Up-coming: Plant Week

For the next week on TMtV I will be concentrating on three films that fall under the banner of Vampiric Plants. Plants and vampires being conflated is nothing new. In folklore, ethnologist Tatomir Vukanović suggested that there was a belief in vampire watermelons. His findings (reprinted in Jan L. Perkowski’s Vampire Lore) suggested:

The belief in vampires of plant origin occurs among Gs. [Gypsies] who belong to the Mosl. faith in KM [Kosovo-Metohija]. According to them there are only two plants which are regarded as likely to turn into vampires: pumpkins of every kind and water-melons. And the change takes place when they are 'fighting one another.' In Podrima and Prizrenski Podgor they consider this transformation occurs if these ground fruit have been kept for more than ten days: then the gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like 'brrrl, brrrl, brrrl!' and begin to shake themselves. It is also believed that sometimes a trace of blood can be seen on the pumpkin, and the Gs. then say it has become a vampire. These pumpkins and melons go round the houses, stables, and rooms at night, all by themselves, and do harm to people. But it is thought that they cannot do great damage to folk, so people are not very afraid of this kind of vampire.

Vukanović was unique in reporting this belief and there is, of course, a chance that those he spoke to were having fun at his expense. Stepping out of folklore and into literature, there is the fine example from 1894 in the form of HG Wells’ The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, a story that can be read as a cautionary tale warning that man cannot tame nature but there is a reading where, like many of the fin de siècle vampire tales, the story represents a fear of reverse colonialism. Fitting, perhaps, as all the films we will see in the coming week have an aspect of colonial (or post-colonial) invasion.

Illustrative images from Little Shop of Horrors and the Creepshow episode Mums.