Short Film: Dracula: A Modern Adaptation

Directed by Stephen Nicksic, and coming in at under 5-minutes, I can’t find an IMDb page. This looks to retell a snippet of Dracula in the modern day and feels more a proof of concept than anything, which is fair as I understand it was shot as part of a Fiction into Film Course in 2014.

Mina and Johnathan

It starts in London, outside a church where Jonathan (Joshua Klingseisen) and Mina (Maridee Mund) have just attended Hawkins’ funeral. They walk and get a bus to Piccadilly. In a park Jonathan sees a man (Nathan Holter) and declares it is Dracula but grown young. Unlike the novel, the Count sees them as he is alone (and not fixated on his prey).

Nathan Holter as Dracula

There are flashes of imagery and Jonathan comes round on a park bench with Mina – he passed out, she says. They have a long walk ahead of them. Night has fallen when they reach an alley and, unbeknown to them, Dracula steps from out of the shadows.

And that’s it, short and sweet and a project that underlines that even the shortest snippet of Stoker’s novel can get some love.

X-Men: Blood Hunt – review

Writer: Various

Artist: Various

First published: 2024 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Collects X-Men: Blood Hunt - Jubilee, X-Men: Blood Hunt - Magik, X-Men: Blood Hunt - Psylocke, X-Men: Blood Hunt - Laura Kinney The Wolverine And Wolverine: Blood Hunt #1-4.

Marvel's mutants survived the FALL OF X - but now they must join the BLOOD HUNT! Your favorite X-Men face the fight of their lives against a barrage of bloodsuckers! As darkness suffuses the world, Jubilee's past as a vampire comes back to take a big bite out of her! Magik must protect her homeland when a vampire army descends on Russia, seeking to turn it into a living hell! When her vacation in Japan is ruined, Psylocke will wield her psionic blade against creatures of legend - and a foe unlike any she's ever seen! When vampires capture mutants for hellacious experiments to boost their own power, Laura Kinney has something to say about that! And if one Wolverine isn't enough, Logan is also up to his claws in fang-faced fiends - but he has one vampire on his side as they fight their way toward a shocking showdown!

The review: Another volume in Marvel’s Blood Hunt event, this one concentrating (obviously, from the title) on X-men. The first half of the volume is full of one-shots, including Jubilee (who apparently had been a vampire some time in the character’s past), Magick and Psylock. We also get a one-shot involving Laura Kinney as Wolverine and her clone Gabby – with the vampires feeding off the latter’s blood getting her healing factor (making them tough to kill, of course) – their adventure including Xarus, Dracula’s son, with his first (brief) appearance in the event.

The tour de force of the volume is the longer Wolverine (Logan) tale with him being hunted down by vampires under the control of erstwhile associate (and now vampire) Maverick. Logan is accompanied by Nightguard (the Nightguard were vampire hunters, but they had been mostly wiped out bar a member named Louise, pre-Blood Hunt, and Wolverine helped her go to the Otherworld vampire kingdom of Sevalith where she learned to control her hunger. She took the codename Nightguard to honour her fallen comrades).

This is a pretty darn action packed, fight to fight with great art and a vampire queen named Alyssa of the vampire Siren Sect – so the events take part during Blood Hunt but do not involved Blade or Varnae’s vampires, with Alyssa looking for a vampire king with which to attack Varnae at some point in the future. One interesting piece of lore placed in this is that, although Logan’s healing factor prevents vampirism, if he is injured in such a way that the factor is fighting that injury constantly, he can turn albeit temporarily. There is a plot point based around vampires not showing up on camera feeds. A great fun addition to the event, involving one of Marvel’s best characters. 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vamp Chat Podcast

During the week I joined Eva Vertrice (author of A Fury) and Dan Klefstad (author of Fiona’s Guardians) on their Vamp Chat podcast (S3 E5) – the second time I have been on their show. 

 Also on the show was Jessica Lindsey, author of Moonlight and Magnolias and Dan reveals and reviews his guilty pleasure vampire movie. 

So, if you have a burning desire to hear my voice (a voice built for silent movies, it has to be said) as we chat vampires and this blog go on over and show the guys some love.

Sanguine Teeth on a Driftless Road – review

Director: Austin Galante

Release date: Unknown*

Contains spoilers

*The film is not dated on IMDb and does not have a copyright date on the actual film that I spotted, but went onto Fawesome TV streaming in 2025.

With a title length that matched its running time, coming in at over two hours as it does, there was a chance that this low budget indie feature might outstay its welcome and yet it never did. Managing to match wit with some laddish humour, it managed to build genuine characters and an off-kilter world.

robbers

The film starts with a woman in a bikini walking along the side of a country road, a car slows down and we hear a lift being offered and rebuffed. It starts us with a little slice of mild oddness and the woman is not seen again until the very end of the film, playing no part that we see in the events. The film cuts to two men in a car chatting – the snappy dialogue felt as though it was trying to emulate Tarantino’s signature style and doing a fairly darn good job of it. One man pulls down a mask, the other puts on a bunny-eared balaclava as they enter a gas station.

Juan Hooks as Alamo

The clerk (Alok Kumar) really doesn’t seem to care about being robbed and there is offence taken by the robber interfacing with him (robber #1) as he believes the South Asian clerk has assumed robbery due to him being African American (the clerk points out the balaclava and he cannot see his face). The proffered bag gets filled with cash from the register (and packs of smokes) but there happens to be two customers in the place, one hiding named Sticks (Austin Galante), the other, Alamo (Juan Hooks), unphased by events. However, Alamo ends up having a run-in with Robber #2 and planting him into the floor with unnatural strength. Robber #1 leaves his erstwhile compatriot and drives off. The clerk reveals, as he does, that the silent alarm has been pressed, Alamo declines waiting for the police, so as to give a statement, and we see the police capture robber #1 as he runs out of gas (despite having robbed a gas station).

Matthew Kenner as Damascus

This scene underlines much about the film. The robbers are incidental to the film and yet writer/director Galante gives them dialogue, character and shows us the fate of both of them (the capture by the cops is almost an irrelevance and could have been cut for running time purposes and yet somehow fits the pace and rhythm). The Sticks character is barely seen and yet the viewer, unbeknown at this point, has met the vampire hunter (who, I assume, is pursuing Alamo specifically). Alamo we quickly find out, in subsequent scenes, is a vampire.

Monty Kane as Cano

Before we discover that, however, we meet Damascus Elfman (Matthew Kenner). Rich, apparently, with a cavernous cave below his home, we will soon discover he is two and a half millennia old. He has hired a luxury RV – and there is a scene with the odd and intrusive (to Damascus) character Barron Snatchblown (Aaron Rathbone) who an irritated Damascus eventually invites into the RV and then seems to vanish from the film. I mention this because much later he emerges, having been glamoured and left under the bed! The incidental characters are not forgotten. Damascus picks up vampire friends Mayuum Cano (Monty Kane) and Ricky Pete (Charlie Mac) for a road trip. Both vampires have familiars with them and Ricky brings Alamo, who we find out is a newly turned vampire.

the humans

The film is the road trip on which they pick up homeless Dongle Man (Douglas Montoya), after Cano drains his annoying familiar, and then later pick up raver Visit-Tor (Jason Rouse) because Cano believes any man hitchhiking in a thong must have a funny story. The plot is less important than the characters, the situations and the dialogue dominates over narrative in this, so lets move to lore. As a young vampire, Alamo has yet to face his first (and last) ablution – it’s a noisy affair when it happens. The vampirism is a virus which regenerates the cells and thus keeps their dead bodies moving but there are also supernatural powers, some of which come with age, such as flight and glamouring humans. Damascus can scramble a video recording device with his powers.

Charlie Mac as Ricky

Wood kills the virus and thus stops it repairing cells – hence the stake in the heart working – sunlight is an issue but vampire scientists have developed a sunscreen they’ve all used. Vampires can catch vampire specific disease and Ricky has diabetes – so his familiar Sandy (Tiffany Saggio) is sugar free. Incidentally Sandy has an Only Fangs page – indicating, along with the vampire scientists, a much larger society we don’t see. The vampires can get stoned and drunk. As for the film itself, it is a comedy and uses laddish humour, as mentioned, but also some quite surrealist humour (the vampire hunter weapon salesman with a budgie for sale, which is meant to carry a wood-shrapnel grenade, and party poppers that fire sawdust being a prime example). Equally surreal was the drug-fuelled extended dance sequence that just seemed to fit.

Visit-Tor and Ricky

The film, on paper, probably shouldn’t work nearly as well as it did. It should be too long; extraneous scenes should slow the pace and yet it does work – or it certainly did for me. The dialogue felt natural but had a well-written snappiness to it. The characters were developed through said dialogue, the talent of the actors and their interactions, and it was these developed characters that, I think, take the viewer along with the film. I really got on with this one and thoroughly enjoyed watching it. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Circle City Supernatural – review

Director: J.P. Leck

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

This portmanteau film had an interesting conceit in that the wraparound was a radio show with host Lindsay Mallyn (Lindsay Leck), engineered by Sylvia Flores (Patty Najera-Esparza) and they were taking calls from citizens of Circle City who were telling their true tales of the supernatural on Halloween.

The segments of the films were then the stories but the interesting twist to this was that the caller told the story all the way through and the scenes complemented the voice rather than became the whole narrative – there was, therefore, a bit of an old-time radio feel to this.

Lindsay Leck as Lindsay

The stories were very inventive, for the most part, but lacked some level of bite due to the fact that, as the protagonist of the tale was the caller, you knew that there was no ultimate peril within the story. They also suffered due to budget. Take the zombie tale, which was a mother (Laura Morrison Richcreek) relating the dream her son (J.J. Taylor) had in detention, which she claims was a vision of the future – we see a too decayed to move zombie, detail lost in a hazmat suit, and a moving body bag but no other one despite the caller saying the school was full of them. The first story, Do Not Disturb, was an example of the interesting ones where the caller, Melody (Julia Leslie), walks through a mysterious door standing alone in a field and ends up in an old hotel. She recognised that this was something that took the form of the building to trap her but ultimately wanted to devour her.

Hudson Leck as Johnny

The vampire story was Fertile Ground where John (Dennis Hanley) calls in and tells the story from his childhood, when he was still called Johnny (Hudson Leck), and he was dared to go trick or treating in an abandoned part of town – whilst there seems no logic to this, it worked in that ‘kids and dares’ sort of way. Apparently that part of town was deserted after ‘the blight’ forced everyone out, the source being a carnivorous plant called the Thicket that attacked for blood. The detail that sunlight killed the plant was also mentioned, causing Lindsay to exclaim about vampire plants from Transylvania.

fighting the Thicket

The name the Thicket came from a man who died with the last seed and it had grown from his decaying flesh. As we follow Johnny deeper into a house he thought still occupied (though he found no-one), we end up descending into the cellar with him and there is what is left of the Thicket. There is also an old-fashioned pump sprayer. The plant is dormant and Johnny realises this as it emerges from dormancy as he touches it and the plant attacks – he fights back with the sprayer and escapes, though he takes a scarlet ‘acorn’ with him. He later figures out that the Thicket had been feeding on rats and the sprayer was rat poison – Warfarin based – and the plant was already dying having drunk the blood thinner from the rats. John is now dying and he intends to put the acorn in his coffin…

mysterious door

The story was interesting and it is always good to get a vampire plant. The plant itself was a puppet with a red metal maw that looked a tad silly, unfortunately, and it is another sign of the ideas the filmmakers had being grander than their budget would allow (puppets appeared in several stories, working best in the actual haunted puppets story). So, there are some good ideas here, some really good ones, if I’m fair, but the conceit that feeds them also hamstrings them by taking away peril (as I mentioned). The film has its flaws certainly but I have to admire the inventive concepts and the effort to reach beyond the budget. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Blood & Roots

Directed by Wren Brewer, this 11 ½ minute short film was uploaded to YouTube in 2024 but does not have an IMDb page that I can find. Exploring the drifting of friends as puberty and boys enter the scene, it is also a neat little vampire tale.

girl talk

It starts with Care (Wren Brewer) and Jan (Evie Turley) hanging out. Jan suggests she is going to see *him* (he being Cyrus (Cannon Haney)) and let him do *it*. Care is unsure, suggesting it not being a good idea, expressing concern that he is older and that it will hurt. Jan is dismissive.

with Grandpa

At school, their teacher (Richard Douglas Jones) gives a biology lesson about metamorphosis. After school Care rides home on her bike and heads into the garage for a juice and a chat to her Grandpa (Bill Baker). He is making *another* birdhouse. When she asks why he says that he likes to protect small things and he also loves to work wood – suggesting that, with the things you can make from it, it is alive even after it is dead.

boyfriend at the window

In her room, getting ready for bed, Care hears a knock at the window. It is Jan asking to be let in. Shocked she does so, only registering the height from the ground later. Jan no longer has a reflection and her eyes shine and she has fangs… Cyrus is soon floating near the window and Jan has an ultimatum. Care must come to them the next day and let him bite her, to make her like Jan, or she will drain her friend to death. Luckily Care will confide in her grandpa, whose woodworking skills weren’t always focused on birdhouses…

fangs

This is such a well put together little short, examining coming of age and peer pressure, whilst crafting, as I mentioned, a neat little vampire tale. Whilst the main chops are not something particularly new, I liked the biology aspects (we see a second class ON the evolution of predator and prey) and it was particularly well photographed with sound acting. Worth your time.

Diva Satänica – review

Words and Art: BRÄO

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: She’s an urban legend. A whispered name.
Some call her Medusa. Others, The Queen of Evil. The Lady in Black.
Vampire? Witch? Demon? No one knows for sure.
But one thing is certain. No one leaves her mansion alive.


And yet, people still go searching for her.
Why? Because she promises you the greatest night of pleasure you’ve ever known… in exchange for your life.


In this haunting tale, we follow Jonathan, a lonely, aimless man consumed by addiction. A string of strange, possibly supernatural encounters leads him to the legend of Diva Satänica, and what begins as curiosity soon becomes obsession.

Rendered entirely in stunning, hand-painted watercolour across 68 full-colour pages, Diva Satänica is a seductive, violent, and deeply atmospheric exploration of desire, death, and dark myth.

The review: This was a comic book I backed via a kickstarter, in its digital form, and it is a great piece of comic art. Pretty simple in its storytelling – a predator who hunts lonely men via a darkweb adult site, there perhaps is a simile with the film Succubus in the idea that she uses an electronic medium to hunt (and seems to have a supernatural control over that medium). She lures the men to her, though that may involve stepping between worlds also, with the promise of a sexual encounter.

This is absolutely beautiful and the creature, known as the Lady in Black, is described in comic both as a vampire and as a succubus. It is apparent that she needs blood in order to climax. The story itself has some adult themes (obviously, given the story as outlined) and some adult illustrations – so take that into account – but beyond the story, the joy of this has to be the wonderful, atmospheric artwork. 7 out of 10. The comic is available from Afterlight comics.