Vamp or Not? Monster House

For those who are unaware, I have a keen interest in the idea of the vampiric building and wrote a chapter, Vampiric Buildings: Life Soaked into Mortar and Blood into Earth for Palgrave’s Handbook of the Vampire. I was aware of the 2006, Gil Kenan directed, Monster House and think I did see it back in the day. However, I decided to take a look with pretty fresh eyes (I remembered next to nothing about the content) and a view to see whether we could call the house of the title a vampiric building.

The film starts the day before Halloween in US suburbia, within a nostalgia dictated timeframe. It starts with a very young girl riding her trike and greeting inanimate objects. Suddenly the speeding trike stops, the animation follows a leaf but the inference is that she has flown off the bike. She hasn’t, but she is stuck on the verge of a lawn, for some reason unable to move (I’ll return to why later). Suddenly the door flies open and house owner Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi, Paris Je T’aime, Hotel Transylvania 1, 2 & 3) comes screeching out of the house, yelling at the girl and in the tirade asks if she wants to be eaten alive – she runs off crying and he breaks and takes the trike.

Steve Buscemi voices Nebbercracker

This is watched from over the road by DJ (Mitchel Musso), a young boy who has been observing the antics of Nebbercracker and logging them. His parents are going away for the weekend and have arranged for Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to babysit. Meanwhile, his friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) arrives but his ball ends up on Nebbercracker’s lawn. DJ notices that he hasn’t reacted and goes to retrieve it but the old man emerges and, in the tussle, collapses – DJ thinks dead. Paramedics come and pick him up – the viewer notices that grass seems to grow and grasp one of the gurney wheels, which breaks off and is then consumed by the earth. That night DJ receives phone calls from the house – making him believe that the ghost of Nebbercracker is haunting him.

the house awake

Now, we have heard local rumour from Bones (Jason Lee), Zee’s boyfriend, who lost his kite, as a kid, to Nebbercracker, who suggests the old man had been married, fattened her up and ate her (bringing in a cannibal theme – though the story is gossip and not truth). Kicked out by Zee he taunts the absent old man (and by default the house) only for the front door to open and his kite be there. With a similar lure used later with Chowder’s ball it indicates an intelligence (and memory) at play. The house consumes Bones. The next day DJ and Chowder save a prep school student selling candy, Jenny (Spencer Locke, the Vampire Diaries), and the three realise they have to neutralise the house before trick or treaters arrive.

the gang

Getting some half-baked advice (that is accurate) they are told they have to “strike at the source of life – the heart”. This is, of course, a vampire trope. They decide that the heart must be the furnace and they have to douse it (the house chimney has been active despite being empty). We have also seen that the house can morph its physical self and the front door becomes a mouth, with teeth (and the veranda can widen the maw), it opens a gullet within the hallway and the hall carpet becomes a tongue. 

Constance's grave

When Nebbercracker is released from hospital (and the kids have just escaped from inside the house) DJ realises that the house is Nebbercracker’s wife Constance (Kathleen Turner). We get the story that she was an unwilling circus freak – the Giantess – and war veteran Nebbercracker helped her escape. He was building the house when trick or treaters caused her to fly into a rage, fall into the foundations and be buried in concrete – that has become a shrine/grave for her. He soon realised that her spirit had possessed the house, that she would attack those who approached and hated Halloween. Nebbercracker was actually protected the neighbourhood and had been essentially a prisoner of his own making for forty five years.

with legs

So – is the house a vampire. Well, possessed by Constance’s spirit it is certainly a monster and arguably (through Constance) undead. It is sentient, intelligent, remembers both what happened to Constance and those who have been near. It is polymorphic, able to change from a creepy house into an animated creature – at the end of the film it takes two trees as legs and becomes mobile. The idea of striking the heart was correct. The question is, does it feed on the victims? That isn’t clear. We do know that those it consumes in the course of the movie all survive but that does not mean to say that normally it would not digest them or drain their energy – the film is silent and probably deliberately so as it is a PG movie. Assuming it does, I think we can call this a vampiric building and one whose source (ie the possession) is communicated to the viewer – in other vehicles these things can be simply alive and bad.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Dead Creatures – review

Director: Andrew Parkinson

Release date: 2001

Contains spoilers

We are very much in contested territory for this film. A gritty British low budget horror, I can see why people would call this a zombie film, indeed a couple of the film credits mention zombies, and perhaps cannibalism. However, the creatures of the title are compos mentis, infected flesh eaters (and blood drinkers – we see a reaction to blood, at the very least) so I am declaring zompire.

It starts at a door to an industrial unit. In it a man is strapped to a chair. We then get views of tower blocks, placing this in that modern British gothic exemplified by hoody horror. An image of urban decay. In a flat, whilst a radio speaks about incompetent doctors, we see a woman, Ali (Lindsay Clarke), sat in the corner of a room smoking a cigarette, blankets round her, she looks like she is decaying. There is a shot of a cattle bolt and then a man, Reece (Brendan Gregory), sat in a bloodied white coat. Two women, Jo (Beverley Wilson) and Ann (Antonia Beamish), leave the tower block, with suitcases and a wheelchair in which they push Ali. It appears they are moving.

left arm gone

The three women we’ve met are all infected – though by what is uncertain. As the title suggests, they might be dead – when we meet a newly infected later coldness is described as part of the turning process and the wound that is the point of infection doesn’t seem to ever heal but no longer hurts. Indeed, we see a body left, where an arm has been removed, who subsequently awakens and attacks someone; this is a trope from both the zombie and vampire camps of the victim rising and immediately attacking.

deterioration

Once infected they develop an overwhelming need to eat human flesh. If they deny the need then they become violent and (one guesses as we don’t really see it) feral. If they eat enough they can stave off the decay – which is less decay and more open weeping flesh that looks pretty darn unhealthy. We see Ali at the advance stage (with associative cognitive decline) but we also see one at the earlier stages with several open wounds. We see a male infected peeing against a wall and they pee blood. The infection is low key, in that the world is going on around them as though nothing has happened. However, they suggest a shadowy government conspiracy and infected people being vanished if found.

Brendan Gregory as Reece

Reece is a zombie hunter (or, from our viewpoint zompire hunter); not associated with the government conspiracy, he seems to be searching for a specific infected (his daughter). He kidnaps infected and questions them, starving them to get them to speak and then killing them. He does this with the cattle bolt through the brain – whether this is necessary is unclear but it obviously calls back to the standard, Romero, shoot them in the head. He releases one captive – presumably because he wasn’t actually infected.

Ann and Jo

Also in the film is Sian (Anna Swift) a young college girl who decides to go on the wrong date with Christian (Bart Ruspoli) and is bitten for her trouble and subsequently found (in A&E) by Jo, and taken in. Through her we see the start of the infection for an individual. This, all in all, might prove to some to be a tough watch. There is little story and the dialogue of the women is around life in general (or more precisely, their lives, which have been suspended as they step out of normal society into their twilight existence). However, I was rather taken by them. The infection can be read as sexual (Sian is infected on a date, Ann hunts by prostituting herself and does indulge in random pickups for sexual gratification) but is passed through the violence of a bite.

With budget but, in places, rather effective SFX, this is not cheery and celebrates its dourness, but I was taken by the characters' extraordinary ordinariness. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Madam Yankelova's Fine Literature Club

Having sought out the Lady and the Peddler my next stop on the journey inspired by Melissa Weininger’s Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire chapter was this 2017 film directed by Guilhad Emilio Schenker.

Strangely dystopian, this film could be read as a stealth vampire film or a film that plays with the tropes by placing Agnon’s story at the heart of the film in its own right.

The film follows Sophie (Keren Mor) a member of the title’s Fine Literature Club, a female only group who despise the concept of love and whose active members have to find male companions to bring to the Club. There Madam Yankelova (Leah Koenig) reads her favourite Agnon story – the Lady and the Peddler – and then the men are mechanically bound, measured and the lady who brought the most ideal (according to prescribed measurements) wins a trophy. The men are then slaughtered… what becomes of them?

hot dogs

The Agnon story hints that they are then eaten, but we do not see that – we do, however, see a kitchen producing large numbers of hot dogs (presumably human). We also discover that Sophie’s refrigerator and cupboards are practically bare and this brings the words of Agnon’s Lady to mind, “But whatever food she tried to eat she would throw up, for she had already forgotten the science of eating ordinary human food, as it was her practice to eat the flesh of her husbands whom she slaughtered and to drink their blood”.

Madam Yankelova presides

Sophie has 98 trophies and, as the film opens, she wins trophy number 99 – though it is almost accidentally and she has not won a trophy in a long time. To get to 100 would mean she would join the ranks of the House of Lordesses, which is described as an “eternal membership”, though the use of eternal might be hyperbole or a vampiric reward – the film does not say. Her main rival is Lola (Ania Bukstein), a younger woman who has quickly built up her trophy tally.

Sophie and Lola, rivals

Too much failure and Sophie will be relegated to cleaning and sanitation – a demotion where one must serve club members and clean up after club meetings (and prepare hot dogs). Sophie’s friend Hannah (Hana Laslo) was in cleaning and sanitation but has run away (and fallen in love). The club is looking to find and punish her and have Lola watching Sophie as they assume the friend will contact her. Sophie has also met a man, Yossef (Yiftach Klein), interested in Agnon’s work and fate seems to be conspiring to make her actually fall in love with him.

Sophie and Yosef

The film itself is a slow burn, with an air of fantastique meets Kafka to it. If you are unfamiliar with the Agnon story then the cannibalism hinted at might be missed and certainly the vampirism would not be noticed. Whether they are vampires, with 100 victims bestowing eternity, actually cannibals or simply a club of literature reading serial killers is down to interpretation. The imdb page is here.

Alice and the Vampire Queen – review

Director: Dan Lantz

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Appearing for free (on the film is now YouTube channel), kind of out of nowhere, it feels churlish to be too critical of this film – especially as it does have some interesting ideas. Unfortunately it also has some really rotten choices as well, most notably in accents.

It has a very loose connection to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, not just in the naming of the titular heroine (Shelby Hightower) but also through actually referencing and quoting Carroll’s novel but, unfortunately, that connection really is missing once one scratches below the surface.

Shelby Hightower as Alice

It starts with a beach and a woman, Madeline (Rachel Aspen), enjoying the location as the sun sets. Figures start appearing around her and she runs up a dune but is grabbed… In a greasy spoon, Alice is preparing a burger. She is openly abused by her boss Big Joe (John Groody, Bloodrunners) and has a highly prominent facial scar (which he references). After being threatened with her parole officer, she walks. Outside, in an alley, a stranger, Charles (Graham Wolfe), offers her a light.

Graham Wolfe as Charles

As they speak it becomes clear that Charles knows a lot about her and, as her backstory fills out, we discover that she was a Michelin star chef who was married to another (abusive) chef. It was he who cut her face and she ended up killing him. Her plea bargain kept the fact that she cut out his liver and served it in his restaurant out of the press. Charles is offering her a deal – cook one meal for his boss, Isabella (Brenna Carnuccio), for a ridiculously large sum of money. If the boss likes it, she’ll be offered a job.

eating steak tartare

Unbeknown to Alice, Isabella and her entourage – Fredrick (Xavier Michael) and Sophia (Danielle Muehlen) – pay Big Joe a visit, expose themselves as vampires and kill him. Alice is asked to make steak tartare, which she does. She is taken to meet Queen Isabella, who is suitably impressed and feeds it to Madelaine and Sophia, revealing the restaurant as a vampire place, where Alice, Charles and kitchen hand Gordon (Chris James Boylan, also Bloodrunners) are the only humans and if Alice doesn’t maintain her usefulness and loyalty, well she’ll be dinner.

Aaron Dalla Villa as Kieran

There is a sub-plot about vampire rebel Kieran (Aaron Dalla Villa) and another where Gordon turns out to be an escaped serial killer (the vampires are aware and are using his peculiar tastes to their advantage). It is notable the Michelin star chef never questions the meat type and apparently vampires like a little undercurrent of rot in consumed meat (though meat laced with garlic or holy water could prove deadly). I liked some of the ideas – such as the queen able to cure Alice’s scar (which she literally finds fallen from her face). The idea of having leverage to maintain control of their human servants worked as a concept. Unfortunately, other things didn’t work so well.

attack

The whole rebellious vampire wanting to usurp the queen was under-explored. The film is a standard 90 minutes, and there is much to be said about not overstaying one’s welcome, but this thread desperately needed more exploration. The serial killer part accelerated from nought-to-sixty way too quickly and more building a relationship to betray it would have been useful – especially as Boylan’s performance was one of the better supporting ones.

restaurant feed 

It is in the performances that we are let down the most. To be fair Shelby Hightower is good as Alice and does what she can with what she has, likewise – despite the comment above – Villa is excellent as Kieran, his performance adding a nuance to a character that the narrative didn’t provide. However, most of the vampires were using the most god awfully fake English accents, with a comment suggesting it was because they felt superior to humans and their (American) accents. These accents stifled performance (this was also true of the one human character who affected an accent), making things stagy at best.

another restaurant feed 

There are good ideas in this and whilst the idea of a human chef amongst vampires is not unique (and my mind drifted to Broil as I watched) there was much that could have been done with this. Director Dan Lantz is no stranger to making a vampire movie, having helmed Bloodrunners. This is not as good as that film partially as interesting things are under-explored and mostly because the accent affectation stifled performance badly, killing nuances that should have been there and impeding the actors’ art. 4 out of 10 reflects the fact that, despite this, I found myself quite taken with the good bits of the film.

The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: Shake Rattle & Roll Extreme

It is always great to get a new entry into the long running Philippine horror anthology series, Shake Rattle & Roll. This new one from 2023 recently dropped onto UK Netflix. The first segment, Glitch, is a great demonic entry and I was also rather taken by zombie-esque final segment Rage with people turned by space parasites, and the segment carrying the fun conceit that the more violence they commit the more powerful they become.

The segment that has led to this article is Mukbang, directed by Jerrold Tarog, which was interesting because it moves directly into the world of internet influencers. However, whilst the creatures in it are not named as such, I did get a bit of an aswang feel.

Jane Oineza as Ms Vee

We see a motley crew of different influencers arrive at a mansion. We have Adelle (Esnyr Ranollo) and their assistant Beyoncé (Phi Palmos), Ashley B (AC Bonifacio) and her assistant Hannah (Jana Taladro), Ms Vee (Jane Oineza), and Chef Kino Javier (Ninong Ry) and his assistant Issac (Ian Gimena). They are meeting Robin (Paul Salas) and Reye (Elle Villanueva) who have set the whole thing up to hit a million subscribers. The viewer notices that each influencer character is introduced with their followership levels. Late is Lionell (RK Bagatsing), Vee’s boyfriend and influencer in his own right. Also there is caretaker (and, we later discover, butcher) Mr Isko (Francis Mata).

influencers

It is a collaboration, including a Mukbang and Mr Isko will provide the meat. Beyoncé is the first to change. We see them wandering, meeting Robin, something indistinct with glowing eyes appearing behind them and then Beyoncé acting odd in scenes thereafter. The general plot is that there are monsters in the mansion. Now aswang is a term meaning monster (and can be very generic) but aswang are mentioned once later when Adelle puts on makeup and pretends to be one.

what's behind Beyonce

The monsters themselves are referred to as kindred and the plot is one of world domination. A kindred will rip the heart of a victim out and eat it, in doing so they take on their appearance. The rest of the victim is then butchered by Mr Isko who gets Chef Kino to ignorantly cook it for the Mukbang, with the villains amused that the human influencers are tricked into cannibalism. The disguised kindred needing to eat the flesh to consolidate their appearance and regain strength. The idea is to take over the influencers, gain their platform, and then start inviting followers to further events.

one of the Kindred

It is the association with aswang (even in the generic monster sense, and we can note that the kindred are credited as monsters), the eating of the heart to gain a victim’s shape and the cannibalism that leads to this mention. This is the most comedic of the three segments and the influencers are not really drawn as pleasant. Unkind (in cases) to their assistants, cheating, more concerned with content than safety to the point of doing an advert for a sponsor whilst being attacked. The two who come off better are revealed to be villains of the piece (Robin and Reye) and, in some respects, the influencers themselves might be said to be vampires.

The imdb page is here.

Cannibal Girls – review

Director: Ivan Reitman

Release date: 1973

Contains spoilers

This strange little exploitation flick stunned me by the fact that I really rather enjoyed it. I don’t know what I was expecting but it was certainly not what I saw. Don’t get me wrong, its daft, and yet has an undercurrent of creepiness that puts the viewer off kilter. It has no great thought-out story either and I understand much of the dialogue was improvised but then it did have Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin doing the improvisation… oh and Ivan Reitman directed.

Is it grand cinema then… well no but it has something that raises it above the exploitation flick it appears to be and it also, in some regards, apes Dracula.

beach attack

It starts with a couple by the seaside and laying a blanket on the ground… it all looks a bit chilly to me being a snowy Canada but they are young and up for it. Or they were until a figure of a woman approaches and buries a pick axe in him. The girlfriend screams and has her blouse ripped open for her trouble. For a moment we get a close up of eyes (I’ll come back to those). In town the local cop (Robert McHeady) tells the doctor (Ray Lawlor) that they have another one.

Cliff and Gloria

Leant up against a car, Gloria (Andrea Martin) is trying to read a map and can’t make head nor tails of where they are. Her boyfriend, Cliff (Eugene Levy), is off screen presumably relieving himself. After a while he stops talking back and she gets worried, she starts to look for him and he jumps out at her. We can see, however, that they are observed from the woods by a woman with a knife. The car refuses to start and after some shenanigans they get a false start and then the car nudges back to life.

Randall Carpenter as Anthea

Cliff stops in the next town and asks at a garage if there is somewhere to stay and is directed to Mrs Wainwright’s (May Jarvis) motel. There is also a guy asking whether anyone has seen a girl, his sister, to no avail. After the man goes, the garage attendant talks to the cop and says the guy was asking about one of the Reverend’s girls and an arrangement is made to have him done away with. Meanwhile Cliff and Gloria have got to the motel and, when talking to Mrs Wainwright, she tells them the local legend of the cannibal girls.

Mira Pawluk as Leona

The three lived in a large house, she explains, and were Anthea (Randall Carpenter), Clarissa (Bonnie Neilson) and Leona (Mira Pawluk). In her telling of the story, three men are lured to the house; Leona chats Felix (Allan Price) up in a bar, Earl (Earl Pomerantz) was already at the house when Felix arrives and, from the dialogue, it seems that the girls string them both along for a couple of days. Eventually Rick (Alan Gordon) is given shortcut directions to another town, which go past the house, and he ends up staying overnight, though how that happened isn't shown. Once all three are there they are done away with over the next night.

scissor attack

The first to be killed is Earl, who finally thinks he is on a promise with Clarissa. We hear her (in her head) intone “Within me and without me, I honour the blood, which gives me life” and then takes him out with scissors. Felix actually does sleep with Leona but is sent back to his own room afterwards and Anthea chops him with an axe as he leaves Leona's room. Somehow Rick sleeps through all this, wakes handcuffed to the bed and the girls come in, drip blood on his torso and then lick it up, which quickly becomes biting into him…

dinner with the Reverend

And that’s the local legend but Mrs Wainwright assures them that it was some time ago (probably not that long ago, given the garage attendant being in the story and the missing sister possibly being Anthea). Nevertheless she then says the house is still there and is now a restaurant and takes the pair up there (after they settle in, Gloria falls asleep and Cliff takes the car to the garage – which we later see the attendant put a for sale sign on). The restaurant is run by the very theatrical (and formal wear wearing) Reverend Alex St. John (Ronald Ulrich), they are the only guests, there is only one thing on the menu and he dines with them (and is a tad handsy with Gloria)…

the Rev and his girls

So, the Dracula bits I saw in this start with the Rev. He has the three girls, he wears formal wear like the Lugosi version of Dracula (the top hat could also be a reference to London After Midnight) and he also has a particularly strong line in eye mojo, it appears. This is augmented visually by several eye close-ups, indeed the eye close-up I mentioned at the beginning were his eyes (suggesting a telepathic connection also). He also asks the couple to stay and when they refuse makes them promise that if they hear anything in the woods they’ll run and not look back (building a fear). They leave anyway and almost immediately hear wolves, turn back and stay the night – so the scene is lifted from Dracula when the Count allows Harker the opportunity to leave Castle Dracula. The Rev. also says they should “drink the blood of life eternal” (cf. the blood is the life) “and live forever”.

a toast to the Reverend

There were other things I perceived through the running time. As mentioned, the performance for the Rev was very theatrical (this is actually mentioned in dialogue and may have been an adlib) but would not have been out of place in Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. There is a turn around where Gloria is gaslight into thinking everything is in her head, the townsfolk are in on it (we see the main players having a meal beneath a picture of the Rev., with them eating flesh, drinking blood and a toast is called to the Rev. as their guiding spirit) and there are strange moments in town such as the town barber slicing a customer's ear off, unobserved by the couple as they walk past his shop. The atmosphere at times, through this, resembled the small town uncanny portrayed in Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.

Bonnie Neilson as Clarissa

The film is therefore a strange old thing but it really kept my attention as I was drawn into apparent references. Even the fact that it seems a tad ill-prepared feeds into its uncanny presence. I think some of you will watch this and think me mad, but I was very taken with this one. It probably doesn't deserve 6 out of 10, but it's getting it anyway.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

101: Modern Los Angeles Vampires – review

Director: Stan Harrington

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

This was one I had ignored because, for some reason, I had assumed it was a documentary of the so-called vampire societies out there. It is, however, a low-budget drama that centres on self-styled vampires and, with it saying it was based on a true story, I’m assuming it drew inspiration from the crimes of Rod Ferrell.

As the film opens we see what looks like aggressive sexuality between Christian (Christian Delevante*) and a young lady – and here we have the first issue with this; it wasn’t always clear what the character names were – that’s not to say they were not always there but they were often obfuscated within the dialogue. Back to the scene, he is clearly choking her with a chain and it is cutting into her neck. 

*Credited at the end of the movie as Nikolai Delevante.

news report

When she eventually says no to him, he decides he will go to Gretchen (Amanda Drexton) instead and, when the woman asks him to return the chain, he says that she doesn’t deserve it. Elsewhere, Gretchen’s father is watching the TV news about disgraced homicide detective Steve Foster (Stan Harrington, Vampfather), and doesn’t look up when he hears something, just calls out to Gretchen. However, she is there with Christian who attacks him with a bat – and her mother when she comes in. He makes Gretchen continue with the beating (and homicide) and offers her blood from a bloody metal flask – she refuses.

news report #2

Meanwhile a group of friends are out in a bar. Emily (Amy Sanders) leaves with her boyfriend and sneaks him home. Their petting is getting heavy when her father (the aforementioned Steve Foster) bursts in and punches the lad before kicking him out. His police colleagues are called by the boyfriend’s mother who wants charges pressing until it is mentioned that, at 17, Emily is underaged and there would be counter charges of statutory rape.

Christian Delevante as Christian

There then runs two storylines – the vampires are quite a large group, led by Christian who has convinced them that drinking blood (and its lifeforce) will make them immortal. There is a string of murders, with them attacking their families first. Not all the vampires are as committed, however. Of course, they are not supernatural creatures but flesh and blood. It would have worked better as a film if we had got to know some of them better than we did. I did like, in the ending, them putting a spigot in a victim – which harked back to earlier vampire films.

vampires

The second strand is Emily and her dad. Dad has been accused of police brutality – caught on his own dash-cam. Emily wants her freedom and thinks her dad is a hypocrite as he is in a relationship with a cop (Sarah Lappin) in her twenties. He has grounded her because of the incident at the head of the film but, in reality, she is not as wild as most of her friends or as he fears. The friends are arranging a rave in, what looks like, an art gallery. Eventually the two storylines converge as the vampires stumble over the rave and treat it as a human buffet.

spigot

The film could have been a little stronger in its narrative in some places, but it did well for a low budget effort. There is a chunkiness to the photography that works for the film. Where it really fell over was in the ending as, when Steve comes to his daughter’s rescue, there are a couple of moments where the editing made it feel like we had jumped in the narrative without explanation and the whole ending could have done with expanding, as it was, and with a running time just under 80-minutes there was room to add in to this part of the film. Nevertheless, it worked for what it is. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Cannibal Apocalypse

There is no doubt that Italian director Antonio Margheriti knew his way around the vampire genre, but also that his vampire films (and those that played with tropes from the genre) were some of the stranger and more interesting entries into the genre.

The prosaically titled Cannibal Apocalypse, from 1980, certainly played with vampire tropes and flirted around the Venn diagram where vampires and zombies intersect. The story's narrative demands leaps of faith in places, but the film is certainly an interesting take though might have been a bit tauter when it comes to the horror aspect.

the soldiers

The film starts with stock footage of Vietnam, with American choppers in the sky. A troop led by Norman Hopper (John Saxon) are attacking a Viet Cong village and, after one soldier is killed by a dog with explosives at the collar, they go in heavy, machine guns and flame-throwers blazing. Some villagers run, others fight. In a pit they have two American soldiers prisoner.

Thompson bites Hopper

I didn’t get a sense as to whether this was a rescue or a coincidence (Hopper knows one of the men, Charlie Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, City of the Living Dead & the Reverend), and describes himself as his commanding officer later). We see a woman run from the caves in flames, a victim of the flame thrower, and then she falls through the bamboo grating into the pit. Bukowski and the other prisoner, Tom Thompson (Tony King), turn onto her and start eating her flesh. The troops find them and Hopper leans into the pit. When Thompson spots him, he grabs for his arm and bites into his flesh.

John Saxon as Hopper

Hopper bolts awake at home, back in the States. He’s not had the nightmares for a while. When taking his meds, he looks into the fridge and becomes entranced by dripping meat – the camera, importantly, lingers on the blood rather than the meat. Wife, and local TV presenter, Jane (Elizabeth Turner) seems overly worried and the next day we see her pick up Doctor Phil Mendez (Ramiro Oliveros), whilst he’s jogging, to ask him about her concerns as Hopper hasn’t had the nightmares for some time. Mendez uses the opportunity to sleaze a bit (Jane had chosen Hopper over him) and gets a lift to the psychiatric hospital where he works and where Bukowski and Thompson are inmates. Bukowski is just leaving, his first pass out of hospital.

Cinzia De Carolis as Mary

As for Hopper he seems happy enough playing with a remote-control plane and then showing the young kid next door how it works. The kid’s teen sister, Mary (Cinzia De Carolis, Night of the Devils) comes over and asks if she can borrow Jane’s hair dryer. They go in the house and Mary fakes a thigh injury to sexually entice him. Saved by the bell, it seems, as the phone rings, Hopper answers and it is Bukowski. Importantly Hopper says he was thinking about him (and he had the dream, of course), which though subtle does suggest a (limited) psychic link. They talk about having a drink but Mary is messing with the hair dryer and Hopper changes his mind. Off the phone he approaches Mary and the approach is sexually charged. He lifts her jumper – the camera cuts as we hear her exclaim…

cinema attack

Bukowski walks through the town, getting in the way of bikers sexually harassing a couple of girls and then deciding to go to the cinema to watch a war picture (From Hell to Victory) – probably not the best choice for a Vet on day release from the psychiatric hospital. The film, however, does suggest that they have been home at least 6 years. A couple go in after him and start making out right in front of him. She is leaning over the chair and he reaches out to her and then leans in and takes a bite out of neck/shoulder.

Bukowski's siege

He's chased out of the cinema – at which point the bikers go after him also. The bikers smash a thrift market window and Bukowski goes in chased by a biker on his motorbike. In the market (which was closed) Bukowski finds a stall with guns (well it is America) and kills the biker and then a security guard who comes to investigate. Soon the market is surrounded by cops. Jane gets to hear about the incident through her TV job and phones Hopper as a Vet has gone mad (she really does doubt him) but he’s home and yet, knowing instantly it is Bukowski, he goes to intervene. As he gets in his car Mary comes across. No one has ever bitten her like that she says, and doesn't seem upset… he drives away.

Tony King as Thompson

Suffice it to say he talks Bukowski down but, on his way into a waiting ambulance, the Vet bites a cop’s hand. In the hospital Bukowski and Thompson conspire to bite a nurse, Helen (May Heatherly, Vampyres). The hospital has identified a virus – they liken it to rabies – however there is no rhyme or reason as to why the two prisoners displayed symptoms in Vietnam and then have been bite free until this day, why Hopper never seemed to “turn” until this day and why those bitten on the day are symptomatic and infectious in a matter of hours (the cop and Helen for instance, the girl in the cinema is essentially forgotten about).

feeding

The infected do seem to have a connection. Helen turns on her Doctor boyfriend (biting his tongue out) and then hurries to free the two from their restraints. Hopper might have loyalty to his men but that loyalty seems stretched (escape of a secure facility, stealing vehicles, fighting and killing bikers and cops). Talking of which, the bikers suddenly pitching up to attack them during their escape is a stretch, as is the cops getting hold of a flame-thrower! The infected do seem to be connected somehow, aware when another one is near and also, of course, they don’t attack each other.

turned cop

This is ultimately some form of cannibalism causing virus (they really want to munch on flesh) but the camera does linger on blood a couple of times as though that is the motivator and all flesh consumed is raw. The film more uses tropes from the vampire genre (though arguably vampirism is nothing more than cannibalism) and the zombie genre (especially them sat munching on flesh in a couple of shots that feels straight out of that genre). The  hinted sexual element, through Hopper and Mary, is more vampire than zombie. They are still thinking (though some are more rational and calculating than others) and, as mentioned, they seem connected. The horror, however, could have been ramped up, both in tension and in gore; for instance the cop is caught having attacked two other cops and munching (on what appears to be ripped off breast) flesh – the attack, unseen, could have been a cracking horror gore scene. As mentioned, there are some story leaps of faith. That said, this has something about it despite being less well known than some.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK