Short Film: It Gets Dark Too Early

Released in 2022, this short film by Rebeca Spiegel comes in a under 10-minutes and is a great piece of short film making. It does, however, have a dark theme around sexual assault that some might find triggering.

It starts with a spooky looking house and a whole lot of knocking. Eventually the owner, Chrysanthemum (Carlos Diehz), opens the door to find Valerie (Genevieve Guimond) there. He doesn’t want saving, assuming her reason for being there, but she gets her foot in the door and produces the flyer for a vampire support group.

Chrysanthemum and Valerie

They talk for a while. He explains that he was turned in 1850. She tells a tale about being in bed and something attacking her, the sequence for her flashback in black and white. He notes that she doesn’t have fangs, she suggests they might be growing in. He does some arts and crafts, and she used to film stop-motion with her sister, and we get a 'becoming friends over a shared hobby' montage (including their own little film). However, when he orders in dinner the truth starts to emerge.

As I said, this is a neat little trope playing with the useful simile that is the vampire, here representing the self-Othering of the victim. For a student effort it is well shot, well acted and on point with its screenplay. The imdb page is here.

Fangs Out: Blood Apocalypse – review

Director: Chris Schwab

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Originally billed as Fangs Out 2, I can see little connectivity between this and Fangs Out bar them being about vampires, and Randy Oppenheimer (Blood Moon Rising, Arise of the Snake Woman & Ammityville Vampire) and Marlene Mc'Cohen (The Boneyard Collection. Vampire Boys & Vampire Boys 2: The New Brood) being in both films, but playing different roles. As the title suggests this is a vampire apocalypse film and yet, despite this, it somehow feels much smaller than the previous film.

city during the vampire war

We get background to begin with of the last days before the war. The vampires took the children and then blackened the sun before waging war on humanity. It suggests three sisters as the vampire originators and that war has been raging for six years. We then move to Thompson island, an inhospitable island with a research lab. One of the residents is outside, wearing protective gear, and finds a man, Ray (Brenton Jones), washed up on the shore. He is taken into the facility but then bound.

the facility team

The facility has an all female staff. Head researcher is Davis (Ginny You) and the other, I assume, researcher (it’s never clear) is Starling (Marlene Mc'Cohen). The commanding military officer is Cross (Harmony Smith) and she has three soldiers with her; Hartt (Isabela Penagos), Parker (Andrea Martina) and Collins (Kennedy Anderson) – it becomes readily apparent that boredom has set in amongst the military. Also on the island, captive, is one of the three sisters, Sariel (Siomara Rubio). She is in a non-corporeal form and Davis’ job is to find out how they can kill her as the sisters seem invulnerable. Davis, who lost her family to the vampires, is determined to achieve this but the presence of Ray seems suspicious.

captured Sariel

He suggests he was on a ship, one of very few survivors, looking to get to the Falkland Islands. He says that humanity has lost and tells a tale of a desperate launch of nuclear weapons, and thus the fallout would soon come to the island. This fits with the last supply run not turning up but local instruments don’t detect radiation. There is a better sensor on the other side of the island, though it needs fixing, and so Cross determines to go. Whilst Cross is out of the facility Starling releases Ray, feeds him and then takes the dubious decision to take him to see the secret bit of the lab. Following this Ray manages to persuade the women that partying like there is no tomorrow is the order of the day…

Starling fights back

And, this is ok, but character decisions made are poor, and whilst the set up could be likened to Romero’s Day of the Dead with researchers and military cooped up together, this film lacks the nuances, acting chops and emotional tension that Romero’s zombie flick absolutely had. That said, we do get a flashback to the night the children were taken and Starling losing her daughter and it was surprisingly effective emotionally. Not a lot of lore on offer – a bite turns, and the sisters, they discover, are vulnerable when feeding.

Siomara Rubio as Sariel

All in all, this is pretty much throwaway fluff. It didn’t experiment with lore like the pervious film did (no nun blessed blood or apotropaic tattoos) and it avoided too many close up sfx moments, where the other film had some really shoddy ones, though there are city wide air attack scenes that you know are matted CGI. That said, the filmmakers did add an unexpected emotional core by adding in the flashback I mentioned. Not great but positive aspects make it nose ahead of the earlier film 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

City of Demons – review

Director: Charles Band

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers  

It really seems like the guys at Full Moon Features have given up trying. That’s somewhat unfair, there is some original material coming out, but the mash up of other films continues. This time, a little like Haunted Hotties, it takes from a variety of films and splices them together in a Frankensteinian nightmare (and by that I mean a mess, not a thing of terror). For the record I spotted footage from The Dead Want Women, Trophy heads, Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt, Evil Bong 666 and Decadent Evil 2 - of course, there might have been others.

red vampire eyes

The IMDb blurb says: “Hollywood realtors Danni and Reese close the biggest deal of their lives and throw a party. But the previous owners still occupy a tunnel system beneath the house and are having a party of their own. The bad news? The hosts are vampires.” This is mostly inaccurate to the lumbering monster they have created and mostly lifts from the footage carved from The Dead Want Women (which hasn’t got vampires in it). Danni (Ariana Madix) and Reese (Jessica Morris) are realtors and have just sold a mansion that no-one has been able to sell. They are cleaning it up as they wait for the buyer and then…

bite

Then we start flipping through scenes from the different films. Some of them feature recurrences of Madix and Morris as a variety of characters. However, the stories don’t gel generally and the scenes from any one film might be moved out of sequence to the source narrative. It is a big old mess. Now, I do like a good non-linear narrative – emphasis on good. To achieve this, in a way that holds your viewer, requires excellent writing, direction and editing. This film is edited in a butcher’s shop. It makes so little sense that it genuinely might give a viewer a headache. Still, there are vampires, thanks to the Decadent Evil 2 footage used, which comes towards the end of the film. I cannot recommend this and suggest that you would be better seeking out the original films. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Full Moon via Amazon UK

Hungerstone – review

Author: Kat Dunn

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: FOR WHAT DO YOU HUNGER . . . ?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them from London to the Peak District, to the remote, imposing Nethershaw estate, where he plans to host a hunting party. Lenore must work to restore the crumbling house and ready it for Henry's guests - their future depends on it.

But as the couple travel through the bleak countryside, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . .

As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband's affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the Peaks and the uncontrolled appetite of the Industrial Revolution, HUNGERSTONE is a compulsive sapphic reworking of CARMILLA, the book that inspired DRACULA: a captivating story of appetite and desire.

The review: Whilst this is a retelling of Carmilla (and I note the blurb mentions it as a sapphic retelling, which forgets that the original – whilst not as direct or graphic as this – was a sapphic tale anyway), it is so subtle around the vampirism that a reader unfamiliar with the original novella or not deeply invested in the vampire megatext may well miss the fact that it is indeed a vampire novel.

And it has a couple of vampiric themes in it, not least that of capitalism as a vampire as the industrial revolution literarily bathes in the blood of the worker to extract the capital. But Carmilla is a vampire and the book connects vampirism with appetite (as well as hunger), which was interesting as Orlok in Eggers’ Nosferatu says “I am an appetite, nothing more.” I am not suggesting there was any read across between the two texts but it was a nice trope, used in both, where the vampire is drawn as having (and offering) a psychological desire to consume as well as a physiological need. Jumping ahead, we only see attacks on Lenore – with sleep paralysis, a (potentially imagined) cat form and, at one point, a blood soaked Carmilla at the end of the bed (mirroring a scene from Le Fanu) but we can read into at least three other women visited by Carmilla (the appetite), which unleashes a hunger that manifests as one eating hair, another eating a live chicken and a third eating flesh from her husband’s arm. The hungers awakened in Lenore are much more complex.

The book moves us from Styria to the Peak District for location (offering an immediately Gothic landscape to play upon), in 1888, but whilst Carmilla still enters their lives through a carriage crash, the reader does not see the crash, rather the aftermath as Lenore and Henry come across it on their journey to the Nethershaw estate. Indeed, the more graphic description of a carriage crash comes in flashback as Lenore recalls the crash that left her orphaned as a child. Lenore is, of course, very different from Laura in the novella – as well as the trauma from her childhood, she is married, sexually active (though she has not during ten years of marriage become pregnant), with Carmilla awakening her bisexuality, and whilst naïve in some respects she is wise in the way of society and etiquette. This brings in other dimensions that Le Fanu could not explore. Her marriage allows for an exploration of misogyny widder than the patriarchal exploration in the original novella.  

I did wonder whether the book was aimed at the YA audience but the themes it explores certainly do not seem to be. However, I very much enjoyed the book, found it a satisfying revisit to Carmilla through an interesting lens. I enjoyed the subtlety of the vampirism and overall think this deserves a strong 7.5 out of 10. I need to add a thank you to Gary who posted about this volume on Facebook, which brought it to my attention.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Daylight to Dark – review

Director: Jake C. Young

Release Date 2024*

Contains spoilers

*date taken from the Amazon page as IMDb does not have a date listed at time of writing.

This is a film that references, and is set in the same world as, 1990’s turkey American Vampire. Now, giving that film some love is kinda cool because it featured Adam West (and, well… Adam West). It also feels odd because American Vampire is a really poor film. That said, if such a poor film is your inspiration then the bar is set nice and low and you should be able to step over it with ease.

old Drac

The film opens with a man showing a couple of people a car that’s for sale. One of the buyers is old, bent and wizened – actually a mask, clearly, but darker lighting and very little screen time makes it workable. It is just like the one he used to have, bar one detail – he scratches the paint work with a claw, the owner becomes upset and is eaten. The other gets in and asks Mr Dracul (Wade Yates) if he wants to go home – now young, Vlad Dracul opts for them to go for a drive.

scratching the car

A moment here about accent and identity. Vlad Dracul was obviously meant to be Vlad Ţepeş and later we see the classic Ţepeş portrait redone with the actor. In that case it would have been Dracula (the ‘a’ denoting ‘son of’). The accent was a bit odd too. As the old version we get a vaguely Eastern European accent but when young we get a posh-end British accent – why is unclear. He also suggests at some point that he is at least 1000 years old – so either Vlad was a vampire when ruling Wallachia (and that might be the answer chosen by the filmmakers) or someone got the dates wrong.

Jeremy Boggs as Renfield

Into the town of Wormwood drive Mason (Drake Daffron) and his sister Bridgette (Ka'ssee Rhe'anne). She’s not long left her fiancé after catching him in bed with her best friend and they are off to a music festival. They’ve taken a backroad and have gotten lost and their GPS and mobile signals are non-existent (the mobile signal is contested – lack of signal is confirmed later but people also seem to use them). They stop to get directions from an office run by Renfield (Jeremy Boggs) – sporting a deliberately bad comb-over wig.

Bridgette and Vlad

Having got a map (pre-interstate), they discover the oil-pan is leaking and Renfield reveals himself a mechanic (it’ll take two days to get a part) and purveyor of cabins (the last in town). Seeking to do something fun, they discover there is a horror convention. Once in, Vlad spots Bridgette (who he saw earlier outside Renfield’s, sunlight is not a thing in this), distracts Mason by having two vampire chicks have a threesome in the bathroom with him (we see nothing, they don’t bite him that we know of, but they do wipe his memory of the event) and introduces himself to Bridgette – they get on and Vlad gives her a special drink (obviously blood and it is very intoxicating).

advertising

So, Vlad has ordered the move from Wormwood (before getting distracted by Bridgette, who he has searched for, for 1000 years) as the cops are getting suspicious. In another breath they have been there 70 years, having invaded, changed the name from Renfield to Wormwood and allowed the Renfield family to be unharmed but made the town their slaves (and so the cops line made little sense). Also in town is Jonah Helsing (Jake C. Young), vampire hunter, student of the Big Kahuna (from American Vampire), who once denied his family business and had a relationship with Madam Lily (Tuesday Knight) the vampire queen.

Tuesday Knight as Madam Lily

Helsing takes it on himself to help the siblings as he is after Vlad anyway. Lily happens to be in town but is not connected with Vlad and his vampires, it seems. Renfield wants to take the town back. Bridgette seems quite ok with being with a vampire and becoming one (Mason suspects mind control and Helsing knows he can save her if he kills Vlad before she drinks human blood). All in all, it’s quite the Bugger's muddle. It was made with comedy in mind, like the film it takes inspiration from, though this one works that bit better (though it isn’t hilarious), indeed it comfortably steps over the low bar previously set.

Drake Daffron as Mason

Acting is a bit of a mismatch, some better than others – though Jake C. Young is very personable on screen. The sfx are minimal and betray the budget – whilst the old Drac mask was worked around, a vampire bat creature looks as unreal as you’d expect. Some is used for comedic effect (Renfield’s wig) but the killing of a vampire, where we get literally dust and some clothes (that we don’t see the disintegration, showed a realisation of the budgetary issues they had and the dust pan comment following the kill worked with the low budget to make it palatable). However, this isn’t a great film – though significantly better than it’s inspiration – 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel – review

Author: Kiersten White

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: In this epic and seductive gothic fantasy, a vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love, from the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide.

Her name was written in the pages of someone else's story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula's first victims.

But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire, and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula's clutches - and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.

Her undead life takes an unexpected turn when, in twenty-first-century London, she meets another woman who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power.

Lucy has long believed she would never love again. But she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris, while Iris is mesmerised by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by forces from without. Iris's mother won't let go of her without a fight, and Lucy's past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl again.

Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?

Dracula changed her. Love will transform her.

The review: Based on Dracula, I need, in the first instance, to address the obvious error in the text. One of the main (modern) characters is Iris Goldaming part of the Goldaming dynasty, founded in the US when Arthur emigrated and took his hereditary name as his familial name – so, not Godalming then? Friend of the blog Clark has read the volume and mentioned this to me, he also communicated with the author who admits it was a missed thing. This has not affected the score.

Because, beyond that faux pas, the book showed an insight into Stoker’s novel and the story fit nicely with Stoker. The volume does, however, deliberately change things. Lucy is a closeted lesbian and unrequitedly in love with Mina, her engagement to Arthur is due to it being expected (she shows, in her real journal, little care for any of the suitors) and she kept two journals – the one that might be found (and we are familiar with from the novel) and a real, personal and hidden one. I have to say the method of her survival from the ministrations of the crew of light was really inventive.

The other main character is the aforementioned Iris. Her controlling mother recently died and she has run away to London to escape the family business – a predatory MLM with cult like practices. Indeed, as well as vampires we get the business as a vampire, capitalism out of control. In London, trying to free cash to vanish, she meets Elle – a museum worker and they start to fall for each other. This is very much a queer re-telling and expansion of the tale.

There was a really interesting take on vampires and flowing water, with a suggestion that as they age, they become denser and they have, therefore, a tendency to sink. The vampires are often not as rounded as Lucy as they lose themselves but Lucy was given her name back after she turned (literally told her name) and this allowed her to mentally reach back to her mortal life and self, but the vampires are also frozen in development, prisoners of their mortal desires/belief at the time of death. As we see Lucy grow beyond this we see a vampiric coming of age. Holy items are not so much a thing – it is the belief behind them that is important – and there is a really clever thing done with this and self-belief. There is also a wonderful deconstruction of the character Dracula that I don't want to spoil.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I thought it a really clever exploration of themes through a modern lens – despite the faux pas with a primary name. 8 out of 10. Thanks to David who got me the book for Christmas.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Blood & Lust

This is a short film directed by Patrick Eichner and released in 2023, it comes in at just under 38 minutes. My thanks to Akash Inti, who plays the role Akash in the film, who gave me access to the film.

As a truck pulls into woods we see a man, Gus (Christopher J Reilly), with night-vision headgear moving through the dark. In the truck a guy has picked up a young woman – Dame Demonica (Danél Catherina Minnaar), according to the end credits – he is not backwards about the fact that he wears a wedding ring and takes it off and pockets it.

Demonica fed

They start to get hot and heavy but he notices Gus watching, gets out the truck and beats him up. That done he gets back in, and his date and he get back to it. She bites whilst down there and comes up with blood on her mouth (and fangs, but her fangs are subtly small and have a degree of realism – in that perhaps they’d be overlooked – because of that). But why was Gus creeping round with night vision equipment?

Christopher J Reilly as Gus

Well, if you think he might be a hunter, you’d be way off target. In fact it is because he is a sex addict and clearly a voyeur. We next see him at a sex addict support group (though many of the members don’t seem that supportive) and he is sporting some nasty looking bruising on his face. As he is talking about his life – and I liked the dialogue here that was just enough to give some depth, whilst it was lacking further depth due to the constraints of the short film format – the vampire enters.

on the hunt

She is clearly hunting him and isn’t being subtle. As he walks home he bumps into a trolley of a homeless man (Tim McCaffrey) and then she grabs and feeds from him, in plain sight, before confronting Gus. She speaks about them sharing something intimate and how good he smells, and he admits that she is the woman he spied on. She kisses him but immediately bites his lip, requiring a taste, and then lets him leave (after delaying him so he can give her a light).

great imagery

He ends up in a Goth club/bar but it has a number of actual vampires in there and he comes onto the radar of venue owner and vampire Lady Samantha (Maia Andrea). It seams Gus does have something the vampires want and the film explores whether he is going to get out alive… We don’t really get an indication of why he ended up in a vampire hang-out (and presumably had not been there before) and one could guess fate or mental manipulation (Demonica makes him freeze with a hand gesture even before she had tasted him) and a longer vehicle would allow the filmmakers to explore further the whys and wherefores of the story, especially expanding on Gus’ backstory. The short has a lot of style, that has to be said, and some particularly nice vampiric imagery. There is a Homepage. The imdb page is here.

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer – review

Director: Craig R. Baxley

Release date: 2003

Contains spoilers

Having established that Rose Red is a vampire film – with potentially vampiric ghosts but, more importantly, a vampiric building, it became apparent that I should also look at this TV movie, which serves as a prequel to the miniseries.

It is based on a novel by Ridley Pearson, under the pseudonym Joyce Reardon, PhD – a main protagonist of the miniseries – and that novel was based on Stephen King’s script. Overall it does little to add into that background, more showing us visually things that are mentioned (and perhaps captured in flashbacks) in the series main.

John and Ellen

It follows the fortunes of Ellen Rimbauer (Lisa Brenner) an innocent woman who is proposed to, and subsequently marries, oil tycoon, misogynist and philanderer John Rimbauer (Steven Brand). Rose Red is built to be their home but the troubles with it manifest through construction and there is a murder on the site as John proposes – blood spills into a grate, implying feeding. I assume this was the first death and strangely we did not see the accidental death shown in flashback in the actual miniseries. There was an interesting throwaway line about the house being brought from England brick by brick – which may have made the vampire an émigré but I suspect had more to do with Thornewood Castle, the filming location, having been imported in such a way. Later mention is made of it being built on a First Nation burial ground – a favourite American haunted house trope.

guest in distress

John and Ellen travel the world for a year for their honeymoon, as the building is constructed, ending up in Africa where he instigates sexual shenanigans, gives her an STD and where she meets confidant, friend (and lover?) Sukeena (Tsidii Leloka). Back home and at a ball a nosey attendee is somehow accosted (we don’t see how, just a shimmer in the air) and sent into distress (and, probably madness) and then people start to vanish. John’s mistress Fanny (Deirdre Quinn), openly carrying on with John whilst Ellen is pregnant, vanishes before Ellen’s eyes. It leads to a séance – where Ellen grows to understand that she will not die whilst the house is being built and the eventual disappearance of her daughter, and second child, April (Courtney Taylor Burness), orchestrated by the house to keep Ellen there. The death of John (killed by the house and the ghosts therein) gives Ellen the means to build continually – until she herself vanishes as per the miniseries.

fangs superimposed

The film seems to be designed to give the fan of the miniseries a little more but is tonally quite different. It plays like a period drama with a dash of murder mystery, and whilst there is the ghost/supernatural/vampire element the film fails to capitalise on either a spooky atmosphere or horror feel. In this way it is much more subtle than the miniseries but perhaps too subtle. We do see a manifestation of the house, during the murder of John, where we see a fanged mouth superimposed over a stained-glass window. To me the film is more a completist thing and pretty average. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Rose Red – review

Director: Craig R. Baxley

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers

Rose Red was a Stephen King penned miniseries that I was aware of when it was released but passed me by and then I just forgot about it. Recently I saw a post on Facebook that suggested the vehicle featured vampiric ghosts and it does but, more, it features a vampiric building – the titular Rose Red.

For those wondering, I have a fondness for vampiric buildings and so to, it seems, does Stephen King. I wrote about the niche sub-genre in a chapter of the Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire and it is fair to say that King has listed a vampiric building film, Burnt Offerings, as an all-time favourite. To me it is clear that this influenced The Shining, in which the Overlook itself is a vampiric building that holds its hungry vampiric ghosts within. The Overlook obviously inspired Rose Red – like the hotel it feeds on psychic energy – and other inspirations would seem to be the film The Haunting (which came from the same source novel as the series The Haunting of Hill House, again interpreted as a vampiric building) and the real-life Winchester Mystery House.

Rose Red circa 2001

The miniseries begins, proper, in 1991 and suburbia. Annie (played young by Kristen Fischer) draws in her room, she starts music by telekinesis. There is an argument about her from outside her locked door. The neighbours across the road had a dog, which is being put down for biting her. The wife insists that he was a good dog and sensed something wrong in her. Annie’s drawing is of their house and, as the arguments rage, she starts scoring lines down the page and, in reality, rocks and boulders start to mysteriously fall from the sky smashing the neighbours' house. It is clear that Annie is causing the phenomena.

Nancy Travis as Joyce

In 2001 Prof. Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis) is finishing the last lecture of the semester – her subject parapsychology. A young man, Kevin Bollinger (Jimmi Simpson, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter), asks her a question, trying to trip her up about the use of funds for a term-break project – he is a reporter for the student newspaper and has been set up to make her look bad. She fends him off, but she is, indeed, having a weekend paranormal investigation of Rose Red. She describes the house as a dead cell – there has been no reported phenomena for several years. Later she will suggest that she wants to make a psychic muscle twitch.

Melanie Lynskey as Rachel

She is in a relationship with Steve Rimbauer (Matt Keeslar, The Middleman & The Thirst) who owns Rose Red (being the great-Grandson of original owner Ellen Rimbauer (Julia Campbell)). He has not entered the house since he was eight and intends to have it demolished in 6-months. She is gathering a research group of psychics (who she is paying out of her own pocket) including automatic writer Kathy Kramer (Judith Ivey), a post-cognate called Emery Waterman (Matt Ross), telepath and remote viewer Nick Hardaway (Julian Sands), Victor Kandinsky (Kevin Tighe) who is a pre-cognate and Pam Asbury (Emily Deschanel) a psychometric. She really wants Annie (played older by Kimberly J. Brown, Halloween Town, Halloween Town II & III & Vampire Princess Miyu), something her parents are against but, with a high value offered for her attendance, her older sister Rachel AKA Sister (Melanie Lynskey, Castle Rock) secures her presence.

Tsidii Leloka as Sukeena

However it isn’t just for the money – Rachel wants it to get Annie enrolled in an autistic school, as well as psychic Annie is mostly non-verbal autistic – as Annie has shown she wants to attend (making her wishes known through telekinetic activity) and we have seen something calling her, shown in the form of eyes appearing in a reflective surface. This is clearly the house calling to her and so it is not as dead a cell as Joyce claims (and it is likely she knows this). Emery is also getting warning visions, though it is unlikely that is the house as it would want him there. We also get a sense of it not being as dead as claimed when Bollinger tries to get in ahead of the group (and so the psychics have not been there to feed it) and is greeted by a ghost, Sukeena (Tsidii Leloka). Not knowing her spectral nature he follows her and is taken by the house (though survives for some time, it seems, though quite mad).

Annie making contact

As for the house, constructed by John Rimbauer (John Procaccino) for his young bride, Joyce describes it as bad before it was built, with at least three deaths during construction. There was a séance at the house were Ellen was told that if the house kept being built then she would never die (using the mythology around the Winchester Mystery House, where rumour suggested the owner, Sarah Winchester, believed they would die if construction stopped). Ellen continues to have things built onto the house until, at a good age, she vanishes mysteriously but from then on the house seems to grow under its own volition. The count of rooms can change and early on the investigators tie a guide rope and, when leaving the area, find that a wall has appeared with the rope passing through it. Annie removes the obstacle (though whether it was dispelling a shared illusion or an actual wall is unclear).

fangs on show

Rose Red is a gothic pile that looks anachronistic against the modern city it nestles in. The house is described as a vampire and also homes the ghosts of those who died/vanished there (at an estimated count of 23). It likely supports them through the psychic energy it steals – in this case, whilst feeding on all the psychics, it is mainly interested in Annie and Steve – whilst Steve is described as not being psychic at all, his familial link and the visit when he was eight plays into this. We do see Ellen both as a walking cadaver and a ghost (the spirits are shown in a glowing blue often) – whether she is animating her own cadaverous body or it is a spectral form she takes was unclear, but when she is angered she does also manifest large fangs.

ghost in the mirror

The mini-series was interesting and, if nothing else, it seems to underscore the vampiric building/ghost aspect of the Shining and clarify King’s direction of travel. It is very miniseries with characters that are perhaps too larger than life – Emery’s incel like snark is almost caricature, Joyce’s obsessiveness overtakes any other character aspect she may have had and some of the powers/abilities are too overtly strong to allow for subtlety (Annie is pretty much overpowered – telekinesis is one thing but the stones and boulders from the sky are another order of magnitude). There is no slow build up here either. Once at the house the hauntings come in hard and heavy (in fact it is astounding that they make it past a night… and… well not all do). Yet it was a fun enough watch and a vampiric building is always welcome. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Guest Blog: Interesting Short: The Antimacassar

Please welcome Clark to the blog who has come with an interesting short. The Antimacassar was a story by Greye La Spina and was first published in Weird Tales, Volume 41 (Issue 4) in 1949. Clark’s reading of it is from the British Library Tales of the Weird collection volume Queens of the Abyss, edited by Mike Ashley. The British Library series have proven to be fine volumes.

In this short story we follow Lucy Butterfield, a young woman who is staying as a guest at a farmhouse somewhere In the rural Haycock region, near Quakertown. She, as one does, locks her bedroom door at night, but can hear a child crying for her mother, the lady running the place (Mrs Renner), and telling her mother she's hungry. Lucy overhears Mrs Renner and Aaron the farmhand outside her room stating the door is locked, and of interest in this story, that they can't enter because there is honeysuckle in the room.

When Lucy is out of her room the following day, this disappears, but as she has heard that comment she opens her bedroom window and collects more from where it's growing all around the house. To say this displeases Mrs Renner would be an understatement, so Lucy agrees not to do it again. Of course, she has every intention of doing so, only to find it's all been cut away so she can't reach it. The antimacassar in question is also mentioned; it is a cloth chair covering produced on a weaving machine that Lucy recognises as one made by her company. We learn that she had recently been promoted due to the disappearance of her boss, and that she was actually trying to find her. She learns that this was where her manager had been upon finding one of her handkerchiefs with her initials. She finds 2 tyres on her car flat, which is used as an explanation for why she doesn't just leave and involve anyone in authority. That night, although she has locked her room and, hearing Aaron talk about a stake, she dreams she woke to find a child by her bed who leans forward to kiss her.

Obviously, this is a bite and the child is the vampire in question. Upon waking she finds 2 pinprick marks where she dreamt that she was "kissed". Resolving to confront Mrs Renner she tells her she knows what happened both to her and her boss. As she says this Aaron walks by with a stake and a hammer, and fortuitously Stan, her fiancé, appears. Before Mrs Renner can do anything, Aaron has staked the child vampire, and Mrs Renner faints. The explanation for the arrival of Stan is that the previous manager had weaved a message into the antimacassar, which gave the address, an SOS message, and mentioned vampires in shorthand. This felt slightly unnecessary and rushed, but was of little consequence to what was an enjoyable little story.

The story can be found in the volume mentioned above but it is also available at Wikisource, and my thanks to Clark for sharing this tale with a strange apotropaic, it’s the only one I can think of with honeysuckle being used for that.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

The Route of Ice and Salt – review

Author: José Luis Zárate

Translation: David Bowles

First published: 1998 (2021, English translation)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: A reimagining of Dracula's voyage to England, filled with Gothic imagery and queer desire.

It's an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.

He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he's done before, it's routine, a constant, like the tides.

Yet there's something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.

The review: We have looked at vehicles focused entirely on the doomed voyage of the Demeter before. There has been the novel Dracula’s Demeter by Doug Lamoreux and, in graphic form, Bram Stoker’s Death Ship. On the small screen the second (feature length) episode of Dracula (2020) was entirely about the voyage and, of course, the voyage finally got feature film treatment with the Last Voyage of the Demeter. This is another recounting of the fateful voyage, but one that actually pre-dates all the above (in the original Spanish), and can I just say wow.

The book is in three parts. Firstly, and noted immediately in the blurb, this is a retelling through a queer lens, entitled Before the Storm and the largest section of the novel. The Captain is gay, closeted from his crew (and haunted by the death of a lover). This section explores this and the view of the voyage as things begin to go wrong, with beautifully composed, evocative prose. It is a queer fever dream, both a distraction from and communication of the evil taking the ship. The book then moves into the Log of the Demeter, taking Stoker and expanding upon the original logs in the novel, and, finally, the catastrophic denouement.

There are several vampire descriptions used, names from around the globe as befits a ship where crews come and go from an international pool. Mention is made of the vrykolakas from Thera, delicately hanging above their victim, causing a deep sleep as they steal their breath. His Romanian mate has told the Captain of strigoi, described as demonic birds in the night – which brought the idea of the deathbird from Nosferatu to mind. The wieszcy are mentioned, dead devouring themselves in Wallachia (Bane associates them with Poland and auto-vampirism is not mentioned in her description). The book also mentions the Indian rakshasa, Ghanian monsters and Bulgarian obours. It is a cornucopia of references that works well.

One scene I particularly liked described the dead sailors clinging to the hull of the ship – unable to let go and look for other ships as the water hurts – for a sailor it is a consecrated thing – and yet the pull of blood might be more than the pain of the water. I also liked, in a vampire sense, the way the rats of the Demeter hid, starved and tried to flee the Demeter, replaced by the Count’s familiar rats.

This was a marvellous book, lyrical and haunting. The queer aspect added a layer that was welcomed and added depth to the primary story. 9 out of 10. My thanks to Sarah, who bought me this for Christmas.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Henry Danger: The Movie – review

Director: Joe Menendez

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

I was not aware of Nickelodeon’s Henry Danger (Jace Norman) franchise and so, having stumbled across this, went in cold and, the good news is, they manage to adequately explain the background in short order.

Henry Hart, as a child, becomes the sidekick to superhero Captain Man (Cooper Barnes) under the pseudonym Kid Danger. Having gained powers, and whilst saving the people of Swellview, Henry faked his death and moved to the city of Dystopia to become the crime fighting hero Henry Danger, along with his best friend Jasper (Sean Ryan Fox).

Missy as Kid Danger

The start of the film sees a device being delivered to an evil lab. Someone, in a Kid Danger mask and costume, manages to steal it and fight their way out of the lab (showing a fighting competence that begs the question of why the thief felt the need to steal the device in order to bring Kid Danger back to life and deal with the petty crime in their neighbourhood). But that is the entire reason why Missy (Glee Dango) has stolen the RAD (Reality Altering Device). She is a superfan of Kid Danger and believes only he can help her.

Henry and Missy

Over in Dystopia, Jasper and, eventually, Henry have been fighting Blackout (Eric Mazimpaka) – this has led to a friction between the friends over fame, and the friendship and partnership seems to be at an end. Henry is ambushed by Blackout and kicked out of a skyscraper window just as Missy uses the RAD. Of course Henry was not dead and it pulls him through space and makes him appear in her room wearing the Kid Danger uniform.

Ella Anderson as Vampiper

Unfortunately, the RAD also pulled in Missy’s fan fiction and it has taken Henry’s powers away and then deposited the two of them in a fan fiction. This one happens to feature her invented villain Coach Cregg (Andre Tricoteux, Van Helsing). Missy also had a beef in a fan group with Henry’s sister Piper (Ella Anderson) and, as night falls, she appears as the electro-vampire villain Vampiper – hence me reviewing the film. Unfortunately the RAD gets stuck in story mode and so Missy and Henry have to jump through stories/dimensions trying to get home but the actual way home is through Vampiper.

an ally turned

There isn’t much vampire lore. She comes out at night, she can turn into a load of bats to move rapidly and her bite turns the victim and changes their personality so they are immediately evil. There is a spark of electricity as she transforms into bats and across her fang wounds but other than that the electro bit isn’t explained any more than coming from the imagination of a young girl writing fan fiction. Ella Anderson looks suitably gothic as the vampire.

the key to going home

As for the film itself it is sure to be appreciated by the target audience – this is a kids orientated superhero movie and look slick enough. It has quite a slab of humour, including an end of the world scenario with Mounties trying to claim the last batch of maple syrup and, in another story, Jasper becoming the moustachioed super-powered hero Captain 'Stache. The story dimensions concept riffs on the multiverse idea that the big hitters in the Superhero genre are using, however it doesn’t really have an adult layer to it. Nevertheless, for the target age group 6 out of 10 feels fair, but fans of the franchise will likely get much more out of it.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Bandit Blood be Bitter

From 2022 and coming in at 10 minutes, this short film directed by Asdis Guðrún Ragnarsdóttir manages to tell its story without dialogue and a cute, self-contained little tale it is.

It starts with wanted posters and, particularly Monty Sprout described as a wily bandit. It cuts to whom I assume is Monty (the character names gave no real indication when checked in the credits) who takes a deep breath that is, almost, like he is coming back from the dead – and I assume that is what the filmmakers wanted the audience to guess.

1st vamp

As he trudges through the snow, we move elsewhere and see a man with a bandaged face. There is a trail of blood in the snow and, whilst vocalising inarticulate noises, he sniffs and then tastes the blood. The blood is a trap, however, and a vampire hunter comes for him at which point the maw of sharp teeth becomes apparent. We see the hunter cleaning off his stake and he takes the vampire’s coat. After moving away from the kill he cuts his palm and bleeds into a canteen.

Monty the bandit

He takes the canteen and leaves a new trail that will lead to the blood-filled canteen that is hanging on a branch. Then, leaving his bag (with his gun and stake) with the canteen, goes to toss holy water around the blood trail (I assume to keep the next vampire on the trail). Whilst the hunter’s actions can be pieced together some make little sense – for instance, why take the first vampire’s jacket? Well Monty comes across the bag and, after putting the bullet-holed jacket on and trying the “water” canteen, spitting out the blood but getting blood down his chin, he does look suitably vampire-like when the hunter returns… but Monty has the vampire hunter’s bag by him and clearly there is another bloodsucker on the loose.

the hunter and the 2nd vamp

As mentioned at the head this did tell a neat story and whilst there are narrative gaps/questions – first and foremost being, why sprinkle holy water around the blood trail, what was the in story reasoning or was it just to remove the hunter from bag but keep the holy water for story reasons – but the overall story was fun and the effects were nice – we have a good, visceral blood effect going on. The end credits are a homage to Dracula (1931).

The imdb page is here.