A Stranger in the Woods – review

Director: József Gallai

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

I do like Bill Oberst Jr. (Age of the Living Dead, the Good Things Devils Do, Dis & the Black Water Vampire), a genre actor whose presence picks any film up when on screen. On the other hand, I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of the found footage genre. In this we have Oberst Jr and a found footage format, with the actor lifting the format simply by his presence. The fact I am reviewing the film is clearly a spoiler – the original blurb doesn’t mention vampires.

Laura Ellen Wilson as Edith

The film credits appear over black with the sound of an engine and radio playing. The foley continues as we see we are in a car driven by Edith (Laura Ellen Wilson). Edith is a film student who is travelling to an arranged assignment. Let me stop and discuss location. The countryside looked distinctly European (the film was shot in Hungary), though when we hear Edith there is no mistaking her Northern-English accent – Oberst Jr adopts an authentic Eastern European lilt. Yet the film is set in the US – thus the viewer has to suspend disbelief.

Shawn Michael Clankie as Gregory

She receives a video from her tutor, Gregory (Shawn Michael Clankie, Nest of Vampires), saying that the subject of her film, Victor (Bill Oberst Jr.), is expecting her, that he is a recluse (or hermit, perhaps) but has agreed to be filmed and she is being paid for the project. He also mentions that Victor has mentioned someone watching him from the woods. There is a final warning that cell signal is poor out there but if she needs anything to get to a high point to find a signal and give him a call.

Lynn Lowry as Granny

When she arrives, no one seems to be there, but eventually Victor emerges claiming that he is someone else and that Victor died… He quickly suggests he was acting but it is the first of many games played that do come across often as subtle. He takes her photo on arrival and she suggests driving to town for some supplies. When she stocks the fridge there only seems to be two bottles of red liquid – her alarm bells don’t sound. She does manage to get a signal and call her granny (Lynn Lowry, Mostly Dead, My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?!, Rabid & Necropolis: Legion).

Bill Oberst Jr. as Victor

So, as things build Victor comes across as socially awkward and very strange. However, there are tells we get. Edith cooks for him and after one mouthful he gags, seeming pained and physically angry. The reason is never offered but hinted at in the earlier cooking scene, as there is a net bag of garlic towards the front of the shot. In the following scene, where he takes her to a takeaway-only-diner and buys them burgers, he “accidentally” gives her his burger and the meat is raw. Edith gets more and more paranoid, especially about the watcher in the woods, but somehow lets Victor talk her into staying when she determines to get the Hell out of there.

vampire eyes

This is a game he plays (Granny is contacted by Edith and she manages to get an ex-Federal profiler to discover more about the man, who seems to have been ghosting around since the 19th Century) and seems to insist on a victim per year (though there is talk about mass killings also). This worked to a point, that point being when the film slips away to a conspiracy about a vampire society about to strike into the heart of humanity. That tag on was just too much. Better had they spent more time around Edith getting paranoid. In fact even the tenser moments can fail – cops and bodycam footage really just dragged along and killed the pace. Worth seeing for the Oberst Jr fans out there, overall I think this struggled, with not enough tension built between the two leads, despite their best efforts, and turgid moments such as the bodycams, along with the unnecessary global conspiracy aspect. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Grindsploitation – review

Director: Various

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

Coming from Troma, Grindsploitation was sort of an anthology based around exploitation cinema. I say sort of as most of its 2.5 hour running time was made up of fake trailers for films. There are a couple of shorts in there, but mostly it’s the trailers. Some of the later volumes of grindsploitation (I believe there are 14 at the time of writing) had a few more shorts that this one did, balancing the trailer to short ratio better.

The Girl Who Once Drank Blood

The vampire orientated parts of this looked at first to be all trailers. The first was for a fake film called Arbor Day, directed by Jim Towns, and was possibly more genre interest than anything. The film purported to be one of plants becoming aware, mobile and deadly and it gets on the radar when the question is asked, “Trees don’t drink blood?” We are in the realm of vampiric vegetation. Then there was the Shane Ryan directed The Girl Who Once Drank Blood – again, ostensibly vampiric the girl (Amelia Rose) does apparently drink blood. There needs to be a mention of the Alexander Emmert directed The Wendigo, because of the crossover that can happen – though this seems to be the antlered variant (we only see the antlers).

Cannibal Vampire... From Outer Space

The next trailer to look at, by Tony Masiello, was definitely vamp, however. For the fake film Cannibal Vampire Call-Girl Hookers From Outer Space Part 3, it was well into the exploitation camp and I wouldn’t blink if I actually found a series of films with that name. Then we got the first vampire related short in the form of Ruben Rodriguez’ No Strings Attached. A lonely girl (Andrea Castro) has placed a personal ad looking for a vampire and is on a date, in her apartment, with a guy (Chris Riquinha) dressed as a vampire. She is less than impressed and when he suggests getting it on (sooner rather than later as he has to get the costume back to the store) the date is over.

turned hungry

One he has gone, however, a woman (Marilena Rapalo) appears at the girl’s balcony door but when the girl threatens to call the cops the woman vanishes and then appears behind her. Fanged, she is the real deal and has a proposition. She will give the girl what she wants and make her a vampire, all she has to do is consent… which she does. The turning occurs by a spell and the girl is a vampire, the woman is mortal again and I liked the idea of passing the curse and freeing yourself. Unfortunately for the woman, the girl is hungry… and then the man returns as he has left his fangs behind…

Jimmy Olea as Uno

The final part to look at is another short, listed as Uno, directed by Reyna Young, it is subtitled in film as Uno: Badass Mariachi Vampire Hunter. Intertitles suggest that Uno (Jimmy Olea) hunts vampires with his sister Luna (Reyna Young) and brother Roberto (Adam Richardson). But Roberto has been kidnapped and the others are out to rescue him. We have seen Roberto bound with duct tape over the mouth and the rescue section consists of fighting four vampires – which the supposed badasses make heavy work of, especially as Uno insists on shooting vampires, which clearly has no impact. The last one tells them Roberto is dead before being killed. And that’s it…

Marilena Rapalo as a vampire

So, of the two shorts I was really impressed by the first but the second fell a little flat. The Uno character was clearly comedy orientated, and done in an exploitation manner, but the short suffered for having little story content – something that can impact short films of course. The full package, as it were, was a mixed bag but the heavy focus on the trailers overwhelmed the format a little and a better balance with shorts would have helped. It scores, of course, for the vampire bits and I think, on balance, 4 out of 10 is fair.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? The Night Sitter

Directed by Abiel Bruhn and John Rocco, this 2018 film features witches but there can be an overlap into the vampire or use of vampire tropes. In this case I think there is an inference that we can look at and, if that inference is accepted we may well class this as vamp. However, it also needs pointing out that the three witches are referred to as the Three Mothers and this directly refers to the witches of Dario Argento's Three Mothers series – and the lighting through this film reminded me of Suspiria, deliberately so I’d say.

The film follows Amber (Elyse Dufour, Drakul), a woman entering into a rich area to babysit – however it is clear that the name is a pseudonym and in reality she intends to rob her employer. The employer is Ted Hooper (Joe Walz) a paranormal investigator whose show hasn’t really got off the ground and who hasn’t seen a genuine supernatural event in twenty years of investigating. His wife died a year before and Amber is to sit for his son Kevin (Jack Champion). Kevin spends most of his time in his room drawing sinister pictures of three dark figures – later he tells Amber he is being haunted by them, they come in his dreams but his mother saves him.

pizza time

Also in the house will be Ronnie (Bailey Campbell), son of Ted’s date Charlotte (Deanna Rashell), he is a bit of a tearaway. Amber has noticed a door that Ted says leads to his office and is locked and so Amber has contacted her friend in crime Rod (Jermaine Rivers), telling him to bring both his van and lock picking kit. Ronnie also wants in to the office, to see what cool stuff is in there, and he actually finds the key (which seems all too convenient and, by the end of the film, we discover it was). The relationship with Kevin and Amber is interesting in that he sees her take watches and money from his father’s room and whilst he mentions it he seems keen to believe her “Robin Hood” excuse and they do seem to quickly, and naturally, bond.

the grimoire

Anyway, Ronnie and Kevin get into the office and Kevin looks at a grimoire regarding the Three Mothers (we later discover it was written by the witches' acolytes, after they were executed, and the ink contained their ashes), gets a papercut and bleeds on a page, which absorbs the blood and summons the Three Mothers who then terrorise the people there including Amber’s not quite boyfriend, Martin (J. Benedict Larmore) who is trying to talk her out of crime, neighbour Vincent (Ben Barlow) and Rod’s girl Lindsey (Amber Neukum). So how are they vampire – well we discover they were child killer witches who were executed at Salem and so we have the trope of blood reconstituting from ashes (in the ink, of course). This is a different background to Argento’s Three Mothers, who are living (if ancient) and scattered across the globe. But I mentioned an inference…

Ronnie's end

They kill Ronnie first and we see him strung over a tub and his throat slit, with them catching the blood in it. Later we hear them say of Kevin that “We've already tasted his blood. Soon we will bleed him dry.” That also comes with the knowledge that, back in the day, they bled children either quickly or over weeks. The inference comes into it when we are told “They tend to play with their food.” The inference being that bleeding the children is the source of their food – in other words their blood. If we accept that inference, we accept them being vampiric witches and, as one of them possesses Lindsey, we also get vampiric possession.

a witch

If I had an issue with the film, it was the fact that they chuck in the kitchen sink. The family dog Finley is killed (off screen, we hear its whimper) but then it seems that it is now some sort of Hellhound, in his kennel with glowing eyes, but they do all that to do nothing with it. Equally the possession seemed odd when we see they can take on other people’s forms and are corporeal. However, the film kept a good pace after a slower start and the lighting that reminded me so much of Suspiria was gorgeous. As for the Vamp or Not, if you accept the inference their food is the blood of children then it is Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Unforgiven – review

Writers: Mark Russell & Tim Seeley

Artists: Sid Kotian & Dave Wachter

Contains spoilers  

The blurb: Collects Spider-Man: Unforgiven (2022) #1, X-Men: Unforgiven (2022) #1, Captain America: Unforgiven (2022) #1, Blade: Vampire Nation (2022) #1.

Marvel's team of super-hero vampires emerges from the shadows! Raizo Kodo and the clanless vampires of the Forgiven scour the underworld for the most dangerous ghouls known to man! But when former Sorceress Supreme Salomé returns with a devastatingly devious plan, these moral monsters might run into more trouble than they bargained for - and mixed up in the middle of it all is the one and only Spider-Man! And when body parts mysteriously start washing up on the coast of Maine, the Forgiven must call in some help from the X-Men - including former vampire Jubilee! But as defeat follows defeat, they become bitter - and bloodthirsty! Can Captain America bring them back into the light? Plus: Blade is now the sheriff of Dracula's Vampire Nation! But an assassination threatens to unravel the fledgling country and spread chaos throughout the world!

The review: The forgiven are a group of hero (or perhaps anti-hero is closer) vampires, clanless and fighting for redemption. They did appear in the Jubilee Blood Hunt one-shot – collected in X-Men Blood Hunt - but I did find it surprising that they weren’t more involved in that event. Jubilee makes an appearance in this, within the X-Man and Captain America one-shots but the first in the book is a standalone with Spider-Man, the end of which opens the scenario for the next two one-shots. The X-Man and Captain America stories follow on from each other more closely and prove to be a very satisfying, short redemption arc that involves a plot by Geiomar, the anti-Cleric of the Elder God Cthon.

The final story is unconnected to the first three and is a Blade story, in which Blade has taken on the mantle of the sheriff of Dracula’s Vampire Nation – Vampyrsk, a UN recognised vampire safehold within Ukraine and, more specifically, Chernobyl. The idea of situating the vampire nation there was a clever one given the radiation makes it uninhabitable for humans. In this a human mercenary team attack and kill Corvis, a member of Dracula’s Vampire Council. However, Dracula was the actual target and he charges Blade with finding who it was that wanted his final death. This isn’t bad but as a one shot it is a little bit over too quickly.

All in all, however, this wasn’t a bad foray into the vampires of the Marvel Universe. 6.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Feed – review

Director: Marco van Bell

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

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

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

the boy

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

messaging

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

Orla blurred

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

the dearg-due

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

the entity emerges

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

influencer culture

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

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

The Night Boyz – review

Director: BonVida

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

It is not a rule, as such, but often the adding of a ‘z’ to a film title indicates not only that the film is going to be a modern urban (often gangland) setting, but also that the film is going to be of a lower quality. Look, I’m sorry, but that really does seem to be the case.

So I went into this with low expectations, however, as I started watching it my hopes raised, the actual photography seemed accomplished for a start. In truth the film does have issues, but it is a cut above where I thought it would be and has some interesting ideas within.

eyes light up

It starts in the past and Yashua (Leslie A. Jones) as voudon (style) drums are heard with women dancing. Yashua is eventually caught by slavers, a decision is made that he is native rather than African but they then lynch him anyway. Meanwhile a mob come to what looks like a church. The man who comes out is able to mesmerise the crowd (whilst inflicting them with very poor poetry) and cause them to drop their makeshift weapons. The significance of this was lost on me. A hooded woman comes to the hanging Yashua and bites him. She vanishes and his eyes light up.

Brian Fernandez as Joshua

We cut to present day. Joshua (Brian Fernandez) has moved to LA after his parents were killed. He is chilling when there is an insistent ringing of his doorbell. It is his cousin Mike (BonVida) who drags him out. They end up sat in the concrete canal of LA river, talking. Mike gives him a protective ankh pendant. They are going to smoke but Mike drops the spliff so they head to a store. In the store, Joshua is at the counter when he spots a girl, Lily (Brooke 'Little' Dugan), he steps back and bumps into T (Jorge Meneses) – evidentially there is existing beef. It is when T grabs the ankh and rips it off Josuah that the fight starts – next thing we see them all rounded up by sheriff Martin (Manny Casimir) who gives them all a talking to and sends them on their way, with the exception of Joshua who he keeps back for some extra disappointment talk.

Leslie A. Jones as Yashua

T later gets hold of Joshua and cuts his face with a box cutter... Joshua and Mike are with Red (Manner Washington III), who seems to run a crew. Joshua wants in, but he isn’t deemed ready – later we will discover that Red is a werewolf and I’ll get back to that – but they go out and T is shot. Dying on the street, he is approached by a snazzily dressed Yashua, who offers T eternal life and holds out a hand that T takes… Joshua then meets Lily on a beach, there is talking, an attempt to hold hands (and she has very cold hands) and make out – she bites him and then regrets it. In the morning Mike picks him up, but he is very ill. He awakens At Auntie’s house, his cheek cut has gone and Lily is there. He is told she is a half vampire (she hasn’t killed anyone) and so is he. They must get sacred wood from a tree older than Yashua to kill him and become human, and stop his plans to build an army and bring chaos to the city.

a zombie

So vampires, werewolves and half vampires… actually, Lily is a dhampir though she doesn’t know it and the daughter of Yashua. In flashback we have seen that he was a slave and lynched, we also see him losing his mortal wife (and daughter he assumes) following a police raid and being taken for experimentation and torture to release the secrets of eternal life to an old, white man. For some reason everyone refers to him as Head Vampire. We also get bums that he has turned into ghouls or zombies (the credit calls them both). I could have lived without the werewolf, aspect, it was minor and the sfx comparatively rubbish – I will say I loved the fang set they did for Yashua. Half-vampires are irritated by sunlight where full vampires burn, ordinary stakes are fine for killing most vampires, beheading kills and vampires fear symbols such as the ankh and police badges (tied to Yashua’s lynching as the slavers wore deputy stars). In a strange piece of lore, certain music (I think EBM) will cause vampires to be mesmerised, swaying on the spot.

werewolf

Beyond the poor werewolf, it felt like the film could have lost half an hour of its running time. There were moments that had no build before we get there. Whilst not a poor performance, Brian Fernandez was missing a certain something and struggled to carry the film – whereas BonVida had that something in spades but was sidelined, killed and brought back as a supernatural assassin with no scope to flex the presence he showed earlier in the film. There are some moments that, given the running time, could have been pre-established (such as turncoat cops). Yet, overall the film was well shot and had plenty of potential. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Hunger

This was a 2016 short at less than 5 minutes and directed by Joffre Taylor. It starts with two guys chatting but their status as ne’er-do-wells becomes apparent when they see a woman go past and follow.

They get down to ground level, but the woman has gone. One of the men, Chris, moves back to have a pee. His mate isn’t looking and so misses when a blur grabs Chris and drags him off. The other man is looking for Chris when the woman, bloodied mouth, starts coming towards him. He swings a punch but she stops it and is soon feeding on him…

vampire

There is a coda to these vampiric shenanigans, because one of the men has turned… Quick, simple and does what it sets out to. This one does not have an IMDb page but the film itself is available to watch on YouTube and can be found here.