Handbook of the Vampire: Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr and the World of Dreams

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Gillian McIver the Chapter Page can be found here.

Dedicated to the wonderful film Vampyr the author takes us on a study of the film touching on its financing, Dreyer’s vision and some of the themes and imagery in the film itself.

One aspect that I particularly liked, as it is not something I picked up personally, was the observation that the predation of Chopin (the vampire) on Leone is actually age preying on youth. A marvellous observation. The book within the film, The Curious History of the Vampire, by Paul Bonnat, O.P. Published by Gottfried Faust’s Estate – 1770 AD, which we read much of during the running time on intertitles, was so central to the film that (in my original review of the film I quote it extensively). The author quotes Dreyer himself as seeing the book as a character itself. I liked the reading of the film as being a series of dreams belonging to Allan Grey.

The one thing I did find odd was that the author didn’t touch on the over-exposure of the film, which offers its distinctive look. Though this may be because that has been touched on many times before.

Honourable Mention: Deadpool & Wolverine

Some may call this 2024 Marvel film, directed by Shawn Levy, the film that saved the MCU – that remains to be seen. Drawing the ultra-popular Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, Blade Trinity) into the MCU along with the equally popular Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, Van Helsing) was always going to be a slam dunk, especially with the on and off-screen chemistry the two actors display. That is, so long as they managed to pitch the film right, and that they did with plenty of fan service, gags out the wazoo, fourth wall breaks and plenty of violent action.

Wesley Snipes as Blade

It was great seeing some of the old characters reappear from the Marvel stable and from outside the MCU sequence. For us, it was the re-emergence of Blade (Wesley Snipes) and let us not forget that it has been argued that the original Blade movie saved Marvel. Stuck in the Void, a multiverse trash heap where the Time Variance Authority stick multiverse problems (and old Marvel heroes from films not in the MCU are sent to die), Deadpool and Wolverine are found by a resistance group that includes Blade and they then help them fight the evil Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) to get the duo passage out of the Void.

the Void resistance

It was great to see Wesley Snipes reprise the role and even better to see him enjoying it – rather than phoning the performance in as he did in Blade Trinity. There is one thing that struck me, however. There was fan chatter when, in context of multiple character variants, he says “There's only been one Blade...and there's only ever gonna be one Blade.” Many took this as a hint that perhaps Snipes, rather than Mahershala Ali, may be Blade in the touted (but troubled) MCU Blade film. We shall see; though I doubt it at this point, I could be on board with that, though I am very excited to see Ali in the role. However, I do think Sticky Fingaz might have something to say about that and Blade the Series deserved far more love than it got.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

First Impression: Salem’s Lot {2024}

Whilst the 2024 reimagining of Salem’s Lot came out across most territories on streaming, for some reason in the UK it was released a week after the States into cinema. Dutifully I attended. The Gary Dauberman helmed film had a lot to live up to, given the earlier versions and, I understand, it had around an hour shaved off to hit it’s just shy of 2-hour running time.

Before I look at the film, however, I want to quickly take stock of my thoughts on the earlier versions. The Stephen King novel is, of course, an absolute classic and the two miniseries are both excellent. However I do, controversially, prefer the 2004 version; the 1979 version is still a much loved classic but it has not aged with grace and feels like a product of its time. Both try their darndest to add in some of the vast characterisation King uses in his novel, a vain hope given the limitations of time they faced but a brave attempt in each case.

giving instructions re the crate

This version returns to the novel’s time-period and, whilst this is done well in both the photography and costuming/cars etc, it doesn’t feel dated like the 1979 one. Not that this is better than that version, it has to be said, this for me is the weakest adaptation – though it was still worth a watch. Starting at the point where the crate containing master vampire Barlow (Alexander Ward, American Horror Story: Hotel) is collected, one feels that much of the early story to introduce the town characters has vanished. And that is the issue with the film.

Susan and Ben

King’s book tracks a town, the miniseries both try their best to round out characters in different ways. In this we obviously still get some of the central protagonists and some of their backgrounds are changed – Susan (Makenzie Leigh), for instance, is working for Larry Crockett (Michael Steven Costello) the realtor and meets returning son of the Lot and author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) that way. Crockett himself becomes a footnote, met for a scene and then forgotten. Worse fates lie in store for characters such as Weasel – a voice, a top of his head and less than a couple of seconds, he hasn’t even a credit on IMDb. As for Ben and Susan, their romance is so shorthand you have to take it for granted rather than see the characters fall for each other, and bruised former suitor Floyd Tibbets (Kellan Rhude) may as well have been cut altogether he was so pointless. I get it though; with such a tight timescale they couldn’t possibly include everything.

Marjorie returns

Therefore, they play for scares. Jump scares are the order of the day, along with some well-done atmosphere supplemented by plenty of mist. Some of the situations seemed a tad out though. When waiting to see if Majorie Glick (Danielle Perry, Castle Rock) will rise we have Ben, Susan and Doctor Cody (Alfre Woodard) there. However, Ben, in an earlier scene, was clutching a cross, which the camera (and the Doctor) focused directly on. There is no reason he wouldn’t take one with him and thus the whole tongue depressor built cross moment (and the peril that it leads to) feels forced. A comment on crosses – they glow near the undead. A comment on the doctor being bitten and treating with a rabies shot… that all seemed silly, this is supernatural not a virus and in the time frame it would have been in the stomach… even today it is a muscle shot rather than into the vein.

Jordan Preston Carter as Mark

The vampires are fast, fly, have glowing eyes, require invitation (which can be rescinded), are killed by sunlight or staking, have major eye mojo and the town falls pretty darn quickly. Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) is played younger than the other versions and new to the Lot, but is cool as a cucumber and well-acted – he was a highlight character along with Matt Burke (Bill Camp). John Benjamin Hickey made a great Father Callahan, but the character was almost as stifled as the 1979 version. As for the antagonists, Straker (Pilou Asbæk), is the weakest version of Straker out of the three films, his presence is low – both in screen time and actual presence in a scene. Barlow is done as a Nosferatu type of vampire but does speak and the look is not as effective as it was in 1979. The Marsten House failed to be the character it became in both miniseries and Mears connection to it was not communicated.

Barlow in action

If it sounds like I’m negative, I’m not – I enjoyed the cinema experience and this is a horror flick first and foremost rather than the more involved miniseries. There is a place for that, and these are my thoughts as I mull the next day. Go in expecting a vampire horror that happens to have names from King and you will have a good enough time, expect anywhere near the characterisation of either miniseries, not to mention the novel itself, and you’ll be disappointed. I will review this properly and delve more into certain aspects (like the finale) when the physical media comes out. I am hoping that a Blu-ray release will retore the rumoured hour and then, perhaps, we will have more rounded characters.

The imdb page is here.

Unnatural – review

Director: Whit Whitman

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

I was given access to Unnatural as a screener and my first thought was one of trepidation. The film is clearly on a budget and, though vampire themed, does contain a werewolf (Matt Headley) and werewolves and low budget can struggle to mix. In fact, the werewolf is at the head of the film and seems to have been done well. This turns out to be a solid budget western/horror and whilst it isn’t the greatest film (or even the greatest budget film) it is certainly a decent watch and a cut above many other budget films.

the werewolf

It starts with a POV camera heading towards a homestead. In there are Pa (Keith Migra) and Ma (Megan Reneau) and their kids Jessie (Charlee Carmicle) and Junior (Samuel Wilson). It is bible reading time but there is howling outside. Despite Jessie’s warning that something is wrong as ghosts are gathering (something her Ma does not accept and seen, for us, in the form of subtle motes or orbs), Pa goes outside and is immediately got by the werewolf. Ma goes out and is got as well.

the kids

The kids hide and we have seen a rider, Dan (Al Snow), heading towards the homestead. The werewolf is about to get them when Dan saves them. He is, it transpires, their estranged grandfather. His wife had been possessed and he had to exorcise her but, despite ridding her of the demon, her weakened state caused her to die. This meant his son ran away, becoming estranged from Dan. The disaster is Dan’s fault – the werewolf is a survivor of a pack he wiped out and had followed the scent of his bloodline.

vamping out

Dan does not want the responsibility of his grandkids but one of the ghosts (his wife) speaks to him and reprimands him for the attitude. He can hear ghosts but not see them, and Jessie can see them but not hear them. (Junior can fix just about anything.) Dan ends up taking the kids with him as God sends him to the town of Possum Trot. Before he gets there we see a trio of vampire hunters. They ignore the town rule of handing in their weapons, and do not get suspicious when they hear that the Sheriff, Hawken (John Wells), 'works his farm' during the day and comes to town at night (and has done so since the previous Sheriff was killed by a foreign visitor and he survived). They end up being quickly slaughtered as night falls. When Dan gets there he ignores the gun rule and also the rule of no children (though it does say that they should not be there at nightfall).

burning cross

So, vampires must be burnt or staked and are held back by garlic. Drinking holy water will make that person's blood undrinkable. They are fast and strong and there is a cool bit of surrounding a building with a burning cross of oil to trap a vampire. The night shots can be a tad too dark – most notably whilst we are trying to see the werewolf. The dialogue can be very on the nose with regards exposition. Al Snow as Dan is wonderfully surly and his delivery is natural – of course Snow is an old wrestling pro, but the character does not fall back on wrestling in the film. All in all this was a solid 5 out of 10 and it is better than many a low budget horror flick.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

First Impression: Bleeding

A 2024 film by Andrew Bell, Bleeding was shown at Grimmfest 2024, where we were warned of the dark tones in the film and it is dour but the dark, pretty nihilistic tone suits the film and the subject matter and the excellent acting makes it a great vampire film.

The film tracks addiction – and using the vampire as a simile for addiction is no new thing, of course, most obviously in the Addiction but also such films as I Pass for Human – and the impact addiction has on friends and family, as well as the societal impact. More than this it makes the blood of vampires the actual drug, leading to the exploitation of the turned – again, not new and used in vehicles such as Blade the Series (where it is more accurately the bone dust of a killed vampire) and True Blood. This is not a criticism – the genre builds upon itself – and Bell (who wrote, directed and plays an antagonist) created a fine vehicle in its own right.

John R. Howley as Eric

The film follows Eric (John R. Howley) a teen whose brother died from a vampire blood overdose – the lore within the film sees an OD leading to death and then turning, equally a bite can turn it appears – and whose mother is in a prescription drug haze. He has taken to breaking and entry – not to rob, however – and at the head of the film he goes to visit his cousin Sean (Jasper Jones). At the house he sees Sean’s dad, Hank, drinking at 10 AM – and, though not explored I assumed his drinking was a reaction to his work, plus there are themes touched on of domestic violence father to son. He shows Eric a video of a raid on a house where a young person has OD’d and the execution of the vampire. Later we hear he was the one who terminally took care of Eric’s brother.

Jasper Jones as Sean

Eric has come to get weed from Sean, who trades the weed for some of the mother’s prescription pills. We have seen Sean snort dust – the powdered form of blood (actually, how they make the dust is an impactful scene in the later film). He tells Eric to not smoke the weed in the house and then relents and tells him to blow the smoke out of the window. It goes wrong and Hank charges upstairs. Sean has a big brick of dust, loaned from dealer Dustin (Andrew Bell), to sell to get away from his dad. Hank finds it and scatters the dust to the wind. The boys smash one of the house windows before running off.

Tori Wong as Sara

Sean is in trouble, he owes Dustin $2k and Eric comes up with the idea of going out to the cabins on the edge of town, laying low and stealing contents from the rich owners to make the money back. They do break into a cabin and stumble across an imprisoned vampire, from Eric’s school, called Sara (Tori Wong), insensible during the day and reactive to the sun. Sean stabs her neck and drinks her blood, going into OD and so there is that to deal with, Dustin of course, as well as the person who imprisoned Sara and she wants to escape to Canada where they are treating vampirism as a disease and working towards a cure.

turning

The tone of the film never lets up, but the three primary leads absolutely give their all. Was this a horror film? Arguably it is a dark drama and yet the vampirism – which straddles a line between a consequence of actions and a supernatural condition – is less the horror, than the horror themes that stem from the society wrapped around it and, whether the issue is vampire blood or opioids, the impact of addiction on society (and vice versa) becomes the dark centre stage. What is great, however, is that the vampirism never feels tagged on but rather it is integral. I want to delve much deeper into this vehicle when the film is available for home consumption and will do a full review then.

The imdb page is here.

Nosferatu, créature des ténèbres (silent) – review

Director: Gérard Seigneur

Release date: 2023 (2022)

Contains spoilers

Though copyrighted for 2022, I have seen that production was ongoing in December of that year so have assumed a 2023 release date – there is, at time of writing, no IMDb page for conformation. I understand there is a version of this film with dialogue, however I have watched the silent version with intertitles (and a small piece of audio dialogue in the bookends to the film). The bookends are colour, whilst the majority of the film as presented is black and white – there is a colour flashback sequence. My thanks to Adrien who informed me of the film’s existence. I watched this on YouTube. There are no English subtitles but the Google translator app on my phone is a marvellous thing.

playing with the cat

So, this is a French language remake of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens and, I perceive, one done in tribute – especially as it was made in the 100th anniversary year of the original masterpiece. Filmed silent (there is, as mentioned, a dialogue version also) it does mirror the original quite closely but veers off massively at the end and I will spoil that. All the names are changed. The opening colour sequence sets the scene and then we meet Alice (Juliette Perfetto) playing with her cat. Husband Louis (Andrea Poupard) leaves the house and gets flowers from Doctor Bonnin (Gérard Seigneur) and takes them to her – and they embrace.

the letter

Changes are seen already. If being true to the original, Louis (or Hutter) would meet the Doctor (Bulwer) on the way to work but, more significantly, Alice (or Ellen) would mourn the flowers being cut. Be that as it may, Louis then does go to work and an intertitle suggests that his employer, Dublineau (also Gérard Seigneur) – Knock, in the original, of course – is a bad man with plenty of rumours circulating about him. He has received a letter, in occult script, from the Count of Aulan – or Nosferatu (Philippe Seigneurin), and there is a reason for separating the two out, which I’ll come to. Dublineau sends Louis with papers to sell the Count a house in the town.

in the inn

Before he leaves, he visits the Doctor who shows him the mysterious microscopic world and a Venus Flytrap in action – lifting the Bulwer, science sequence from the original forward and given to Louis rather than students. He then leaves Alice with his in-laws and rides off to meet the Count. There is quite a bit of riding footage and then he gets to the inn. He is, of course, warned about his journey but interestingly he is also told that the real Count has been dead for some time. A handily placed book on vampires suggests Nosferatu was born in 1443. Back home Dublineau conducts occult/alchemical experiments – and this could have been interesting if capitalised on by explicitly connecting this with his being committed to the asylum, but it was not.

meeting the Count

Louis goes to the castle, but we have seen a hooded figure look through his window at the inn and a hooded figure picks him up in a carriage – I noted here that it was clearly daytime as we got sun glare in the photography. I don’t think it was a day for night error rather I think this Count has servants. When Louis reaches the castle another hooded figure leads him to the Count who is sitting at a desk. The Count’s makeup is rather simple – revealed bald later, he has pointed ears and obvious makeup to make him look gaunt. When we see fangs they are more to the side than front. There is a portrait in the room, clearly Alice, though no comment is made by Louis and, when the Count sees the small portrait Louis carries, he makes no comment about the likeness. So let us turn to Alice for it is here that the changes, and issues, begin.

colour memory

Alice is not shown reacting on the first night that Louis is attacked but she does react the second night. But where the original can be read that her psychic link is with either her husband or the vampire, here it is clearly with Louis. Later, when she gets his letter, she (clairvoyantly) knows he is in danger and might be dead. However, the film does tap into the reincarnation trope of the wider megatext and we get a memory or flashback sequence later, shown in colour, of her as the Countess with the Count of Aulan (Eneko Darrigo) – note the change in actor. She falls and dies, he commits suicide and is transformed in the grave (and the grave is transformed also) into Nosferatu (and the vampire is credited as Nosferatu). Where this became confused is that they chose to use a different actor and the grave states 1723 – some time beyond the 1443 date in the book. Did the suicide allow the vampire to take the real Count’s place? The sequence is shot as though they are the vampire’s memories, so perhaps they are one and the same and the dates are wrong? We just don’t know.

the shadow on the stairs

This reincarnated love aspect is not capitalised on at all and here we come to the even bigger changes. Louis gets back before the Count arrives and brings plague to the town. Alice reads the book and sees the answer to the vampire is to offer blood by consent – there is no purity aspect mentioned. As in the original she sends her husband off and essentially invites the vampire in – the shadow sequence is not well realised unfortunately. The vampire bites and… she dies, the sun hasn’t risen and the Doctor and Louis find her body. The dying in the sun is removed, worse, the men then go and stake the Count – so the female agency, so important in the original film, is absolutely removed.

staking

I do have to say that the staking sequence is nicely done and I liked the vampire, metal stake part embedded, grabbing Louis by the throat until the job is finished by the Doctor (who has way more Agency here than the original, and I think there was an under-communicated aspect of science defeating the occult, where the original film had the man of science as ineffectual and almost irrelevant). I should mention that Dublineau does not escape the asylum as Knock did. Interestingly they have the castle fall to ruin once the vampire dies, taking a moment that was in Stoker’s notes for Dracula but not the finished novel. I also need to mention that there are two moments of crap bat syndrome within the film.

Philippe Seigneurin as Nosferatu

Overall, however, this was clearly an ode but I did not like the big changes to the end of the film. Of course a filmmaker is free to do what they like but the death at dawn aspect of the original film is so iconic and so important to the megatext that, whatever else I changed (were I to try and rescript Nosferatu) I would never touch that, nor would I remove the agency that Ellen displayed. Of course, I have not watched the sound version but the silent acting had a level of mummery to it that I think is born from the fact that the exaggeration needed for such an art is no longer needed when acting in modern films normally. Some of the, clearly budget driven, sets were a bit silly. The ship becomes a sailed river sloop, but the log still mentions sea ports and they pretend this very low to the water vessel has a hold it could never have. Still, I appreciate the love for the original that this shows. 5 out of 10.

Brief Hiatus

 Dear blog reader,

 

It seems a while since I put the blog on hiatus but I’m off on my travels tomorrow for Grimmfest 2024 and have decided to have a brief break from TMtV for the duration. But worry not, I’ll be back on Monday 7^th to bring you the vampire goodness (and badness) I know we all crave.

 

Whilst I am there, I’ll get the chance to see The Bleeding and so I’ll be doing a First Impression of that for sure. If you happen to be attending Grimmfest then be sure to say hello.

 

See you in a few days.