The Night Time World – review

Directors: Various

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

This is a portmanteau film, where the wraparound – entitled The Night Time World and directed by Timothy Paul Taylor – is about vampires but so are the four segments. It has become very easy to stitch a series of shorts into a film and I guess that theming them is a good a way to try and build a cohesive anthology. It feels to me, however, that creating bespoke segments is normally the stronger method.

Doug Henderson as Nada

Nevertheless, we are where we are with a vampire theme but shorts of varying quality and one in particular was probably not a good one to curate into the selection. The wraparound sees podcaster Nada (Doug Henderson) hosting his horror story show. He gets a caller, who seems to be in distress and speaks of a woman (Selina Flanscha) who answered his ad asking to kill him on camera. He gets cut off but she then calls, supernaturally controlling the lines, and their conversation makes the wraparound. It is fluff, to be honest, but Henderson makes for a calm, charming host for the stories.

Shane and Paul

The first segment is called The Backpage, directed by Brandon Lescure and originally released as a short in 2016. It is actually, for me, the best of the bunch. Paul (Brendan Krick) is in a bar with friend Shane (Joe Welkie). They are very much an odd couple, with Paul recently single and not very good with the dating game and Shane a player (or a bit of misogynistic slut). Both their dialogues are cringeworthy for different reasons and designed to be so.

Annabel Leah as Lilith

Shane convinces Paul to try out a massage website for a happy ending and he goes home, surfs the net, realises he has very little cash in his wallet and then spies a Backpage ad in a newspaper. This suggests a masseuse, named Lilith (Annabel Leah) who will come to the client and rates are negotiable. He calls and then falls asleep, woken when she knocks. Paul is nervous, suggests they chat but she soon strips, gets her massage table and kisses him.

drool

With a name like Lilith there is going to be no spoiler in discovering she is our vampire but I need to go into some unfamiliar lore they add in. She drools a foam-like drool onto his face and it is numbing and sedative. It also turns into a waxy residue, which seals his mouse and is used to glue his arms down. She straddles him and a large trunk-like tube comes from her belly and starts to suck his insides out from his groin. It was spectacularly unusual, and she comes across as much succubus as vampire.

Nina Donnelly as Scarlett

The next segment was Scarlet, directed by Sean Brien and released in 2020. It has three friends in a car – Denice (Harley Cubberley), Craig (James Stephen Walsh) and Robert (Greg Young) – watching for a woman who soon comes into view, her name is Scarlet (Nina Donnelly). It is apparent they know what she is and it is down to Craig to deal with her (he has a bag of vampire killing tools and Denice gives him a flask of garlic water). As he seems reticent, Robert suggests going to her, but Craig eventually leaves the car. She seems pleased to see him and leads him away… will he be able to deal with the restless dead? This is a very short segment (around 9 minutes) and has some good imagery but fails to get past a very basic narrative.

having a bite

The third segment is the one I am unsure of why it would be placed in the anthology, called for this Sorry for the Blood, and directed by Adam Michaels, Chaz and Dray Schoenbeck as I watched it I felt like it was lifting its story from Morbius and the vampire (Adam Michaels), unnamed in credit, looked like the comic book living vampire. Turns out this was a Morbius fan film from 2014, which is fine but curating it into a commercial anthology seems risky and, honestly, it was the weakest of the segments as it feels more like a proof of concept than a story.

feeding blood

The final segment was called Indictment and was a 2016 short that was directed by Gene Blalock. A man, Nico (Derrick Scott), wakes in a police cell and is brutalised by the cop in charge (Robert Hugh Starr), having been accused of murdering another cop (Nick Somers), which he can’t remember. As the brutality continues, memories start to return and he begins to realise that he’s been changed. This was my second favourite after the Backpage. Over all, this was a mixed bunch, though the photography was set at a decent standard across the segments and the shorts are worth watching (even Sorry for the Blood has some merit). 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Honourable Mention: All the Girls Love Blood: Kiss of the Devil

This is real DIY filmmaking, with a series of films so micro-budgeted (at least for the first) that, whilst the director Elliot Passantino has an IMDb page, none of the series have IMDb pages.

The first film, All the Girls Love Blood, was a shot to video film from 2004 and was a pretty poor print and a gritty mob story (with lowbrow comedy element) It followed a couple of undercover bent cops as they tried to avoid being killed by the French mob with Internal Affairs at their heels. As far as I can tell not all the film has survived.

Fatima's witchy sisters

In 2023 a sequel of sorts, All The Girls Love Blood: Full Moon Motorpsycho Mafia, was created. The print is tellingly better, especially as they have merged the two films into a feature on the Blu-Ray release. The story expanded with various Mob families, and a biker Neo-Nazi. A key-element of the narrative was a new psychotropic street drug called Christ. So far, no supernatural but at the very end a mob-boss turns into a werewolf and rampages, though it is revealed to be a Christ induced mass hallucination. Feminist mob-boss Fatima dies at the end of part two and that is important…

eating with mom

The 2025, 65-minute feature All the Girls Love Blood: Kiss of the Devil is somewhat more surreal. We get an FBI agent obsessed with a psycho bunny-suited Mr Hoppy – who appears at the end of part two, and he turns out to be a CIA super-soldier experiment, where they programmed several Mr Hoppy units (in the suits to freak out the enemy). We also get the agent’s Irish mom, played in drag and focal point for a lot of the lowbrow humour in this part. There is a bike gang, more mobsters, an undercover hacktivist group called Unicorn Sky (which is a separate project from the director that crosses into this). It turns out that Fatima’s family are witches too.

Fatima awakens

They try to bring Fatima back and fail but, at the end of the film, another mob lady manages to resurrect her – in the name of Lilith and Lamia – and Fatima comes back as a vampire under her control. This leads to her killing a few people (ripping one’s privates off whilst saying that the presence of Lilith in her resurrection was making her horny). This time it isn’t written off as a hallucination but is an actual supernatural event.

warding with a cross

It is, however, not too long an appearance and I am holding this to being a fleeting visitation. Even her death is off screen – killed by a CIA Laser Spectra piece of kit that leaves her as a fanged skull. Nevertheless, it has a vampire and despite the low budget I found myself drawn into the films – and despite looking awful, more so the first film that was a simple mob story, when the horizon broadened and conspiracy entered into the story the narrative felt more muddled.

At time of writing there is no IMDb page.

Short Film(s): Dead to the Last Drop

So, it was quite some time ago that I looked at Maxx Bloodd – Vampire Spy, a short film directed by and staring Rock Savage. The film, apparently from 1993, had ultra-low video quality and no IMDb page (it still doesn’t) but it has now had a Blu-ray release as part of the Rock Savage Collection Volume 1.

Also on that disc is Dead to the Last Drop – a short anthology of three vampire short films. I considered splitting the three films up, but it is the anthology that has an IMDb page and so I eventually decided to keep them together. Irreverent, with casual racism thrown in (but nothing as shocking as the blackface used in Maxx Bloodd), these are shorts for the viewer who likes their straight to video fare to be as low budget as possible.

Mod Mutilator as himself

The first short is called The Omega Wrestler, a title I assume nodding towards The Omega Man. It features the luchador-mask wearing Mod Mutilator (himself) who has settled down to watch wrestling with a concern that he is running low on beer and that he needs pizza. The last bit is easily solved and he orders a delivery.

death by silver kitchen knife

Meanwhile, a vampire queen (L M Woods) pitches up with her minions – including main minion Ivan (Don Woods), who informs her that this is the home of the wrester who killed her vampire sisters – Santo. After MM kills a random vampire with a silver kitchen knife, with the vampire queen laying siege, it becomes apparent he is not Santo and then, after Ivan suggests Blue Demon and this is refuted, Ivan loses his head for incompetence.

L M Woods as the vampire queen

The vampires decide they will kill the wrestler after he unleashes a racist tirade based on their Mexican heritage, and they eat the pizza delivery guy (Kenny Charnock). Separated from his pizza and down to his last beer, he needs reinforcements and this eventually takes the form of Harry Gross (Rock Savage) a psychic investigator in all three films. MM doesn’t want help with the vampires, he wants Harry to bring beer…

Marvin Kennedy as Dracula

The second short is the Vampire Pierre. Harry Gross is visited by a good vampire called Big D, or simply Dracula (Marvin Kennedy). Dracula made a killing investing in blood banks and doesn’t need to hunt people anymore. However, he was seduced by a French vampire named Fifi (L W Woods) who stole his family ring. The ring has the power to call and control zombies. She has stolen it for a French vampire named Pierre (Frank Vassallo) who wishes to use it to rule the world. Dracula hires Harry to get it back.

Rock Savage as Harry

Fifi is sent to take Harry out – though, luckily, he has a spectral gun that can kill things such as vampires – though he’ll soon discover it doesn’t work on zombies. This one stereotypes the French and has some incredibly crap bat on display but also concentrates on the Harry character, who is more a cameo in the other two shorts.

Frank Vassallo as Scarlett Sheik

The Final Short is Bloodsucking Sheiks. The short starts with Nazi doctor Von Cresse (Marvin Kennedy) – a scientist who developed a youth formula in the 1940s – with terrorist Scarlett Sheik (Frank Vassallo). Von Cresse has developed a new formula that will turn a person into a vampire. It is used on the Scarlett Sheik, and they intend to use it on his men also, creating a vampire terrorist cell.

evil mad scientist makes vampire

Agent Rex Jones (Eric Koger) goes to Tiki Joe’s Bar to get his new mission – finding and stopping the Scarlett Sheik. What he doesn’t know is where the terrorist is or what his plot entails. Luckily Harry Gross comes in – he was offered the job first and recommended Rex – who suggests Tiki Joe (Don Woods) might have info – indeed he has heard a rumour that they’ll attempt to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister…

Pierre takes a bite

All three have moments set around race that is poor – though the stereotyping in the Vampire Pierre is probably the lesser as the other two carry quite offensive wording as well as falling back on lazy stereotypes. The Harry character is drawn as quite cool and, to be honest, felt like a non-vampire version of Maxx Bloodd. One for the low budget aficionados and the vampire completist.

The imdb page is here.

Resurrection – review

Director: Bi Gan

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Bi Gan’s epic film is a 2 hour and 40 minute long meditation on cinema through the ages, an art film that explores its subject in an oneiric fervour, which demands viewer attention.

The premise is that humanity has achieved immortality by sacrificing the ability to dream but there are dissenters to this, known as Deliriants, whose dreaming threatens the fabric of both time and reality. A woman (Shu Qi) searches for a Deliriant (Jackson Yee)…

shadow of the Deliriant

The first section of the film sees her trying to capture him via a cinema, into an opium den – where he consumes poppy to help him dream and cries tears that supply the den. The film style here is expressionist and the Deliriant referred to as a monster. With his monstrous visage and the use of shadows there was a feel of Murnau and Nosferatu - though this isn’t why I’ve reviewed the film – and with the modern take on expressionism and the silent film I was reminded of Guy Maddin also.

the Deliriant

She eventually captures the deliriant and cannot understand why he wishes to dream but, digging into his back, she finds a projector within him and decides to allow him to watch the films/dreams as he dies – a process that will take two hours for her but be a hundred years for him. I will mention at this point that I think you can read Nosferatu as a meditation on film/cinema just as this is. The film then has four dreams in which the deliriant shapeshifts into a role within the dream (each lead played by Jackson Yee), It is the final dream that concerns us.

Apollo and Tai

The dream takes place on New Years Eve 1999 and the opening sees Yee’s Apollo awaken on a dock, that is drenched in red lighting and peppered with firework explosions. The cinematic style of this dream is that of a Long Take – a signature style of Bi Gan – and has Apollo meet a girl – whose first appearance consists of her shadow – and follows them through the streets. She gives her name as Tai Zhaomei (Li Gengxi) and professes that she has never bitten anyone and wishes to do that, he says he has never kissed anyone. The dream follows them together and individually at the times they are separated. It becomes apparent that she is “owned” by Mr Luo (Huang Jue) who seems to be a local mobster.

Huang Jue as  Mr Luo

In actuality, both Mr Luo and Tai are vampires, and he controls her as he holds her grave dirt. Apollo decides to fight for her -though he stands little chance and is severely beaten. They, by the end of the night, make a run for the docks and a ship that is meant to be there and, aboard ship, she admits what she is and shows fang. Mr Luo had not allowed her to drink blood unless it was filtered through him – there is mention of the idea that drinking from a human might make her human – but Apollo is willing to allow her to bite him…

lshowing fang

The vampire segment is technically brilliant, the Long Take working exceptionally well, and the whole film is beautifully photographed. The film, I suspect, will form a staple in some academic exploration of cinema and within vampire cinema texts. It can be like wading through a dream at times, and of course it is meant to be just that, with the film offering more and more, I suspect, on repeated watches. It is not going to be for everyone, certainly not a horror, it will be loved by some but its arthouse nature will make it inaccessible for others. I really enjoyed it, 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Dracula (2025 – RO) – review

Director: Radu Jude

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Not to be confused with Luc Besson’s 2025 version of Dracula, this is a strange one and no mistake. Definitely comedy, partly satirical, partly trolling filmmakers and viewers alike, partly plumbing vulgar depths, it runs at a whopping two hours and fifty minutes and in some regards absolutely outstays its welcome and in others keeps the viewer absolutely fixated on the strangeness within.

AI Ţepeş

What this is not, in many regards, is a film that owes much to the novel Dracula (a fifty minute interlude of the film does owe another novel, and I’ll get to that), rather it fixates on Vlad Ţepeş, perhaps rightly so as it is a Romanian film, with quite a bit shot in Sighișoara, where Vlad III was born. So the opening sequence of the film contains various AI renditions of Vlad Ţepeş saying “I am Vlad Ţepeş Dracula, you can all suck my cock.” This opens us up for discussion of the film’s repeated use of AI, always done in an obvious way with glitches welcome and realism ignored.

Oana Maria Zaharia as Vampira

The film then cuts to the (fictional) director (Adonis Tanta), who is making the film we see whilst conversing with various AI models regarding additional sequences – for this runs like an anthology, not all vampire related, with a central film that is cut through the production. The central film features a tourist restaurant in Sighișoara where a cabaret-like play of Dracula takes place, staring a washed up actor (Gabriel Spahiu) playing Dracula and Vampira (Oana Maria Zaharia) playing Mina. The show has a moment where patrons can pay to be with the actors – the woman (Ana Dumitrascu) who pays €1500 to be with Dracula demands her money back when he can’t sexually perform – and ends with them running through the town play-hunted by patrons with stakes. As this story progresses the pair decide to run away (they are essentially human trafficked) and are subsequently literally hunted.

stake in the ass

The sections are of varying lengths, intercut further with scenes with the director, and whilst some are vampire orientated – a vampiric Vlad Ţepeş returning to the house of his birth a (restaurant on the ground floor and) tourist attraction upstairs, or a vampiric and broke Vlad Ţepeş with tooth ache visiting the dentist (a dentist named Dr Caligari); noting various aged and gender actors play Vlad Ţepeş – others are most certainly not vampire stories. An example of the latter being a tragic tale of love (though barely romantic) on a collective farm during the Communist era. At one point we get a vampire (and zombie) satire of capitalism, invoking Marxism and Moretti, as a vampiric Vlad Ţepeş terrorises workers whose role is to play games and level up to then sell the passwords to Americans. That ends with a stake in the ass.

the muppet-headed vampire

Most interesting was the longest segment – at 50 minutes – which was a rendition of Romania’s first vampire novel; Vampirul by G.M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu (1938). It was subject to the same trolling attitude to the creative process with bad AI, an interior inn setting with the bare sound stage floor and cut out customers, a wonderfully acted bridge scene where the 19th century period illusion is shattered by the unedited modern street with cars and modern building in the background and the vampire looking like a man wearing a muppet’s head. SPOILER – the last was silly but almost forgivable as the book is one where the vampire is actually a very human protagonist playing on local superstition and fear. However, it was – despite the irreverence around it – fascinating if only for its heritage but did definitely tickle me in its absurdity.

emerging from the biopic

If what I have described feels strange, in places (a dildo tree and some usage of its strange fruit or with penis-enlargement ads spoken over Nosferatu) deliberately sexually immature, AI slathered so thickly to be a satire of the use of AI, muppet headed vampires and multiple Vlad Ţepeş (including a fanged one emerging from the Romanian historic biopic Vlad Ţepeş), deliberately mise-en-scène that does not miss anachronisms so much as revel in them, absolutely meta moments and a running time that is akin to a filmic marathon – it is all these things and more. But so very deliberately so. Perhaps the experiment works (the on-screen proxy-director suggests at one point that the film might be better called Frankenstein). Perhaps it doesn’t. In fact it is a mix of both and really, as such, hard to score. I am going for a straight down the line 5 out of 10, realising some of the underlying commentary might mean more in Romania but still fascinated and, in honesty, loving the muppet vampire.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Short Films: Destiny The Vampire Mermaid – Crimson Currents & Death in the Dark

Two short films the first, directed by Rusty Pietrzak and released in 2009, came in at about 13 minutes and the direct sequel, directed by James Panetta and released in 2010, was longer at around 18 minutes. Both starred Debbie D (Vampyre Tales, Deep Undead, Requiem for a Vampire, Around Midnight & Jim Haggerty’s Unnatural Causes) as the eponymous Destiny.

The first short sees a couple of women held by pirate captain Anne Bonny (Laura Giglio, After Midnight and also Deep Undead & Around Midnight). Also held is Destiny and Bonny, with her first mate Mary (Deborah Dutch, 60 Seconds to Di3 & The Vampire Hunters Club), want to know which ship she came from before they fished her out of the sea. Destiny says no ship and, with a trigger word, turns into her mermaid form. Bonny has mentioned that they are trafficking virgins to Prince Dracula (who does not appear in this film but is played by Jim Ewald in the next). Destiny has a score to settle with Dracula (it is implied that he turned her).

Debbie D as Destiny

She was actually searching for a shipwreck with plunder from Atlantis and she and Bonny agree that she can get what she is looking for so long as she brings treasure back to the pirate – do that and she can have anything she wants. She gets an orb that has specks of light representing other mermaids round the globe and gives Bonny a necklace, unfortunately for the pirate, what Destiny wants as a reward is her ship and she strangles then feeds from the pirate – before taking the ship.

Jim Ewald as Dracula

The first film ends there, the next has Mary and Destiny in Transylvania. Despite their uneasy alliance, Destiny’s plan is to be taken into the castle in irons, as a prisoner, and then kill Dracula. Of course, this means they both end up in the dungeon with Peter Van Helsing (James Panetta) whose bag of vampire slaying gear has been left nearby by Dracula, just out of his reach, to torture him. The women team up with Van Helsing… The character of Destiny first appeared in a short from 1999 and was reprised for a short-lived web serial later. The shorts themselves are very much in the straight to video realm.

The imdb pages are here and here.

Succubus: The Bloody Mary Murders (#1-4) - review

Author: Darryl Hughes

Illustrator: Monique MacNaughton

First published: 2023 (#1) – 2025 (#4)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb (#1): VIOLENCE BRED...

She was created in the aftermath of a brutal violent crime committed against her by sons of wealth and privilege that ended the life that she was born with. She was reborn with new "life" in a burst of the soul cooled flames of hellfire, christened by the depths of hell, and blessed by the devil him.

VENGEANCE FED. FEAR NOT THE DARKNESS--FEAR HER INSTEAD!

Brimming with preternatural life, consumed with a hunger for vengeance for the life that was ripped from her and the blood of those responsible, she hunts the darkness and the cold still night for her victims, leaving a mounting trail of carnage and carnality in her wake.

WHO IS SHE?

Her name is Mary. Bloody Mary. Vampire...SUCCUBUS.

The review: This is a series of 4 (so far) comics, available via Kindle and I’m covering of all four, though am linking to book 1 with the link below. Often, when it comes to something tagged as succubus we have to discern whether the entity falls into the vampiric. Mary, central character in this, is very much a vampire.

In life she was brutally raped by a bunch of bros, presumed dead, buried alive, which caused her death, and then emerged from the grave (the succubus side directly touches in to the how she turned, and the actions of the devil are entirely behind it). Now those college bros are finance bros and she is back for revenge. The first is killed, and flayed, which draws both Cinder Duvalle, a journalist, and Patricia “Pepper” Doyle, a homicide cop, into a hunt for the femme fatale.

This was fun, the art worked for the story and, whilst it had some quirks within the narrative (such as Mary, missing and presumed dead, able to access her assets on her return, something that was quirky due to lack of exploration – which was understandable given the limitations of the comic medium), it was a quick, fun read. The story, however, is far from complete at issue #4 and I hope the writer and illustrator get opportunity to finish the series. 6 out of 10.

In Kindle format @ Amazon US

In Kindle format @ Amazon UK