Joe Vampire – review

Directors: Sean Donohue & Mike Niche

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

You should not only not judge a book (or DVD) by its cover, you should also not judge it by the company it keeps. The trailers at the beginning of the Joe Vampire DVD had, I admit, got me worried. All from the Sleazebox label they all looked truly dreadful.

Of course I knew that Joe Vampire was a budget effort and came in at only 68 minutes but if the quality of the film could be judged by these trailers I was actually in for a rocky ride. I was pleasantly surprised.

the battle

The prologue section takes place on September 9th 1863, in South Carolina, the Confederate and Union forces are engaged in battle (using, I assume, footage of a battle recreation society in action rather than something staged specifically for the feature). Joe (Mike Christopher, who, incidentally, was the Hari Krishna zombie in Dawn of the Dead (1978)) is a Confederate soldier who makes it out of the battle, injured, bloodied but alive. He stumbles towards a campfire and is attacked by Kristof (Slake Counts), a vampire. Joe’s eyes turn red as he turns.

Joe's bed/coffin

There is a banging at a door, as the film shifts to a contemporary timeframe, and Joe opens up a coffin disguised as a bed. It’s his landlord (Joel D. Wynkoop, Addicted to Murder 2: Tainted Blood) and Joe is late with the rent… again. Joe has trouble keeping track of time and, when the landlord comments on his mirrored shades, Joe’s stock response is that he is in a Cory Hart tribute band.

Joe out on the town

He goes out and sees a bar with a help wanted sign but when he enquires the position has already been filled. As he has a drink a young woman, Melissa (Erin Cline), comes in. She gets a Tequila and then goes over to the dartboard. Joe approaches her and uses the Cory Hart line again when she laughs good naturedly about his shades. However she is not for being picked up and flashes a wedding ring, though he claims it isn’t a pickup - whilst simultaneously professing feeling a connection with her. She leaves and is followed by a young drunk, as an older woman approaches Joe and gets brushed off.

killing the bad man

Joe leaves the bar and intervenes as the young man tries to rape Melissa, pulling him away from her and biting the guy’s neck. In my notes, made as I watched the film, I actually recorded that it was a good blood effect and, in fact, the blood effects through the film worked really very well. Joe gets pepper sprayed across the shades before Melissa realises he is there to rescue her but she becomes very concerned when she sees his red eyes and the body of the rapist. He promises to explain, but not there...

Joe and Melissa

They go to a bench – a place he likes to go and think. He explains he is a vampire and she states it is unbelievable and then clarifies – she really doesn’t believe him. A flash of fang and some superhuman movement changes that. This is where the film should break down; the conversation spins to her immediately asking to be turned and being with him forever! He counters with the suggestion that she sees one last sunrise and her family, and if she still wants to (to which he professes doubt) then he’d do it. It should have fallen on its face but Christopher and Cline seem so natural it somehow works.

Mike Duffau as Drake

The rest of the film sees Joe being drawn into the machinations of his “brother”, Drake (Mike Duffau), who is doing business with someone called Denton (Anthony Wayne) - a human who is kidnapping children as a blood supply for the vampires (we hear a little about a vampire network). Joe apparently uses synthetic blood from the hospital, which, it is claimed, makes him weak. As for further lore – they avoid sunshine but cannot transform or fly. Joe has red eyes, apparently Drake wears brown contacts. A stake to the heart kills, as does massive blood loss/trauma apparently.

Vampiric eye candy

There are story issues. Denton's reparation is something in a box, which glows – we don’t know what that thing is. The rapist seems to be turned and sets about attacking random folks but then is working for Drake – how that happened we don’t know. We do know that all the machinations are about turning Joe onto the path Drake and Kristof believe he should be on but that is not deeply explored. We get a couple of attack set pieces with a pair of vampire women (Cassey Figueroa & Brendaly Rivera), one in a hot tub and the other in a pole dancing joint, that seem to be nothing but vampiric eye candy - not adding to the story but the scenes are nice to look at.

Melissa vamps

The unanswered bits of story and brevity of the film make this feel like a long set up for a further story. The short-cuts in storyline and narrative should be an issue. However I go back to Christopher and Cline making it so watchable – the short running time also prevents the film outstaying its welcome. I actually was rather taken by Joe and his troubles, 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Carmilla (web series) - Season 1

Done in the form of a vlog, Carmilla was a web series based, obviously, on J Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel. The first season ran for 36 episodes (of roughly 2 – 4 minutes length per episode) and a 2014 Christmas special was also produced.

The series is less a reimagining of Carmilla and, I guess, one could almost call it a sequel. Carmilla (Natasha Negovanlis) describes her early years of undeath as a round of carriage crashes, becoming firm friends with a young lady post the crash and then handing her over to her vampiric “mother” but we get ahead of ourselves.

Elise Bauman as Laura

Laura Hollis (Elise Bauman) has started at Silas University, in Styria (why the Austrian University is full of North American students and has fraternities is never really touched on). Part of her degree is journalism and she wishes to investigate a prank in the library (this actually does resurface later) but when her roommate Betty (Grace Glowicki) vanishes after a social event, a disappearance that the college do not seem to care about, and is replaced by the mysterious Carmilla she senses a different story.

pyrokinesis

Carmilla is described as the roommate from Hell and, eventually, we do get evidence that she is a vampire. She sleeps late (as the original character did), goes out all night, can turn into a cat, has super strength and displays pyrokinesis. However the story takes things in a distinctly Lovecraftian bent with a cult worshipping an entity described as an eldritch light. And description is what we primarily get with Laura and others speaking to the vlog camera. To a degree this then becomes much like a radio drama in construction.

captured vampire

The lesbian undertone remains – although less an undertone and more, perhaps, matter of fact. The portrayal of men, however, is less than positive – with the two examples pretty himbo like Frat boys. But hey, perhaps it’s time that men got the treatment more often reserved for portrayal of female characters .

At the time of this article there are two IMDb pages, here & here. You can watch the series through their YouTube channel here.

The Curse of Styria – review

Directors: Mauricio Chernovetzky & Mark Devendorf

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

My first draft of this review included a long rant about the production company and how they treated their kickstarter backers. The rant did not affect the score of the film but I believe that the producers treated their backers in a shoddy way and openly broke the ethos of crowdsourcing. However I have decided to remove the full rant (just having this mini rant) so as not to detract too much from the review of a film that (despite the events of the last 18 months) deserves our full attention.

Stephen Rea as Dr Hill

It is 1989 and a car pulls up to the Hungarian checkpoint. As well as a driver the car contains Dr Hill (Stephen Rea, Interview with the Vampire, Underworld Awakening & Werewolf: the Beast Amongst Us), an art historian, and his daughter Lara (Eleanor Tomlinson). There is an issue at the crossing and the guards suggest she cannot cross as her papers are no good. A bribe gets them over and in to a waiting car.

Lara's Diary is full of dark images

They get to their destination, a castle that has been closed since 1917 and was used as a sanatorium for consumption victims due to the spa below it. It has taken Hill 10 years to get permission to remove murals painted within the castle, along with a Dr Burkson – who will be arriving at the castle with his daughter Anna. Hill has arranged a tutor for Lara, Eva Pasztor (Erika Marozsán), and Lara has had to come after being expelled from her boarding school – where it is alleged that she pushed a girl down some stairs, something she denies but also illustrated in her diary. That night she dreams of being a little girl and being attacked by a woman who says she is taking her home.

grabbing the basket

In the morning she hears a man calling out the name Carmilla. He leaves a basket of food by an opening into the castle and a hand grabs the food. Dr Hill is working when he hears a noise – it is workmen come to demolish part of the castle. He arrives at where they are working just as a sledgehammer crashes into one of the murals. An altercation occurs, which is broken up by General Spiegel (Jacek Lenartowicz), more bribes stop the work but Spiegel informs Hill that Burkson (and thus Anna) has been denied entrance to the country under suspicion of being a spy. Lara takes this news badly and we see that she keeps a razor in her diary and her arms are covered with cutting scars. The hole in the mural revealed a hidden stairwell that makes Hill suggest the spa was in use pre-Roman times.

the crash

Lara walks in the grounds, her razor in hand. Suddenly she sees a car careening along a road and crashing. A young woman, Carmilla (Julia Pietrucha), gets out of the passenger side, staggering from the crash. A bloodied hand pulls the passenger door closed and Lara screams as the car appears to try and run Carmilla down. The car speeds away. Lara tries to talk to the girl and offers to phone the police – she says no to alerting the police. However she does go to the castle with Lara, who smuggles her inside without alerting her father to the woman’s presence. Having cleaned her up, and lent her clothes, Lara is taken out into the Hungarian countryside by Carmilla, were they look at the stars. Lara falls asleep and, after a disturbed dream about cutting that seems ritualistic, wakes on the hill top alone.

Lara and Carmilla

Now, it should be stated that Carmilla is not a vampire – at this point. The General is looking for her (and, it is implied, was the driver of the car), she is referred to both as an orphan and a gypsy, and she has lived in the vaults of the castle. She suggests to Lara, at one point, that the Karnstein crypts are in the castle, that they were vampires and one was missed when the rest were destroyed. At that point she does say “my crypt is close”. However it is after she is caught by the general, and subsequently cuts her own wrist and throat, that she becomes a vampire. In this vision the idea of a vampire is that it is a suicide, unable to rest, who seeks to drive others (one book says their loved ones) to suicide. Directors Mauricio Chernovetzky and Mark Devendorf touched on this when I interviewed them.

Feral attack

Other girls in the area kill themselves (the first one to do so is the girl buried in the funeral sequence that is an integral part of Le Fanu’s story) but some become feral and violent – all sense gone, with a need to bite and rend flesh. The locals try destroying those who have died to cure the living – beheading the first girl in her grave and later burning all the suicide girls in their graves. Of course this can’t be successful as the first was Carmilla, not the buried girl. It is an interesting slant on the vampire and, whilst there is bloodletting courtesy of the feral girls, this is very much a different take on vampirism to the norm.

Lara and Carmilla

The character of Lara is absolutely central to the film, her struggles and her past (both that which she remembers and that hidden from her) are fundamental to the narrative and so the excellent performance by Eleanor Tomlinson is key. That said Stephen Rae is excellent within the film also. The post-punk soundtrack works very well - the presence of the Jesus and Mary Chain standing out to me.

Burning in their graves

There is a motif of moths through the film. Whilst the moth is part of the Slavic vampire folklore I don’t think they were being used in that folkloric sense. I did get a feel from the film not dissimilar to that produced by the Moth Diaries (nothing to do with the moths in the title), however the Curse of Styria had the advantage over that vehicle in that it had a palpable Gothic atmosphere, provided in great part by the excellent castle location. It also didn’t have the weaker storyline aspects that detracted from the other film.

8 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

Edit: 24/2/15 - it was announced that the North American release of the film will be renamed Angels of Darkness.

Honourable Mention: Carmilla: the Harlequin Production

A few months ago I mentioned the play of Carmila, by my friend David MacDowell Blue, after he sent me a copy of the script.

More recently David has given me access to a video shot of the play being performed by Harlequin Productions of Cayuga Community College. The play was directed by Robert Frame.

The familiar story of the vampire Carmilla (Niki Baker-Lanning) coming into the life of the innocent Laura (Meg Owren) was cleverly transported to Austria in the 1930/40s. When I read the play I was also impressed with the way David had framed the story with a clever use of flashback interacting with a foreground that sees Laura interviewed by Allied Captain Martin (Donovan Stanfield). This was even more so after watching the way Harlequin production cleverly used a central stage area, which seemed to really draw the audience into the play.

the peddler scene

I think my favourite moment within the play was when Carmilla and Laura meet Carlsberg the Peddler (Ryan Baldwin). As well as offering us a modicum of lore, the scene really does allow Carmilla to reveal a darker, more aggressive aspect that is well portrayed by Baker-Lanning. The scene actually flows into one of my favourite scenes from the novella, which is Carmilla's reaction to the funeral dirge. I've always found this scene both interesting and intriguing.

Speilsdorf on stage

When I gave the script a mention, I said that it only gave me “a wee glimpse into the actual performed play". Now that I have seen the video of the production, whilst I have more idea I can also say that I wish I had actually seen it performed live. Nevertheless thanks to David, and the company, for giving me the opportunity to see the video.

Ed Wood's the Vampire’s Tomb – review

Director: Andre Perkowski

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

If someone designs a film to be a bad film, can a critic actually call it bad? This is a question I will struggle over during the length of this review.

Andre Perkowski has created a film apparently based on an unfilmed script penned by Ed Wood Jr for Bela Lugosi. What the truth of that is, I don't honestly know. We do know that Bela filmed footage with Ed wearing his Dracula gear, which ended up in Plan 9 from Outer Space, and we also know he died before principle shooting on Plan 9.

Judson and Flinch

Perkowski makes a film complete with visible boom mikes, bad edits, poor focus, even poorer framing, risible acting, awful dialogue and ridiculous plot. All this is clearly on purpose. It features an opening narrative by Criswell (himself, from archive) that actually continues on and off through the length of the film. The story, such as it is, is just a little bit "10 Little Indians". Lucille died two months earlier and her husband Judson (Keith Heimpel) and his siblings Flinch (David C. Hayes, Goodbye Light, the Death Factory: Bloodletting, Blood Moon Rising, Vampire Slayers & Vampageddon) and Diana have gathered at the house at Old Marsh Lake waiting for the inheritance (don't try and make sense of the expected probate).

Aunt Lucille

Also at the house is Barbara (Katie Dugan), who is Lucille's niece. She has had dreams or visions of Aunt Lucille walking from the tomb, a vampire. Of course the siblings do not believe in vampires (though I have to say when they open her tomb, Lucille is looking remarkably well preserved) and her death was perhaps not as natural as they made out. As a mysterious cloaked figure, Dr Acula, makes his presence known, the siblings begin to vanish one after the other.

Dr Acula

There really isn't much more story to tell, unless I were to spoil the ending. Piecing the narrative together was a little like plaiting fog. So instead I'll return to my original question, "If someone designs a film to be a bad film, can a critic actually call it bad?" Edward D. Wood Jr made bad films, of that there is no doubt, but he genuinely believed in himself and there is a naiveté to films like Plan 9 that make them watchable.

errant boom mike

Whilst this film was purposefully bad, I really don't know if Perkowski is a bad filmmaker or just the maker of a (deliberately) bad film. However there is none of Ed Wood Jr's naiveté to this film, it is most definitely a homage to Wood the one can't help but feel a cynicism as well. The film isn't so bad that it is good, and therefore is just bad. Unfortunately it pretty much is unwatchable. The answer to the question is therefore: yes, a critic, albeit an amateur one in this case, can call such a film bad. 1.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Bloodsucka Jones – review

Director: Justin Armao

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

As always, when it comes to comedy we are in what I think to be the most subjective form of filmmaking. Humour really is a fickle thing and what one person finds funny another person does not.

Bloodsucka Jones is very much a comedy and you know what it worked although, as we'll discuss, the comic performances could have been better. The film takes its lead from blaxploitation movies from the 70s, though the film didn't pursue this in the way that perhaps other retro-facing movies have chosen to do so. Again we'll discuss this later, first the plot.

blood at mouth

A car pulls up at night. In the car are a boy (Pani DuPrey) and a girl, Heather (Erin Holt). The atmosphere feels awkward and eventually Heather asks if he would still like her if she was different. He assumes she's Canadian, so she directly asks him if he would like to see her boobs. She unzips her top, his vision drifting between the brassiere clad boobs and her also revealed fangs. She lunges and bites him, then a gang of prepubescent vampires grab him and pull him out of the car. In the morning there is a stain of (very red) blood to mark his passing.

Christine and David

David (Justin Armao) is playing basketball on his own. He manages to hit a passing girl, Christine (Jessica Dercks) with the basketball. To apologise he tells her to throw the basketball at his head, and ends up on his ass. She asks him if he has a girlfriend. Cut forward a couple of months and she takes David to meet her stepbrother Stewart (Matt Kelly). Initially friendly, when alone with David, Stewart picks the hapless boyfriend up by the throat and tells him to break up with Christine. Later in a bar he is approached by Heather who again tells him to break up with Christine. Both reveal their vampire nature.

Travis Woods as Tony

David is directed towards the apparent vampire hunter Tony (Travis Woods), who is actually just a bit of a beach bum. Tony's knowledge comes from comic books about Bloodsucka Jones. The reason the vampires want David to break up with Christine is because tradition says the first kill should be someone you love, and they know Christine wont attack David and so they are trying to provoke the attack. Eventually David and Tony also find a sword that Stewart has been searching for. They also, eventually, meet Bloodsucka Jones (Preston Gant), and his silent sidekick Vanessa (Maria Canapino), who takes the two hapless heroes under his wing.

Bloodsucka Jones and Vanessa

The film is funny but not consistently hilariously so. One of the main reasons why, I think, is that most of the cast is quite inexperienced and I think they struggle with the comic timing. Not so Preston Gant who is the best thing about the film. It is therefore quite worrying that we don't get to see him until almost a third of the film had played. The other actor who really impressed me was Maria Canapino whose virtually silent character works really well.

melted through cheap fashion

Don't get me wrong I found the film funny, but with a more confident cast and more focus on the title character it could have been more so. The vampires in this can confidently walk around in daylight, are turned by biting and are generally as hapless as the heroes. One very amusing (and spoiler filled) change of lore comes when Heather is given the present of a new top and, after she puts it on, is told that it is from a cheap retailer. The top then dissolves her as holy water might do in another film.

Preston Gant is Bloodsucka Jones

I found it interesting that the filmmakers decided to go down the line of having a 70s blaxploitation type character, with authentic looking clothes, an Afro that could have been its own character and a moustache that was wonderfully false, and yet place that character within a contemporary surrounding. This makes the character an anachronism, but this worked well. The alternative I guess would have been to go along the lines of films like the Sins of Dracula or Disco Exorcist, which very much try to recreate a film that feels like it came from that era. That is almost becoming a tried and tested formula, so kudos to the Bloodsucka Jones team for trying something different.

Again, it's a comedy, so bear that in mind when looking at the score. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here. The film can be hired or bought digitally at Vimeo.

Mostly Dead – review

Director: Hernan Caraballo

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

Whilst many of the vampire movies featured on TMtV are bought, sometimes I'm contacted by production companies and asked if I would like to review their film and at other times I actually contact the production company to see if a screener is available for review. In the case of Mostly Dead it was the latter.

CGI vampire death

It is always tough, in either of those scenarios, when the film proves to be not one of the best. Clearly the filmmakers are proud of their effort, but my first loyalty is to the reader of this blog. Mostly Dead has genuine problems, many of which I suspect are born of a combination of the issues of budget filmmaking combined with a genuinely (overly) ambitious vision. I will cover these issues within the review, and it will of course affect the final score. However, there are some really good ideas in Mostly Dead as well and I also hope to persuade you that the final film is actually worth your time viewing.

a vampire attack

We are in the town of Fairlawn and things are distinctly odd. The cars stopped running, no trains or buses arrive in the town and no planes fly overhead. Somehow the electricity and water are still available but no communications can escape the town. They assume that similar phenomena has impacted the rest of the world. Oh yeah... they also have vampires. As the film starts we see a girl walking down the street with baby, more importantly we hear a song being sung. Unaccompanied vocal, this original track for the film is truly excellent and works towards building an atmosphere.

like an undead Fagin

As she walks the sky darkens. We see in an alley a vampire feed on a Goth. She passes a vampire, Vasili (Christopher Brechtel), dressed in Victorian garments with a group of children vampires all dressed in fancy dress capes. She runs and they chase. She reaches the doors of a church and has time to bang on the door, multiple times, for entrance. It takes a while but the door is opened, and she gets inside before the out of breath vampire reaches her. And here we can start seeing the problems. I'll get to the changing weather/days in a second but it was difficult to understand why 1) Vasili couldn't catch a girl holding a baby, and 2) why a vampire seemed out of breath? (After all, later in the film a vampire says that they do not get tired.)

in the snow

So, a good number of the town residents are hiding out in the church, under the care of Father Giovanni (Ryan Trost). These residents emerge during daylight hours scavenging for food. I said I'd mention the weather, it flips between summer and winter. When preparing for a review I make notes on the film I'm watching, and made a note of the extreme changing weather – snow in one scene, summer in the next. Suddenly this was answered in the dialogue when one woman asks whether it is the vampires causing such drastic day by day changes. Kudos to the filmmakers for tackling this, though I suspect the ever changing climate may have had more to do with an extended filming window. I would, however, tend to avoid filtered day for night shots – they can jar generally, especially when internal shots appear duller than faux-night shots, and they weren't used consistently.

Lynn Lowry as The Lady

When the town residents find a vampire, they dispatch it. The vampires explode in a fireball, the CGI for this (and for a house explosion the residents set off) jarred as well and I would have been tempted to avoid using such effects. The main story was the thing that kept me hooked into the film. This was, of course, the question of what exactly was happening? We get additional mysteries that feed into this, such as why it appears that certain vampires can go out in daylight, why the man with learning difficulties, Michael (Dean Puleo), seems to be able to sense vampires, and why one of the vampire leaders, The Lady (Lynn Lowry, My Stepbrother Is a Vampire!?!), can sense something amiss in the church.

under-explored as a character

Unfortunately they did throw a lot more story at the viewer and some of this was too much, and never got fully explored. Vasili feeds on children, walking with a gang of vampire kids like a toothsome Fagin, but we never see deeply into his character. That was a mistake. 30 years before he preyed on a young girl; as he fed on her the cross she wore, beneath her nightdress, seemed to burn into her chest. In the present day with faced with a cross the one in her chest glows. She hasn’t stayed with him, despite his perchance for gangs of vampire kids, we don’t know why. She appears to actually be growing, something a vampire shouldn't do, and this is put down to the cross. It’s a great kernel of an idea but is frustratingly not explored.

Flunky and The Lady

Similarly, early on we see a young woman contemplate suicide and later in the film it appears that Vasili is invading her dreams to push her towards such an act. But that is all we get, much more might have been done with it but the incidental nature of the scenes make it extraneous. I mentioned The Lady, she has a lackey (Michael O'Hear, Red Scream Nosferatu) but precious little is done with these characters. A young man who turns with his leg severed was perhaps a story too many and could have been left out. Frustratingly there is a character called Maria (Tara Rae Hark) who was concentrated on a little, but cutting away some of the extraneous storylines could have seen this important character concentrated on even more.

spotted - a daywalker

So that was some of the problem with too much story but in some respects I did feel that the actual piecing together of the main narrative could have been smoother as well. None of this, however, is able to take away from the fact that the core story kept me intrigued. I admit that I did guess exactly what the vampires sensed as being off in the church, but not straight away. Let’s be honest, a town taken by vampires was always going to be an ambitious project but concentrating on the core mystery would have made it a little more manageable.

vampire dog

So we come to the score, and is not an easy thing. I was entertained, and there were some great ideas (and a vampire dog). However the cinematic narrative was somewhat clumsy, the CGI obtrusive and there was a feeling that the filmmakers had bitten off more than they could chew. I also understand that they were working with a budget and a cast who were mostly in their first film. I don't want to give the film too low a score, which in itself would be unfair. Because I was taken with the film I'm going to give this 4 out of 10. The score reflects the issues but also the fact that I did actually sit and enjoy the central mystery within the film. Hernan Caraballo should take heart as there is much to build on.

The imdb page is here.

The Angels of Islington – Review

Author: Sarah Channing Wright

Published: 2014

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Onyx, Demon, Spider and Storm are vampires.

They hide from an ancient enemy within the recesses of a Victorian warehouse situated in the heart of London that houses a club night known to its denizens as ‘Slimelight’.

But all is not as it seems.

Immersed within the goth subculture where music, alcohol and blood flows concurrently, they are unaware that something has been plotting revenge and in order to survive, they must each find a new inner strength and, hopefully, sober up.

A gripping début novel following in the footsteps of Anne Rice and Poppy Z Brite with a touch of the sardonic. The Angels of Islington is a tongue-in-cheek romp through the world of a group of vampires who have successfully integrated themselves into the goth scene of nineties London.

This is not a sparkly vampire story.

The review: In her introduction to the novel, Sarah Channing Wright informs us that this book began life some years ago as a project not meant to be read by anyone, written when the author was younger. As such it reminded me of my own project Behind the Masque, which was a product of its time from a writer less mature than the one who released it. The author has, of course, edited and altered this moment in time to smooth off much of the rough edges but, as I read the book, I kept its roots in mind.

The book further spoke to me, as it described the Goth scene in London in the 90s, which living in a Lancashire seaside town at the same time I could only imagine whilst listening to the music. Hearing descriptions of such famous venues like Slimelight released a pang of jealousy for the nostalgia that my home town of Blackpool could never provide.

The story itself concentrates on a group of vampires who hang out in the Goth scene so as to hide in plain sight. Their hedonistic lives are threatened when an ancient vampire known as the Count tracks them down, his aim to destroy them. The Count is not a moral crusader, wiping out fellow vampires due to the perception of evil, he is absolutely mad as a hatter having been shunned by the woman he loved, Cleopatra.

The vampires are fairly standard lore wise; they are stronger and faster than humans, beheading certainly kills them as does sunlight and staking. The curse can be passed to animals, there was only a little bit done with this and I would have liked to have seen this explored more. Vampires can sense each other but somehow the Count can block this. I was unsure about the idea that the vampires could drain someone dry in seconds but, then again, this was written in the era of Buffy.

The citing of Goth bands by name, of which there is a lot, might prove distracting if a reader was unaware of the artists. This was not an issue for myself, but something to do that to bear in mind in future projects. All in all I enjoyed the journey and the sense of nostalgia. 6 out of 10.

New Crowdsourcing Projects

I've just come across these two crowdsourcing projects, which I thought I'd share with you. The normal caveat applies; I share this for information only and you back them at your own risk.

They are two very different films, and I'm rather excited about the first one (to the point that I've backed it myself). Octavia: Elegy for a Vampire is a film proposed by Dennis Leroy Kangalee. I was taken in by the description on the film's homepage:

Part poem, rock opera, and “Brechtian” play — this will not be a traditional horror/vampire genre-film but a cubistic portrait of a woman trying to come to terms with the perennial problems of racism, misogyny, and the startling lack of empathy and awareness in the world.

The film's Kickstarter page can be found here and Facebook page can be found here.

The second film is Seize the Night and is a different beast altogether. Apparently inspired by such films/series as Blade, Underworld, Dracula 2001, True Blood and Razor Blade Smile, the story follows:

EVA, a renegade vampire assassin, on her action filled journey to the truth. The film opens shortly after she has escaped from a secret government compound, a centre for the most nefarious biological experiments. Following her escape Eva is confronted by her lifelong enemy and is forced into a situation of such gravity she may have to deal with the devil she knows best in order to fight a far greater evil.

 The film's Indiegogo page can be found here and the film’s Facebook page can be found here.

And that's all from me until after Christmas, have a great day tomorrow and I'll see you on the other side.