Vamp or Not? Monstrosity

Suggested to me by Simon Bacon, this 1963 film was directed by Joseph V. Mascelli and Jack Pollexfen and it matches its title as it is a bit of a monstrosity. Simon saw within it a potential of it being a vampire film firstly due to its opening lines from the narrator (Bradford Dillman) that says “For in the ancient folk legends, tales are told of blood-sucking vampires, crawling out of graves to live on the bodies of helpless victims. Is man now doomed to produce a race of ever-living monstrosities, worse than the vampires of legend?” Through that he likened the film to the story Good Lady Duncayne and, to be fair, this does have an elderly rich lady, Mrs March (Marjorie Eaton), employing a Doctor, in this case mad scientist Dr Frank (Frank Gerstle), to restore her youth. Blood is not the order of the day, however.

In the reactor chamber

It starts with Dr Frank transplanting an animal brain into the newly deceased female body he has stolen – in a procedure that involves an atomic reactor chamber. We then see him stealing a newly interned corpse, aided by the monstrous looking reanimated male corpse in which he put the brain of a dog. This reanimated corpse has fangs in the lower jaw, giving a bestial look that brings the Island of Dr Moreau to mind.

Marjorie Eaton as Mrs March

He has discovered that the transplant works better the fresher the corpse and the aim is to be really fresh and transplant Mrs March’s brain into a living woman’s body. To this end she has lured three young woman, Anita (Lisa Lang), Bea (Judy Bamber) and Nina (Erika Peters), to her home, which she shares with “toy boy” Victor (Frank Fowler). She will select one of the girls to be her host, as it were, and through the course of the film one will end up with a cat’s brain.

Two of the candidates

So, the use of science to gain eternal life but this is by brain transplant and so calls to mind the superb Get Out (2017) – though this does not have the haunting vestiges of the original owner mentioned. The use of atomic power does bring Atom Age Vampire to mind but the vampiric surgery in that had to be repeated. This would be initially a one-shot transplant, killing the person though not the body (with the assumption that the new owner would swap bodies at some point as the new one ages). I am veering towards Not Vamp, it just didn’t feel like it was to me – despite invoking the vampire at the head of the film, but I can see why Simon suggested it might be and I am interested to hear what you think in the comments.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Stoker Hills

I received the opportunity to view a screener of Stoker Hills but I only take on such opportunities if I believe a given film will fit into the premise of the blog. I checked a trailer, which suggested the taking of blood but also read a review that suggested that the film hinted at a vampiric nature because of this blood taking and the title (connecting the name Stoker to Bram). Good enough for me to have a look for the blog.

The fact that I am writing a ‘Vamp or Not?’ suggests it was not that straight forward but, actually it was straight forward – I just think the reviewer I read over-thought that aspect.

Vince Hill-Bedford as Jake

So the premise merges found footage with traditional narrative – the footage on camera being found by two police detectives, Stafford (William Lee Scott) and Adams (Eric Etebari, Kiss of the Vampires, Vegas Vampires & Castlevania: Hymn of Blood), who investigate the filmmakers’ disappearance, which is shown in a traditional narrative. The filmmakers – Jake (Vince Hill-Bedford) and Ryan (David Gridley) – are making a school project horror film starring Ryan’s girlfriend Erica (Steffani Brass).

taking blood

The film goes awry when they are doing a distance shot of her (where she is acting as a prostitute) and a car slows, she gets pulled in and kidnapped. They grab their car and give chase and soon find themselves hunted by the kidnapper who is, it turns out, a serial killer. He does take their blood when captured but does so to test it for specific medical reasons. Having set up the found footage and the narrative around what happens to them when captured, alongside the search for them, the film throws in quite a neat final twist.

Erica and Ryan in peril

This twist neatly smooths aspects you may have found somewhat OTT as you watched (such as a series of traps that just seemed too sophisticated for the killer we meet) and the somewhat outlandish reason for the killing spree. This left me with a satisfying viewing experience, however, in terms of a vampire aspect, this really does not have one. Indeed, it doesn’t particularly use familiar tropes either (with the tropes more being pulled, rightly, from the slasher genre). Definitely worth a watch and though the use of found footage carries the same health warning (about why someone would continue to film in the situation they’re in) that many others of that genre come with, the way it is used is rather neat also. Not Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? The Darkness

The Darkness is a 2020 film directed and written by Tharun Mohan and truth be told I am looking at it by accident. You see I had seen the trailer and there is a moment that looked as though a character was in a coffin, throat slit and staked. Now, although the trailer was clear that there were themes of witchcraft and changelings, I thought that at the very least there would have been a use of tropes with the stake used to hold a character in the earth.

I was offered access to a screener and accepted on that basis, to discover that I had mis-seen the scene. The character is, indeed, in a coffin and their throat is slit but they hold a rose to their chest. As you know, the blog deals exclusively with vampire material but I had also given my word that I’d do an article. However, the film does have aspects of the restless dead and I decided that a ‘Vamp or Not?’ would be the fairest way of looking at the film.

the decayed finger 

The film begins in, what feels like the 19th Century (or early 20th century) and we see a bell – it is the surface bell of a safety coffin. We move below the earth and see a decayed finger with the bell pull attached to the finger. It moves and the bell rings. Brian (Adam Bond) rushes to the grave shouting to his mother that *she* is back. He gets into the grave but something pulls him in. At the same time, we see through a window into the house and see a figure move behind the mother.

Lisa and David

In a car Lisa (Amelia Eve) awakens suddenly. She and her partner David (Cyril Blake) are going to a house that has been in his family for years but he has only just found out about. He seems quite work focused; she is an author who has written and published her first book but is struggling to move on to the second. The house, of course, is the one from the prologue. It is remote and there is no wifi or phone signal.

Katherine Hartshorne as Niav

Almost from the get go there is strangeness afoot, with Lisa particularly nervous (and having the dream of herself in the coffin that I had noted in the trailer.) She then finds a diary in the attic written by Niav O'Connor (Katherine Hartshorne) – Brian’s wife… except a local historian has no record of Niav only of a wife called Mary who mysteriously vanished a year before he went missing. The diary, however, has intrigued Lisa who thinks it might be the basis for her next novel.

gluttonous eating

The film follows two paths – with the nineteenth century one showing us Niav’s story and involving fairy folk, witches and changelings. The modern one sees Lisa changing as the spirit in the house takes possession of her. It is all a case of unfinished business but – trying to not spoil anything – we have seen the corpse of Mary move and there is a hunger passed to Lisa when she is possessed – manifesting itself in gluttonous eating of food. This gluttony would fit in with some of the restless dead folklore.

blood tear

Ultimately there is spirit possession in the present day, which manifests as personality change and the gluttony I’ve mentioned, along with eye colour change and levitation. Essentially it is aimed at finishing the unfinished business. In the nineteenth century section we have a wider bag of stuff – we have witches, a faery cave and blood sacrifice to attempt to resurrect the dead. We do get a random blood tear at one point. The movement of the finger and what then happened to Brian suggests a degree of restless dead (which was frustratingly under explored) but there isn’t really a vampiric element to it. An unusual mix of themes but ultimately not vamp.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Rome Against Rome

This Giuseppe Vari directed film from 1964, titled domestically Roma Contro Roma but also titled War of the Zombies, came into view due to being mentioned in the Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (in which the analysis of the film’s socio-political messaging is worth reading). In it the film is said to have “a plot centred on political conspirators worshipping a vampire goddess.” Sounds pretty up our street and the Blackhorse Entertainment DVD blurb also says, “A zombified soldier rising from his coffin, Nosferatu style, is one of the macabre highlights.” The use of zombie might give us pause for thought, but mention of Nosferatu is always good. As this is a ‘Vamp or Not?’ you can tell that this isn’t so simple.

the crone

After starting with a raid on Roman legions, in order to steal a treasure, we see a crone leading a group of deformed peasants on to the battlefield to steal the Roman bodies. The film then turns to the Roman Senate, who are more concerned with the missing treasure, it seems. They decide against sending reinforcements and instead send a single centurion to investigate, his name – Gaius (Ettore Manni). He is warned about their worship of a Goddess – when we see her depicted, she is modelled as a cyclops.

John Drew Barrymore as Aderbad

Meanwhile we have met the leader of the cult of the Goddess, Aderbad (John Drew Barrymore). He is a mage and it is to him that the bodies of the Romans are brought – this is the crux of the ‘Vamp or Not?’ and so I’ll return to what he does with them in a second. Essentially Gaius gets there, falls for a slave girl named Rhama (Evelyn Stewart, Hercules in the Haunted World), is betrayed by the Roman governor (and his scheming, string pulling wife) who are working with Aderbad, finds that he is immune to being turned by the Goddess and ultimately saves the day.

rising like Nosferatu

So, what is this ritual being done with the dead. It isn’t all that clear but it does seem like Aderbad conducts a blood ritual – sipping the corpses’ blood – and having the Goddess raise them as undead. But are they vampire? Well there is absolutely no indication that they are vampires. We see some frozen, awaiting activation. Others are in their graves. When called forth they fight with the skills they had as mortal men and they cannot die (as they have died once before). What is strange is that some seem spectral (though they can still hit their opponents). The one rising like Nosferatu is the one we see being turned, rising stiff bodied from the sarcophagus he was placed in. However, there is no other connection and no suggestion that they consume blood/flesh/energy.

the statue in the cave

I said they cannot be killed – this isn’t entirely true. They cannot be killed in combat but Gaius could destroy them if he could destroy the jewelled eye of the Goddess statue that is able to cast a gaze around the cave it rests in and connects the spiritual force of the Goddess with the raised dead. Sever the connection the puppets fall and so the blood consumption by her priest is to link the puppet to her and not a sustenance issue. We also, just to mention, get a voodoo moment with a doll of Gaius that, if stabbed, will kill him. However, when used it incapacitates him but doesn’t end his life.

spectral army

The print I watched wasn’t the best and it was, unfortunately, the dubbed version and so there is always the chance that the cut missed some aspects around the Goddess that are relevant to a ‘Vamp or Not?’ and still in an Italian print of the film. However, as the film stands, despite the use of blood in the raising ritual this is not a vampire film. We have restless dead who are puppets of the Goddess – but neither they, not the Goddess show overt vampiric tendencies and the raised soldiers are essentially more zombie-like despite their spectral appearance at times. Not Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mentions: the Hunt for Vlad the Impaler

This is a 2018 Turkish film, originally entitled Deliler, and directed by Osman Kaya. Probably the most infuriating aspect of the UK release is that it is dubbed – and very badly dubbed too. This obfuscates any level of acting under the horrible dub and brings back memories of older dubbed movies, when bad dubbing was the only thing you got. Why on Earth this couldn’t have shipped with the original Turkish dialogue and subs is beyond me – except that such an aesthetic didn’t fit with it being sold as an action adventure.

The other thing to note, from a TMtV point of view, is that the film has absolutely no vampire aspect to it whatsoever. This is refreshing, but I have included it here because of the inextricable link that has been developed between Vlad Ţepeş and vampires.

deliler

So, the other thing to note is that whilst Vlad is often depicted as bad or perhaps a necessary evil, though to be fair this is not always the case and sometimes he is definitely heroic, here he is unquestionably the villain and the Turks are clearly the good guys. This takes us to the title (in Turkish). The Deliler were an Ottoman light cavalry unit, formed in the mid-15th Century, that were used as shock troops and often deployed in the Balkan region.

as children

The film starts with a voiceover that describes how the Ottomans were a force for justice against cruelty and then describes how Vlad II surrendered two sons to the Ottomans (Radu is ignored through the rest of the film) and shows Vlad (played young by Berkecan Akkaya and adult by Erkan Petekkaya) and Mehmed (I’m not sure who plays him young but played as an adult by Ruzgar Aksoy) and it becomes clear that, even as a child, Vlad is a wrong-un and, within the sequence, we see him casually crush a songbird.

nailing the turban

This childhood cruel streak manifests into his adulthood and, of course, there are impalements but we also get a sequence where a messenger attends Vlad’s court to give him the message that the Sultan will give him one last chance to forgo his cruel ways but Vlad, instead, becomes offended at the fact that the messenger refuses to remove his turban and so nails it to his head (hammering it in himself). Mehmed has clearly had enough.

deliler leader

He consults Father Sultan (Yetkin Dikinciler), who appears to be some form of mystic – the exact nature of this and the relationship is never fully established and perhaps I am missing a bit due to cultural ignorance. However, it is Father Sultan who summons the seven members of the deliler (or six and an apprentice on his first mission) and sends them out to go and stop Vlad. The leader of the deliler wears large wings and this is authentic, an affectation that I guess was meant to cause fear in the warrior’s enemies.

Erkan Petekkaya as Vlad

Meanwhile Vlad is being dismissive of any other power (so he refuses a crown sent by the Pope, for instance) and his wife/consort, Elizabetha (Gülsah Sahin) seems frustrated by this and there is an unspoken implication that she is an agent of Rome but that isn’t explored. Vlad actually gets to the point of calling himself the Son of God. He also has an alchemist working up a biological weapon of rats infected with “red moss plague”, which he intends to deploy against Constantinople.

battle scenes

The film lays on the Ottomans as the good guys quite thickly with gypsy caravans and rescued locals alike declaring that they have a friend in the Ottomans. Yet this probably only feels thickly laid on because the normal Western trope is to label the Ottomans as the bad guys and it was actually rather refreshing to look at this through the other lens. Unfortunately, the story was a tad confused and, as I mentioned, the dubbing horrible. The battle scenes were fun enough – though, in the final battle, the fact that an exploding haystack seemed to be positioned behind any participant making a killing blow or battle pose was an aesthetic too far.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? The Kiss

This was a 1988 movie directed by Pen Densham and I was told about it by Leila who said “unearthed this in my vamp or not pile - see what you think. It's demon possession but there are some tropes here”. Intrigued I sought out the film, which some kind soul had uploaded to YouTube – though the quality was a bit low.

The film is certainly an oddity, which unfortunately fails to pump up the tension as central character Amy (Meredith Salenger) has her life torn apart by an evil relative. However, this is not where the story begins, rather it starts in the Congo in 1963.

Felice and her Aunt

At a train station where piles of ivory are being shipped out, a father (Philip Pretten) is saying farewell to one of his daughters, Felice (played young by Priscilla Mouzakiotis and adult by Joanna Pacula), who is leaving with her Aunt (Céline Lomez) to go to a sanatorium. His other daughter, Hilary (played young by Talya Rubin and adult by Pamela Collyer), is staying with him. Their mother is dead and Felice has her cross, which the father suggests she give to Hilary for safe keeping.

the statue

On the train Felice sees a strange statuette that her Aunt has, she is told that it is 100 years old and we see what looks like a patch of discoloured skin on her arm. That night the aunt wakes, clearly influenced by the talisman, and we see blood at the corner of her mouth. She grabs and strangles Felice and then kisses her hard. The train stops at a station and we see a composed looking Felice disembark. A guard finds the Aunt’s body that is already in a state of advanced decomposition.

hit by a vehicle

Moving forward to the eighties and Hilary is married to Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus) and they are have a teenage daughter called Amy. They are having a barbeque to celebrate Amy’s confirmation – it appears that Hilary is a very devout Christian. Amy takes a phone call and shouts for her mother as Aunt Felice has phoned – Amy was unaware she had an Aunt. Hilary makes an excuse to go on a supply run but is looking at guns when a truck spins out of control and knocks her through the shop window before landing on her. She survives but leaves her leg behind as she is pulled from under the vehicle – she dies being operated on.

monstrous cat

At the funeral Amy spots a figure lurking in the distance (Felice) but it is several months later when Felice invites herself into their lives. So, without going into the story too much, Felice starts stripping everything away from Amy – friends mostly. This is done through sympathetic magic, and she uses the statue as a totem within her magic. She feeds it her own blood as part of the ritual. This is definitely supernatural. She also has a monstrous cat, which seems supernatural in nature, which the film’s Wikipedia page suggests is “a therianthropic manifestation of Felice”. Therianthropy is the ability to shapeshift and so I am not so sure, as we see them together. It might be a manifestation of part of herself or it might be more like a familiar.

beginning to rot

In fact, Felice is described, at one point, as being a witch and there is the sorcery aspect. However, when a friend of the family (Mimi Kuzyk, the Strain) has her blood examined it is shown to be the blood from a corpse. Whether she dies when her aunt ‘turned’ her, due to being strangled, which would beg the question of how she then grew, or her body died in adulthood (after being used up) and thus she called Hilary to get access to her niece, the film is not telling us explicitly. However, as she seems to have started to rot (in patches) and given the rapid decomposition of the Aunt I would suggest the latter.

emerging parasite

But how was she ‘turned’. We see this at the end of the film as a serpent like creature emerges from her mouth and tries to enter Amy. This parasite would seem to be a controlling intelligence – there is a recollection that Hilary felt she had lost her sister as she changed (there is also a suggestion that the possession was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia). It can certainly keep a corpse walking and talking, in order that it might find a new host. It is suggested that the family have been hosts for the entity for some time – this might suggest a genetic compatibility passed through the generations.

Amy and Felice

There is a poorly explored religious aspect – from the cross at the start of the film being removed from Felice (begging the question as to whether the father was in on it), to Felice removing a cross from the wall of the guest bedroom to a confrontation with a priest (Peter Dvorsky) who is accused of not really believing as, otherwise, Felice wouldn’t be able to enter the church. A religious item does burn her and the belief line is reminiscent of the faith needed in films such as Fright Night. There is a deliberate connection to that film as Felice is described as going all Fright Night at one point. The reference to Fright Night aside, is this Vamp?

rapid decomposition

I would have to say no. Whilst Felice is a member of the restless dead (or, at least, she is whilst her parasite still controls her body) there is no evidence of a need to drink blood, eat flesh or consume energy. However, Leila was absolutely spot on when she suggested that the film plays with tropes. It does and the Fright Night reference suggests to us that this is deliberate. So, it uses tropes (such as the reaction to religious artefacts – that have belief behind them) and the use of imagery such as the trickle of blood from the mouth and the kiss itself.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Palace of the Damned

This is a film listed on IMDb as being from 2013 and directed by Antony Szeto, and is a bit of an oddity. The film begins with a period piece, but that turns out to be from a filmset. Flashback moments to events are performed by the actors playing the modern-day actors. Confusingly, there is a further film entitled Shen Gong Yuan Ling, which is dated as 2017 and also directed by Szeto, and the IMDb trivia for it mentions lifting footage from this, the cast list is the same and the description sounds like the period film. This film then throws into the mix a storyline about an American film crew making a documentary about the Chinese Ghost Festival.

One feels like three films are mismatched together. There is a hint of possession of one of the actresses by the vengeful spirit of the character she plays, but that part of the film leads to a strange non-supernatural conclusion. Separately the American crew end up being attacked by the supernatural. Never the twain shall meet, it appears.

the jiangshi

The reason for looking at this was the blurb that said, “Legend has it that the Chan Ju Chi has risen to become a "jiangshi", killing innocent people in the hope of taking over their bodies.” So the jiangshi is what I would normally term as kyonsi and is best known in a cinema sense as a Chinese hopping vampire. They are not necessarily known for possession (and honestly, I didn’t get a sense in this that people were being killed to have their bodies hijacked).

removing the tongue

Starting with what appears to be a period piece we discover that Chan Ju Chi (Yixin Li) is a concubine of the Emperor and set to become the favourite as she is pregnant and astrologers predict that the child will be a son. This does not sit well with current favoured concubine Ping Wei (JuJu Chan) who leads her rival to a bed chamber and has a soldier brutalise her to kill the child. To stop her speaking out she has her tongue removed but the girl can write, so it’s a case of cut off her hand and then, for good measure, throw her down a well.

Katie Savoy as Rebecca

The actress playing Chan Ju Chi seems jealous of her co-star and has recently been in the tabloid press due to sexual pictures being leaked and goes a bit off the rails, but seems to be possessed by her character. By the end of the film many she thought had been killed were not dead at all and its all an elaborate plot by her shrink to heal her! However there is also an American documentary being shot and writer/anchor Rebecca (Katie Savoy) becomes somewhat obsessed with the concubines’ story.

taoist ritual

So it is that the American crew seem to be on the fringes of spiritual attacks taking place until eventually they are right at the centre of the supernatural storm. But are they facing a vampire? Jiangshi is used as a phrase occasionally and the spirit is able to become corporeal and uses long talons to dig into the necks of those she kills. She also has, on demand, sharp pointed teeth. When we see her being tackled it is by a Taoist priest – often used in Chinese vampire movies but not exclusive when it comes to the creatures of evil they’ll battle.

fangs

What we don’t see is anything resembling blood drinking and there is a large amount of non-corporeality. The spirit of the concubine may (or may not) be possessing the actress. This feels more like a ghost than anything (on the US documentary shoot at least) but the use of jiangshi makes this of genre interest I suppose. That said the film is as confused as the lore and pretty poor. The imdb page is here.

Kissing Cousins: I am Omega

Let’s get things straight from the get go… I am Omega is not, in any way, shape or form, a vampire film. It is, in the wider sense, a zombie film (the creatures might be infected rather than undead but we aren’t exactly sure). It does have a blood aspect, at the heart of it (that I’ll cover in the article), but completely removes the nocturnal aspect that was a feature of both book and the more mainstream makes. However the reason for looking at it is that it was based directly on I am Legend, citing Matheson within the credits, indeed it was actually released to cash-in on I am Legend (2007) coming out just before the big budget film’s theatrical release. It was directed by Griff Furst.

dead wife

It starts with a ‘prequel’ scene. We see Mrs Renchard (Jennifer Lee Wiggins, Dracula’s Curse) and her son (Joshua Schlegel) racing to leave the house. She gets him in her car when she realises that she has forgotten her keys. A zombie (which seems more mutated than your standard zombie portrayal) bangs on the window and she gets out and beats it back, but the creature swings at her and pushes her forcibly against the windshield killing her. The creature runs off (which is a strange behaviour – whether they aim to feed or propagate, they are not normally portrayed as kill and run). The kid gets out the car and zombie hands grab him from beneath.

killing the zombie

Richard Renchard (Mark Dacascos, Wolvesbayne) wakes with a start and aims his gun into the night. If the intro was a dream, then he has fabricated it from what he believes happened, we assume, as otherwise we need to question what he was doing whilst his family were killed (perhaps we should ask that anyway). Suddenly security lights burn and alarms blare. He goes out and kills several creatures (any trauma that would kill a human seems to be enough to kill them). He gets blood on his hand and cleans it with alcohol (?) as the infection is passed through blood as well as scratches and bites. As we don’t actually see a turn, we don’t know how long it’ll take.

with the mannequin

Back in the house and one thing that is noticeable is the large amount of prescription medication he has. The alarm radio starts playing, talking about the outbreak, but it isn’t plugged in. He repeats “there is no radio” and this is a direct nod to Heston and the telephones in the Omega man, likewise his mannequin seated at the table is like Heston’s Cesare bust. His laptop then starts beeping with an incoming video message. He refuses it (presumably believing it to be another hallucination).

Mark Dacascos as renchard

Richard’s life is dedicated to planting bombs (it’s clear that he was some kind of special forces). He is planting them on gas mains and intends to blow up LA, thus killing large numbers of the creatures. There is a timetable as he fits each bomb with a long-term timer. He also, we notice, suffers from frequent visual hallucinations – seeing zombies were there are none. We also see him checking through stores, training and generally being a lot kooky. It perhaps isn’t as powerful a performance as Smith gives in his vehicle but Dacascos does what he can with the material. Whenever he leaves his home he stamps a time card and says “another day, another dollar” – again referencing Heston – and leaves money at the store before the corpse of the store holder. To some degree this is a wish to reconnect with the lost capitalist past.

Jennifer Lee Wiggins as Brianna

Eventually he gets another video call and answers it but when the woman, Brianna (also Jennifer Lee Wiggins), appears he freaks out and runs out of the house – clearly down to the fact that she looks like his dead wife and he knows he has been hallucinating other things. Eventually he does speak to her, however. She was with a caravan of people heading to Antioch, a survivor colony in the mountains. They got ambushed by zombies and she is the only survivor. She asks if he and his people can help her and he admits there are no people. He refuses to go himself and cuts her off.

Geoff Meed as Vincent

A van arrives and the men inside, Vincent (Geoff Meed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Mike (Ryan Lloyd), claim to be ex-special forces on their way from Antioch to the city to rescue Brianna – she is immune and her blood holds the cure for the disease. They intercepted her broadcast to Richard and also know about his bombs. Richard is sceptical, wary and eventually refuses to help again. He was right to, given that they then blow his house up to force him to help – the reason, because his knowledge of the sewers will help them get into the city easier. I’ll leave the blow-by-blow but do have to spoil the ending.

zombie

Richard gets separated from the soldiers but when they have a re-encounter (at least with one of them) he is shot and Brianna taken. The reason… they don’t want a cure to be found, they think the world is now a Darwinist paradise with pure survival of the fittest and without those darn liberals insisting that care is taken of the sick and infirm etc. So, having established he wouldn’t help save her and knowing the bombs would go off, then why not leave her? And certainly, why not shoot her dead rather than kidnap her so he can rescue her again? That said we are in a world where a man can be shot in both legs and still push a car to bump start it! All-in-all, the logic was thin – but the new societal order, limited to two survivalists as it was, was an interesting take on that described by Matheson.

post apocalyptic lighting

The film is poor, let’s be honest, but it is better than most of the other films made by its production company, the Asylum. Logical faux pas, low numbers of zombies (it never feels like an apocalypse, if we are honest), gunfire and explosions don’t draw hordes, there are close up of guns that are in the wrong scenes and use the wrong model of gun, street lights and building lights still working, forgetting to close and lock doors behind you when escaping zombies… to name but a few of the issues. However it is based on I am Legend so deserved an examination.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK