Honourable mention: Lore: They Made a Tonic

This was the first episode of the first season of a made for Amazon series (based on a podcast, I understand) and directed by Darnell Martin. It is, going by this episode, a dramatized documentary and this episode roots us into the folklore of the vampire – specifically the folklore (and events) emerging from 19th Century New England.

As it opens a simple animation takes us through the story of Mary E Hart who died but was disinterred (due to a dream, apparently) and was found to have been buried alive – if the scratches on the coffin and the horror etched into her features were to be believed.

The fear (and reality) of being buried alive was fascinating, of course, but had little to do with the case the episode goes on to explore – that of Mercy Brown (played age 10 by Pamela Riley Sauve and age 19 by Hannah Culwell). I assume most readers will know the story but for those who don’t Mary’s mother and sister (Mary Simmons) died of consumption (tuberculosis). Her brother (Connor Hammond) later became ill and was sent away for treatment. Whilst he was away Mercy sickened and died.

Ill again

On his return he became Ill again and her father (Campbell Scott) was approached with the idea that a demon could rest in the heart of a person, kill them and then have them continue to kill from beyond the grave. If the corpse of a recently deceased was found to be fresh – with blood in the heart – then the demon resided there. Reluctantly he allowed his wife and daughter to be disinterred and then they opened Mercy’s coffin, declared her the one (despite, as he points out in the dramatization, that she died after her mother and sister), cut out her heart and liver, incinerated them and gave the ashes in water to the sick brother as a tonic – he died despite this (unsurprisingly).

a spectral Mercy

Mercy’s case made American newspapers and so is rather famous – though the idea that it inspired Dracula is a stretch. Stoker certainly knew about the case (and had a press clipping in his notes for Dracula) but the likelihood is that the writing of the book was well underway when he found the clipping and, whilst it may have played a little into the novel's ideas, its role of “original inspiration” is unlikely. The dramatization does see a spectral Mercy walking the halls and grounds of the family home but the episode does not suggest this is actually happening and is for atmosphere (nothing I have read suggests that her father was anything other than sceptical but resigned about the desecration).

checking the corpse

The actual dramatization moments are well shot but I found the veering off onto concerns about being buried alive to be superfluous. The narration by Aaron Mahnke was nothing special but did what it had to do. There was more that could have been explored around other acts of disinterment of suspected American vampires – the excellent work of Michael Bell indicates this was not an isolated case, just the most publicised.

The imdb page is here.

Twixt – review

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

Twixt has received an awfully large amount of bad press. The film from the director of Dracula (1992) has been fairly savaged by critics and fans alike. Perhaps this is why, having watched the film once – and really enjoying it – I immediately watched the film a second time to see if it withstood further scrutiny, to see whether it was a low expectation on my part that boosted the film in my eyes. As far as I can tell it wasn’t.

However, it is not a horror movie and, perhaps, that is where people have turned against it. It is certainly gothic but with an almost David Lynch attitude. It is a slice of American Gothic, but one which remembers that the true Gothic piece looks inward. It plays with time, in a way that only dreams can do. It openly uses vampires as metaphor – and perhaps this puts many a viewer off. It explores the creative process and this is fitting as Coppola has said that he came up with the concept within an alcohol induced sleep, a concept that had no ending when he dreamt it. The film depicts, therefore, the search by the artist for the film.

the clock tower

We begin in a small town and the narration of Tom Waits (Dracula 1992) introduces us to this world. The town is small but attracts runaways, the dispossessed and those who just want to lose themselves. The local sheriff, Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern), is mentioned; a man who likes to woodwork (he builds bat houses). Dominating the town is a clock tower, seven clock faces all tell different times and some say the belfry is the home to evil. The town has a past, a terrible murder took place there in the 1950s, a dozen children killed. Over the lake a camp has emerged, young people there (Gothic in dress) are said, by townsfolk, to be evil, Satanic – especially their leader Flamingo (Alden Ehrenreich).

Val Kilmer as Hall

Into the town comes Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), a writer of witch related horror novels on a signing tour. He can’t find the bookstore but then realises that books are sold in the hardware store and so he sits, alone, calling out to the occasional shopper – none of whom seem interested. Then Bobby LaGrange comes over. He knows of Hall but does ask how it feels to be the Bargain Basement Stephen King. He asks if Hall will read some of his stuff and then mentions the mass murder. Hall is ready to get out of Dodge but Bobby insists he comes to the morgue to see a “doozy” he has there.

the murder victim, staked

The morgue is less attached to and more part of the small sheriff’s office and Bobby has Deputy Arbus (Bruce A. Miroglio) wheel the corpse out. We see the body covered in a sheet and a large stake emerging from her chest, when Bobby goes to reveal her face Hall stops him. Bobby suggests there is a story in the murder, probably about a serial killer, and they should collaborate on it. Hall is not interested. He goes to have his thermos filled with coffee and discovers that Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin) once stayed in the town. He goes to the old Chickering hotel, where he stayed, and we recognise the derelict hotel as the place where the killings took place. Hall takes a swig of whiskey and then pours the rest of the bottle over the sign to Poe – an invocation of sorts.

arguing with Denise

Hall gets a motel and, as he unpacks, we begin to see a little of his life. He has a first edition paperback of his first novel signed to his daughter, Vicky (Fiona Medaris), and, as the film moves on, we realise that she died and it was from there that his career perhaps took its turn for the worst. He has a skype conversation with his wife Denise (Joanne Whalley). The conversation begins with him saying he wants to write something for himself but, as it progresses into an argument, we discover that he can’t get an advance for his next book as he has refused to write another witch novel and she desperately needs the money for bills.

Elle Fanning as V

Hall slams the laptop lid down and reaches for the bottle; the bell tower rings and we see the world shift. Hall goes for a walk, swings seem to move of their own accord. He takes a fork in the road and, as an owl screeches, he passes a brick vault. A girl (Elle Fanning) walks besides him. She is concerned about her buck teeth, though Hall says her teeth are fine (though the braces maybe not so). She says that all the kids call her Vampira on account of them but he can call her V. When he asks her real name she says Virginia. She knows his work and he mentions that the clock tower keeps ringing. It is impossible, she says, to keep time straight there. They reach a restored Chickering hotel but she won’t enter.

Ben Chaplin as Poe

He does and gets a drink. He notices a rectangular patch in the floor and he is told that he has found the grave and that twelve children are buried below the floor. The woman in the hotel grabs V, who is hanging around near the door. The young girl bites the woman to escape. Hall chases after her and then sees the rectangle open and children emerging with a man, Pastor Allan Floyd (Anthony Fusco). They are playing in front of the hotel but when the Pastor sees V he becomes agitated. As he leads them back to their grave, V leads Hall away. He stumbles as he crosses a bridge and is picked up by Poe whom Hall asks to show him the way.

a model execution machine

He awakens with Denise shouting to him through the laptop. When he looks at the screen she is holding his first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. She has had it valued (though he says it is priceless) and will sell it if he doesn’t get another advance. I am sure that Coppola will have known the connection between Whitman and Stoker but Leaves of Grass was a pun title in itself grass being a name used by publishers for works of minor value (and leaves being the pages of the books) and so it sums up Hall’s career at that point. In desperation he returns to find Bobby and agrees to collaborate on a book, which LeGrange had suggested should be called the vampire executioner. He has even built a model of an execution device for vampires that he shows Hall, inspired by the fact that the stake in the girl seemed to have been pushed in by a device. It is during this conversation that Hall suggests that, whilst he normally writes about witches, a vampire is nothing “but a witch who sucks blood?” Hall contacts Sam (David Paymer), his publisher, and convinces him to wire an advance to Denise but Sam demands a bullet-proof ending and Hall hasn’t got any ending yet.

Alden Ehrenreich as Flamingo

The film goes on to merge the present and the past. The murder of the girl and the murder of the children become conflated as V becomes the image of a girl hunted by the Pastor as she tries to save the children from him – he kills them because he thinks the folk by the lake are vampires and so, by killing them, he is saving their souls. The folk, of course, are in our time and V is also the image of the girl in the morgue. In Hall’s dream state we see Flamingo rescue the 1950’s V and bite her before the pastor kidnaps her and bricks her up in the vault. When a waking Hall visits Flamingo and his group the young man is reciting Baudelaire. Baudelaire is associated with Poe through his love of Poe’s work and also wrote some vampire related poetry, most famously Le Vampire in the work Fleurs du Mal. Bobby claims that Flamingo is a vampire.

remove the stake...

Poe becomes Hall’s guide and explains how it was his (wife and cousin) Virginia who became, in death, his muse and that he wrote about the death of beauty, but Hall has his own demons to face in the form of Vicky and the guilt he feels over her death. She is his Virginia. There seems to be more than just dreams going on as, for instance, he sees the grave in the Chickering Hotel in a dream, enters the derelict building thereafter and finds the grave in reality. Of course there is also the little matter of the murdered girl as well and the question of what will happen if the stake is removed?

Hall and V

The first thing to state is just how much I loved the look of the film. The dreamtime shots were astounding, with their muted colours and ethereal figures. I have tried not to spoil the plot but, to be totally honest, it is difficult to explain the film without spoiling it a little as the plot is so tied up in the merging of reality and dreams and the displacement of time. The vampires are fantastic. There is clearly someone who believes in vampires enough to stake a girl, there are vampires which become metaphors for Hall, vampirism is used as a scapegoat for those things we fear because we don’t understand and perhaps they are real in some small way.

Flamingo bites V

Who or what is V. Hall mentions witchcraft but he is a man who made his career on witches. In some respects she is a (vampiric) ghost looking for peace. Is she the girl recently murdered or the child walled up by the pastor? Ultimately she is both as she, as we meet her, is a product of Hall’s inner mind and in a dream such duality is perfectly acceptable. She also represents Poe’s Virginia and becomes conflated with Vicky in Hall’s mind.

fangs

The performance by Val Kilmer is excellent. He is jaded, lost, a man who can’t work past an event, a trauma, to continue with his life but a man on the cusp of a moment of self-enlightenment. Equally Ben Chaplin is fantastic as Poe, enigmatically matter of fact he leads the writer (and the director in some respects) to their ending. I have heard complaints about a lack of ending (and, as mentioned, Coppola initially didn’t have one) but the ending provided is almost inevitable given the journey we took and indeed it is the journey that proves the most valuable part of the exploration. Elle Fanning is fantastically ethereal as V.

I really did enjoy this, as you can probably tell by the length of this review, 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The review was based on the German DVD release; Twixt: Virginias Geheimnis.

isle of the dead - review

Director – Mark Robson

Release date: 1945

Contains spoilers

“Isle of the Dead”, I have to admit, is one of my favourite movies. I remember seeing it as a kid, although for years I couldn’t remember the name of it, and being moved by it even then. Years on I rediscovered the movie and was just as impressed as I was as a child.

The movie is a vampire movie that does not contain a vampire; instead it concentrates on the peasant level superstition that blames the supernatural – in this case the vorvolaka – on natural disasters such as plague.

The movie begins in the tent of General Pherides (Boris Karloff), known to his troops as the Watchdog. He is having a tardy officer stripped of his rank. He passes the officer a gun and waits as the officer leaves and a shot is fired. All this is witnessed by Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer), an American journalist. Pherides’ wife is buried on an island near-by and the General and Oliver cross through the battlefield to travel to her crypt. Davis wonders why the General has his exhausted men still working, so soon after the battle, and the General informs him that the dead must be buried. This is confirmed by Doctor Drossos (Ernst Deutsch) who tells Oliver that they have had cases of septicemic plague.

At the island, guarded by a statue of Cerberus, the General discovers that all the coffins in the crypt have been opened. They are going to leave when they hear singing. Following the singing they find the house of Albrecht (Jason Robards Sr) a Swiss archaeologist. He has several guests, sheltering on the island to avoid the fighting. There is Madam Kyra (Helen Thimig), the housekeeper. St Aubyn (Alan Napier) a British consul and his wife Mary (Katherine Emery). Mary’s maid Thea (Ellen Drew) and travelling salesman Robbins (Skelton Knaggs). The General is known by Thea and there is some tension there, but Oliver and the General eventually stay the night. Robbins seems drunk and staggers as he retires to bed, falling at Thea’s feet. Meanwhile the general is informed that the crypts were grave robbed for antiquities some 15 years earlier, but then Kyra says that the bodies had to be destroyed as one amongst them was evil.

In the morning Robbins is dead. The General sends for Drossos who confirms that it is the plague. The General quarantines the island and they will all have to stay there until the wind changes. Essentially the plague is carried by fleas and the warm sirocco winds will kill the flea population off in around 24 hours. Kyra has a different explanation, she believes that the plague is being caused by a vorvolaka and even knows who it is – Thea. Thea is young and healthy, whilst her mistress (who suffers from a debilitating illness) is pale and wan.

The vorvolaka is the vampire of the tale, though it is kind of a hybrid of the vampire and werewolf myths. It is the spirit of a wolf which inhabits a human host and, often astrally, drains the vitality of its victims. There is also some indication that it might feed on blood. Sometimes known as a vrykolakas there is a fantastic discourse on the creature here (EDIT 23/10/12, link removed as site gone).

As more and more victims succumb to the plague, rationality begins to be lost on the General. We discover that Mary suffers from catalepsy and she makes Drossos promise that he will not bury her until he is absolutely sure she is not in a trance. Unfortunately he is a victim of the plague and so when Mary falls into a trance she is buried alive. The wind changes but by then the General has contracted the plague and, in his delirium, he is told by Kyra that Mary will rise from her grave, the victim of a vorvolaka will become a vorvolaka. Of course, as she has been interned alive she does rise, but the time in her coffin has broken her mind.

The stand out scene, to me, is when Thea has locked herself in Mary’s room, after Mary has fallen into catalepsy. Unsure of what to do she stands vigil whilst Kyra taunts her through the door, accusing her of being the vorvolaka. The scene is heavy with atmosphere.

All the cast are excellent and the direction is top notch.

Incidentally one of the inspirations for the film was the picture “Isle of the Dead” by Böcklin (pictured). The painting is the background to the opening credits and the island in the film is designed to look much like that in the painting.

This film is one of the prime examples of how a film can be a vampire genre movie, without actually having a vampire in it. It is also one of the few (if any) movies that features the particular breed of vampire, the vorvolaka. It is also interesting that, as well as the characters relying on superstition as science seems to fail them (or at least not provide them with an immediate solution) they also turn to the old pagan Gods. Beyond anything else it is a great piece of cinema and I give it 10 out of 10 and recommend you try and watch it if you have never seen it.

The imdb page is here.