Vampus Horror Tales – review

Director: Piter Moreira (segment)

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

This is a Spanish portmanteau film, with the wraparound featuring the Gravedigger/robber Vampus (Saturnino García) aka Mr. Fettes, a name he doesn’t wish to be known by. He buries them by day and unearths them at night – to feed to his ghoulish pet Tobi (Alberto Rivas). He also feeds Tobi fresh meat from victims who happen along to the cemetery.

The whole film is shot in black and white but each segment showcases a new director. The vampire segment is entitled Lineage.

blame the hot dogs

A man, Marco (Federico Repetto), who wears hazard clothing drives with his wife, Cami (Vicky Jorge) as the radio speaks of handing infected over and the sacrifices that must be made. If it feels familiar then it is, being that viral outbreak film that owes its lineage to I Am Legend and, in this case, it becomes apparent that the film is indeed focused on a vampire apocalypse. The radio mentioned tainted meat in a hotdog and later we see a newspaper that says much the same – this is a nod to the wraparound, where at the end Vampus starts making money on the side selling hotdogs made from flesh he has gathered.

stake

Marco gets to an abandoned house in the country and carries Cami in but the virus has developed in her and she turns on him. He gets out and she licks blood that has smeared onto a refrigerator as he sits in front of the door, she is trapped behind, holding a stake. If we needed more indicators of the vampiric nature of the virus we get it when we see that she burns in sunlight, turns the fridge on its side and uses it as a light tight coffin, develops small fangs and only calms when fed.

Vicky Jorge as Cami

The film follows the couple as he looks to keep her fed and preserve the woman he loves… And, as a segment, it's alright. The black and white is effective and the photography nice and there is some nice vampire imagery but the story denouement is obvious and it doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before in countless vampire/zombie apocalypse films. Not that every film needs to have original aspects to be good but this barely fleshes out the characters and is pretty average in its storytelling. For the segment, 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.