Honourable Mention: Char Man

I am not massively a fan of the found footage sub-genre of horror, for every one that works there are plenty more that don’t and plenty that leave you with a bad case of the ‘why are they still filming’ blues. Interestingly, Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) actually plays with the concept that someone would carry on filming, even in the face of utter horror, in a real and interesting way.

Luckily this is not a vampire found footage film… so, you might ask, why cover it here? Well the film dates to 2019 and was directed by Kurt Ela and Kipp Tribble, who play primary characters Cameron and Eric respectively. They aim to make, with the help of hired camera man Andy (Nick Greco), a documentary about the Ojai Vampire. Ojai is in California and Anthony Hogg covered the (urban) legend here.

driving to Ojai

Anthony tracks the story to a section of Rosemary Ellen Guiley with J.B. Macabre's The Complete Vampire Companion (in a chapter actually written by Martin V. Riccardo) where the story is placed in the 1980s. Later, on Weird California’s Char Man page, the story appears in a side box with the date of the events revised to 1890. Given the same physical location for the two stories (Ojai) and the appearance on the same page, it is not surprising that the filmmakers used both stories as the basis for this flick.

meeting Andy

It is also clear that the story is a modern urban concoction (with, as Anthony points out, some similarities to Curse of the Undead). This, then, makes the fact that characters Eric and Cameron are just going to make up the 'facts' of the documentary seem quite natural. We see them decide he is a toymaker, just so they can use a toy clown Eric has with him, and watch them try to scope a suitable 'vampire' location out (and, apparently, they have brought five pre-constructed and aged coffins with them, to put at the location).

Jeff Kober as Kent Bridewell

Their path changes, however, after they go to meet local historian Kent Bridewell (Jeff Kober, Kindred: the Embraced & Buffy the Vampire Slayer). He tells them the legend of Char Man (or one variant of it, at least) and their interest in the vampire angle wanes so fast its almost supersonic. And the interest the blog has in the film wanes also but I am left with an interesting conundrum – what sort of label do I give this article. It isn’t “belief in vampires” as none of the characters believe and it isn’t “acting as a vampire” as that doesn’t happen either. This would seem to be more of a case of “exploiting vampire legends”, not the first story to do so, but the first time I’ve used the label.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK