Dracula: Rise of the Vampire – review

Director: Dean Meadows

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

First comes the rant – and it does not affect the score. I backed this film on Kickstarter. Now I understand that this isn’t like purchasing, and carries a risk, but when the film is completed and the backers wait over two years past the estimated date before shipping their perks it can be irksome. I recognise when the filmmaker say, “we can’t release the film to you prior to its first official release date due to piracy concerns” (as this filmmaker did), but that wasn’t the basis of the perks as offered, which had no caveat for waiting for commercial distribution, and the despatch of the discs took longer than the film hitting streaming services (including free streaming on Tubi). Still, they have now made good on the pledges, unlike some projects, and at long last I have the numbered, signed, backer only-edition Blu-ray, but my frustration at the filmmakers was tangible for a while. Rant over.

Kurt Dirt as Shaw

Next come the confessions. Firstly, actor Kurt Dirt, who plays cult member Shaw, is a good friend. I was unaware he was in the film when I backed the crowdsourcing but certainly was by the time it was shot. Confession number two is the more I saw about the film, whilst I waited for the eventual release of the perk, the more worried I became about the quality of the film overall. The trailer made me wary, some reviews were scathing, but in fairness (and maybe enhanced by a low expectation) when I finally sat down to watch this, I found myself really taken with it and, of course, low-budget films can be satisfying cinematic experiences.

blood spray

And so, on to the actual review… after establishing shots of London, the film starts with a sermon from new vicar, Father James (Nathan Head), who has just moved to the parish 3-weeks prior. Suddenly several members of the congregation stand and put on masks – later described as Baphomet masks – and massacre the rest of the congregation. At this point we get the first weak link – (what I assume was) cgi blood spatter. Often an issue in budget films, to be honest, this looked like black dust. The cultists (for that is what they are) surround the priest and tell him to give a message – he is coming – before belting him one.

Gabe and Murray

One thing I should mention is that, whilst the establishing shots are of London, the filming took place in Barnstaple, Devon, and some suspension of belief is needed around external scenes. The police arrive at the church, in charge is DC Jessica Murray (Emma Fletcher). As well as the indoor massacre, in the churchyard they have found a body, exsanguinated with punctures in the throat. This is the third body found like this. Though Murray hates to admit it they need some help… Help is in the form of Gabriel Lee (Dean Meadows), and the back story for Gabe is partial but interestingly done. As the film goes on we discover he had been involved, as a cop, in something (supernatural) that left him kicked out of the force and sent to prison for doing the right thing. It is implied, but not stated, that he and Murray had a thing. Murray’s boss, DI Lee (Ailsa Roanne), is Gabe’s mother.

Gabe and Zoe

Before we meet Gabe, we meet a young woman, Zoe (Cerys Piper), who is being chased down an alley by three guys she stole a wallet from. She falls and they catch up but luckily Gabe is nearby. They tell him to do one, call him grandpa and one even draws a knife… so he draws a gun. Now this is a British film, so they don’t think it’s real, this opinion changes when he shoots the one with a knife in the leg. He lets Zoe give him a kicking before taking her to eat. She is homeless and hasn’t eaten for a couple of days and he wants her to stay at his flat, just for a while, what with the three exsanguinated homeless people and something coming… especially given her surname is Van Helsing – she is the last of her line.

Elizabeth and the High Priestess

So what we have is a cult of Dracula (Peter Jakeson) worshippers – they are run by Elizabeth (Eileen Daly, Demonsoul, Razor Blade Smile, Witchcraft X: Mistress of the Craft & Sentinals of Darkness), who is revealed to be Bathory later. Not a vampire according to dialogue but, assuming she is THE Bathory, the blood bathing has given her impressive longevity. It appears she has history with Gabe and, presumably, was involved in the previous unseen case. There is also a high priestess (Pauline Peart, The Satanic Rites of Dracula & Video Shop Tales of Terror) of the cult. The cultists want to resurrect Dracula; they have his blood, his cape, the location of his resting place but need his ring (which the Lee family have) to be able to control him. What was great was the lack of loyalty in the ranks with Shaw (Kurt Dirrt) intent on taking over and stealing Dracula’s favour.

Peter Jakeson as Dracula

The film is a love letter to old horror films, especially Hammer. The dialogue drops in several Hammer Dracula film titles verbatim and a Denham Industrial Estate (named for Dracula’s alias in the Satanic Rites of Dracula) is mentioned amongst other references. Dracula, once resurrected, looks the part, though he sports a Yorkshire accent rather than Christopher Lee’s clipped English or Lugosi’s Eastern European brogue. As well as Dracula and Bathory, the film’s opening credits mention Sheridan Le Fanu alongside Bram Stoker, and the mid credit sequence offers a brief Carmilla appearance. But the film has issues.

vampire attack

The acting veers wildly across the spectrum, a scene with Murray and Gabe was nuanced and well played by both (in the main Meadows plays things straight and hard man, any comedic cracks he makes are character deliberate), Eileen Daly hams it up deliciously and adds a campness that the film craves, but some other actors are stagey, perhaps even amdram, and the dialogue perhaps becomes a tad unnatural in places. ADR does not help and is noticeable. One fight – or more a drubbing of Gabe by the cultists – was well done, but other fight sequences not so much, a bar fight in particular feeling too choreographed, unrealistic and appeared slightly sped up in places.

Eileen Daly as Elizabeth

Yet, I was taken by the infectious nature of the film. It clearly isn’t a perfect film, the budget shows and yet I sat enjoying the experience. Where I had worried that it was going to be a dud I was taken by the love of the genre it showed and the deliberate campness added by Eileen Daly really kept the film afloat (and I should mention that, when his character turned simpering later on, Kurt Dirt added a further layer of campness that complemented Daly’s performance). Where the hinted at Gabe backstory worked, the plotting in film perhaps was a little ambitiously convoluted at times. Yet overall, if you enjoy low budget, like love letters to the genre, and appreciate well-paced campness, there is definitely something worth watching. 6 out of 10 was not where I thought this would be going. But it did.

The imdb page is here.

Whilst I am adding the Amazon links, be aware that, at time of writing, this is on Tubi for free stream.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Guest Blog – Why are Vampires Erotic? – TMtV 20th anniversary

I’d like to welcome David MacDowell Blue to TMtV. I met David through Leila’s forum and we have corresponded on and off since. David has produced an Annotated Carmilla, to which I provided the preface and has written plays based on both Carmilla (twice) and Dracula. David has produced a blog to celebrate twenty years of TMtV, based on a paper he wrote for the World Dracula Congress.

Not everyone finds the undead even remotely sexy. Plenty are baffled by those who do. But denying plenty of people do feel exactly that way? Denial, pure and simple. The sheer number of porn sites and adult movies as well as hardcore erotic novels on this subject make up a thing called “evidence.”

But...why? To be sure nearly anything can be erotic to someone. But what in English culture latched onto the vampire, generation after generation?

Here’s my own theory. Part of this is probably the simple fact that for many pleasure and pain bleed into each other at times, not least during foreplay and especially at the moment of climax. Biting is erotic, a vampire bites, plus the aura of submission, the pleasures many feel entwined with losing control, etc.

There must be more, though. Begin with timing. By the 1800s, specialization and mass production had begun to impact lives in a way the Renaissance never did. Cities in Europe had begun to swell far beyond what they had been. Among other things, this meant people had less to do with basic processes of life. Increasing numbers no longer grew their own food, baked their own bread, and perhaps more importantly, never slaughtered their own meat. This last seems vital because to slice open the throat of a creature with a face, a creature to which we might well have given a name, that is a profound experience. And it reminds us we share something in common with that goose, that pig, that bull. We too will die. This period also saw increasing isolation from the processes of death. Doctors now took care of the very sick. Morticians took over preparing the dead for burial. It took generations, but it happened.

In this milieu The Vampyre by John Polidori emerged, followed by more literary vampires which—unlike their folkloric counterparts—engaged in temptation, seduction, betrayal. But all—from Varney to Carmilla and Dracula—embodies DEATH not as force but a character, someone with whom victims and others had a relationship. A relationship we no longer have with that part of life.

As death itself became repressed, shut aside, pushed down, so the Vampire in art became a forbidden but alluring figure of power. Perhaps more importantly, this was also a time as the idea of sexuality changed, echoing the same suppression about death. Just as we no longer killed our Christmas goose, so we were not supposed to “enjoy” pleasure from our bodies, at least not that kind of pleasure. Especially women. In the Middle Ages, a woman could ask for a divorce—and get it—if her husband did not give her enough orgasms. By the time Victoria had been on the throne for awhile, the idea of women enjoying sex became seen as an unhealthy deviancy! Small wonder as the Vampire became an avatar of forbidden lore of one kind it became associated with another, given the timing. Certainly both Carmilla and Dracula used such themes, exploring taboo desires often in an effort to “cure” such.

 

Carmilla as portrayed in The Vampire Lovers

By the time the twentieth century arrived, and as it progressed, all this became wound up with other aspects of life in some sense forbidden. Church and medical professionals as well as dozens of other institutions portrayed efforts to avoid death as unnatural, as much so as deviant forms of lust (including but not limited to dominance/submission, same sex attraction, fascination with pain or darkness in general). Small wonder then the centers of culture so often seen as “decadent” created many of the most memorable vampires which continue to haunt us. Weimar Germany gave us Nosferatu, while Hollywood turned Bram Stoker’s Count into a sinister sex symbol, and the same country from which the Beatles emerged also brought heaving bosoms as well very bright red blood into a whole slew of cult classic movies. Likewise, it makes such perfect sense New Orleans was the original home of Anne Rice, whose first novel took place in that beautiful, decaying, sensual city!

The pattern I see is how vampires remain entwined across the decades with whatever our culture wants rejected. Addictions, sexual excess, same sex love (all of Anne Rice), polyamory, cults (i.e. alternate spirituality a la Count Yorga or The Strain), interest in shadows and death (Dark Shadows), rebellion against the status quo in so many forms (including Twilight interestingly), power given to women, acceptance of the part of us that is animal (see 30 Days of Night for example), everything our teachers and parents and others insist we don’t “really” feel, at least not unless we are flawed (shades especially of Owen in Let Me In).

We aren’t supposed to feel a connection between ecstasy and agony, between feeling life ever more acutely in the presence of death, the primitive nature of so many of our desires (including the ones which cannot help pervade our lives). Jung called all these things our SHADOW, an archetype within our unconscious minds, the embodiment of all we have been taught to suppress. A figure of repulsion and attraction. Something we fear yet somehow know we need, and which being a part of us cannot be amputated without disfiguring or crippling ourselves.

Orlok as shadow in Nosferatu

Vampires have become one incarnation of that Shadow. Our isolation from death, from death as part of life, from the processes humans now have done by proxy in order to survive, the sexual repression that emerged in the rise of the middle class, the specific shape of female repression and its frankly terrible consequences for all genders—plus maybe a little bit of our acquired idealization of biting into delicious red meat, tasting what seems like blood on the tongue (it isn’t really, but we’re talking visceral impressions here). All these combined into shaping this image—a seductive creature of sensual power, combining life and death, offering horror and freedom, slavery and excess, pleasure side by side with torture. It might not be handsome, although certainly most of the men cast as Dracula have been very good looking, and the voluptuous vampire woman in a translucent gown revealing a lot is an icon in her own right. It might be ugly, like Orlock or the spawn of Barlow in Salem’s Lot. But it remains in some sense attractive, often in the same way a toxic significant other may be, or the thrill of a very dangerous habit like heroin, or simply a temptation to power in one way or another. Achieving it, wallowing in it, or giving it away, releasing oneself into sensation and submission.

It could have been something else. The Hunger in some other timeline might have been about djinn. Abigail could have been a werewolf. Sinners could have been about zombies. From Dusk Till Dawn might easily have been about Minotaurs or Mermaids or even Elves!

Yet in the specific cultural stew of England in the early 1800s, the ingredients took the folkloric Vampire and simmered for centuries with the sexual neuroses of the Victorian Age into what we have today--a version of Jung’s Shadow within us all, tempting with danger and sin and truths we’ve been told are lies.

Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal – review

Author: Amy Chu

Illustrations: Soo Lee

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: The final chapter of this Bram Stoker Award-winning graphic novel reimagination of Sheridan LeFanu's classic Carmilla!

Athena's daughter Ella journeys to Oxford, England where a mysterious university benefactor hires her for what seems like a simple research position, but leads her straight into the heart of danger...and the Lo family back into the complicated web of Carmilla herself. As deaths begin to pile up on campus, Ella becomes entangled with a secret supernatural society of hard partying immortals. And just as Athena once did, Ella is about to discover some family secrets of her own...

A seductive, supernatural thriller about mortality and mother/daughter relationships.

The review: The closing chapter – you can read my thoughts on Volume 1 and Volume 2 - the author takes the interesting premise of leaving Athena’s story, moving forward in time, and concentrating on the daughter raised by her and her wife Jess. Ella has recently graduated but worries what career her Art History Major will lead her too. That is until she gets a mysterious call from England and offered a job in Oxford by the equally mysterious Gilda. Sharp-eyed readers will spot the name from Jewelle Gomez’ stories about an African American lesbian vampire and, in this series, though Carmilla uses pseudonyms she does not stick to anagrams.

Once at Oxford she does not meet Glida but is set to work cataloguing her collection. She also meets a trio of party-hards, Liz Bathory, Yilmar Barbarossa and Yuri Tepes. Yep, you’ve guessed it… all vampires. Carmilla, when we meet her, has dramatically aged through drinking HIV infected blood and believes Ella to be her way to heal (as Athena had tasted a little of her blood long before her pregnancy). Then there is another member of Carmilla’s family who surfaces.

The ideas are great, as was the change of generational perspective, but the execution comes off as unfortunately hurried. There was a feeling of things being crammed in, the characters (bar Ella) were thin though this may have been because we were always using Ella's view (19th century flashbacks notwithstanding). I wanted to enjoy this as much as the previous volumes but the undue haste made it miss a little more than the earlier parts. 6 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Carmilla Volume 2: The Last Vampire Hunter – review

Author: Amy Chu

Illustrations: Soo Lee

First published: 2024

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Before Dracula, before Nosferatu, there was...CARMILLA.

In the second volume of this feminist tale of murder, monsters, and mystery layered with dark Chinese folklore, social worker turned vampire hunter Athena Lo has just lost everyone she loves—and it's all her fault.

Hoping to put her life back together, Athena travels to San Francisco’s Chinatown on a quest to uncover the secrets of her mysterious family history. But her journey escalates into a nightmare when she‘s violently introduced to a new, ruthless gang of Asian American vampires and its unlikely leader, who hold shocking truths. As she navigates this dangerous territory, Athena can't escape the ghost of Carmilla...and neither can the vampires. Athena must decide—whose side is she on?

Inspired by the gothic novel that started the vampire genre, this queer, feminist murder mystery graphic novel is a tale of identity, obsession and fateful family secrets.

The review: It would have been easy for this sequel to Carmilla: The First Vampire to have ignored the titular vampire as vampire hunter Athena Lo destroys her in the first volume – but, as we know, you can’t keep a good vampire down. Though, her presence in the book is fleeting (and she seems to have taken the form of a monk). Primarily it follows Athena to San Francisco, where she hopes to piece together her family history.

There she discovers a whole bunch of Asian vampires (and a werewolf), we get Nukekubi (a Japanese Yokai that the book identifies as a Filippino vampire), the Indian Brahmarakshaa (a type of rakshasa), Korean Dokkeabi Goblin (which I have not seen connected with vampirism before) and the Japanese Nure-Omna (another Yokai). Without identifying it, we see a penanggalan and Taki who is a Geungshi (which is the Korean variant spelling of Jiangshi or Kyonsi). The leader is Wing, a young boy who had been attacked by a vampire and was saved by Taki – causing Wing to become a hybrid of western vampire and Jiangshi – Wing happens to be Athena’s older brother though she doesn’t remember him. He tells her of their parents, and their deaths, the Jiangshi hunter heritage and that a Taoist priest had taken her and protected her – the man she knew as her grandfather Yeh Yeh. Unfortunately, Wing has plans for Athena.

Of course, the first volume used Athena’s queerness and Asian identity as lenses for othering. This volume concentrates on the American historic, and more modern, treatment of Asians, and the Chinese specifically through Taki. The redemptive element around him was really rather well done and moving. The story is neat, the appearance of Carmilla fleeting but it was a good, solid little volume. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Mircalla – the Lesbian Vampire

An odd one. This is a short film that comes in at just under 40-minutes. According to IMDb it is just 11 minutes (and is just called Mircalla, without the sub-title). I have seen it on YouTube in German with embedded English subs but currently it seems to be that with an overlayer of English dialogue over the original German. It was also edited for the anthology DVD Evil Deeds 3. The film dates to 2008 and was directed by Christian Jürs (Juers on IMDb).

bad fangs

Nevertheless, it is a short vampire film and whilst the fangs are rubbish and the narrative basic, it has an interesting lore aspect. The film opens part of that at the head when it says that vampires are not like the fiction and that there are Queen vampires and drone vampires.

friends

Laura (Neele Kurt) rings Emma (Anna Carlzon) to arrange meeting soon. We then see Laura with Jessica (Nicole Schneider) and Tanja (Elisabeth Juers). They mention new neighbour Mircalla (Annika Altwig) – joking that it sounds like an East German name. Jessica says that she saw her and said hello but she never acknowledged her and there was something funny with her eyes. Tanja has to leave – she passes the strange Mircalla on her way out.

Annika Altwig as Mircalla

At home Tanja reads about vampires and the book suggests that Queen vampires do not age, heal incredibly quickly, regenerate limbs and are practically immortal – immune to stakes, sunlight, crucifixes and holy water. They can be killed however, by having them drink the blood of another Queen Vampire. If they die so do their drones. Back at Jessica’s, Mircalla has hypnotised Jessica in the laundry room and also bites Laura and turns her into a drone.

attack

Tanja returns and finds Jessica dead and Laura vampirised. Mircalla bites her and screams, dropping dead. Tanja – secretly a vampire queen who wants to die – bites Mircalla before her body vanishes… And this should be the end (we are very early in the run time) but Laura has not actually died (as a drone) and Emma is drawn over and then Laura is a blood sacrifice to allow the spirit of Mircalla to possess Emma and go after their other friends. Luckily Mircalla (as Emma) is vulnerable to being killed by more conventional means until she merges fully with her new body…

eye mojo

So, that takes in the interesting lore (around the Queen and drones, as well as the vampiric possession). The film itself is very amateur, though it has a certain earnest charm to it, and the fangs are blooming awful. Eye mojo is the weapon of choice for this vampire – essentially ensuring that each person they go against is quickly hypnotised (signified by flashing eyes).

The imdb page is here.

Undead Girl Murder Farce – review

Director: Mamoru Hatakeyama

First aired: 2023

Contains spoilers

An anime series that (to date of posting) has run a single season, I have to say this was great fun. Set in a fin de siècle setting, in a world where monsters are real and known about, the main character (the undead girl) is Aya (Tomoyo Kurosawa) a fushi who is truly immortal. Unfortunately, she was decapitated and her body stolen and so is now a head carried in a birdcage.

Tsugaru 

She and her servant Shizuku (Makoto Koichi) travel to a circus to find the so-called Oni-Slayer, Tsugaru (Taku Yashiro), half-oni (due to an experiment that was forced upon him) he has the ability to kill supernatural beings with his bare hands. She wants him to kill her and in return she will give him the knowledge to stop the oni side of him causing a descent into homicidal madness. The answer is eating parts of her, however they realise that the person who experimented on Tsugaru also stole her body – an elderly western man with a cane bearing the letter M.

Godard

They agree to look for her body and, as they search for clues, she becomes a detective who specialises in supernatural cases. The first takes them to France where Lord Godard (Hiroyuki Kinoshita) and his family of vampires have tried to make peace with humans – a difficult proposition given the actions of Dracula but made easier as the latter is dead. Unfortunately they were attacked recently by a hunter and, following that, his wife was staked in their home.

a family of vampires

The Godard’s were fascinating as the series had them still impacted by silver and holy water (and fire and stakes kill) but they actively went to church and only drank animal blood. They have two human retainers and Aya quickly concludes that the murderer must be from the home, but who is it and how to prove it? This mystery lasts through to the fourth episode and I suspected that this was going to be the most vampire orientated section. But, whilst it was the one where the episode focused on vampires, there was vampiric involvement all along.

Carmilla

The next section is in London and Arsene Lupin (Mamoru Miyano) had declared to the world that he would steal a diamond from Phileas Fogg (Hideaki Tezuka) both Aya and Sherlock Holmes (Shin'ichirô Miki) are hired to foil the crime but there are other players in the form of the Banquet – a secret society led by Professor Moriarty (Wataru Yokojima). He has a crew of monsters – one being Carmilla (Reina Kondô). They want the diamond as it is synthetic and contains the key to finding the lost Village of werewolves.

bite

Looking at Carmilla, she prefers to feast on women, and she has a venom, which works on skin contact, that causes the victim to become hot and numb and fall under her aphrodisiac spell. At one point she is stabbed with a cross and that burns (whether it is the holy symbol or simply the cross was made of silver is not clear). Interestingly, whilst a silver burn takes time to regenerate, cutting the affected area away allows for immediate regeneration (so silver burnt fingers will take a week to heal but cut them off and they regenerate rapidly).

detectives

There is a third set of antagonists – insurance agents for Lloyds who are monster hunters and prejudiced against their kind. This hotchpotch of literary, historical (such as Aleister Crowley (Tomokazu Sugita) who is an agent for the Banquet), and original characters made for an interesting watch and the stories were great fun. The animation was sharp – the character design were typically anime, which made for an interesting interpretation of characters such as Lupin. It’s been a couple of years, but I do hope this gets a second season. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Crunchyroll via Amazon US

On Demand @ Crunchyroll via Amazon UK

Carmilla – review

Director: Jay Lind

Release date: 1998

Contains spoilers

After watching Jay Lind’s Valerie I was much more upbeat about watching this low-to-no budget adaptation of Carmilla. Unfortunately this just didn’t capture me in the same way – though I will say that the selected soundtrack for this worked a lot better than the Valerie soundtrack did. There is a nasty crackle over the sound but I think that is going to be the best version that a distributor will find.

crucifix

It starts in the second half of the 19th Century and Carmilla (Maria Pechukas, Spookies) is being forced to marry and so she killed her husband and then slit her wrists with a crucifix. She returned as a vampire, of course, and the women of the family started to die due to a strange anaemia. Maddie (also Maria Pechukas) had a dream of a strange woman in her room as a child – it started when her mother (Heather War) died.

Maria Pechukas as Carmilla

The film has quite a disjointed narrative, with an attempt to draw a psychosexual drama in much the way Valerie did, but this isn’t as well put together. Angela (Colleen Van Ryn) is being called by a voice (haunted as she is by Carmilla) and Maddie’s dad goes to stay with her uncle as Angela is her aunt and is ill. Maddie is beginning to experience phenomena too and later we hear that her dad had an affair with Carmilla whilst her mom died.

vampiric imagery

The film does create a dreamlike aspect to the narrative. I was more taken with the performance of Carmilla than that of Maddie and there is, of course, much in the way of vampiric imagery. If you like your movies to be a fever dream (with low-to-no budget) then you’ll get something out of this but I’d direct you to the much stronger Valerie. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Hungerstone – review

Author: Kat Dunn

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: FOR WHAT DO YOU HUNGER . . . ?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them from London to the Peak District, to the remote, imposing Nethershaw estate, where he plans to host a hunting party. Lenore must work to restore the crumbling house and ready it for Henry's guests - their future depends on it.

But as the couple travel through the bleak countryside, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . .

As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband's affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the Peaks and the uncontrolled appetite of the Industrial Revolution, HUNGERSTONE is a compulsive sapphic reworking of CARMILLA, the book that inspired DRACULA: a captivating story of appetite and desire.

The review: Whilst this is a retelling of Carmilla (and I note the blurb mentions it as a sapphic retelling, which forgets that the original – whilst not as direct or graphic as this – was a sapphic tale anyway), it is so subtle around the vampirism that a reader unfamiliar with the original novella or not deeply invested in the vampire megatext may well miss the fact that it is indeed a vampire novel.

And it has a couple of vampiric themes in it, not least that of capitalism as a vampire as the industrial revolution literarily bathes in the blood of the worker to extract the capital. But Carmilla is a vampire and the book connects vampirism with appetite (as well as hunger), which was interesting as Orlok in Eggers’ Nosferatu says “I am an appetite, nothing more.” I am not suggesting there was any read across between the two texts but it was a nice trope, used in both, where the vampire is drawn as having (and offering) a psychological desire to consume as well as a physiological need. Jumping ahead, we only see attacks on Lenore – with sleep paralysis, a (potentially imagined) cat form and, at one point, a blood soaked Carmilla at the end of the bed (mirroring a scene from Le Fanu) but we can read into at least three other women visited by Carmilla (the appetite), which unleashes a hunger that manifests as one eating hair, another eating a live chicken and a third eating flesh from her husband’s arm. The hungers awakened in Lenore are much more complex.

The book moves us from Styria to the Peak District for location (offering an immediately Gothic landscape to play upon), in 1888, but whilst Carmilla still enters their lives through a carriage crash, the reader does not see the crash, rather the aftermath as Lenore and Henry come across it on their journey to the Nethershaw estate. Indeed, the more graphic description of a carriage crash comes in flashback as Lenore recalls the crash that left her orphaned as a child. Lenore is, of course, very different from Laura in the novella – as well as the trauma from her childhood, she is married, sexually active (though she has not during ten years of marriage become pregnant), with Carmilla awakening her bisexuality, and whilst naïve in some respects she is wise in the way of society and etiquette. This brings in other dimensions that Le Fanu could not explore. Her marriage allows for an exploration of misogyny widder than the patriarchal exploration in the original novella.  

I did wonder whether the book was aimed at the YA audience but the themes it explores certainly do not seem to be. However, I very much enjoyed the book, found it a satisfying revisit to Carmilla through an interesting lens. I enjoyed the subtlety of the vampirism and overall think this deserves a strong 7.5 out of 10. I need to add a thank you to Gary who posted about this volume on Facebook, which brought it to my attention.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Handbook of the Vampire: Carmilla in Context

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by S. Brooke Cameron, the Chapter Page can be found here.

This was another HotV chapter looking at Le Fanu’s Carmilla, this time looking at the original text and specifically around the queer context and the political reading as it pertains to the Irish politics of the time. There is no doubt that the text has a very obvious queer reading but the chapter explores that within its historical context. On the Irish question there is a full discourse on the Protestant/Catholic tensions, the question of home rule and Le Fanu’s own political positioning, which the author suggests was, at best, uncertain.

The author looks comparatively at Carmilla against the other stories within In a Glass Darkly, touching also on Le Fanu’s Spalatro, from the notes of Fra Giacomo and looking briefly at the forward influence on with Dracula. By looking firmly at the nineteenth century the chapter proves an excellent companion to the Carmilla and the Daughters of Darkness chapter.

Handbook of the Vampire: Carmilla and the Daughters of Darkness

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Brigid Cherry the Chapter Page can be found here.

This was a HotV chapter looking at Le Fanu’s Carmilla through its adaptations and intertextual connections, concentrating on key themes. It looks first at the African-American Gothic as portrayed within the Antebellum location and narrative themes in Carmilla (1990) and I found this part of the chapter both inciteful and worth the entry alone. Comparative to this, and equally worth exploration, was the move of the story to a British heritage drama in the adaptation Carmilla (2019).

The chapter touches on predatory masculinity, as some adaptations explore – looking at both the Unwanted and Styria (reviewed as the Curse of Styria – and the forcible return to heteronormality (which, arguably, was a theme emerging from the original story). Self-harm is looked at, and it is worth remembering that the creative forces behind the film Styria were interested in the phenomena of “suicide clusters”.

I was really pleased to see the author looking at metatextual examples of Carmilla related texts, especially the obscure Carmilla Hyde. Overall, a really worthwhile chapter.

Carmilla – critique

Director: Janusz Kondratiuk

Release date: 1980

Contains spoilers

This was a Polish TV presentation of LeFanu’s Carmilla that I have been aware of for quite some time, indeed I long had a murky version of it without subs. That same print has now been put on Matthew Pederson’s YouTube Channel with all its issues – including an ill-fitting soundtrack and poor-quality transfer – but with the added bonus of subtitles. They are, however, machine created and therefore not consistent – hence this is a critique to allow me to put the film on TMtV and not a full review. At some time, I hope proper subs, on a good quality print with original soundtrack might be available.

Carmilla and Laura

It is also said to be the most novella accurate of the versions. It isn’t, in my opinion. With the erasure of General Spielsdorf and his niece, a lack of cat transformation, some neat (but novel inaccurate) creative staking/trap building and an ending inference that I won’t spoil, it does take liberties but the broad strokes certainly are there. However, let me talk about the added soundtrack. A bombastic classical score feels inappropriate but more ill-fitting is music that has been lifted from Dracula (1992). It really feels off and is too overly familiar for genre fans.

the coach

Nevertheless, in a house we see movement as the household – Father (Leon Niemczyk), Madame Perrodon (Barbara Rachwalska) and Mademoiselle de Lafontaine (Anna Milewska) – go to Laura (Monika Stefanowicz), who, is in bed and states, “she was here”. The next day, at meal, we hear their chatter as we intercut with a carriage that hurtles through the countryside – one of the (male) passengers has a hand that seems to belong to a devil. There is a cry from outside the house – there has been a crash and a young lady, Carmilla (Izabela Trojanowska), is brought to their door.

Laura's father and Carmilla's "mother"

Carmilla’s mother (Zofia Rysiówna) impresses the urgency of her business leading Laura’s father to offer to let the daughter stay and for them to care for her. In the morning she is checked by the doctor (Tomasz Grochoczynski), who believes she is ok. He confides about the mayor’s daughter being attacked during the night and having her blood sucked. The father is more the rationalist it seems and the doctor edges towards the folk beliefs as a plague sweeps the area.

Carmilla attacks

I won’t go much further as the broad brush of the story does come from the novella and I am sure readers of the blog will be familiar with it. I will mention that when we see Carmilla attack Laura, later, she maintains human form and feeds from the neck. Whilst the lack of transformation to cat is disappointing, I was impressed with the disjointed, looped movements that added to the vampiric presence, and had almost a Lynchian quality to it.

flashback vampire

I will also say that when we hear about the historic vampirism in the area, getting a flashback to a stranger (Eugeniusz Priwieziencew) hunting the vampire (Jerzy Bonczak), the nobleman vampire hunter creates a spring-loaded trap that propels a stake through the vampire. I rather liked this too. One interesting assertion was that the soul is in the blood, if the translation here was accurate then it seems to step one stage beyond Stoker’s the blood is the life. So, no score to give as the print quality is so poor, the subs make it watchable but frustrating in places and the soundtrack would deflate the score and is clearly not what was originally put with the film.

The imdb page is here.

Carmilla: The First Vampire – review

Author: Amy Chu

Illustrations: Soo Lee

First published: 2023

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Before Dracula, before Nosferatu, there was... CARMILLA.

At the height of the Lunar New Year in 1990s New York City, an idealistic social worker turns detective when she discovers young, homeless LGBTQ+ women are being murdered and no one, especially the police, seems to care.

A series of clues points her to Carmilla's, a mysterious nightclub in the heart of her neighborhood, Chinatown. There she falls for the next likely target, landing her at the center of a real-life horror story--and face-to-face with illusions about herself, her life, and her hidden past.

Inspired by the gothic novel that started the vampire genre and layered with dark Chinese folklore, this queer, feminist murder mystery is a tale of identity, obsession and fateful family secrets.

The review: Moved to the twentieth century and America, this graphic novel was inspired by Carmilla but also features the book within it. Strangely, in this New York, it is only available in a rare book section of the library (so the protagonist, Athena, steals it to read it, rather than picking the novella up from any good bookstore). The book becomes almost a reference work rather than story as young women are found murdered and Athena becomes obsessed with finding out by who.

The sense of othering is embedded in the novel with Athena’s Chinese heritage and lesbianism offering lenses that the vampire 'other' stands against, and her sexuality mirrors the original story but also makes this a great queer story. During the story Athena discovers, from her grandfather, that she is from a line of guengsi (a variant spelling of jiangshi/kyonsi) hunters – we see her watching a Chinese vampire film at one point.

The vampire is Carmilla, from the novel, but the naming convention of anagrams does not hold, and she uses a non-anagrammatical pseudonym. We do see a transformation, but it is into a (Chinese style) dragon rather than a cat.

The artwork is competent, suits the story but wasn’t my favourite style unfortunately. That said it will appeal to many, I am sure. The story itself was interesting and as Amy Chu has done a further story I hope it does explore Athena’s heritage as that has much potential. 7.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Death Rider in the House of Vampires – review

Director: Glenn Danzig

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

There was always going to be a shadow of doubt over this film after Danzig’s feature directorial debut with Verotika which, whilst not as bad as made out through some reviews, was still a fairly poor film. Stood against that was the thought that this Western vampire film had some interesting stars appearing in it. Unfortunately, it did fall under said shadow, with some mistakes that are probably down to Danzig’s inexperience in the feature film industry.

opening scenes

The film itself reminded me, to a degree, of From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter, in that the vampire haven – Sanctuary – reminded me of the vampire brothel, though this lacked the lovely desert photography of that film. Before we got to Sanctuary, however, the film followed Death Rider (Devon Sawa, Devil’s Den) as he rode his horse through the night leading another horse with a topless, bound and gagged women (Tasha Reign). The Death Rider theme was really good, as he went past turn back signs and crucified corpses, but then with credits that followed – with a wind only soundtrack – the pacing was wrong and the opening took way too long.

Danny Trejo as Bela Latigo

Not even the interlude and cameo, twixt riding and credits, of Danny Trejo as Bela Latigo particularly lifted the pacing issue. Normally a lift to a film, the scene had him threatening Death Rider and suggesting he’d take the girl, then Death Rider moving at high speed (indicating he, like Bela, was a vampire) and punching him out. The rest of the wasted cameo was Trejo staked out for the rising sun and pleading for help. Death Rider gets to sanctuary and the girl is his payment for entry. He drops the name Bad Bathory (Glenn Danzig) Meanwhile Mina Belle (Ashley Wisdom, Verotika) tells her mistress Carmilla Joe (Kim Director) of the newcomer’s arrival. Rider (as he is now styling himself) is taken to the council.

Kim Director as Carmilla Joe

The council is actually a single vampire, Count Holiday (Julian Sands, Tale of a Vampire, Blood Ties & Gothic) – as an aside it was great to see the too soon departed actor. Rider is given sanctuary but the Count does not trust him and has Carmilla tasked to keep an eye on him, a task she is only too glad to do, warning Mina to not even look at him. Rider has a kit full of stakes (silver, incidentally, is the order of the day in this, the kit has silver stakes and silver bullets and we see a vampire, Drac Cassidy (Eli Roth, Tales from the Crapper & the United Monster Talent Agency), kill another bloodsucker by pouring molten silver into his mouth).

left to the sun

There isn’t much story to tell… Bad Bathory appears and doesn’t know Rider and so there is a huge gunfight, this is after Rider poisons whiskey with silver and, in doing so, takes many vampires out. He’s after the Count, it appears he was a vampire hunter (presumably prior to being turned) and I assume aiming for the Count to avenge his sister (that is only implied by the fact that the Count keeps victims like revenant trophies and awakens her and sends her after Rider). The issue is this doesn’t string along too well and the pacing is off. Scenes are way too long and the narrative so scant it fails to snare you.

Devon Sawa as Death Rider

That said there are some good aspects too. Whilst the cgi is generally horrendous, the practical gore effects work well and I loved the spurting bite holes in victims. Some of the lighting, as well, is particularly effective, with Danzig referencing Mario Bava in some of the lighting choices. Not even acting veterans like Sands can rescue the dialogue, which drags like the length of the scenes. There are some good moments, especially with the vampire imagery, but far too few to successfully outweigh the empty narrative and poor pacing. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.