The Terror – Devil in Silver – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2026

Contains spoilers

The Terror is an anthology TV series, where each season is a standalone story. Devil in Silver is season 3 and is the first in a contemporary setting. It locates itself in a secure mental health facility, and an underscoring theme is systemic failure in the US mental health services and healthcare generally. However, there is a presence in the hospital also.

Dan Stevens as Pepper

The primary character is Pepper (Dan Stevens, Abigail, Apostle & Vamps) a mover by trade, he was in a heavy metal band, as the drummer, and wants to do drum lessons for neighbourhood kids on the side. His girlfriend, Marisol (Juani Feliz), isn’t quite onboard with buying a drumkit – which he impulse does – and their call regarding the purchase is interrupted by her physically abusive ex. Pepper gets back, ends up assaulting the boyfriend, and fighting with a group intervening – who happen to be cops.

Judith Light as Dorry

The cops arrest him but they don’t want the paperwork and so take him to New Hyde hospital, a run down facility, whose chief doctor, Anand (Aasif Mandvi), admits him. Comply with treatment for 72 hours and he can leave, but compliance proves impossible, partly because it is made to be so - for instance he must take all his meds, but the meds knock him out so he can’t take certain doses and is thus non-compliant - and partly because his personality doesn’t handle compliance with authority well. What we have also seen is that something is haunting the hospital and is feeding on the misery of the patients.

CCH Pounder as Miss Chris

We see very early on two presences, later revealed to be one and the same. One is tied to an apparently comatose patient and seems to be capable of assaulting patients. The other seems to be the apparition of the founding (and deceased) doctor Walter (John Benjamin Hickey). It is head nurse Miss Chris (CCH Pounder) who later identifies the presence as a duppy – which is an Afro-Caribbean spirit that is sometimes thought to attach itself to someone and feed on their vitality and emotions. Later the duppy says the hospital had once provided good eating. Interestingly the lore she offers is that they can be stalled by throwing rice they have to count, this arithmomania being very much a trope of the vampire genre, along with a need to retreat to the spirit world when the sun rises.

the duppy in Dr Walter form

What we eventually discovered is that the duppy had attached itself to Dr Walter and became trapped in the hospital when he was murdered by an inmate. Walter was no angel, compulsively lobotomising patients, but this seems to be the influence of the duppy, which now takes his form, though his flesh often sags, offering an uncanny air. Towards the end of the season we see the duppy rip the flesh from his face to horrify the witness. He will take other forms and also communicates through payphones. With the duppy we also get vampiric possession, something akin to a vampiric ghost (the actual folklore has the duppy as the earthbound one of the two souls a person has), and the physical creature terrorising (and sometimes killing) the patients is the murderous and apparently comatose inmate when possessed. The duppy needs inviting in to a person.

the duppy in creature form

The season isn’t long – 6 episodes in total – with a denouement that perhaps speeds at the viewer a tad quickly. However it takes its time to build the characters and Dan Stevens gives a great performance, special mention should be given to Chinaza Uche who plays Pepper’s roommate Coffee and Judith Light who offers a fantastically nuanced performance as Dorry. The scares, however, were low with the season reaching for atmosphere and perhaps pulling away from being too visceral. The UK Blu-Ray has minimal special features, consisting of a picture gallery and a very brief inside look at the season. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Sex and Xen II – review

Director: Man-Kei Chin

Release date: 1996

Contains spoilers

The second in the series of films, I have previously given an honourable mention to the third film, which contained a fleeting visitation of energy vampirism. The vampirism is the central point of this film, indeed the blurb of the 88 Films Blu-ray release suggests a succubus. Whilst that western creature is not mentioned in the dialogue, the central villain does act like the myth where the incubus and succubus are the same creature (albeit this is not based around semen harvesting and subsequent impregnation as the Western myth can be).

Loletta Lee as Yiau

The film itself is a sex comedy, certainly at the level of sexploitation movies, the softcore sex does not stray into pornography and the film is underscored with the aforementioned comedy (albeit the humour of the bedroom farce). Whilst the first and third films were based on Chinese erotic novels, from what I can tell this was an original story (despite the blurb suggesting is was based on a “(notoriously fruity) classic of Chinese erotica” and the film showing books at the head of the film, one being the Carnal Prayer-Mat, which the first film was based on). It did take some of its beats from a variety of sources, however.

Elvis Tsui as Kin

It centres on the Sai-mun family; dad Kin (Elvis Tsui, the Seventh Curse and Sex and Zen III) is known for his iron member, which he has trained (we see some of the training though not the member). His first wife died and he now has three concubines. He has two children. His son has a learning disability but his daughter, Yiau (Loletta Lee, Mr Vampire 4 & The Musical Vampire) is clever and wants an education. After she meets a scholar named Fa-tau (Tat-Wah Lok), who mistakes her for a boy, she determiners to run away to school.

Yiau and Fa-Tau at school

She is caught but her father relents and allows her to go to school, so long as she wears chastity armour. The armour is weaponised, with spinning blades over breasts and buttocks and a nasty guillotine covering the pudenda. She successfully enrols and shares a dormitory with Fa-tau, who still believes she is male. However, during the night she has an erotic dream about him, he sees her still dreaming when he awakes, trips and falls member first into the guillotine. Ruined, she helps him to a monastery where (having dismissed becoming a gay prostitute or having a full sex change) he is fitted with an artificial mechanical penis.

Shu Qi as Mirage Lady

The monastery is visited by Mirage Lady (Shu Qi, Resurrection) to acquire a pamphlet on a form of mysticism that teaches an energy sucking magic, amongst other things. Yiau soon learns that her father is marrying her brother off to a woman – and we discover she is Mirage Lady. When his son fails to perform his conjugal duties, Kin takes them on and starts a scandalous affair with his daughter-in-law. The son dies, clearly at her hand, and then she starts preying on Kin’s concubines – sucking their Yin energy. This includes pulling them into a magical dimension and a rather tentacley scene. I mentioned incubus and succubus. She is able to morph from male to female and when she has a surfeit of Yin energy she will balance it by feeding off male Yang energy, and vice versa. She will change sex during a single encounter.

in the male form

So, there you have it – an energy vampire that changes gender and will feed on both male and female energies. The film itself looks absolutely sumptuous (and the 88 Films print is particularly gorgeous). The story isn’t as convoluted as it might have been, the cast work very well although some of the comedy sinks to the puerile at times. This one is definitely worth a look and I’ll balance the more puerile aspects with its sumptuous side by giving it a score of 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

The House That Drinks – review

Author: Alex Alicea

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Marrow’s Point has a house everyone avoids and one ambitious investor is determined to monetize it anyway. When restoration consultant Evelyn Hart steps onto the fog-choked property, the mansion seems to notice her. Doors lock themselves. Sound dies in the halls. Blood does not spill, it sinks into marble and wood like the building is thirsty.

This is Gothic Horror with teeth: a living Victorian mansion that behaves like an organism, studying people, learning what they fear, and deciding what they’re worth. Locals warn that even if you leave, “part of you becomes a room,” and the house is patient enough to make that prophecy feel inevitable.

Evelyn is hired by Lila Voss, a desperate dealmaker who refuses to slow down even as the house’s “charm” turns predatory. When Evelyn pushes back on hosting guests, Lila’s answer is blunt: “Whatever it takes.” The house seems to like that.

Then Detective Mark Calder gets pulled into the nightmare as the mansion’s history snaps into focus and the town’s “luck” starts looking like a bargain paid in blood. The house whispers offers of protection in exchange for feeding, and Mark realizes the missing-persons story may include his own family.

As the mansion tightens control, Lila accelerates a preview event, funneling dozens of guests into a structure that herds them like prey. To survive, Evelyn and Mark are forced into an uneasy alliance with Silas Crowe, a contractor who knows too much about what’s under the house, and Rowan, an unnervingly calm figure who feels far older than he should.

If you want a Vampire Horror Mystery where the monster is the building, the secrets are structural, and every locked door is a decision the house is making, step inside The House That Drinks… and try not to give it anything it can keep.

The review: Some people are very traditionalist when it comes to vampire stories, they are looking for a member of the undead, they expect certain tropes. Others like a wider view of what constitutes a vampire and I am of the second camp, as regular readers will likely attest. I particularly like the idea of a vampiric building and indeed wrote a chapter on just that subject for the Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. I was therefore really excited when I spotted this book and there are conceptual aspects that I really enjoyed but other facets that are worryingly poor.

The book follows Evelyn Hart, a house restorer employed to assess the Varrick House (a building that had many names and uses over the years, but was built by immortality obsessed Elias Varrick in the nineteenth century). The house, however, is a living being and, as the book goes on, we find out about the predatory creature sealed in a foundation stone that acts almost as heart and brain, are told of the living wood used in construction and are introduced to a design that was meant to allow immortality and does, kind of. The house not only drinks blood but drinks in the person, taking the memories and personality, trapping the essence within its walls as it slowly grows and changes. This then feels like a culmination of certain vampiric house traits, whilst the stealing of memory and personality makes the house a repository of undead memory. In that sense it was a conceptually exciting read.

What went wrong was in the writing. There is inconsistency throughout the book and, as I read it, I gave that the benefit of the doubt as some of the inconsistencies, certainly around the passage of time, may have been deliberate to give the whole thing an Unheimlich essence. That might be true in places but, for instance, the time setting jumps between January in one place and October in another, which seems it might be a change in concept by the author and the editing of a redraft was poor…

However the errors in names were pretty bad, Evelyn Hart becomes Evelyn Thorne at one point. At the same time in the book Detective Mark Calder temporarily becomes Mark Chen. Chen, incidentally, is a name used for several background characters in the narrative. At the end of chapter 17 they are held in the house, with it locking them in place, at the start of chapter 18 Evelyn is outside in the nearby town – charitably, this could be nonlinear, though there is no indication of this, or deliberate but the author neglected to put anything in that would indicate that to the reader, likely it was just sloppy. On a positive note, it does jar the reader, and so inadvertently it does add to the uncanny.

Characters repeat plot points they have already established as though new – though perhaps this was meant to be the impact of memory being drunk and the characters losing their minds (literally) but if so the author never let the reader know this was what they were doing. Attitudes regress with characters resigning to the truth of the house and then deciding that can’t be the case despite seeing absolute proof. The house’s custodian, Rowan Hale, is met for the first time in the nearby town but later we are told his binding to the house is so strong he cannot cross beyond the house’s property line. He tells how his family were bound to the house, suggesting the responsibilities were inherited, and he has seen its actions by observing past family members but also that he is the one that made the original deal, was bound and has aged extremely slowly since. This might be an untrustworthy narrator, an error in drafting or an inability to keep motivations and backstories straight.

Another thing I noticed was the house using Evelyn to draft blueprints to allow it to reproduce, there are seventeen of them. However, at the end suddenly the house itself is blueprint 11 and it is strongly suggested that there were ten house before and likely out there (an idea that didn’t fit with the backstory and a single captured predator at the heart of the house) and seemed a fudge to open the pathway for a sequel.

I think all this could be one of three things: 

One, that the author deliberately made unreliable narrators and had things change or aspects repeat to build in that Unheimlich element and make the narration itself a liminal space between facts and falsehoods. If this is true, then the failing is on the author for not making this clear to the reader. I managed to convince myself this was true so as to stay with the narrative and finish the volume, and this was because I loved the central idea of the vampiric house, but I don’t truly think that was the case.

Secondly it might conceivably be errors created because the author used AI, to a greater or lesser extent, in the writing process. The inconsistencies and errors would then likely be AI hallucinations. I sincerely hope that isn’t the case, though I also note the, apparently, AI illustrations on the Amazon product page. A worse scenario is that the author is a pseudonym/invention that entirely AI generated books are being attached to – there is very little about the author online and he seems to have published a large number of books in an incredibly narrow space of time.

Lastly it is simply sloppy writing and redrafting, with ideas shifting, rushed changes, and very poor subsequent editing (or none at all).

As stands, if you like the idea of vampiric buildings and can overlook the issues with the narrative it may be worth a go, and that bolsters the score to 3 out of 10, which is generous given the issues but a tragedy given the concept.

On Kindle @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Cult of Blood – review

Director: Robbie Lopez

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Very nearly a “Vamp or Not?” However, by dint of some fangs, a late bat-form and mention of a vampire cult this sneaks into review but the vampire content is incredibly low. It also features a woefully underused Michael St. Michaels from cult favourite The Greasy Strangler as both the mayor and an evil entity who might be an energy vampire.

In a building dubbed Castle del Vampire, which has a sign painted inside declaring it part of the Order of the Dragon, a woman with pink hair runs and screams as she is killed by three robed figures. Elsewhere a cop, Taggert (Kyle Ament, Protégé Moi), is putting up missing person photos. He shouts out to his partner Patrick Ashworth (Mikael Mattsson, also Protégé Moi) who we don’t see at this point – as an aside Mattsson is given full face sfx makeup for the character that is so obviously makeup one wonders why they bothered. Taggert goes off screen and a hooded man comes on screen and starts pulling the posters down. Taggert chases him to no avail.

Dave Sheridan as Todd

We get an advert for Todd-Wan-Do, a mixed martial art brought to the people of Chicago by Todd (Dave Sheridan, also Protégé Moi) at Castle del Vampire. Todd is the leader of the vampire cult. Over the road is a Christian bookstore run by Stacy Fields (Thomas Smith) who has called the cops, Taggert and Ashworth, about seeing a young innocent girl enter the place and then hearing screams. As they discuss this they see the (not innocent, according to Stacy) Princess Jill (Nadia White, Harvest of Horrors) enter – Ashworth develops an immediate crush. In the place Jill, Todd and Crystal (Felissa Rose, Nikos the Impaler & Pandemic Thirst), along with cult members, summon the giant head of their dark overlord and make a sacrifice – his words make it appear he feeds on their energy.

captured

Cutting to a pair of influencers, T-Rav (Dan Gregory) and Joey Danger (Jessie Hobson, also Protégé Moi) who are with their long-suffering girlfriends Donna (KateLynn E. Newberry) and Shirley (Larissa Dali) for date night (but still live streaming). Donna has invited Tom (Ryan A. Johnson), another influencer, and his girlfriend Cindy (Bearce Isabelle), along. They get to a bar, Tom gets drunk(er than the rest) and they attract a guy named Roach (Bryan Slusher) – unbeknown to them a member of the cult – who has a crush on Cindy (nothing is done with that in a meaningful plot way) and who subsequently lures them to the Castle… Once there, having found the previous sacrifice, their days are numbered as Todd decides to use them for the Blood Ritual.

fangs

The film kind of aimlessly ambles along. Things happen more for device and joke than anything else (there is a definite undercurrent of humour, with Dave Sheridan mugging the camera for laughs) and the vampire aspect is less than explored. Jill shows fangs occasionally, there are the names of the order and the castle and they call themselves a vampire cult at one point. The three main cult members refer to others in the cult as humans – indicating they are not. We also get, through ritual, Todd transforming into a bat creature. The tension is pretty absent and the influencers are annoying rather than sympathetic – I think deliberately so. The girlfriends are more sympathetic. I get what they were trying to do and this is a cut above Robbie Lopez’ Protégé Moi. More for a beer fuelled viewing, this does have its place. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

You and the Night – review

Director: Yann Gonzalez 

 Release Date: 2013 

 Contains spoilers 

I considered looking at this French arthouse film under the “Use of Tropes” heading but, ultimately, it is a vampire film, albeit sexual vampirism and I will look directly at that phenomena as I review the film. It is a film I was unaware of until noticing it recently on Shudder, which seems an odd home as I really didn’t read this as horror at all – though there is an overt supernatural aspect. Rather it is a film ostensibly about an orgy but truthfully more a character examination against that backdrop. 

riding into the night

It starts in the rain and Ali (Kate Moran, Vampires) sits on the back of a motorcycle, imploring the rider to wait as *he* said he would come, and calling out for Matthias (Niels Schneider). When his figure is seen running towards the bike, the rider sets off leaving him behind. Ali asks the rider who he is but gets no response and so feels his face (the helmet is a 3/4s one with no chin guard), touching round and in his mouth. Her ultimate reaction makes the viewer think she finds him somehow familiar… Ali wakes, suggesting the previous scene was a dream (or premonition), and she sits in snow with Matthias dead or dying in her lap. Udo (Nicolas Maury, Paris je T’aime) comes to them and Ali and Udo kiss, as they masturbate Matthias, this revives him.

Nicolas Maury as Udo

A note about Udo, who is described in things I have looked at as a transvestite, and certainly wears a maid outfit and tiara through the majority of the film but also referred to with a masculine pronoun in the film. As such there appears to be a fluidity of gender and so I am using they/them pronouns for the character. Matthias suggests that he had gone to the land of the dead, a place ruled by children violently killed, robbed of their potential and hatred had made them monstrous. Udo reminds them that their guests are due to arrive soon for the planned orgy. I wondered as I watched this as to how the guests were invited, as it wasn’t revealed. They all carry and use stereotyped names, and, to some degree, it almost appears that fate drew them to the event.

the Stud and the Star

The first to arrive is the Slut (Julie Brémond), or so she is called in the English subs, in the French she is called La Chienne or the Bitch. She is ready to party, but she is told to wait for all the guests and is introduced to the jukebox – a device that reads the person through their palm and plays music based on their mood. Next to arrive, coincidentally together, are the Stud (Éric Cantona) – in French L'Étalon or the Stallion – and the Teen (Alain-Fabien Delon) – in French L'Adolescent. The final guest to arrive is the Star (Fabienne Babe). She demands the lights are turned off, and remain off, before she enters and kisses each guest passionately in the dark until the Slut turns the lights on, out of curiosity, which freaks the Star but the earnestness of the Teen causes her to stay.

Ali widowed

The film explores their stories, often presented to the viewer in a surreal style, but from our point of view it is Ali, Matthias and Udo’s story that is important, which they are open about when the guests enquire. Ali and Matthias were young lovers who married – this is suggested to be centuries before. Unfortunately, there was a war and Matthias had to go, writing home for two months until the letters stopped and then Ali was informed that he was killed. Ali then spent her nights in widow’s black at his grave. She was approached there by Udo, a gypsy who claimed that Matthias’ spirit had implored their help and they could bring Matthias back for her. Before Udo appears, mist curls around the gravestone and Ali, reminiscent of a mist from which a vampire emerges.

Matthias returns

That night Matthias visited Ali, the side of his face wounded with maggots writhing in the wound (modern Matthias wears an eye patch on that side). He tells Ali that she can trust Udo – and his visitation immediately brought the idea of Death and the Maiden to mind as well as the ballad Lenore by Gottfried August Bürger, which supplied the line "Denn die Todten reiten schnell!" as used by Bram Stoker in Dracula. Reassured by Matthias she allows Udo to perform their ritual, which invokes Lucifer and sexual deviancy to enable Matthias’ return. They go to the graveyard and dig him up and when lifted from the grave he does revive. On that revival his wounded face is mostly healed through Ali’s kisses, bar his eye – death always claims a souvenir.

Matthias and Ali

Udo had levelled a price for their service. They had observed Ali and Matthias as the most passionate of couples and the price is the couple allow them to remain with them to observe and indulge in their passion. Udo suggests they are immortal and, like them, Ali will be immortal also but Matthias’ life depends on Ali’s desire, he has to feel it vibrating and pulsating, whether stimulated by him or others. They state categorically that vitality is the important part and also warn that sadness cannot take over. So, it is implied that the orgy will stimulate Ali’s desire and she will impart that vitality to maintain Matthias’ undead state but he has seemed melancholy throughout and this maybe why he seems to be edging towards the land of the dead. Though on the surface this makes Ali seem like a succubus, there is no suggestion that the orgy will harm any of the guests in her doing so, and more so Matthias is an incubus feeding from the vitality of desire – though it is only his immortal lover that feeds him (and heals him, her kisses previously seen to heal his face). It also needs to be noted that the Teen comments on loving the night “where only vampires and lunatics lurk.”

Alain-Fabien Delon as the Teen

The film obviously has sexual themes throughout – it is the story of an orgy – but the characterisation and stories, the revealed flaws and acceptance of the characters, are the important narrative, and the sexuality takes a backseat (and is perhaps drawn a lot less passionately than it might have been). It is absolutely queer, not just through the gender fluidity of Udo but in the fact that the guests could all be described as pansexual and refreshingly matter of fact around that. One might criticise the fact that flaws are highlighted underpinning their queerness, but the flaws are the underpinning of the narratives. There are also taboo subjects such as incest within the narrative. On the (understated and perhaps subverted) vampire side there was something (in both Ali and Matthias' characters and attitude) of Adam and Eve from Only Lovers Left Alive and interestingly they premiered at Cannes Film Festival within 5 days of each other. Only Lovers is more traditionally vampire but, overall, I preferred this as a film 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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

Bite School 2: Bite Squad – review

Director: James Balsamo

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

To get the chronology right, this is a 2025 sequel to James Balsamo’s 2015 film Bite School (at the beginning of this Balsamo’s character Tony meets briefly meets the character George and they say that it’s been 10-years). It is subtitled on some of the artwork as Bite Squad and on others as From Dusk Til Bong, which was a 2022 Balsamo flick which also featured his Tony character. All three films are in the Blu-Ray set “James Balsamo’s Thrilling Three Pack”.

Robo Dracula (whole)

When I reviewed Bite School, I said “This is not a good film, by that I mean as a piece of cinema it does not rank particularly high. However, it doesn’t try to rank high either.” This is just as true of this, if not more so. Tony and George meet in a garden (the sets are very limited in this) and observe a group of vampires with a naked sacrifice. The head vampire is speaking tech speak and has the head of Robot Dracula (Joe Castro). Wires attach (and enter) the sacrifice and draw her energy to bring him new life.

Camazotz

Tony is the chosen one, who will destroy Robo-Dracula with help from the bite squad and the film is filled with talking head interviews as a mockumentary being filmed by someone in the school at the centre of the first film. There are, therefore, plenty of excuses for cameos of musicians and genre stars. Before he can get Robo-Dracula there are other head vampires he must destroy – starting with Mayan bat God Camazotz. In a sequence that involves Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe having his flesh stripped by drawn bats, Tony whips Camazotz but, rather than destroy it, uses it as a ride.

Mimeula

Following that we get him going to France to take on Mimeula (Stu Silverman) a vampire who turns a woman into a mime when he bites her. He also goes to Germany to defeat Krampus – yup Krampus is a vampire in this. This sequence of the three head vampires takes less than ten minutes of film time. We get a scene with Vlad Ţepeş, back in the day, being bitten by a skeletal bat creature and thus becoming a vampire (who will eventually be Robo-Dracula). 

Krampus

There really isn’t much else when it comes to story. It is just gags, low budget props (cardboard circular sawblades, for instance) and a parade of characters and cameos. Yet, still, Balsamo is having a hoot – as are many of those in it. It failed, however, to keep my attention as well as the first one (probably because the story was even thinner than the previous). 3 out of 10 but, again, like the first film it is more than the sum of its score (though perhaps closer this time round) and James Balsamo fans will know what they’re getting and enjoy it.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

It Feeds – review

Director: Chad Archibald

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers  

Vampiric entities appear in films, not necessarily undead – perhaps demonic, perhaps an inhabitant of another dimension – but they want to feed. Of course I was going to watch a film called It Feeds, it may or may not have proven to be about a vampiric creature, but the title was certainly an attractor. As it happens the entity proved to be an energy vampire.

in the classroom

It starts with Cynthia (Ashley Greene, Twilight & Sequels) stood in a school setting, the blackboard covered in writing attesting to the wolf. She walks as the wind blows through the school and enters an office, a coach (David Thompson) sat facing away and a child (Jayden Kirton) in a cage. If it all looks dreamlike, well it kind of is because it is a brainscape. She tries to encourage the child to let himself out of the cage but he is scared. Eventually he tries but the coach turns and a whiskey glass explodes, cutting her arm. The child retreats, she says they can try next time and she begins to chant under her breath.

Ashley Greene as Cynthia

She opens her eyes in the real world, removing her fingers from the forehead of her client Larry (Dov Tiefenbach, the Strain). Cynthia runs a home psychiatry practice, but she has the ability to step into people’s minds – though what happens to her in the mind happens in reality, so she has a cut arm from the glass. As the film progresses, we discover her clients are sworn to secrecy, they were driven from one town by superstitious townsfolk. Her husband had the same ability but he attempted to wrest an entity from a client and subsequently hung himself. Cynthia’s 17 years-old daughter, Jordan (Ellie O'Brien), screens her clients and does online research to help. Occasionally Cynthia has been able to tip the police as to wrong doers who hurt her clients.

entity behind her

There is a banging on the door and it is a young girl, Riley (Shayelin Martin). She has snuck away from her dad, Randall (Shawn Ashmore, The Ruins) , and she is desperate for Cynthia’s help – apparently a previous client, Agatha (Juno Rinaldi, Jennifer’s Body), had mention Cynthia to Randall and Riley overheard. Jordan is screening her and she talks about a thing she sees. She suggests it stares like a starving dog and is in the room, it caused the scars on her arms (which look like burns), she claims, and it is always hungry. Cynthia walks into the room and can see it, when Randall bursts in and drags his daughter away.

Ellie O'Brien as Jordan

Jordan wants to help the girl but Cynthia refuses to help, she knows it is a real, malevolent entity and out of her skill area. However Jordan manages to follow up, find their home and is captured by Randall for her troubles. Randall’s wife was a nurse who did overseas nursing and it is implied picked the entity up there. It essentially devoured her over time, draining her life and causing massive physical deterioration – the hospital she ended up in believed it was some sort of flesh-eating disease hitherto unknown. When she died, Riley was in the room and the entity passed over to her. Randall has been kidnapping people and the entity has eaten them through Riley (as a conduit) – the energy transference burning them. The entity speaks to the host and, when we hear it speak it says “Feed Me”. In the kerfuffle that follows, Riley dies, Jordan becomes the host and Cynthia has to defeat the entity – not helped by Randall deciding to defeat the entity himself with a plan to bury Jordan alive and let her die with no-one near to become the next host.

enthroned

This was interesting, the idea of being able to enter a patient’s trauma to help them psychiatrically was neat, though similar has been done before. However the entity was a nice touch. Definitely an energy vampire, but one never sated, in its own dreamscape it sits on a throne like chair and controls vine like tendrils. There are moments were you do have to suspend disbelief – Jordan is bound, Riley brings clippers and puts them in her behind-her-back-hands rather than snips the cable ties round the wrists. This led to a tension moment and a delay in escape. But, then again, Riley is a scared child. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Guest Blog – Rusalka, A key to Early Vampire Film – TMtV 20th anniversary

It’s with great pleasure I welcome David Anwnn Jones to the blog. Whereas with other guest bloggers for this 20th anniversary celebration I have put a little forward of how I met the guest, with David he wrote something on that himself and so I’ll hand straight to him:

It is a great pleasure to be asked to write a post for Andy Boylan’s ‘Taliesin meets The Vampires’ twentieth anniversary year. I have long admired this vampire film expert’s writing with its wide knowledge of vampire lore and cinematics. In 2016, I convened the World Vampire Congress, Whitby where Andy delivered his fascinating talk on Stoker and vampire bat iconography. Since then, I have followed his blogs which spread an awareness of film vampires over a wide range of transnational environments, often remote from Hollywood. I have also enjoyed our extensive correspondence.

In his appreciation of Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy’s The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead (2018) from 9 Sept 2019, Andy writes:

 

Now mermaid is a misnomer here and it is what the title has been translated to from the Russian title Rusalka: Ozero myortvykh. The rusalka is from Slavic lore and is a form of restless dead. Zelenin (in Russian Folk Belief) suggests it is a suicide or murder victim who, in either case, was drowned. There is an entry in Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology that has it as a type of fae created when a child dies before baptism or an adolescent dies a virgin.

The foundation myth here is that of the malefic underwater female who lures handsome men beneath the surface to enjoy them sexually and then drains them of life. Andy certainly reads the Rusalka as an energy vampire. Bane goes on to write she’s a ‘vampiric fae’ and member of the Unseelie Court. Vladimir Propp and Linda Ivanits called the rusalka one of the ‘unclean dead’, a revenant. Thomas J. Garza in The Vampire in Slavic Cultures writes that the boundary between vampires and the rusalka as predatory outsider was porous in village lore. Such links reveal that the Rusalka is the oldest surviving vampire figure in cinema history in an extant film, predating F W Murnau’s Nosferatu by over a decade and Lugosi’s Dracula by 21 years.

The rusalka myth is perennially fascinating. galvanising directors and writers today. Podgaevskiy’s film is surrounded by other cinematic she-vampires of the deep: Petr Weigl and Václav Kaslik’s respective versions of Dvorak’s opera, 1963 and 77, Aleksandr Petrov’s animated Mermaid Rusalka 1996, Gary Whitson’s Destiny: Vampire Mermaid 1999, Sebastian Gutierrez’s She Creature 2001, François Rousillon’s Rusalka 2002 TV movie, Anna Melikyan’s Mermaid/ Rusalka 2007, Don E. Fauntleroy’s Bering Sea Beast / Beast of the Bering Sea 2013. Milan Todorovic’s Mamula /Nymph/ Dark Sea /Killer Mermaid 2014 and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, 2015. Nearer to the present, Perry Blackshear, Lona Fontane, Dale Thomas Cizmadia and Claudiu Mitcu’s have all made Rusalka films. Though the primary means of predation in these films is drowning, there is no shortage either of feeding, directly and by osmosis, strangulation, sharp fangs, blood-letting and sucking, and other vampiric depredation

I wish to make a bridge from these films, stretching back to the early dawn of Russian horror cinema. Vasili Goncharov’s foundational Rusalka film of 1910 is based on the play by Alexander Pushkin and stars Andrey Gromov as The Prince, Vasili Stepanov as The Miller and Aleksandra Goncharova as Natalya, the miller’s daughter and subsequently the Rusalka queen.

 

The film starts with Natalya, visibly longing for her lover, the Prince, who, when he arrives, throws her aside to marry a woman of royal blood. Distraught. Natalya drowns herself in the river. Yet, at the wedding feast, her ghost appears accusing the Prince, even within the nuptial bedroom. For eight years, the Prince obsesses over the dead working-class girl and finally rides back to mill, encountering her father who, driven mad with grief, imagines that he is now a raven. Led by Natalya, the rusalka spirits appear, amongst them a young girl who could be Natalya’s unbaptised daughter (unborn when her mother committed suicide). Natalya and the young girl and others lure the prince into the Dnieper river. His present wife arrives later only to find his clothes. On the riverbed, in what initially seems to be a Mélièsan tableau, Natalya, now queen of the Rusalka, caresses his corpse while other her maidens perform a swaying dance. For 1910, the same year as Frankenstein, the film, (which can be viewed here) is a considerable achievement, more indebted to the structure and rhythms of Pathé early films than Edison.

The cinematic Rusalka has survived perhaps because, whatever the seismic pull from Western horror cinema, it has proved difficult to Dracularize a Slavic female water-fiend. (Yet, the ‘feeding of the beast’ in Luc Besson’s Dracula (2025), whereby a feral mer-maiden rises to threaten horrified fairground visitors might hint that pressure is now being exerted in the opposite direction), The rusalka’s miraculous survival from a fractured and decimated Russian film industry also opens the gate for an awareness of the first female age of vampire films. She was originally part of a constellation of film’s female vampires, a whole distinctive age 1901-21: the Lilith of Lilith and Ly, Vera in Afterlife Wanderer (1915) the Pannochka of Goncharov’s Viy (1909) and the cat vampire of Nabeshima (1912), all notorious female monsters in their time but starring in films now lost. Yet their early dominance is still attested in surviving stills, scripts, reviews and posters.

I do not wish to be politically glib, but the story of a young woman mis-used by a prince and who subsequently commits suicide but takes her revenge from beyond the grave is not without strong resonance in 2026. Like any vivid revenant of the screen, even after 115 years and against all the odds, Aleksandra Goncharov’s vampiric mer-demon still rises towards us from the shadows of pre-Soviet cinema with a flickering intensity. She points at the feckless prince over his wedding feast. She follows her faithless lover right into his marital bedroom accusingly. She and her daughter stalk the shores of the Dnieper. They lure the royal philanderer into the river-depths. In her underwater apotheosis, she will instate her revenge and caress her man’s prone body, absorbing all his former strength. She will not lie down. Happy Anniversary ‘Taliesin meets the Vampires.’ Long may you run. The first age of vampire cinema was female.

David Annwn

David Annwn is author of Gothic Machine, Sex and the Gothic Magic Lantern and Gothic Effigy. He is also author of the first book on vampires in early film: Vampires on the Silent Screen, Re-envisaging the First Age of Cinematic Horror and essays in each volume of The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic series. A magic lanternist, David is a recognised authority on E-G Robertson’s Phantasmagoria show, being the first to locate its original site. Sir Christopher Frayling called David’s work ‘fascinating materials and connections: Vampire archaeology.’ Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney has called his writing: ‘wonderfully sympathetic and accurate.’

Breathing In – review

Director: Jaco Bouwer

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Based on a play by Reza de Wet, this South African film, set within the Boer War, maintains that stage foundation by mostly holding the set to the inside of a barn with moments just outside, with a wagon, but in the dark as rain falls. As such it relies heavily on the actors to bring the narrative alive. What we have, in a lore sense, is a breath stealer – which is a type of vampirism akin to energy vampirism and the fact that there is a character, which codes with a witch, fits with this.

figure in the wagon

The film opens with said wagon in silhouette against the sunset and an intertitle that mentions the use of concentration camps by the British – imprisoning women and children to break the fight in the Boers – and the number of deaths this led to. The camera pulls back and we see that farmland is on fire in the distance and a black hooded figure within the wagon.

Michele Burgers as Annie

Opening in the barn there is Anna (Michele Burgers) and her daughter Annie (Jamie-Lee Money), led in a stupor is the Boer General (Lionel Newton), looking frail and grey. Annie is languid, strapped to a chair (to keep her sat upright). She claims sleepiness and Annie straps her straight in the chair to keep her awake (or she may not wake again). She tells her she’ll be strong again soon and dresses her as she knows someone will be with them soon.

Sven Ruygrok as Brand

That someone is Adjutant Brand (Sven Ruygrok). As the film progresses it seems that he had Anna stay with the General, as she is a healer, in the barn on the General’s land (the farmhouse is destroyed), and he has returned after delivering despatches. However, reality is warped in this film and Anna is manipulative, so at times he cannot remember how they met and came to be there. Anna’s blackened fingers, use of herbalism and mannerisms codes her as the witch I mentioned. She is manipulating Brand into having feelings for Annie.

Anna and Brand

Annie is the vampire – though it seems not her fault. Later in the film Anna talks about Annie's conception and Anna being with her father (who had the blackest eyes). He was a dowser she met and fell in love with but, after spending time with her, he left, though by then she was pregnant. She made a vow that she would give up the child to be with him again and, eventually, the child died in the womb and he returned... but only to have her make a potion or spell to bring him his unrequited love. She strangled him and his last breath escaped and entered her (carnally) bringing the foetus back to life (so we can code Annie as undead).

restraints show in the mirror

The lore is sparse, the film relying on producing a sense of uncanniness and mystery. Outside, for instance, red eyed creatures stand sentinel, and one rips apart a horse (that has been shot) but we see little more than a distant silhouette against the night, with glowing eyes, and the film does not expand. Mysterious people appear for a moment in the barn (perhaps a concentration camp). In a reflection it looks like Annie is held in metal, restraining head gear. This leads us to wonder about the reality presented.

hoofed

Equally we see, through Brand’s point of view, Annie’s legs momentarily become hoofed animal legs or Anna transforming into a bird of prey for a split second. We are told that Anna and Annie travel by night, Brand assumes to avoid the British, but Annie says it is because “We can't bear the daylight. It hurts us.” It does feel that tying Annie and Brand emotionally is being done to increase the potency of his last breath but it is also revealed that his youth is a factor – she could take the General’s last breath but he is old and it is not potent.

Lionel Newton as the general

The film relies on atmosphere, uncanny moments and the strength of the performances and, in that regard, Michele Burgers does much of the heavy lifting with a powerhouse performance. However, this film is almost the definition of a slow burn and, whilst it revels in mystery and ambiance, a viewer wanting something more immediate and visceral could well be disappointed. I was not, I was thoroughly absorbed in the film. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

Draculaw – review

Director: Scott Deschaine

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

A horror comedy (mostly a comedy, to be fair) this not only tickled me but also used a rather unusual trope for the vampire. Of course the title brings Dracula to mind but there is no indication that the vampire at the centre of the film is Dracula, Referred to throughout as The Counselor (James Donahue) he is a lawyer (whereas Dracula hired lawyers) and it is with this vampire plying that trade that we start.

a vampire's contract

Though we only see hands, we hear the conversation between the Counselor and his client Frederick Rockman (Tom McFarland). Rockman wants to start a lawsuit against a rival and, whilst it sounds as though the vampire is trying to caution him, in fact it is clear he tempts him and has him sign a contract. The lawsuit fails and a series of counter claims are lodged against Rockman, eventually settled, though almost ruining him, there then comes the matter of the vampire’s invoice…

Sarah Dewey as Mary

We meet Mary Rockman (Sarah Dewey) as she takes her father into the nursing home. As she goes in she meets a youngish man, mistaking his room for a media room. He is Arc Gabriel (Joshua Greene) – the owner of the nursing home. Once a crack young lawyer, five years earlier something happened that smashed his confidence and he gave up law and moved into the nursing home. Mary tries to solicit his help, at first to no avail. However, after her father passes, his lost briefcase is discovered and they realise they share the same nemesis, at which point he relents – this renewed confidence shows in the filmmakers removing the makeup that made him look haggard.

James Donahue as the Counselor

Arc lost his briefcase when, celebrating a win with his engineer girlfriend Penny (Bessie Amato), the bridge they were on collapsed (invariably due to the Counselor). Her head was never recovered… Meanwhile the vampire is not only a lawyer but he has a pet politician (Dennis Mowery) and makes him get safety laws passed that are annoying and bog people down (there are a range shown through the film and they all take the concept of health and safety to ridiculous levels). This is done for a reason, it causes people to loose time and the vampire feeds on the lost time. He also cannot break a law (or at least cannot break a law and get caught), which is the apotropaic of the film. We, at the end, see him in a nebulous, smoke form where Arc combats him with the law (in the form of a book).

a vampire in the old country

There are various monsters (many seen in the coda) and Arc gets some lore help from home resident Sasha (Adela-Adriana Moscu, One for the Road) who tells him about vampires in the old country – and we get a flashback of a vampire, who is described as ghastly and far from the movie image of a vampire – and also points out that fellow home resident Mrs Hoover (Gerri Weagraff) is an energy vampire. But it is our lawyer vampire that is most fascinating in this with his diet of time. Of course the conflation of lawyer and vampire is telling in and of itself and the film plays with a satirical look at “health and safety gone mad”.

skull-headed bridal revenant

The film isn’t perfect… the haggard makeup for Arc is, quite frankly, rather stage-like, some of the green screen work is very obviously green screen and it isn’t evenly paced. That said some of the effects are brilliant. A skull-headed bridal revenant (Heather Cole) is brilliantly realised, for instance. There isn’t much horror to this; though the vampire's lower face is always covered (due to a horrendous accident, is the cover story, though likely due to a monstrous visage), he is actually more designed to be annoying. The main thrust is comedy, and I was amused, and enjoyed the unusual lore. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK