Semya Vurdalakov – review

Directors: Gennadiy Klimov & Igor Shavlak

Release date: 1990

Contains spoilers

The Necrorealism art movement was a Russian movement that is little known outside that country. I have featured a film from that school previously in the form of Daddy, Santa Claus is Dead. I’m not sure whether art critics class Semya Vurdalakov (or the Vampire Family) as part of that movement but I got a sense of the same underlying symbolism and despair – though this was nowhere near as absurdist.

That said this was, like the later released film, based on Tolstoy’s the Family of the Vourdalak. The story has been filmed by the Italian horror school, of course, wonderfully by Mario Bava as one of the tales in Black Sabbath and as a feature the Night of the Devils, but it seems fitting that it also inspired films in Russia. This film, whilst adjusting the premise slightly, followed the story quite faithfully – to a point.

the old man

We begin in the country and the soundtrack of the slow piano is hauntingly effective. The soundtrack seemed to carry a lot of static and the print was of VHS quality but the film is a rarity and the visual print actually suited the film. We see a figure walking through the fields, and then are shown icons and religious paintings. A coffin is prised open by a bearded man, a ruby ring adorns the corpse’s hand. As he reaches for it the corpse grabs his hand. In the city a young man awakens as though the events we have just seen are his dream.

the photo-journalist

The man is a photojournalist – and also seems to be an affable office clown despite the fact that his reportage concentrates upon death. Indeed when he goes to see his editor he is asked how he is able to take pictures of corpses with no fear – he claims he is not afraid of anything. He is given a new assignment, there has been some kind of scandal with an art restorer who believes in the supernatural, and he is to make it look more frightful. The reporter is getting married in three days but the Chief believes he can be finished in two.

the restorer

He goes to the restorer. There is a painting of a patriarch who, the restorer says, is famous in the area and was said to have sold his soul for immortality. He refuses to show the reporter the piece he is working on. Then the film takes a sideways slide into surreality as the reporter is on a boat being rowed out to an island, said to be haunted by vampires, and taken to a farmhouse. The family living there consisted of an old man (the one from the head of the film) now deceased, two brothers and a sister plus the wife of one of the brothers and their child.

returned

It has been nine days since the old man died (almost) and the tradition is that his name should not be spoken or he will return from the grave and drink the family's blood. This is actually one form of vampiric lore that we have seen before in the short film the Cursed Days (though ten days were used and it was a general warning not to speak their names whilst away at war) and I did liken that short film to Tolstoy’s story. At the dinner table the child asks for his grandfather by name and it is just before the end of the ninth day. The old man does return, almost immediately.

the grandson

As with Tolstoy’s story the grandfather first looks to his grandson, whilst the hero falls for the daughter. There is a city and country clash that seems almost as though they are in different eras. It is fitting, therefore, that time seemed to pass by at a different pace in the country compared to the city. This version of the tale had more of a dreamlike quality than perhaps some versions but the ending, whilst fitting with the qualities described, could have done with being tightened up and, unfortunately, is a tad disappointing. The dreamlike quality will put some off and it is certainly not the best narrative version of Tolstoy’s tale though I found it visually striking despite (or maybe because of) the print. 5 out of 10.

The episode's imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula

Getting an Honourable Mention as I am not straying into reviewing radio plays but by crikey this deserves a mention. The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula started life as a Anthony Hind’s script for Hammer than was unfortunately never filmed. Mark Gatiss has taken that script and directed a radio play of it for BBC Radio 4.

Set in India in the 1930s the play has a narrator in the form of Michael Sheen (Underworld, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the Twilight Saga: New Moon, the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 & the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2) and follows Penny (Anna Madeley) as she travels across India in search of her missing sister. Also travelling in the train with her are the kindly Babu (Kulvinder Ghir) and the brother and sister performers Prem (Nikesh Patel) and Lakshmi (Ayesha Dharker).

The siblings are travelling to perform for a Maharajah (Raj Ghatak) but when they arrive at his palace they discover that their services have been bought to entertain the house guest Count Dracula (Lewis Macleod). I have to say that Macleod sounded just like Christopher Lee and brought a wonderous gravitas to the role, bravo. The Maharajah’s wife (Meera Syal) is the high priestess of a proscribed blood cult (clearly a Kali cult, though the Goddess is not mentioned).

There are some wonderful scenes, such as Dracula so replete from drinking blood that he lies glassy eyed, the blood cult ritual that pre-dated Indiana Jones, or the pit of vampire women that made the basement of the house in Satanic Rites of Dracula seem empty by comparison, all drawn – of course – through storytelling. One thing that seemed a strange change (though it suited the story) was removing Dracula’s ability to shapeshift into a bat – without spoiling things too much Dracula becomes trapped atop a tower and one would have expected him to fly away. This fits with Dracula’s first Hammer outing in Horror of Dracula, as it is explicitly stated that he cannot transform into a bat but Hammer ditched that concept thereafter.

I understand that Gatiss wishes to film the script at some point but, until (and if) that happens we now have the radio adaptation, which I hope the BBC will make commercially available at some point.

Zapped: The Party – review

Director: Dave Lambert

First aired: 2017

Contains spoilers

I was contacted by my friend Everlost who told me that episode 3 of season 2 of Zapped was a vampire episode. Now, I must admit that I hadn’t heard of Zapped, much less seen an episode but dutifully I sought it out.

Zapped is a UK fantasy series concerning Brian Weaver (James Buckley) an office worker who received a package addressed to someone in a place called Munty. Opening it and putting on an amulet in the package he is teleported to the town of Munty in a fantasy world where magic works.

James Buckley as brian

In the episode Brian is bored of the clientele in the tavern The Jug and the Other Jug, and on hearing about a trendy new bar at the docks decides to go there. He is refused entry at first but when Jay-Winn (Jonathan Pointing) discovers that he is from another world he is let in and Jay-Winn dutifully listens to all his stories (such as winning Wimbledon… again). Eventually he is invited to an exclusive party that night.

Paul Kaye as Howell

The story runs parallel with resident wizard Howell (Paul Kaye, Dracula Untold) trying to make a deal for a shield stone – which makes the holder impervious to attack. Unfortunately the seller, Rina (Susan Wokoma) – a childhood friend of Brian’s friend Barbara (Sharon Rooney) – is a con artist and, as well as paralleling the stories and bringing them together at the conclusion, the writers draw a parallel between the bloodsuckers and the con artist draining monies. Howell proves the most entertaining component of the episode.

the desrati

As for the vampires, they are known as desrati, have a third eyelid as well as eyes that glow and when they drain a victim they absolutely desiccate them. Their aim is gather rare bloods to sample – hence Brian, Rina (as she claims to be royalty to them) and Brian’s bar buddy Steg (Kenneth Collard) – who is half dwarf and half giant. We see them with “tomato juice” but should the blood be infused with an intoxicant that can really knock it out of them.

a victim

The episode was fun though the vampire aspects were sparse – we do not see an attack for instance and, as I say, the aspects around Howell are the most entertaining. I’m scoring as a vampire episode and its ability to stand alone from the series. It certainly needed no previous knowledge to watch and enjoy but the vampire aspects deserve no more than 4 out of 10 – score bolstered by the episode as a whole and the episode as a whole deserving of a higher score.

The imdb page is here.

Bullets, Fangs & Dinner at 8 – review

Director: Matthew Rocca

First released: 2015

Contains spoilers

Bullets, Fangs & Dinner at 8 is an ultra-low budget film that is listed as a comedy (actually, one performance has a comedic edge to it but generally I found this took itself way too seriously to be taken as a comedy) and pits Christians against vampires.

That said the majority of our vampires are not vampires at all but wannabe vampires who have gone that step too far and joined a vampire cult, whose leader just so happens to be a real vampire but the story itself starts in a church.

Joe D'Amato as Father Otto

Father Otto (Joe D'Amato) hands the pulpit (as it were) over to Assistant Pastor Steven Cooper (Matthew Rocca). He is making announcements when someone at the back of church, Johnny (Brian Patrick Butler), starts guffawing. Otto realises who it is and Johnny makes a speech about being cast out (we later discover that he is gay) and finding a new family. He produces a gun and starts shooting, aiming to create a massacre (with unconvincing cgi blood). A couple of Christian gunmen enter to try and save the situation. They get Otto out but it turns out that Steven is in cahoots and has fangs… yes, he is the bad vampire boss.

Garrett Schweighauser as Michael

Eleven months later and Michael (Garrett Schweighauser) leads an assault on an S&M club that is a vampire hang-out. We get a vague background of the police not taking the vampire threat seriously, kidnapped Christians and vigilante gunmen doing the “Lord’s work”. Michael knows who the boss is, and wants to expose him. Steven knows that Michael is a vigilante vampire killer and wishes to kill him. It all heads to a showdown (an hour before a dinner party that Steven throws). Innocent bystander Vivian (Eva Rocca) gets drawn into the fray.

fangs on show

It is all a little too over the top, to a degree, as one feels that the body count would have attracted a high level of police involvement (Michael slaughters a club full of people, for instance, and Christians are going missing all over the show). As a comedy this probably is less problematic but, as I say, the film seemed to take itself too seriously to be classed as a comedy. The exception was the character of Steven (who is unravelling and may be suffering from a vampiric form of dementia) where Rocca instilled the performance with some genuine comedic chops.

cgi blood

There is a correlation of vampires and rabies as Steven infects some with rabies to use as monstrous enforcers. This was probably played as a comedic aspect but failed to be funny. Generally there was very little in the way of lore in the film, though we know Steven uses an umbrella as a sun shade when out during the day. The thing I did like, however, was the fact that there was little in the way of good guys with the Christian warrior happy to lie and murder as he went on his crusade. The cinematography is amateurish (one shot places the primary actors in front of the sun to nicely obscure them in shot, for instance), the use of cgi blood done, I suspect, for expediency and to protect the cleanliness of the borrowed sets but failing next to the practical effect blood used on occasion.

I struggled with this one, to be honest. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: the LEGO Batman Movie

You’ll hopefully recall that I looked at the LEGO movie because of a fleeting visitation of the Friendly Vampire and, of course, Batman (Will Arnett) played a fairly large role in that film.

This was the 2017 movie, directed by Chris McKay that was totally concentrated on Batman. Of course, familiar terrain if you’ve played the LEGO Batman games, this turned out to be a hoot. Puns and jokes come thick and fast as Batman must put aside his lone vigilantism and learn to work with the new police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and accidental protégé Dick Grayson (Michael Cera).

Dracula

The danger comes from the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) who tricks Batman into sending him to the Phantom Zone so that he can recruit the evillest baddies ever. We have Sauron, King Kong, Godzilla, Voldemort and… a vampire. Presumably Dracula (he utters the line “*Count* me interested”) this is a bad vampire (as opposed to the Friendly Vampire) who helps Joker bring chaos to Gotham city but his appearance is only, again, a fleeting visitation and a crap bat moment. Nevertheless he is there in the film.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable mention: I Love You to Death

I really didn’t know which way to go with this one. Our “vampiric” figure is not a vampire, I think, but displays cosmetic vampiric attributes that demanded I feature the film here. There didn’t seem enough for a ‘Vamp or Not?’ and yet there are characters (named in the credits) that fit in with the wider genre.

I settled for an Honourable Mention as this is, at the very least, of genre interest. How vampire or otherwise it is I’ll let you decide for yourselves.

It begins with Lily Foster (Shannon O'Dowd) saying how she loves her husband Clay (Travis Mendenhall) but she betrayed him. Cut to Clay at the breakfast table with her, explaining how he won’t be going to work that day (or the next week) and her suggesting that they need the money and he has no holidays left. All the time we do not see her and, given the title and DVD cover, I easily realised that she was dead. Clay says he is making an anniversary dinner for them that night.

Sevont Richards as Gator

Cue dinner and again we do not see her as they speak, though we do see them dance (and she looks very much alive). Suddenly there is a banging at the door and outside is Gator (Sevont Richards), unknown to Clay he is shouting that he is their worst nightmare and Lily is urging Clay not to let him in. However Clay does just that. Gator is threatening violence, demanding something and sets a mocking laugh belt buckle going when he sees Lily and we also see her, clearly dead, eyes milky and starting to decay. He runs.

flashing fangs

After Gator has gone, Lily tells Clay that they are pregnant, despite the fact, as Clay points out, that they used fertility drugs to no effect and despite her being dead of course. Clay starts to become overwhelmed, he can’t hear her voice and then she starts to speak to him again and says someone’s coming. This is the primary character that lead to this article. Never named in film he is called The Syphon (John Klemantaski) in the credits, in fact when Clay asks, “who are you?” He answers “There is no who in my presence, only what and when.” He flashes retractable fangs at Clay and states that he has come for Lily. He lights candles with a breath, plays the piano and then leaves, promising to return the next day for Lily.

front fangs

It seems to the viewer (and this becomes confirmed as the film moves forward) that he is akin to (if not actually) the devil. This was confirmed for me in Clay’s dream sequence where he sees The Syphon (scarred and with Nosferatu style front fangs) on a throne – surrounded by what seems four vampire ladies – watching demons battle. What becomes interesting are the names that the four ladies are given. Lilith (Maggie VandenBerghe), Lilu (Rosie Tisch), Lamashtu (Stephanie Skewes) and La-Bar-Tu (Maria Aceves). We can see now why the scriptwriters called our dead woman Lily.

surrounded by Lilith and her sisters

Lilith is, of course, heavily connected with the vampire genre (via the Babylonian/Sumerian, through Jewish mythology). We have seen Lilith listed as a demon, a vampire, the Goddess of vampires etc. Lamashtu is shown as a vampire in the Constantine episode The Saint of last resorts and a demon in the film the landlord and in Mesopotamian mythology menaced women during childbirth. Lilu meant spirit in the Akkadian Language and, again, is often associated with Lilith. Labartu (no hyphens) is again from Mesopotamian mythology and has been associated with both the hag and Lamashtu.

Shannon O'Dowd as Lily

There is little further use going into the detail of the film – suffice it to say it is a whodunnit or perhaps more a howdunnit as Clay struggles to regain the memories he has blocked despite interruption by Gator and his boss (Christopher Ivins). The Syphon and his vampiric demon harem are in the film further but there is no more that we would necessarily associate with vampirism. The film was very watchable and whilst it perhaps suffered from its B nature to a degree it certainly kept my interest.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Vampire in Union City

This was a short film, coming in at 48 minutes, directed by Lucio Fernandez and released in 2010. I was lucky enough to be sent a DVD of the film, though it came with a health warning that it was “really artsy fartsie with a campy 1960's "bad horror" film style”. Now I like myself a bit of arthouse and also, if done well, some neo-Grindhouse.

The first thing that struck me was the artwork on the DVD was beautifully moody, the second thing that struck me was how low resolution the print committed to disc was (as you’ll gather through the screenshots accompanying). Indeed, it was so low res that I contacted Lucio Fernandez to ask whether this was actually deliberate. The answer was yes, “We did that on purpose. Everything was done with the intent of making it look like an artsy 1960-70's bad horror flick.”

staggering into view

So, if I tell you that generally I enjoyed the short, I must add that I think the low resolution went a step too far and I would have preferred if it had been upped, at least a degree. However, I respect what they were looking to achieve. I also have to be careful not to spoil the underlying narrative that is revealed within the arthouse and probably offend at my lack of geographic etiquette.

Lucio Fernandez as the vampire

I am aware that Union City is in New Jersey and I don’t know, therefore, if it is an etiquette faux pas to mention New York – but the film, for me, certainly had the visual texture of the arthouse end of the New York vampire genre. As such it slips into the same realm, ambience wise, as films such as Nadja, the Addiction and, perhaps, Habit; though this tellingly had less in the way of budget. It begins with the vampire (Lucio Fernandez) who staggers. A phone rings and eventually we hear that the vampire cannot go into work as he is dead.

the Danse Macabre

What I noticed was how well the vampire’s voiceover (voiced by Tom Osborne) worked, adding a noir element, underpinned by the ambient soundtrack that worked well throughout (and became a centrepiece later in the film as a violinist performed Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre as performers offered interpretive dance). However, back in the film's opening, our vampire is set upon by men who call him a freak and as he blacks out we see a Dead Poet (Gerard Karabin) reciting Poe’s The Conqueror Worm.

drinking myoglobin

The vampire is obsessed with death and suggests to one man, in a park, that he knows what being dead feels like – before sharing that feeling by throttling him. Is he actually a vampire though? He is called such by one couple and also called chupacabras by a third party. We see many of the traits and tropes tied with the genre such as religious iconography, sleeping in coffins, thoughts on walking in daylight and reflections, endless hunger and the drinking of myoglobin from meat trays.

This is arthouse on a budget and, as such, might put some off. Certainly the low resolution choice is something the viewer has to push through but, at its heart, there is an interesting examination of the genre here and it is worth looking at.

The imdb page is here.

Acid Head: The Buzzard Nuts County Slaughter – review

Director: Tony Watt

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

J. Gordon Melton, I blame you – in the nicest sort of way but I came across this due to some correspondence we had!

There has been an increasing tendency for films, especially blockbusters, to go on considerably longer than the (oft-considered) standard of 90 minutes. Sometimes this can cause a film to outstay its welcome, and the pacing of the film becomes slower, perhaps too slow. At 2.5 hours I might have said the same about this but it had outstayed its welcome after the first ten minutes.

Now, director Tony Watt is no stranger to long films. Currently (at time of review) in my ”to watch” list is his earlier film Frankenpimp, which comes in at an eye-shattering 3 hours 15 minutes. This film has not made me want to hurry up and watch it.

robbery

It starts in Ontario and some random wall and door is turned into Bank of Brampton by superimposing the name over the shot. Two characters, the false moustached and bewigged Bo (Luke van Belkom) and Lewis Mercer (himself) rob the bank. Bo has a shoot out with a cop and is shot in the heart. Lewis is given his gun and throws it away, causing it to go off and accidentally killing the cop. He gets away as the camera jerks all over the place in some extremely poor camera work. The off-yellowed tint carries through the film making it look turgid and unappealing.

Tony Watt as Dracula

So, the story is pretty much irrelevant but there is a sorority house that is a front for student escorts/prostitutes. It had previously been the site of the murders by Acid Head (Vivita), a serial killing Goth girl (noted on the DVD blurb to be a blood drinking cannibal) who happens to be making her way back. It later transpires that the house is built over the grave of Dracula (Tony Watt) who makes an appearance a couple of times but is also named as a vampiric poltergeist who possessed Acid Head.

They actually used blackface

Acid Head herself was the daughter of a movie producer and actress. The actress cheated with the gardener and in an intervening fight with her husband acid was accidentally thrown over the daughter's face. Plastic surgery did wonders for one side of her face but there is still scarring hidden by her fringe. However if the film is meant to be an absurdist, misogynistic bad taste comedy (that fails to be funny) I was even less than impressed when they called the gardener Ni**er Charlie and had the actor (credited as Trenchmouth Colitis, a name used by Tony Watt in another production) wearing blackface.

Vivita as Acid Head

Beyond shoddy camera work and the filter from Hell, the SFX is terrible, the blood splatter being layered onto shots afterwards, and the acting and dialogue worse. Ridiculous sound effects are presumably meant to be comedy but are just awful. False moustaches, teeth and ill-fitting wigs are the order of the day. The blurb suggests that this is in a “grind-house style” but really, in this case, that is an excuse for lack of any discernible redeeming feature. This was awful, though perhaps if it had been shorter it would have been a more watchable form of awful – though, honestly, I doubt it. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Monsters and Mutants – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2017

Contains spoilers

With 6 episodes taken from season 5 of the Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this has four episodes concerning the classic monsters and then a double episode called When Worlds Collide (about aliens).

The episodes that concern us contain a mini-arc of a story.

It opens with April (Mae Whitman) and Casey (Josh Peck) walking through the Halloween streets of New York on their way to meet the turtles. Suddenly they are under attack by large wolves and a man appears with rather large canines. A young girl bites Casey. The turtles are getting ready when April calls them and says that Casey is a vampire and after her blood. They go to rescue her but, after using garlic pizza to capture Casey, April is bitten and they become surrounded by wolves, vampires and the Frankenstein Monster (Grant Moninger).

Turtles undercover

They are lifted out of danger by the newly appearing Renet (Ashley Johnson). Renet is an apprentice Time Master – the guardians of time and space. She explains that she was checking on the banished Savanti Romero (Graham McTavish, Preacher & Castlevania) when he managed to get her spare time travelling device and has come through time, recruiting monsters on the way, with the aim of taking over the world. We should note that his name seems to be a homage to Tom Savini and George Romero. Renet wants to take the mutants back in time to try and stop Romero – unfortunately her time staff is low on energy.

vampire turtle

They go through time to his first stop, which is Ancient Egypt, but our interest lies more firmly in the next episode where they go through to Transylvania in the 1300s to stop Romero recruiting Dracula (Chris Sarandon, Bordello of Blood, Fright Night (1985) & Fright Night (2011)). Renet gives the turtles clothes that will help them blend in and they head towards Dracula’s castle. En route they meet gypsies, one of whom turns out to be the wolfman, and Raphael (Sean Astin, the Strain) is bitten becoming a vampire turtle. Let us just say that they are not successful here or at Frankenstein’s castle and have to take the fight back to their own time. At which point Donatello (Rob Paulsen) is also turned (by April) leaving just two turtles to lead the fightback.

Dracula

The vampires can summon mist, eye mojo, turn into bats and become bat creatures as well. There is a symbol that will ward them (though faith is needed) and garlic will weaken them. Being staked through the heart will kill them, a vampire is not a true vampire until they have drunk blood and its kill the head vampire free the half-vampires (or, indeed, all of them apparently). We are in a one bite and turn situation. The monsters have a hostile relationship/alliance, with Dracula clearly wanting to take command and we do see that the mummy is no match for him. So, what was it like as a vehicle to view.

surrounded by bat creatures

You know it was good fun. You couldn’t fault the voice acting, which was provided by a mixture of big names and veteran voice actors. The animation was cgi and it was deliberately blocky and low textured – I think I would have preferred higher standards of cgi (especially with regards textures) or actually drawn animation but it didn’t do anything too terrible. I must give a shout out to both Alex and Everlost, both of whom contacted me to tell me about the Crypt of Dracula episode (second in the sequence). 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Blood Woods – review

Director: John Reign

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers


Simply appearing on Amazon Prime on the run up to Halloween, this was one that frustrated me by nearly getting things right and really not. I liked the idea that it became almost a portmanteau – though there is one main feature length film with a portmanteau-like surround. It had some nearly good photography, and yet managed to undermine itself in that regards, and the very strange compositional shots for said photography also undermined it. In fact, I think it tried to be unusual but in being so actually made some really poor compositional choices.

a Bela still

The first mistake it made was having a still of Bela Lugosi at the head of the film with the three legends “Vampires”… “Real Ones”… “Don’t Sparkle”. If I could get (most) filmmakers and authors to do one thing, it is stop the blatant Twilight attacks. At first  quickly shifting from mildly amusing to just kind of sad, like shooting fish in a barrel, now its gone past that. The films were poorly executed but the books were fine for their target audiences and this constant jabbing feels like nothing but jealousy as, after all, no-one owns or defines the vampire genre. But also, whilst once in a while you get something like I Had a Bloody Good Time at House Harker, where the spoofing is actually clever and amusing, mostly it isn’t.

boy-bandish vampire

Worse. This wasn’t even spoofing but a positioning all the more sad because, despite being bald and having rat-like ears (ala Orlock), when we see the vampire (Larry Overfield) and his open shirt and medallion he actually looked like a so-called “romance vampire”, strangely boy-bandish even though that wasn’t the goal. Perhaps it was the declaration at the head of the film that caused this correlation? Who knows… anyway, rant over. So, we start with a trailer and a man (face never seen) enters and there are a couple of tied up girls who he tells to shut up (they whimper) and (after chopping some meat) tries to feed some gore-like slop to. A couple of things I noticed. The photography seemed crisp but the shot choices were poor, like the primary actor blocking shots. Also, ok the girls refused the slop but they’d hardly have eaten it with their gags still in.

advert for Birkett Butcher

Anyway the man leaves the trailer and sits in front of a small TV. There is an advert for Birkett Butchers – the good old Birkett boys crossing over into the main feature as cameo characters. The TV then goes to New Castle After Dark, where the hosts introduce the feature they are presenting: Blood Woods. So the film becomes a film within a film. I did kind of like that as a concept. Blood Woods starts with establishing shots of nature and I’m guessing they were stock footage as they were very crisp and professionally shot. When we then see the photography within the feature that seems crisp, but not as crisp, blurring on motion and these establishing shots undermined it.

the hunter

A truck pulls into the woods and the camera looks at the truck but the driver is hidden within the reflection of trees in the windshield. We get odd angles and compositional shots. The camera lingering on hitching pants, him obscured as we watch him pee, a desire not to show the face and then, showing it anyway. I know there was a point to the composition but I couldn’t gel with it. The man is a hunter. He kills a deer and is then got by the vampire, who hunts at high speed. The vampire drags him off (and it is suddenly night) and then proceeds to tell him that he came to the wrong part of the woods with a really gravelly (OTT) voice before killing him. There is then a slo-mo vampire run to Moonlight Sonata.

robbery

We get to a shot of a town and we are already 20 minutes in. The film moves into a bank and in walk three robbers. They have masks on but they are Wolf (Dave Campbell, Fist of the Vampire), Dozer (Tony DeJulia) and Cash (Allyson R Hood). Also in on the caper is security guard Fargo (Jason Howell), who happens to be Cash’s brother. Cops show up at the bank’s drive through and a teller manages to tip them off by mentioning a sister he doesn’t have (though it takes them a while to get it). This leads the robbers to start a shootout as they leave the bank, re-enter, leave through the uncovered back entrance, car jack an escape vehicle (taking the driver hostage) and drive past the cops shooting. In all this they drop the money (!) and Fargo is shot.

Cash and Wolf

There is a pointless scene with the cops in a bar. Honestly, it added nothing and the cops were not important enough as characters to warrant it. All it did was slow the narrative down. Back to the robbers (now unmasked, so the kidnapped car driver can see their faces) and they have broken down. A couple of sisters are walking up the road and one goes to see if they need help, gun in face and a walk to their campsite reveals someone has ransacked their stuff and their car keys have gone. They get back to the car, one says for Wolf to put his monkey on a leash, about African American Cash, which made me wince. Then they spot the smoke coming from a lodge no one had seen before.

he's behind you

In the lodge are mother (Delores Anne Bruce), father (Paul Worley) and daughter (Casey Burke) – daughter seems somewhat disconnected with the real world and her dialogue, or delivery or both, strikes as odd. She has made cookies – special ones for mother as they have her medication in them. The robbers take over the lodge but the vampire has taken an interest in them and he is hunting them down, after warning them to leave…

biting the head

So, lore we get is that sunlight is later hinted to be a problem but the vampire got the hunter at the head of the film in daylight (though the woods could have shaded him). A bite turns but the vampires can be shot and killed (there was a suggestion that they hadn’t fully turned). One of these is a head shot. There is some (almost too subtle for its own good) playing with the invitation rules and crosses will ward off if the person has “complete faith”. So, what did I think…

turned

Honestly I was frustrated. There were some good ideas that were almost lost in bad ideas that they thought were good – such as some shot composition or expanded narratives that added nothing to the film. Those expanded narratives may have worked in a more experienced filmmakers’ hands but didn’t in this. There was some necessary suspension of belief location wise. The acting varied but the best performance, for me, was given by Allyson R Hood. On to the score, and it was so frustrating... 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.