Honourable Mention: Venom Vol. 7: Exsanguination

Author: Various

Artist: Various

First published:2024 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Venom vs. Carnage in their bloodiest battle yet! Carnage is back! Born anew in symbiote goo and blood, Cletus Kasady is more dangerous and violent than ever before - and he has his sights dead set on an unsuspecting Venom! Untested against the might of his symbiotic sibling without his father by his side, can Dylan Brock hold the sadistic serial killer at bay? Will Carnage live up to its namesake and leave another brutalized symbiote host in its wake? Or is Dylan just bait for Eddie Brock, the King in Black himself? In the greatest depths of space and at the end of existence, some carnivorous new species has blossomed. Something blood-red, with thorns - and an appetite! Plus: There's one thing that can still kill Carnage: Anti-Venom! And if things weren't wild enough, the BLOOD HUNT begins, and Venom must unleash lethal justice on hordes of vampires!

The Mention: I have looked through the Marvel Blood Hunt event extensively where it comes to volumes that were directly part of the event and where the volume majority tied in with the event. I have also looked at post-event vampiric consequences. In the case of this Venom volume, however, I have made it an Honourable Mention as it is a minor aspect within a storyline, events happening during Blood Hunt rather than impacting it/impacted by it.

I also have to be honest and admit that seven volumes in, the primary storyline confused me. Issues around Eddie Brock, his son Dylan being Venom’s host and Carnage trying to destroy Venom. All of this probably demands a wider knowledge of the previous volumes and therefore reading this for the Blood Hunt side (of which there are two storylines) is probably for completists only.

In one storyline we get Dylan, abandoned by Venom, approached by a priest who had been turned. The important part of this story is that when the priest bites Dylan his blood is poisonous to vampires as it has been altered by his half-symbiote physiology. He is also immune to the bite. The priest, in pain due to the blood, is then staked by Dylan. This means that Dylan/Venom could have played a pivotal role in the wider event had the writers desired it.

The second vampire storyline concerns the alien Threkker aka The Captive. He absorbs life force and was imprisoned on Earth, and subsequently captured in a high tech coffin that was found by Dracula and released during the Blood Hunt to hunt symbiotes. It reanimated a previous symbiote host (Lee Price) as a sort of zombie symbiote to lure in Venom (who at this point is host-less and dying). The Captive’s plan is to feed on Venom’s life energy but natural protections come into play, causing the Captive’s bite to begin a feedback loop that makes him feed on himself and desiccate. Not one of the undead vampires, a full back-history being presented (rather than touched on) could have embedded this in the event but this is more a throwaway and more significant to the Venom storyline, I feel.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Guest Blog - “If it doesn’t look like a vampire, or sound like a vampire, can it still be a vampire?” – TMtV 20th anniversary

We’ve come to the end of the 20th anniversary celebration and, last but not least, I’d like to welcome Simon Bacon to TMtV. We met through vampire groups on Facebook, becoming firm pals, and have had many discussions regarding our toothsome friends. An author and editor, I have corresponded over his vampire monograms and have been lucky enough to be included in several of the academic volumes he has edited.

In discussing the mutability of the vampire the much cited vampire scholar Nina Auerbach writes “we all know Dracula, or think we do… .” Although she was using Stoker’s Count as an example of how even the most “recognizable” of the undead doesn’t remain a fixed character in the popular imagination, it is just as true for what constitutes a vampire. Indeed, in many people’s minds Count Dracula is synonymous with the idea of the vampire with the implication that they must all drink blood, can transform into a bat (and possibly a wolf), are very sexy, wear evening dress with greased back, black hair and speak with a broad Eastern European accent—it should be noted that this is predicated far more on Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s 1931 film Dracula, than Stoker’s 1897 novel (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula about to enjoy a night-time snack with Lucy (Frances Dade) in Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. Universal Pictures, 1931.

However, the cinematic vampire, although providing what some see as the quintessential representation of the King of the Vampires (Count Dracula), seems to be continuously unsure about what a vampire looks like or what makes it one. What follows is an idiosyncratic selection of (and some of my favourite) films that have a very non-canonical view of what a vampire is.

Two of the earliest representations of vampires on film aren’t really vampires as we’d think of them now. They were from the early 20th century and both represented the “dark” side of society. The first features what was then known as a “Vamp,” that was a more sexually malevolent form of the New Woman from the end of the 19th Century and who asserted their independence by preying on wealthy men for their money. Theda Bara was one of the most well known of these and A Fool There Was (1915) the best surviving example of her playing her vampy best. In many ways her credentials as a vampire were more explicit in the marketing around the film and of Bara herself so that there was little to distinguish between her on- and off-screen personas. Apart from being called “The Vampire” in the films titles there is nothing else in the film that would really mark her out as one of the undead (see figure 2).

Figure 2. A triumphant Theda Bera (The Vampire) enjoys the sight of her latest victim who has lost his wealth and his family because of her in A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell. Fox Film Corporation, 1915.

Similarly the French serial Les vampires takes another yet equally oblique turn in what constitutes a vampire. Here, the titular “vampires” are in fact a gang of crooks led by the Grand Vampire that prey on the people of Paris and who think nothing of murder, kidnapping, and terrorism to get what they want. Although the film is well known for a sequence featuring a dancer dressed as a bat (see figure 3), once again there is little to connect the film to actual vampires apart from their metaphorical “feeding” on the wealth of their “prey.”

Figure 3. Marta Koutiloff, played by Stacia Napierkowska, dancing as a vampire bat in the ballet “The Vampires” in Les vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade. Gaumont, 1915.

Back in Hollywood, vampires became one of the pantheon of classic monsters in the 1930s, though even within that there were no strict borders between the various forms of creatures that could be called undead which could range from someone brought back from the dead (by whatever means), to a ghost, a ghoul, a zombie...or even a mummy. As mentioned above Lugosi’s performance solidified the idea of what Dracula was, and consequently, vampires, but even here the Count himself wasn’t sure of what exactly made him a vampire. In House of Dracula (1945), the second film starring John Carradine as the Count, sees the vampire looking for a cure for his vampirism (in reality he wants to sink his fangs into the pretty nurse assisting Dr Edelmann who he seeks help from). What is of interest here is that the doctor takes blood samples from Dracula and under the microscope we see vampiric blood cells attacking human blood cells marking out vampirism as a disease of the blood (see figure 4).

Figure 4. Dracula’s blood under the microscope showing the black tendrils in it is the true vampire as it attacks human blood cells, in House of Dracula, directed by Erle C. Kenton. Universal Pictures, 1945.

We could argue it is Dracula’s blood that is the vampire, not the Count himself. This is a curious idea that has been picked up since in a few screen narratives such as Dark Shadows (1966-71) and the Dracula (2013-14) series by Cole Haddon. The importance of blood, and what we might call the medicalisation of the vampire, is also seen in The Return of Dr X (1939), featuring a rare turn in horror films for Humphrey Bogart. Here at least the “vampire” in question needs fresh human blood, though rather disappointingly for its undead credentials it’s not from biting a beautiful young woman in the neck, but rather transfusing her blood into his own body (the reverse of Stoker’s use of transfusions where they are to combat vampirism rather than promoting it). Here, Bogart as the eponymous Dr X (Maurice Xavier) is brought back from the dead using synthetic blood, however, this no longer works and he needs a special type (type one) of fresh human blood to stay alive. His vampy credentials highlighted by his pale white skin and greased back, black hair--his monstrosity emphasized by a bride of Frankenstein white streak running through it (see figure 5).

Figure 5. Humphrey Bogart as the suitably deathly pale Dr X, in The Return of Dr X, directed by Vincent Sherman. Warner Brothers, 1939.

Post-WWII and the rise of science fiction on film only increased the complications of identifying vampires—even Dracula is affected by the appearance of aliens as seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) where humans are brought back from the dead as zombies and one of these “zombies” is non-other than Bela Lugosi in full Dracula costume. In some ways this was exampled earlier by the science-gone-mad idea in Dr X, but the involvement of aliens would only exacerbate the problematic nature of vampire identity. A good one to start with is The Thing from Another World (1951) where the “Thing” is a Frankenstein’s monster style alien (see figure 6) that has been cut from beneath the Arctic ice where its ship had crashed an unknown time ago.

Figure 6. “The Thing,” played by James Arness, as a vegetal vampire from outer space, in The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby. Winchester Pictures Corporation, 1951.

Once defrosted the creature is driven by a need for human blood, and it exhibits a kind of immortality as parts of it, when cut off, regrow when fed blood. Perhaps more strikingly the creature is in fact a plant of some kind—this correlates to other vegetal aliens that crave human essence such as the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978), and The Queen of Blood (1966). While the creature cannot change its shape in this film—other than its severed parts being able to take on their own lives—later adaptions of the story, The Thing (1982/2011), make such transformations explicit to how it survives and multiplies. Indeed, just as the first “Thing” required human blood to live, the later “Things” require human lives to thrive—oddly echoing the BBC Dracula mini-series from 2020 in which the Count requires blood as “lives” to sustain himself.

Something of this is repeated in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985) where alien vampires, whose spaceship hides in the tail of Halley’s Comet, awaken to feed on human essence each time it returns to the vicinity of the planet Earth (every 74.7 years). The aliens themselves are huge bat-like creatures but can possess the bodies of humans and consume/suck-out soul/lifeforce by putting their mouths over that of their victims (see figure 7).

Figure 7. A guard (John Keegan) having the lifeforce sucked out of him by an unseen Space Girl (Mathilda May) in Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper. London-Cannon Films, 1985.

These are then “sent” back up to the mother ship for the rest of the colony to feed on. An earlier example of a similar kind of vampiric possession as a means of survival was seen in Planet of the Vampires (1965) where the survivors of an alien race are trapped on a barren planet after its sun has burnt out. Using the distress signal of a crashed space ship they attract 2 other ships and then inhabit the bodies of the humanoids piloting them. Of note here is that their vampirism is purely predicated on the possession of humanoid bodies (see figure 8), which although deadly to the hosts—if they’re not already dead—does not provide any kind of sustenance to them (such vampiric possession, though often non-deadly is a more recent feature of vampire narratives such as The Vampire Diaries (2009-17) and The Originals (2013-18).

Figure 8. A deadly game of “guess whose body is possessed by a vampire” featuring Wes Wescant (Ángel Aranda), Sanya (Norma Bengell), and Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan), in Planet of the Vampires, directed by Mario Bava. Italian International Film, 1965.

Returning to Lifeforce, and its idea of feeding off of human essence and “draining” their victims, this is not a million miles away from psychic vampires, most recently and famously seen in the figure of Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows (2019-24) where he purposely bores people to death and/or annoys them to distraction so that he can feed on their emotional energy (see figure 9). This has returned such forms of untypical vampirism back into the popular imagination—it’s actually something that has a longer history in literary vampires seen in The House of the Vampire (1907) by George Sylvester Viereck and “The Transfer” (1911) by Algernon Blackwood.

Figure 9. Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) as the person in the office that everyone tries to avoid, in What We Do in the Shadows, created by Jemaine Clement. FX Productions, 2019-24.

To sum up this rather eclectic list of some of my favourite vampire films, and to mangle and repurpose a well known phrase about ducks, “if it doesn’t walk like a vampire, or quack like a vampire, it doesn’t mean it’s not a vampire!”

Bio: Simon Bacon has authored/edited/co-edited 40+ books on vampires, monsters and gothic horror in popular culture and his Amazon Author page can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Vampire Zombies... From Space! – review

Director: Michael Stasko

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

With the best will in the world, this film drawn like a 1950s-B should score low, it really should. However, I sat amused as I watched this. Michael Stasko and his team aimed for something straight out of Ed Wood’s playbook and totally committed to it and that commitment paid off, this should be bad, or so bad it’s good, rather I think it is actually pretty darn good.

Drawn in Black and White it starts at the MacDowell tobacco farm and mom, Bernice (Catherine Valle) sings a lullaby as she and pa, Roy (Erik Helle), put daughters Mary (played young by Elizabeth Wacheski and older by Jessica Antovski) and Susan (played young by Lauren Meadows and older by Charlotte Bondy) to bed. Later in the night the family dog, out on the porch, starts barking. Susan goes to the window and sees it run off into the tobacco fields, she follows.

spattered in mom's gore

Mary gets her parents and they look for her sister, who has been traumatised when she found the dog fed on by Dracula (Craig Gloster). In response Dracula causes his spaceship (yes, he’s a UFO flying Dracula) to blast Bernice, leaving Roy, along with the girls, spattered in her gore. Dracula turns his attention to the family but the spaceship fails and a reflection of light catching Roy’s cross causes the vampire to flee, turning into a bat.

Oliver Georgiou as Wayne

Ten years later and, a now grown, Mary is walking to school, something is in the field by her but she is distracted when a car with some guys stop by her. The majority are being sexual to her – though there is a warning about her murderous father. It seems that the townsfolk believe Roy killed Bernice, though he was acquitted. No one believes about the UFO. One of the guys, Wayne (Oliver Georgiou), is pissed with the attitude of the others and makes them drive off. They don’t see the zombie come of the field and rip Mary’s throat out – or the others that then rip her to shreds. I say zombie but they have fangs…

stake

Essentially, Dracula is going to invade Earth. His son, Dylan (Robert Kemeny) – a secret human-o-phile – created a serum that prevents their reaction to the cross (although these space vampires do not know it as a cross and refer to it as a t symbol). The side effect is that those bitten by a vaccinated vampire will turn, develop fangs but they (and their brains) rot. In other words, zombie vampires (or zompires, we would say). Like a vampire they must have the heart destroyed, not the rotting brain. There is, however, another apotropaic in the film, which the audience works out long before the characters – tobacco. It scares them off and makes vampire technology fritz out (hence the foul up at the beginning). It seems that it works fresh but tobacco smoke seems more effective.

the vampire high council

So, there is a vampire high council – not impressed with Dracula’s efforts. Unnamed in film they are credited as Vampira (Judith O'Dea, Night of the Living Dead), Nosferatu (David Liebe Hart) and Coppola's Dracula (Martin Ouellette). There is a cracking mirror bit with Dylan dressed as a soldier with a massive fake beard and only being spotted through the mirror – and it’s a moment where we can see a reflection of clothes (and fake beard) but not the vampire. There is turning into bats, as mentioned, but at one point Dracula turns into a bat to get into a mini bat-winged UFO.

clothes reflect

High silliness abounds with some genuine NSFW jokes - Lloyd Kaufman for instance appears as a character credited as town masturbator and his antics, when described, are consistently followed up with the line, “did he finish?” But the real reason this works is the absolute commitment to the aesthetic. The designs – be it the sci-fi elements or the fifties elements are bob on. There is no attempt to hide the wires. Because that fits the aesthetic. This was way more fun than I thought it would be. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Lesbian Vampires from Outer Space

I made a conscious decision to stop reviewing short films and simply post about them, as the short film is a rather different movie form to the feature. When it came to this Sam Rooke directed film, that is around 48-minutes, I was torn as the production company, Psychic Visions, list it as a feature. It is also longer or as long as many a TV episode. But, as it comes in just under what I’d generally class as a feature length, and it is available to watch for free on YouTube, I decided that I’d run it as a short film article.

First, I need to touch on the title – lesbian is apt as the lead characters Don (Rachel Simm) and Maude (Zorsha Taylor Suich) are lesbians and the production company is a queer facing company and collective. The Outer Space bit didn’t overly mean much, they do refer to humans as something other than themselves (but it is common in the megatext for vampires to see themselves as separate from their prey) but they can turn victims, and nothing is made of the allegedly alien aspect. The full title makes the film sound like it might be schlocky (it isn’t and is filmed and played with a serious air) or comedy (it really isn’t).

aftermath

As mentioned, it follows Don and Maude who are celebrating their anniversary and are getting ready to go out. Before they leave Don packs a body part from a victim away. They go to a local pub and, at the bar, they are accosted by Jamie (William Mullett), who thinks Don should fancy him. When she goes to the toilet, he follows her, and things turn violent and rapey. Maude’s sensitive hearing picks up on what is going on but when she gets into the toilet Don is violently feeding on him. His mates hear a scream and enter the toilet and then panic ensues as they kill both them and all others in the pub. In all 21 die.

fangs

The film does cast hetero men as a threat – and not unfairly, in truth. However, it also fails to capitalise on the violence. We get aftermath gore but not the attacks (for the most part) and I understand why from a production standpoint, but it would have added a visceral layer. The vampires get out of there – though Maude vomits some of the blood and later becomes ill and there is mention of what human blood does to them, drawing an addiction aspect to the narrative. The women go on the run, head to the coast, meet an eloping lesbian couple and are hunted by the police.

at a crime scene

There are some bits of this that jar – such as a copper suggesting they are from a PD, which is very American, and two grown women able to hide in the rear footwell of a small car for a couple of hours (even if it’s dark). The primary leads seem very natural in their performances. As mentioned extended violence/gore sequences would have added to it. However, all in all it kept me watching and positives outweigh niggles.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Captain Amazingly Incredible and the Space Vampires from the Evil Planet!!!

You may think I’ve gone mad giving this 2010 New Zealand flick, directed by Karl Burnett, an honourable mention rather than a review, especially given the title but, whilst we do get the vampires in this, we actually only get fleeting visitations of them and mostly this green screen driven film apes such serials as the early Flash Gordin series whilst concentrating on Captain Amazingly Incredible (Roy Snow).

It starts, however, with Detective Jack Spartan (Karl Burnett, My Grandpa is a Vampire) who is in the city looking to get smokes and a newspaper. Unfortunately, the news seller (Tarun Mohanbhai) doesn’t seem to understand him, Spartan notes that he is speaking in an Indian accent also. Suddenly he hears a scream and finds Tallulah Diamond (Katherine Hubbard) who says she has something in her eye.

Captain, Spartan and Tallulah

They fish out a tennis ball (yes, it is that surreal) when the news seller appears, and he has fangs. Spartan’s garlic breath causes him to vanish and, realising that there may be thousands of vampires, the pair run to Spartan’s HQ. Spartan wonders what could be turning folk into Punjabi vampires and calls in Captain Amazingly Incredible. He realises that the evil doctor called The Evil Doctor (Nicko Vella), from The Evil Planet is behind this dastardly plot and they head into space to stop him.

Nicko Vella as The Evil Doctor

Later we discover that The Evil Doctor created a virus from alien vampire bats to turn people but his son Brogor (Grant Roa) is somewhat clumsy and spilt a curry into the virus vat hence the victims turned becoming Punjabi vampires. It is all surreal and we only see another couple of vampires briefly. The method of filming gives the film a graphic novel feel and the delivery is deliberately camp but we do get a fleeting vampire visitation.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Alien Siege – review

Director: Robert Stadd

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Oh lawdy. This came on my radar as an alien vampire film and it is (in a very loose definition of vampire sense). It is also a film that was made specifically for the sci-fi channel. It really struggles therefore with script, narrative, acting and any level of budget to make this look as good as it should want to look.

It is set on an Earth in which we have been visited by the Kulku, an advanced alien race. Later we hear they pride themselves on their intergalactic philanthropic works but that is not the case with us. You see, there is a pandemic on their home planet, a virus that threatens to make the race extinct and the cure is… human blood. So they have essentially invaded, using advance tech that we can’t fight against. The film is six weeks later…

alien lander launches

So, the Kulku have demanded we hand over 8 million people. It is up to each nation to do their bit, and it is suggested that many nations handed over their prison populations. America have to hand over 800,000 people and rather than use prisoners (which, in reality, I recon would be America’s go to policy) they have decided to do a random lottery and if your name comes up you are detained by human military and sent for processing by the space vamps. There is a basic maths issue here as the film suggests that 650,000 Americans had been handed over but there are 300,000 to go…. Something doesn’t add up.

nozzle delivery

The other issue that the invaders have is that the Kulku travelled via a wormhole and… well the explanation was a bit odd but it got them to Earth (and it is a one way trip) but they can send things back through – just not living things so the aliens are stuck but the blood apparently can be sent back (they don’t just suck the blood out, but liquidise the person apparently, and then three shower nozzles spray the blood into a pod, yeah really – and the idea of asking for planet wide donations is not touched on). This ignores the fact that blood is essentially living tissue – what property they need to make a cure and why it works when inert is not answered.

Erin Ross as Heather

So, the film is essentially an intergalactic version of the Trolley Problem. Of course, it needs a human interest side and this is found through Dr Stephen Chase (Brad Johnson) who discovers that his daughter, Heather (Erin Ross), has been chosen and so tries to hide her. That doesn’t go very well and she is taken for processing. He tries to swap himself for her but it appears she has a blood anomaly that the Kulku have been looking for and her blood can produce many more cures, so they won’t let him stand in for her. However, there is a resistance who attack the facility and Chase manages to get to the leaders with a proposition – save Heather and he’ll give them special tech.

Brad Johnson as Chase

Now, one might question why (and how) a race living so far from Earth that they need a wormhole and cannot travel back by conventional means would know that human blood would cure the virus? Well, apparently, they’ve been here before and Roswell was a crash of one of their scout ships. Chase has been a lead researcher trying to backwards engineer their tech. Issues, issues. One, we have no idea how they got to and from Earth that time, did they abduct humans – if so they may know what our blood is like, I guess, but its still a stretch to think that it would be, and they would know it would be, the cure for their illness. And then there are the coincidences – the daughter of an alien tech researcher is chosen in lottery (and somehow he knows, we don’t hear how), she just happens to have anomalous blood, and she happens to be taken to a processing centre that the resistance happens to attack (for the most part humanity seem to be sleepwalking into this).

a Kulku

As for the Kulku… well they look remarkably like us, save having dyed blonde eyebrows, a black mark at the neck (which, when we see the black marks of the virus, I assumed was a viral lesion, but that doesn’t vanish when someone is cured whereas the lesions over the torso do vanish) and a grey dot on the cheek – which turns out to be a comms device. The spaceships and lasers are cgi generated. The acting is wooden throughout. The dialogue is awful (and the docile lottery people feel outstandingly unrealistic… go over there… ok… in reality, surely they would try and overpower the small number of army guards and not a one seems to cry, despite knowing they are going to be liquidised to make alien medicine – there is a touch on more realistic reactions when a hunted “winner” jumps from a high building rather than surrender). Really quite poor but the taking of human blood to prolong life (by staving of a deadly virus) puts it onto our radar. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Vampire Genesis – review

Director: Michael Lee Buie

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Crossing vampires with aliens is not unheard of and it can work but sometimes one wonders what the point was. Sometimes the extra-terrestrial origin of the vampire (or in this case both vampires and demons) makes not one iota of difference and the film could just as easily have had them hailing from other dimensions and of supernatural origin.

It starts with a young woman, Karen (Neriah Chadwick), dreaming and waking. She calls local priest Father Domenici (Ernest Jam) who tells her to come over. She gets dressed (in some short shorts) and is nervous as she crosses the graveyard, clearly sensing someone around. She goes in the church, uses the bathroom to put makeup on and then tells Domenici about her dreams.

Maalik revealed

Declaring that she has revealed herself as the first seer, he suddenly transforms and reveals he is actually Diablo Maalik, eater of souls. He is terrorising her when a pair come in, one a vampire queen who gave Maalik a daywalking stone and her servant Ahriman (Renaissance Jones). Maalik loses his head, for undermining her authority, and she leaves Ahriman to deal with the seer – but he does not kill her.

Nadia Covington as the Empress

Twenty years later and on a mothership we meet vampire Empress Amunet (Nadia Covington). She is disturbed by the Captain Abu’Al (Eric Hamilton) who says that a slave, Teh'a (Katrina Jeen), has escaped to Earth. The slaves are generically manipulated vampire/humans from what I can tell. A hunter is despatched after her and we later discover that she is attuned to Gaia, a physical manifestation of Earth I assume, who defeated the vampires when they last invaded. Except for the vampires who remained on Earth, of course, and the demons.

the slave's arrival

The film proper follows hard-ass Detective Jessica Cole (Stephanie Fausto) who is put onto the alien landing case as a punishment assignment. Cole has powers that she has not yet allowed to manifest. The vampires are after the (now disguised as human) slave and Cole is embroiled in it and the plot, as in much with the film, is over ambitious for the budget and the filmmakers’ skill level.

eyes

The cgi used within the film is not great – cgi blood spatter always tends to look bad but the spaceship scenes look pretty average also. The alien aspect, as mentioned, needn’t have been there and the acting was a mixed bag – though to be far Fausto gave her all as Cole. This is one with plenty of ambition, as suggested, but it just didn’t do it for me. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Handbook of the Vampire: Bloodsuckers from Beyond: Cold War Era Space Vampires of the Cinema

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Matthew Jones the Chapter Page can be found here.

This chapter of the Handbook looked into science fiction vampires that were contemporaries to, and analogous of, the Cold War, with a view to opening a discourse on, what Jones terms, “the elusive extraterrestrial film vampire”. With that in mind, though the Thing from Another World is mentioned in passing amongst other, famous, monster features, it is not studied within the essay as a vampire film with an extraterrestrial origin to its creature. Given that it was released early into the Cold War its absence is unfortunate. The text is also silent on such films as Brainiac, which has an alien aspect (the brain eating vampire was human but returns from a comet having become monstruous and the author could have entered into an interesting discourse between this Mexican offering and US fare).

My only other criticism regarding content was that, although It! The Terror from Beyond Space was included, I’d have liked to have seen more space dedicated to the film, but that is because it is one that I have a tremendous soft spot for. This chapter does start the discourse the author wished to, and generally there is plenty of room for more on these alien vampire films.

Short Film: Vamp

A short film directed by Denise Castro from 2015, this was an extra on the Salvación DVD and was a little familiar.

It tells the story of Vamp (Liliana Pérez, Salvación), a female vampire and her lover Vlad (Àlex Batllori), who live on a planet where the rivers are blood – thus feeding their hunger. Unfortunately there was a cosmic event (star into planet), which destroyed their home world.

Very few escaped the planet and Vamp and Vlad were in a spaceship that fed them the blood they needed but when that blood ran out it bee-lined to the first semi-habitable planet. Crashlanding the pair look for a means to survive but hunger forces Vlad to sacrifice himself and then, just before he does, further forces him to attack Vamp and they begin to fight each other for survival.

Liliana Pérez as Vamp

If the story seems a tad familiar it is essentially a Vampirella fan film. Her name shortened (I assume for copyright reasons) and the familiar red outfit swapped out for a black one. To be fair it is fluff, but it is fun fluff – perhaps a proof of concept to angle for a Vampirella film gig, perhaps just constructed because Castro is a vampire fan (clearly) and, one assumes, a Vampirella fan.

The imdb page is here.

Creepshow Season 1 (Blu-Ray review) – review

Director: Various

First Aired: 2019

Contains spoilers

Ahead of the airing of Creepshow Season 4 on Shudder, Creepshow Series 1, 2 & 3 are available on Blu-ray, DVD & digital from 25 September 2023 in the UK and I have been lucky enough to get the three seasons on Blu-ray to review.

I have previously reviewed individual vampire episodes and, in honesty, this season did not contain a vampire related episode but it was a damn fine anthology series in its own right and there were passing moments of vampires in the Creepshow comic graphics that layered between episodes. These were in the form of adverts for various masks, models and LPs that readers of the fictional comics could send off for. Nevertheless, we have vampires mentioned in passing in these ads and also mentioned in the episode 2 segment – the Finger (which I will come back to).

the Creep

The series is made up of 6 roughly 45-minute episodes, with animated moments of Creepshow mascot, The Creep, and comic stills related to the story (the comic bookends each episode, the inference being that the episode is the comic brought to life). Each episode contains two stories and they run the gamut from monsters to killers and all sorts of horror tropes in between. A cursed head that appears in a girl’s dollhouse is one of the stranger segments, entitled The House of the Head. Incidentally one of the carpets in the dollhouse matches the Overlook’s in the Shining.

giant Venus vampire

One of my favourite segments of this season was in episode 2, the aforementioned The Finger. Before it came Bad Wolf Down, a wholesome tale of werewolves killing Nazis during World War 2. The Finger follows a character Clark Wilson (DJ Qualls) who is a divorcee, living in a run-down house, barely getting by as a web designer and who likes to take walks and collect things (mostly useless junk). On one such excursion he finds a clawed finger – one which seems to absorb beer he spills and then grow into a whole arm. Eventually it grows into a demonic creature – he calls it Bob – who likes to please Clark by going out and killing people he dislikes… such as the “f*cking vampires” at the debt collection agency that keep ringing him, or his ex-wife. Qualls breaks the fourth wall as he tells the tale to camera (in a story explained way) and the story itself can either be read as Bob being real or a figment of homicidal delusion, perhaps even (as it grows through spilt beer) an expression of alcoholic rage.

vampire mummy mask

Episode 4’s the Companion has a neatly gothic atmosphere to its take of a scarecrow come to life and Night of the Paw (episode 5) is an interesting reworking of the Monkey’s Paw. Not every segment works as well as others and I think it’s a shame that the execution of Times Is Tough in Musky Holler (also episode 5) was not as good at the denouement as the concept itself, which was pretty fun. The Blu-ray set presents in widescreen over 2 discs and the transfer is lovely. This season is a bit light when it comes to the variety of extras – with the only extras being an audio commentary per episode, bar episode 5 with a director’s commentary from John Harrison and then a separate screenwriters’ commentary with John Esposito during Night of the Paw and then co-screenwriter John Skipp during Musky Hollow. I love anthology series and this one did hit the mark for me much more than it missed and as a Blu-Ray set I think a strong 7.5 out of 10 is fair.

The Season’s imdb page is here. Note that it lists an episode 7 and 8 – both specials and both appear on the season 2 Blu-ray set.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US (contents may vary to UK edition)

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Anunnaki The fallen of the sky – review

Directors: Joan Frank Charansonnet & Rubén Vilchez

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

I was contacted by a blog reader, some time ago, to suggest I look at this Spanish film, and I am going to have to beg forgiveness but I can’t remember who it was that gave me the tip – but thank you.

The Anunnaki were Gods described in early Sumerian texts but they also have become a focus for some conspiracy theories, with them offering their name to creatures controlling the world from a shadow government and being alien colonisers (ala Erich von Däniken’s crackpot, ‘God was an Astronaut’, theories). This is what they are in this.

Nibiru

So the opening of the film suggests they came from Nibiru (an invented planet tied into conspiracy and thought to be the cause of the apocalyptic catastrophe of 2003… wait... that didn’t happen, of course) and enslaved mankind as they used earth for resource. It suggests they merged human and Anunnaki DNA and eventually left, though some stayed. Apparently they stayed without their advanced technology (or ability to replicate it) as we never see them with sci-fi gubbins. They feed on human blood and suffering (so the later would indicate energy vampirism).

the Anunnaki anachronism

The film then moves to the 13th Century and a group of Anunnaki, led by Uruk, are in a chapel about to sacrifice a human woman. A group of knights are on their way to attack the monsters. The Anunnaki are able to kill her, gather her blood and drink it. The knights break in and there is a fight. Two things to note. Firstly, Uruk is able to “force push” the humans – this is an innate ability and not derived from tech. Secondly, he is wearing a modern leather jacket over a leather Brando jacket – as all the other outfits seem to replicate the clothes of the period it seems like the costume designers wanted to treat obviously store bought modern clothing as his and it looks awfully anachronistic.

Claudia taken

We then move to the modern day and we get a very confused plot around the sacrifice of the chosen one. They chose one victim, a model called Victoria, but soon swap her for a girl (who may or may not be her sister, that was unclear as I watched) called Claudia. All the clans have to agree but Uruk wants to sacrifice Claudia as she is a hybrid (her father was Uruk’s brother, who was executed for fraternising with a human). Claudia is sure people are following her but the police don’t believe her – until one detective does.

force push

Honestly, it’s a big old mess in a narrative sense and one never gets the feeling that the Anunnaki are in control of anything and one questions why they are against a hybrid if they were splicing the two species' DNA back whenever. Claudia is said to be the first human (or new species) who can see the fourth dimension (again, whatever that means) and can force push people also, she eventually discovers. There is another hybrid, but he is a sickly, green skinned creature who is kept locked up.

Uruk

The Anunnaki eyes can go red (and seems to be a telepathic link with each other, Claudia is confirmed as a hybrid when they cause her eyes to do the same), they can sprout fangs, appear to be extremely long lived and, as well as blood, like to eat meal worms and other creepy crawlies. They have horizontal slit eyes that they can cause to look like human round pupils. They, for supposed rulers of the world, all seem to congregate in one Spanish city and not rule very much.

Really, there isn’t much to go into with this, the film really is a bit of a mess. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Slash/Back – review

Director: Nyla Innuksuk

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Adding in elements that explore the coming of age of Inuit girls (this film tells its story through the eyes of a group of girls), and also touching on questions of alienation from tradition as these indigenous youth push away from their collective past but discover they need that tradition to survive, Slash/Back is a film that skirts around horror (it is perhaps a little more action, though has some tentacled moments and some interesting body horror) as it uses that youth lens but has alien vampires.

Tasiana Shirley as Maika

It begins on a ship as a father teaches his daughter Maika (played young by Niviaq Mike and older by Tasiana Shirley) to hunt. This is followed by a man out in the wild, in modern day, who sees something odd in the snow and is killed, with an implication that it has his face off. Elsewhere the older Maika seems embarrassed by her father and mother and both estranged from and ashamed of her indigenous heritage. We see this in things as simple as responding to her parents in English, to her desire to attack traditional art and food and dislike of her home, the town of Pangnirtung, Nunavut.

spotting the bear

After a moment where her little sister, Aju (Frankie Vincent-Wolfe), has some money conned from her by Maika’s friend Uki (the tough-as-nails Nalajoss Ellsworth) and she gets it back, she takes her father’s rifle and she, Uki, Jesse (Alexis Wolfe) and Lenna (Chelsea Prusky) take a boat out to the Land and leave Aju behind. After Uki has bragged about being a great shot, and Maika has refused to show off her shooting skills, they spot a bear acting odd, it walks strangely. About this time Aju finds them – having cycled – when Uki shoots the bear.

the bear attacks

It falls and then suddenly it is up and runs at Aju, who is frozen. It is on her before Maika can load and shoot but, once Maika can get the shot off, it falls and the young girl is shaken but otherwise unharmed. However, she is covered in a black oily substance, rather than blood. They return to the town and we see a tentacle or snake like thing emerge from the bear’s eye-socket and slink away. Back home the girls talk to their contemporaries about what happened – Uki suggests it was Ijirak – shapeshifting creatures that steal children in Inuit folklore but Maika reacts vehemently against the thought that it might be anything like that.

the parasite infested fox 

Having been invited to a party when the adults are out (it is solstice and the adults have a dance organised) the girls go out – with the grounded Lenna sneaking out and Uki not to be found as she has gone back to the Land because of a dare by Maika. There Uki sees a group of animals acting odd around a shape – which she realises is draining blood when it attaches a tentacle to prey and later suggests is some sort of ship (the leaps to understand what is occurring in this are taken on faith) – and is attacked by an artic fox. The fox has tentacles that emerge from its eyes and mouth and Uki manages to kill it by slitting its throat – getting the black blood on herself in the process.

wearing the cop like a disguise

Back at the village she crashes the party to tell everyone about the hunter aliens but we have seen a polar bear attack a cop and he has been taken over and enters the party hunting Uki. So, the aliens do drink blood, draining their prey dry, but then may wear the kill like an ill-fitting skin and can smell their own blood. They are hunting Uki and Aju until the primary girls turn the tables and, embracing their own traditions, hunt them back. As they work out what is happening they also work out that the blood fuels the aliens so their flesh puppets are quicker and stronger but falter when they run out of fuel, as it were. We do get a face ripped away and see inside one of the possessed (possessed is perhaps a bit strong given that it is more wearing skin).

the girls hunt the aliens

This is good fun, it is simplistic in how it explains the lore – as I said above the girls just seem to work out things in great narrative explaining leaps, but there are fab moments, like Maika and Jesse suddenly ignoring they are looking for killer alien parasites wearing a person as a disguise and argue over a boy. The tension between tradition and modernity is explored well – a line about folklore being old people stories made up because there was no internet was inciteful in its summing up of that tension. The acting is sometimes faltering, but works as a group of kids becoming adults and exposes their awkwardness.

face (mask) removed

The effects are fun – the fact that the human/aliens look like masks work, because they are actually skin masks and I enjoyed their inhuman, jerky movements. The whole effect side has a B quality to it that works with the sci-fi element. There is a whole bit of this that feels like a homage to the Thing – apt as we get Jesse explaining the plot of the film. There is an element of social justice with Maika wearing a jacket that says “No justice on stolen land”, a Caucasian cop hassling the kids and the film title, at the end, morphing to Land Back – so of course the idea of aliens coming, killing the animals and draining the blood of the animals and people fits into that narrative.

feeding

On the other hand, as fun as this is it does struggle to carry a horror element as well as it might, as well as moving the narrative explanations with leaps that felt too much of a character’s logical leap and so I think 6 out of 10 is fair. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK