Bite School 2: Bite Squad – review

Director: James Balsamo

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

To get the chronology right, this is a 2025 sequel to James Balsamo’s 2015 film Bite School (at the beginning of this Balsamo’s character Tony meets briefly meets the character George and they say that it’s been 10-years). It is subtitled on some of the artwork as Bite Squad and on others as From Dusk Til Bong, which was a 2022 Balsamo flick which also featured his Tony character. All three films are in the Blu-Ray set “James Balsamo’s Thrilling Three Pack”.

Robo Dracula (whole)

When I reviewed Bite School, I said “This is not a good film, by that I mean as a piece of cinema it does not rank particularly high. However, it doesn’t try to rank high either.” This is just as true of this, if not more so. Tony and George meet in a garden (the sets are very limited in this) and observe a group of vampires with a naked sacrifice. The head vampire is speaking tech speak and has the head of Robot Dracula (Joe Castro). Wires attach (and enter) the sacrifice and draw her energy to bring him new life.

Camazotz

Tony is the chosen one, who will destroy Robo-Dracula with help from the bite squad and the film is filled with talking head interviews as a mockumentary being filmed by someone in the school at the centre of the first film. There are, therefore, plenty of excuses for cameos of musicians and genre stars. Before he can get Robo-Dracula there are other head vampires he must destroy – starting with Mayan bat God Camazotz. In a sequence that involves Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe having his flesh stripped by drawn bats, Tony whips Camazotz but, rather than destroy it, uses it as a ride.

Mimeula

Following that we get him going to France to take on Mimeula (Stu Silverman) a vampire who turns a woman into a mime when he bites her. He also goes to Germany to defeat Krampus – yup Krampus is a vampire in this. This sequence of the three head vampires takes less than ten minutes of film time. We get a scene with Vlad Ţepeş, back in the day, being bitten by a skeletal bat creature and thus becoming a vampire (who will eventually be Robo-Dracula). 

Krampus

There really isn’t much else when it comes to story. It is just gags, low budget props (cardboard circular sawblades, for instance) and a parade of characters and cameos. Yet, still, Balsamo is having a hoot – as are many of those in it. It failed, however, to keep my attention as well as the first one (probably because the story was even thinner than the previous). 3 out of 10 but, again, like the first film it is more than the sum of its score (though perhaps closer this time round) and James Balsamo fans will know what they’re getting and enjoy it.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Short Film: Vamped (2026)

Directed by Eli Valencia, this short is just under 13-minutes in length. Set in a world were, apparently, vampires are a known thing, this follows Mina (Liia Kasenova), a college student.

She is called by friend Joaquin (Jose Soreque), who is trying to entice her to a party – a vampire themed one. Despite classes the following day she agrees to go, so long as they leave if she dislikes it.

bitten

They arrive and attendees are playing spin the bottle, with a 7-minutes in heaven forfeit. The bottle lands on Keiran (Jonah Martinez) and then Mina and so it is off to the bathroom for, what Mina describes as, the longest seven minutes… Until he moves in and bites her. She pushes him off, leaves the bathroom and demands Joaquin takes her home.

Joaquin and Mina

The film then follows her as she tries to navigate her new normal. A google search suggests to her that the scientific consensus is that there is now known cure for vampirism, Then there is her friendship with Joaquin to consider… The storyline may sound simple, but the filmmakers manage to cram plenty into the short running time.

The imdb page is here and the film can be viewed here.

Honourable Mention: A Haunting on the Hill

This 2023 sequel to The Haunting of Hill House by Elizabeth Hand was authorised by Shirley Jackson’s estate as an official sequel to the seminal novel. The book obviously features Hill House, and the ‘haunting’ therein but also touches into witchcraft and, with the recurring appearance of a supernatural Fetch of a hare (or multiple thereof) has a touch of folk horror to it. There are some interesting (literal) echoes from the original story.

I put haunting in parenthesis because it is mentioned through the book that it is not a haunted house, rather that the house is aware, an entity of its own. The phenomena in the house stems from that. It is further suggested that the house both hates and needs the occupants and it is this need that leads us to an Honourable Mention again as the reason for the need is perhaps hinted but not explicit. The house is owned by Ainsley, who is part of a coven of three, the others unhappy that she occasionally rents it out as to do so is dangerous – the three watch over it and Evadne, one of three, asks of one of the group in the house, “Hill House—how do you think it survives?” adding “Ainsley’s done virtually nothing to maintain it. No one has. Hill House looks almost the same today as when it was built a hundred and forty years ago. Why do you think that is?” The implication being that it takes something from residents within and maintaining itself through that. This is almost, but not quite, spoken again later (or that was my reading, at least). It becomes clear that those it manages to “take” remain in spirit, perhaps as puppets for the house, which sits against the idea of the house not being haunted.

The only other vampire adjacent comments is character Nisa suggesting that they may need garlic. We get the tale, within the dialogue, of one of the characters meeting a woman who suggests she met a haint (a restless ghost or spirit) who impregnated her. Mentioned as haints do occasionally get mentioned in vampire texts.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vampires of the Velvet Lounge – review

Director: Adam Sherman

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Cheese… Ok, actually loads of blood (with both good and bad sfx, as I’ll explain) but a right royal portion of cheese, and this Erzsébet Báthory (in this Elizabeth) flick is great fun because of it. I have to admit I went in with low expectations but it certainly lifted me way beyond that. The cast, built in an ensemble way I felt, mostly seemed to be having a blast, especially on the vampire side.

drinking absinth

It starts, however, with a series of intertitles explaining the Elizabeth Bathory (Mena Suvari) backstory and then we see various smartphone style screens as these vampires have taken to hunting by dating app (not a new concept, but one that certainly works). Someone hunted in such a way is Eric (Timothy V. Murphy, Broil), who has arranged to fly to where Elizabeth is and meet her in an absinth bar she has mentioned. I also need to mention the cracking version of Ain't No Grave that plays over the credit sequence at the start of the film.

meeting the green fairy

When he gets to the bar he finds Joan (India Eisley, Underworld Awakening) and Helena (Sarah Dumont) working the bar (and both vampires, also). They tell him all about absinth and the green fairy and he confesses he feels he has been stood up and proceeds to get drunk… to the point he does see the green fairy, which is Elizabeth taking that shape in his perspective. She lures his very drunk ass outside and hunts him down, her now apparent bat wings occasionally looking like green fairy wings in his perspective. A point here re blood. The film uses both cgi and practical effect. The practical blood looks great and is drawn copiously into shot so that the film feels a tad splatterpunk. The cgi blood (and in this scene, neck rip) looks blooming awful.

Dichen Lachman as Cora

So Cora (Dichen Lachman), who suffers bad dreams, is a former soldier and assassin who now works for a group who hunt monsters. She is sent out on recon and observes (and films), through a crack in a doorway, Elizabeth blood bathing as three supplicants happily agree to have their heads cut off with giant scissors wielded by vampiric Chuck (Mark Boone Junior, Vampire$ & 30 Days of Night). The viewer is clear that Elizabeth knows that she is there. Cora and her superior, intelligence operator Alexis (Rosa Salazar), are ensconced nearby but are using a VPN to suggest that Cora is based a couple of States away as she chats to Elizabeth by app. They are looking to strike at the vampires, though it is clear that Elizabeth is using mojo to actually seduce her.

lawyer bros

Throw into the mix a group of corporate lawyers. Luke (Tyrese Gibson) is going through a divorce and is depressed and his buddies Randall (Stephen Dorff, Blade) and Malcolm (Lochlyn Munro, Tracers 4: Jack of Clubs, Dracula 2001, Hansel & Gretel Get Baked, Lost Girl & also Broil) want to cheer him up. He has been chatting to Joan online and they decide to all go visit (with them getting dates with Elizabeth and Helena – all three vampires having a website together). Also throw in the mix that Elizabeth is becoming worried about Joan’s behaviour; she is mixing blood with absinth (and sometimes just drinking booze straight) and interested in sex – in short becoming erratic to Elizabeth's pov.

blood bathing

There is some interesting lore in this. Cora is repeatedly taught to think happy thoughts as such thoughts can keep a vampire out of your head – if they get in there they can absolutely control you. Cora's issue is that, given her past, she has no happy thoughts. They fly, are superfast and strong but cast no reflection (in mirror or water). In fact the vampire women do each other’s makeup in a setup reminiscent of Vamp. When a question is raised as to why they then show on digital media/photography, the answer is that digital and AI are of the devil and so are they. Sunlight destroys, silver is effective, a stake and beheading will destroy the vampire (though not necessarily so) and ingestion of vampire blood turns.

bat winged

The cast seem to be having a great time in the main, Mena Suvari and India Eisley especially are chewing up the sets and their larger than life characters are great fun – unfortunately Sarah Dumont’s Helena is pretty much side-lined as a character and so she doesn’t get the same opportunity to shine. Unfortunately Dichen Lachman plays Cora as a deeply stoic character and so comes across as less fun but that contrasts nicely with Elizabeth. The story is simple and, as mentioned at the head, cheesy with comic book and splatterpunk elements that was simply great fun. My big gripe is some of the cgi work in the sfx – the obvious green screening was fine and, to be fair, I rather liked the wing effects in the main, but cgi blood looks poor generally and sat against well done practical effects showed it up even more. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

It Feeds – review

Director: Chad Archibald

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers  

Vampiric entities appear in films, not necessarily undead – perhaps demonic, perhaps an inhabitant of another dimension – but they want to feed. Of course I was going to watch a film called It Feeds, it may or may not have proven to be about a vampiric creature, but the title was certainly an attractor. As it happens the entity proved to be an energy vampire.

in the classroom

It starts with Cynthia (Ashley Greene, Twilight & Sequels) stood in a school setting, the blackboard covered in writing attesting to the wolf. She walks as the wind blows through the school and enters an office, a coach (David Thompson) sat facing away and a child (Jayden Kirton) in a cage. If it all looks dreamlike, well it kind of is because it is a brainscape. She tries to encourage the child to let himself out of the cage but he is scared. Eventually he tries but the coach turns and a whiskey glass explodes, cutting her arm. The child retreats, she says they can try next time and she begins to chant under her breath.

Ashley Greene as Cynthia

She opens her eyes in the real world, removing her fingers from the forehead of her client Larry (Dov Tiefenbach, the Strain). Cynthia runs a home psychiatry practice, but she has the ability to step into people’s minds – though what happens to her in the mind happens in reality, so she has a cut arm from the glass. As the film progresses, we discover her clients are sworn to secrecy, they were driven from one town by superstitious townsfolk. Her husband had the same ability but he attempted to wrest an entity from a client and subsequently hung himself. Cynthia’s 17 years-old daughter, Jordan (Ellie O'Brien), screens her clients and does online research to help. Occasionally Cynthia has been able to tip the police as to wrong doers who hurt her clients.

entity behind her

There is a banging on the door and it is a young girl, Riley (Shayelin Martin). She has snuck away from her dad, Randall (Shawn Ashmore, The Ruins) , and she is desperate for Cynthia’s help – apparently a previous client, Agatha (Juno Rinaldi, Jennifer’s Body), had mention Cynthia to Randall and Riley overheard. Jordan is screening her and she talks about a thing she sees. She suggests it stares like a starving dog and is in the room, it caused the scars on her arms (which look like burns), she claims, and it is always hungry. Cynthia walks into the room and can see it, when Randall bursts in and drags his daughter away.

Ellie O'Brien as Jordan

Jordan wants to help the girl but Cynthia refuses to help, she knows it is a real, malevolent entity and out of her skill area. However Jordan manages to follow up, find their home and is captured by Randall for her troubles. Randall’s wife was a nurse who did overseas nursing and it is implied picked the entity up there. It essentially devoured her over time, draining her life and causing massive physical deterioration – the hospital she ended up in believed it was some sort of flesh-eating disease hitherto unknown. When she died, Riley was in the room and the entity passed over to her. Randall has been kidnapping people and the entity has eaten them through Riley (as a conduit) – the energy transference burning them. The entity speaks to the host and, when we hear it speak it says “Feed Me”. In the kerfuffle that follows, Riley dies, Jordan becomes the host and Cynthia has to defeat the entity – not helped by Randall deciding to defeat the entity himself with a plan to bury Jordan alive and let her die with no-one near to become the next host.

enthroned

This was interesting, the idea of being able to enter a patient’s trauma to help them psychiatrically was neat, though similar has been done before. However the entity was a nice touch. Definitely an energy vampire, but one never sated, in its own dreamscape it sits on a throne like chair and controls vine like tendrils. There are moments were you do have to suspend disbelief – Jordan is bound, Riley brings clippers and puts them in her behind-her-back-hands rather than snips the cable ties round the wrists. This led to a tension moment and a delay in escape. But, then again, Riley is a scared child. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable mention: Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated – Season 1

This was the first season of the 2010-2013 incarnation of Scooby-Doo as a serial cartoon where there was an overarching story arc. In actual fact, I did look at this season’s vampire episode, the Secret Serum, previously. Now, when I reviewed that I said “There is an estrangement between Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) – who were, it appears, an item. Plus Fred (Frank Welker) and Daphne (Grey DeLisle) seem to have issues, making the gang drift apart in different directions by the end of this – distractions; what we want is mystery solving not soap opera teen romance. For heaven’s sake we are watching a talking dog…”

vampire film

I do not take that back – the introduction of character romance (and romantic failings, in the case of Velma and Shaggy) seemed a distraction as I watched the whole thing – but there was enough mystery solving and Scooby-ness to keep me going back to it (indeed, I might be the father of an adult son but I’ll always maintain that Scooby is for all ages). In Fact, despite the more soap aspect, the season was perhaps darker than other Scooby-Doo series and, as it happens there were (beyond the vampire episode) some vampire connections through the season that were worth mentioning here.

the Bloody Stake steak house

First of all was a restaurant in Crystal Cove (the town that seems to attract fake paranormal activity at a rate of knots). A steak house, one assumes, called the Bloody Stake, which has a vampire logo. The restaurant appears in three episodes of the season and is most notable for Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (Frank Welker) being refused any more helpings on the "All You Can Gorge" night.

stake in hand

We see Shaggy and Scooby about to indulge in the Vincent Van Ghoul (Maurice LaMarche) movie marathon at one point. Due to this we see a tad of a vampire film staring Van Ghoul as a vampire hunter, stake in hand, with the implication that he is fighting off an army of vampires. Van Ghoul is, clearly, based on Vincent Price and I understand that Warner Bros received Price’s estate’s permission to use his likeness and voice.

vampire bust

Van Ghoul actually appeared in the 13 Ghost incarnation of Scooby-Doo and, in this season, his fans Shaggy and Scooby actually meet him when they win a competition to have dinner with him (which is a set up for a new ‘scare’ reality TV show Van Ghoul has, but leads them to saving him from a monster). In the house we see a Poster for O’Vampy, one of his films, and a vampire bust/mask out on display in the horror icon’s mansion.

teen Vamp literature

Lastly, the gang becomes embroiled for a second time with professor and horror author H.P. Hatecraft (Jeffrey Combs, Holiday Hell, Frightmare, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead & Dark House) – as an aside, Hatecraft is obviously modelled on Lovecraft, who Combs played in Necronomicon. In their second encounter Hatecraft is being ousted by Regina Wentworth (Kari Wahlgren), author of Teen vampire series Dusk (made up of Dusk: Forbidden Love, Dusk: Early Evening and Dusk: Just Before Bedtime). There is a cut-out of the main vampire character causing Daphne to muse at what Fred would look like with “fangs and skin the color of boiled pork”.

Daphne dates an actor

So, there we have the additional vampire references in Season 1 of Mystery Incorporated. Note that in Season 2 there was the reappearance of the Bloody Stake a couple of times and Daphne dating the actor from the Dusk films – but no real vampire reference otherwise. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Vampires of Dubois County

Director Patrick Higgs created this 6-minute short for the Southwest Indiana Film Fest and released it in 2014. Done as a bit of a travel commercial for Dubois County it starts with a brief history lesson of the vampires leaving Romania due to persecution and heading to the States (there is mention later that their location was, at one point, influenced by the vampire hunter Abe Lincoln being further south at the time.

blood tears

We are then into a series of vox-pop with various residents (tellingly many have plasters on their necks and there are plenty of lost pet posters). In the main positive – though one factory worker is rather negative about his co-workers. Probably the most amusing is the moment with the baseball team and the coach yelling at a vampire for crying (blood tears) as there is no place for tears in baseball.

It is a silly, amusing little diversion that likely means a little more if you are from that neck of the woods.

The imdb page is here.