Short Film: L.A. Vampires

A little over 3 minutes this is a short film directed by Ezra Gentle and released in 2026. At the time of writing there isn’t an IMDb page.

Darian Drake (Ezra Gentle) is a Hollywood talent manager, in a club and on the phone when his sister, Saha (Juliette Cecile), also a talent manager, comes over somewhat mad. She shows him a missing picture on her phone. The woman, Mina Roxy (Sarah Ray Penton), has been missing 24-hours and was signed by Sasha. It becomes readily apparent he has killed her. Sasha needs to find her and their mother isn’t going to like it – there is a cracking comment that Sasha “should have eaten you in the womb”, meaning they’re twins.

vampire siblings

Meanwhile, Dr Van Helsing (Ori Kalmus) is attending a crime scene. The dialogue makes it clear he is not on the force but rather is helping out lead Detective Bonzie (Nivea Mae Nieva). The victim is the missing Mina Roxy and she is the third female bite victim in twenty days. Whilst the two bicker (down to his over-inflated view of whose crime scene it is) they miss the victim come back to life and walk away… And that is it… the whole thing feels like a proof of concept but is very well polished.

Night of the Vamp-Friars – review

Director: Kurtis Spieler

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Vinegar Syndrome tie with Severin as my two favourite film distribution companies (at the time of writing). Both companies do so much to catalogue, restore and preserve genre cinema and make films available that otherwise might never see the light of day. Director Kurtis Spieler is a film restore for Vinegar Syndrome, and this original film has been produced and distributed through the company.

What he has created is a love letter to genre filmmaking past, a nostalgic B movie using practical effects. 16MM film and vampire friars… oh yes skeletal, hooded vamps.

Clinton, don't be a hero

So, after an introduction in intertitles and narration that talk about 19th Century American belief in vampires, we find ourselves in Connecticut in 1884, and Bethany (Samantha Frattallone) sits by a fire startled by the noises in the woods. They are revealed to be made by Clinton (Alex Morsanutto), she has come to meet him, whilst her father sleeps, to tell him she is pregnant. He is delighted but the noises continue and he produces a pistol and goes to investigate.

lightning fingers

He vanishes into the darkness, and she hears a violent noise. Following him she sees him turn and his throat is ripped open. The perpetrator is a hooded monk (J.T. Warner) with an eye-patch and fangs. Vampire hunters appear, wielding crosses, stakes and axes. The friar proves powerful and they do not come out unscathed or with their numbers intact. We discover that he has the power to cast lightning from his fingers, but they eventually overwhelm him, and the friar and his brethren (we don’t see them despatched) are buried in a cemetery in the woods – the hunters sure no-one would disturb the graves…

Abby Arza as Roxy

Connecticut in modern times – the timeline is vague and not commented on but there are wired telephones and no mobile phones in sight. At a college radio show the host, Rebel Roxy (Abby Arza), asks listeners to call in with local legends – the best will get a prize of… she looks to the engineer, Warren (Joey Ambrosini), who has no answer. Setting off music he mentions her thesis (she is an anthropology major) that she hasn’t started. Back on air she mentions the prize will be two tickets to see her boyfriend’s band, The Neck Wounds. A caller tells her the legend of the Woodsfield Vampires – the friars.

camping

She meets Cole (Domenico Pugliese) and the rest of the band after her show. The other band members are Stoney (Miles Dominici) and Thompson (Kai Turner), and Thompson’s gal Brooklyn (Madison Grace Plummer) is there. Roxy mentions the legend and Thompson says his uncle used to party out there. They decide to go out, camp, get pictures for both the band and Roxy. Roxy is given a book containing details of the legend by Warren – he set the call up and is in love with Roxy. She invites him along and, after a stop with Roxy’s brother Frank (Frank Wihbey), an ex-con turned mechanic, to fix Thompson’s truck they end up out in the woods…

vamp friars

So, they do find the cemetery – after camping even though it is virtually a stone’s throw from their camp. It isn’t disturbing the graves that raises them, per se, but blood spilt on a grave has one emerge and more blood raises the rest. They rise as robed, fanged skeletons and there is a tad of the Blind Dead to them. Roxy has discovered that the townsfolk killed them before the full moon as they intended to ritually drink the blood of a virgin, which would have given them more powers. They can be staked and also killed with holy water and silver (be that bullets or knuckledusters). They kind of blow up on death.

bitten

The effects are hokey but work for it – the skeletons are not overly dynamic but clever framing does offer a sinister edge. There are some fun gore scenes – one scene of a friar sucking the intestines out of a torso look obviously fake but managed to be fun. The acting varies but is solid and in all cases earnest, with Abby Arza sounding great on radio and makes for a very personable focal point for the film. Mention is needed of the visceral, full teeth, bite marks she gets, which looked brill. Apparently, the audio was entirely ADR and it is testament that it didn’t come across as that.

have a heart

The reason the film, the sfx, and the cast work so well is because the filmmakers absolutely knew what they were looking to create. Filming on 16mm gave the film a definite look that worked. It is not high art – it never tried to be. Rather it is that love letter I mentioned, knows exactly the beats it needs, paces well and is thoroughly entertaining if you are a fan of that sort of filmmaking. Not outstaying its welcome, I think a solid 6.5 out of 10 is fair. The end of the film says the Vamp-Friars will return and I welcome that.

The imdb page is here.

On HD and Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Demon Hunter: Time 2 Kill – review

Director: Zoe Kavanagh

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

The sequel to Taryn Barker: Demon Hunter, this Irish movie transplants itself from the Dublin of the first film to America. The first film was the origin story for Taryn (Niamh Hogan, Feed), a young woman whose younger sister was taken by demons and so entered into a Faustian bargain to avenge her, before realising that the deal really meant her body being possessed by a demon, and so fighting back.

Sparkly

The first film was just focused on demons, this one has plenty of vampires as background – though a main antagonist could be read as vampire also. After a prologue set in 1986 and Camp Beaver and seeing the potential final girl killed by the slasher Lucian Krull (Lar Mclachlan), it flips to the modern day with Taryn hunting down leads for an artefact known as the necrox. This leads her to a sparkly vampire but, just before he spills, he is killed by a non-sparkly vampire. Taryn is able to get a tracker on the other vampire.

on the hunt

She follows him underground and finds a holding pen for livestock – and for livestock read trafficked women. She manages to rescue them, kill him and get the half of the necrox he is carrying. Taryn is living in hiding with Ethan (Kevin O'Malley) as part of an underground demon hunting organisation. She is a wanted fugitive after being blamed for the slaughter of a group of cops in the previous film. Ethan works out that the other half of the necrox is at Camp Beaver and it had been used to animate Krull – who had been a satanist and groundskeeper there.

bathing in blood

However, Taryn’s actions have tweaked the demons and head of Illuminati Industries, Elysia Cronika (Lisa Wilcox, Don’t Suck), is threatened with exposure if she doesn’t either kill Taryn or push her off track with her hunt for the necrox. Cronika is our character who could code vampire, though she is referred to as a time witch. Firstly she was the head of the trafficking ring, but the coding I identified is primarily down to the fact that she blood bathes (and we are talking a swimming pool full). Later, in a time ritual, she cuts her hand and sand comes out – that could be read as the sands of time but also could be the desiccated innards of a vampire that bathes in blood rather than ingesting it.

a consensual nibble

After two failed attempts on Taryn’s life she does said ritual and Taryn is pulled into a time vortex, whilst travelling to Camp Beaver, and deposited in 1987 – as are a group of youths who were on the same journey. Taryn has to babysit them, trying to protect them from Krull, complete a ritual to banish Krull and get the half of the necrox off him and get back to the present day. Of course, given the date none of the mobile phones work. I should also mention another vampire, in the modern day, who we see for a moment consensually feeding and then staked via stake gun.

Niamh Hogan as Taryn

The part in the past is lifted from the slasher handbook, if the slasher was faced with a kick-ass demon hunter, and uses the tropes of that genre to its advantage. The plot is convoluted and perhaps a tad reliant on the first film to make total sense to a new viewer. The acting is varied, with some actors perhaps less experience than others. However Niamh Hogan appears to be having great fun and the tone of this film is more light-hearted than the earlier film. There is one major issue, however – cgi enemies. Badly textured, with no weight and, honestly, pretty bonk – these let down the film and betray the ambition the film displayed. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Scotsferatu: The Vampire in Scottish Culture and Folklore – review

Author: Dee Lawlor

Release date: 2026

The Blurb: We don’t normally associate Scotland with vampires, but there is a hidden history of folklore surrounding the undead – if you only know where to look.

From the Pagan baobhan-sith of the Highlands and a sixteenth-century stranger that was suspected of being a vampire in Galloway, to a vampire that was terrorising wildlife in Lochmaben in the 90s, the vampire is alive … or rather, undead … and well in Scottish history and culture. This is a unique exploration of Scottish history and of a horror hero.

The Review: An interesting whistle stop through the highlands and lowlands and the vampires associated with them. Not everything in this volume is exactly vampire related (in the very traditional sense) as some are more faery related and others are revenants, but it is nice to see the Scot vampire getting some attention.

The baobhan-sith we have come across before but other creatures like the ganconer are more obscure and is a type of fae who causes a woman to pine for him and waste away and red-caps are a little more goblin like and blood is used in the dying of their caps but they are of interest. When it comes to revenants I was quite excited when the idea that the hundeprest (or dog priest) was said in some versions of the tale to turn into a bat – but a quick search myself revealed the earliest publication of the tale that suggested the bat transformation was the Stories of the Border Marches by John and Jean Lang and published in 1916, which means it was post-Stoker and the Langs were adding a vampire element to the revenant story, even using the V word. It would have been nice if that was clearer.

Great fun is to be had with the vampire caterpillar of Princes Street, and it was good to see the Gorbals Vampire getting some coverage. There is a small bites section that covers some general lore – I would have liked to see the section on mirrors, which associated the idea that silver backing causes a lack of reflection, to have been very much identified as a modern interpretation as there is nothing in folklore that I am aware of that would lead to that conclusion (indeed very little to suggest a folkloric lack of reflection) there was enough folklore about the dangers of mirrors and the dead as it was.

The book is brief and the style very chatty, which honestly wasn’t unwelcome, but it does have references and this is important as I would see this as a starting point if one wanted to research some of the things within. Nevertheless, as I say, it is good to see Scotland getting some love and this volume will allow the reader a point to start a deeper dive. 6 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Scared Stiff

This was a 1987 Hong Kong movie directed by Liu Chia-Yung and it has a distinct vampire section within it – and in this case Western style vampires. The film itself is about Dai Wai (Michael Miu) who shares a place with best friend Harley (Eric Tsang, The Dragon Lives Again & Vampire Family). The film opens with Harley’s dream, which is semi-sexual until Dai Wai enters the dream and nicks the girls Harley was about to be raped (his word) by.

It seems that Dai Wai can enter his friend’s dreams. The two men get accidentally caught within an armed robbery that subsequently leaves Dai Wai seriously injured. Indeed his heart stops and blood pressure drops to nothing, but his brain activity continues. Figuring he has a strong will to live, Harley is brought in by doctors to elicit an emotional response and bring him back to life. His case is then referred to a researcher who is looking at telekinesis (which Dai Wai demonstrates by popping a researcher’s blouse button with his mind), but more importantly entering dreams.

Shirley Kwan as the vampiress

Using technology and his natural abilities he is told to enter the dream of a mentally ill patient (Wu Ma). We see him in the dream and in there the patient is a vampire hunter and at first produces a small nail and tiny hammer, but this is for a really tiny vampire, which can be lifted between finger and thumb. Normal hammer and stake are needed for the life size variety.

the vampires

He gives Dai Wai a card and tells him not to match the letter on it with a vampire. He firstly meets a female vampire (Shirley Kwan), she produces a card with an O where his says A – a reference to blood type one assumes. When he meets a male vampire (Wing-Cheung Cheung), the fiend has every type on card and goes for him. Eventually, at dawn, they end up at the coffins and he stakes her, whilst looking away but, because he isn’t looking, he misses the male vampire altogether. It ends up with him pulling a curtain, though the sunlight is less than effective, and then making a cross by carrying the dreamer. He is bitten before he awakens…

Dai Wai and Alice

It is, of course, all a dream but a traumatic experience for Dai Wai. The research assistant, Alice (Emily Chu, Vampire’s Breakfast & Return of the Demon), keeps him coming back and each dream session ends with him screaming – though we don’t see those dreams. Dai Wai and Harley eventually become embroiled in the machinations of some corrupt cops who intend to eliminate any potential witnesses to their murderous activities. From a TMtV point of view the vampire section is a chunky segment, played for laughs with a surrealistic overtone, but ultimately it is a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

The Vampire Lestat (Interview with the Vampire Season 3) – Blu-Ray review

Directed by: Various

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

I have already reviewed the Vampire Lestat but the UK Blu-ray release is upon us and I am casting my eye over the set itself.

The 7 episodes are distributed over three discs, look great and the show itself lent itself to a second watch and maintains the solid 7.5 out of 10 score I offered last time. The set itself had more in the way of extras than perhaps previous seasons.

from One Night Only

The extras on disc 1 had the series preview, a Karaoke video of Long Face, the All Fall Down Lyric video, a breakdown of the track the Loneliness, a look at the laydown of the tracks, the Panel at the 2025 Comic-Con, which included a music aspect and a highlight video of the Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live. That they concentrated heavily on music aspects was understandable given the important role music plays in this season. The fact that the One Night Only was a 10-minute highlight rather than the 45-minute full video was a shame.

After Dark

Also on the disc were the broadcast series The Vampire Lestat After Dark – a preview special and the episodes that aired after episode 1 and 2 of the series. These are hosted by Lizzie Bassett and involve cast and crew from the series discussing the aired episode (bar the preview special, of course, which looked forward to the coming season). The other discs carry the other After Dark episodes analogous to the episodes on the disc. These are neat insights into the thoughts of the showrunner, producer and core cast – with other crew and cast members brought in through the series.

Akasha takes Lestat

Finally, disc 3 had, in addition to the After Dark episodes, a backstage pass in seven parts that briefly looked into each episode. It is a generous collection of extras totalling, especially because of the After Dark episodes, around 6-hours’ worth of material. Essentially, if you are a fan of the series, the set does allow you that bit more of an insight into the show. And whilst the show is the main event the distributors have ensured this carries interesting extras also – more so than perhaps the previous seasons sets.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Suck It Up: Life Lessons From 500 Years Of Not Dying – review

Author: Count Dracula (J K Vescount)

First published: 2026

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Five hundred years. Zero self-doubt. One life coach you should never invite in.

For centuries, people have asked Count Dracula the secret of his success. He has never told a living soul. Until now.

Having survived plagues, wars, three revolutions, the invention of the bicycle and one extremely persistent Dutch professor, the world’s oldest life coach has finally written it all down. This is self-help with the confidence of a man who has been staked twice and still landed a publishing deal.

Inside, you’ll learn to:

Set boundaries. He physically can’t enter without an invitation. Your neighbours have no such excuse.
Glow up. How he lost 300 years in one English summer, without a single spa day.
Handle haters. He has many. One of them is Dutch and has a hammer.
Accept feedback. A pitchfork is just a question with prongs.
Bounce back. Stabbed, staked, reduced to dust, and back by Christmas.
Work from home. He hasn’t commuted since 1462.
The power of compound interest. What happens when one gold florin is left in the bank for 500 years.

Packed with case studies from his former clients (Jonathan Harker kept notes), Bite-Sized Takeaways, an hour-by-hour dusk routine and postcards from a doomed sea voyage. There’s a practical worksheet on who is draining you (and who you could be draining), and a Before-and-After photo section you have to see to believe (you can’t). And in “Ask the Count”, Dracula answers readers’ letters from Melbourne to Las Vegas, personally, after dark.

Along the way he name-drops shamelessly: inspiring Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine, coaching Roger Bannister to the four-minute mile, dropping an apple on Isaac Newton and gatecrashing Queen Victoria’s séance.

Illustrated with deadpan Victorian-style engravings, it’s the perfect gift for vampire fans, lovers of gothic humour, and anyone who needs life advice from someone who stopped living centuries ago. Ideal for Halloween, birthdays, Christmas stockings and Secret Santa.

Some of his methods may be hard to swallow. His advice? Suck it up.

The review: A satire of a self-help book as if written by Dracula, this merges the character of the novel with some of the more pop culture version – sunlight is a thing – and stirs it together with a big old heap of humour. A couple of moments that tickled me, without spoiling too much, were the declaration that he is “the world’s leading authority on boundaries” given the invitation rule, and the thought that “A pitchfork is just a question with prongs”. The chapter on detoxing is subtitled, “Cut out garlic, crucifixes and the Church of England”, which I rather liked. I don’t read the self-help genre but I recognised the style and framing the book uses immediately and that parody helps carry the joke.

This is not a huge read at some 82 pages, and the style makes it pithy, so the price tag might feel a tad high. However, I suggest this is more the sort of book you’d pick up as a gift for the vampire fan in your life (as the blurb actively suggests). With that in mind I think a strong 6.5 out of 10 balances it being a fun read, the fact that it whiled away an hour on a train and would make a fun gift against it being pricey for a short book.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

The Reluctant Vampire – review

Director: Emily McDonald

First aired: 2026

Contains spoilers

For those of us in the UK, above a certain age, the name Eric Morecambe is revered as the genius comedian he was. Less well known is the fact that he wrote a series of vampire books. I actually have one of the series, bought some time ago when they were fiendishly difficult to find (I suspect on the back of this, they are now easier to acquire) but had never got round to reading it; languishing as it is in my ‘to read’ pile.

Tom Davis as Viktor

This series is based on the first two books and has been drawn as a predominantly children's series (and, as such, has a slight feel of the BBC’s Young Dracula) with a deliberate undertone for adult watchers. It also has that very BBC tonal quality, which can often undermine a series. Nevertheless, it was a fair watch and a quick one too – 6 episodes at the 30-minute mark each).

Lenny Rush as Val

The series follows Val (Lenny Rush) the elder son of Victor (Tom Davis) and Valeeta (Sian Clifford) and elder brother of Vernon (Gabriel Nagy). Victor is the vampire king and they live in a castle not far from a small English village – this castle on the verge of suburbia was a main point in Young Dracula, though the village feels much less suburbia and the locals are very aware of vampires. The show starts with Victor and Val on the hunt, a hunt Val manages to mess up.

Ellie-May Sheridan as Gertie

As the first episode progresses, we discover that Val, heir to the throne, is a late bloomer. His fangs have not emerged, he dislikes blood, and he can’t fly or transform. An accidental fall sees his flight kick in and Victor declares that Val is ready for his initiation – a major milestone in a vampire’s life (or undeath?). To prove his worth Val tries to finish the previous hunt, ends up pursued by a mob and meets human girl Gertie (Ellie-May Sheridan). When he tries to convince her that he isn’t a vampire she takes no convincing, after all he has a reflection in the lake.

Sian Clifford as Valeeta

We then discover that Val is human. Found by Valeeta when rescued by her from a burning building, whilst Victor was away, he was to be a snack but she fell in love with the baby and has raised him as a vampire – this leads to a commentary on nature vs nurture as she expected the baby brought up vampire to develop vampire traits. His earlier flight was simply the castle’s invisible woman (Ada Player) saving him. He now has the problem of passing an initiation that involves biting a human and drinking their blood, the machinations of Vernon who is jealous of Val’s position as heir to the crown and discovering his human side – the vampires are generally ignorant of human culture and tech.

Gabriel Nagy as Vernon

There are some aspects the series glosses over – for example what has Val subsisted on for fifteen years? Valeeta mentions swapping out blood for beetroot juice but that alone is not enough to nurture a growing child. However, aspects such of this can be ignored for the pay-off of the fish out of water element. There is a tendency for some of the supporting performances to veer into that stagey BBC style, however Lenny Rush charms the audience as Val and Ellie-May Sheridan offers a strong, nuanced performance. A special shout out to Gabriel Nagy as Vernon – he was a neat foil to Val, though the Machiavellian aspect would have benefitted from a more adult orientated script.

Joe Wilkinson as Wilf the werewolf

Looking at Victor and Valeeta, Tom Davis offers a bombastic performance that can’t help but summon Matt Berry’s Laszlo to mind and Sian Clifford’s Valeeta feels like an English version of Natasia Demetriou’s Nadja – however there isn’t the sharp adult humour to match those blueprints and any adult undertow in the script for this series does not come near. The inclusion of Asim Chaudhry as a put upon vampire butler, Joe Wilkinson as a werewolf, and Bill Bailey and Ross Noble as Gargoyles should have been a home run but I felt they were all held back in supporting roles - though had they been allowed full range they’d have likely dominated the production.

a raven in disguise

The vampire lore is pretty standard with vampires hunting for blood, avoiding sunlight, not reflecting, can transform into bats and made ill for days by exposure to garlic. We discover there is a lost power that allows a vampire to control humans. I did like the idea of Vernon having a raven spy on Val but dressing it as a bat. The production value is excellent throughout. What this needed was perhaps to veer away from the BBC house style of acting, however the choice of adding an adult element to the children aimed production did make it palatable for a full family viewing – it may have been more amusing had they leaned heavily into adult humour but, equally, they were not aiming in that direction. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon UK

The Teenage Vampire – review

Director: Frank Mora

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Vampires and teens often come together and some vehicles with them together provide great vampire movies (a perfect example being The Lost Boys). However, as a rule of thumb, putting the word teen or teenage in the title seems to indicate a lack of quality (for reference see Teen Vamp, Teenage Space Vampires or Teenage Vampire). I had hoped that this film would break that trend, alas it does not though it is slightly better than some of those exampled.

Jazlyn Nicolette Sward as Sandra

We start at a house, at night, and a girl comes out in a robe, disrobes to a bikini and, having sat on a lounger, goes swimming. We see feet approach and eventually she sees the owner and we see a mouth and fangs in close up… Footage follows that looks shot on 8mm, and shows woods and Sandra (Jazlyn Nicolette Sward, Night Carnage) seems pursued, we see the same mouth as the previous scene flashing fangs. It’s a dream, she wakes up…

party gang

There is some texting about a party, but Sandra’s mom (Fallon Shaya) won’t let 18-years-old Sandra attend; her house, her rules. This is despite (or because of) the fact that Sandra's sister (Courtney Akbar) moved out at 18. Sandra declares that she will move out and mom suggests good look with that as a part-time waitress in LA. She meets up with best friend (and partyer) Beth (Kelly Lynn Reiter). Whilst they talk, Sandra finds a listing for a backhouse in the Hollywood Hills for $300 a month – despite being ridiculously cheap (and the obvious red flags) she emails.

James Chalke as Viktor

We get a side moment with a homeless person dumpster diving and then being attacked by an unseen vampire. Meanwhile Sandra gets an offer to view the house. Waiting to be picked up by Beth she meets old school chum Jordan (Luke Gregory Crosby), who works at his dad’s antique store and is now quite hot – they exchange numbers. Her friends have nowhere to party that weekend and, despite not even viewing yet, Sandra suggests they can have a party at hers… Then going to view the place, she finds a brilliant rental and gets it. She moves in with Beth’s help.

Isabelle and Viktor

So, she soon meets Viktor (James Chalke) who only comes out at night and literally vanishes after they have spoken, and who owns the main house with his wife Isabelle (Spice Williams-Crosby, From Dusk Till Dawn, Buffy the Vampire Slayer¸ Angel, Revamped, The Dead Undead & Death Valley). Beth finds an old picture and Sandra recognises Viktor but they also recognise Jordan (or there is someone who looks like him) and the girl in it looks like Sandra. The vampires are going to use Sandra's party to feed…

lots of hissing and fangs on show

Jordan is the identity concealed vampire from the head of the film, but his vampire status is a shock to no-one when revealed. What is never answered is how and why, his dialogue indicates that Sandra is the (reincarnation of the?) girl in the photo. How he went to school with them is not answered (was it an oversight in the plot, was he a reincarnation also, was he a creepy ancient vampire posing as a high school student?). The vampires really do little more than growl and there isn’t a plot. Girl moves into apartment, may be a reincarnation, vampires eat people… that’s it. It is the lack of plot, motivation and wider narrative that provide the first hurdles. Next is the pacing, with a scene having Sandra’s sister trying to talk her our of moving, immediately followed by her mother doing the same, sucking the pace out if the film more effectively than the vampires suck blood.

Sandra

The next problem was within performance. The scene with the mother I mentioned is not helped by the fact that Fallon Shaya’s performance feels stagy, the vampires have nothing really to do (as mentioned) and, along with them, most other characters have so little depth that the actors had nothing to work with. It has to be mentioned that Jazlyn Nicolette Sward made Sandra personable and felt very naturalistic in the role. As for the vampires, there is very little lore other than coming out at night, being able to appear as other people and able to vanish. I can’t realistically give this more than 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

PSA: Richian Studios Present Dracula

I was approached by Richian Studios regarding their ongoing version of Dracula. Though the AI aspects are controversial I felt that at least highlighting it to blog readers will allow you to decide whether you wish to listen to this version or not.

The project is described, in their words, as:

In 1897, Bram Stoker told Dracula through letters, diaries, telegrams and a ship's log, written by people who didn't understand what they were part of until it was too late.

 

Richian Presents: Dracula is the whole novel as a full-cast audio drama, in the first-person voices Stoker wrote it in. Every character gets their own voice. New chapters twice a week through October, then every Monday until the novel is finished.

 

The voices are AI. Casting, direction and the cut are by Rich and Adrian.

The AI generated audio might be a deal breaker for some of you but, if you are interested in checking this out, you can find chapter 1 here and the releases so far on their YouTube Channel.

Short Film: Fame da Vampira

From directors Roger A. Fratter and Davide Pesca, coming in around 25 minutes, and released in 2017, this is on the same DVD as Seta da Vampira and achieves more (albeit simple) narrative integrity than Fratter’s earlier feature.

It starts with Super 8 footage and a voiceover by Elga (Beata Walewska), she is addressing us through her boyfriend (Davide Pesca), saying that this was footage shot by her father and drawing attention to the mysterious black robed figure that apparently was not there when it was shot. She says that, after his death, she discovered her father was an occultist.

in the woods

Her boyfriend and his friend (Stephan H. Asler) are out and about, and the boyfriend is complaining about her obsession with a vampire woman she dreams of, who wanders the woods half naked. It is likely he is more bothered by the frisson of sexual excitement revealed in her voice when she speaks about her.

the photos

Elga awakens after dreaming of the vampire (Mery Rubes) and, whilst sat at the kitchen table, reveals her father’s footage is gone but she has some stills of the vampire and that proves her reality. Her acquaintance Ratlof (Roger A. Fratter) comes round and suggests that the pictures are from a photoshoot and the woman in them is a model – he has a photo from her career too. His doubting makes Elga react angrily to him.

a kiss before...

Her boyfriend also doesn’t believe in the vampire and Elga says she will go to the woods to find her – the boyfriend suggesting if she doesn’t come back he won’t go looking for her. In the woods she, of course, finds the vampire. Is she real or a figment of Elga’s imagination? What will she do to Elga? How will that impact the boyfriend? All is kind of revealed in the denouement.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

A Hellish Fury – review

Author: Eva Vertrice

First Published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The blurb: In the second book of The Fury Trilogy, A Hellish Fury, Rachel and Lilith continue the search for the key to unlock the power of the ring. From New York, to New Orleans, to Hell itself, they’ll follow leads to uncover the mastermind behind the heavenly plot to kill them. But, is there just one person behind it all, or are they sacrificial pawns of an even larger game?

The review: The sequel to A Fury, this continues the adventures of Rachel – a vampire, who we now know is the reincarnation of an angel – and Lilith, who is *that* Lilith…

The book carries on from the first and if it felt that the relationship between the two had become tense it is down to that and, on Rachel’s side, a series of changes she is going through tied potentially to the new knowledge that she was the angel Nuriel and having part of that life reawakened within her, or perhaps to the ring she now wears, which was tied to that and is capable of killing an angel. These changes include not wanting to sleep during the day and the ability to daywalk without consuming Lilith’s blood (in the previous book, the companions had used this method for Rachel to withstand the sun). The daywalking aspect also seems to be intermittent.

Although the series is moving Rachel away from her vampirism to some degree with things like this, I like the fact that, as a vampire character, she is at ease with herself, “It’s who I am, and from my very first breath as a vampire, I’ve embraced it.” Indeed, she has a moment of a game in an airport deciding who she would drain dry and who she would spare – the likening of this in the character’s first person narrative to a serial killer, by wondering if they do the same, shows both that ease I mentioned and her honesty about what she is.

The urban fantasy vibe remains strong with this, and as well as vampires and Lilith, we meet demons, fates and angels within the journey. The first person works for this, and whilst the attitude and power of the character perhaps dulls the tension a tad, given that she is a confident, strong character and also honked off enough to walk into Hell, literally, the same qualities make her fun to follow and means the pace remains strong. 7.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon, I'm Out for Revenge! – Season 1 – review

Directors: Musashi Sakai and Katsushi Sakurabi

First aired: 2025

Contains spoilers

If you think that the title of this anime series is a mouthful, it is, though it is wonderfully descriptive of the plot and is a breeze next to the title of the light novel series it is based on: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon: My Trusted Companions Tried to Kill Me, but Thanks to the Gift of an Unlimited Gacha I Got LVL 9999 Friends and Am Out for Revenge on My Former Party Members and the World!

the Concord of the Tribes

It is set in a fantasy realm with nine tribes and main character Light (Nina Tamaki (Japanese)/Shannon Emerick (English)) is a human who gained an innate gift of an Unlimited Gacha – a power that allows him to summon unlimited cards that become real and offer support to him and his comrades. Unfortunately, every card seemed to be a dud. After being mugged by Beast Men he was offered a place in a party called the Concord of the Tribes whose stated aim was to work together across the nine races – as an adventuring party – in order to fight inter-tribe discrimination.

Light betrayed

This discrimination is, to be fair, mostly aimed at humans, who find it difficult to level up particularly highly (each character and card has a level, much like a RPG/video game, humans max at around 100) and are treated as slaves in many kingdoms. However, in one of the most dangerous dungeons (known as the Abyss and, given its danger calling it a backwater seems off), Light’s companions betrayed him and tried to kill him. They had been tasked to see if he was a Maestro (a predicted, powerful being) and after deciding he was no threat they look to kill him.

Mai rescues Light

Luckily, Light accidentally triggered a teleportation trap during the attack and ended up in the lowest part of the abyss. About to be killed by a Hell Hound he released a card and gained the Level 9999 support character Mai (Ikumi Hasegawa (Japanese)/Molly Searcy (English)), a super ultra rare card. It turns out that the gacha uses ambient mana to summon and there is little on the surface but, in the lowest abyss, it is abundant. Mai kills the Hell Hound and then spends three years training Light to level 9999 – he uses magic to suspend aging to remain as he was when betrayed. The aim is to get revenge on the party. He uses the unlimited gacha to create a whole kingdom in the abyss and it is here the vampire element comes in.

Nazuna and her card

Including Mai, Light has four level 9999 allies (allies may be the wrong word, every summoned person has fierce loyalty to Light) and this includes Nazuna (Hana Hishikawa (Japanese)/ Chaney Moore (English)) a true vampire knight. She is ridiculously strong and – if the anime character follows the novel version – a half vampire and so does not need to drink blood. We certainly never see her do so. She is displayed as a little bit slow-witted, light-hearted but, like the others, fiercely loyal. She is not used overly much in season 1 but she is very much there.

sacer arbor and victim

I also need to mention that another of the four, the witch Ellie (Ayumi Mano (Japanese)/Ginger Sue (English)) summons a sacer arbor – blood sucking trees that feed off her enemies and the more they are fed the further they can grow. The show has a touch of harem to it, with the summoned female characters all focused, sometime romantically or sexually, at Light - that said it is not nearly as obsessed with sex as some vehicles. There is a large undercurrent that discusses racism openly and a lot of characters are drawn negatively. The most negative thing around Light is his single-minded aim at revenge both at the party (he gets two of them in season one) and the world but, by the end, he gets a redemption narrative aiming at ending discrimination.

Nazuna shows fang

The UK Blu-Ray hasn’t much in the line of extras (just clean opening and ending title animations) but does have both English and Japanese audio. The English audio was actually excellently done – special mention to level 5000 character Gold (Katsuya Miyamoto (Japanese)/John Gremillion (English)) whose English dialogue was excellent, funnily written and great to see British colloquialisms like chuffed and twat creeping into the dialogue. The series really held my attention, indeed I absolutely binged it, the animation was as good as one would expect from a modern anime and this was definitely worth a watch. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK