Claire – review

Director: Mike Booth

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

This was a film I found available to watch for free on the net and, I understand, it was made for a budget of just £250. Normally that might be telling but, in this case, what filmmaker Mike Booth has managed to create is rather impressive.

That’s not to suggest its perfect but it introduces us to a very unusual take on the vampire myth – a cannibalistic take, which suggests why it originally had the title Kuru, a degenerative neurological disease transmitted by prions and primarily transmitted through funerary cannibalism.

preparing the nursery

It is shot in black and white, set in the UK and begins as Claire (Carol Roache) is painting a mural of a tree in a nursery, she is heavily pregnant. Her boyfriend, Ethan (Joseph Curdy), comes in and begins to speak about the possibility of flying soon after the birth. He is suggesting they go out to California, where his parents are, as there is a free slot available at a wedding function location – his parents will pay for the wedding (we later hear). Claire is perhaps not as enamoured with the idea as he is – and we get the feeling that all is perhaps not well in the relationship. After he leaves the room she stands and notices blood – she is having a miscarriage.

parting ways

It is three months later and he is travelling to the States but is concerned about leaving her in the state she is in. He has spent the time since the miscarriage sleeping in the spare room, she barely changes her clothes and is clearly depressed. However she insists that she needs the time and actually insists he doesn’t keep phoning her. As the film develops we discover that she has had a full hysterectomy. We meet some of her neighbours and one, Helen (Sue Marshall), calls to return a didgeridoo that belonged to Claire’s father (it is his house she has inherited). Apparently he was a bit of an amateur explorer.

the seed

Not knowing what to do with it, she decides to place it in the loft and when up there she finds an elaborately carved and bound box. She takes it downstairs and opens it, there is soil inside and in the soil is… something. It was organic, probably a seed or pod, and reminiscent in some ways of a horse chestnut – I say that as Ian had collected horse chestnuts and put the conkers round the house to keep spiders away. She cuts into the pod and a dark liquid gets onto the knife blade and so she licks it… it tastes awful. That night she is coughing in her sleep and, when she wakes, she vomits (what may be blood). Her stomach is growling and she has no voice. She tries eating various things but everything makes her vomit, she calls the doctors but can’t get the receptionist (Marian Booth) to understand her.

the box

She falls down the stairs and is knocked out and, when she comes round, she tries to eat dog food – to no avail. It is then implied that she eats the dog. We cut into a memory of her with Ethan, in happier days, but the memory ends with him beating her. The film has a number of twisted memories interjected through it but I suspected from the get go that they were not necessarily accurate. The film is deliberately vague as to whether she had been a victim of domestic violence or whether these are fevered dreams as her mind and body snaps.

Lovecraft as a weapon

Her neighbour Alan (Malcolm Summers) glances through the window as he passes and spots her on the floor. He goes to help her and is stabbed for his trouble. Claire eats flesh, we see her cook an organ, she also loses her hair and takes to wearing shades. She covers the windows over with fabric. As the film progresses we have her kidnapping passing Jehovah’s Witnesses (and the fact that she clobbers them with a hardback Lovecraft tome entitled Necronomicon was a nice touch) and dealing with burglars. We gain evidence towards the end of the film that the seed she found is definitely the cause of the vampirism and, indeed, a bush carrying more seeds grows from where she buried a victim.

Carol Roache as Claire

The film’s pacing is a tad on the slow side, but Booth uses that to tantalise us with glimpses of what may or may not have been. I think the leads held their parts very well, especially as neither have extensive film credits on IMDb. Carol Roache in particular had a lot of work to do, especially as there was a lot of dialogue free scenes. The character developed an interesting tremor in her legs, which I assume was significant to the kuru title as tremors can be a symptom.

This is one you can check for yourself, as it is over at Vimeo. The pace might put some off but I think it is a stick with it film. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Nightlife – review

Director: Daniel Taplitz

Release date: 1989

Contains spoilers

Some two years before Ben Cross became steeped in the melodrama of vampire Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows – the revival he played a vampire named Vlad in this made for TV gentle spoof.

We know it to be a spoof as the credits roll and we see mummified bodies in open coffins as the lounge stylings of “I don’t get around much anymore” plays. We are in Mexico at a museum connected to a church. The bodies are preserved and were exhumed from unhallowed ground. The tour guide mentions that three more coffins have been found. The gravediggers open one and find another mummified corpse. The next one kind of blows open and the corpse is perfectly preserved. She opens her eyes and reveals fangs.

Her name is Angelique (Maryam d’Abo) and she sits up, leaves her coffin (the gravediggers have fled) and throws an ornate pendant into the casket with disgust. She wanders out into the modern world. Now we discover that she was buried for 100 years and I enjoyed, to a degree, her trying to cope with the modern world. Crossing a street (on a cross light) as cars revved to be chased down the road as the lights changed, or coping with an elevator. These things could have been expanded on a little I thought. She ends up in a blood bank trying to make a withdrawal but the sun is fast approaching and she faints.

Interspersed in these scenes are ones of a couple of wiseguy vampires (never given names) driving into Mexico – for some broad, as one of them puts it. They are pulled by a cop who has them open the boot. It is filled with earth and as he leans in a hand grabs and drags him to the bite. Vlad is awake – he’s not a morning person quips one of the wiseguys.

They arrive at the grave excavation and Vlad finds the pendant with his initial on it and exclaims to the night that his bride is awake. Said bride, Angelique, is in hospital and awakes as the sun sets. She has been treated by American doctor David (Keith Szarabajka) and Mexican colleague Jose (Jesse Corti) – they believe she has a slow virus (as they describe it) utterly unique and a little like the kuru virus. She is allowed to leave with a promise she returns.

She sells her jewels and rents an apartment – a maid kind of comes with it, or at least bullies her way in. The maid is Rosa (Camille Saviola) who is mostly wonderful through the film as the bossy maid who, unfortunately, vacillates it seems between belief and disbelief in vampires. However, despite a slight glitch in the script she generally is a joy to watch through the film.

So, Vlad wants Angelique back. She wants nothing to do with him, having buried herself alive to escape him (and subsequently given herself a full on phobia of insects due to them crawling over her in the grave). David wants to cure her condition and falls in love with her – slowly realising that she is actually a vampire. What is interesting, however, is within the lore they introduce.

Let us start with the virus element. Vlad refuses to accept he is diseased – he is a creature of the night. He tells Angelique that the blood transfusions will not help, that she will become more and more hungry and a rash like a spider will appear on her arm. Eventually she will lose reason and simply hunt. David realises eventually that the virus doesn’t just crave blood it also craves epinephrine released by the victim during the hunt and that artificially giving both will allow non-hunting feeds – I liked that, it was clever. However, Vlad locks Angelique away to starve her to the point of madness – it does beg the question of why was she so calm after a hundred years in the grave.

The other lore we get includes a fear of holy objects, but the fear is irrational. David drags Angelique into a church to escape the two wise guys. She says she can’t enter but is ultimately fine, though they do not follow her. Indeed the only one to massively react to a cross is the human David when Rosa brandishes one at him, a quip is made about him being Jewish but the idea of a scary Mexican maid brandishing a cross was reason enough. Interestingly Angelique describes vampirism as a cult, with all the sufferers bound together (and they can sense each other) and Vlad as the cult leader – the cult of vampirism was a favourite idea in the Hammer movies .

A stake to the heart will kill and mummify the vampire, it seems, but sunlight – or more precisely the UV aspect – is the impressive killer. A vampire caught in direct sunlight will explode violently, a small exposure will burn the flesh. We then wonder at the showdown between David and Vlad and the pools of sunlight that seemed to have no effect.

This is the on-running problem with the film. Ben Cross is sonorous and menacing as Vlad, Keith Szarabajka is personable as David and Camille Saviola, as I mentioned, is a joy. Some of the lore is unusually handled and makes for an interesting watch. However the script needed tightening, rules seem to be ignored and aspects (such as Angelique’s confusion in a very changed world) could have been expanded on.

The film hasn’t, to my knowledge, made it to DVD at time of review but is ghosting around on VHS. A gentle comedy that could have been so much better with a bit of tightening. 4 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

Red Blooded American Girl – review

Director: David Blyth

Release Date: 1990

Contains spoilers

The first thing to note about this is the DVD cover. I wasn’t expecting the cover at all – the cover when I ordered the disc was the original ‘American Flag’ cover and it seems to me that new artwork has been developed in the wake of such films as Underworld. It is a shame really as whilst this is a low budget flick it kinda deserves to maintain its own identity.

The film starts off positively enough, after some black screen and panting we cut to a topless Rebecca (Lydie Denier) in stockings and panties, lying on a bed. It does beg the question as to why she was so clothed in a post-coital state… oh yeah, refusal to show excessive nudity. Anyway she seems satisfied and her erstwhile partner, Denis (Kim Coates), is pouring Champaign and spiking it. He gives her a drink and suggests that they 'share'. She gets angry and then realises she has been spiked. He turns her over, cuts her neck and feeds.

Owen Augustus Urban III (Andrew Stevens) is an underground scientist working on a synthetic form of adrenalin. Unbeknown to him he is about to get a visitation from the founder of the Lifereach foundation, Dr John Alcore (Christopher Plummer). On route to Owen’s home Alcore spies on the scientist via a hidden camera and also watches a tape of Denis, who is his PA, and the tape mentions tainted blood. Alcore offers Owen a job and Owen is interested.

He goes to the foundation and there meets Paula (Heather Thomas) a volunteer test subject – it is clear they are interested in each other. During his tour we also notice that Denis edges around a beam of direct sunlight – though this is not mentioned again. Later Paula is walking through an area when she hears a scream, it is her friend Rebecca who is bound to a bed and foaming at the mouth. Paula is told that she has had a bad reaction, though we have heard Rebecca accuse Denis of infecting her. Paula decides to leave the foundation.

Owen goes after her and they decide to check on Rebecca themselves, sneaking into the secure area she is held in. Rebecca is in a padded cell and when they go in she seems edgy and says they are denying her blood. She launches at Paula and bites her ankle. They get out and Rebecca snarls through the glass window. With all the foaming and snarling we have seen, I can’t help but be reminded a little of Rabid.

Owen takes her to an ER but sneaks some of her blood test and looks at it himself. She has contracted a virus that is mutating her cells and eating her from the inside. Strangely, in this, the more blood they consume the deeper into vampirism they go and the more accelerated the eating up of their own cells – eventually killing them. Alcore admits that the virus is a mutated form of the kuru virus – a real world virus prevalent amongst cannibals.

The race is on for Owen to develop a cure but all is not well within the foundation.

The problem with the film is that it fails to hold any form of tension, the story itself is quite good but the film meanders and the breaking in and out of the foundation becomes wearisome. The film cannot make its mind up as to whether the foundation are ultimately the enemy or an ally and this becomes difficult to watch as certain aspects make little sense.

The moment with the sunlight I mentioned was annoying as it didn’t go anywhere and the fact that Paula feeds on a random guy means the virus has escaped but nothing is mentioned about it.

The acting isn’t bad, but Plummer does sleepwalk through the role, probably he realised that this was ultimately a flawed project. Characters fall in love too easily, Denis is annoying and Alcore’s control over him (or lack of it) is badly realised and generally things are somewhat too convenient.

Not the worst film I’ve seen but lacking in tension, the base story could be taken and made into a much more competent production. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.