Short Film: The Mare

Whilst nothing overtly vampiric seems to happen within Casper Rudolf Emil Kjeldsen’s 18-minute short film, which was released in 2018, it deserves a place here for a couple of reasons (beyond the fact that it is an absolutely gorgeous piece of filmmaking). Firstly there is the title – the Mare is a variant name (which includes mara, the alp and the hag) of a vampiric entity that sits upon a sleepers chest, filling the sleeper with nightmares as it steels the sleeper's breath (or acts as an energy vampire). Secondly is the fact that the film really manages to capture the unheimlich, the uncanny that sits at the heart of the Gothic and is often represented by the vampire. As I explore this, I will spoil the film, so you might wish to skip the words and watch it before reading.

lost in a Forest

The film starts with shots of a Danish Forest and, I say without hyperbole, they are stunning. The photography, captured in black and white, is exceptional in this. One of the shots sees what might be a small wooden structure up a tree, then the film then cuts to a car, besides which stand Bjorn (Steen Stig Lommer) and Anna (Ingrid-Marie Thorlacius Troelsen). Bjorn is making a call and asking for an ambulance, though Anna has suggested they simply drive to the hospital. They are social workers and have found a girl (Alvilda Lyneborg Lassen), who appears thin and sickly, in the woods.

Ingrid-Marie Thorlacius Troelsen as Anna

The response is that they must drive her unless it is an emergency. We see the drive for a moment from the girl’s pov but do not see the girl in shot until later. What we do see is Anna looking back reassuringly towards the girl – her reaction to her different to everyone else who encounters her. Then we see the pair sat waiting for the doctor (Sussie Nøhr). She walks in and the camera cuts from her to the girl – us seeing her for the first time. The capturing of something unheimlich within her features is just remarkable, it is (rightly) something that can’t quite be communicated but the cut to the photography of the forest suggests that the girl shouldn’t be in this tamed, civilised world. The doctor suggests that she is physically fine and estimates her age as 18.

Mogens Holm as Manfred

Bjorn is clearly not happy with the diagnosis and makes a call to a mental hospital. It seems that neither the doctor nor the social worker wants to be left responsible for her. We see them drive again and then Bjorn pulls over. He tells Anna he will walk home from there and that she can drive the girl the rest of the way. He doesn’t know what to put in the report so leaves that to her also and exits as quickly as possible. Anna drives her the rest of the way and leaves her with institution manager Manfred (Mogens Holm). We see the end of the exchange from a distance, as he suggests she make an appointment to help complete her report and leads the girl in.

in the corridor

What is interesting is that Anna continues to work with her and teaches her some sign – and it seems that Anna remains unaffected by her otherness. Manfred, who the film visually associates with the church by placing him in an establishing composition of a chapel, disagrees that any progress is being made with her; she is non-communicative and has ‘nocturnal activities.’ These involve watching people who sleep – and this we can assume is her acting as the folkloric mare. She does communicate in front of him with Anna there, saying in sign “If he doesn’t let me go, I will eat him up”, which is telling in itself, and “I am his worst nightmare”. The latter again referring to the activities of the folkloric mare. This becomes more than apparent when he stands before her, with a knife in hand, and then we see his trousers drop and he is severed from his privates. There is no scream… it is likely a nightmare he is forced to endure…

smile

This is a masterclass in unheimlich and in short movie making. It simply drips with atmosphere. There are some unfortunate typos in the subtitles (rapport used rather than report, for instance) but this is mentioned to also mention that you should forgive the film those minor errors when all else is so perfectly done. Alvilda Lyneborg Lassen manages to capture something extraordinary in a mute performance, and when she allows herself to smile it is truly disturbing. The pace is deliberate and I can’t speak of this one highly enough. The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: In Fabric

The 2018 Peter Strickland film In Fabric is an outstanding film and one that is described as a (sort of) ghost story. However, I saw elements within it that tie into vampire genre tropes. Whether this has a touch of apophenia on my part, or an unconscious element on the director’s part is almost irrelevant. Looking into this I listened through Strickland’s commentary on the Blu-Ray and whilst he mentioned some influences – notably M R James and Carnival of Souls (1962) – there was notably no espoused connections to vampire genre pieces. Interestingly many (including myself) see a stylistic connection to Susperia (1977), a connection Strickland mentions but denies consciously making. Nonetheless…

Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Sheila

This is a surreal walk through consumerism, through the Department store and a character exploration. The film is also about a haunted red dress – though what is it haunted by? Perhaps it is cursed, though it is the dress itself that is the focus of the film and to the characters unlucky enough to don it.

Luckmoore and Sheila

The first of these buys the dress. She is Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) a bank clerk who, near the head of the film, discovers that her ex-husband is dating again and starts to look at doing the same through personal ads – though her son Vince (Jaygann Ayeh) is less than impressed with the idea. She arranges a date (ultimately, a bad date) with Adonis (Anthony Adjekum) and goes to the Department store Dentley and Soper’s, who are in the January sales period, and is convinced by the mysterious Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed, the Field Guide to Evil) to buy the dress despite the fact that it isn’t what she would normally wear. Strangely it fits, despite the size not being the size she would wear. The dress is the only one like it they have.

sale signs

Let us look at the store workers as they are, very much, part of our trope. I have seen them described as vampire like and they also draw the mind to Susperia. Wearing almost Victorian dresses, the staff are female bar Mr Lundy (Richard Bremmer) and the (almost Renfield like) Pitcroft (Adam Bohman). Lundy seems to have some authority and, as the store opens Lundy kneels and the female staff stand, beckoning the customers in (something that occurs in their almost psychotropic television advert also). This is a surreal extension of Strickland’s experience as a member of staff and the ‘first customer’ greet in TGI-Fridays but could also be tied to “Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!” from Dracula. A quick note that the “sale” signs converts the ‘l’ to two parallel lines bringing to mind trails of blood from a vampire’s bite.

in the dumb waiter

If they are strange in store, with their commercial patois, for example “The hesitation in your voice, soon to be an echo in the recess in the spheres of retail” and “Did the transaction validate your paradigm of consumerism?”, then in the back of the store they are something else. Miss Luckmore, we see, removes her hair to reveal it as a wig, her head bald (the implication being the female staff, at the very least, all are), and this makes her more like a mannequin but also draws Roald Dhal’s the Witches to mind and Count Orlock. Miss Luckmore descends further into the bowels of the store by crouching in a dumb waiter. The mannequin’s and the store staff seem to be interconnected – not only do the staff seem to resemble the mannequins but there is a scene where they are revealed to be more than they seem.

at the window

One of the staff takes a mannequin to dress it and lifts her skirts, sitting over its head in a scene that suggests oral sex. Miss Luckmore strips the underwear from the prone mannequin revealing that there is pubic hair and it begins to menstruate. Miss Luckmore masturbates the mannequin – as Mr Lundy watches from within the shelves, pleasuring himself at the sight, and then she lifts her bloody fingers and tastes the blood on them. It is a strange and surreal scene that did land the film with some controversy with censors. The last thing I want to mention about Miss Luckmore specifically is a scene of her looking out of a window down at the milling consumers waiting to be allowed entrance to the store. At the window she again reminded me of Orlock in the window of his house in Wisborg/Bremen.

the dress on the ceiling

The dress itself, when worn, causes a rash on the breast/chest of the wearer and is able to move of its own volition. It seems to cause disturbing dreams (like the vampire type the mare does) and we also see it seem to attack – including Gwen (Gwendoline Christie), Vince’s older girlfriend, that it seems to smother in her sleep. When placed in a washing machine it causes the machine to break, and also seems to ‘heal’ itself – having been ripped in a dog attack and burned in a fire it reappears none the worse for wear. It lands on a canary cage in the night and the bird is dead in the morning – smothering is mentioned – and seems to cause a box of fresh fruit and veg to rapidly decay. Smothering by a mare, and the nightmares it brings, is often a description for energy vampirism and the causing of vegetation to rot is a trope used in many genre films and also ties to energy vampirism.

Richard Bremmer as Lundy

The dress has the phrase, “You who wear me, will know me” embroidered inside it and there seems to be a definitive connection between Miss Luckmore and the dress (a scene of her rapidly moving in the back of the store matches the movement of the dress in a wardrobe). She also refuses to take the dress back from Sheila and when Sheila sees the dress in the store’s catalogue her reaction is sharp, trying to hide the page (and later ripping the page out and intimately hiding it). The dress is described, in the catalogue, as being arterial red (connecting the dress to blood) and it is revealed that the model of the dress was killed (run over on a zebra crossing), making her the first victim. When the dress finally causes Sheila’s doom the dress ends up in a charity shop and bought for the stag night of washing machine repairman Reg Speaks (Leo Bill) – who is forced to wear it and gets the rash. His fiancé Babs (Hayley Squires) later wears it too.

Reg and Babs

To touch on the dreams a moment – now we have met Babs and Reg. Sheila has a dream of her dead mother but the dream also seems to foreshadow her death. Reg’s dream involves the staff of the store as nurses, giving Babs a caesarean section and his new-born daughter, in the dress, giving him the finger. Babs dreams that she is in the store and is pictured in the catalogue. She gets thinner and thinner (she has body dysmorphia as it stands) as the sizes of dresses seem to get larger and larger. The catalogue is cut apart and placed in a coffin where she is entombed.

The dress

The final thing to mention is the ending, with Miss Luckmore descending in the dumb waiter where it passes cells. In each cell is a victim sat at a sewing machine, creating another dress, the red thread in the machine that same arterial red. It is as though the dress has taken the souls of the victims – perhaps consumerism stole their souls – and has eternally put them to work. There are empty cells also, awaiting new victims.

tasting mannequin blood

So, is it a vampire film? Whilst you could argue a case for energy vampirism, I would say that more it uses, likely unconsciously, tropes. There is, incidentally, a thread of people being placed into ecstatic trance but this is by Reg Speaks as he drones his technical specs around washing machines and this is a take on ASMR. A wonderful and strange film. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Slumber – review

Director: Jonathan Hopkins

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

So, we have another Mare movie – the energy vampire or demonic creature, which comes to a person petrified with sleep paralysis, sits upon the chest and draws the life energy away. Another name is the Hag, and, of course, the Hag appears in various mythologies and Old Hag is closely linked with vampiric activity in the Circum-Caribbean and African diaspora. This film also uses the name nocnitsa – another version from Slavic mythology (that can be warded by a stone with a hole in the centre or a knife, indeed even a circle drawn by a knife – not methods of protection tried (or even mentioned) in film).

you're with my sister

The film starts with two children sleeping in a room. The boy, Liam (William Rhead), sits up whilst still sleeping and starts speaking to something we cannot see. He introduces his sister, Alice (Zahra Wardhana-O'Reilly), and says that she is six, he then suggests that he would like to play. Alice awakens to hear him say “coming, ready or not”. She looks for him, telling him that he is sleep walking again. He asks where it is and then realises it is by Alice – we see a tall shadowy thing – Liam becomes scared, backs away and falls through a window.

meeting the Morgans

After a credit sequence that has various people talking about night terrors, sleep paralysis and shadowy creatures and the Hag, Alice (Maggie Q, Priest) wakes up. An adult, married with a daughter but still haunted by her brother’s death. To cut quite a slow character building session down a bit she is a sleep doctor and meets a family, the Morgans. Son Daniel (Lucas Bond, Lady of Csejte) is suffering from sleep paralysis, whilst sister Emily (Honor Kneafsey), mom Sarah (Kristen Bush) and Dad Charlie (Sam Troughton) are all suffering nightmares whilst sleepwalking.

Maggie Q as Alice

The first night in the clinic sees all three sit up at the same time and move away from Daniel – but both Alice and colleague Malcolm (William Hope, Dark Shadows & Hellbound: Hellraiser II) are both out of the monitoring booth. When they hear screams they intervene with the sleep paralysis and Alice goes over to the sleepwalking Emily; still asleep, Charlie grabs her by the throat. Now, at this point (having been rescued by janitor Cam (Vincent Andriano)) the cops turn up and Charlie is hauled off.

Sylvester McCoy as Amado

This just didn’t work for me. There is a bruise on Daniel’s chest in the shape of a hand but it is blatantly too small to be Charlie’s and they have cameras and so the entire night’s events could be reviewed. Even if he were initially restrained, I couldn’t buy the arrest and holding. Cam resigns, warns Alice to stay clear of *that* family and hands her a piece of paper with the word nocnitsa on it. Now, I can buy the fact that an obscure Slavic myth form might be unknown to her but, as a sleep expert, I’m sure she would know about the Mare and the Hag myths – this seems to be news to her. The only hope for a solution seems to be known by Cam’s mad grandpa, Amado (Sylvester McCoy, Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric), who survived a nocnitsa as a child.

the Nocnitsa

I really wanted to like this but it felt as though they struggled to get to the horror and the cgi creature at the end looked a bit rubbish. They built the characters but then didn’t use them (for instance Alice’s daughter draws dream pictures – this could have been exploited in narrative but wasn’t really). The idea of the Mare drawing the family away from the feast (and the word feasting is used in dialogue) was good but the reaction of the sleep experts to three people simultaneously sleepwalking was worryingly pedestrian. The myth of the nocnitsa has wards that folks versed enough in the Slavic myth to know the creature's name didn’t apparently know (and I know through a google, the resource the good Doctor seemed to rely on).

All in all, there are better Mare films out there, a pity as this felt like it really could have been better. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Marianne – review

Director: Filip Tegstedt

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

This Swedish film features a creature called a Mare. Now the experts all have different variants of the Mare. Melton says “closely related to the incubus was the mare (Old Teutonic)”. Bunson added more detail and said, “The mar a (mare) generally represented the active terror of the night (the nightmare), an incubus or succubus, and an oppressive or crushing weight during the sleeping hours.” Under Mara he associates it with the alp and says it has a taste for blood. Bane suggests that “The alp, when it attacks a horse, is usually referred to as a mare” and suggests the mara “is created when a child dies before it could be baptized”.

Mare's teeth

All these different takes have a broad consensus that it is a creature that acts somewhat like a succubus/incubus – in that generally it is seen as an energy vampire that comes upon the victim at night; rather than a sexual assault, however, the mare causes terror and sleep paralysis. The terror that comes in the night is, of course, the nightmare.

picnic

This film begins with a picnic. We see Krister (Thomas Hedengran, Frostbite), Eva (Tintin Anderzon) and their 10 year old daughter Sandra (Saga Viljeståhl). Krister walks into the forest a little way and makes a call, we hear him say he is with his family and say to the caller that he loves them. Sandra comes up behind and asks who is talking to, Eva is not far behind. Cut forward 9 years later and Sandra (Sandra Larsson) is at Eva’s funeral. Krister holds a baby, Linnéa, who is crying – he passes her to Sandra and leaves the church.

at the funeral

We discover, as the film goes on, that Krister and Eva split up and, some years later, got back together – Krister leaving his lover. Linnéa was born after their reconciliation. They had left Sandra babysitting when they went out for a night away. Krister told the police that their car was hit by a car driving on the wrong side of a bridge’s carriageway. Eva was killed and the driver of the other car then threw themselves over the side of the bridge. This has left a very broken home. Sandra was already dressing in a Goth/metal fashion and is with an older bloke known as Stiff (Dylan M. Johansson), she has little time for her dad, doesn’t want to go back to school and is generally rebelling.

face above him

Early on in the film we start hearing, as Krister sleeps, a noise – it becomes apparent it is grinding teeth. As the film progresses the mare (for that is what is making the noise) becomes more and more apparent. Krister wakes unable to move, at first feeling the presence in the room, later being sat upon and suffocated. He is even wounded by the mare – though when he shows the marks to a doctor they are barely visible.

Mare's exorcism

He is encouraged in the belief that he is being visited by a supernatural creature by Stiff – who believes in the supernatural and claims to have seen an elf when he was a child. It is he who suggests the visitor is a mare and describes them as a woman, back from the dead, who feeds on life essence and normally has red hair. This fits for Krister as he has already described a pale woman with red hair in a green coat to his counsellor, Sven (Peter Stormare, the Batman Vs Dracula, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night & the Brothers Grimm). Stiff tells him that a line of linseed at the door should keep the mare at bay and the two concoct an (unsuccessful) exorcism including a “mare cross” (a pentagram) and a sheet soaked in sweat as mares don’t like human sweat – to me counter-intuitive as they cause sweat when producing the night terrors.

Peter Stormare as Sven

Sven doesn’t believe in the mare, of course, worrying that Krister is developing paranoid schizophrenia and wants to refer him to a psychiatrist. Sandra is also less than impressed with the idea and dismissive of the concept, even when their relationship is improving. She finds a notebook full of scribbled names including her, Linnéa, Eva and someone called Marianne (Viktoria Sätter), which looks like it supports Sven’s theory.

Sandra Larsson as Sandra

The film kind of split me. The revealing of what happened – on the bridge and in Krister’s relationships is non-linear and shown in dreams. But the on-running family drama was slow and Sandra was at the same time a story lynch pin and an annoying character who seemed to whine endlessly (well she is a teen, I suppose). Krister ends up coming across as sympathetic when facing his daughter’s barrage of angst – despite the fact that we know he is controlling of his daughter and has a dark past. This probably was helped as the film moved forward and Krister was victimised more and more by the mare (or became more and more mentally ill – depending on which you believe) as Thomas Hedengran absolutely sold this to us.

physically marked

The horror moments (and they are moments) were vastly superior to the family drama, Filip Tegstedt working around budget by showing glimpses and details only, using darkness to obscure his monster and an excellent use of sound. The sound of grinding teeth puts the viewer on edge, but in the right way to accentuate the scene. This less is more attitude continued into the film and I don’t know whether expanding those sections would have helped? Perhaps just a better pacing and perhaps a little less angst was the key. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Interesting Shorts: Pepopukin in Corsica

Also found in the Anthology, The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology is the story Pepopukin in Corsica. The story itself was published in 1826 in an Anthology series The Stanley Tales (the existence of which I have confirmed). In his introduction to the story, Editor Andrew Barger makes the argument that the story, which is only credited to AY, was written by Arthur Young. If that is the case the story was published posthumously as Young died in 1820 and *potentially* makes it older than The Vampyre: A Tale.

Sadly, we will never know the answer to that and at best we can state that the story was published in 1826, making it one of the pre-Victorian English language vampire tales. Interestingly the story does not contain a vampire but it does have a belief in vampires and someone acting as a vampire.

The story centres around Sir Giles de Montfort, a Frenchman whose fortune and reputation was made on the backs and failures of others. He travels to Corsica with the express desire of marrying Jane de Launay, a very beautiful maiden who had never met the man and who was in love with another. Sir Giles, however, was rich and this did much to turn the head of Jane’s father.

However Jane and her siblings come up with a plan to discredit Sir Giles. They discover he is superstitious and decide to suggest that their home is haunted by a vampire. Luckily for them, Sir Giles believes that he had been attacked by a vampire whilst in Poland. The assault is described thus: “at a convent near the town of Mersburg, in Poland, he had been attacked by a vampire, which had knocked out his teeth, beat his servants black and blue, stolen his books, his silver lantern, and drank all his wine.” The idea that a vampire’s attack might be more akin to a poltergeist than a blood drinker is consistent with some folklore. Sir Giles comes to believe that the vampire has followed him from Poland to Corsica.

The vampire is created by using ventriloquism and thrown voices to make the Knight believe it is haunting him (along with physical assault). This haunting voice calls “Pepopukin, Pepopukin!” to announce its presence and much of the lore we get in the story actually comes from some (rather clumsy in places) rhyming couplets the “vampire” recites. Within these couplets the vampire refers to himself as old Vampy.

Some of this lore is astounding, given when the story was published (and potentially written). One couplet goes:

“The Alps beneath my wings I thrust,
“And stain with blood the very dust.”

This is a very early reference to both vampiric flight and the idea that the vampire would have wings and one cannot underestimate the importance of this.

I mentioned the poltergeist type activity of the vampire but they are still, in this story, bloodsuckers. Sir Giles is told, “these vampires are most terrific animals; they suck every drop of blood, after innumerable and excruciating torments”. The attack might cause immediate death or the vampire may draw out the death. The vampire threatens to attack after he is married and then “suck his blood until he’s dead.” And suggests that “with his teeth, draw his black blood.” A confirmation that the vampire bites his victims. Interestingly the author ties in another folkloric creature, and an energy vampire, the nightmare, suggesting that, “Sometimes on nightmare’s backs I ride”.

The final thing to mention is a ritual to try and “help” the knight, which involves drawing magical sigils that cause a blue-flame to rise. How the tricksters achieved this effect is never answered.

This story is interesting as it may well be the third English Language vampire story but also, to me, because it suggests the vampire has the power of flight and wings.

Lost Girl – season 2 – review

Director: various

First aired: 2011-2012

Contains spoilers

Everyone’s favourite succubus, Bo (Anna Silk), is back and for those who have not read my review of season 1, I’ll repeat that although she is a succubus (and a fae, making her a natural creature rather than something either demonic or undead), she is certainly also an energy vampire hence being reviewed on TMtV.

The season doesn’t feature a standard vampire (the first season had a fleeting visitation within it) but like the first season does feature a vampire-like/genre interesting creature in one of the stories.

Anthony Lemke as Ryan Lambert

Bo is still unaligned (choosing neither dark nor light faction of the fae) and her love life is as complex as ever. Werewolf Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried, Underworld Awakening & the Death of Alice Blue) sacrificed his love for Bo to help her at the end of season 1 and so is keeping his distance, she is having an affair with human doctor Lauren (Zoie Palmer) but the doctor has a secret with regards her relationship and also falls for a dark fae, a loki named Ryan Lambert (Anthony Lemke) – in this universe loki are a species of fae and the God aspect was just PR on their behalf, but they are tricksters.

Raoul Trujillo as the Garuda

Her professional life is complicated also with a new Ash – the leader of the light fae – in the form of Lachlan (Vincent Walsh), a man who seems to have little tolerance for the unaligned succubus. She is also being stalked by the Nain Rouge (Hayley Nault), a fae that watches tragic events and knows that Bo is at the heart of a threat to all fae. That threat is from a creature called the Garuda (Raoul Trujillo, True Blood Season 1 & House of Frankenstein), a creature that is older than the fae and feeds on their conflict (which is quite vampiric itself, come to think of it, but one wonders what he fed on before the fae came to be).

the mare feeds

I mentioned a vampire like creature and this was a Mare (Kristina Pesic). Made famous in the painting the Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, the mare gives her name to the word nightmare. A creature that would hag-ride victims and feed off their energy whilst giving them nightmares we see her attack Bo in her sleep, an act that makes a psychic link between the mare and her victim. The victim then suffers nightmares and the mare feeds off their fear.

one of the better effects

The series itself had a cheap feeling about it, I’m afraid, something about the quality of the actual filming, the lack of special effects (there were some, and some later on where quite good, but all in all the creatures as humans negated the need for much in the way of effects) and the low body count on screen (large crowds of creatures were mentioned but unseen and the sets felt empty at times). I can’t say I noticed this as much in the first series and it was a shame as the stories are engaging.

Anna Silk as Bo

Of course, the stories being engaging are the main thing and whilst this won’t win awards it does entertain (me at least). I think, therefore, that this deserves it’s 6 out of 10. Thanks to Sarah who got me the boxset for Christmas.

The imdb page is here.