire story (but somehow hasn’t made the same observation with regards the Butcher, as the suposition of the Butcher being a vampire is never mentioned before vampirism being revealed to the cops). Why this scene? I don’t know, it really didn’t work so well as it seemed superfluous referencing of the Demeter scene from the source novel.

fly form vampire

(Still rather too) long story short. Renfield has Dracula’s remains, Mina and Quincy want to resurrect him and Renfield takes a shine to Bonnie. The flashbacks to what happened to Renfield through the Stoker story (which was still published in this universe) are the most interesting points. Renfield seems to have a bug aspect to his vampirism. One of his victims turns into a bug vampire and he is knocked out by an injection of bug killing chemicals.

John Stevens as Dracula

Most of the acting was, at best, average – though Nichols did have a whale of a time as Renfield and nailed the madness aspect of the character. The worst thing about the film is, however, the length. It still needs cutting down and tightening up through the editing process. That said, I enjoyed this more than I did last year and the score has risen up to 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Umbrage: the first Vampire – revisited

2011-11-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

I reviewed Umbrage some time ago, from a screener, but the UK DVD is now available and I decided it was worth a revisit. Why? Well, for one thing I felt there might have been some editing differences – albeit small ones they might affect the film, which in turn might affect my score.

Honestly, I am not sure if there were any edit changes but it certainly felt tighter than when I first saw the film. There are still issues within there and I stand by a lot of the comments made in the original review. However I found myself feeling that the score I gave the film was a little on the low side. As such I have decided that the score should actually be 6.5 out of 10.

I will also say that Umbrage has proven to be a popular film with regard correspondence, with several people emailing me with questions about the film prior to its distributed release. This had, I feel, mush to do with Doug Bradley’s presence in film and I do hope those correspondents have now had chance to see the film and hope they enjoyed the experience.

Pun mesec nad Beogradom – review

2011-11-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

Director: Dragan Kresoja

Release date: 1993

Contains spoilers

The title translates to Full Moon Over Belgrade and this was a film produced in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as was. It certainly is a rarity and is an example of a vampire being used allegorically as the film is (not subtly) an anti-war film and one wonders if the vampires are real or, indeed, who the true vampires are.

The film begins with bums in a night time street, walking past whores. A Rolls Royce pulls up a woman looks at the men. It seems she selects them all and takes them all with her but it is just the fantasy of one of them. Eventually they come to a club where a band plays. As we look at the band we realise that the bums are all band members and they watch themselves. This was actually the Serbian band Piloti and cut is called on a video. Aleksa (Dragan Bjelogrlic) was watching the shoot and leaves. One of the bums offers him a drink that he refuses. The fact that the bums watch themselves perform on a stage, the bums part of the video and yet somehow separate to the band, underlines the surreality of the film and the concept that nothing is what it seems.

Djordje and Aleksa

Aleksa works on an occult/new age type magazine but he is aiming to get a scholarship and move to England. He and his friend Djordje (Nebojsa Bakocevic) attend the funeral of Milorad (Slobodan Ninkovic), a young man who had worked on the magazine with them until he was drafted into the army. It is a military funeral though it is said that Milorad had no blood left in him. Djordje suggests that Aleksa asks for a transfer to the night shift as he is more likely to be picked up by the military as a draftee if he works days. He asks for the transfer.

in the library

The first night he is working with Djordje and a woman called Madam Kosara (Ruzica Sokic). She is an eccentric who only works nights. It is suggested that Djordje has been working on the voncimer, her library, cataloguing the books therein. When Aleksa’s father is made redundant Aleksa goes to see his girlfriend, whom he hasn’t visited for a month, as his father has signed Aleksa’s draft papers. He asks her for a place to stay but she has a new boyfriend. At work he discovers that Djordje has been mobilised – in other words taken by the military police. He is enticed to stay with Kosara by being shown a supposedly missing book that forms part of her library.

in a tine coffin

Of course, things get weirder and weirder. He starts to see Milorad who tells him to run away from Kosara. Milorad states that he is a vampire now but can only come to Aleksa in his dreams as he was buried in a tin coffin – something that prevents him physically rising. Later Djordje is brought back for buriel. He is in a tin coffin also, and the view-plate lets us see that he has fang marks on his neck. He too starts to visit Aleksa’s dreams.

a light nibble

Ultimately the vampires (as well as Kosara there is her husband Alimpije (Rade Markovic)) are representative of the state, forcing young men to spill their blood on the battlefield, destroying dreams through wars. The ending of the film is incredibly dour but getting there is a surreal journey that includes a party of the dead and Kosara selling off goods to survive.

On odd film, but fascinating – offering a glimpse of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia through the eyes of protest. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Blood and Bone China

2011-11-13T02:07:00.000-08:00

There are times when something appears online that is both astounding, beautiful and free. Kudos to director Chris Stone who, over 2011, brought the Victorian Gothic back to the vampire genre in the sublime Blood and Bone China. Now that all 12 episodes are available online (with a completely re-shot episode 1) I felt it time for an honourable mention.

Richard in trouble

The series is set in Stoke-on-Trent in the year 1897 (yes, the year that Bram Stoker first published Dracula) and Stone manages to recreate that Victorian setting incredibly well. It begins with Stoke doctor Richard Howell (Simon Hooson). He writes to someone, telling them of disturbing discoveries he has made. He fears that his letters are being intercepted and so begs his correspondent to meet him at the place they first met. He stands in a street when a woman approaches him, later revealed to be Victoria (Lara de-Leuw). At first she solicits him and then, when the tactic fails, she eye mojos him. He manages to break free from her spell as she tries to bite him.

blood at mouth

He runs, pursued, until he passes through a tunnel and sees, ahead, a figure. He shouts a warning but the figure is another vampire (Ryan Callaghan) and Richard is trapped. Over in rural Buxton, Richard’s brother Newlyn (Anthony Miles) is a vet, and not a particularly good one. When we meet him he is pitting his wits against a rather tenacious border terrier, and coming off second best. He is approached by a man, later revealed to be Alexander Pyre (John James Woodward), who has come to tell him of Richard’s death.

John James Woodward as Pyre

When details are offered, Pyre cannot say that Richard is dead – for certain – as no body has ever been found. He is one of many in Stoke who has disappeared without a trace. Newlyn agrees to go to Stoke but to find his brother, not investigate his death. When they reach Richard’s home, the door is ajar. They go in and explore the property and Newlyn is accosted by a large book judiciously applied to his head. His assailant is Anna Fitzgerald (Rachel Shenton), who is a reporter for the Sentinel (she writes under a male pseudonym). It was to her that Richard had written.

Hemlock and Anna

Pyre shows her a package containing a bone china tea set, the thing that was recovered from Richard’s attack. Some of the set is broken and much blood-stained, but Anna recognises it as Hemlock China. It is a particularly fine and cheap china made by recluse Linus Hemlock (David Lemberg, who was also in the video for Moonlight by Lesbian Bed Death). He has a weekly gathering of the Stoke elite and Newlyn is encouraged to attend as the “new doctor” with Anna accompanying him as his wife.

bathing in blood

Of course we have already seen that there are vampires about and they are, indeed, associated with Hemlock China. Victoria is revealed to be Hemlock’s lover. We also see her bathing in blood in the first episode and she attacks Anna and Newlyn – causing Pyre to reveal himself as both Newlyn’s long lost uncle and a professional vampire hunter. Tracking vampire activity along the canals brought him to Stoke.

vampire attack

The vampires are controlled by their creator – unless the creator happens to set them free and, when controlling them, their eyes become entirely black. Sunlight, presumably, has an effect but we do not see it in action. Silver (in the form of a plated stick sword and silver bullets) are effective against the undead. There is some suggestion of crosses warding the undead but the absolute effectiveness is not revealed. Not every victim who is turned (rather than disposed of) survives the turning process.

strange death

Of course, a stake through the heart will kill a vampire and there is an incorporation of an actual true story, about a man dying due to his anti-vampire precautions.

Blood and Bone China is the best vampire orientated web serial that I have seen. I have no hesitation in saying that. Professionally shot, edited, costumed and performed, my only question to Chris Stone is when is he going to make it available to buy on DVD, cut into a feature?

The imdb page is here and the homepage is here.

Vamp or Not? The Fades

2011-11-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

The Fades was a BBC series that I was told I should see and was, luckily enough, able to catch up with. Let me start off by saying that this was, on the surface, a ghost series but these ghosts had a pedigree going back to some fine Euro-horror – whether the writers knew it or not. It was directed by Farren Blackburn and first aired in 2011 (there was an unaired pilot dated from 2010).

It follows the fortunes of protagonist Paul (Iain De Caestecker, the Little Vampire) Abandoned by his father, undergoing therapy and detested by his twin sister Anna (Lily Loveless). He and his best friend Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) are the school geeks but it is their odd quirkiness that actually carries the series, in its early part.

Iain De Caestecker as Paul

The first episode sees them in an abandoned shopping centre at night when a woman called Sarah (Natalie Dormer) is attacked and murdered by a creature and her companion Neil (Johnny Harris) takes a pot shot at Paul. Sarah and Neil are Angelics, humans with powers above and beyond normal humans – for instance Sarah is a seer and another Angelic Helen (Daniela Nardini) can heal the injured. All Angelics can see the fades.

a soul ascends

The fades are souls of the dead that are earthbound. There are certain points on the earth known as Ascension points, places in nature where the souls of the dead can ascend (to whatever lies beyond death). The trouble is that many ascension points have been lost due to urbanisation and over recent years some of the dead simply do not ascend. Earthbound and aging in spirit form, burned by the touch of the living and unseen by all bar Angelics they become bitter towards the living.

he wasn't expecting that

However, because they have no substance they cannot interact physically with the world and so the fact that one is able to kill Sarah is worrying to say the least. Needless to say, Paul discovers that he is an Angelic and, indeed, not just an Angelic but an über-Angelic. As things progress he discovers that he has healing powers, he dreams the future and he also sprouts wings (at the end of a vigorous teenage solo activity, as it happens!)

John reborn

They discover that the fades are eating the flesh of the living and this is giving them the ability to touch the physical world. The main fade is John (Joe Dempsie), a man who died in the Second World War. We see him cocoon eventually and when he emerges he is reborn whole. Indeed, better than whole as he discovers he is now immortal. However the reborn fades cannot eat human food and must eat human flesh and drink human blood, they are filled with a ravenous hunger. John hatches a plot for fade domination.

blood transmuting spirit to flesh

When we hear about how he accidentally became physical again we discover it is when his wife, whom he had silently watched for decades, contracted cancer and killed herself. John sat below her slashed wrist not wanting to move, whilst the blood spilt on him and burned him and, where it burned, he developed new tactile skin. This puts me in mind of the film La Vendetta di Lady Morgan, where ghosts drank blood to manifest physically. Also, for the best Euro-horror example of vampiric ghosts, you need to check out Castle of Blood.

a reborn fade is killed

So, what we end up with are truly immortal creatures (though no one tries dismemberment as a killing method) that became physically whole and young again through drinking blood and eating flesh. They are filled with hunger and become weak when starved. When in fade form their teeth seem to become sharp, though they return to normal when they are reborn. The Z word is mentioned in series and dismissed, and honestly they are too darn sentient for that label. Paul discovers he is able to destroy them and they burn up and explode.

Whilst the filmmakers may not have been aiming for it, they did create something that I would say is vampire genre. It was also a good watch thanks, as much as anything, to the performances of Daniel Kaluuya and Iain De Caestecker. The imdb page is here.

Vamperifica – review

2011-11-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Director: Bruce Ornstein

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

I often caveat horror/comedy films – and will do so again – with the observation that comedy is difficult to review as what one person finds funny another person may not. However, when we saw Vamperifica at the 2011 Bram Stoker International Film Festival the film certainly wowed the festival. Not only did the organisers award the movie best horror/comedy film but the audience also voted it as best film of the festival.

To the film’s further credit I found myself enjoying the film even more when I re-watched it for this review.

fangs

It starts with a quick potted history of the vampires in this film. The vampires, some two hundred years ago, were hunted by the church and had become a dejected race. Then one vampire, Raven (Darwin Shaw), rose up and turned the tide. He slaughtered humans until he eventually faced a warrior priest in battle. He defeated the priest but was mortally wounded. He prophesised that his soul would return, reborn as a human, and tasked the vampires Campbell (Creighton James) and Emily (Bonnie Swencionis) to find him and turn him. With his death the vampires were dejected and the race, now, stands at the brink of extinction.

Martin Yurkovic as Carmen

Then the film plays “Barbie Girl” as we meet our protagonist Carmen (Martin Yurkovic) and his best friend Tracey (Dreama Walker). They are in a diner arguing over the merits, or from Tracey’s point of view lack of them, of the ‘c’ word. They ask waitress Maria (Maria-Christina Oliveras) her thoughts on the subject, provoking her ire and causing Carmen to leave her a tip consisting of a note that says “F*ck you”. As they leave they arrange to meet in the park the next day – after Carmen has an interview for a stage role he auditioned for. They don’t notice Campbell and Emily watching them.

dream of Raven

The interview does not go exactly the way that Carmen envisioned it, with the director Josh (Josh Alexander) suggesting that Carmen can’t act and refusing him a role. Once out of the interview he is approached by Campbell but has little time to listen to the stranger who has approached him. But, when sat in the park with Tracey, he notices that Campbell and Emily are stood close by. Suddenly Tracey and Carmen jump, dropping their coffees, when Peter (Jeff Ward) sneaks up on them. He is a friend from school who has just returned from college. Later, when we see Carmen dream, we see the three as kids, we see Tracey defending her friend and then the dream turns to one of Raven feeding causing Carmen to bolt awake, believe he sees a shape in his room (Campbell and Emily who quickly vanish off) and sit up all night holding a baseball bat.

Campbell and Emily

Of course the two vampires stalk Carmen and then turn him but they want him to leave his human friends behind (and Emily becomes jealous of Tracey, as she was Raven’s lover). Carmen, for his part, starts murdering anyone he had a problem with and his sloppiness – leaving bodies behind – cause Campbell, particularly, to wonder if turning him was the right thing to do. However it is within the character of Carmen – and the excellent performance by Martin Yurkovic – that the source of the comedy is found. Carmen is a very camp, gay man, abandoned as a baby by his mother (who left him a keepsake of a locket and little else) he hides behind bitchiness.

Carmen turned

Yurkovic, once Carmen has been turned, flits between camp and sinister with consummate ease and makes it so that, no matter what Carmen is doing, the audience maintains a sympathetic view. Interestingly Carmen’s sexuality is not played on in-film. There is one throwaway line about being stalked by a man and Tracey exclaiming ‘finally’, but he simply is who and what he is. Not that the comedy begins and ends with Carmen, all the primary characters are interesting and funny and the actors do a fine job. The character of Emily was a personal favourite and Bonnie Swencionis has a mesmerising screen presence.

bleached eyes

The vampires can go out in daylight – sunblock is mentioned – they are massively strong and fast. The fangs are retractable and their eyes can change colour. Emily actually has pure white eyes where a priest bleached them but causes them to take on a hue normally, choosing only to show their true state to those she is closest to. Holy items burn the vampires and a stake through the heart kills – the vampires exploding into a gory goo. When a vampire is near a sleeping human they can cause the human to have bad dreams and awaken, this is a human defence mechanism. The name Sarah Michelle Gellar is offensive to vampires.

dance number

The film has a musical number, with Carmen performing the track ‘Hah, Bloody Hah’ which worked really well in the context of the film - indeed for me it's up there in 'top musical numbers' with Let's Do It in Tank Girl. All in all the film is a delight to watch, improves on a repeated watch (which of course is a good thing) and has one of the best comedy vampire characters for some considerable amount of time. This is all caveated with the warning I gave at the head of the review about the personal nature of comedy.

For me, however, Vamperifica deserves 8 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

film poster taken from Dread Central.com

Vamp or Not? Vampire Horror!

2011-11-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

"Vampire Horror!" is a professionally read audio book containing four stories. Two are classics of the vampire genre. Polidori's The Vampyre: a Tale being the first English language vampire prose, excellently read by Bill Wallis, and F. Marion Crawford's For the Blood is the Life is a sublime little tale read by John Teffler and a story that may well form the basis of an ‘Interesting Short’ article in the future.

The other two stories are by M R James and their part in the vampire genre is debatable, hence this ‘Vamp or Not?’

At the beginning of Wailing Well narrator Anthony Head informs us that this has vampiric overtones (as does, he alleges, the other M R James story in the set). "Wailing Well" has a welcome humour around it, within the style and content of the short as it follows, in the main, the misadventures of Stanley Judkins, an Etonian and Scout – though a poor student and worse scout.

On the Scouts' Midsummer holidays Stanley and his friends look out to Wailing Well, a feature that is ringed red on their map as out of bounds. A local Shepherd tells them the legend of the three women and a man who met their ends in that area but Stanley doesn’t believe him and resolves to go to the well.

When his scout masters go to his rescue figures are seen and one is described as “something in ragged black — with whitish patches breaking out of it: the head, perched on a long thin neck, half hidden by a shapeless sort of blackened sun-bonnet.” Later we hear that the “rim of a broken black hat fell off the creature's head and showed a white skull with stains that might be wisps of hair.”

So evidently these are skeletal creatures. As for Stanley, the scout master Mr Hope-Jones finds him: “Over his shoulder hung the corpse of Stanley Judkins. He had cut it from the branch to which he found it hanging, waving to and fro. There was not a drop of blood in the body.”

The exsanguination certainly suggests vampirism but we do not actually know what they do with the blood. At the end of the tale we hear that the figures lurking around the well now have a boy amongst their number – suggesting that Stanley becomes one of the creatures. Mr Hope-Jones fails to destroy the trees growing around the well, evidently stopped by a supernatural force. Are they vampires, deep down I suspect not but they certainly have some potential that could be exploited by a filmmaker adapting the story. You can read Wailing Well here.

The other story this article needs to explore is the Cornelius Garrett read, An Episode of Cathedral History and again there is little vampiric in the story of an altar-tomb found in a cathedral during a restoration, in which something exists. The something seems to be able to leave the altar-tomb at night, through a crack.

What resides in it? When they go to investigate the narrator’s father sees “A thing like a man, all over hair, and two great eyes to it”. It seems to visit people in their sleep spreading disease (possibly consumption?) and nightmares. At the end, James describes a cross affixed to the sealed tomb engraved with the phrase "Ibi cubavit lamia", which is from the Vulgate edition of the Bible, Isaiah xxxiv verse 14. A quick online research reveals that Rosemary Pardoe suggests that it translates as "there shall be the lair of the night monster". Pardoe connects the night monster to a witch or vampire and the lamia is often associated with the vampire genre.

To me there would seem to be a connection with the traditional, rather than the fictional, vampire within the tale, though that might not seem explicit on a casual listen/read. You can read An Episode of Cathedral History here.

I should say, however, that the two James stories are well read and immensely fun, just not explicitly vampire stories (though the second seems more vampiric than the first) and this may lead to some disappointment given the title of the set. Indeed there are other vampire stories that might have been used, I’d have loved to have heard an audio of the Tomb of Sarah for instance. Nevertheless it is a good audio set.

The set was first reviewed for the Amazon Vine programme and the review was expanded for this ‘Vamp or Not?’

Stake Land – review

2011-11-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

Director: Jim Mickle

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

I looked at Stake Land here after watching it on the big screen. Now, when I offer a first impression I have often found myself torn about composing a full review, often I re-read the first impression and decide I have said all I want to about the film, tag a score on the end and list the film in the review menus.

In the case of Stake Land I felt it would be doing this marvellous film a disservice. It is a movie I particularly enjoyed, have watched a few times since getting the DVD, and wished to run over it once more. I doubt everyone will feel the same way about the film – the joy, of course, of movies generally.

Mister and Martin

The film begins with Martin (Connor Paolo) and Mister (Nick Damici) in a car. Martin’s voiceovers lead us through the film. There is something in the boot of the car. Cutting to the time when they met, Martin is in the family garage as his dad (Gregory Jones) works on the car and his mother (Traci Hovel) holds his baby brother. Public service announcements sound through the radio. The dog runs into the night and Martin chases after it. He is out of the garage when the vampire attacks.

uncompromising opening

He runs back but is intercepted by Mister. Mister hands him a gun and they go into the barn together. By flashlight they see that his father is wounded and dying and his mother is dead. The vampire is up the barn wall feeding on the baby, which it drops. The film is uncompromising here, the scene with the baby showing us the aggressive, feral hunger of the vampires. The vampire attacks and Mister manages, eventually, to pin him but Martin has to swing the hammer to bury the stake in it's chest – it is the start of an apprenticeship in vampire hunting.

Michael Cerveris as Jebediah

Where did the vampires come from? The film doesn’t say, we are simply in the midst of a vampire apocalypse. However some short prequels, which were made available, indicate that contaminated meat may have been the source of the virus. Martin tells us that many survivors turned to God, waiting for a Messiah who never came. However crackpot religions did develop and rather than the vampires, the main enemy in the film is the Christian Army of Aryans, known as the Brotherhood and personified in the form of Jebediah Loven (Michael Cerveris, Cirque du Freak: the Vampire’s Assistant). The first time we meet the brotherhood is when two of them are trying to rape a nun, credited as Sister (Kelly McGillis), and Mister kills them – finding rapists morally reprehensible.

dumped with vampires

The Brotherhood see the vampires as instruments of God and use them to attack Lockdowns – small towns surviving through their own militia. We hear of them crashing through roadblocks, we see them dropping vampires from helicopters into a town and hear tales of them crashing planes with vampires on board into cities – that is how Washington DC is alleged to have fallen. The hypocrisy of the group and their twisted biblical message is a central theme of the film.

Kelly McGillis as the Sister

The actual core of the film is a buddy, road movie focusing on Martin’s coming of age. The film can be purposefully languid at times, with soundtrack to match, exploding into violence and, more importantly, forcing the characters, and thus us, to deal with the aftermath of the violence. Along the way they meet other survivors in the form of Belle (Danielle Harris) and Willie (Sean Nelson). The goal of the group is to head North, vampires are inactive/less active in cold climates and New Eden (Canada) is alleged to be safe.

Eilis Cahill as the scamp

We meet various vampire mutations. Berserkers have developed a bony breastplate protecting the heart and so they have to be killed by severing the spinal cord – vampires utilise the reptile brain – and we also meet a scamp (Eilis Cahill, Thicker than Water: the Vampire Diaries Part 1), a child turned into a vampire. Mister mentions that he has seen other mutations. Sunlight will kill them, causing them to burn and Mister coats his stakes with garlic essence – saying it can’t hurt. The virus manifests as black markings radiating from a bite.

vampire Santa

I really enjoy Stake Land, it was a fantastic vampiric take on the apocalyptic movie – taking back from zombies what they originally borrowed from the genre. It works as a buddy movie, as a coming of age movie and as a horror. There are moments that seem derivative – the vampire Santa reminded me of the zombie clown in Zombieland for some reason, though this film is played completely seriously as opposed to the comedic zombie movie – but this was not necessarily a bad thing. The film eschews sentimentality, the brotherhood attacks destroy hope in the form of community and Martin’s companions can be taken from him without any character sympathy and yet, in the end, an open finale offers a glimmer of hope for the character.

Definitely a film I will return to again and again. 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Terminus

2011-11-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

Terminus is a 2010 short movie, approximately 40 minutes in length, directed by Sean P. Parsons, which is based upon the novel “Blood Hunger” by A M Esmonde. The film was intended to be a showcase – hence the honourable mention, though the film is available in the US on Amazon video on demand. Indeed it is almost a prelude story to the novel. Esmonde had previously worked on the short Revamped: a Vampire Tale, which can be seen here.

Hauer and Anushka

The film was described to me as arthouse and it isn’t a bad description. The filmmakers have summoned a feeling, rather than a fleshed out narrative, an excursion into the Blood Hunger world. It concentrates on two main characters, Hauer (Philip Fletcher) a drifter and Anushka (Katherine DuBois) an assassin who is also a vampire. Some of the dialogue delivery is quite stagey but many of the cast members have a background in theatre and, to be honest, the delivery works with the atmosphere that the film develops.

offering the substitute

Anushka has foresworn human blood, feeding instead on a synthetic alternative that has the side effect that it allows vampires to work in daylight but is as addictive as heroin. This is similar to the miracle substance in the flick the Dead Matter, though this film draws a more beautifully photographed world around us. Anushka hunts her own kind, as an assassin, and the blood substitute seems to be her payment. She classes humans as innocents. A viewpoint scoffed about by fellow vampire Marquise (Stacey Jackson).

Katherine DuBois as Anushka

Anushka and Hauer’s paths first cross because he stays, and gets massively drunk, in the abandoned paper-mill that Anushka has made her home. For the first time in a long time Anushka findsherself tempted to take human blood. Later, through friend Caelum (Sarah Taurchini) and her drug dealing boyfriend, Jacob (Ben Cunis), Hauer is drawn back into the vampires’ world – not knowing that Jacob has been turned. In this film, when a vampire is killed said vampire explodes with a flush of flames.

vampire assassin

As I mentioned, the narrative story is fairly thin. It is a very simple story that showcases more the filmmaking skills of Parsons and introduces the viewer to the interesting ideas within Esmonde’s story. The script for a feature based on Blood Hunger is being written, which I hope will expand on those interesting ideas and bring them to a wider audience.

The imdb page is here and the film’s homepage is here.

Vampires (2010) – review

2011-11-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

Director: Vincent Lannoo

Release date: 2010

Contains spoilers

The UK DVD of Belgian film vampires happened to land on my doorstep the day before I was due to travel to the 2011 Bram Stoker International Film Festival. I knew the film was showing at the festival and so I avoided watching it until I got to see it on the big screen.

In some respects the film doesn’t actually need that big screen treatment – it is a mockumentary that begins with the first two failed attempts to integrate a film crew into the Belgian Vampire Community, but I am glad I got the opportunity to see it on the big screen nevertheless. Being a mockumentary and being Belgian it has been compared (within the DVD blurb, no less) to the film Man Bites Dog. Man Bites Dog is a stunning piece of black humoured cinema that still challenges me as a viewer. To be fair this is not of the same calibre and it would be wrong to suggest so, however it is a genuinely funny piece of black comedy.

Fleur Lise Heuet as Grace

The film crew spend their time with a vampire family. The father is Georges (Carlo Ferrante) and he turned his wife Bertha (Vera Van Dooren), their children are Samson (Pierre Lognay) and Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet). Vampire society (in Belgium at least) suggests that vampires are provided houses and food via their social structures. The families with children are given houses – despite the size of the house, the whole family sleep (in their coffins) in the same room, and the vampire sexuality is more open than that of a human family. Indeed, as their actual relationships are born out of turning there is a distinctly incestuous undertone.

the Meat brings mugs of blood

Also living in the house is the Meat. She lives in the refrigerator and is a human not slaughtered for her blood but savoured and fed various foodstuffs to enhance her taste. She was a prostitute and sees little difference in what she does for the family. She also deals with modern contrivances that are beyond the vampires and prepares warm blood as a wake-up drink. At one point (on a necessary trip to the UK) she takes the role of travelling companion.

Elizabeth lives in the basement

Living in the basement are the neighbours. Vampire family units such as Elizabeth and Bienvenu (Batiste Sornin), who do not have children, are not granted houses and must live in the basements of a family. There is a clear snobbery from both parties. Georges doesn’t even register the neighbours and they feel themselves superior to the family. There is rivalry that is often covered by a set of rules called the code (allegedly developed by Dracula himself).

suicide attempt

The vampires themselves are unable to withstand sunlight or garlic; they are disturbed by the cross and to call a vampire "priest" is a grave insult. Grace wishes to be human, wears pink (and, in an indulgence, is given a pink coffin for her death day). She regularly tries to commit suicide but in ways that would kill a human (she never tries walking into the sunlight for instance) as she wants to die like a human. If a vampire is not turned with a bite that contains enough passion for eternity they might become human again eventually.

Samson feeds

They have a school – where they develop cruelty – which is a human school through the day and they are controlled by a leader – Little Heart. Whilst the vampires' sexuality is very open generally there is an exception, and it is the leader’s woman, Eva (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld), who is absolutely off limits – something that might cause a problem within the film… hint, hint… The vampires clearly dislike humans, thinking of them only as foodstuff, but there is also an underlying racism in the film (the police provide them with illegal immigrants and Georges complains of the colour of his skin, as does Grace) but the comments are telling, illuminating of a social issue and of a black comedy level.

Batiste Sornin as Bienvenu

The film is genuinely funny. From the antics of Bertha as she steals a boom mike cover to the more dark humour. It is also a film where repeated watches reveal more and more that was not noticed in previous viewings (the fact that Bienvenu is talking to the crew with a drink in front of him that has been infused from a tampon was not noticed in the first viewing, for instance). However it is not nearly as shocking as something like Man Bites Dog and its overarching story works well but is ultimately thin.

That said, it is a film worth seeing. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Third Section – review

2011-11-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

Author: Jasper Kent

First Published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Russia 1855. After forty years of peace in Europe, war rages. In the Crimea, the city of Sevastopol is besieged. In the north, Saint Petersburg is blockaded. But in Moscow there is one who needs only to sit and wait – wait for the death of an aging tsar, and for the curse upon his blood to be passed to a new generation.

As their country grows weaker, a man and a woman – unaware of the hidden ties that bind them – must come to terms with their shared legacy. In Moscow, Tamara Valentinovna Komarova uncovers a brutal murder and discovers that it not the first in a sequence of similar crimes, merely the latest, carried out by a killer who has stalked the city since 1812.

And in Sevastopol, Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov faces not only the guns of the combined armies of Britain and France, but must also make a stand against creatures that his father had thought buried beneath the earth, thirty years before.

The Review: This is the third book of the Danilov Quintet, and we previously looked at Twelve and Thirteen Years Later, this book jumps forward thirty years and the hero of the first two books, Aleksei Danilov, is an old man exiled in Siberia. The book switches viewpoint to his children, Dimitry and Tamara, half-siblings who are unaware of each other.

Also distant in this book is primary villain Zmyeevich and it his erstwhile agent Iuda or Cain, as he was known in the previous volumes, who takes centre stage. He has, as revealed in the last book, insinuated himself into Dimitry’s life and in this novel he is a high ranking official in the Third Section, the Russian secret service, and as such happens to be Tamara’s superior (not knowing her parentage). The book follows the three as Iuda manipulates the siblings for his own ends and some voordalak Iuda thought buried forever seek revenge on him.

The book is as well written and as high quality as the previous volumes. There is little in the way of new lore except around the lack of a vampire’s reflection. In this Iuda discovers it is because the brain of the voordalak (and presumably a human) cannot face the truth a mirror reveals and thus block it out. When he manages to create a mirror that tricks a vampire’s brain into seeing its true image the results are devastating to the vampire’s mental health.

A worthwhile addition to the series. 8 out of 10.

Sacrifice: A Vampire Tale – review

2011-11-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

Director: Robert Jukic

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Ammended Review: Sacrifice is a short film (some 9 minutes) that I stumbled across on iTunes and thought I would give a go. It suffers, as many a short film does, with too much story background lost because of a curtailed running time. However it also does something rather wonderful in respect of faith and the vampiric reaction to religious icons and phenomena.

It also juxtaposes a richly gothic location with the modern starkness of Melbourne’s underground system.

the next target

We begin in the gothic location. A man, credited as the stalker (Terry Camilleri), puts a sharp, blood soaked knife down on a bloody tray and moves a skull that is still wet with blood. He crosses through a photograph of a man and looks to another photo. This one is of a woman (Jamie McDowell) and he circles her... his next target.

casting a long shadow

In a theatre bar a girl (Julia Markovski) frantically fills her backpack and packs her laptop before rushing out, accidentally leaving a plastic wallet containing her passport, underground pass and plane tickets. As she rushes she knocks into a waiter (Ben Day) and he spills a drink over the woman (who is the stalker’s target). She moves to the table the girl vacated and finds the wallet. As the waiter brings a fresh drink she has gone, looking for the girl – the stalker is already following her, casting a shadow, a device that is synonymous with the vampire genre…

backpacker runs

The woman finds the girl, who had reached a barrier, couldn’t find her underground pass and then dropped papers over the floor as she tried to rush back to the bar. The woman passes the wallet back and they talk briefly. The girl is French and her boyfriend has proposed to her, she is going home to tell her mother. She has nothing with which to repay the woman for her kindness... and it is here I will stop.

My originally posted review continued onwards with spoilers, not for the sake of spoilers but because of something the film does. However I was contacted by Robert Jukic, the director, who very nicely asked if it was possible for me to tone down the spoilers. I understand why and will thus only say that the film does something with the concept of faith that is superb and further say that this device did increase the short’s score and make it genre essential.

The final score is despite what I mentioned regarding the film’s lack of backstory. I’d have liked to know more about the stranger– marvellously portrayed by Terry Camilleri – for instance where does he get his intel from? In fact the film generates more and more questions and 9 minutes is not enough time to allow answers to be given. However Robert Jukic has also let me know that Sacrifice was a teaser and test piece, and the ultimate goal would be to produce a feature trilogy in which we would gain answers to many of these questions. Fingers crossed for that but for now the short gets 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here and the film’s homepage is here.

Back from Bram

2011-11-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’m back from the Bram Stoker Film Festival, tired but happy and thanks to Paul, Teresa and Leila for your company through the event and to those we met there, either at the festival or just in Whitby – it’s the great folk that make the event special.

I kept to my goal of twittering after each film (some a little later than anticipated but that was sometimes due to hunting the elusive 3G signal).

As for the vampire films, here are my general thoughts. There were a couple of films already reviewed and so you can find my thoughts on Bonnie and Clyde v Dracula and the Living Dead Girl on the blog. With regards the latter, I wandered off from the Vampires' Ball to watch the film as the event and the film clashed, and it was a shame that the film seemed misinterpreted by my fellow audience who couldn’t see through the (admittedly) poor effects. The pathos of the ending was almost lost within the laughter that met some of the effects, but I trust that the film was enjoyed on the B level by those there. For me it was simply great to see the film on the big screen.

There were two newly watched features; firstly there was Vincent Lannoo’s Vampires – the DVD of the film arrived at home the day before travelling and I resisted watching it until it was on at the festival – a review will be forthcoming. Also on was Vamperifica, an excellent vampire comedy that won Best Horror Comedy and the coveted Audience Award for Best Film. I’m hoping to bring a full review very soon. There were two shorts on, Thredony was above average and the short Sacrifice was actually a film I had watched for review last week and that review will – all things being fair – be posted tomorrow. Finally, Thai based ghost story Shadows had some flesh eating demons in it that reminded me very much of Aswang – I’ll be looking at that as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ when available on DVD.

Other vampy things to mention were the wonderful paintings of Mark Williams, the performance by Don’t go into the Cellar of The Feast of Blood – a stage piece inspired by Polidori’s the Vampyre and Varney the Vampire, which delivered a veritable cornucopia of references for the Victorian vampire buff – and last but definitely not least the performance of Lisa Starry’s a Vampire Tale and I’ll leave you with a taste of that:

Bram Stoker Film Festival

2011-10-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

I’m travelling up to Whitby today, meeting with some good friends and attending the Bram Stoker Film Festival. Whilst I’m there the blog won’t be updated, however, if things go to plan I do intend to tweet about the films – so check my Twitter page.

See y’all next week.

The Night Dracula Saved the World – review

2011-10-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

Director: Bruce Bilson

Release date: 1979

Contains spoilers

There are times when a show is saved because you view it with rose tinted glasses. I am sure that the Night Dracula Saved the World would be one such show – it’s just a shame, therefore, that I never saw it when I was a kid and thus do not have the special colour filtered glasses.

It begins with Dracula (Judd Hirsch) waking up in his coffin. He scares Igor (Henry Gibson) who is watching TV. A news report comes on that suggests that Dracula has summoned all the leading monsters to his castle. The reporter then speculates that this might suggest that reports of Halloween's cancellation might be true. He further speculates that it is Dracula who wishes to cancel Halloween – a view that Dracula finds most offensive. We then cut to a family preparing for Halloween and they furnish us with some Halloween trivia.

the monsters

The monsters arrive and they include Warren the Werewolf (Jack Riley), the Frankenstein creature (John Schuck), the mummy (Robert Fitch), Zabaar the zombie (Josip Elic) and Winnie the witch (Mariette Hartley). Far from wanting to cancel Halloween, Dracula has called them because they are failing to be scary enough. The werewolf shaved his face and hands for a razor commercial and the Frankenstein creature likes to tap dance.

Mariette Hartley as Winnie

Having heard it all Winnie suddenly declares that she quits, she doesn’t want to be a witch anymore, she’s sick of being ugly. The problem is that Halloween cannot start until she flies her broom above the moon. No witch, no Halloween – it was her that started the rumours. She gives Dracula a list of demands – including joint leadership of the monster. When he refuses she leaves.

Judd Hirsch as Dracula

Dracula doesn’t want to let her escape, and so we get a slapstick chase scene, mostly centred on a corridor lined with doors and straight out of Scooby-Doo! She eventually gets away and – in crap bat form – Dracula gives chase. Unfortunately the sun foils any plan he might have had. The next night the monsters would have to go to the witch’s castle and somehow force her compliance.

Disco Dracula

The title is a misnomer – it is not the world but Halloween being saved and Dracula is not the one who saves it. The gags are okay but a little too slapstick for my taste and I don’t think the entire thing has aged that well – this is doubly so for the disco dancing Dracula scene. Kids, at the time, might have found it funny – I don’t know if that would be true today and for an adult (with no childhood investment in the show) it isn’t brilliant. Most of the monsters are wasted but the entire thing is rather short and so beefing their roles up would have been difficult.

Altogether 3.5 out of 10, though I hope I haven’t offended those with rose-tinted specks. The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Halloweentown 2: Kalabar’s Revenge

2011-10-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

This was the sequel to Halloweentown and was set a couple of years on, and indeed was released a few years after the first film, in 2001. This time Mary Lambert directed.

Like the first it began on Halloween, though this time around the Cromwell household was hosting a large Halloween party rather than avoiding Halloween altogether. Mum Gwen (Judith Hoag) and grandmother Aggie (Debbie Reynolds) were still bickering and eldest sibling Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown) was well in with her witch training. We do get a mortal (Jessica Lucas) dressed as a vampire at the party.

suddenly she's a real vampire

The crux of the film is that son of the enemy from film 1, who is called Kal (Daniel Kountz), seeks to avenge himself against the Cromwells and turn Halloweentown into a grey facsimile of the mortal world and introduce monsters into our realm. The spell to do the latter turns those at the high school Halloween party (which followed the Cromwell party) into the monsters they dress as and so our vampire from earlier becomes a real vampire (for all of a minute of screen time, if that).

Less vampire appearance than the first film, but still there. The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Halloweentown High

This third instalment was from 2004 and was directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé. It followed on from the second film and the fact that Marnie opened the Halloweentown portal so that it worked all year round. The council of Halloweentown congratulate her and look to the proposal that some Halloweentown kids go to the mortal world on exchange. When there are reservations about this, Marnie bets the Cromwell magic that it will be successful.

This leads to a group of kids (in human suits) going to the high school and posing as Canadian exchange students. It also leads to the resurrection of the fear of a group of knights sworn to destroy monsters and protect the world from the denizens of halloweentown.

vampire

Now, if one of the students had been a vampire this might have warranted a review. In actuality there is even less vampire involvement in this than the other two films, hence the mention being tagged on after film #2. One of the council members is a vampire (Mowava Pryor) and we know this because of the fangs. The credits confirm it but she gets no real screen time and does nothing particularly vampiric.

The imdb page is here.

For information, the fourth film – Return to Halloweentown – had a different actress playing Marnie and no noticeable vampire element.