Director: Jay Lind
Release date: 1998
Contains spoilers
Release date: 1998
Contains spoilers
After watching Jay Lind’s Valerie I was much more upbeat about watching this low-to-no budget adaptation of Carmilla. Unfortunately this just didn’t capture me in the same way – though I will say that the selected soundtrack for this worked a lot better than the Valerie soundtrack did. There is a nasty crackle over the sound but I think that is going to be the best version that a distributor will find.
It starts in the second half of the 19th Century and Carmilla (Maria Pechukas, Spookies) is being forced to marry and so she killed her husband and then slit her wrists with a crucifix. She returned as a vampire, of course, and the women of the family started to die due to a strange anaemia. Maddie (also Maria Pechukas) had a dream of a strange woman in her room as a child – it started when her mother (Heather War) died.
The film has quite a disjointed narrative, with an attempt to draw a psychosexual drama in much the way Valerie did, but this isn’t as well put together. Angela (Colleen Van Ryn) is being called by a voice (haunted as she is by Carmilla) and Maddie’s dad goes to stay with her uncle as Angela is her aunt and is ill. Maddie is beginning to experience phenomena too and later we hear that her dad had an affair with Carmilla whilst her mom died.
The film does create a dreamlike aspect to the narrative. I was more taken with the performance of Carmilla than that of Maddie and there is, of course, much in the way of vampiric imagery. If you like your movies to be a fever dream (with low-to-no budget) then you’ll get something out of this but I’d direct you to the much stronger Valerie. 3 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
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| crucifix |
It starts in the second half of the 19th Century and Carmilla (Maria Pechukas, Spookies) is being forced to marry and so she killed her husband and then slit her wrists with a crucifix. She returned as a vampire, of course, and the women of the family started to die due to a strange anaemia. Maddie (also Maria Pechukas) had a dream of a strange woman in her room as a child – it started when her mother (Heather War) died.
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| Maria Pechukas as Carmilla |
The film has quite a disjointed narrative, with an attempt to draw a psychosexual drama in much the way Valerie did, but this isn’t as well put together. Angela (Colleen Van Ryn) is being called by a voice (haunted as she is by Carmilla) and Maddie’s dad goes to stay with her uncle as Angela is her aunt and is ill. Maddie is beginning to experience phenomena too and later we hear that her dad had an affair with Carmilla whilst her mom died.
 |
| vampiric imagery |
The film does create a dreamlike aspect to the narrative. I was more taken with the performance of Carmilla than that of Maddie and there is, of course, much in the way of vampiric imagery. If you like your movies to be a fever dream (with low-to-no budget) then you’ll get something out of this but I’d direct you to the much stronger Valerie. 3 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
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