Patience: Vampire – review

Director: Maarten Moerkerke

First Aired: 2026

Contains spoilers

I think it true to say that, generally, vampires get everywhere and so it wasn’t a shock when Ian contacted me to say that the first season 2 episode of crime drama Patience was entitled Vampire. I was unaware of the show but quickly found out that it is a crime drama, set in York, where the main character Patience (Ella Maisy Purvis) is an autistic woman, working in criminal records, but embroiled in police cases as the detective inspector has discovered how sharp her investigative mind is. I later discovered that this is a remake of a French series, Astrid et Raphaëlle, which is in its sixth season (at time of posting).

Ella Maisy Purvis as Patience

Being unaware of the series, coming in cold as it were, can make it difficult as you are unaware of some of the goings on, the character traits and interactions etc. It is just the hope that the vampire tale is strong enough to carry a genre interest – unfortunately the vampire aspect was not played on as much as it might. It was, I discovered, a time of flux for main character Patience as the DI who drew her in has moved on and the new DI, Frankie Monroe (Jessica Hynes), doesn’t understand why a non-copper is in her meetings and has even less knowledge and understanding of autism.

moody shots of York 

The episode starts with moody shots of York – a perfect setting for Gothic Horror that isn’t exploited really – and then we see a woman, Marina Murray (Jeany Spark) – obviously a riff on Mina Murray – enter a dimly lit photography exhibition. She is looking for artist Jonathan Starper (Julian De Backer) – again a riff, this time on Jonathan Harker – and finds him, with a wooden stake through the chest. She screams.

bites?

When the police are at the crime scene it begins to look like he has been drained of blood and Patience spots the two incisions in his neck – as an aside, these seem to be there and not be there in different shots, I can’t make my mind up whether it was an unfortunate angle thing or just poor continuity. There is commentary around this point around needing garlic. Later the medical examiner ascertains that the wounds were created posthumously and that the blood (which is completely drained) was taken through ankle incisions as he was strung up. It is also discovered that he was blood type Rh-null – the incredibly rare, so-called Golden Blood. This then directs the investigation and there is no further mention of vampires. We do get Patience carrying and returning to the library a copy of Dracula and a medical company, where blood is procured for a sickle cell patient, called Helsing. When the case is cracked, they don’t even return to the posthumous fang marks.

staked

And that is disappointing. There are plenty of vampire related episodes of shows set in the real world that exploit a willingness to believe in vampires – this did not. The vampiric aspect is window dressing and flimsy at that. I actually did enjoy the depiction of Patience, an altercation with a motor bike (its presence unnoticed until a near miss partly because of her noise cancelling headphones) and the nicely done panic attack, showed an insight to autistic reaction. I loved the neurodivergent self-help group we briefly see as they try and navigate a neurotypical world. But the vampire aspect left me disappointed (and that’s impacting the score as I am looking at it from a vampire genre point of view). This is based on a season 3 episode of Astrid et Raphaëlle, which I intend to watch to compare and contrast. 4 out of 10 reflects a lack lustre use of vampires within an otherwise interesting episode.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable mention: Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated – Season 1

This was the first season of the 2010-2013 incarnation of Scooby-Doo as a serial cartoon where there was an overarching story arc. In actual fact, I did look at this season’s vampire episode, the Secret Serum, previously. Now, when I reviewed that I said “There is an estrangement between Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) – who were, it appears, an item. Plus Fred (Frank Welker) and Daphne (Grey DeLisle) seem to have issues, making the gang drift apart in different directions by the end of this – distractions; what we want is mystery solving not soap opera teen romance. For heaven’s sake we are watching a talking dog…”

vampire film

I do not take that back – the introduction of character romance (and romantic failings, in the case of Velma and Shaggy) seemed a distraction as I watched the whole thing – but there was enough mystery solving and Scooby-ness to keep me going back to it (indeed, I might be the father of an adult son but I’ll always maintain that Scooby is for all ages). In Fact, despite the more soap aspect, the season was perhaps darker than other Scooby-Doo series and, as it happens there were (beyond the vampire episode) some vampire connections through the season that were worth mentioning here.

the Bloody Stake steak house

First of all was a restaurant in Crystal Cove (the town that seems to attract fake paranormal activity at a rate of knots). A steak house, one assumes, called the Bloody Stake, which has a vampire logo. The restaurant appears in three episodes of the season and is most notable for Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (Frank Welker) being refused any more helpings on the "All You Can Gorge" night.

stake in hand

We see Shaggy and Scooby about to indulge in the Vincent Van Ghoul (Maurice LaMarche) movie marathon at one point. Due to this we see a tad of a vampire film staring Van Ghoul as a vampire hunter, stake in hand, with the implication that he is fighting off an army of vampires. Van Ghoul is, clearly, based on Vincent Price and I understand that Warner Bros received Price’s estate’s permission to use his likeness and voice.

vampire bust

Van Ghoul actually appeared in the 13 Ghost incarnation of Scooby-Doo and, in this season, his fans Shaggy and Scooby actually meet him when they win a competition to have dinner with him (which is a set up for a new ‘scare’ reality TV show Van Ghoul has, but leads them to saving him from a monster). In the house we see a Poster for O’Vampy, one of his films, and a vampire bust/mask out on display in the horror icon’s mansion.

teen Vamp literature

Lastly, the gang becomes embroiled for a second time with professor and horror author H.P. Hatecraft (Jeffrey Combs, Holiday Hell, Frightmare, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead & Dark House) – as an aside, Hatecraft is obviously modelled on Lovecraft, who Combs played in Necronomicon. In their second encounter Hatecraft is being ousted by Regina Wentworth (Kari Wahlgren), author of Teen vampire series Dusk (made up of Dusk: Forbidden Love, Dusk: Early Evening and Dusk: Just Before Bedtime). There is a cut-out of the main vampire character causing Daphne to muse at what Fred would look like with “fangs and skin the color of boiled pork”.

Daphne dates an actor

So, there we have the additional vampire references in Season 1 of Mystery Incorporated. Note that in Season 2 there was the reappearance of the Bloody Stake a couple of times and Daphne dating the actor from the Dusk films – but no real vampire reference otherwise. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: The Haunting of Hill House

I had never read Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, which is shameful given one of my favourite films, The Haunting (1963), was based on it. I recently rectified the situation and read the novel, though I didn’t expect to give an honourable mention here.

I knew that the 1963 adaptation was pretty faithful to the book but there is nothing within the film that could have it (and the house at the centre) labelled as a vampiric building text. This is not true of the later (and also excellent) Mike Flanagan adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, which made the house vampiric (and the least said about the 1999 film the better).

The house in the novel, however, is immediately coded as living and sentient (if mad):

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

There is a suggestion that it sought to feed from inhabitants when we are told, “The sense was that it wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe—”. Had the theme been expanded on then I would have been suggesting that the house was, indeed, vampiric but, as a throwaway, I will say it certainly flirts with the trope and this could lead to a vampiric reading.

The mention is offered as Jackson certainly draws the reader to the vampiric on a couple of occasions by associating the house with an imagined vampire inhabitant. In one exchange about housekeeper Mrs Dudley we get:

“‘She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it’s probably part of what she agreed to.’
“‘Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?’
“‘You think he lives in Hill House?’
“‘I think he spends all his week-ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork downstairs.’”

Later we get another mention, whilst discussing Mrs Dudley leaving the house in a car with two others (one of whom was her husband, who the characters had met at the gate of Hill House, but who the second person might have been is never discussed further):

“‘First Murderer must be Dudley-at-the-gate; I suppose the other was Count Dracula. A wholesome family.’”

The use of Dracula is interesting as Castle Dracula was meant, at one point, to be intimately connected with the vampire, collapsing on his death. In this case it is a mention in passing but I would suggest the mention was deliberately used in order to invoke a particular Gothic feel for the reader. Nevertheless, the invocation of Dracula within the text opens the opportunity for me to mention the book here.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Katharina

I’ll be honest this Anglo/Romanian ghost story, directed by Florian Zapra and released in 2022, was somewhat excruciating. However, it definitely uses some pretty darn obvious tropes – mostly location and character backstory – and is of genre interest as a result. It centres round a load of Romanian kids (I guess they were supposed to be late teens, but some seemed somewhat younger) in Bistrița, and an English exchange student Raul (Raul Szanto). The Romanian kids decide to take Raul into the Carpathians for some camping fun.

arriving at Hotel Castel Dracula

To get there they hire a ride, and several sneak into the hatchback as too many are travelling. The driver (Florian Zapra) is a drunk but gets them to the hotel that marks their starting point. En route they establish that he does not speak English. The hotel is the real life Hotel Castel Dracula, which is some 3.5 KM from the Borgo Pass. In that respect the drive is almost parallel to the journey in Dracula - indeed when at the hotel exterior, the camera lingers on the statue there of Bram Stoker.

with the ghost

This is the nearest Raul gets to vampires, something he had been interested in, but the uncanniness begins here also, with the driver who doesn’t speak English warning Raul in English to beware of the woods (a sensible warning for forest with a large bear and wolf population, to be fair) and Raul realising that the driver has vanished from a group photo he took. This, of course, makes him as mysterious as the Count’s coachman in Dracula. As they start their hike, Raul hears something calling him and wanders off, ending up in an abandoned building – suggested later to be the shell of a hotel. Within there he sees a ghost, Katharina (Ely Ciotmonda).

Ely Ciotmonda as Katharina

The Romanian lads find him and undertake to catch the ghost – to become rich. They eventually find and speak to her and ask her to come with them and essentially assimilate into the modern world and she agrees. There is a makeover later, where her clothes are exchanged for modern ones and makeup disguises her pallor. The other genre connection the film offers occurs when she tells Raul that she is 549 years old, named Katharina (but wants a new name) and was married to Vlad Dracul (which would have been the father but I suspect they were suggesting Vlad Ţepeş). .

the gang

And that’s it, all the vampiric connection. The kids try and assimilate Katharina into their world, she ends up invading their dreams (or nightmares as they die in each dream) and then they essentially scare her off with harsh words. It doesn’t do much, generally, the acting is amateurish, in honesty, but there was at least a nub of an idea and some genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon – review

Author: Barry Maher

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: It’s 1982. Steve Witowski, a failed songwriter on the run from the law, finds himself caught in a supernatural thriller after an apparently innocent act of heroism—saving a woman from a vicious assault by a seemingly unstoppable wino. The woman, Victoria, is just part of a mystery Steve can’t unravel. Even as he’s looting the decomposing dead for the secrets of a self-proclaimed sorcerer. Even as he plummets into a nightmare of fire and blood and murder. Even then, Steve remains certain the sorcerer’s spells, the occult rituals—the supposed demons and supernatural horror—are simply delusion and fantasy. Steve is wrong.

Victoria, who has just bought a dilapidated church with a haunting past, entangles Steve in a deadly game of dark magic and rituals. As, unknown to him, the demon grows desperate, Steve plunges deeper into a world of crypts, grave robbing, and long-forgotten secrets, all while trying to escape his own haunted past. But when the face of the man Steve killed appears on his arm, the line between reality and nightmare begins to blur.

This supernatural novel will leave you on the edge of your seat, with wickedly funny dark humor and, ultimately, pulse-pounding suspense, as Steve and Victoria navigate a twisted adventure full of occult horror, supernatural suspense, and shocking revelations.

The review: The author of The Great Dick emailed me and asked if I would like to review the volume. I am always open to receiving books for review, but did explain that the blog is strictly vampire genre. Barry responded that “The demon is definitely an entity who feeds on people’s energy, the victims are left dead or devastated.” So, whilst demonic, we have what sounded like an energy vampire – though the demonic elements are low key until the ending.

However, the book is a blast and a page turner. I thoroughly enjoyed the read. The main character and narrator, Steve Witowski, is an utterly flawed but brilliantly conceived and revealed character and it is a testament to the sharp, pithy writing that the character keeps the reader enthralled. 

A tale of cults (or at least the aftermath of a cult) and a hunt for secrets, when we do get the reveal of the central creature, born of demonic ritual (using cadaverous flesh), things take a crazy turn. That we see little to start with is down to Steve not being aware of some of the activity in the background – though he is exposed to weirdness from the beginning. 

There is, to be fair, mention of vampires when we get “‘You think you’re a fucking vampire?’ ‘Vampire?’ She laughed. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Steve. The blood’s mine.’” So they are mentioned in passing, but the central creature is a form of energy vampire, as mentioned, and described as “a psychic parasite” at one point. The victims were left cognitively destitute but some are killed through the process. Though the creation process was different for this creature, I was conceptually reminded of Hanns Heinz Ewers' Alraune. This is a great novel and an excellent opening to a promising series. 8.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: The Twilight Zone: The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank

The Twilight Zone was one of the great anthology series and this episode, directed by Montgomery Pittman, which aired in 1962 came from the third season. Certainly, one that dealt with the restless dead (or just a premature burial) this wasn’t so much about a vampire but does mention the V word in its run time.

The place is the southern end of the mid-west, sometime in the mid-1920s, and a church service is being held for the funeral of Jeff Myrtlebank (James Best). The Reverend Siddons’ (William Fawcett, The Munsters & The Return of Dracula) suggests that God must have had a reason for taking him so young. The lid of the coffin lifts and Jeff sits up.

awakening

The congregation runs out screaming and Jeff follows bemused. There is his Ma (Helen Wallace) and Pa (Ralph Moody), as well as his sweetheart Comfort (Sherry Jackson) and all of them seem scared witless of him. Doc Bolton (Edgar Buchanan) is defensive, he pronounced him dead but concedes that there is a rare illness (that has only had 30 known cases in the last 1500 years) which can look like death – later he concedes he made this up. However, Jeff’s little sister Liz (Vickie Barnes) hugs him, and they all calm down.

Edgar Buchanan as the Doc

As things go, however, his mother starts to get suspicious. Jeff only eats two eggs for breakfast (he always ate three) and he has suddenly developed a work effort, where before he was verging on shiftless. Rumours spread – taking these minor (and positive, in the last case) things and building on them. The townsfolk suddenly start suggesting he might be a haint.

James Best as Jeff Myrtlebank

Haints are restless spirits and in this it is qualified to suggest that one such restless spirit might have taken over Jeff’s vacated body. Haints came up in the film Sinners, where they are suspected until vampires are identified. In this Jeff actually says that people “treat me like a vampire”. However, we do also get him taking flowers to Comfort and they have wilted though he only picked them that day. The death of flowers does sometimes follow in a vampire’s wake – especially energy vampires – and this is one of our tropes, along with being accused of being the restless dead.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Monstrosity

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

In the reactor chamber

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

Marjorie Eaton as Mrs March

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

Two of the candidates

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

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Van Helsing (2023)

This is a computer-generated animation that starts with a battle on the moon. But… You said it’s called Van Helsing. And that it is… Jack Van Helsing (Ernesto Galan), whose grandfather was THE Van Helsing. So, we get a vampire mentioned in passing, saying how his grandfather destroyed the fiend, and an image of it. Plus an image of Vlad Ţepeş because… yup, Dracula was Ţepeş in this never returned to backstory.

Essentially it looks at the end of the world, and has a preachy bit about devastating wars ignored because we’re all looking at phone screens (I very much doubt we’d ignore warfare on the doorstep, even if we ignore warfare in other countries often). Then it became nuclear.

vampire was mentioned in passing

We get some survivors – Jack appears in a hazmat at first and manages to get those survivors killed, then he gets to the moon (by stealing a space shuttle) and teams up with a colony there lead by Lilith (Jennifer Fourteen) – who is Lilith in name only. They then get killed, though he survives again. The transitions from a contemporary world destroyed by nukes, a moon base and then space-faring people and space warfare are jarring.

Jack Van Helsing

Of the enemies, one is a zombie (for that read more like a ghoul from the Fallout series) who stole a space shuttle! Yes, NASA just leaves those things hanging around with the keys in the ignition (so to speak)… Anyway he becomes a galactic despot and the moon base was destroyed by Xterminator (Edson Camacho) – an anti-human AI driven robot… kill all humans… Who gets a galactic taskforce… His faction also create a rebuilt, cyborg (with the memories of the human, but with loyalty to the AI) Lilith. Not much happens with that storyline as Jack goes to meet her on the recovering Earth, in the strangely still functional Hong Kong…

a bat creature

If it sounds a mess… well it is, as is the animation. Some looks detailed, other bits look terribly untextured. I’m not sure how it was built (and doing a budget driven cgi is brave) but it doesn’t look consistent. The voice acting style is melodrama 101. The storyline just seems to stitch ideas together with no thought as to the logical viability. You never see Jack’s face (though you do see Abraham) rather he is behind gas masks or helmets. Not great but genre connected (oh and a big bat creature at the very end).

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Uzumaki

The Blurb: Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in everything from seashells and whirlpools in water to the spiral marks on people's bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi's father and the voice from the cochlea in our inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurouu-cho are pulled ever deeper into a whirlpool from which there is no return! For older teen audiences.

The Mention: This is another step down the Junji Ito rabbit hole and, thanks to an internationally released film, possibly one of his more famous concepts. This is the story of the village of Kurouzu-cho as narrated by Kirie and, unlike previously read Ito works, this is one whole story (the edition I read was the deluxe edition that collects all three mangas). The village is haunted by, cursed by even, the shape of a spiral. It starts with individual obsessions and grows chapter after chapter until it consumes the village. The story involves some stupendous body horror and a darkly Lovecraftian edge (only named as such as a simile as to be honest it is more pure Ito), which touches into cosmic horror.

stake

I have recorded this as a mention because there is a mention of vampires in passing and one chapter (that has a touch into another) that is definitely a vampire chapter, but they are small parts of the greater whole and the book itself is not a vampire story. The first mention occurs in chapter 7, entitled Jack-in-the-Bix. Mitsuru Yamaguchi is a schoolboy who loves to jump out and surprise people with a “boo”, he starts doing this to Kirie as he is attracted to her but the feelings are not reciprocated. When she refuses a present from him he, to prove his love, steps in front of a car to stop it with the power of his feelings. He is run over and dies but then haunts the poor girl after she opens the refused present (of a toy Jack-in-the-Box). Shuichi, her actual boyfriend, and she go to the cemetery to dig his corpse up (cremation has ended because of the spiral curse) and he carries a stake to hammer in his heart to prevent him coming alive – to which she responds, “I don’t think he’s a vampire”. Of course, once in the grave what would a Jack-in-the-Box do but spring out?

vampiric mothers

That was just a mention but chapter 10: Mosquitos and, in coda chapter 11: The Umbilical Cord, does contain vampires of a twisted Ito type. Mosquito sees the village plagued with mosquitos, often in spiralling columns, and they are particularly feeding on pregnant women including Kirie’s cousin Keiko. Kirie happens to be hospitalised at the time and there are attacks on patients who seem stabbed and drained of blood. Eventually Kirie faces the truth, the hospitalised pregnant women are rising from bed at night, with hand drills that they stab into patients to drink their blood, nurturing their babies (just as a female mosquito drinks blood to nurture her eggs).

The babies nourished with blood are born in the next chapter, starting with Keiko’s baby, and the mothers had taken to feeding from blood packs prior to the births. They all seem like healthy, beautiful babies. Kirie, however notices that their bellies seem to swell and manages to injure herself again prolonging her hospitalisation. The hospital starts serving a strange meaty mushroom – which she avoids – and then she discovers that the swellings under the baby clothes are cords and placentas regrowing and the “mushrooms” are from a crop of mushroom like placentas growing from where they were dropped when the babies were born. The sinister Doctor Kawamoto understands that the babies wish to return to the womb and, starting with Keiko, he opens the mother and replaces her baby but she now has to feed it and has developed a spiralled stinger where her tongue was that she can use, mosquito like, to feed. Kirie escapes the hospital and we don’t return to the symbiotic vampire mother and child. Thanks to David who got me this for Christmas.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Ouvert 24/7

Despite its Troma release and the presence of Lloyd Kaufman in the film, this Thierry Paya directed film from 2010 has more in common with New Extremity from its native France than the normal fare from the Troma table.

It’s a portmanteau film with a wraparound based on a truck stop with the two customers and the waitress telling stories to pass the time. It starts with a truck pulling up and the trucker ordering a beer. When he starts to tell his story, he is accused of being a drunk, and admits to it – worrying given the large vehicle he pulled up in.

the trucker

The stories include one about a pair of cannibal lesbians (not the reason for the mention, though cannibalism and vampirism skate closely together), one about a child eating ogress (or so the credits suggest, listing Marie-Pierre Vincent in that role, though there is also a hint of the character being a witch), which draws in on numerous fairytales to inform its narrative, and one about sisters who violently escape their incestuous father to head to the city to see a musical star.

standoff

It is from the ogress’ story that we get the mention – I had seen the term vampirism used regarding the film but this is not accurate. The child-eater does primarily eat children (she can’t resist chowing on an adult at one point but can’t keep the flesh down). However, it is at her home when a cop (Bertrand Patrzek) shows up and demands an interview with her that we get the mention of vampires. In a standoff, on comfy sofas, she pulls a knife and he a crucifix and then splashes her with holy water, to no avail, accusing her of being a vampire. She isn’t and so he leaves (he only does vampires) – gunning down a grey faced visitor as he leaves (the neighbour) and suggesting the ogress stake her (though she doesn't as she has a crocodile to feed the cadaver to).

A mention in passing and a vampire hunter (and credited as such). The film is interesting, though I felt the stories lacked denouement. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

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

Honourable Mention: Bleed 4 Me

This 2011 film was directed by Joston Theney and it’s, let’s be honest, not brilliant. The premise sees a chess game between the devil and, well its never said but presumably God gave powers to the demon hunters in this, as they do have powers. The primary hunter is Ramona (Tonya L. Harris) who has taken over from Lady Jasmine (Brinke Stevens), and we also briefly meet Lady Black (Tiffany Shepis). This is a world were the good have to take an ‘ends justify the means’ stance.

Also in the plot is scientist Cassie (Mariana Evans), new in town due to a job opportunity (there is a side bar of personal issues that I won’t go into). Now the story gets confused about what the devil is up to – there is talk about him possessing (that never seems to happen, though he can speak through those he controls) and harvesting blood to make a new corporeal body (this is not why this gets an honourable mention). However, it seems he has set his sights on Cassie – though exactly why isn’t massively clear, something about the end of the earth, yadda, yadda, yadda…

hunters

What seems to happen is that he phones someone (though TV and radio can be used) and sings Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and ‘activates’ them. You see everyone has a little bit of the devil inside them and the nursery rhyme puts them in his power… So much for free will then. Nevertheless, he is after Cassie… and yet never just phones her (you’d have thought that would be a cinch, I mean one assumes he can find who is looking for and does activate her boss), which gives Ramona chance to be involved.

Tonya L. Harris as Ramona

So why vampires? Well Ramona tells Cassie about a particular sort of Demon that is the soul of a person in Purgatory that the devil allows to return corporeally to Earth in return for some chaos and bloodshed. She describes them as a plague and then states they are vampires. And that might have been it, simply mentioned in passing. But later a soul returns (who turns out to be Ramona’s sister) and Lady Jasmine wants to (re)kill her, but she hasn’t turned yet as she must drink the blood of the one who brought her back… We don’t see her turned. So, a fleeting visitation of a (nearly) vampire.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Honourable Mention: Abnormal Attraction

Directed by Michael Leavy, this film was released in 2018 and runs on a premise that monsters and folklore creatures are real and living openly amongst humans. Through this it touches on racism and, more openly, on sexuality but, mostly it is a fantasy flick that aims towards comedy and a little bit of action.

It follows a group of protagonists and antagonists who are interconnected in ways they don’t understand and starts proper with Dr. Stanley Cole (Bruce Davison, Corbin Nash, The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice & A (Schizophrenic) Love Story) leaving the hospital for the day. His office has 12-step posters and it pushes us to assume (correctly) that he’s a recovering alcoholic.

Nicole Balsam as Alyssa

He is approached by colleague Dr Nick Lane (Nathan Reid), who has just argued with his fiancée, Alyssa (Nicole Balsam), and later we discover it is because he has made an excuse not to be at home that evening. He is meant to be leading an AA meeting and he persuades Cole to take his place. Our first vampire moment is a mention in passing at the AA meeting. The meeting itself befuddles Cole as he thinks it is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting but it is an Abnormal Attraction meeting, a self-help group for humans obsessively attracted to non-humans.

in the hut

The actual vampiric moment is during a battle at a non-human camp, when Alyssa (who, unknown to Nick, has a burning hatred of monsters) leads an attack on the camp. She doesn’t know that Nick was kidnapped by Andy, the Abominable Snowman (Michael Barra), and taken to the camp. He had chains, making the non-humans believe he is a monster hunter but they were for himself as, unknown to Alyssa, he is a werewolf and there is a full moon that night. During the fight Alyssa enters a hut.

Steven Della Salla as Vincent

Inside a man is tied up, as a vampire, Vincent (Steven Della Salla), stands nearby. The vampire says “I want to suck your…” well its not blood he’s aiming to suck, put it that way. Alyssa repeatedly shoots the vampire, much to the chagrin of the tied up human – who was a willing participant. Of course bullets are not going to keep a good vampire down and later we see him emerge from the hut, shading his eyes from the sun but otherwise not worse for wear in the daylight. And that’s it, a mention in passing and a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: The Curse of La Patasola

So, when a film has in its blurb “…haunted by La Patasola, a famed vampiric monster from Amazonian folklore…” I honestly didn’t think I’d be writing a Use of Tropes article rather than a review. However, there is blessed little vampiric in AJ Jones’ 2022 movie. Normally I turn to Bane for comparative vampire legends but La Patasola does not appear in her book – however she is listed in Jane Alexander’s The Mind Body Spirit Miscellany, which says: “‘One Foot.’ Beautiful, often familiar-looking woman who reveals her true monstrous one-legged form after a time, sucking her victims’ blood or devouring their flesh.”

Colombian tryst

The film starts with a scene in 19th Century Colombia, where a man (Jack Young) and a woman (Daniela Gonzalez) run to have a tryst. She has second thoughts for a moment – she is married – but he kisses her and then they hear something in the forest. He goes to investigate and we hear him scream and yell for her to run…

Sarah, James and Daniel

In the modern day USA we see a pickup truck. The driver Daniel (AJ Jones, Lovecraft Country) is arguing with Naomi (Najah Bradley), the new girlfriend of his friend James (Patrick R. Walker). The issue between the two is that she is a feminist and he is an embodiment of fragile male privilege. Honestly, there is nothing likable about the character and, as the film goes on, he doesn’t improve. His wife, Sarah (Gillie Jones), seems long suffering and we get a sense of his fragility when he talks about the role of man being the provider and Naomi asks what he does for work – as the film develops we discover Sarah supports him (unable to follow her dream of going to nursing school as she has to work) whilst he tries to get his business off the ground – he’s been doing that for five years.

Naomi and James

They are flagged down by a park ranger (Mark Pettit) and this is the stereotypical warning for the kids going into the woods but as we’ll see the warning is superfluous. Rather it is for Naomi to complain about the way Daniel interacted with authority, whilst he had black people in the car. Anyhoo, they get to Bear Lake, set up camp and tell ghost stories. Even in this, Naomi and Daniel antagonise each other. Naomi tells a story her Colombian grandmother used to tell about La Patasola (Luciana Faulhaber) – one-legged – who was a beautiful woman who cheated on her husband, for which he killed her and chopped a leg off in the process.

La Patasola appears

She won’t say the creature’s name as it summons her – which causes Daniel to call her bravery into doubt – so she speaks the name… and this makes the ranger, in the normal use of the trope, superfluous as he is meant to foreshadow the trouble by referencing the dangers and they were not there until Naomi named them… the creature being summoned after meeting him (though in the exchange with the ranger, Daniel mentioned having a flare gun, which lets us know he has one and fire kills the creature). La Patasola punishes the unfaithful (and it is suggested that the pure cannot see her, though this does not seem to be the case).

Sarah and Naomi

So… James wants to propose… Naomi wants to finish the relationship… Sarah is dissatisfied with both the home situation and Daniel’s attitude… Daniel is a dick… Everything falls apart and there are sparks between Daniel and Naomi that leads to an illicit kiss (though the idea that Naomi would go for Daniel stretches credulity). La Patasola is haunting the woods and… well for ages not much happens and when it does there is little in the way of atmosphere and nothing that resembles vampirism. Worse, when we see her in her full monster form it is a blooming awful construct that is pure creature feature – so why the Use of Tropes?

monstrous form

It centres on her backstory – the fact is that several cultures have a version of myth that Others women and makes them monstrous, and whilst often this is the hag (ie. The woman who is of no more use to the patriarchy due to their lack of fertility), it is also often the beautiful young woman who perhaps loses their child (fails in their imposed role of incubator), attacks other children (anti-maternal) or, in this case, enforces her body autonomy against the wishes of her husband. (Note, whilst the myth talks about unfaithfulness it is the unfaithful woman who is punished by being transformed into the monstrous and not the man). Much like the penangglan or the legend of Lilith this is the Othering of the female, and that is the trope – it would have been nice if the film had actually had more (or anything) vampiric but the connection to the vampire myth is mentioned during Naomi’s story.

The imdb page is here.