Kiss Me if You Dare – review

Director: Brad Sykes

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers

Known in the US as Demon’s Kiss, Kiss me if you Dare is another film by Brad Sykes, whose work we have seen in the form of Lord of the Vampires, Bloody Tease and Death Factory. Now, Death Factory was an unusual spin on the vampire myth – or so it was decided having been subjected to the patented “Vamp or Not?” process. Kiss me if You Dare is not as unusual but it still a spin on the general genre staples – so kudos for that.

Jeff Marchelletta as Paul

It is also not brilliantly shot and quite poorly acted but in that B movie, Fred Olen Ray school of filming… indeed Ray staple actress Beverly Lynne makes an appearance in the film and it begins in Chile or so we later discover. Paul (Jeff Marchelletta) has travelled out there with his girlfriend and photographer Teresa (Madeleine Lindley), art historian Ruby (Emmy Smith) and intern Michelle (Beverly Lynne). He tells taxi driver Carlos (Pedro Pano) that they are there to study the extinct Akuma tribe. Pedro mentions that they should be beware El Beso Del Demonio.

the Akuma woman

After an overnight in a hotel – an excuse to have a rumpy pumpy session between Paul and Teresa – they set out with the guide Zayas (Richard Azurdia) who takes them so far and then is going to abandon them until more money is shown. Ruby mentions El Beso Del Demonio, which he translates to Demon’s Kiss but won’t elaborate on the actual meaning of the phrase. Teresa sees movement in the forest, a girl with what looks like painted markings. Later, on a rest, Paul is checking Michelle’s ankle – much to Teresa’s disgust – when Teresa spots the girl again and follows her, leaving the others behind.

ritual

She is led to a cave and goes in. A fire burns and skulls are carved in the walls. There is a demonic looking mask on the floor. Teresa is hit by the girl. She wakes up in a hospital bed back in LA. She has been out cold for three days (one suspects she wouldn’t have been shipped back in reality, but hey, this is the fabulous world of B movies). The doctor asks her if she was bitten by an animal as her shoulder has a scabbed bite mark on it.

the mask

Back to the house and Paul produces the mask – scaring her half to death. He brought it back, having found it in the cave. First point, they said she was found near the cave – why go in with an unconscious party member to take care of. Second point, wasn’t the fire (either burning or the smell of it newly extinguished) a give away that someone had been there. Oh hum. Anyway, time for a quick romp with Paul, in the shower. Another gratuitous body shot but one that was perplexing as the bite had vanished and reappears later.

tasting blood

They go to a party at Ruby’s and Michelle is clearly digging Paul. Teresa passes out. He takes her home and is making her some tea when, like a lummox, he smashes the china cup and manages to cut his hand on it. A quick wrap in kitchen paper later and they are in bed. She wakes up in the night and starts lapping at his cut. He awakens and, thinking with his little head, lets her turn it into sex which climaxes with her scratching his back open and having a lick when he is asleep. He awakens to blood stained sheets, from his back, and her gone.

bloodied

It is 8 AM when she gets to Ruby’s and they talk about hypnosis. It must have been a long talk because it’s more like 9 at night when they do it and Teresa remembers some ritual performed on her semi conscious self before being bitten. She legs it out of Ruby’s straight into a rapist. He manages to rifle her beg, conveniently dropping a photo envelope with Paul’s name and address on it before she brains him, stabs him in the neck, chews at the wound and causes a passing woman to scream (who later couldn’t tell if the assailant was a man or a woman). Paul is in the frame for murder and doesn’t even realise when she lies to the cops about her whereabouts (or it isn’t mentioned).

Michelle - dead hussy

Now you just know that Michelle is going to go for Paul, he nearly beds her and then veers off after some heavy petting; unfortunately Teresa is witness to this little infidelity. Thus the subsequent murder of Teresa is going to put Paul in the frame again (because the police found his prints over her body – one wonders why his prints were already in the system) and ignored the smaller fingered, not matching his, bloody fingerprints all over the room!

feeding

It turns out that the Akuma were starving and started drinking blood as a food supplement/replacement. Somehow animal blood contaminated the human blood (yeah, I know, run with it) and caused women to mutate. They develop markings, much like a tattoo of a skeleton, pale blue eyes and fangs and crave blood. They pass their illness on to other women (it’s a gender specific disease) by biting the left shoulder. Teresa is craving blood and there is no cure.

I will kill you...

Because it is disease based any old way of killing someone who is infected will do. Teresa is disgusted with herself when she sees her eyes sunken and her face covered with blood and so smashes a mirror – a take on reflections. She can’t partake of normal human food eventually, a carton of milk making her choke. Other than that she is an animalistic, fanged vampire – though the word isn’t used.

The gore effects are rather good in this. The plot has holes that a truck could drive through and the acting is not brilliant, each main cast member asked to only project one thing. Teresa – tortured vampire, Michelle – slutty intern, Ruby – clever lore finder etc. That said, it is still B movie fun in its own way, just not a brilliant movie. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q

Interesting Shorts: The Shunned House

I like H.P. Lovecraft, but it was reading Michael E Bell’s Food for the Dead that had me revisiting The Shunned House – a story, I confess, I must not have read in over 23 years.

Bell is acquainted with the actual Shunned House, indeed the Benefit Street house described by Lovecraft is opposite his office. It was also clear that, within the story, Lovecraft had included aspects of both vampire and werewolf lore and that this was based on his knowledge of the folklore and knowledge also of the exhumations that took place in New England. Indeed the familial names of many of those involved in Lovecraft’s tale were familiar to me via Bell’s research into the real world exhumations.

The story (written in 1924 and published in 1937) surrounds a house that seems cursed; indeed he tells us that, “What I heard in my youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers.” We discover that no child was born in the house – those few that were delivered there were all still-born. Those adults and children who did die whilst living in that abode “were not all cut off suddenly by any one cause; rather did it seem that their vitality was insidiously sapped, so that each one died the sooner from whatever tendency to weakness he may have naturally had.”

Not everyone died, at least not at first, and those who moved away seem to improve in strength but whilst alive in the house they “displayed in varying degree a type of anaemia or consumption”. Consumption, of course, being the primary infection that led to the exhumations in New England.

During his investigations into the house, the storyteller tells us of a servant called Ann White, from Exeter (scene of the Mercy Brown exhumation, amongst others), who insisted that “there must lie buried beneath the house one of those vampires - the dead who retain their bodily form and live on the blood or breath of the living - whose hideous legions send their preying shapes or spirits abroad by night. To destroy a vampire one must, the grandmothers say, exhume it and burn its heart, or at least drive a stake through that organ”. This, of course, conjures up images of exhumation and corpse mutilation due to the belief the corpse is a vampire.

Fuseli's the nightmare

White insisted, due to an amorphous fungal shape that regularly appeared in the compacted soil of the cellar floor and the unwholesome smell that seemed to emanate from there, that said cellar should be searched and was discharged for her trouble. The storyteller admits that White’s tales dovetailed with others he came across in his investigation. That an earlier servant, Preserved Smith, complained “that something "sucked his breath" at night”, that the death-certificates of four fever victims showed that “the four deceased persons [were] all unaccountably lacking in blood” and that the ravings of resident Rhoby Harris contained complaints “of the sharp teeth of a glassy-eyed, half-visible presence.” Bell tells us that it is common for tuberculosis (consumption) sufferers to “awaken, coughing in pain (sometimes described as a heavy feeling, like someone has sat upon the chest)”. This would also fit into folklore surrounding sleep paralysis that culminated in Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare.

The investigator uncovered the fact that the dying sometimes attacked the living, namely their doctors, for instance Eleazar Durfee who “transfigured in a horrible way; glaring glassily and attempting to bite the throat of the attending physician” The investigator describes things coming to a head, and the house being withdrawn as a rented property, when there was “a series of anaemia deaths preceded by progressive madnesses wherein the patient would craftily attempt the lives of his relatives by incisions in the neck or wrists.” Of course, these attacks are not typical symptoms suffered by the consumption victim but born of Lovecraft’s storytelling craft.

He does mention the werewolf legend and ties it in with the Roulet legend (chronicled by Montague Summers) – however I shan’t go into that here except to say both the vampirism and lycanthropy became ways for the uninitiated to explain the eldritch terrors that under-pinned the story – as they would do in a Lovecraft tale. The Investigator imagines “an alien nucleus of substance or energy, formless or otherwise, kept alive by imperceptible or immaterial subtractions from the life-force or bodily tissue and fluids of other and more palpably living things” but uses both science and folklore to develop weapons. He creates an unfeasible piece of equipment, along the lines of a Crookes tube, should the thing prove intangible. However, should it be more physical in manifestation he has flamethrowers, “for like the superstitious Exeter rustics, we were prepared to burn the thing's heart out if heart existed to burn.”

In the end the flamethrowers are not used – acid ends up being the order of the day, after wounding the thing with his unfeasible Crookes tube – however I should mention the fact that the investigator does liken the phosphorous luminescent cloud to a corpse-light, a “vampirish vapour such as Exeter rustics tell of as lurking over certain church yards”. The idea of corpse-lights has become inextricably linked to some of the New England vampire cases.

So, Lovecraft and vampires… using more traditional folklore of course and remember that as Bell tells us, “In New England tradition the unnamed evil resided in the grave, perhaps locating itself within the corpse of a deceased family member.” Thus the idea that this might be some “intruder” as Lovecraft would describe it fits the tradition very well indeed.

A film version, The Shunned House (2003) directed by Ivan Zuccon, lost all of the vampiric elements bar a vague reference to “ghosts and demons who sucked a person’s soul whilst sleeping” and merged in the stories Dreams in the Witch House and the Music of Erich Zann. It did include a character called Estelle Roulet, however.

RIP Leslie Nielsen

Red Scream Vampyres – review

Director: David R Williams

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

This film was released in the same year as its stable-mate Red Scream Nosferatu (RSN), though this was released marginally ahead according to iMDB. Like RSN this was ostensibly a remake this time of José Ramón Larraz’ Vampyres.

In the first instance this does mean that Williams has very good taste when it comes to classic vampire movies but RSN was something of a mess. This is less of a mess, despite some bad acting from some of the victims the main cast seem natural, there isn’t the same idiosyncrasies that plagued RSN and he manages to develop quite an atmosphere – though it is forced in places. What it does do is miss the point of Vampyres by a country mile and thus the film’s aim is off.

“Tell me child, what do you know about vampyres?” we hear and then we see images of blood and flesh as a death metal soundtrack screeches out and we see a membrane like cocoon. Within it writhe three vampires, Theodora (Satu Makeda), Elenora (Valeria Dombrovschi) and a third (Caitlin Blackman). Why three? Who knows, the third doesn’t come into the film proper. The cocoon was a nice touch but the actual blurb suggests these are 1000 year old vampires – so we lose sight of the original film already as the original is a tale of revenge beyond the grave rather than ancient creatures.

Piano floats through as a man stumbles through the corridors of a decrepit building, he seems to limp. He ends up chained and we get an indication that this is being filmed but that is unimportant. The two main vampires are with him and he is scratched open. We cut to a man hitching (Sean-Michael Argo) and a car passes then returns. It is driven by Theodora. This then is a change around as the victims were drivers and the vampires hitchers in the original.

Theodora takes him to the abandoned Buffalo Terminal – the place where she and Elenora have made their home. As she gets in we note two things, it is daylight, but she does seem to keep to the building shadows – unfortunately that doesn’t stop the sun hitting her full face and the camera capturing it, no reaction is forthcoming. She asks the hitcher if he enters of his own free will – dude, at that point run. But he goes in and she gives him a change of clothes, feeds him and give him wine (the wine seems drugged in this). Yup – he’s a gonner.

Sky (Andrea Bentin) is walking through the building with a gun. She walks in on the vampires in a lesbian clinch and kills them. This, in a distorted way, mirrors the opening of the original except that it isn’t the Ted character – DieTrich (Jess Weber) in this – with the gun, plus they are already vampires rather than women murdered and thus the scene loses its story impetus. It is a dream anyway. Sky wakes, gets up to look out of the caravan window and screams. Her partner, Morrissey (Ed Bergtold), asks what is wrong and she describes a bloodied hand on the glass. He looks outside; nothing and there is no hand print on the glass.

After a bizarre but effective scene of the vampires talking, mentioning child murder and the fact that humans are animals, we cut to Sky and Morrissey looking round a warehouse next to the terminal building (we later discover that they are urban archaeologists). In the building he finds a symbol and tells her he has seen t before in Bosnia (go figure) and… well it is essentially an image depicting vagina dentate. All well and good but… that misses the point of the original also; Larraz’ film wasn’t about men-hating women, castrating (or killing) their victims in an ultra-femminst frenzy but of two women wronged, seeking revenge within a psychosexual drama. Back to Morrissey and he finds something with cuniform on it (no real explanation there and the translation – at the end of the film – was muffled in soundtrack) and cuts his hand – the blood moving strangely on the floor after they go to get him medical attention.

 Anyway, Theodora picks up DieTrich, who reminds her of someone (but as she wasn’t murdered by him that was almost irrelevant) and doesn’t kill him but does keep him, feeding on him. Much to the chagrin of Elenora who wants him killed. As in the original he meets the caravan couple and survives as others are killed. The wine connoisseur from the original morphs into Moby (Robert Bozek), who seems psychotic and Bozek seems to be channelling his Renfield role from RCN (or vice versa). The vampires do meet Sky and mark her (with protection rather than a sign of recognition) and William’s tries to build a reason (it was a tantalising unexplained event in the original) – Sky is prime material for turning, she is also newly pregnant (that seems to mean little in the grand scheme of things).

I must mention the bizarre ending because, rather than a guilt wracked Ted we get a sword wielding DieTrich and zombies – yes, zombies and no, I don’t know why either.

Despite missing the main point of the original, and thus having little actual point in itself, this wasn’t the worst effort I have ever come across. The principles, as I mentioned, all seemed to fill their roles with a natural fluidity – though all the disposable victims, to a man, were badly acted. The cocoon idea was nice (and it is mentioned that they sleep in it later) but who was the third vampire?

Williams did manage to fill the screen with a level of style and atmosphere, kudos given the low budget, but this would probably have worked better if he had ignored the Larraz classic and created something original. One might argue that Williams was making conscious changes for a reason, unfortunately I doubt it but if so the change in direction from the original didn't particularly work too well. However, in both of Williams’ films that I have seen there has been potential and this fulfils it in a much more satisfying way than RSN, but it still cannot get close to the original.

4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Lamia

Fumetti is the Italian name for comics – I understand that it literally means ‘little puffs of smoke’ and this refers to the speech bubbles. Some fumetti is rather rude as well, and that certainly is the case when it comes to some of the vampire orientated series – most famously Jacula and Sukia.

Hushicho Phoenix is a fan of Sukia who has started his own comic, pretty much inspired by Sukia. Lamia is a female vampire and, like Sukia, she has a gay male sidekick – in this case Antonio. This is what Hushicho had to say about the first book:

“In the first book, Baroness of Blood, Lamia and Antonio stop over for gas on a road trip and find themselves drawn into a power struggle in a small town. An evil figure -- a baroness -- has taken over, and she's flexed her fascist muscles. Will censorship and government evil win out, or will the world's sexiest vampiress teach them the meaning of 'might makes right'?”

The Lamia homepage has been linked here for a little while already and you can read the volumes for free there as they are released. Just remember these are not safe for work.

You can also purchase the printed director’s cuts of Lamia from the homepage.

What struck me more than anything about Lamia was the artwork; the art has a crisp, clean style that suits the subject well.

I wish Hushicho all the best with his project.

Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters - review

Director: Gilberto Martínez Solares

Release date: 1970

Contains spoilers

Santo (Santo), is there anything better than a Santo movie? Well, honestly, plenty of things but as a completely camp piece of escapism it takes a lot of beating. Come on, you know it does. This has a whole range of monsters for Santo to fight… but what of Blue Demon (Blue Demon) you ask… well he is actually a bad guy through most of this… gosh, it’s true, kinda.

So as the film opens we see the range of monsters they are going to meet in this. The Mummy (Fernando Rosales), the Cyclops (Gerardo Zepeda), Frankenstein’s Monster (Manuel Leal), the Wolfman (Vicente Lara), the Vampire (David Alvizu) and the Vampire Woman (actually there are two played by Elsa María Tako and Yolanda Ponce). An entire range of monsters and still more to be mentioned…



Blue Demon

We start with a wrestling match, no surprise there. It is actually a multi-wrestler all female match. I was a little surprised to hear the announcer suggest they were beautiful female wrestlers – given they were all wearing masks! Santo watches on and then watches the next match which is a tag team bout with Blue Demon involved.

a green faced zombie

In a graveyard Otto Halder (Jorge Rado) and his daughter Gloria (Hedi Blue) watch as Otto’s brother Bruno (Carlos Ancira) is laid to rest. Afterwards they talk about him and we discover that Bruno was a mad scientist who revived the dead. We also see a hunchback dwarf named Waldo (Santanón) and 4 green faced zombies steal Bruno’s corpse. Santo is worried about the death but Blue Demon tells the silver masked one that he should take his vacation with his girlfriend, who happens to be Gloria.

Waldo revives the master

Blue Demon drives down the road when he sees the horse and cart with Waldo and the zombies. He follows it to a castle and breaks in but he is too late, Waldo has revived his master. The zombies attack Blue Demon and he is placed in a machine and a replicated version of him is made… this is why I said 'kinda' because the clone of Blue Demon is actually played by the wrestler Black Shadow. Blue Demon 2 (to distinguish from the good version) is sent to destroy Santo.

replicating Blue Demon

Santo is driving along the road with Gloria, occasionally stopping for a spot of tongue wrestling. He sees Blue Demon 2 and stops, Blue Demon 2 attacks aided by the zombies who also grab Gloria. Gloria is bundled into a car and Blue Demon 2 tosses Santo down a hill towards a cliff. Santo escapes his fate and manages to get back to his car, chase the baddies down and allow Gloria to leap car to car into his rescuing arms. Things here are confused as it suddenly cuts into night shots and the film is inconsistent with night and day, the monsters can only attack at night but most of the scenes were filmed in broad daylight. Blue Demon 2’s car crashes but he walks away from the explosion, aflame but still very much alive.

crap bat syndrome

Next we have a long convoluted scene as the various monsters are found. Blue Demon 2 clearly has been sent to find some of them and one of these is the vampire. It appears that his coffin is actually in the same castle as Bruno’s lab but when Blue Demon 2 opens it, it is empty. We have seen him in crap bat form, he turns into his human form and attacks. For no explored reason Blue Demon 2 has a ring that flashes and manages to control the vampire.

an army of monsters

Once they have all been gathered the monsters are put in equipment that revives them (though vampire and Cyclops were very much active when found) and makes them obedient to Bruno. He now has an entire army of monsters with which to crush Santo but, in the first instance, he sends them out to cause general trouble. This includes vampire biting a girl, Frankenstein's Monster crushing a head and wolfman eating a mother and father in front of a little boy.

the vampire

They are soon attacking Santo and the Halders. Indeed in one attack Gloria is attacked by vampire in her bedroom whilst Santo and Otto fight monsters downstairs. Gloria escapes vampire's fangs and legs it out of the house, her life saved when she falls down before a cross that wards vampire away. Santo is challenged to a match by vampire, which he accepts. The fact that vampire wears a mask in it was, I suppose, to disguise the wrestler who took over the role. Santo is winning anyway but, when Gloria runs to ringside, the cross she wears has vampire turning into a bat to escape – all hell breaks loose as the other monsters attack the arena.

staking

Eventually vampire attacks another girl and then we realise that there are now 3 coffins in his lair as both his victims become vampire women. One of them tries to seduce Santo and lure him into a trap. There isn’t much else vampiric to mention except that, at the end of the film, all three end up being staked by the good guys.

heroes always win

For, yes, good triumphs over evil as always – because this is the world of Santo and that is how things are. The effects are so awful they are brilliant. Frankenstein’s Monster has a bit of a goatee going on and the zombies look lost and forlorn when one of their number has his head pulled off. The story is surreal, even for a Santo script. We get stock footage of a Mexican musical in the film. It is bizarre.

Doctor's orders - watch Santo films

Is it good cinema? Absolutely not, 4 out of 10 as a piece of cinema is probably ludicrously generous but... is it good fun? Absolutely, everyone needs to watch a Santo movie from time to time… it should be doctor’s orders.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: Barackula – the musical

Okay, so President Lincoln has been both vampire hunter, in the Seth Grahame-Smith book, and a vampire in the Transient but now it is the turn of Barack Obama (Justin Sherman) to face fangs in the short 2008 film, directed by Michael Lawson, entitled Barackula the Musical.

singing Barack

It begins at Harvard Law School in September 1990 with a young Barack Obama setting the scene in song. He, following the song, falls dishevelled into his apartment where his girlfriend (Nakia Syvonne) asks him what is wrong. This takes us back to the night before when he was asked to attend an initiation at the law school, who had just decided to make him president of their chapter.

snack-rodent

What Barack didn’t expect was that the various members of the school where all vampires and the leader, Count Ben (Nathan Bell), has chosen Barack, not only be the President, but also to be converted into a vampire. Barack fights back with the tool of diplomacy, utilising the medium of song and dance. He suggests that mortal and immortal can work together without conversion. Ben seems to accept this and they share a toast… Guess Barack hasn’t seen the Lost Boys…

silly

This is silly, fun and probably would have been annoying if it had gone on too long in the vein it was in but is timed about right. It does say 'to be continued' but perhaps it should be left where it is or have a little less song… Hey, but what do I know?

There is a homepage here where you can watch the short or download it in i-implement format and the imdb page is here.

Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires – review

Author: Michael E. Bell

First published: 2001

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Close your eyes and imagine a vampire: Your mind’s eye may conjure up Count Dracula with bared teeth and a shiny tuxedo. But another kind of vampire was believed to live in rural New England long ago. Author and folklorist Michael E Bell has spent twenty years pursuing this forgotten vampire tradition. His discoveries will surprise and enthral sceptics, believers and all readers of this engaging book.

Bell’s odyssey began in 1981 when Rhode Islander Everett Peck told him a family story passed down for generations. In 1892, months after young Mercy Brown succumbed to tuberculosis, her body was exhumed from a local graveyard. Relatives cut out her heart, burned it on a nearby rock, and fed the ashes to her dying brother, hoping to cure him of the wasting disease. They feared that Mercy had become a vampire, sapping her sibling’s vitality to provide sustenance for her own spectral existence. Or, had she become a scapegoat, blamed for the baffling affliction ravaging her family.

While writers such as Henry David Thoreau, HP Lovecraft and Amy Lowell drew on portions of this tradition in their writings, Bell captures the tale in its entirety for the first time. He takes readers on the road throughout New England, as he visits legend trippers and outright sceptics, old cemeteries, and small town museums. With humor insight, and sympathy, he uncovers story upon story of dying people who some believed were food for the dead – the source of life after death for their vampire kin. Bell introduces us to extraordinary people confronted with an extraordinary illness that pre-modern medicine could neither explain nor cure.

Bell also makes comparisons to seemingly inexplicable forces in our own midst, like ebola, mad cow and AIDS, showing that while times have changed, our need for answers has not. He shows that our vampire-seeking ancestors battled disease with the most potent tools they possessed – an instinctual belief in their power to heal themselves, aided by their folk customs.

The Review: Lest we forget, the figure of the vampire so beloved on this page and on many others round the net is an evolution of a figure/figures from mankind’s myths and legends, from our own superstitious and supernatural beliefs. The vampire was transformed into the suave aristocrat by Polidori but, long after that, people still believed in vampires in a more traditional folkloric sense.

The name vampire may not have been used by those who either believed or sought the scapegoat that the concept of the 'vampire' provided, but the alleged modus operandi of the dead was remarkably familiar and the fear was all too real. Cases still occur today, for example the case of Petra Toma in Romania in 2004. Certainly, in the United States, cases were still occurring as far as the end of the 19th century and it is these cases that Bell’s book explores. Essentially it explores cases where corpses were disturbed in the grave because the person had died from consumption (tuberculosis) and others in the family were dying, the fear was that the living were providing sustenance for the dead and thus, if they dealt with the corpse - by burning the heart for instance, they could save the living.

I have seen Bell on documentaries and some of them are a little, shall we say, sensationalist – but that is modern media for you. In the pages of this book we see an exploration by a man sympathetic to his sources and material and often frustrated by the handling of the subject matter in the media. The book is very chatty in places and meanders through its subjects as a result. However it is no bad thing, pushing the text away from something that could have been all too dry and academic. Bell is a folklorist, after all, and the style has a rustic honesty underpinned with academia. The book carries extensive references (held at the back of the volume and sorted by page number, rather than carrying the citations in text) and is indexed.

If the book disappointed me on any level it was down to one omission, and this is not the book's fault as it is something Bell discovered the year after the book was published. In 2002 Bell received a lead and found a gravestone belonging to Simon Whipple, who died in 1841. Part of the inscription is missing but the lines “Altho consumption's vampire grasp -- Had seized thy mortal frame” are clearly visible.

This shows a deliberate connection between consumption and vampire belief, presuming authenticity, and I would have loved to have read more detail on this and Bell’s research thereafter.

That aside – and one cannot hold it against the author as he hadn’t discovered the grave until after the book was published, and I should also mention that the proposed sequel will be called The Vampire’s Grasp, so one assumes it will carry the detail I wanted – this was an interesting and informative volume. 8 out of 10.

RIP Ingrid Pitt

The Bloodletting: Vampire Scrolls – review

Director: Shaun Paul Piccinino

Release date: 2004

Contains spoilers

By ‘eck, this should not have worked… never in a million years. However, despite itself, I found myself enjoying this. Ok, its low, low budget combined with a barely constructed storyline but…

The credits moved me first of all. Piano floats above very well photographed images of books and candles. We hit an issue amongst all this, as we see extracts from the so called vampire scrolls, as we see text mentioning the bloodletting, as we see the symbol of vampire society… well we start to believe that there might be a deeper storyline occurring within this movie. It is further into the film proper when we realise that… well its all smoke and mirrors. The bloodletting is mentioned as is moving in shadows but generally all that was an ethereal phantasm of a story, as elusive as the infamous Scotch mist.

We then move into the film proper and… well there is an instant deflation when the beautifully shot credits open into a cheaply shot street scene with a sub-soap dialogue between two college girls. One suggests an alley way short cut and you know that is going to end badly. They pass by a homeless guy who moves suddenly grabbing and feeding on one before she can raise a scream. Her friend turns and we see his blood stained face.

Crystal (Jody Marie) and her friends are arranging a night out. She is on the phone to Amanda (Molly Fix) and tells her to bring her new beau, Johnathan (Jeremy Dunn). Also in the house are Rachael (Amanda Lea) and Meg (Caroline Blackwell). Over at a pool we see Theo (Mark Westerdale), the camera slow-motions as he flicks his hair, he ain’t no stud and, when he speaks in a British accent we realise, he’s not really an actor either… sorry, just the way it is. He is at the pool with Mark (Orlando McGuire) – Rachel’s boyfriend – and Derek (Shaun Paul Piccinino) – Crystal’s boyfriend.

So, they all go out, meet Johnathan, have a good time and then stagger home dunk. On the way they see a vagrant (Henry Inglesias) who warns them that he sees *them* in the shadows and they are all doomed. The main gang go to one house and Amanda takes Johnathan home and they have some rumpy pumpy. We then see the vagrant attacked by an assailant who remains unseen. In the morning Amanda is on her own, Johnathan has left a note explaining that he had to get up early… Are you already suspicious of him, the new guy who isn’t there in the morning?

Rachael takes out the trash and finds the dead vagrant. Now, ok, she has found a dead body but there is no need for the almost catatonia she falls into or for the gang to all come-a-running. They phone Amanda and she phones Johnathan – who can’t come round as he has an interview – but he’ll be there in the evening. Suspicious still? Good… They all watch TV, bar Rachael who sleeps. When Mark looks in on her she has gone and blood is on the sheets. Now we get to the good bit.

The gang split up, Mark and Theo wait in the house whilst the three remaining girls and Derek go to the underground parking to get the car and go to the cops (as they are taking a long time getting there). In the parking lot they discover that Amanda’s car is dead and they are attacked by a fast moving thing. Eventually they discover it is Amanda and it was here that I began to engage more with the film.

They had Amanda kill virtually the entire gang of in the lot, as well as a stranger, but that is not what impressed me. What impressed me was the look… the way the fangs were done, the way the blood was done, Hell even the ceiling cling, they were all really well done. It came as little surprise then that director Shaun Paul Piccinino has gone successfully into visual effects as a career – they were impressive.

It’s not a huge shock to eventually discover that Johnathan is a vampire. Theo rumbles it when he notices a lack of reflection in the TV screen and dies for his troubles. Amanda realises when he mixes his story up. The problem is I see no motivation. He kills the vagrant because he warned the kids, but they didn’t listen so there was no point to that one. He wants to turn Amanda so they can be together forever (fair enough) but then turns Rachael as it is a gift, and she goes on the rampage… His motivation for that didn’t add up.

Lore wise we see a stake through the heart is rather effective as Amanda accidentally stakes Rachael in the underground parking lot. The vampires can move fast, vanish and reappear and they avoid sunlight. They cast no reflection and can wall crawl/ceiling hang. All the stuff about moving in shadows/darkness, vampire societies and the bloodletting was, as I mentioned, irrelevant story babble.

The acting was not particularly brilliant across the board but nothing as bad as Theo, who was cringe-worthy. It is a shame that story, photography and acting didn’t match up with the visual effects used as this might have ended up a little cult classic. As it is I found it watchable, enjoyable even, but truthfully not brilliant as a piece of cinema. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q

Bloodlock – review

Director: William Victor Schotten

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

Given two of the trailers that appear as DVD extras on this (the solid but flawed Vampeggedon and the great fun God of Vampires) I had the expectation that it would be a fairly solid – if not brilliant – indie vampire movie. I was, as you shall see, bitterly disappointed.

A simple storyline is no problem, so long as it is solid – this wobbled like a blancmange. Worse, it seemed to bite off more than it could chew effects wise. We’ll come back to this, of course.

the door

The film starts with a man sat in a house. Down in the cellar is a door with a cross, a symbol (later we hear it is an Amish symbol to trap evil spirits) and an elaborate lock. Something is being kept in. The man has a heart attack, and it was an unconvincing one at that. Sorry, but it really was. So, house now empty, strange door in the cellar, something trapped within…

obsessed with the door

Cue couple Christine (Ashley Gallo) and Barry (Domanic Koulianos) moving in. Also moving in is Christine’s half sister Lisa (Karen Fox) – same father, different mothers. It becomes readily apparent that cop Barry is having an affair with sister Lisa. Also, it is hinted that Christine has inherited money (there is mention of her being rich and, presumably as Lisa isn’t rich it was inherited from her mother), this seems to be the motivation for Barry wanting to drive Christine mad and then fake her suicide. The fact that she is obsessed with the door seems an opportunity too good to miss.

visions of infidelity

There is an old couple over the road (who don’t realise that there are three people who have moved into the house) by the name of Edwina (Debra Gordon) and Foster (Dirk Hermance). They want what is trapped in Christine’s house and have killed the neighbours to be near the house. Indeed they were going to raid the cellar on the day the others moved in. Christine has dreams of the creature within (obviously a vampire, played by Nick Foot), who then shows her visions of her cheating sister. She catches Barry leaving Lisa’s room, sees lipstick on his back but lives in abject denial.

Karen Fox as the hussy Lisa

The first morning and Barry decides to go to work. Lisa arranges for Christine to go to the store and get a locksmith so he can sneak back and have some rumpy. Having just donned her naughty cowgirl outfit she finds herself hogtied by Foster as he and Edwina try to break into the door. Meanwhile Christine goes to a locksmith and flirts with the hunky Luke (Gregg Biamonte), who confesses his father made the lock and there was no key and then tries to warn her not to open the door. Question, if you are going to seal the creature in why make a lock, why not just do without a door and wall the bugger in with the same occult protections?

Barry's papier mache head

Eventually both Lisa and Christine are tied up, the Amish symbol has been burnt off with acid, a counterspell has been cast and the lock is being drilled. Barry gets home and pulls his gun. After assessing the situation he decides to shoot Edwina and Foster, release Lisa and then he is about to shoot Christine with Edwina’s gun and claim home invasion gone weird when the vampire gets out. He bites a chunk out of Lisa’s leg and then rips Barry’s head off with a poor effects display.

veins drawn by felt tip?

Yes, it is Barry’s papier mache head and why? The joy of using vampires in your movie is that you can – if you so wish – go with minimal effects. So why make a false looking head? And whilst I am on the subject why bother with a vein effect that looked like the actor had been drawn on with felt tip pen? Silly and unnecessary. Lisa escapes with the help of Luke and overnight, it seems, turns from timid mouse to vampire slayer, from dungarees to hipster jeans and forgets Barry (and his betrayal of her) and starts rumpy sessions with Luke.

the head, again

The film then drones on, with the mayor (Larry Froehlich) and a detective (William Victor Schotten, with the world’s most false looking moustache) being turned for reasons best ignored as nothing was done with them and these vampires couldn’t pass for human. Stake, burn, behead seems to be the order of the day, bar the master – he is the first vampire who cannot die and… can I go on?

hunting Christine

Not really because this was poor. The effects looked bad, the story was ungainly, characters that should have been 3 dimensional were as thin as card and the acting was poor – especially Dirk Hermance who seems to have studied in the Conrad Brooks’ school of acting and that is no good thing. The film’s twist/coda was awfully pedestrian and that is me being polite.

Sorry, but this was poor. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: House of the Wolf Man

Back in the day there was a House of Dracula and a House of Frankenstein - Universal’s monster mashes that brought Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula and the Wolf Man together.

A House of the Wolf Man was never produced… until now.

Not by Universal, when all is said and done; indeed this is essentially a fan movie but, given that, it looks rather splendid – capturing a feel of 1940’s Universal cinema despite being dated to 2009. It was directed by Eban McGarr.

Ron Chaney as Reinhardt

Of course the great actors who played roles in the golden years of the Universal Monster Movies have sadly passed on. To tie back to that pedigree the film has Ron Chaney – grandson of Lon Chaney Jr. – as Dr Bela Reinhardt. Not that he is a great actor, mind, but the connection is well made and he does cold and distant well enough.

Craig Dabbs as the Monster

So you may well be wondering exactly why this is only a honourable mention? Well it is because of the severely restricted screen time and plot purpose of Dracula (Michael R Thomas). Indeed all the main ‘house’ monsters are represented with the Wolf Man (Billy Bussey) and Frankenstein’s Monster (Craig Dabbs). However the film only runs for 75 minutes and it takes an hour to get an appearance from any of the main monsters. That said the makeup was rather well done and I really enjoyed the Monster’s ghastly visage.

John McGarr as Barlow

The film begins with the rain beating down on a castle as Reed Chapel (Dustin Fitzsimons) and his sister Mary (Sara Raftery) arrive. She is reluctant to go in but they have been invited with regards a possible inheritance. They knock and the door is opened by the monstrous Barlow (John McGarr) – looking somewhat like a refugee Tor Johnson escaped from an Ed Wood flick. Reinhardt is on the stairwell inside and offers their details – Reed is an all star quarterback and Mary has a promising medical career before her.

Sully, Mary and Reed

Next to arrive is Conrad “call me Sully” Sullivan (Jeremie Loncka), who has a habit of waiting to be invited in, followed by the vampish femme fatale Elmira Cray (Cheryl Rodes) and finally the hunter Archibald Whitlock (Jim Thalman), who has his footman Leopold (Rod Spencer) and others with him… he doesn’t know their names and finds Leopold’s native name harsh. Yes he is the embodiment of the 1940s racist white hunter trope. All five have a claim to the inheritance – what that claim is none of them know.

Cheryl Rodes as Elmira

A night is spent in the castle, including Whitlock sneaking outside to search for an unknown beast, whose tracks his men have discovered in the grounds. Eyeballs watch the guests from behind paintings, but we don’t know whose (and it is never actually revealed). For a moment I thought we might get a play on ten little Indians but that was avoided. It is Elmira who finds out roughly what is going on.

Saba Moor-Doucette as Vadoma

She sees a spider scurry into her room and then retreat backwards. She follows it and it climbs a set of stairs. As she climbs them she hears a voice reciting a poem about a curse. In the room at the top of the stairs she finds the limbless hag Vadoma (Saba Moor-Doucette) and it is revealed that she is Elmira’s grandmother. Indeed all five guests are half-siblings; Elmira’s mother was attacked and left mutilated, the same for Sully (whose mother was institutionalised) and Whitlock. Reed and Mary were adopted and so never knew the story of their birth mother. Reinhardt isn’t actually Bela’s name either, his real name is Frankenstein. Vadoma hints that Elmira is in touch with the gifts of her side of the family, the implication being witchcraft.

classic pose

The next night Reinhardt intends to test his children to see who will be his heir and successor and the next night is a full moon… Now, I said Sully has a habit of waiting to be invited in but don’t read too much into that. However Dracula also needs to be invited in and has a hankering to get to an ‘old friend’ – the Monster. Dracula appears right at the end of the flick and, despite striking a classic pose, has little to do.

hideous vampire brides

He does have the brides with him, in diaphanous gowns, but these brides have hideous visages rather than being wispish beauties. Again they do little bar attack an injured party. This, to me, was the big weakness in the film. It felt like they didn’t know how to end it and so Dracula appears, finds the Wolf Man and the Monster in mortal combat and the film kinda just ends.

the Wolf Man

Despite this, I enjoyed the film for what it was… a tribute to the Universal monster films. It felt like a film by fans for fans. Was it the greatest movie ever… no, not by a long shot, but it was good clean fun (despite Whitlock’s reprehensible attitudes). A nice tribute to the monster films of yore and, one suspects, a personal tribute from Ron Chaney to his grandfather.

The imdb page is here.