Night of the Vamp-Friars – review

Director: Kurtis Spieler

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Vinegar Syndrome tie with Severin as my two favourite film distribution companies (at the time of writing). Both companies do so much to catalogue, restore and preserve genre cinema and make films available that otherwise might never see the light of day. Director Kurtis Spieler is a film restore for Vinegar Syndrome, and this original film has been produced and distributed through the company.

What he has created is a love letter to genre filmmaking past, a nostalgic B movie using practical effects. 16MM film and vampire friars… oh yes skeletal, hooded vamps.

Clinton, don't be a hero

So, after an introduction in intertitles and narration that talk about 19th Century American belief in vampires, we find ourselves in Connecticut in 1884, and Bethany (Samantha Frattallone) sits by a fire startled by the noises in the woods. They are revealed to be made by Clinton (Alex Morsanutto), she has come to meet him, whilst her father sleeps, to tell him she is pregnant. He is delighted but the noises continue and he produces a pistol and goes to investigate.

lightning fingers

He vanishes into the darkness, and she hears a violent noise. Following him she sees him turn and his throat is ripped open. The perpetrator is a hooded monk (J.T. Warner) with an eye-patch and fangs. Vampire hunters appear, wielding crosses, stakes and axes. The friar proves powerful and they do not come out unscathed or with their numbers intact. We discover that he has the power to cast lightning from his fingers, but they eventually overwhelm him, and the friar and his brethren (we don’t see them despatched) are buried in a cemetery in the woods – the hunters sure no-one would disturb the graves…

Abby Arza as Roxy

Connecticut in modern times – the timeline is vague and not commented on but there are wired telephones and no mobile phones in sight. At a college radio show the host, Rebel Roxy (Abby Arza), asks listeners to call in with local legends – the best will get a prize of… she looks to the engineer, Warren (Joey Ambrosini), who has no answer. Setting off music he mentions her thesis (she is an anthropology major) that she hasn’t started. Back on air she mentions the prize will be two tickets to see her boyfriend’s band, The Neck Wounds. A caller tells her the legend of the Woodsfield Vampires – the friars.

camping

She meets Cole (Domenico Pugliese) and the rest of the band after her show. The other band members are Stoney (Miles Dominici) and Thompson (Kai Turner), and Thompson’s gal Brooklyn (Madison Grace Plummer) is there. Roxy mentions the legend and Thompson says his uncle used to party out there. They decide to go out, camp, get pictures for both the band and Roxy. Roxy is given a book containing details of the legend by Warren – he set the call up and is in love with Roxy. She invites him along and, after a stop with Roxy’s brother Frank (Frank Wihbey), an ex-con turned mechanic, to fix Thompson’s truck they end up out in the woods…

vamp friars

So, they do find the cemetery – after camping even though it is virtually a stone’s throw from their camp. It isn’t disturbing the graves that raises them, per se, but blood spilt on a grave has one emerge and more blood raises the rest. They rise as robed, fanged skeletons and there is a tad of the Blind Dead to them. Roxy has discovered that the townsfolk killed them before the full moon as they intended to ritually drink the blood of a virgin, which would have given them more powers. They can be staked and also killed with holy water and silver (be that bullets or knuckledusters). They kind of blow up on death.

bitten

The effects are hokey but work for it – the skeletons are not overly dynamic but clever framing does offer a sinister edge. There are some fun gore scenes – one scene of a friar sucking the intestines out of a torso look obviously fake but managed to be fun. The acting varies but is solid and in all cases earnest, with Abby Arza sounding great on radio and makes for a very personable focal point for the film. Mention is needed of the visceral, full teeth, bite marks she gets, which looked brill. Apparently, the audio was entirely ADR and it is testament that it didn’t come across as that.

have a heart

The reason the film, the sfx, and the cast work so well is because the filmmakers absolutely knew what they were looking to create. Filming on 16mm gave the film a definite look that worked. It is not high art – it never tried to be. Rather it is that love letter I mentioned, knows exactly the beats it needs, paces well and is thoroughly entertaining if you are a fan of that sort of filmmaking. Not outstaying its welcome, I think a solid 6.5 out of 10 is fair. The end of the film says the Vamp-Friars will return and I welcome that.

The imdb page is here.

On HD and Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Demon Hunter: Time 2 Kill – review

Director: Zoe Kavanagh

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

The sequel to Taryn Barker: Demon Hunter, this Irish movie transplants itself from the Dublin of the first film to America. The first film was the origin story for Taryn (Niamh Hogan, Feed), a young woman whose younger sister was taken by demons and so entered into a Faustian bargain to avenge her, before realising that the deal really meant her body being possessed by a demon, and so fighting back.

Sparkly

The first film was just focused on demons, this one has plenty of vampires as background – though a main antagonist could be read as vampire also. After a prologue set in 1986 and Camp Beaver and seeing the potential final girl killed by the slasher Lucian Krull (Lar Mclachlan), it flips to the modern day with Taryn hunting down leads for an artefact known as the necrox. This leads her to a sparkly vampire but, just before he spills, he is killed by a non-sparkly vampire. Taryn is able to get a tracker on the other vampire.

on the hunt

She follows him underground and finds a holding pen for livestock – and for livestock read trafficked women. She manages to rescue them, kill him and get the half of the necrox he is carrying. Taryn is living in hiding with Ethan (Kevin O'Malley) as part of an underground demon hunting organisation. She is a wanted fugitive after being blamed for the slaughter of a group of cops in the previous film. Ethan works out that the other half of the necrox is at Camp Beaver and it had been used to animate Krull – who had been a satanist and groundskeeper there.

bathing in blood

However, Taryn’s actions have tweaked the demons and head of Illuminati Industries, Elysia Cronika (Lisa Wilcox, Don’t Suck), is threatened with exposure if she doesn’t either kill Taryn or push her off track with her hunt for the necrox. Cronika is our character who could code vampire, though she is referred to as a time witch. Firstly she was the head of the trafficking ring, but the coding I identified is primarily down to the fact that she blood bathes (and we are talking a swimming pool full). Later, in a time ritual, she cuts her hand and sand comes out – that could be read as the sands of time but also could be the desiccated innards of a vampire that bathes in blood rather than ingesting it.

a consensual nibble

After two failed attempts on Taryn’s life she does said ritual and Taryn is pulled into a time vortex, whilst travelling to Camp Beaver, and deposited in 1987 – as are a group of youths who were on the same journey. Taryn has to babysit them, trying to protect them from Krull, complete a ritual to banish Krull and get the half of the necrox off him and get back to the present day. Of course, given the date none of the mobile phones work. I should also mention another vampire, in the modern day, who we see for a moment consensually feeding and then staked via stake gun.

Niamh Hogan as Taryn

The part in the past is lifted from the slasher handbook, if the slasher was faced with a kick-ass demon hunter, and uses the tropes of that genre to its advantage. The plot is convoluted and perhaps a tad reliant on the first film to make total sense to a new viewer. The acting is varied, with some actors perhaps less experience than others. However Niamh Hogan appears to be having great fun and the tone of this film is more light-hearted than the earlier film. There is one major issue, however – cgi enemies. Badly textured, with no weight and, honestly, pretty bonk – these let down the film and betray the ambition the film displayed. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Scotsferatu: The Vampire in Scottish Culture and Folklore – review

Author: Dee Lawlor

Release date: 2026

The Blurb: We don’t normally associate Scotland with vampires, but there is a hidden history of folklore surrounding the undead – if you only know where to look.

From the Pagan baobhan-sith of the Highlands and a sixteenth-century stranger that was suspected of being a vampire in Galloway, to a vampire that was terrorising wildlife in Lochmaben in the 90s, the vampire is alive … or rather, undead … and well in Scottish history and culture. This is a unique exploration of Scottish history and of a horror hero.

The Review: An interesting whistle stop through the highlands and lowlands and the vampires associated with them. Not everything in this volume is exactly vampire related (in the very traditional sense) as some are more faery related and others are revenants, but it is nice to see the Scot vampire getting some attention.

The baobhan-sith we have come across before but other creatures like the ganconer are more obscure and is a type of fae who causes a woman to pine for him and waste away and red-caps are a little more goblin like and blood is used in the dying of their caps but they are of interest. When it comes to revenants I was quite excited when the idea that the hundeprest (or dog priest) was said in some versions of the tale to turn into a bat – but a quick search myself revealed the earliest publication of the tale that suggested the bat transformation was the Stories of the Border Marches by John and Jean Lang and published in 1916, which means it was post-Stoker and the Langs were adding a vampire element to the revenant story, even using the V word. It would have been nice if that was clearer.

Great fun is to be had with the vampire caterpillar of Princes Street, and it was good to see the Gorbals Vampire getting some coverage. There is a small bites section that covers some general lore – I would have liked to see the section on mirrors, which associated the idea that silver backing causes a lack of reflection, to have been very much identified as a modern interpretation as there is nothing in folklore that I am aware of that would lead to that conclusion (indeed very little to suggest a folkloric lack of reflection) there was enough folklore about the dangers of mirrors and the dead as it was.

The book is brief and the style very chatty, which honestly wasn’t unwelcome, but it does have references and this is important as I would see this as a starting point if one wanted to research some of the things within. Nevertheless, as I say, it is good to see Scotland getting some love and this volume will allow the reader a point to start a deeper dive. 6 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Scared Stiff

This was a 1987 Hong Kong movie directed by Liu Chia-Yung and it has a distinct vampire section within it – and in this case Western style vampires. The film itself is about Dai Wai (Michael Miu) who shares a place with best friend Harley (Eric Tsang, The Dragon Lives Again & Vampire Family). The film opens with Harley’s dream, which is semi-sexual until Dai Wai enters the dream and nicks the girls Harley was about to be raped (his word) by.

It seems that Dai Wai can enter his friend’s dreams. The two men get accidentally caught within an armed robbery that subsequently leaves Dai Wai seriously injured. Indeed his heart stops and blood pressure drops to nothing, but his brain activity continues. Figuring he has a strong will to live, Harley is brought in by doctors to elicit an emotional response and bring him back to life. His case is then referred to a researcher who is looking at telekinesis (which Dai Wai demonstrates by popping a researcher’s blouse button with his mind), but more importantly entering dreams.

Shirley Kwan as the vampiress

Using technology and his natural abilities he is told to enter the dream of a mentally ill patient (Wu Ma). We see him in the dream and in there the patient is a vampire hunter and at first produces a small nail and tiny hammer, but this is for a really tiny vampire, which can be lifted between finger and thumb. Normal hammer and stake are needed for the life size variety.

the vampires

He gives Dai Wai a card and tells him not to match the letter on it with a vampire. He firstly meets a female vampire (Shirley Kwan), she produces a card with an O where his says A – a reference to blood type one assumes. When he meets a male vampire (Wing-Cheung Cheung), the fiend has every type on card and goes for him. Eventually, at dawn, they end up at the coffins and he stakes her, whilst looking away but, because he isn’t looking, he misses the male vampire altogether. It ends up with him pulling a curtain, though the sunlight is less than effective, and then making a cross by carrying the dreamer. He is bitten before he awakens…

Dai Wai and Alice

It is, of course, all a dream but a traumatic experience for Dai Wai. The research assistant, Alice (Emily Chu, Vampire’s Breakfast & Return of the Demon), keeps him coming back and each dream session ends with him screaming – though we don’t see those dreams. Dai Wai and Harley eventually become embroiled in the machinations of some corrupt cops who intend to eliminate any potential witnesses to their murderous activities. From a TMtV point of view the vampire section is a chunky segment, played for laughs with a surrealistic overtone, but ultimately it is a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

The Vampire Lestat (Interview with the Vampire Season 3) – Blu-Ray review

Directed by: Various

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

I have already reviewed the Vampire Lestat but the UK Blu-ray release is upon us and I am casting my eye over the set itself.

The 7 episodes are distributed over three discs, look great and the show itself lent itself to a second watch and maintains the solid 7.5 out of 10 score I offered last time. The set itself had more in the way of extras than perhaps previous seasons.

from One Night Only

The extras on disc 1 had the series preview, a Karaoke video of Long Face, the All Fall Down Lyric video, a breakdown of the track the Loneliness, a look at the laydown of the tracks, the Panel at the 2025 Comic-Con, which included a music aspect and a highlight video of the Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live. That they concentrated heavily on music aspects was understandable given the important role music plays in this season. The fact that the One Night Only was a 10-minute highlight rather than the 45-minute full video was a shame.

After Dark

Also on the disc were the broadcast series The Vampire Lestat After Dark – a preview special and the episodes that aired after episode 1 and 2 of the series. These are hosted by Lizzie Bassett and involve cast and crew from the series discussing the aired episode (bar the preview special, of course, which looked forward to the coming season). The other discs carry the other After Dark episodes analogous to the episodes on the disc. These are neat insights into the thoughts of the showrunner, producer and core cast – with other crew and cast members brought in through the series.

Akasha takes Lestat

Finally, disc 3 had, in addition to the After Dark episodes, a backstage pass in seven parts that briefly looked into each episode. It is a generous collection of extras totalling, especially because of the After Dark episodes, around 6-hours’ worth of material. Essentially, if you are a fan of the series, the set does allow you that bit more of an insight into the show. And whilst the show is the main event the distributors have ensured this carries interesting extras also – more so than perhaps the previous seasons sets.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Suck It Up: Life Lessons From 500 Years Of Not Dying – review

Author: Count Dracula (J K Vescount)

First published: 2026

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Five hundred years. Zero self-doubt. One life coach you should never invite in.

For centuries, people have asked Count Dracula the secret of his success. He has never told a living soul. Until now.

Having survived plagues, wars, three revolutions, the invention of the bicycle and one extremely persistent Dutch professor, the world’s oldest life coach has finally written it all down. This is self-help with the confidence of a man who has been staked twice and still landed a publishing deal.

Inside, you’ll learn to:

Set boundaries. He physically can’t enter without an invitation. Your neighbours have no such excuse.
Glow up. How he lost 300 years in one English summer, without a single spa day.
Handle haters. He has many. One of them is Dutch and has a hammer.
Accept feedback. A pitchfork is just a question with prongs.
Bounce back. Stabbed, staked, reduced to dust, and back by Christmas.
Work from home. He hasn’t commuted since 1462.
The power of compound interest. What happens when one gold florin is left in the bank for 500 years.

Packed with case studies from his former clients (Jonathan Harker kept notes), Bite-Sized Takeaways, an hour-by-hour dusk routine and postcards from a doomed sea voyage. There’s a practical worksheet on who is draining you (and who you could be draining), and a Before-and-After photo section you have to see to believe (you can’t). And in “Ask the Count”, Dracula answers readers’ letters from Melbourne to Las Vegas, personally, after dark.

Along the way he name-drops shamelessly: inspiring Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine, coaching Roger Bannister to the four-minute mile, dropping an apple on Isaac Newton and gatecrashing Queen Victoria’s séance.

Illustrated with deadpan Victorian-style engravings, it’s the perfect gift for vampire fans, lovers of gothic humour, and anyone who needs life advice from someone who stopped living centuries ago. Ideal for Halloween, birthdays, Christmas stockings and Secret Santa.

Some of his methods may be hard to swallow. His advice? Suck it up.

The review: A satire of a self-help book as if written by Dracula, this merges the character of the novel with some of the more pop culture version – sunlight is a thing – and stirs it together with a big old heap of humour. A couple of moments that tickled me, without spoiling too much, were the declaration that he is “the world’s leading authority on boundaries” given the invitation rule, and the thought that “A pitchfork is just a question with prongs”. The chapter on detoxing is subtitled, “Cut out garlic, crucifixes and the Church of England”, which I rather liked. I don’t read the self-help genre but I recognised the style and framing the book uses immediately and that parody helps carry the joke.

This is not a huge read at some 82 pages, and the style makes it pithy, so the price tag might feel a tad high. However, I suggest this is more the sort of book you’d pick up as a gift for the vampire fan in your life (as the blurb actively suggests). With that in mind I think a strong 6.5 out of 10 balances it being a fun read, the fact that it whiled away an hour on a train and would make a fun gift against it being pricey for a short book.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

The Reluctant Vampire – review

Director: Emily McDonald

First aired: 2026

Contains spoilers

For those of us in the UK, above a certain age, the name Eric Morecambe is revered as the genius comedian he was. Less well known is the fact that he wrote a series of vampire books. I actually have one of the series, bought some time ago when they were fiendishly difficult to find (I suspect on the back of this, they are now easier to acquire) but had never got round to reading it; languishing as it is in my ‘to read’ pile.

Tom Davis as Viktor

This series is based on the first two books and has been drawn as a predominantly children's series (and, as such, has a slight feel of the BBC’s Young Dracula) with a deliberate undertone for adult watchers. It also has that very BBC tonal quality, which can often undermine a series. Nevertheless, it was a fair watch and a quick one too – 6 episodes at the 30-minute mark each).

Lenny Rush as Val

The series follows Val (Lenny Rush) the elder son of Victor (Tom Davis) and Valeeta (Sian Clifford) and elder brother of Vernon (Gabriel Nagy). Victor is the vampire king and they live in a castle not far from a small English village – this castle on the verge of suburbia was a main point in Young Dracula, though the village feels much less suburbia and the locals are very aware of vampires. The show starts with Victor and Val on the hunt, a hunt Val manages to mess up.

Ellie-May Sheridan as Gertie

As the first episode progresses, we discover that Val, heir to the throne, is a late bloomer. His fangs have not emerged, he dislikes blood, and he can’t fly or transform. An accidental fall sees his flight kick in and Victor declares that Val is ready for his initiation – a major milestone in a vampire’s life (or undeath?). To prove his worth Val tries to finish the previous hunt, ends up pursued by a mob and meets human girl Gertie (Ellie-May Sheridan). When he tries to convince her that he isn’t a vampire she takes no convincing, after all he has a reflection in the lake.

Sian Clifford as Valeeta

We then discover that Val is human. Found by Valeeta when rescued by her from a burning building, whilst Victor was away, he was to be a snack but she fell in love with the baby and has raised him as a vampire – this leads to a commentary on nature vs nurture as she expected the baby brought up vampire to develop vampire traits. His earlier flight was simply the castle’s invisible woman (Ada Player) saving him. He now has the problem of passing an initiation that involves biting a human and drinking their blood, the machinations of Vernon who is jealous of Val’s position as heir to the crown and discovering his human side – the vampires are generally ignorant of human culture and tech.

Gabriel Nagy as Vernon

There are some aspects the series glosses over – for example what has Val subsisted on for fifteen years? Valeeta mentions swapping out blood for beetroot juice but that alone is not enough to nurture a growing child. However, aspects such of this can be ignored for the pay-off of the fish out of water element. There is a tendency for some of the supporting performances to veer into that stagey BBC style, however Lenny Rush charms the audience as Val and Ellie-May Sheridan offers a strong, nuanced performance. A special shout out to Gabriel Nagy as Vernon – he was a neat foil to Val, though the Machiavellian aspect would have benefitted from a more adult orientated script.

Joe Wilkinson as Wilf the werewolf

Looking at Victor and Valeeta, Tom Davis offers a bombastic performance that can’t help but summon Matt Berry’s Laszlo to mind and Sian Clifford’s Valeeta feels like an English version of Natasia Demetriou’s Nadja – however there isn’t the sharp adult humour to match those blueprints and any adult undertow in the script for this series does not come near. The inclusion of Asim Chaudhry as a put upon vampire butler, Joe Wilkinson as a werewolf, and Bill Bailey and Ross Noble as Gargoyles should have been a home run but I felt they were all held back in supporting roles - though had they been allowed full range they’d have likely dominated the production.

a raven in disguise

The vampire lore is pretty standard with vampires hunting for blood, avoiding sunlight, not reflecting, can transform into bats and made ill for days by exposure to garlic. We discover there is a lost power that allows a vampire to control humans. I did like the idea of Vernon having a raven spy on Val but dressing it as a bat. The production value is excellent throughout. What this needed was perhaps to veer away from the BBC house style of acting, however the choice of adding an adult element to the children aimed production did make it palatable for a full family viewing – it may have been more amusing had they leaned heavily into adult humour but, equally, they were not aiming in that direction. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon UK