Evil Eye – review

Director: Isaac Ezban

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Vampiric witches, you have to love ‘em and these ones hail from Mexico. I saw this film, which they find themselves in, at Grimmfest and whilst it isn’t perfect, it does have a lot going for it, with a primarily female cast and a setting that just drips atmosphere and a sense of the uncanny and just-out-of-touch repressed memories. This is one that summons, what my pal Simon Bacon might describe as, undead memories.

The film starts off, in a forest and with a story – it is a story that is told through the film of triplets who happen to be at an encampment. One of them falls and it is before an old, swaddled woman – she seems an archetypal hag and this is fitting within the lore of the film. The girl stands and the woman reaches out, deftly releasing and taking a ribbon from her hair. The story narrator says that sometimes, when you are in view, evil turns its gaze towards you.

curing the fit

A noise and a small girl, Luna (Ivanna Sofia Ferro), is fitting. Her parents, Rebecca (Samantha Castillo) and Guillermo (Arap Bethke) rush in and push a syringe into a device on her back that is emitting an alarm and flashing a warning light. As the injection takes hold the light turns green – it is her third attack that week. Her older sister, Nala (Paola Miguel), is annoyed, it seems, at the attention the younger sibling gets. When the doctor visits he suggests that her organs are failing and that she should be in hospital now.

Guillermo and Rebecca

Rebecca and Guillermo disagree on the next course of action. He wants to move her to the hospital but she wants to go out to her family as she believes there is an alternative treatment. Rebecca wins the argument, much to Nala’s discontent as she doesn’t want to go. We discover, before they leave, that many of the children in the apartment complex have been ill and it is later described as an epidemic. The drive is incredibly long, the city left far behind.

Ofelia Medina as Josefa

At the family home they meet Josefa (Ofelia Medina), family matriarch who Guillermo and the children have never met. It is clear there is discontent between Josefa and Rebecca. Nala is devastated to discover that there is no wifi or phone signal – she still spends a large amount of time on her phone, presumably packed with offline apps. Also at the house are Abigail (Paloma Alvamar), the young housemaid, and her boyfriend Pedro (Mauro González), the handyman. They live in a cabin nearby and Nala clearly takes a shine to Pedro.

the hag

Abigail starts telling the girls a local legend – that is the story of the triplets. The story goes on to say that the hag was indeed a witch and witches suck the blood of children to steal their youth. This caused the one triplet to start becoming ill. The others realise what is happening and put scissors beneath the mattress as this should ward off a witch, but it doesn’t work and so they go to a sorceress in the forest – who interestingly is listed as being from the Caribbean and this is an area where the vampiric old hag folklore is highly prevalent. She teaches them how to make a Bacá – a magical creature that can grant wishes but also bring misfortune to those who make a wish.

Luna and Nala

There is much more to the tale of the triplets, which I won’t spoil. As it is, mom and dad go off to find the alternative cure leaving the girls with Josefa. Nala is a bit of a brat (but, as the film progresses we do see she genuinely loves her sister) but the treatment by Josefa is essentially abusive. In return Nala becomes convinced that Josefa is a witch and is sucking Luna’s blood at night.

skinless

Lore-wise we have a really interesting mixed bag. I have mentioned the scissors and the blood drinking. Witches will also shed their skin to hunt, storing it in a pumpkin. This reminded me of some of the Southeast Asian lore, which more often sees the body detach but the left body part becomes a weakness as the skin does here. More so it is identical to the Caribbean soucouyant, or Old Hag—an aged woman by day who sheds her skin when hunting blood. Salt is deadly to the witch and rubbed inside the shed skin will burn and kill the witch. That Caribbean connection is enhanced with a view of a ritual late into the film that looks like it originates from that area.

drink blood

It is, however, the atmosphere in this that got me. The house just feels so unheimlich and we get much that points to repressed memory and also a clash between modern and old fashioned. The story itself, whilst the film does its best to obfuscate at times, is pretty easy to work out and I found myself waiting to see it pan out the way I predicted, rather than work out what happened. I mentioned Nala being a brat, but that is deliberate and the child actors deliver what is needed. Ofelia Medina is fabulous as the demented matriarch. I did enjoy this one, 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

10/31 – review

Directors: Justin M. Seaman & Zane Hershberger

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

So, I stumbled over this one on YouTube (the Kings of Horror channel) and as far as I knew it was just a Halloween themed horror anthology (there is a horror host but she appears at the beginning and end only).

It just so happened that segment 1 contained a ‘world’ vampire type and segment 2 had a vampire (and an unusually situated one at that). They also happened to be two of the better segments. So, what are we waiting for, let’s look at them…

Tyler and Kevin

Segment 1 was directed by Justin M. Seaman and is called Old Hag. Now the hag (Jedediah Giacchino) is definitely seen as a vampire type (often crossing into witch/vampire) in the Circum-Caribbean and African diaspora but also appears within European folklores (and gave her name to the psychic vampirism of being hagridden). In this, when eventually described, there is a portrayal of her sitting on her victim’s chest and strangling them – tying into the Nightmare and folkloric vampirism.

Cindy Maples as Kathy

The segment sees us at a bed and breakfast on Halloween. Tyler (Nickolaus Joshua) and Kevin (Mitchell Musolino) are aspiring filmmakers who have answered a Craigslist ad to make an advert for the guest house. As requested, they have brought a proposed script and their equipment. Owner Kathy (Cindy Maples) suggests they film straight away – they can always stay over. As things go on Tyler keeps seeing the Hag, at first thinking her a guest. Kevin, dismissive, takes up the offer of the bed for a night.

chest sit

Kathy keeps on yawning through and one might suspect that she has been drained of energy. She admits that she never sleeps properly (bar one night of the year) and it is not a stretch to believe that the activity that prevents her sleep can be described as an energy vampire attack – as though she is the year-round sustenance and the boys are due to be gorged on. We do get a proper chest sit and throttle…

Jeff and Stephanie

Segment 2 was Zane Hershberger’s Trespassers. It starts with a couple, Jeff (Chad Bruns) and Stephanie (Sable Griedel), who leave a Halloween night film early because it was rubbish. He is new to the town and she still wants to be scared so she takes him to the old Martin place. This place, she tells him, was the land belonging to some gypsy people who were run off and the land bought out by a Mr Martin (Dave Joseph). However, a scarecrow (Jedediah Giacchino) appeared and Mr Martin went mad and killed his family.

the scarecrow

The abandoned house is still there but Stephanie wants to see the scarecrow. More, she wants to answer the mystery of what that scarecrow was and so cuts it down. Under the sackcloth, however, is a rotten face – a face that awakens and bites her neck… It then reforms into a horrific vampire form. But, you may ask, is it a vampire… beyond the neck bite and the fact that it seems to produce mist and is called vampire in the credits, Jeff works out that it was attached to a cross and that Mr Martin killed his family because they had been turned… but… it is still there of course, and Stephanie has been bitten…

vampire

These were great fun little shorts (and probably the best in the whole anthology). I liked the putting the vampire as a scarecrow thing, it was really fun and the denouement is satisfying. The photography was well done and all in all this had a lot going for it if you like your anthologies. The score is for the two vampire segments, which are unusual and deserve 6 out of 10. As I write you can find the film here.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Monsterland – review

Director: Various

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

This is another portmanteau film that brings together unconnected (and I assume previously released) shorts as a whole. The wraparound has a survivor (Josh LaCasse) of an ongoing apocalypse seeking refuge in a cinema (where the audience has been killed) and watching the shorts we watch.

This is fairly lengthy, coming in at 108 minutes, but most of the content is worth a look (a rather surreal stop motion was perhaps misplaced and I have seen it before in another anthology film). The only connectivity is the theme of monsters and there are two that we are interested in – one with a vampire and the other with a vampiric entity.

Scott and Marie

The first segment is entitled Hag and was directed by Erik Gardner. It starts with Scott (Drew Wicks, Angel) waking up to find that wife, Marie (Megan Duffy) is out of bed and stood at the window. She repeats over and over that *she* gets you in your sleep. He calls out to her but she snaps at him. In the morning he wakes to find her staring intently at him, wanting to look at him.

the hag

They are attending therapy together with a marriage guidance counsellor (John Franklin) but things are going to take a turn for the worse. Scott starts waking to a dripping on his face and finds he cannot move. He also starts seeing a hag (Eileen Dietz, Creepshow 3). We have met the hag before; energy vampire and common archetype across many mythologies/folklores. This time it is unusual as it seems to be tied in with Marie and we are left wondering whether it is an entity in its own right, Scott’s stresses made manifest or actually Marie possessed. This Hag can also attack in a way that is much more visceral than many portrayals.

home invasion

The second segment we are interested in is House Call, directed by Graham Denman. It starts with a dentist, Dr Richter (Ruben Pla), sat at home maudlin – visual clues suggesting that he is recently divorced. There is a knocking at the door. A man (Sean Keller, Death Valley) is there and says he wants a dentist. Richter tries to get rid of him but he pushes in and brandishes a gun. The man has been to his surgery and, when it was closed, come to his home.

pulling teeth

His issue – he’s becoming a vampire. He met a woman, who bit him, and he is now burnt by sunlight and garlic repulses him. He can feel his teeth growing. Richter tries to tell him that the teeth look normal and that, as he has a reflection, he can’t be a vampire. To no avail… the man wants him to pull his cuspid teeth, and when Richter states he doesn’t have his equipment at home the man suggests he improvise. He literally pulls them using a small monkey wrench, but the man fits, following the second extraction, and perhaps the fangs just needed space to grow…

vampire

Both these shorts were well shot and fun. Hag gave a lot of room to think about the story and what may (or may not) have happened. The insinuations are there but the short offers just the right amount of doubt. House Call is more direct and simple, with no grey area and is fun for that very reason as well. The other shorts included are varied in content but, for the most part, are professionally put together horror shorts.

Noel Jason Scott as the Ghoul

There is just one more vampire to mention. The wraparound in the cinema was directed by John Skipp and Andrew Kasch. It doesn’t have a huge amount of story to it other than the survivor watching the films (and killing a tentacled thing in the projection room). However – at the end of the film there is a somewhat larger monster in the auditorium and the survivor makes a break for it, however another monster runs into the theatre at the same time. Credited as the Ghoul (Noel Jason Scott), the distinguishing features are the fangs and the 'vamp face' – so it could well be a vampire or remind us that ghoul and vampire often are conflated.

For the shorts mentioned, 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: The Magic Sword

The Magic Sword was a 1962 fantasy movie directed by Bert I. Gordon and stars Gary Lockwood as George (or Sir George, as he later claims) who is the ward of 400-years old Sorceress Sybil (Estelle Winwood). She found him after his royal parents died when he was a baby and has raised him. Now that he is twenty she despairs as he isn’t learning a trade (magic, one assumes) and spends his time mooning over the local Princess, Helene (Anne Helm).

Now when I say mooning over, he’s never met her but voyeuristically watches her in a magic pool (as she takes a skinny dip in the palace pond), which is a little more creepy than romantic. Anyway, a wicked sorcerer, Lodac (Basil Rathbone, Queen of Blood & Madhouse), kidnaps her and intends to feed her to his dragon. Sybil tries to get George to forget her but he manages to trap his foster mother and take magic armour, a magic sword, a magic steed and 6 brave knights (who were petrified as statues) and vows to defy Lodac’s seven curses to rescue her.

wooing Mignonette

Now, I’ve interpreted one part of this as vampiric and it is only a fleeting visitation, but it goes a little like this. Also travelling with George is double-crossing knight Sir Branton (Liam Sullivan). Branton goes to a mill to meet Lodac but is followed by Sir Dennis of France (Jacques Gallo). A woman, Mignonette (Danielle De Metz), comes along, singing Frère Jacques and completely distracting the (horny) French Cavalier. He immediately tries to woo her and, as he does, we see her eyes flash green.

hag attack

Suddenly she is not Mignonette but she is a hag (and credited as such on IMDb). We see two teeth like fangs and she goes (successfully) to bite his neck. Of course the hag is a vampire form in folklore (more often an energy vampire) and it does look like she has fangs. Perhaps the mode of attack was inspired by the fact that (as the hag) she is played by Maila Nurmi (Plan 9 from Outer Space) – famous, of course, as Vampira.

cross glows

Luckily, for Dennis, George arrives and holds his magic shield aloft. The (St. George’s) cross glows in her presence and causes her to cower and vanish. She does appear later in the film, very briefly, tricking Sir Branton by taking the form of Helene and then organising Lodac’s household. However her presence in the film is limited and it is only with Dennis that we see the vampire like activity. So, a fleeting visitation, and if you think I might be reading a little in to this, I do believe part of the original movie advertising said, “SEE the Green Fire Demons! SEE the 25-Foot Tall Ogre! SEE the Beautiful Vampire Woman! SEE the Boiling Crater of Death!”

The imdb page is here.

Slumber – review

Director: Jonathan Hopkins

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

So, we have another Mare movie – the energy vampire or demonic creature, which comes to a person petrified with sleep paralysis, sits upon the chest and draws the life energy away. Another name is the Hag, and, of course, the Hag appears in various mythologies and Old Hag is closely linked with vampiric activity in the Circum-Caribbean and African diaspora. This film also uses the name nocnitsa – another version from Slavic mythology (that can be warded by a stone with a hole in the centre or a knife, indeed even a circle drawn by a knife – not methods of protection tried (or even mentioned) in film).

you're with my sister

The film starts with two children sleeping in a room. The boy, Liam (William Rhead), sits up whilst still sleeping and starts speaking to something we cannot see. He introduces his sister, Alice (Zahra Wardhana-O'Reilly), and says that she is six, he then suggests that he would like to play. Alice awakens to hear him say “coming, ready or not”. She looks for him, telling him that he is sleep walking again. He asks where it is and then realises it is by Alice – we see a tall shadowy thing – Liam becomes scared, backs away and falls through a window.

meeting the Morgans

After a credit sequence that has various people talking about night terrors, sleep paralysis and shadowy creatures and the Hag, Alice (Maggie Q, Priest) wakes up. An adult, married with a daughter but still haunted by her brother’s death. To cut quite a slow character building session down a bit she is a sleep doctor and meets a family, the Morgans. Son Daniel (Lucas Bond, Lady of Csejte) is suffering from sleep paralysis, whilst sister Emily (Honor Kneafsey), mom Sarah (Kristen Bush) and Dad Charlie (Sam Troughton) are all suffering nightmares whilst sleepwalking.

Maggie Q as Alice

The first night in the clinic sees all three sit up at the same time and move away from Daniel – but both Alice and colleague Malcolm (William Hope, Dark Shadows & Hellbound: Hellraiser II) are both out of the monitoring booth. When they hear screams they intervene with the sleep paralysis and Alice goes over to the sleepwalking Emily; still asleep, Charlie grabs her by the throat. Now, at this point (having been rescued by janitor Cam (Vincent Andriano)) the cops turn up and Charlie is hauled off.

Sylvester McCoy as Amado

This just didn’t work for me. There is a bruise on Daniel’s chest in the shape of a hand but it is blatantly too small to be Charlie’s and they have cameras and so the entire night’s events could be reviewed. Even if he were initially restrained, I couldn’t buy the arrest and holding. Cam resigns, warns Alice to stay clear of *that* family and hands her a piece of paper with the word nocnitsa on it. Now, I can buy the fact that an obscure Slavic myth form might be unknown to her but, as a sleep expert, I’m sure she would know about the Mare and the Hag myths – this seems to be news to her. The only hope for a solution seems to be known by Cam’s mad grandpa, Amado (Sylvester McCoy, Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric), who survived a nocnitsa as a child.

the Nocnitsa

I really wanted to like this but it felt as though they struggled to get to the horror and the cgi creature at the end looked a bit rubbish. They built the characters but then didn’t use them (for instance Alice’s daughter draws dream pictures – this could have been exploited in narrative but wasn’t really). The idea of the Mare drawing the family away from the feast (and the word feasting is used in dialogue) was good but the reaction of the sleep experts to three people simultaneously sleepwalking was worryingly pedestrian. The myth of the nocnitsa has wards that folks versed enough in the Slavic myth to know the creature's name didn’t apparently know (and I know through a google, the resource the good Doctor seemed to rely on).

All in all, there are better Mare films out there, a pity as this felt like it really could have been better. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Dead Awake

One form of vampire in the Caribbean and African diasporic folk traditions is the Old Hag. Her presence is part of a wider archetypal form as the hag appears through various traditions, sitting upon the chest of a paralysed sleeper, strangling them.

Whilst strangling might not sound that vampiric, the attack of the hag would seem to be an example of energy vampirism, draining the lifeforce of the victim, and the 18th Century vampire reports out of the Slavic areas actually made more play of strangulation than blood drinking (indeed it is arguable that the blood drinking was an addition to the reports in order to ‘explain’ the blood at the mouth of (and in the coffin of) suspected vampires when dug up for examination.

That being the case you might wonder why I am bothering was a ‘Vamp or Not?’ of Phillip Guzman’s 2016 film Dead Awake and not just classing it as a vampire film without investigation. Simply put it is because things are never that simple – though the film is about the Hag.

it's coming

It starts with mention of sleep paralysis and a fan beats as a door creaks open. Beth (Jocelin Donahue) lies paralysed before suddenly bolting upright. We then see her in a corridor, fearful of a door towards the end, she anxiously enters an apartment and is greeted by a surprise party. The apartment belongs to her boyfriend Evan (Jesse Bradford) and her twin sister Kate (also Jocelin Donahue) is at the party. We do get a potted history through the front end of the film. Kate is a lawyer, Beth is a recovering addict who now lives back with their parents.

Kate & Beth

There is a discussion about sleep as a friend, Linda (Brea Grant), is having night terrors and Beth mentions the paralysis and a presence of evil. She leaves the party upset. She goes to Kate during the day to tell her about the events and to explain that she is going to see a sleep specialist Dr. Sykes (Lori Petty). Kate goes with her and the Doctor suggests that sleep paralysis is quite common and in more extreme cases can cause hallucinations. Kate suggests Beth not fight it.

Kate becomes haunted

Kate awakens seeing through Beth’s eyes (a twin thing, I assumed) as the thing crawled over the bed towards her. She awakens panicked and calls home telling her father (James Eckhouse) to check on Beth. The twin has died in her sleep. At the subsequent funeral Kate is approached by a strange man, later revealed to be Dr. Hassan Davies (Jesse Borrego, From Dusk till Dawn the series). It is revealed that he was working with Beth (and because it didn’t seem to be helping she went to the more mainstream Dr Sykes).

painting of the hag

Essentially the hag starts haunting Kate, but then also Evan and Linda (who is killed by the hag). Hassan suggests that she is drawn to belief (so if you believe in the hag she finds you, Kate’s belief causing Linda and Evan to believe and be haunted). The hag seems to be able to construct dreams and pose as others within them (she lives in the space between dreams and awakening) and not fighting her was the exactly incorrect advice. Hassan has theories but no proven method of severing the connection between the hag and her victim.

strangulation 

We see the hag causing fear and we see her strangling her victims. What we don’t necessarily see is her feeding on their energy in any way. It is suggested that she tastes fear (but the phrase sounds more ornately descriptive than lore accurate). So, Vamp? She is the old hag, she is supernatural and she selects victims. We get no sense that she feeds from them – but neither is that denied – and she does strangle her paralysed victims – which is right for the hag and also the folkloric vampire. I am swinging towards ‘Vamp’ simply because the film does play within the hag’s folkloric boundaries. At the very least it is of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

The Things that Fly in the Night – review

Author: Gizelle Liza Anatol

First published: 2015

Contains Spoilers

The Blurb: The Things That Fly in the Night explores images of vampirism in Caribbean and African diasporic folk traditions and in contemporary fiction. Giselle Liza Anatol focuses on the figure of the soucouyant, or Old Hag—an aged woman by day who sheds her skin during night’s darkest hours in order to fly about her community and suck the blood of her unwitting victims. In contrast to the glitz, glamour, and seductiveness of conventional depictions of the European vampire, the soucouyant triggers unease about old age and female power. Tracing relevant folklore through the English- and French-speaking Caribbean, the U.S. Deep South, and parts of West Africa, Anatol shows how tales of the nocturnal female bloodsuckers not only entertain and encourage obedience in pre-adolescent listeners, but also work to instil particular values about women’s “proper” place and behaviours in society at large.

Alongside traditional legends, Anatol considers the explosion of soucouyant and other vampire narratives among writers of Caribbean and African heritage who in the past twenty years have rejected the demonic image of the character and used her instead to urge for female mobility, racial and cultural empowerment, and anti-colonial resistance. Texts include work by authors as diverse as Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, U.S. National Book Award winner Edwidge Danticat, and science fiction/fantasy writers Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson.

The Review: When I saw that this volume, which carries the secondary title “Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora”, was due for publication I became very excited as the soucouyant myth receives little attention (in Europe anyway). The name (or a variant thereof, namely soucriant) is used for the vampire type in the film Byzantium but the vampires are whitewashed racially and the core lore of the creatures (shedding their skin, becoming balls of fire and being destroyed in the sun if their skin is not back on by the morning light) is lost. It did not surprise me, therefore, that the film was not mentioned in the book.

The Byzantium vampires were, of course, most definitely vampires (and the film drew inspiration from both Byron and Polidori) but some might question the vampire pedigree of the soucouyant (both students of vampire folklore and scholars of the very circum-Caribbean literature examined in the book). Anatol admits, in her lengthy introduction: “I have also been asked by numerous African Studies Scholars: “Why are you using the word ‘vampire’? Isn’t that a European tradition?”” And suggests that, “I would argue, however, that failing to use the word “vampire” confines the African Americans’ traditions to a marginal status, perpetuating the idea among majority populations that the only “true” vampires – the only “real” vampires – are White/European.” Of course, here at TMtV we use the broadest church of the term vampire.

The book itself is scholarly, with extensive references and indexing. If there was a fault it was with me rather than the book. The majority of the literature looked at was unknown to me and has shown a gap in my reading that I am going to look to fill; certainly I now have a desire to read Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching and Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring. However that gap in my reading made the book that little more difficult to work through than if I had been more familiar of the sources discussed. Of course not all the books were unknown to me, for instance Blood of the Vampire was examined.

I will add that Anatol does not mention the 1819 story The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Saint Domingo, and whilst not based on the soucouyant it was an unfortunate omission given that the 1819 story is the first American vampire story I am aware of, it is the first instance of a black vampire and it is apparently the first story to argue universal emancipation.

There is also no mention that the old hag folklore is not simply Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora and has a lot of European equivalents (and the use of the same name of hag). Perhaps that is an indication of myth bleeding between the African slaves and the European slavers or perhaps just evidenced of it being a more universal figure. The Old Hag (like the soucouyant) is the outsider, at the edge of society and reviled as a symbol of the female fight against the male dictated “proper place” (and, as much as Byzantium whitewashed race, it did very much base its story on a level of misogyny that saw the two heroines hunted through the centuries by the otherwise exclusively male vampire society).

This is not the easiest book to plough through if the reader is unfamiliar with the majority of sources but it is still a necessary and welcome addition to vampire studies. 6.5 out of 10.