Feed – review

Director: Marco van Bell

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

This Irish release mixes the world of influencers with the legend of the dearg-due (in variant spelling dearg-dul). Quoting Bane, it “is a type of vampiric REVENANT from Ireland that has been feared since the days before the introduction of Christianity. These ancient creatures are described as looking like a beautiful yet pale woman who can be seen strolling aimlessly through graveyards at night. It uses its beauty to lure men to it and then kisses them on the mouth. When it does so, it drains them of their blood. To stop a dearg-due from continued assaults, its grave must be found and a cairn erected ond top of it, trapping it beneath. Ireland’s most famous dearg-due is said to be buried beneath a strongbow tree. About four times a year it is able to escape from its grave and feed.”

The film changes the mythology but the changes work (mostly). The influencer side did threaten to undermine the film as the film portrayed them as unlikeable – but one particular ex-influencer worked really well, adding depth to what could have been a vapid cast of characters. However the film begins in 1897 – which, of course, was the publication year of Dracula, though there is no connection with Stoker other than that. We hear banging, it is night and two guys wearing blindfolds on carry a woman (Niamh Hogan).

the boy

The man banging a stick against the rock of a dolmen is also blindfolded and says they must close their eyes to her lies. The men manoeuvre her headfirst into a deep narrow hole dug into the earth. In, she begins to scream. The reactions are different, the man who was beating the dolmen with a stick starts to bash his own head against the rock, one runs into the wood and the third frantically claws dirt into the hole, burying her. The camera follows the running man and he suddenly stops, he says it is done but he has been stabbed by a boy holding a sword. The boy runs his finger through the blood on the blade and rubs it over his teeth…

messaging

A vehicle drives through the Irish countryside. We see the text conversation between Nessa (Daisy Jelley) and Sean (Oskar Smith) bitching about *her* being silent – referring to passenger Orla (Grace Collender). Sean is ordered to do something. Nessa is an influencer, Sean her assistant/collaborator. He starts to film the people in the car, the driver is Austin (Rhys Mannion), Nessa’s boyfriend and photographer. Also in the car is the aforementioned Orla and her boyfriend Lorcan (Clinton Liberty) – he gets angry when the camera is turned on them. Later we discovered that Orla was an influencer with a large following but the use of her camera caused an accident, a year before, where her family died and she was pulled back from the brink of death. Whilst the trip is to shoot footage for Nessa it is also an intervention – though the accusation levelled later that it is less for her and more to enhance Nessa’s following is probably accurate.

Orla blurred

Getting to the house – in the middle of nowhere – we see the awful influencer attitude when Nessa berates Austin for not driving in slowly enough for her to get intro footage. The house is locked but soon Nora (Charlotte Bradley) arrives to give them a key. They start setting up but Orla is literally haunted by her PTSD and wanders off into woods, following a voice only she hears, the others following to get footage. In some respects Orla is the true undead of the film; pulled back from the brink of death, she wants to die but is afraid to because she remembers death as nothingness. At one point a photo of her and Nessa has Orla blurred, as though she can hardly be captured and another time her reflection vanishes, though that is a vampire induced illusion. She leads everyone to the dolmen – which has dearg-due carved into it. There is an icon hanging and fashioned from hawthorn, on which Orla pricks her finger – some blood falls to the ground.

the dearg-due

Things escalate quickly with the dearg-due emerging from the earth and going to the house. Before that Sean has looked up the name and found a mythology that suggests it is the first vampire and was a fallen angel that merged, initially, with a Celtic warrior. It preserved the body of its host for an unnatural span by drinking blood and when the body finally rots it moves to a new host – we discover later that it is Orla’s presence and blood that have brought it back as it wants her body. They are trapped by being buried headfirst under hawthorn and stones. What didn’t quite gel for me were those locals living nearby and awaiting the dearg-due's return – we are told they have tried rituals to bring it back, I don’t think anyone asked why they didn’t just dig her up.

the entity emerges

Other lore we get is that she can make people see what she wants (and the blindfolds at the beginning was to try and prevent this) and her blood getting in a person's eyes, which burns, gives her control of that person. We see her start to haemorrhage deliberately and essentially turn into a pool of blood, in which form she escapes from a room through a drain and reconstitutes as a hand emerges from the blood to touch into someone's spilled blood – this struck me as a more visceral form than the standard fog/mist often used. Sunlight burns the host but not the possessing entity.

influencer culture

The acting in this works – Nessa bugged me intensely and she was meant to. The ranges needed generally were limited and the actors flexed comfortably in those ranges but much more was needed for Orla and, whilst she started as a listless revenant of a character, the full film saw her as a nuanced character (and the only one who elicited true audience sympathy) - Grace Collender carried that transformation well. The effects worked well enough for a budget production, and I liked the use of the dearg-due as a vampire type. A message about the darker side of influencer culture was a tad on the nose but I did enjoy this. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Guest Blog – Rusalka, A key to Early Vampire Film – TMtV 20th anniversary

It’s with great pleasure I welcome David Anwnn Jones to the blog. Whereas with other guest bloggers for this 20th anniversary celebration I have put a little forward of how I met the guest, with David he wrote something on that himself and so I’ll hand straight to him:

It is a great pleasure to be asked to write a post for Andy Boylan’s ‘Taliesin meets The Vampires’ twentieth anniversary year. I have long admired this vampire film expert’s writing with its wide knowledge of vampire lore and cinematics. In 2016, I convened the World Vampire Congress, Whitby where Andy delivered his fascinating talk on Stoker and vampire bat iconography. Since then, I have followed his blogs which spread an awareness of film vampires over a wide range of transnational environments, often remote from Hollywood. I have also enjoyed our extensive correspondence.

In his appreciation of Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy’s The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead (2018) from 9 Sept 2019, Andy writes:

 

Now mermaid is a misnomer here and it is what the title has been translated to from the Russian title Rusalka: Ozero myortvykh. The rusalka is from Slavic lore and is a form of restless dead. Zelenin (in Russian Folk Belief) suggests it is a suicide or murder victim who, in either case, was drowned. There is an entry in Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology that has it as a type of fae created when a child dies before baptism or an adolescent dies a virgin.

The foundation myth here is that of the malefic underwater female who lures handsome men beneath the surface to enjoy them sexually and then drains them of life. Andy certainly reads the Rusalka as an energy vampire. Bane goes on to write she’s a ‘vampiric fae’ and member of the Unseelie Court. Vladimir Propp and Linda Ivanits called the rusalka one of the ‘unclean dead’, a revenant. Thomas J. Garza in The Vampire in Slavic Cultures writes that the boundary between vampires and the rusalka as predatory outsider was porous in village lore. Such links reveal that the Rusalka is the oldest surviving vampire figure in cinema history in an extant film, predating F W Murnau’s Nosferatu by over a decade and Lugosi’s Dracula by 21 years.

The rusalka myth is perennially fascinating. galvanising directors and writers today. Podgaevskiy’s film is surrounded by other cinematic she-vampires of the deep: Petr Weigl and Václav Kaslik’s respective versions of Dvorak’s opera, 1963 and 77, Aleksandr Petrov’s animated Mermaid Rusalka 1996, Gary Whitson’s Destiny: Vampire Mermaid 1999, Sebastian Gutierrez’s She Creature 2001, François Rousillon’s Rusalka 2002 TV movie, Anna Melikyan’s Mermaid/ Rusalka 2007, Don E. Fauntleroy’s Bering Sea Beast / Beast of the Bering Sea 2013. Milan Todorovic’s Mamula /Nymph/ Dark Sea /Killer Mermaid 2014 and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, 2015. Nearer to the present, Perry Blackshear, Lona Fontane, Dale Thomas Cizmadia and Claudiu Mitcu’s have all made Rusalka films. Though the primary means of predation in these films is drowning, there is no shortage either of feeding, directly and by osmosis, strangulation, sharp fangs, blood-letting and sucking, and other vampiric depredation

I wish to make a bridge from these films, stretching back to the early dawn of Russian horror cinema. Vasili Goncharov’s foundational Rusalka film of 1910 is based on the play by Alexander Pushkin and stars Andrey Gromov as The Prince, Vasili Stepanov as The Miller and Aleksandra Goncharova as Natalya, the miller’s daughter and subsequently the Rusalka queen.

 

The film starts with Natalya, visibly longing for her lover, the Prince, who, when he arrives, throws her aside to marry a woman of royal blood. Distraught. Natalya drowns herself in the river. Yet, at the wedding feast, her ghost appears accusing the Prince, even within the nuptial bedroom. For eight years, the Prince obsesses over the dead working-class girl and finally rides back to mill, encountering her father who, driven mad with grief, imagines that he is now a raven. Led by Natalya, the rusalka spirits appear, amongst them a young girl who could be Natalya’s unbaptised daughter (unborn when her mother committed suicide). Natalya and the young girl and others lure the prince into the Dnieper river. His present wife arrives later only to find his clothes. On the riverbed, in what initially seems to be a Mélièsan tableau, Natalya, now queen of the Rusalka, caresses his corpse while other her maidens perform a swaying dance. For 1910, the same year as Frankenstein, the film, (which can be viewed here) is a considerable achievement, more indebted to the structure and rhythms of Pathé early films than Edison.

The cinematic Rusalka has survived perhaps because, whatever the seismic pull from Western horror cinema, it has proved difficult to Dracularize a Slavic female water-fiend. (Yet, the ‘feeding of the beast’ in Luc Besson’s Dracula (2025), whereby a feral mer-maiden rises to threaten horrified fairground visitors might hint that pressure is now being exerted in the opposite direction), The rusalka’s miraculous survival from a fractured and decimated Russian film industry also opens the gate for an awareness of the first female age of vampire films. She was originally part of a constellation of film’s female vampires, a whole distinctive age 1901-21: the Lilith of Lilith and Ly, Vera in Afterlife Wanderer (1915) the Pannochka of Goncharov’s Viy (1909) and the cat vampire of Nabeshima (1912), all notorious female monsters in their time but starring in films now lost. Yet their early dominance is still attested in surviving stills, scripts, reviews and posters.

I do not wish to be politically glib, but the story of a young woman mis-used by a prince and who subsequently commits suicide but takes her revenge from beyond the grave is not without strong resonance in 2026. Like any vivid revenant of the screen, even after 115 years and against all the odds, Aleksandra Goncharov’s vampiric mer-demon still rises towards us from the shadows of pre-Soviet cinema with a flickering intensity. She points at the feckless prince over his wedding feast. She follows her faithless lover right into his marital bedroom accusingly. She and her daughter stalk the shores of the Dnieper. They lure the royal philanderer into the river-depths. In her underwater apotheosis, she will instate her revenge and caress her man’s prone body, absorbing all his former strength. She will not lie down. Happy Anniversary ‘Taliesin meets the Vampires.’ Long may you run. The first age of vampire cinema was female.

David Annwn

David Annwn is author of Gothic Machine, Sex and the Gothic Magic Lantern and Gothic Effigy. He is also author of the first book on vampires in early film: Vampires on the Silent Screen, Re-envisaging the First Age of Cinematic Horror and essays in each volume of The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic series. A magic lanternist, David is a recognised authority on E-G Robertson’s Phantasmagoria show, being the first to locate its original site. Sir Christopher Frayling called David’s work ‘fascinating materials and connections: Vampire archaeology.’ Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney has called his writing: ‘wonderfully sympathetic and accurate.’

Guest Blog - Has Ireland become the new Transylvania? - TMtV 20th anniversary

It’s with great pleasure that I welcome Dan Klefstad and Eva Vertrice to the blog. I met them individually through reviewing their books, A Fury by Eva and Fiona’s Guardians by Dan. But as well as authors, Dan and Eva are co-hosts of Vamp Chat with Dan & Eva and they have been as good as to invite me on the podcast not once but twice. Without further ado, here’s their blog.

When you hear the word “vampire” you might envision centuries-old revenants from Romania or other eastern European countries. They might have a Slavic accent similar to Béla Lugosi or perhaps Count von Count of Sesame Street. They might wear a long black cape and have a gentlemanly air about them. But what if this perception was changing? What if modern vampires had an origin story more Celtic than Slavic?

In recent years pop culture brought us Angel, the title character in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff which ran from 1999-2004. In 2016, AMC adapted the comic book series Preacher that casted Joseph Gilgun as the vampire Cassidy, best friend of the main character, a pastor with a criminal history. From 2011-2014, the vampire Aidan Waite roomed with a ghost and werewolf in the BBC series Being Human. And then there’s Remmick, the banjo picking, jig dancing vampire from the film Sinners, played brilliantly by Jack O’Connell.

What do these vampires have in common? They all hailed from The Emerald Isle. 

But Ireland is not a new hotspot for vampires. In fact, it has a rich history of undead lore.

The 1870 book, The Origins and History of Irish Names and Places, by Patrick Weston Joyce, introduced 19th Century readers to Abhartach, a chieftain Joyce describes as a “dwarf” who lived in Londonderry:

This dwarf was a magician, and a dreadful tyrant, and after having perpetrated great cruelties on the people he was at last vanquished and slain by a neighbouring chieftain; some say by Fionn Mac Cumhail.

They buried Abhartach in a standing position, but the next day he returned to his haunt. The chieftain who slew him the first time, did so again and buried him as before. Abhartach again rose and terror spread throughout the county. Joyce continues:

The chief then consulted a druid, and according to his directions, he slew the dwarf a third time, and buried him in the same place, with his head downwards; which subdued his magical power, so that he never again appeared on earth. The laght raised over the dwarf is still there, and you may hear the legend with much detail from the natives of the place, one of whom told it to me.

Some modern versions have Abhartach rise from his grave to drink the blood of his subjects {Ed – Abhartach is at the centre of the Irish film the Boys From County Hell}. In Bob Curran’s book, Was Dracula an Irishman?, the chieftain who slays the revenant consults an early Christian saint instead of a druid, and is told that Abhartach is one of the neamh-mairbh, or walking dead, and that he can only be killed with a sword made of yew wood. Then he must be buried upside down with thorns surrounding his grave and a large stone placed on top.

The Dearg Due is another vampiric entity in Irish folklore. Pronounced DAH-ruhg DU-ah, it means “red bloodsucker,” and refers to a female demon that seduces men and drinks their blood.

According to this legend, a beautiful young woman fell in love with a local peasant, which was unacceptable to her father. A greedy man, her father forced her to marry a rich chieftain who imprisoned her and treated her terribly. The only path out of such abuse, she reasoned, was death, so she killed herself and was buried near Strongbow’s Tree in Waterford. On the anniversary of her death, she rose from her grave to seek revenge. She attacked her evil husband first, then her father, sinking her teeth into their necks and draining them dry. Now with an unquenchable thirst for human blood, she continued to prey on young men, enchanting them with her beauty, and luring them to her grave, sparing none.

Dracula author Bram Stoker, an Irishman, would’ve been familiar with these tales. So why did he decide to take his story down a different path instead of relying on this known local lore? Instead, he set much of his story in Transylvania, a place he had never visited. He leaned heavily on Emily Gerard’s 1885 essay, “Transylvanian Superstitions” and its expanded book form, The Land Beyond the Forest to introduce us to Vlad Dracula, aka Vlad III or Vlad Tepes which means “Vlad the Impaler.” Stoker was intrigued with the name “Dracula” which meant “son of Dracul” but also translated to “devil.” Blend these two, “Son of the Devil,” and you have the perfect name for a monster.

Still, there’s no evidence that Stoker based his character on the Wallachian warlord. In her essay, “Filing for Divorce: Count Dracula vs Vlad Tepes,” Professor Elizabeth Miller points out that Stoker’s research notes for Dracula fail to indicate that he had detailed biographical knowledge of Vlad III. Miller adds there’s no current evidence that Stoker had knowledge of Vlad III’s reputation for cruelty, his use of impalement as a punishment, or even his full name. This absence of a direct connection between Count Dracula and Vlad III makes it easier to conclude that the world’s most famous vampire may be more Irish than we thought.

Perhaps Bram Stoker did draw on his Irish roots a bit more than originally believed, and that Count Dracula hailed from a lush, green glade, surrounded by fairies & leprechauns with pots of gold.

Dan Klefstad & Eva Vertrice

Dan & Eva will moderate a panel discussion titled, “Has Ireland become the New Transylvania?” This will take place at The Imaginarium Convention, July 17-19, 2026, at the Holiday Inn Louisville East in Kentucky. They are excited to welcome Dacre Stoker, great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker, to the panel along with several other authors and vampire creatives. For more information visit entertheimaginarium.com or vampchatwithdanandeva.com or reach out to Dan & Eva at vampchatwithdanandeva@gmail.com. It’s going to be an exciting discussion.

Draculaw – review

Director: Scott Deschaine

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

A horror comedy (mostly a comedy, to be fair) this not only tickled me but also used a rather unusual trope for the vampire. Of course the title brings Dracula to mind but there is no indication that the vampire at the centre of the film is Dracula, Referred to throughout as The Counselor (James Donahue) he is a lawyer (whereas Dracula hired lawyers) and it is with this vampire plying that trade that we start.

a vampire's contract

Though we only see hands, we hear the conversation between the Counselor and his client Frederick Rockman (Tom McFarland). Rockman wants to start a lawsuit against a rival and, whilst it sounds as though the vampire is trying to caution him, in fact it is clear he tempts him and has him sign a contract. The lawsuit fails and a series of counter claims are lodged against Rockman, eventually settled, though almost ruining him, there then comes the matter of the vampire’s invoice…

Sarah Dewey as Mary

We meet Mary Rockman (Sarah Dewey) as she takes her father into the nursing home. As she goes in she meets a youngish man, mistaking his room for a media room. He is Arc Gabriel (Joshua Greene) – the owner of the nursing home. Once a crack young lawyer, five years earlier something happened that smashed his confidence and he gave up law and moved into the nursing home. Mary tries to solicit his help, at first to no avail. However, after her father passes, his lost briefcase is discovered and they realise they share the same nemesis, at which point he relents – this renewed confidence shows in the filmmakers removing the makeup that made him look haggard.

James Donahue as the Counselor

Arc lost his briefcase when, celebrating a win with his engineer girlfriend Penny (Bessie Amato), the bridge they were on collapsed (invariably due to the Counselor). Her head was never recovered… Meanwhile the vampire is not only a lawyer but he has a pet politician (Dennis Mowery) and makes him get safety laws passed that are annoying and bog people down (there are a range shown through the film and they all take the concept of health and safety to ridiculous levels). This is done for a reason, it causes people to loose time and the vampire feeds on the lost time. He also cannot break a law (or at least cannot break a law and get caught), which is the apotropaic of the film. We, at the end, see him in a nebulous, smoke form where Arc combats him with the law (in the form of a book).

a vampire in the old country

There are various monsters (many seen in the coda) and Arc gets some lore help from home resident Sasha (Adela-Adriana Moscu, One for the Road) who tells him about vampires in the old country – and we get a flashback of a vampire, who is described as ghastly and far from the movie image of a vampire – and also points out that fellow home resident Mrs Hoover (Gerri Weagraff) is an energy vampire. But it is our lawyer vampire that is most fascinating in this with his diet of time. Of course the conflation of lawyer and vampire is telling in and of itself and the film plays with a satirical look at “health and safety gone mad”.

skull-headed bridal revenant

The film isn’t perfect… the haggard makeup for Arc is, quite frankly, rather stage-like, some of the green screen work is very obviously green screen and it isn’t evenly paced. That said some of the effects are brilliant. A skull-headed bridal revenant (Heather Cole) is brilliantly realised, for instance. There isn’t much horror to this; though the vampire's lower face is always covered (due to a horrendous accident, is the cover story, though likely due to a monstrous visage), he is actually more designed to be annoying. The main thrust is comedy, and I was amused, and enjoyed the unusual lore. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Jim Haggerty's Unnatural Causes

A 2025 portmanteau film directed by Jim Haggerty, there are three stories here and, whilst arguably, there might be a revenant in one of the segments, the reason for the mention is the wraparound and that is both a fleeting visitation of someone who may be acting as a vampire, rather than being one.

The film starts with a news report of the death of a minor celebrity. Vlad Eterno (Baron Misuraca, 60 Seconds to Die & Seymour the Unfortunate Vampire) was an actor in low budget horror films, whose films veered towards the really poor eventually, but he was due a comeback by making a TV series for the same channel the news is on. The newscaster reports Eterno’s alleged age as 300-years-old.

out of the coffin

A couple of Goth women are let into the funeral home to see the body before the family get there. They discuss how he was meant to be a vampire – so with the mythology of being 300 and a vampire, likely acting as a vampire. They give him a rose and he awakens, gets out of the coffin and gives them a film tin with the first three episodes of the series Unnatural Causes (our segments obviously) and tasks them to get them seen. He then leaves; getting into a black Cadillac, which then drives off and vanishes – so perhaps there was some truth to his supernatural claims? Maybe it was a publicity stunt? But, from our point of view, that’s it; bar his intro segments to each short film, a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

Domnisoara Christina – review

Director: Viorel Sergovici

Release date: 1992

Contains spoilers

A little background, if I may, of how I came to know this film existed. On occasion I am known to attend the excellent online lectures arranged by Romancing the Gothic - favouring, of course, the vampire related. I spotted one by Maria Cohut entitled Revenants as Abject Feminine in Romanian Gothic Horror: Mircea Eliade’s ‘Miss Christina’ (1936). The word revenant got me… then as I looked into the book I noted it used the term strigoï. More excited now I looked to track the book and discovered that there were two Romanian films based on it. This being the first and so I managed to track it down and watch this the day before the lecture. Note this is not easily come by, it is a VHS quality rip from Romanian TV and, I suspect, fan-subbed. There was also a 2013 version that I will also look at.

Christina murdered

So Eliade’s story surrounded strigoï and, from within the lecture I ascertained that in his non-fiction work he recognised both the strigoï vii as living witch-like persons and strigoï mort as more vampiric and fluctuating from spectral to corporeal. This film, I understand, follows the book pretty darn closely. It starts with Miss Christina (which is the English title) the sound of a crack of gunfire and she falls dead. This places the event in the historical peasant’s revolt of 1907. Later, however, we get to hear that Christina was deemed as wicked anyway (beyond being a landowner). The film shows us a portrait of her.

Adrian Pintea as Egor

Moving to the 1930s and the painter Egor Paschievici (Adrian Pintea) has visited Sanda (Raluca Penu), with whom he has a romantic entanglement. As they walk through the hall of her family house he tries to pull her to him but she pulls away and says they have a new guest. They enter the dinning room and her mother, Mrs Moscu (Irina Petrescu), introduces Professor Nazarie (Dragos Pîslaru). They sit to eat but Sanda’s younger sister, Simina (Medeea Marinescu), insists she have the chair near her mother to which the Professor acquiesces. A note about Simina, the dialogue referring to her describes her as young – indeed in the novel she is nine – but Medeea Marinescu was eighteen and the character looks teen. I suspect this is because of sexual connotations later.

the portrait

One thing of note is Mrs Moscu eating obsessively, shovelling fork after fork of food into her mouth. Egor has also noted that she seems to lose strength as the sun sets, sometimes falling into lethargy. The next day Simina reports having dreamt about Aunt Christina – Mrs Moscu’s older sister – and the men are taken to a locked room that contains the portrait of Christina. Egor suggests he would like to paint it in his own style and Sanda tells him that it is rare that her mother lets anyone in the room. The Professor has heard stories about Christina being the bailiff’s mistress and forcing him to thrash peasants for her pleasure. During the uprising, it is said that she invited peasant men two at a time into her room and allowed them to rape her (a note from Maria Cohut’s lecture is that this paints her as the abject feminine, that rape and consent are mutually exclusive, and that the tale is told from a male perspective) and the bailiff shot her out of jealousy. Children in the village, he suggests, still fear her.

Simina and Nazarie

As the story progresses Egor, having had warning dreams at first, starts seeing Miss Christina in his dreams as she attempts to seduce him. Sanda becomes deathly ill – and is said to have anaemia by the doctor (George Constantin) who is called for. Though we don’t see it, Sanda seems to be being fed upon by Christina, whose powers grow and who seems to become more corporeal. Equally Simina starts acting in a way inappropriate for a child (notwithstanding the age she presents in the film), knowing things about Christina, cleaning her Aunt’s prized carriage, acting sexually dominant to Egor at a point and a cut on his lip may have occurred when she kisses him. This can be read two ways, that she is being possessed at times by her aunt or, as posited by Maria Cohut, that she is actually strigoï vii. The mother seems to have a sympathetic connection to Christina, with her prized portrait and obsessive eating habits and perhaps lending her strength to the strigoï mort at night. It is interesting that in the climax, when villagers reach the house, her first reaction is to say, “You’ve come for land” referencing the 1907 revolt again.

Sanda weakens

The way to deal with a strigoï in this is to push a rod of iron through the heart (in the grave) but the film also connects the portrait in to the ending – with portraits being a firm favourite within the Gothic. I enjoyed this but it is rather languid in its pace, the slow march rather than a rush of thrills and it also aims more for the uncanny than it does horror. The world feels off kilter. It is an interesting take on the feminine; it is a household of females, the negative stories about Christina are delivered by men and the three women of the household could be fit into the maiden (Simina), mother (Sanda – though she is not a mother she is the object of Egor’s sexual desire) and crone (Mrs Moscu), with Miss Christina a unifying force. One thing that did strike me was a feel of la Morte Amoureuse - though Clarimonde only demanded a drop of blood from her lover, and Christina seemed to be sucking the life out of Sanda as she pursued Egor. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Sundelbolong

Directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra and released in 1981, Sundelbolong is an Indonesian film starring Suzzanna and is part of the Severin films All the Haunts be Ours volume 2 set. The set quotes Sophie Siddique as she writes about how the film confronts the New Order Indonesian Government’s gender ideologies and the “gender fantasies of the world of the vampire ghost”. This, of course, made my ears prick up.

Bane also describes the folkloric sundel bolong thusly “In Java, there is a vampiric REVENANT known as a sundal bolong (“hollowed bitch”). It is created when a woman commits suicide or when a child who was conceived by rape dies. It appears to its prey, mostly travelers and foreigners, as a beautiful woman with unkempt HAIR wearing its burial shroud. Using its beauty, this vengeful and angry vampire will lure a man to a quiet place with the promise of an indiscretion but instead will turn and attack him, draining him of his blood.” The translation of the name is suggested in the Severin notes as prostitute with a hole and refers to a maggot covered hole in the ghost’s back.

the wedding

Unfortunately, whilst the film does follow the folklore this particular (physically manifesting) ghost does not indulge in draining blood, rather she murders her victims as we’ll see. As such the film is of genre interest. It starts with the grave of Alisa (Suzzanna), who has died very young, and a voice over suggesting that she did have some happiness in her life – this then cuts to her wedding as she and her groom Hendarto (Barry Prima) enter the reception. However, a man approaches him with a letter. It is from “the company” and Hendarto, a ship’s captain, must go to sea for nine months. They have a final drink together and mention is made of her twin sister Sinta dying at age 10.

Suzzanna as Alisa

Alisa embroiders and is called by Rudi (Rudy Salam), who owns a boutique, to propose going into business with him. She brings her samples, but a customer there knows her. She is known as Mami (Ruth Pelupessi, Satan’s Slave) and she is a Madame over s stable of prostitutes and Alisa used to work for her. Mami has an idea and Rudi changes the offer to Alisa of modelling for his range – she turns him down as such modelling does not fall into her new gender role of a dutiful wife. Driving home a car is blocking the road. Alisa goes to the driver to check he is ok and a group of men come out of hiding and kidnap her.

haunted by phantom kids

They take her to a warehouse, where she fights back but is eventually overpowered. Rudi and Mami turn up and she is offered a deal – they’ll let her go if she works for Mami again and submits to Rudi. She refuses and is dragged off, tied down and Rudi rapes her. He then has the four thugs gang rape her too. The film cuts to a trial where Mami and Rudi are accused of rape but the four are not on trial (Alisa mentions them in an outburst) and the defence solicitor calls her story into question – based on her former profession and basically victim blaming. The trial is adjourned. Worse news comes when she discovers she is pregnant and the doctor she goes to refuses to abort the pregnancy (in truth why she told him it was simply not her husbands, but not that it was as a result of rape seemed odd). It turns out that she has previously had five abortions.

Alisa's death

Realising that her husband is due home she becomes desperate, after a rather freakish hallucination of her previous aborted children as obviously disabled babies (based on the doctor suggesting abortion causes disability), she eventually (in a scene that is almost a flash but pretty darn gruesome) cuts the baby out of herself, killing herself in the process. The film then has her returning to her husband as her twin sister (he quickly accepts that her dying at ten is untrue) and, as the sundel bolong, attacking those who wronged her.

hungering for food

Both non-corporeal and corporeal, she wears a white shroud and has a wan, heavily shadowed face and a hole in her back that is rotten. Occasionally she appears as a (rather rubbish looking) skull with rotten flesh clinging to it. However she can also take the form of another woman and uses this to lure some of the men. Once lured she murders them. At one point she appears as a pocong. We get the lore that a nail in the head, something often associated with the kuntilanak, will turn her into a controllable, beautiful lady (it never happens). At one point she goes to a food stall and demands 200 satay skewers, eaten half cooked, and then drinks a pan of soup, which all drops/pours out of the back hole; showing a relentless hunger but not one for blood.

skeleton form

The fact that the vampire element is removed may have been due to the time it was made (though there is plenty of horror themes in the film) but is a shame. The film is a supernatural rape revenge film and is interesting read against Western films of that genre from the time but the social context of Indonesia at the time also has to be read into it. The classical music on the soundtrack is bombastic and, honestly, ill placed and there is a thick layer of melodrama, especially to the first 30 minutes plus, which despite the gang rape has a layer of schmaltz to it. It is notable that part way through they give Barry Prima a shirtless, action hero martial arts sequence – this film is known as a breakout horror film for Suzzanna who became one of the largest horror stars in Indonesian films but Prima was also one of the hottest Indonesian actors in the 80s.

The imdb page is here.

Interview with the Vampire – Season 2 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2014

Contains spoilers

I was taken with Season 1 of this show. Fearing that it could never stand up to the gothic magnificence of the film, and open minded, but still with niggling doubts, about the changes. I found a show that may have modernized the historic story (moving from the 18th century to the early twentieth century) but still true to the spirit of the books. A show that ramped up the sexuality (Rice’s vampires were not sexual, though she certainly wrote the erotic spirit) but did not lose itself within that.

Louis and Lestat

I found a show where Sam Reid played a pitch perfect Lestat and Jacob Anderson offered a powerhouse and nuanced performance as Louis. It was then announced by Bailey Bass that she would not be returning as Claudia – aged considerably from the books had allowed an older actress able to play a nuanced role with interesting changes tied to her age – and would be replaced this season by Delainey Hayles. In the last season the interview got as far as the killing of Lestat and, in the modern day, interviewer Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian, Blade Trinity) discovers that servant Rashid was actually ancient vampire Armand (Assad Zaman).

Delainey Hayles as Claudia

This season starts off with Claudia and Louis, in Europe, searching for their vampiric roots across the continent, and ending up in Romania. The search made tougher by the fact that the second world war rages around them. If the war seems glossed over, within the space of an episode and mostly at the end of the period, then the dialogue references this and admits as much. As such, we meet them towards the end of their search, see a moment with some German soldiers and then cut to a Romania with Soviet troops there. In truth the search is longer than perhaps the books, which (from memory) is very glossed over. They find troops unearthing the dead and shooting into coffins and eventually find a revenant, and a weak female vampire (not in the book) who cannot successfully turn vampires – Louis posits it is the sadness (from the war) that has infected the blood. There is mention of Dracula and Vlad Ţepeş in passing.

Ben Daniels as Santiago

Following that the full season (8 episodes, rather than the 7 of season 1, but chaptered from chapter 8 onwards) are based around the Théâtre des Vampires in Paris, and a great sequence they are. Offering much more nuance over the 7 remaining episodes and using the present to interrogate undead memory of the past. I must give out a shout at this point to Ben Daniels who steals the show as Santiago, lead actor of the troupe and conspirator.

Armand and Louis

Of course, Lestat is not there any longer, but the series manages to include him by having his memory haunt Louis to the point of hallucination, which in itself worked well too. The Théâtre itself uses more modern techniques given the time period and so, for instance, they project film to the back curtain to interact with it as actors. For readers of the books, the fate of Claudia and the Théâtre itself remains the same, but the way it gets there, and how betrayals are not discovered for seventy years is the thing the show does really well. A note on the Blu-Ray set. There is more in the way of extras this time round, something I found disappointing last time. The show itself, I think is still a strong 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Death Rider in the House of Vampires – review

Director: Glenn Danzig

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

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

opening scenes

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

Danny Trejo as Bela Latigo

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

Kim Director as Carmilla Joe

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

left to the sun

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

Devon Sawa as Death Rider

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

The imdb page is here.

The Bend (Dime Novel Dreadfuls #1) – review

Author: J.H. Kimbrell

First published: 2022

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Arizona Territory, 1888 - The train doesn't stop in Mica Bend anymore. The silver mines are played out and the post office is about to close, but there are still people. People who will not be missed if they disappear. A small western town going ghost is an ideal buffet for a clan of vampires working their way across the southwest.

Recently widowed and grieving, town marshal Hiram Wells is confounded after two prisoners are found brutally and bizarrely murdered in his own jail. Then body parts are discovered half-buried in the desert near town and his oldest daughter goes missing, driving Hiram on a desperate search for answers that may lie in the pulp stories his children love to read. With time running out, Hiram finds himself caught in a war with an ancient enemy, his resolve utterly tested and his humanity at stake.

The review: Vampires and the Wild West – it has been done but there is plenty of scope in the concept and I’m pleased to see that this novel flexes well within that scope and creates a satisfying read that feels authentic to the Wild West genre as well as the vampire megatext.

Mica Bend is a town that is dying and the mayor invites a theatrical troupe to the town in order to boost morale. The troupe are, of course, vampires and their thralls and the invitation to the town reminded me of Salem’s Lot, as did the attack on the town generally – though the vampires are not for making a whole bunch of vampires and that was a divergence point. That is not to say that this apes the famous King novel, just that the attack on a town and invitation overtone (explicit in this) brought the older book to mind.

It is within the desire to not create other vampires that we can start looking at the lore. The vampirism is a (supernatural) disease and if someone is bitten then they contract that disease, this stage of turning (whether it be a survivor, a victim killed or if diseased flesh is eaten by a scavenger such as a coyote) the vampires call the pestilence. If left to run its course it will turn the infected into a revenant, mindless and instinct driven. The infected blood of the pestilence is black and we see a vampire cleanse themselves of such blood that has got on them by facing sunlight. A noble (the main, intelligent vampires) can intervene before the pestilence fully consumes a victim and ensure they are blooded – drink the blood of a noble – to properly turn them. Equally a human can be fed the noble blood to make them a thrall and this gives extended life.

The thralls can go out into sunlight and step on holy ground, which the vampires and revenants cannot – the sunlight was interesting. Given the theme of penny dreadfuls within the story (which is where some of the lore is garnered from in text) sunlight shouldn’t be an issue (having not been introduced to the megatext then). I’d have forgiven the conceit anyway, sunlight being such a cornerstone now, but the author addressees this and makes it clear that the sunlight bit isn’t in the pulp fiction of the time. The impact of religious things (hallowed ground, crosses and holy water) is tied to the energies such things produce. The vampires can move with extreme speed, turn to mist, control weather and transform – in particular we see transformation into an owl (specifically a strix). They have a really strong line in eye mojo and we get the story touching on a wider world and a conflict within the vampire society.

The prose is very strong, with Kimbrell creating a believable world with strong characters and a story that does hold you. The historical accuracy of the Wild West world is something I can’t speak to but it felt authentic from the point of view of someone whose knowledge is garnered from the films set in the Old West, and given the novel grounds itself within media this seems fitting. This is a good read, a strong entry in the vampire/Wild West sub-genre and certainly worth your time. 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

The Panther Women – review

Director: René Cardona

Release date: 1967

Contains spoilers

In truth, when I started watching this Luchador movie I wasn’t expecting to review it, I was just looking forward to some Mexican nonsense with lycanthropic Panther women. It is just that, but it also had an aspect where I felt that there was at least the use of tropes and the more I thought about it the more I knew that there was a vampiric aspect. The film itself kind of felt like a clone of a Santo movie, but it is great fun if absolute nonsense.

the cult

After credits where we see stills of a female wrestling match we cut to the cave-like lair of a satanic cult whose spiritual leader, in ages past, Eloim (Ángel Di Stefani) was killed by a man named Pietrasanta using the Sword of the Druids. The cult has killed the descendants of Pietrasanta and there are four left and it has been decreed that they must die by the full moon. What we later discover is that they are going to use the blood of the descendants to resurrect Eloim’s corpse.

out for drinks

Cut to a wrestling match with the tag team of Golden Ruby (Elizabeth Campbell, Wrestling Women Vs the Aztec Mummy) and Loreta Venus (Ariadne Welter). The latter is one of the descendants of Pietrasanta and her uncle, Professor Rafael Pietrasanta (Jorge Mondragón, Santo in the Treasure of Dracula), and cousin Ramón (Genaro Moreno), are watching the match. They invite them for drinks after the match and we discover that Ramón is a widower with a daughter, Paquita (Elena Saldívar). However, he has recently found love again – we recognise his new lady friend Tongo (Tongolele) as one of the cult.

transformed

After drinks they go back to the Professor’s house and (never one to miss tipping off a victim) a letter has been left for the Professor saying he is going to die. He tells his son and the wrestlers about the legend of Pietrasanta and actually has the sword. The younger guys don’t believe it. That night the professor decides to put the sword over Paquita’s sleeping form. A shame as we later discover it serves as an apotropaic against the cult and so he may not have died if he's kept hold of it. As it is he is subsequently jumped by one of the female cult members transformed into a panther (in a cut price outfit sort of way).

El Angel with radio watch

The gang are interviewed by cop Arturo (Eric del Castillo, the Empire of Dracula). It seems that a wildcat attacked the Professor (or so the cops believe) but Ruby tells Arturo what the Professor told them and the cop decides to get a friend to help with the case. That friend is El Angel (Gerardo Zepeda, Santo vs. la hija de Frankestein & Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters). Now El Angel is a masked wrestler, inventor, crime fighter with a radio watch (very Santo) and a new cape of his own invention that is bullet proof and fire proof – that’ll come in handy.

using blood to raise Eloim

So the vampiric element is around Eloim being brought back with the blood of his enemies and he is reanimated by pouring the blood from the first two murdered descendants into his coffin. He needs the blood of the others but, as we see him, he is a desiccated corpse and one might call him a revenant. The blood is, of course, from a certain family of victims but it is blood nonetheless. The Sword of the Druids can kill him again – causing him to burst into flames when stabbed.

almost a revenant

This is nonsense but it is such good fun. El Angel wears a mask because justice has no face. We get a cowardly policeman sidekick as comic relief and wrestling in and out of the ring from El Angel, Ruby and Venus. Like many Luchador movies, it isn’t great cinema, but it is fab for a watch. Definitely check this one out, as derivative as it might be it is worth your time – though probably as a film it deserves 5 out of 10, the fun is greater than the sum of its score.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK