Father Brown: the Dead of Night – review

Director: Carys Lewis

First aired: 2024

Contains spoilers

The programme Father Brown has featured on TMtV before and, like that time, Ian contacted me and told me that the latest episode of the programme had a vampire theme – though more so than last time.

The series is set in 1950s Britain, where the amateur sleuth is a Roman Catholic Priest, the eponymous Father Brown (Mark Williams, Being Human (UK)) and, to be honest, I’ve never watched it after the last episode I featured here.

at the grave

In this we begin with a gentleman, Bernard Ross (Nicholas Woodeson), going through the nighttime graveyard and being spooked by bats. He gets to a grave and screams. Going to a phone box he makes a call and says that she (his daughter (Bethan Leyshon)) has risen as a vampire. The next day Father Brown is preparing for a requiem mass for said daughter when he is told that Ross is refusing to attend – he goes to his home.

crosses

There the door is opened by Gilbert Gallamore (Nicholas Asbury), who is holding a cross (and there is one on the outside of the door also). Father Brown bustles his way in and Ross is convinced that his daughter is a vampire and Gilbert is equally convinced. Before she died, a year before, she had grown pale and ill, she had mood swings and blistered in the sun and eventually she committed suicide. She is buried on hallowed ground because the church deemed her not in her right mind.

Ray Fearon as Silas O'Hagen

Evidence is a desiccated mouse (she’s been draining animals before working her way to humans) and the disturbed earth of her grave. Now… one might have asked why she had only just risen (as she has just started feeding small on mice) but the programme and protagonists do not. Equally, I’d have been concerned about the grave being dug up, if the soil was disturbed and the turf vanished – but the turf is not mentioned. Brown, of course, believes it to be poppycock but things are complicated when Silas O'Hagen (Ray Fearon) shows up, a vampire hunter returned from Romania, and a body appears with apparent fang marks in the neck.

hunter's kit

The episode trades in movie tropes but that’s ok as the setting is late enough that sunlight, for instance, has entered the megatext and public perception. It also uses porphyria but in a way that makes sense and doesn’t try to tie it to folklore or suggest it was known as a vampire disease and actually tie it into the findings around the disease from the 1950s. It also has the vampire hunter selling apotropaic measures to a panicked village which was mildly amusing.

a daughter returned

However, I’m sorry but the episode didn’t do it for me. I guess, as someone not invested in the series, then the series regulars meant very little and I found the figure of Brown sanctimonious (which he may be meant to be). The mystery was a tad vanilla, a moment with the daughter walking the halls was ill-explained (a dream, of course, but the dreamer’s reaction underwhelming). Whilst I know that now the Catholic Church will allow the burial of a suicide, and I don’t know for certain about the time period we are looking at, I found the idea that a 1950s priest knowingly allowed a burial of a suicide on church ground unlikely. Not for me, 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

The Vampire (2013) – review

Director: Geoffrey Orlowski

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

I noticed this on Vimeo and, having watched the trailer, decided it was likely worth a shot. What I watched was a definitely budget indie with a lot of heart and perhaps a tad too much ambition.

Of course, too much ambition is not necessarily a bad thing and for each moment you might accuse of being a misstep, this did make a correct call and there is a base here for the fimmakers to build from.

Alissa Scherb as Zee

We start in a desolate part of the industrial underbelly of America and a man is treasure hunting with a metal detector. Eventually he bends to look at a ping and, as he looks up he sees something and immediately calls the emergency services. What he has seen is dead cats… a lot of them (we discover there are fifty or so). Elsewhere Zelene (Alissa Scherb), known as Zee, is asleep on her couch when the phone goes – she freelances for a newspaper and the editor has had a tip, he sends her to check on the cats.

scene of the crime

When she gets there she meets a lone cop, Officer Jarrett (Mark Needham). New on the force he has been given the ‘plumb’ job of watching whilst animal control check things out. Animal control is represented by Ramsey (Mark Joseph Peek) – someone who has never let a bad pun go unuttered. What they discover is the cats are in various stages of decomposition – so someone has been bringing them there, as they were killed elsewhere, for a good few months. They all seem to have bite marks but whilst they don’t seem to be animal bites, they are too sharp for a human – especially the canines. As Zee leaves, we discover that the chief of police, Belmont (James S. Cacciatore), is her dad and a face in the bushes watches her.

following the journalist

So the first half of the film follows the investigation and builds a picture of Zee. Her father didn’t want her to be a cop as its too dangerous and is unimpressed with her freelance journalist gig (he is probably overly protective as her mother vanished years ago – but they don’t go into that). She is friends with Hunter (Mu-Shaka Benson, the Shed), a journalist at the paper, but has a mutual hate going on with journalist Ava (Màiri Mason) – Zee thinks Ava whored herself into the post, Ava thinks Zee throws herself at Hunter.

cat snack

I don’t want to spoil the red herrings and false leads but suffice it to say she eventually meets Oona (Rebecca C. Kasek). A feral looking homeless girl, with pale, scarred skin and sharp teeth who subsists on blood (and predominantly hunts cats and dogs). Zee befriends her and brings her home but things, of course, go wrong. In truth the befriending seemed to occur way too quickly, though spending more time on it would perhaps have dragged a film that is not always paced as well as it might be. We also get to see some of her backstory.

Wayne W. Johnson as Varg

So from a Doctor we discover that she has porphyria and her teeth have been filed – he can’t fathom the need for blood. From her backstory we discover that she was created by Dr Victor Aldini (Nathan Faudree). In her case he created her through genetic manipulation (and there is a connection back to Zee). He also created an angry creature Varg (Wayne W. Johnson, Tales of Dracula), who is essentially the wolfman, and a Frankensteinean creation that Oona named Big Brother (Eric Inman). The jump from what seemed like a more reality-based film – feral creature that drank blood notwithstanding – to a monster mash (though the others are barely in the film) did jar a little.

bottled blood

The film was well shot and the acting not bad through the film - although it was a big ask for Alissa Scherb to carry the film she did her darndest. I liked the makeup effects around Oona. Perhaps the investigation was a tad too drawn out, less red herrings and quicker into the monster mash may have helped the pacing as it was a little off in places, as I mentioned earlier. The motivations around the making of the monsters seemed to be little more than ‘because I can’, which is fine mad scientist behaviour but doesn’t answer all – especially not the sense of the Zee connection. There were moments that I expected which weren’t there – Zee meekly sitting in a room in the police station without demanding to know if she were under arrest, for instance. Moments aside we can say that this might not be the greatest indie film out there but it is a brave effort with a lot of heart and allows the filmmakers to really play, explore and hopefully come out with bigger and better beyond it. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable mention: Blood Bags

This is a 2018 Italian horror directed by Emiliano Ranzani and I did wonder whether to run this as a ‘use of tropes’ feature or an ‘honourable mention’. In the end I plumped for the latter and this is down to the opening intertitle, which tells us about Gunther Disease suggesting it is “a rare, recessive, metabolic disease affecting heme” and that “its main symptoms include anaemia and extreme skin photosensitivity.”

If that sounds familiar, it is because Gunther Disease is a congenital form of erythropoietic porphyria and, as we know, there has been a modern tie between porphyria and the genre when Dr David Dolphin erroneously connected porphyria with the vampire – suggesting that it was the root of the folklore of vampires but because of aspects that are out of the modern media vampire playbook. Indeed, the intertitle goes on to say, “it is believed to be the origin of the vampire myth.”

throat cut

Despite that intertitle (and the procurement of blood in the film) the film then steers pretty much away from the subject becoming a slasher and creature feature more than anything. Indeed, whilst it shows a transfusion later it in no way suggests the ingestion of blood (which would not satisfy the lack of heme production). It starts, however, with a couple of thieves. Tony (Riccardo Leto) and Alex (Emanuele Turetta) pull some of the wood boarding a window and break in to an abandoned villa, looking for an easy score. Tony is grabbed, however, by a creature (or so it would seem) and has his throat cut.

Makenna Guyler as Tracy

Next we meet American student Tracy (Makenna Guyler) and her friend Petra (Marta Tananyan). Tracy is obsessed with photography, whereas Petra rather likes to meet boys and go to parties. They meet a couple of boys and, here, is where the film fails. We meet the boys but they are not seen again and the girls are less than 2-dimensional. There is some indication that Tracy is not the photographer she thinks she is (a bitchy comment by one of the boys and a remark by Petra) but nothing is done with this in terms of being a pathway to her personality. We are left with two ciphers and find it difficult to care about their fates.

Petra is soon collateral damage 

Anyway, Tracy is told about a place in the town with a lot of older buildings, drags Petra along and finds her way into the building the thieves broke into (and the outer gate being locked behind them). Once inside Petra is quickly killed and Tracy is hunted by the creature – having found the thief Alex, who is till hiding in the building. We also see a character, Vittorio (Alberto Sette), but when we first see him it is his legs and a doctor’s bag only as he tries to procure blood from a whore – the reason for obfuscating his identity never emerges and he could have been shown from the get-go.

blood bag

Given that the whore 1) has had a blood test done for him and 2) knows him, the speed in which the visit goes south, causing him to murder her and then steal her blood is a tad strange. As it turns out he is the brother of the “creature” (Mario Cellini) and helps take care of him; getting him the blood he needs for transfusions. I put creature in inverted commas because he is a sufferer of Gunther Disease. He hides from the sun in the house (and thus Tracy can get away at one point with a camera flash) and his head and face have become deformed – something that can happen, normally due to sun exposure I understand.

ballerina

The film gives us an antagonist who we could sympathise with as a victim of circumstance, but doesn’t do anything to build sympathy or empathy with any character. It fails to offer a bucket of gore, as it might have done, steers away from torture porn, but does have one really interesting moment with cracking lighting, multiple creatures and a disfigured ballerina (Enrica De Pace) that stood out as misplaced in the film and seemed to be a nightmarish vision only.

the "creature"

As I mentioned the “creature” (so named in the credits) transfuses the blood and does harvest it from the victims – so arguably a moment of vampirism, if not a vampire. But the film misses more than hits and fails to strike the right notes.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Detective K: Secret of the Living Dead – review

Director: Suk-Yoon Kim

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers


I have to thank Leila for putting me onto this – the third Detective K film. This is a Korean series about an eighteenth-century Korean detective and so, like Rampant, this is a period set film. Also, like the zompire film this has a comedy element but, in terms of tone, this weaves it more delicately into the general film. You’ll also see that this has another textual element in common.

awkened

The film is set in 1789 and talks of blood-suckers appearing in the kingdom. As we are given a little background, we see a man digging up a grave and are told that vampires are strong, heal rapidly, can fly and the way to kill them is fire. The coffin contains a charred corpse and he drops blood on it but runs into the woods as soldiers start coming through the trees. He is mortally wounded as a thrown knife sinks into his throat. A woman (Kim Ji-won), the corpse revived, comes to him and he gives her a pouch before dying. She is caught at a cliff edge, shot, goes off the edge but then flies into the distance.

undercover

Detective Kim Min (Kim Myung-min) – K – and his “Watson”, Seo-pil (Oh Dal-su), are undercover at a travelling show, where they are posing as magician and assistant. K actually manages to wound Seo-pil during the swords through the box trick but their primary reason for being there is due to vampires – as suspicious deaths have followed the show. A child is kidnapped from the crowd and K intercepts but discovers that it is the show’s owner and son killing people but not because they are vampires. One of them suffers from porphyria and they are taking blood to treat that (it is, again, a mistaken view of porphyria and how it would have caused people to act).

combustion

Elsewhere a man staggers through the streets with a bite on his neck, he falls and turns, at which point a flaming arrow strikes him (from out of the night). The fire consumes him from inside out. K is approached by a woman to come and investigate the mysteriously burnt man (the second such death) – they are to host a royal lunar festival, the first in 30 years, and the King is to attend. K agrees but finds his lodgings are not as promised. He soon meets the revived woman – who has amnesia and whom he names Wol-Young. At first he doesn’t realise what she is (despite showing prodigious strength) as she can walk in the sun and the two work together to try and both solve the case and discover her story.

vampire

So, the reason she can walk in the sun is down to the fact that she hasn’t drunk any blood – if she does she will gain standard sunlight issues (though dying in sunlight leads to a tad of sparkling) but also regain her memories. The intertextual connection with Rampant that I mentioned is down to the source of the vampirism, which is a European ship that wrecked on shore with a vampire aboard. Likewise, Rampant’s zompires came from a European ship and this speaks of the monster coming from Europe – be that as a general commentary on Western colonialism, the pervasiveness of European culture generally, or a media commentary regarding the traditional folklore creatures being replaced by the Western hordes. This is not a new Asian trope – the Japanese film the Bloodthirsty Roses had the source of vampirism be a shipwrecked European, pushing the trope further by having him literally steal a succession of Japanese faces.

Wol-Young and K

That aside, this is a sumptuous film with some great comedy moments, including much in the way of slapstick – but that slapstick works really well. The three primary characters all work brilliantly. There are moments early on with a UFO abduction and zombies, told as events supposedly happening, that make a nice break from the less supernatural earlier instalments. The zombies make a more substantial appearance at the end – indicating the direction the series is likely to go in. The central narrative itself is, of course, a mystery, and I won’t spoil that. However, I will say it centres around murder, revenge and dynastic politics. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Ripper Street: A White World Made Red

I’d not, before this season 4 episode, watched any Ripper Street – a detective series set in Whitechapel at the end of the 19th Century. However my wife is a fan and had mentioned this episode to me and it came up in a chapter of Dracula an International perspective. In that volume it is described thusly: “The theme {connecting Dracula with the Ripper} was made even clearer through television’s Ripper Street episode, A White World Made Red set in 1897, the year of Dracula’s publication. In the story a vampire stalks the East End…” (P119).

Janice Byrne as Agniezka

Unfortunately, this isn’t correct. Whilst we get exsanguination, Stoker’s novel and the play of one of the fictional vampire tropes it is never suggested that a vampire stalks the East End. Rather we have a crime to be solved by series regulars Det Insp Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) and Set Sgt Drake (Jerome Flynn), along with American soldier/surgeon Jackson (Adam Rothenberg). We start with a woman, Agniezka (Janice Byrne), stood on an East End street. She is approached by a girl (Emelia Devlin) who leads her to a building. In a room a man is hung upsode down and she screams…

finding the dead

The room is an abattoir’s cold storage room and the police are called as the man is hung and exsanguinated. Blood is in a bucket below him. However, they realise that there was more to the scene than this and find Agniezka. As Jackson investigates he realises that the man was not killed by the exsanguination – he was actually executed by hanging (in prison) and his stolen corpse exsanguinated. Agniezka died from organ failure and had not been exsanguinated.

Emelia Devlin as the girl

Eventually we discover that the man had been in prison, where his blood had been taken and it was discovered (with very rough experimentation – bearing in mind that this is before blood typing) that it matched with the young girl’s blood. It was another Polish seamstress Magdalena (Julia Rosnowska) who was supposed to go to the rendezvous. Not realising that her specific blood was key she sent a friend in her place, actually to help the friend out. The girl has inherited porphyria and her disgraced Doctor father (Dylan Smith) is trying experimental transfusions to help her.

reading Dracula

The thing is, there is no connection in the episode made with the exsanguination, porphyria and vampirism. Any genre connection is made through Reid’s daughter, Mathilda (Anna Burnett), reading Dracula. We do get the line about 'blood is the life' as a further oblique connection. Where the episode made no sense was that there seemed no reason to transfuse (and thus kill) Agniezka, unless it was to see whether the blood of the dead could be transfused into the living… Indeed one wonders why the doctor felt he needed Magdalena when he had the fresh corpse (or why he needed the corpse when he had access to the living woman)?

bucket of blood

Nevertheless, whilst there is no historic connection between porphyria and vampirism, it is a sometimes-used trope in vampire films. The connection to Dracula is also interesting (and the rapid death of Agniezka might have been exaggerated but almost speaks to Lucy’s transfusions and the idea in some reworkings of the Dracula story that it was they, not Dracula, that killed her). In short this is of genre interest but at no point is it suggested that a vampire is haunting the East End.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature – review

Author: James B. Twitchell

First Published: 1987

The Blurb: In his Preface to The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature, James Twitchell writes that he is not interested in the current generation of vampires, which he finds "rude, boring and hopelessly adolescent". However, they have not always been this way. In fact, a century ago they were often quite sophisticated, used by artists varied as Blake, Poe, Coleridge, the Brontes, Shelley, and Keats, to explain aspects of interpersonal relations. However vulgar the vampire has since become, it is important to remember that along with the Frankenstein monster, the vampire is one of the major mythic figures bequeathed to us by the English Romantics. Simply in terms of cultural influence and currency, the vampire is far more important than any other nineteenth-century archetypes; in fact, he is probably the most enduring and prolific mythic figure we have. This book traces the vampire out of folklore into serious art until he stabilizes early in this century into the character we all too easily recognize.

The Review: For context sake, this book must be one of the most oft-quoted books in vampire academia and yet a friend who read it found it overblown and seeing vampires where there are none.

How could that be, I thought, in such a respected volume – but one must critically read these things for oneself, and so I did. And it is overblown, seeing vampires where none actually are (thanks Ida). Not in all things, I actually completely agree that there is a vampire undertone through Wuthering Heights, indeed I probably believe it more marked than Twitchell suggests. Yet in other things I am not so convinced.

There are problems that I would overlook just because of the age of the volume. The conflation of Vlad III and Count Dracula had not been thoroughly debunked in 1987, nor had the conflation of vampirism with Porphyria. Unfortunately, Twitchell’s sources for the former had a vested interest in stretching the truths around the historic Dracula. However, looking at material “quoted as vampire but not” and we get the old faithfuls of Bürger’s Lenore and Coleridge’s Christabel.

With the former I can think of no reason (other than Stoker quoting it over a hundred years later in Dracula) to connect the poem to vampirism. With the latter, well it was the work of Nethercott that suggested that Chrsitabel was a vampire poem (and, flimsily, that Carmilla was a reworking thereof) and I have never bought the argument. Actually, if an argument was made for psychic vampirism I might be more convinced. Twitchell brings little extra to the party but does decide to gender swap the character Christabel (suggesting that she represent Coleridge himself and falls into a pattern of young men seduced by older lamia). I remain unconvinced of both the vampirism and now of the gender swap. There are works examined that I feel I must revisit to investigate the alleged vampirism – mostly around the Poe works that Twitchell ties to vampirism.

Probably the most interesting part of the book was that of the artist/art as vampire. There is a Poe piece here in the form of the Oval Painting. It feels a shame that with regards this section that Twitchell did not include (and possibly did not know) the Vampire by Jan Naruda, which has vampiric artistry/artwork as its basis. Though out of his field of study George Sylvester Viereck’s the House of the Vampire would have added much to this chapter.

So, without going into a very long critical evaluation, what I can say is that there are aspects to this I find very flawed (and clumsy errors, such as suggesting Harker was married when he encountered Dracula’s vampire women) but other aspects that are food for thought or I agree with. It is still an oft-quoted tome and necessary if only for that reason. 6 out of 10.

The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend – review

Editors: Barbara Brodman & James E Doan

First published: 2013

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early nineteenth century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires.

A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? In this collection of sixteen original essays, the contributors shed light on this question. One essay traces the origins of the legend to the early medieval Norse Draugr, an “undead” creature who reflects the underpinnings of Dracula, the latter first appearing as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.

In addition to these investigations of the Western mythic, literary and historic traditions, other essays in this volume move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual, as well as the existence of similar vampiric traditions in Japanese, Russian and Latin American art, theatre, literature, film, and other cultural productions.

The female vampire looms large, beginning with the Sumerian goddess Lilith, including the nineteenth-century Carmilla, and moving to vampiresses in twentieth-century film, literature, and television series. Scientific explanations for vampires and werewolves constitute another section of the book, including eighteenth-century accounts of unearthing, decapitation and cremation of suspected vampires in Eastern Europe. The vampire’s beauty, attainment of immortality and eternal youth are all suggested as reasons for its continued success in contemporary popular culture.

The review: I do like books like this but they come with two problems. One is the price tag – though I understand that an academic piece is not going to sell as well and that influences the tag. The second is a variance of quality between contributors’ pieces and the Universal Vampire is no exception when it comes to that.

Looking at the blurb, for a moment, the premise of the book is looking for universal roots within the vampire genre. The book doesn’t actually do that, in totality at least, though it does take us on an international journey.

However the first chapter, Draugula by Matthias Teichert, certainly did this and I find the exploration of both Draugr and Revenant myths and legends fascinating. It is clear that there are heavy similarities to the vampire myth that developed amongst the Slavic nations. The biggest difference was the vampire seemed to have a fixed focus on blood drinking (often, it seems, assumed due to the corpse state when exhumed) and the other types not so much. Blood drinking and flesh eating do appear within some of the myths, but not so much in this essay, which nonetheless was informative and thought provoking.

Flying to the other end of the spectrum, the piece Biomedical Origins of Vampirism by Edward O. Keith could have been left out of the book altogether. A tired re-hash of the discredited porphyria theory (with an almost embarrassed admission that the theory does not fit) is followed by equally tired looks at Pellegra and Rabies. This misses the point that illness as a source of the myth does not rest with a condition suffered by the accused vampire (as they are dead by the time an assumption of vampirism is reached) rather it is with the victims. As such this chapter managed to completely avoid tuberculosis – a disease that we know certainly did influence folk opinion in the 19th century American panics. It was amusing, therefore, that the next chapter, Evidence for the Undead by Leo Ruickbie, shot down Keith’s chapter in a couple of paragraphs. The Keith Chapter also showed a lack of remembrance or knowledge of Dracula with suggestions that the Count avoided daylight (he certainly was abroad in daylight and one of the supporting quotes for this assertion is misattributed to the Count when it was Van Helsing’s dialogue) and only preyed on women prior to their marriage (Mina was married before she attracted the Count’s nightly visitations).

If that chapter is the low point in the book there was a Lilith chapter that was pretty light and a view that Stoker (and subsequently Dracula scholars) got details of Transylvanian society and cuisine wrong was met with a mighty shrug of the shoulders as it is clear that Stoker only used travel books to research that setting. In honesty the argument was very sound but the point of the debate was lost on me.

As well as the Draugula chapter and Ruickbie chapter particular favourites included a chapter by Ridenhour comparing Carmilla and Let the Right One In and Ruthner’s look at Visum et Repertum, the report of the Arnold Paole case.

All in all, for the full volume 7.5 out of 10.

Just a Bite: A Transylvania Vampire Expert’s Short History of the Undead – review

Author: István Pivárcsi

First published: 2012

The blurb: Historian and Transylvania traveller István Pivárcsi addresses the essentials in more than thirty bite size chapters: How did the vampire legend emerge in Eastern Europe? Did a disfiguring illness play a part? To what lengths did people go to keep vampires at bay? Who was the real Vlad the Impaler – and what tortures titillated him? Did “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Báthory deserve her reputation? What other bad things have melded with vampires in our imaginations? How have the undead come truly alive in literature and film?

A chronology of historical events and a glossary of terms further make Just a Bite a must for anyone who seeks a user-friendly short reference to the un-dead that separates facts from fiction.

The review: Oh dear. I wanted to like this I really did and, despite some misgivings from the start, up to a point this was going to get a reasonable review. Then we got to some certain chapters and the whole thing fell apart – not just around those chapters, they caused the misgivings about earlier chapters to come fully to the fore.

The misgivings started around the fact that Pivárcsi says the book is to be “not so much a scholarly work… rather than providing citations throughout I opted to write it more or less as the information came to me.” You may ask ‘what is wrong with that?’ I would say that it suggests the possibility that it is a bullshitter’s charter (quite frankly). That there is every possibility that the information within is not based on fact nor supported by sound research. As we will see this misgiving proved to be all too true…

Yet, at first, I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt, despite some issues. For instance Pivárcsi seems to suggest that Transylvania is the birth place of folkloric vampires (in the strictest sense of the word) – but then does qualify that it is actually the Slavic regions that is the source area. Despite contradicting himself like that I was taken by the chatty, easy to read style – but I was not too sure about the veracity of all his assertions.

When he reached historical figures my defences went up but he was quick to point out that Stoker new little of Prince Vlad III and conflated aspects of Vlad II in with his knowledge – on the other hand he indicates that Stoker’s knowledge was wider than it really was and doesn’t mention Wilkinson as the source of his information. Pivárcsi was also refreshingly even-handed when discussing Báthory. I should also note here that his chapter “Will the Real Dracula Please Stand Up” bears almost the same title as my article about the identity of Count Dracula – pure coincidence and Eminem (as per my article, at least) has a lot to answer for.

I did, however, get the impression that folklore and filmlore merged into one for Pivárcsi. The chapter on “Pellagra and Porphyria” underlined this as (whilst he seemed less than convinced about Porphyria) it was the reaction that suffers of Pellagra had to sunlight that figured as one of the central arguments and, as we know, the vampiric reaction to sunlight was born of the movies and not part of most folklore.

A chapter on real incidents (presumably in Romania) had no referencing at all – no dates, names (or pseudonyms) or locations. Frankly they could have been fiction rather than alleged witness statements, as we had nothing to go on. The chapters on other “creatures” (zombies, golems etc) had no real point and showed no myth bleeding as the blurb reproduced above suggests.

Then things went really wrong. He suggests that Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable is a vampire film – it isn’t but it does contain many tropes we would see later. He also says that it was from 1896 (it was) but then suggests it was released at the same time as Dracula (ie 1897). He goes on to give a synopsis of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens that indicates that he hadn’t seen the film for some time (at the very least) prior to writing the chapter, given that it is inaccurate – as an example he suggests that Hutter escapes the castle and is pursued by Orlock.

A more thorough synopsis of Dracula Halála (a lost film) than I have ever seen before makes us wonder, given the poor quality of this entire section of the book and the fact that his synopsis of a film readily available is wrong. He mentions a paucity of vampire films through the 1950s until Polanski’s the Fearless Vampire Killers in 1967 – conveniently forgetting the very important Hammer output (amongst other films). Then we get to the novel Dracula…

I’ll pick out some prime rubbish… and I quote… “Stoker also revisited the material, publishing the sequel titled Dracula’s Guest in 1913”. Stoker did not revisit the book that we are aware of. Dracula’s Guest was not a sequel (more an unused prologue). Stoker did not publish it from beyond the grave (he died in 1912). Florence Stoker, however, did publish the “missing first chapter” as a short story.

He then says, “After some analysis it can be stated that he [Stoker] wove four separate threads.” These were? 1) The historic Vlad Tepes. No. We know he used the name and a tad of back history, he was far from a thread that led to the writing of the novel and Pivárcsi does at least admit (again) that Stoker could know very little about the historic figure. 2) Emily Gerard’s Land Beyond the Forest. Actually Stoker used her Transylvanian Superstitions and the Scholomance examples Pivárcsi gives are from that second volume. As for Land Beyond the Forest there is no evidence that Stoker read the book and it does not appear in his notes. 3) Attending a series of presentations by Arminius Vambery – after the first he met him and had a private chat and met him several more time. This is complete fabrication. We know exactly how many times they met (twice, though the second time may have only been watching Vambery speak) and roughly what was spoken about (neither Prince Vlad III as some maintain or vampires as Pivárcsi suggests). How? Stoker tells us in Private Reminiscences (1906). 4) Stoker’s imagination – this, at least, is correct.

As an inspiration to Stoker he also directly mentions I Vampiri, an opera from 1812 by Silvestro Palma. This is intriguing, it is possible that Stoker saw the opera (not when written, of course, as he wasn’t born… but then Pivárcsi does have him acting from beyond the grave so why not before birth…) but I am not aware of any evidence that he actually did. When Pivárcsi gives a very sparse synopsis of the novel we again wonder whether he read the book, ever – suggesting, as he does, that Harker escaped the castle and returns to England “with the goal of preventing the Count from carrying out his diabolical plan.” Rather than his stay in hospital, with brain fever, and then helped home by Mina, doubting the events that happened (until they meet Van Helsing). Lucy, with her fate, and (other than Van Helsing) the other characters who hunt Dracula are not mentioned at all.

The inaccuracies and (quite frankly) fabrications really spoil this work. I cannot, therefore, recommend the book. 2.5 out of 10 reflects that the chatty narrative is very readable.

Guest Blog: Blood For the Living - review

Welcome back to Clark Nuttall with another guest blog, this time looking at a futuristic vampire science fiction novel.

Author: Kate Nevermore

First Published: 2010

Contains spoilers

In the near future, an experimental study alters gene therapy subjects into living vampires, giving them superhuman strength, speed, stamina and senses, yet leaving them dependent on blood for survival.

I first came across this book on Facebook, and on reading the blurb was intrigued enough to order a copy. It combines sci-fi and vampires, but in an effective way.

The author flips time periods throughout the book, from the near future to a point some 350 years in the future, to describe how the treatment for Porphyria altered the DNA makeup of the test subjects into vampires, and the formation of the secretive V Society.

This society is made up of the Founders (first test subjects), Seniors and Juniors, and we are introduced to a vampire society that has been corrupted over time by a reigning triumvirate, leading to a vendetta against one of the families, namely the Ricos family. This, of course, is where our main protagonist, Eliza Ricos, comes in.

The story follows her as she is aided and abetted in her attempts to outwit the seemingly all powerful rulers of the society, who have over the centuries grown the society's holdings, under the guise of Fourth Planet Farms into a corporation reminiscent of the Umbrella Corporation, from the Resident Evil series, with regards to its power and secrecy, whilst trying to discover the reason behind the assault on her family. I won't go into too much detail as to what happens, since that would spoil things completely, suffice to say Eliza is discovered by the Founders, who all the Seniors and Juniors had assumed to be dead, aiding her and even coming to her rescue when she is captured by the ruling Seniors and transported to their refuge.

The problems regarding blood supply are amply addressed within the book, so let's just say Fourth Planet Farms has a lot to do with it.

The book races towards its inevitable showdown between the Founders and the dishonest reigning Seniors, bringing with it an insight into the corruption rife within the society, at which point we also find more about Eliza herself that is hinted at throughout the story. How the tables are turned on the Seniors.......................buy it and read it to find out.

The characters may not be vampires in the conventional sense, not having fangs, but are easily identifiable as such, having superhuman strength, stamina, speed and senses, as well as an aversion to sunlight which is shown throughout the narrative. I have to be honest, I really enjoyed this book and hope that the promised sequel isn't too long in appearing. It's not particularly long at just shy of 200 pages but shows a lot of promise, weaving vampirism and science fiction into a thoroughly entertaining read.

A well-deserved 7.5 out of 10

Honourable Mention: The First Vampire: Don't Fall for the Devil's Illusions

This was a 2004 short, directed by Jason Todd Ipson and available to watch at Sloan Science and Film. The setting is fantastic, the film is set in Sweden in 1349 and the film itself looks (as far as I could tell given the streaming video) rather luscious.

I did have a wee problem with one of the premises behind the film and that was a shame as the core premise was a nice area to move into, though even with that there are reservations.

It starts at a lodge and a hooded figure (Clayton Barney) pulls a child (Stefania Barr) from her bed. Meanwhile Erik (Dan Merket) has been to see the priest, Father Anderson (Derrick O’Connor) for (what sounds like) confession. He then goes to the tavern before leaving town. His horse nearly runs down the figure, who drops the child and runs. At the church, with the sickly child, he claims to have seen a devil with fangs, pale skin and evil in his eyes.

erecting a cross

Sister Ingrid (Susan Duerden) arrives at a house to fetch Dr Jurgen (Ben Livingston, Dracula: Dead and Loving It) to the town. Four are ill after being attacked. They arrive, as a cross is being erected in the town entrance, and he examines a victim. She has a mark on her neck that looks like a bite but has not broken the skin.

The film then follows the hunt for the creature – found in a barn at one point and screaming in pain as he runs out in daylight – and Jurgen’s search for the medical truth behind the illnesses. Things are confused further as Ingrid becomes ill in her lungs – but has no marks.

Now comes where I thought both the strength and weakness of this lies. This is spoiler heavy so you might want to look away.

a victim

They do catch the vampire, and despatch him by stake and immolation, but the deaths – as an intertitle tells us – continue as the suffering is from bubonic plague. I liked the plague idea, but bubonic seems unlikely a candidate as the buboes would be in the armpits and groin as well as the neck, those ill would not lie so peacefully and the explosive diarrhoea would be telling. Also Ingrid seems to have pneumonic plague but she would likely have been dead in 24 hours. A better plague to have used would have been septicemic plague, as was used in the classic Isle of the Dead. However, I could live with the idea that plague was mistaken for the work of the devil in the form of a vampire.

Ben Livingston as Dr Jurgen

I had a bigger problem when the intertitle suggested that the scapegoat suffered from Gunther’s Disease (spelt incorrectly) and then named it vampire’s disease. Gunther’s disease is congenital erythropoietic porphyria and the idea that it is “vampire’s disease” is a modern conceit based on bad science. The intertitle claims that sufferers can display the following symptoms: extreme photosensitivity, which is true but was not a part of vampire mythology until Nosferatu. It suggests they can have growth of fangs – some porphyria sufferers can suffer from necrosis of the gums or browning of the teeth due to deposits. Finally it suggests that they have “an insatiable thirst for iron found in blood” – which is absolutely untrue. Firstly some sufferers lack haem, which does consist of (amongst other chemicals) an iron atom but… a sufferer could not absorb haem by drinking blood nor would they crave blood. The association of porphyria with vampirism was, as I say, bad science with a lack of knowledge in respect of folkloric vampires and only served to cause actual sufferers harm with the association. I could have lived with this if he were a porphyria sufferer who was used as a scapegoat for being different (Scandinavia has a larger than average incidence of porphyria) if it hadn’t been for the bad science mentioned at the end.

That moan aside, this seemed worthwhile and a feature length film lurks at the heart – with some scientifically accurate changes going hand in hand with an expansion.

The imdb page is here.

Killer Love – review

Director: Lloyd A Simandl

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers

Lloyd A Simandl obviously has a thing for the Báthory legend as this is the third film by him, which we have looked at, that uses the Countess in one way or another; the other two being Blood Countess and Demon’s Claw.

In this case Báthory is a background to the story and not a character herself. It also nearly became a ‘Vamp or Not?’ rather than a review as there isn’t really a vampire in this, nor someone who uses blood to bathe in ala Báthory. Rather we have bad science and serial killing.

the mask

The credits are interspersed with images that have been videoed, scenes that look like vacations, auctions of girls via the internet (yes, before the Hostel films Simandl had something a little similar, certainly some of the girls our serial killer gets are from the internet) and other sources. Watching is a masked figure and, to be fair, the mask offered a tad of atmosphere though it wasn’t worn by the killer but another of his victims, strapped to a chair and being initiated into the killer’s demented world.

David O'Kelly as Raymond

The killer is a man called Raymond (David O’Kelly) and I will say we have a cornucopia of accents from Eastern European (we are meant to be in Bohemia) to English with our killer and the cop we later meet, Karlion (Noel Le Bon), and American thrown in with the film’s main heroine, Danielle (Kari Wuhrer) – who at least is meant to be American. Raymond looks a little like a demented Phillip Schofield (sorry that’s a UK reference) who has taken to wearing satin shirts and leather trousers.

funny kind of love

During his speech to the unnamed victim he tells her that Elizabeth (Báthory) knew that blood was the source of fulfilment but never knew the love that he feels for all his girls. He suggests that one of the girls reached enlightenment and is still with him – that suggested an accomplice but is actually a red herring; the girl is not mentioned again and, though he has an accomplice, the relationship between him and his accomplice is more familial. He suggests that he will make her, the victim, live forever – the inference being through her blood in his veins.

Teresa and Danielle

Meanwhile Danielle is being driven through the Bohemian countryside by Teresa (Tereza Duchková). Danielle is working on a thesis on Báthory (making her a student, though it is strange that they don’t mention the fact that she is a mature student as Kari Wuhrer is three years older than me and was mid-thirties when this was made… I’m just saying). They are staying in a cabin, suggested by Teresa’s university – and we see hidden cameras within. That night Danielle has a prophetic dream of running through the woods, chased by Raymond as he stands above her with a knife in hand and weaves around like a moron (having planted some drugs where they will be found by the girls).

about Báthory

The next day the two girls go look at a sign about Báthory and, honestly, that’s about all they do. There is a scripted moment where Danielle feels guilty because they are sat around looking at the landscape rather than researching and then she turns round and suggests that she has all the research she needs. A few photos of the signpost, one wonders if the trip from the US was worth her effort! Incidentally the post sets off a psychic reaction that is not followed up on.

Teresa plays Dracula

They decide to stay overnight and then head back to civilisation in the morning.They find the drugs (in a Venetian snuffbox cast in the shape of a mask), get stoned and Teresa does her Dracula impression as they talk smutty. However, the appearance of Raymond soon puts a dampener on their fun and games. Danielle wakes in a cell, Teresa is masked and watching video feeds of girl collection and both are being drugged (as are the other girls he has in cells). However, being a spunky American, she has the wherewithal to knee him between the legs and escape his underground lair. She ends up in hospital where she has to convince the cop and a doctor, Dr Cook (Elin Spidlová), that she is telling the truth and isn’t just a mad junky (due to the track marks he left in her arm).

cramping

I mentioned bad science… Raymond bleeds the girls through tubing into jars. These he transfuses into his own veins, so it is a blessed miracle that he isn’t dead yet. Why is he doing this? Because he suffers, we later hear, from porphyria. Yes it is more bunkum based on Dolphin’s discredited theorem of vampirism… Báthory, the film claims, was also a sufferer (not that we know of) and there was a sufferer in England who was known as the Vampire Killer as he took blood (not actually likely, porphyria sufferers do not crave blood). It also claims sunlight aversion (forgetting the media source of vampires and sunlight, Murnau having invented the destructive connection in Nosferatu) and garlic aversion. He keeps cramping due to ulcers.

Renfield Syndrome?

Actually, given the obvious joy in which he revels in rolling in the blood (despite supposedly collecting it to alleviate his condition) and thus murdering the girls to achieve that end, the likelihood is he has an underlying Renfield syndrome – though this isn’t mentioned. He ties the blood into love so one wonders whether there was a sexual element to this also – Simandl ain’t saying.

Danielle imprisoned

Which is the odd thing about this film, Simandl does not throw in the softcore sexploitation for which we know him well and which probably would have raised the score slightly! The acting is good enough for what the film is, but the film isn’t really anything to write home about. Bad science, confusing cuts back and forth through time (in the film timeline and via Danielle’s mysterious psychic flashes) that seemed to be more filler than anything else. Implausible coincidences (in respect of the accomplice) and some of the worst police procedure ever. Not a great movie; 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.