Rhinehoth – review

Author: Brian E. Niskala

First published: 2009

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Centuries ago a great castle was built in the mountains of Germany’s Black Forest. Its ancient guardians still thrive in its walls forever protecting its dark secrets, holding captive an enemy that threatens their very existence. Foretold is a story of an ancient warrior that is to return to the castle to free the captive Vampire Prince.

Simon Roberts was a petty thief who fled England to escape Scotland Yard after a series of unsuccessful jewelry store heists. He was recruited to do a job in Germany where he was to simply drive the getaway car while providing a look out. He thought this was going to be an easy job and a way to break into the German crime scene. But things go terribly wrong and he ended up being the only survivor of the botched heist. Simon is quickly sentenced to a prison called Rhinehoth. This is where Germany sent the worst of the worst, surely not a place for a petty thief such as himself.

Rhinehoth is a great German castle that was converted in the late 1930’s to a Stalag for war criminals of World War II. The converted prison’s modern day inhabitants are relentlessly tortured, starved and sleep deprived. This contributes to the prisoners' delusional visions that help hide the truth and keeps Rhinehoth’s secrets. Their captors are the army of Werewolves who have survived the centuries off the very flesh and blood of Germany’s worst forgotten criminals.

Simon, imprisoned becomes plagued with visions from his subconscious ancient past with confusion of his modern day consciousness. He discovers through his visions that he is the ancient warrior, Guthrie who has come to free the Vampire Prince and all the captives while saving the world from a dark plan of biblical proportions that has been orchestrated over the centuries!

The Review: Sometimes I approach a review with a heavy heart and this is one such case. On the plus side Niskala has created a great Gothic location. I was struck quickly by how much I liked the concept of the rambling Stalag Rhinehoth. I also liked the idea that prisoners were sent to a prison were, unbeknownst to the outside world, werewolves formed the brutal guards, a vampire tended the sick and wounded and a vampire prince was held captive in the heart of the castle.

From there the book could have taken us, wowed us and left us breathless with fast paced adventure. I did say ‘could have’.

Aside from the occasional typo – and these things happen – the big problem I had with the book was that I felt the language used was clunky and unwieldy. I found myself reading a sentence and re-writing it in my head to make it flow better. This, of course, is not great when one is reading a book but it also underlined, to me, that the setting itself made me want to enjoy the prose, but I just couldn’t. So, whilst I read the book I didn't find myself lost in a breakneck dash through the shadow strewn corridors of the Gothic prison, as the hero desperately searched for the means of survival, rather I found myself going over sentence after sentence wishing for them to mutate into something more than they were on the screen of my Kindle

More than that, because the language wasn’t carrying me, the characters didn’t come alive as I would have wanted. I didn’t buy the character development and the national identities didn’t particularly gel for me.

Am I being unfair? I really don’t think so. Brian Niskala has had an idea, and the idea was good. What he needs to do now is refine his skills and, if he can do that and also continue to generate the settings, I am sure he will develop as an author. The problem is, I just cannot recommend Rhinehoth. 3.5 out of 10.

Guest Blog: Michele Hauf

Michele has been writing romance, action-adventure and fantasy stories for over twenty years. Her first published novel was DARK RAPTURE.

France, musketeers, vampires and faeries populate her stories. And if she followed the adage 'write what you know', all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries she has never visited and of creatures she has never seen.

Romantic Vampires Just Won't Die

Yes, I've heard the groans. When will those brooding, sexy hunks of the undead just take the stake and fade away? Can we shove them back in their coffins? Clip their perfect coifs and let the air out of their bulging, sexy muscles? Why, oh why, do they sell so well?

Well, because the majority of readers who pick up paranormal romances that feature vampires are women, and we women like our men dark, mysterious, and offering us an everlasting promise that we'll never wrinkle, grow old, or have to worry about a retirement fund. We also like hot sex, and those fang boys offer it in spades. The fact that they consume human blood to survive doesn't bother us. You've got to pay a price for all that other good stuff.

Vampires offer that something extra we readers desire in a story. That touch of magic, the unknown, and yes, the enticing and erotic bite.

So I’m sorry to say to the horror and sci/fi fans, that those covers with the male abs and smirking smiles that reveal a glint of sexy fang are here to stay—and I wouldn't have it any other way.

My newest release features a vampire who grew up in Faery so he's never tasted mortal blood, and has an addiction to faery ichor. The dude has sparkle issues, too, because the faery dust seeps from his pores giving him a certain…glint. Here's the blurb for FOREVER VAMPIRE:

Vail the Unwanted is a pureblood vampire. But raised in Faery, he has neither home nor peace, and when his aid is sought in the recovery of a priceless diamond gown, his price is information. Specifically the whereabouts of his accursed father. His goal is revenge, and the supernaturally sexy Lyric, the icy blond vampiress with whom he must work, is a distraction he can't afford.

Outwardly as cold as the diamond dress in which she was kidnapped, Lyric has her own secrets. Desperate to break free from her criminal family, she aligns herself with the brooding Vail. Together they seek justice while each secretly works for freedom and a fresh start. For Lyric that means holding herself apart, even from the smoldering blue-eyed Vail. For Vail, it means a battle to the death for revenge—and for a temptress he can't deny.

"Adventure, intrigue, and a voice like no other--Michele Hauf is a force to be reckoned with!"--Emma Holly

"Vampires, shifters, and faeries—oh my! Michele Hauf is a master of them all!" — Kerrelyn Sparks

Read the first two chapters here.

Or watch the trailer:

the Commercial Vampire: dentists

It was blooming obvious - tie in Vampires with Dentistry. This advert, however, showed a little more class, a little more pizazz and a lot more humour than expected.

Many thanks to Crabstix for pointing the advert out.

I like Bats – review

Director: Grzegorz Warchol

Release date: 1986

Contains spoilers

This 1986 Polish film, entitled Lubie Nietoperze domestically, is somewhat of an odd duck of a film. It comes across as an allegorical film as much as anything. We shall examine the allegory later.

It was filled with a rogue’s gallery of weird and wonderful characters and yet it just didn’t seem to gel together as a cohesive whole. Indeed the characters I mention were left frustratingly two-dimensional.

the portrait

It begins with a bat. Not a crap bat, I should add, but an actual bat. Then we cut to a little curio-shop, and specifically the flat above it. Izabela (Katarzyna Walter) is there with her aunt (Malgorzata Lorentowicz) and the conversation concerns a portrait. The aunt suggests that the fact it fell from the wall is a sign that the man in the portrait wants Izabela to marry. Izabela is dismissive and puts the portrait on a rocking chair. As she leaves the room, the chair rocks on its own causing the portrait to fall again, smashing the glass.

Edwin Petrykat as Marceli

A man enters the shop and goes up to see the Aunt. He sells practical jokes and is annoyingly gregarious in his humours. Later a man called Marceli (Edwin Petrykat) comes in with the news that there has been a murder of a woman, strangled by a belt and subjected to a sexual attack. He says that it is the seventh such an attack and suggests that he should walk Izabela home. The Aunt concurs but Izabela does not.

dead sex pest

In the next scene we see the sex offender and it is drawn in such a way that we believe he is after Izabela – this does not seem to be the case at this point. In the scenes with Izabela we see her feeding and handling bats. However the next night the man does grab Izabela, he seems to be strangling her as he tells her to kiss him but she responds, kissing him, switching their positions until she is on top. The scene fades and then we see him with bats on his face, which fly as she approaches the body. We see her placing his coat into a furnace.

the whore

A man, Professor Rudolph Jung (Marek Barbasiewicz), enters the store. Izabela has just completed making a tea service with a bat motif, which her Aunt dislikes, but he is fascinated by it. She seems drawn to him and offers to show him examples of her work at her home – he declines, he is only in town a day – but he does buy the service. We then see him eating in a bar when a drunken Marceli pours his heart out. Next a prostitute approached Jung, but he rejects her – intimating he is gay.

Katarzyna Walter as Izabela

The prostitute sits next to Marceli but picks up another man – a traveling salesman. She goes off with him and he drives her into the country. She kisses him and then bites him. When she leaves the vehicle she pushes it, it goes over a crest of a hill and, out of our view, explodes. She removes a wig and we realise she is Izabela. That night Marceli breaks in and tries to rape her but stops when she screams. She goes to his home, dressed as the prostitute, reveals herself and attacks him.

Izabela takes herself to Jung’s private hospital, telling him that she is a vampire and needs treatment. He offers treatment but spurns her advances and that is about as far as I want to go.

dead gardener

So, I said it was allegorical and it is. The vampirism seems to be an allegory for sexual frustration tied into a need for love. Indeed, whilst she has told Jung she is a vampire, she tells anyone else who asks why she is in the hospital that she is a nymphomaniac. All the men we see her attack are sexual predators and she devours them. I have mentioned three of them – there is also an attack on a gardener at the hospital, who prior to the attack has caused the nurses to neglect their duties whilst they go to have sex with him, who reacts to an advance from Izabela prior to the attack.

a no-show on the x-ray machine

In Jung she finds a man with whom she falls in love but he rejects her advances, at first. During the film we see that she has no reflection, indeed she does not even show up on an x-ray machine, but as soon as Izabela and Jung consummate their love she gains a reflection (and a bat – this time a crap one – kills itself by smashing through a window, symbolising the death of her vampirism). This casts a darker spin on the coda, where we see Izabela and Jung's young daughter and the body of a gardener who approached her – the child has fangs.

vampire pens

The problem with this interpretation of the film is that it is a male-dominated view. She is an object of desire for the sex offender and Marceli – something to be taken and owned. She is treated like a whore by the salesman and the gardener takes advantage of her alleged nymphomania. The one she loves almost puts her in a cage in an area that stores and experiments on vampires (on a beach). The owner of the ‘facility’ states that female vampires are unusual and Jung does break her out of the cage, fighting for her, but ultimately her relationship with Jung is one where she needs him (and his love) to lift her curse.

fangs

There is an indication that the aunt is/was also a vampire. She is seen levitating at one point and tells Izabela that she knows a good dentist (inferring a removal of the fangs). Speaking of fangs – we only see them towards the end of the film. We can also say that other than a lack of reflection (a symbol of not being whole as a vampire) there are no other overtly vampiric traits. Katarzyna Walter carries the film with aloof aplomb, but there aren’t any other outstanding performances. The film felt disjointed and the secondary characters demanded more depth.

The film is fairly surreal and is interesting, if nothing else. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Blood Gnome

I have Mr Everlost to thank for this 2004 flick, which was directed by John Lechago. Some time ago he sent me the DVD and, I have to admit, it just sat there for such a long time. However, I eventually girded my loins with a copious quantity of wine and settled down to watch it, pad in hand, ready to see if this should be classed as ‘Vamp or Not?’

It starts with a drug dealer (Michael Haboush) going to a contact – a woman who is later revealed to be Elandra (Ri Walton). Whilst she goes to get his merchandise he has a nosey around. There is a crate that glows with an inner light – always a bad sign – and when he looks in tentacles grab him. Elandra pulls him free and then, after admonishing him, gives him a drug to sell – but not to the BDSM community.

Vinnie Bilancio as daniel

When he has left, Elandra addresses some spectral creatures and says it is time to feed mother. We cut to a BDSM couple having some fun – including blood play – they are killed by the little blighters. Later, the police are looking at the scene when photographer Daniel (Vinnie Bilancio) arrives. It is his first day back on the job. He sees a teeny hand print and gets one shot before a cop manages to smudge it. Later still we hear that, on his last assignment, he was called to the murder suicide of a couple and the girl turned out to be his wife, with her lover, and that is what sent him over the edge.

Melissa Pursley as Divinity

Outside the crime scene he is approached by a girl, Divinity (Melissa Pursley), who asks about what happened – the couple were friends. Daniel doesn’t reveal any details but she gives him her card in case he changes his mind. Later, when it is suggested that he needs to understand the culture he is investigating he phones her, meets her mistress (who just so happens to be Elandra) and he and Divinity become lovers.

gnome on camera

But what about the gnomes? He manages to catch one in the viewfinder of a broken video camera but, of course, isn’t able to film it and can’t convince anyone. They are a creature who harvest the blood for mother – the tentacle and teeth thing in the crate – and the feeding makes her birth another one. Daniel bites one, when they are doing an invisible attack, and the ingestion of their blood means he can see them.

birth of a gnome

When mother births, Elandra draws off some fluid (from the placenta?) and that is the drug she is selling. What is its effect? We can guess it lets you see them – that’s why the dealer couldn’t sell to the bdsm community. We can also guess that it makes the user unnaturally strong as Elandra is – but perhaps only in its concentrated form. However, most of all the film stays silent.

stabbed in chest

So, invisible creatures, harvesting blood to feed to a ‘queen’ that births others. There seems to be no special way to kill them – a knife to the chest is just that. I thought about it but I am not convinced that this can be classed as Vamp, however I am open to being persuaded otherwise.

The imdb page is here.

Grave Mistakes – review

Director: Chris LaMartina

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

This is a portmanteau movie which was clearly shot on a budget, however as I watched the opening – a scene in which a grave robber, Mr Burke (Ryan Thomas), prowled a graveyard and then unearthed a grave for the ring its occupant wore – I observed that the filming seemed a notch above many of the recent rash of zero-budget movies. The film quality had a chunkiness to it, rather than the usual thin quality of zero-budget photography.

Burke at work

Following the opening we went into the credits and I was struck by the fact that they seemed neat and the credit music worked really well. Filmmakers should note that this means a lot, it helps establish a mood and an impression on the viewer.

John Beck as the shop-owner

The film itself then sees Burke at a pawnbroker’s shop. The owner (John Beck) recognises the ring as one belonging to his mother. He hasn’t the money Burke seeks but offers him a trade for one of the items in his shop. The segments are the stories behind the items. Burke is more interested in what the owner keeps in his basement.

Aj Hyde as Patrick

The story we are interested in is called Sleep When You’re Undead. Patrick (Aj Hyde) and Carl (Mike Baldwin) are in a therapy centre. They share a room and have very different problems. Carl sleeps – a lot. He fears staying awake. On the other hand Patrick fears sleeping, he will do anything to avoid sleep, it seems. As the segment begins he is watching a horror film about vampires, trying to make Carl stay up and watch the show with him.

bandage

Their doctor, Dr Weinberg (Lee Doll), is unhappy with them both, neither appear to be trying to help themselves. The film also establishes that Carl is very Christian and Patrick not. Patrick has a deal with the cleaner, Terry (Myke Wells), who gets him coffee and, for the price of cleaning the more soiled toilets, provides him with stay awake pills. Patrick is prowling the corridors when he sees a new girl (Jess Owen, I think) being brought in. He hears that she sleeps through the day and claims sunlight gives her a rash. He also notices the bloody bandage on her neck (given the speed of turning this seems a little silly and some scars would have worked as well).

He is convinced she is a vampire but, by the time he gets Carl to help him, she has already attacked Dr Weinberg and Terry, turning them, and the vampires are multiplying at an exponential rate…

vampire Terry

I liked the premise, I really did. However the segment went nowhere with it. There was an ample opportunity for an interesting piece – perhaps even a full length feature. Patrick’s paranoia, and the fact that he might be hallucinating, could have opened this up as a twisted psycho-drama. The infection could have occurred at a slower rate, if it had been a longer piece, building a tension through the piece. The mismatch of atheist and Christian protagonists could have been played with and built upon. The TV show and reality could have intermingled fully in Patrick’s sleep deprived mind.

vampire Dr.

However, none of that happened. It just sat there, went through a 'by the book' vampire bit and ended. It wasn’t offensive but it did nothing, went nowhere and, scoring for the vampire section only, I have to give this a low score of 3 out of 10. However, if the filmmakers read this (and sometimes they do, you know) I’d like them to take the premise and expand on it. I'd like them to throw a tad more budget at it. I'd like them to look at the missed opportunities I highlighted above, and consider expanding what they had into something unusual and special.

The imdb page is here.

Interesting Short: The Young Vampire

The Young Vampire was a short by J H Rosny Aîné, dated to 1920, and was unusual in both the source of the vampirism and the fact that an aftermath to the events was shown.

Rosny Aîné was a science fiction writer and his treatment of vampirism was, at it s heart, a science fiction. It tells the story of Evelyn Grovedale, a young lady who is described as having an “excessive pallor” in her skin tone that was traced back to when she died. Indeed she was dead for four days, had even begun to decompose, and then she revived but the revived Evelyn was distant to her family and her memories seemed jumbled and indistinct.

At around this time her family began to display symptoms of lethargy and listlessness. That was until Evelyn was married to a James Bluewinkle. Once she had moved to her marital home her family seemed to regain their health, though Bluewinkle began to show signs of lassitude.

Eventually he catches Evelyn feeding from him. However her method of feeding is unusual, administered by a kiss she draws the blood from her victim by an osmosis technique. She is not, however, an evil creature. The need to feed was strong but she shared her special kisses amongst her family so as not to kill any of them and, as Bluewinkle discovers the truth, she tries to stop feeding altogether. She describes herself as another being living within the original Evelyn’s body.

He gets a physician involved, interestingly described as a Scottish Charcot remembering that Charcot was named within the text of Dracula but Evelyn eventually, through starvation it would seem, dies. However this enables the original Evelyn to regain her body and once that happens the vampiric impulses end. The story then becomes very interesting as it explores the aftermath, the fact that Evelyn does not know Bluewinkle (she remembers his wedding to someone else, as she describes it).

Rosny Aîné then leads us down a different exploration as Evelyn discovers that she is pregnant (the child conceived when she was the vampiric Evelyn) and we wonder whether the child will prove to be a normal human or a vampire. This is answered.

Fascinating stuff, it has to be said. I liked the fact that she was vampiric but there was an explanation beyond the animated corpse. She is an interloper and the original Evelyn is eventually restored. We are not told where she comes from (she has memories of her origin but does not have the words to describe it to Bluewinkle or, subsequently, us). This reminded me, to a degree, of Lovecraft – particularly the Shunned House, though Evelyn is far from the malevolent force described by Lovecraft and, of course, has a definite body. However the effect she had on her family again reminded me of the Shunned House and the root of that story which can be found in the scapegoating of a consumption plague via the recently deceased.

Labyrinth of Death – review

Director: Ricky Lau

Release date: 1988

Contains spoilers

Another film from the prolific Ricky Lau and, I am afraid to say, one at the weaker end of the films he has directed.

It begins with soldiers on the Great Wall. A holy man appears and uses a crystal sceptre to make a child kyonsi appear. He says he will use it to control others. A horde of kyonsi attack and, after a brief moment of making explosions hit the soldiers, are defeated by the holy man’s acolytes. He assumes he has won when the child kyonsi’s parents appear.

mother kyonsi

They are fighting back hard and, eventually, the holy man himself has to get involved. He is about to strike them down but is prevented by a woman (a God form it appears) who suggests that he should show mercy as the kyonsi have the chance to meet Buddhism. She takes the kyonsi away.

evil king

The evil king, who has long white hair and fangs, along with his minions attack a procession and steal away a princess. Her veil is lifted and, to his dismay, she is ugly. After a moment’s thought he decides waste not, want not but is suddenly attacked by the female god-form. She defeats him and imprisons him. She places a mystical sword in his heart that will kill him if he commits evil and sentences him to 1000 years of imprisonment. A mystical connection is set up with the kyonsi to draw away his badness over the 1000 years.

grandfather

700 years later and a young girl helps her grandfather, a corpse herder who prefers to play majong. He takes the latest set of corpses onto the road but a storm builds up and he hides in the cave – round about the time that the child kyonsi has awakened and slipped out of his coffin. The grandfather sees a gem and goes to steal it – releasing the evil king. Evil King takes over the grandfather’s mind and sends him out to do his bidding.

I am evil

First of all he attacks his own granddaughter, who has found a mystical pearl. Eventually the tale becomes a backwards and forwards of the king trying to get the pearl and the child kyonsi (whom he believes can release the sword from his heart). Certain characters are taken over and then freed and there is a lot of wire-fu, bad effects, strange makeup and (at the end) rubber suits. The evil king’s dilemma (of having the sword in his heart) doesn’t seem to prevent him from committing acts of evil most of the time (occasionally he indicates a heartburn effect) and he is certainly not prevented from ordering others to do evil.

The kyonsi parents are raised up to protect their child – though the father does get taken over at one point.

speared crap bat

The narrative of this let it down. We don’t know who certain characters are, what their motivations might be etc. They may well be staples of Chinese culture so, from that perspective, I am probably doing them a disservice. For instance, three baddies come along and I had no idea who they were until they died – and took animal form. One was a fox spirit but another was speared and transformed into a crap bat – not related to vampirism but crap nonetheless.

All in all there are much better kyonsi films, much better Chinese fables and much better wire fu films. 3 out of 10 as it was strangely hypnotic. The imdb page is here.

Lord Ruthven Begins – review

Authors: Jules Dornay & Frank J Morlock

Volume first published: 2010

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: My science is cursed. I meddled with impenetrable mysteries. My impious eye has sounded the depths of the tomb, and from there, I have made an infernal monster appear. Three days ago, you laughed at the notion of those creatures whose lives continue after death, but they exist, the vampires live!

Scotland, 1648. Sir William Clifford expects to receive the vast Ruthven estates after the death of the old Lord, but a young man suddenly appears, claiming to the be (sic) the new Lord Ruthven, and also claiming the hand of the beautiful Anna Clifford in marriage.

Only Anna's lover, Dr. Maxwell, knows the handsome stranger's ghastly secret—that he is a vampire returned from the grave!

The origins of the accursed Lord Ruthven are finally revealed for the first time in Volume 3 of this unique trilogy, which includes Lord Ruthven Begins, an 1868 play by Jules Dornay and The Confession of Mary Queen of Scots Regarding Lord Ruthven, an all-new story by playwright and translator Frank J. Morlock.

The review: This is the third Ruthven volume by Black Coat Press and, in honesty, after the volumes Lord Ruthven the Vampire and the Return of Lord Ruthven this feels a little like an after-thought.

Regular readers know that I am a big fan of Black Coat Press and so it pains me to say it, but it has neither the breadth of material of the first book or the fantastic penmanship of Dumas from the second book.

It isn’t really a Ruthven either. Actually Dornay’s play was Douglas le Vampyre and it is within this volume that the character of Lord Douglas has been renamed Ruthven. The reasoning is clear as the play is clearly based upon earlier Ruthven plays – indeed some moments are lifted wholesale from earlier Ruthven plays. That said the actions of one of the characters, Fanny, make the character ahead of her time. Lore is changed – whilst moonlight can revive the vampire it becomes more complex than previously seen:

“The vampire can be reborn three times. Life can be returned to the body when it is exposed to the action of lunar rays, before its remains have been confided to the Earth again; like a living man, it is subject to the chances other men run of death, and when for a third time, it has perished by a violent death, all resurrection is impossible. It returns to nothingness.”

The story also has a vampiric death by lightning – put down, in this case, to being an act of God.

The additional piece by Morlock is a short, teasing piece that attempts to offer us an origin for Ruthven’s vampirism.

So, the play has a little to offer lore wise but this is perhaps one for the serious collector/student rather than those having a casual flirtation with Ruthven. 5.5 out of 10.

Becoming Human – review

Director: Alex Kalymnio

Release Date: 2011

Contains spoilers

During the third season of Being Human, the BBC showed a web serial called Becoming Human. At the end of the third season run they aired it as a standalone spin-off episode.

The series followed Adam (Craig Roberts, Young Dracula) who had appeared as the central character in one of the Being Human third season episodes. He was a vampire, chronologically aged at 45 but trapped by his condition as a 16 year old.

Craig Roberts as Adam

The episode begins with him returning to school – he decides that getting qualifications would be useful so he doesn’t get stuck working in a call centre. The logic fell apart a little here. In the parent series he had been looked after by his father and mother, them both letting him feed from them, until they died – this wasn’t a bad premise. Now he looks to working eventually – yet he is a permanent 16. Mitchell gave him money but we don’t see where he lives – or even how he managed to rent/purchase accommodation as a 16 year old. None of this is addressed and, as such, it nags.

embarassing shenanigans

What was also fun in the parent series, but begins to wear, is Adam’s antiquated 80s speak and references to 80s pop culture (leading to a comment about him being a foreign exchange student). One wonders why he had never kept a handle on entertainment and celebrity developments in the intervening decades? Don’t get me wrong, Roberts’ performance is great, it’s just the logic behind the script that is faulty.

vampire, werewolf, ghost

In the school he meets a werewolf named Christa (Leila Mimmack), who he tries to avoid but gets thrown together with, and her stalker – Matt (Josh Brown), who she hadn’t realised was a ghost. Matt’s face is on missing posters and they realise he has been murdered. Honestly though, the idea of the ghost, the vampire and the werewolf was almost too contrived.

the vampire detective

The murder mystery itself is a little too rushed. In its original format – weekly webisodes with additional online content and clues, it worked. Cut into a single episode the 4 suspects (as we only meet 4 other characters) became too transparent, they had no depth and we lost an ability to really care. The investigation is slowed by Matt’s need for revenge on bullies, his embarrassment over past actions and his jealousy of a bond he sees forming between Adam and Christa and yet each hump in the road is sped past with alarming speed.

turning hirsute

The ending became senseless. They realise that the body is in the school and use Christa’s sense of smell to track it on the evening of a conveniently full moon. However, it wasn’t exactly well buried and the entire area would have reeked due to decomposition. Adam gets locked in with a transforming Christa but, as the killer does not believe in supernatural creatures, I wonder why? What was his purpose? A logic-less act to put the protagonists in peril. A final moan must be entered into with regards the fact that the killer is disposed of through Matt’s door to the other world – appearing when the case is closed. I apologise if that is a spoiler too far (though I haven’t said who it is) but it is exactly the solution used to dispose of Kemp in Being Human season 2. The fact that Adam suggests their killer might come back (though how he would know that is beyond me as he isn't exactly supernatural savvy) and there is an online coda of the killer appearing on a TV threatening to return suggests that this was a contrivance that was deliberately added to impact Being Human season 4 (bringing Kemp back). Time will tell on that.

So, I was fairly unimpressed with this. However there was a degree of take your brain out watchability – the trouble is, of course, that I do actually think about these things. The young actors couldn’t be faulted. Special mention to Leila Mimmack who was great as the werewolf in denial. The trouble was the logic (or lack thereof) within the plot. 3.5 out of 10  is for the episode as a pasted together whole.

The imdb page is here.

Being Human – season 3 – review

Director: various

First aired: 2011

Contains spoilers

It is sad when one of your favourite franchises loses its way, sadder still when it hangs on to some of the aspects that made it good and thus things like sloppy writing become all the more apparent.

Sadly, I believe such happened with season 3 of Being Human. It wasn’t the change in location – the series moved from Brighton to Barry in Wales – but a sloppiness born out of the need to expedite events that, quite frankly, the series didn’t need to touch.

Robson Green as McNair

First, the good. The main cast are – as always – brilliant and, indeed, there are some fantastic support role performances. For those who haven’t seen the series before the series concentrates on three friends, a vampire called Mitchell (Aidan Turner), a werewolf called George (Russell Tovey) and a ghost called Annie (Lenora Crichlow). These three try to keep (or find) their humanity. In contrast, within the supernatural world, the various creatures do not get on. To say vampires and werewolves dislike each other is an understatement. In this we get to see ‘dog fights’, where vampires pluck werewolves off the street and put them in cages to fight ordinary humans also abducted and bet on the results. It is through this we get to meet the werewolf McNair (Robson Green).

Lacey Turner as Lia

As this season begins, the housemates, including George’s werewolf girlfriend Nina (Sinead Keenan), have moved to Barry in Wales. Mitchell – after going off the rails (if you pardon the pun) and indulging in the slaughter of a train full of humans – rescued his friends from the pseudo-lab run by evangelical human Kemp. All that is, except Annie, who was exorcised by Kemp. In the first episode Mitchell crosses over to purgatory to rescue her. There, before being allowed to take her back, he meets Lia (Lacey Turner). She is one of the slaughter victims and she tells Mitchell that the price for rescuing Annie will be to die at the hands (or should that be claws) of a werewolf.

Craig Roberts as Adam

The series does some brilliant episodes – but they tended to be standalones. One of them involved finding a teenage (bodied) vampire named Adam (Craig Roberts, Young Dracula) who has lived the last thirty years on his parents, but his mother has died and his father is dying. The episode looks at the seedy-underbelly of suburban life as well as tackling Adam’s dilemma. The episode worked really well but also led to an online serial, Becoming Human, which was shown as a one-off on TV. The spin-off was all about the further adventures of Adam and that did not work as well – but we will look at Becoming Human separately.

Alexandra Roach as Sasha

Another cracking episode had Annie followed home by a dead woman, Sasha (Alexandra Roach) – but this dead woman is drunk and has a body and the body is rotting. They called the episode type 4 (1, 2 and 3 being vampires, werewolves and ghosts) and she was essentially a zombie – though a 'get drunk and pull guys' sort of zombie rather than eat brains or flesh. They discover that there were several deaths that didn’t quite end, during the time Mitchell was on the other side and, in a macabre moment, they find video of experimentation on the other zombies before they were incinerated. Sasha, herself, is in death denial and the episode boasted some stomach turning moment such as picking a rotten toenail off or a man snogging the rotting Sasha for a bet.

George Jr. and Snr.

Finally, I want to mention an episode in which George discovers that his father (James Fleet) has died and goes to the funeral only to find his father, a ghost with unfinished business. The episode followed two stories and was – in some respects – frustrating as it contained the best—George and his father—and the worst—the overriding arc—that the show had to offer. Kudos, however to Fleet and Tovey whose performances were powerhouse, both actors working so well off each other, and yet so natural it was easy to miss how good the acting was.

Jason Watkins as Herrick

It was in the overriding arc, as I mentioned, that the series fell apart but even then it had some shining moments. Herrick—the villain from Season 1—returns, at first with amnesia and thus can’t remember he is a vampire, indeed George finds him in the psychiatric wing of the hospital (a set designed around preconception rather than reality, one feels). Actor Jason Watkins is given a meaty role that allows him to stretch himself and impress but one wonders… how the Hell does everyone end up in Barry?

George, Nina and Mitchell

For Mitchell seems to be unable to hide from anyone, everyone appears on his doorstep it would seem. Okay Barry is only an hour or so’s drive from Bristol but even so… The main thrust of the arc is the prophecy that seems to be coming to fruition as the police net closes in around Mitchell and this is another example of how the show went wrong. Copper Nancy Reid (Erin Richards) is sent to question Mitchell as his name comes up, one wonders at the speed she finds the house but the worst is yet to come.

changes...

Despite the fact that any evidence she gains is inadmissible, and the fact that her superior is missing, Nancy goes to arrest Mitchell. Now she will be attached to Bristol’s police but requests backup in another force’s area, she asks for armed backup (which she would never have got based on her flimsy, 'I believe him armed and dangerous,' especially without a superior officer's say-so, plus I doubt Barry has an armed unit) and they raid the house like something out of a Hollywood film (they’d have likely laid siege). What we have is short-cuts in storytelling, simply because it looks good and it completely breaks the suspension of disbelief. There are problems with the supernatural aspects of all this but I can’t spoil that.

Mitchell and Annie

One had to look at the entire main arc and think, given what we already know, the vampires wouldn’t have let any of this go on. They would have covered it all up at the head of the season and while I am on this; the reaction of Mitchell’s friends is also, to me, unrealistic. Annie would never have sided with the humans after seeing the zombie experiment tapes, George and Nina are hypocrites, at the very least, because Mitchell killed enough people rescuing them. Indeed Nina seems all shocked when she realises Mitchell made them move from Bristol and that must be because of the massacre – they moved because of Kemp’s lab but it seems that event is completely forgotten.

A shame, because some of the good moments were the best the show has had to offer, but the over-arching story was pointless (ultimately) and a mess (emotionally and detail wise). 6.5 out of 10, when it is good it is very, very good but when it is bad it is a little like snogging a rotting, animated corpse, leaving a bad taste in the viewer's mouth.

The imdb page is here.