Carmilla Volume 2: The Last Vampire Hunter – review

Author: Amy Chu

Illustrations: Soo Lee

First published: 2024

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Before Dracula, before Nosferatu, there was...CARMILLA.

In the second volume of this feminist tale of murder, monsters, and mystery layered with dark Chinese folklore, social worker turned vampire hunter Athena Lo has just lost everyone she loves—and it's all her fault.

Hoping to put her life back together, Athena travels to San Francisco’s Chinatown on a quest to uncover the secrets of her mysterious family history. But her journey escalates into a nightmare when she‘s violently introduced to a new, ruthless gang of Asian American vampires and its unlikely leader, who hold shocking truths. As she navigates this dangerous territory, Athena can't escape the ghost of Carmilla...and neither can the vampires. Athena must decide—whose side is she on?

Inspired by the gothic novel that started the vampire genre, this queer, feminist murder mystery graphic novel is a tale of identity, obsession and fateful family secrets.

The review: It would have been easy for this sequel to Carmilla: The First Vampire to have ignored the titular vampire as vampire hunter Athena Lo destroys her in the first volume – but, as we know, you can’t keep a good vampire down. Though, her presence in the book is fleeting (and she seems to have taken the form of a monk). Primarily it follows Athena to San Francisco, where she hopes to piece together her family history.

There she discovers a whole bunch of Asian vampires (and a werewolf), we get Nukekubi (a Japanese Yokai that the book identifies as a Filippino vampire), the Indian Brahmarakshaa (a type of rakshasa), Korean Dokkeabi Goblin (which I have not seen connected with vampirism before) and the Japanese Nure-Omna (another Yokai). Without identifying it, we see a penanggalan and Taki who is a Geungshi (which is the Korean variant spelling of Jiangshi or Kyonsi). The leader is Wing, a young boy who had been attacked by a vampire and was saved by Taki – causing Wing to become a hybrid of western vampire and Jiangshi – Wing happens to be Athena’s older brother though she doesn’t remember him. He tells her of their parents, and their deaths, the Jiangshi hunter heritage and that a Taoist priest had taken her and protected her – the man she knew as her grandfather Yeh Yeh. Unfortunately, Wing has plans for Athena.

Of course, the first volume used Athena’s queerness and Asian identity as lenses for othering. This volume concentrates on the American historic, and more modern, treatment of Asians, and the Chinese specifically through Taki. The redemptive element around him was really rather well done and moving. The story is neat, the appearance of Carmilla fleeting but it was a good, solid little volume. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Penanggal: The Curse of the Malayan Vampire – review

Director: Ellie Suriaty Omar

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

It is nice for the penanggal (aka penanggalan) to get a look in within cinema and this Malay film actually sports some fairly good effects. Unfortunately the story is perhaps not as good as it might be with threads unanswered and a play with physical looks projecting (or not) the monstrous within the running time.

It is set in a more period time – I want to suggest the 1930s given the car we see but I’m not too sure and does have a strong thread about the saving grace of faith, particularly Islamic faith.

the tongue

It starts, however, with a birth. The midwife is Mak Ajeng (Normah Damanhuri) and the father, and Mak Ajeng’s hunchbacked man servant Pak Kadam (Jeff Omar), are outside the hut. The baby starts to cry but then there is a strange sound, the father goes in as the manservant curses and bemoans the timing. The father sees Mak Ajeng spinning as her head detaches, her tongue extends monstrously and she attacks mother and baby. He runs to the village and Pak Kadam goes in and grabs her headless body.

as a fireball

The father rouses the village against Mak Ajeng but as they look to go after her they see a burning light flash across the sky – the penanggal. It felt as though their nerves were slipping until a young boy starts extolling Allah and this emboldens them and they head, mob like, to her home. Pak Kadam has already got there, with the torso, and also there is her granddaughter Murni (Ummi Nazeera). The head returns and enters a big pot (presumably of vinegar to shrink her entrails before re-joining her body).

dissolving

The mob is approaching and Mak Ajeng calls Murni to her and tells her to become one with her blood and essentially passes her curse to her – which was part of the deal she had made with the powers of evil. Now, looking at Murni for a moment her face is covered in warts or tumours, and the implication is that her facial disfigurement has already associated her with the evil of her grandmother (there is also the implication later that the older woman perhaps killed her parents to get her heir). If not this, then the film is associating her ugliness with innocence and later beauty with the monstrous. With the curse passed on she dies and dissolves and Murni looks down on the villagers and then we see her walking, exiled from the village.

Azri Iskandar as Yusoff

We then meet Syed Yusoff Al-Attas (Azri Iskandar) a rich young business man who is due to get engaged to Sharifah Zahrah Al-Sagof (Fasha Sandha). She has concerns as to whether he can love her as she is a widow and his brother, Umar (Zul Ariffin), clearly has a thing for her. He is drawn as a very devout, peaceful man. Switching back to Murni and Pak Kadam has led her to a forest safe-house which is hidden by magic (one wonders why grandma didn’t reside there) and she suffers her first transformation into the penanggal. Afterwards she has lost the tumours on her face and is classically beautiful – we also hear a memory of grandma saying that only she could cure her, in time, and that has certainly proven true. Of course, fate will make her and Yusoff’s paths cross (and she uses magic to bewitch him).

flying head

The lore sees her head and entrails detach from her body (her head spinning rapidly as though it unscrews) and her flying through the night within a flame like halo. There is the dunking in vinegar to “soothe” her entrails when she rejoins. We do get some pov penangaal camera work. When whole she has a vivid scar at the neck. The idea of thorns being able to hold the vampire is mentioned. There isn’t an explanation as to the whole pact with evil and passing that pact on to an heir and Murni doesn’t seem altogether distressed at her new life (maybe more the consequences).

Ummi Nazeera as Murni

I think the issue is the storyline and where they go and don't go with it. For instance, the whole Zaharah plot. There is mention of her being pregnant, implied to be her dead husband’s child, but this isn’t used despite the vampire’s predilection for babies/unborn/pregnant women. Once Yusoff goes missing, she sneaks into Umar’s car to help find him, is burnt by the penanggal’s acidic blood and then vanishes from the story. It just seemed like baggage in the storyline rather than anything useful. Nevertheless this looks pretty good and it's worth seeing a penanggal. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Witch with Flying Head – review

Director: Jen-Chieh Chang

Release date: 1982

Contains spoilers

This is an interesting, low budget Hong Kong & Taiwan originating movie, which states at the beginning that it is looking to the folklore of Java – so the creature within would be a leak, the Indonesian variant of the Thai krasue or Malay penanggalan (though the name is not actually used). The version I saw was from a VHS rip.

It begins with Yu-Zhen, a young woman, at an altar praying for blessings upon her father. Her two handmaidens stand close by. The audience sees a snake on a roof, it drops to the floor transforming into a man, Jia Chu-An (referred to as a snake demon in dialogue). He ejects a further snake from his mouth, which crosses the courtyard and up her dress! An internal organs' close-up suggests that it has got into her body and she is in agony as a result.

the leak attacks

He walks up suggesting he can save her and gives a handmaiden a bottle of medicine. Dubious at first, she does give the medicine to Yu-Zhen to relieve her agonies. Elsewhere we see two men walking the streets. A leak comes at them, the head clearly Yu-Zhen, with bottom jaw sprouting fangs and her viscera dangling beneath her – she attacks and kills the men. We then see the head fly home and integrate back into her body. Jia Chu-An then visits Yu-Zhen's family and explains that she has been poisoned but he will cure her in return for her hand in marriage. She rejects him.

attacking the rapist

She tries to commit suicide (by head butting a wooden pillar) but is stopped and the family call in monks (interestingly Buddhist monks, rather than Taoist), to no avail as her monstrous form defeats them. Unusually, she breaths fire as part of her attacks and also fires different coloured rays out of her mouth. Another suicide attempt (by hanging) and she and her handmaidens move to a distant rural area to avoid people. Unfortunately, she does attack some travellers (who, to be fair, deserved it as they were awfully rapey) but there is an intervention from an old wise man who gives her a partial cure – so she only transforms on the 15th of each month – and promises to find a permanent cure.

the old wise man

Part of the old man’s gift is a box they can magically trap her in so that she is not loose when she transforms. Meanwhile another traveller, Tang Ming-Kuan, is targeted by a female snake demon. He is warned to run from the area as she will drain his energy and then devour him. He happens, whilst pursued, across Yu Zhen’s home and the box is used to trap the snake demon, freeing him. The two fall in love and marry, but with a promise that he cannot see her on the 15th day of each month. Eventually the snake demon woman will escape and, whilst helping with her vengeance, Jai Chu-An will catch up to Yu Zhen… 

fire breathing

The film was fairly fun but needed to thicken the horror atmosphere around the melodrama. There were some bits that needed answers, such as her pregnancy (the film jumps from them being interested in each other to her giving birth, we get the drama around that and then we jump forward several years to where the child is walking and talking) – enquiring minds want to know if the womb made up part of the viscera and thus the foetus was taken flying after prey, or whether she was left in her mother’s body?

the snake demons

I mention melodrama and it is laid on thick, with Jai Chu-An perpetually letting off false sounding evil laughs. I thought the pace was a tad lacking, but this is an interesting take on the folklore, whilst the filmmakers would seem not to be totally steeped in it and this leads to some of the variations. Not the greatest HK or Taiwanese horror film, but worth watching nevertheless. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Blood Covered Chocolate – review

Director: Monte Light

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Touching on themes of addiction and mental health, Blood Covered Chocolate is a low budget piece with lofty ideas that moves purposefully into the arthouse area. In black and white with occasional colour (mostly filters) this revels in the idea of an unreliable narrative, where the viewer must keep their wits about them.

It starts with a man, Massimo (Michael Klug), in a storage facility, entering a unit and looking at a bag stuffed with money. Then at home, Massimo looks on proudly at his 1-year sobriety chip. His girlfriend, Tien (Christine Nguyen, Haunted Hotties & Twilight Vamps), who wears her (longer) sobriety chip on a chain. They have sex and afterwards are talking about penanggalan (and the alternative Arp name).

Massimo and Tien

Massimo thinks the idea gross (she turns this back on Western folklore of the prince sexually forcing himself on a sleeping woman) and we do get a visual of the penanggalan (a sketch and later in photographic form). Tien explains that her grandmother was obsessed with her virginity and use to tell her tales of the creature to scare her (as it will suck a foetus right out of her). When the conversation turns to his parents it becomes more strained. His father ran out to Mexico and was involved in shady stuff, and his mother, Barbara (Debra Lamb, Beverley Hills Vamp & A Blood Story), is described as a succubus – Tien will see when she meets her.

shadow of the vampire

The film cuts to a dinner with her and her husband, Crate (Joe Altieri). Crate offers Tien wine – even though he is aware of her alcoholism, and makes direct mention of it. He is scornful of her job – bartender – and is generally rude and the dinner is very awkward. She takes it in her stride until she has to leave. There is then heated words within the family until Crate tells Barbara to wait in the car. We see her outside the apartment with a shadow reaching for her, à la Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens (I’ll circle back to this later). Crate interrogates Massimo and orders him to break things off with Tien. It is clear that Crate is into some sketchy stuff and controls Massimo’s life.

penanggalan

After Barbara and Crate are gone, there is a knock at the door and a woman (Jamie Tran) is there and demands Massimo invite her in. She refuses the offer of wine, which Massimo pours on the floor, and then attacks him. She seems to be penanggalan. Tien is calling him and wonders where he has been, he has not spoken to her for seven days. He starts to say he needs to break up with her but, when she argues back, a woman he identifies as Sofia (Meghan Deanna Kingsley) sits on his knee and tells her to take a hint. Sofia is the vampire and can change form – later she takes the form of his mother when sexually tormenting him.

fading reflection

The narrative becomes splintered and we wonder as to the reality of the vampire – we get the impression that he is both drinking and using heroin and as the film focuses on his gaze, and he is a very unreliable narrator (as I alluded to earlier), we are never sure. He loses his reflection (and we see it fade) but is told that most of the folklore/tropes are wrong (stakes do not work, nor crosses or garlic and the sun is fine 9 out of 10 times). He learns to smell the truth of people, able to almost read their minds through scent.

Michael Klug as Massimo

I mentioned Nosferatu and I have seen the film described as a tribute to the classic silent movie. We do get the odd moment of shadow but, to me, this is a tribute only in that it is vampire themed. Whilst director Monte Light may have had it in mind, this is much more modern and eschews the European gothic (though there is arguably an American gothic running through it), leaning much more into the black and white New York vampire films (The Addiction and Nadja specifically). That black and white, with occasional colour, worked well and the photography is very nice. It was nice to see Christine Nguyen in a serious role within a quality project – given the films we’ve seen her in before – but it is Michael Klug who is given the task of carrying this and his effort is admirable.

Meghan Deanna Kingsley as Sofia

Whether you like this or not will very much depend on your taste for arthouse films and splintered narratives. It twists into psychedelia from time to time – replete with kaleidoscopic imagery – and whilst it does offer a trustworthy explanation at the denouement, the viewer may find themselves put off with the unreliability of our lead’s narration through the body of the film. If you are cool with that then I think there is much to get out of this and I certainly enjoyed it. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The film is on free services such as Tubi but can be found:

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Dracula: His First Centuries: The Legend of Dracula, Book I – review (& revisit)

Author: Perry Lake

First Published: 2021 (2nd edition)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: All men know the LEGEND OF DRACULA. Since the publication of Bram Stoker’s novel in 1897, the name of Dracula has Inspired terror. Yet between the death of Vlad the Impaler in 1476 and his invasion of England in 1890, there lie four centuries. So what was Dracula doing during the time?

In these nineteen stories, you will see Dracula hack and slash and plot and scheme his bloody way to the top of the undead hierarchy.

Beginning with a quartet of tales about the historical Vlad the Impaler, you will see the depths to which human depravity can descend.

Then meet Doctor Faust, the arch-sorcerer, who makes a deal with the forces of Darkness, to give him power and knowledge. Demanding a devil to serve him, Faust becomes the greatest wizard of his time. But in the end, who will end up serving whom?

Read of Dracula’s battles with the ancient Chi You, the seductive and mysterious Nycea, the cunning Erlik Iblis, the brutish Vardalekos, and the even more brutish Torbalan! Stand beside him in his struggle against those myriad vampire lords who had ruled the Night for centuries—even millennia—prior. Then watch Dracula make an alliance with Ivan the Terrible.

The origin of DRACULA lies within these pages.

The review: Perry Lake had previously published three books in his The Legend of Dracula series (you can access the original reviews for book 1, book 2 and book 3) and had provided the three for review. He contacted me recently with a fourth book and then mentioned that he had substantially changed the first three volumes. The books contain a series of short vignettes concerning Dracula and, in his words, the author has “thoroughly reworked my previous Dracula books, this time assembling the stories in chronological order and adding over 75,000 words of new stories.” I was keen to look over the reworked volumes as, whilst the series grew stronger over the volumes, the first volume was a collection of great ideas hampered somewhat within the style, as the book did jump across time periods in a jarring way. I’m glad I did and this is the new edition (also renamed) of the first volume of the series.

The prose has been corralled, offering a more linear narrative that serves to inform the reader, leading them into the world the author is building. In this world Vlad Ţepeş is the vampire we will come to know within the Stoker narrative. I need to repeat here that whilst Stoker did not base his character on Ţepeş, the concept is part of the Dracula megatext and I have no problem with other authors making the connection for their versions of the story. In this case he, as a mortal, does attend the Scholomance but, whilst aided by the terrible knowledge he accesses within the Devil’s school, he is still ultimately assassinated, his head taken to Istanbul but, decades later, the wizard Faust reclaims body and head and then resuscitates him as one of the undead. Faust’s mastery of the vampire is relatively short-lived and he ends up Vlad's slave. The volume then follows Dracula’s struggle to become ruler of the undead. The stories in this volume (bar the prologue) go up to 1578.

The vampires have to sleep in native earth but can, if well fed enough, daywalk. Mirrors hold their true face (as in what their corpse should appear as) and it is when they would have decayed far enough that they can start to shapeshift. Vlad, having been rendered down to dust in the restorative process can shift immediately. Shifting incorporates clothes into the new form but not metals (so no armour, for instance).

If I had a complaint, it isn’t a new one, and I don’t think it would surprise the author. There is a use, in dialogue, of Elizabethan pronouns. I understand some writers think it makes the language sound more authentic but to my ears – unless the writer is intimate with the rules around them (and I am not by any stretch, myself) – they can be jarring – especially imposed over a prose that feels of a modern style by dint of the author’s natural voice. I do have to make the point again as other new readers can be put off by it too but it soon faded into the background for me and didn’t overly disturb my immersion. The use has not impacted the score.

As for the score, I am pleased to say that the work Perry Lake has put into tidying and updating the volumes has paid dividends. 6.5 out of 10 for a stronger opening to the series

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK.

V-Wars: Night Terrors – review

Editor: Jonathan Maberry

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The Blurb:

• The war is tearing our world apart. Instead of big armies with tanks in the field, the Vampire War is fought in the streets, neighbor against neighbor, family against family. Anyone can turn at any time. The blood hunger can suddenly appear in the middle of a kiss. The person who sleeps next to you every night could wake up in the dead of night...hungry. So hungry...



• V-Wars: Night Terrors collects all-new stories from the reporters embedded with the beats (humans) and the bloods (vampires). Each tale explores the nature of terror and peels back another layer of our comfort. Each tale bares our throat to the bite.



• New York Times Bestseller Jonathan Maberry and his team of front-line storytellers bring you all-new tales of horror and heroism, of pain and delight, of deadly despair and soaring courage. The war between beats and bloods is blazing. Pick a side.

The review: Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of V-Wars as a concept and a series and you can find my reviews of the first two volumes here and here. Whilst arguably the first V-War never really ended, this volume is set during the second V-War and one of the great things about the volumes is how the various authors pull your loyalties one way and another. One moment you may root for a human and the next a vampire. There are multiple shades of grey drawn and, even with a hint that there is a corruption within human Government encouraging the ethnic cleansing of the V-War, we are given the warning that even the most benign seeming V organisations – the court of the Crimson Queen – may not be the ideal it makes itself out to be.

This is underlined when, through the eyes of a truly innocent hybrid, we see the grassroots organisation Unity, which espouses mutual living and yet thinks nothing of holding humans prisoner as food for their interpretation of greater good.

Again it is a joy playing spot the vampire type. We are told there are 300 vampire species and 5800 known hybrids (plus hydra, a never before classified species and a one off. Hydra being a teenage girl whose regenerative powers are so strong she may be truly immortal). Lycanthropes generally are vampire types but there is a known (through DNA) true lycanthrope who has human and dire wolf DNA – this may be the person known only as Rancid and certainly Rancid is something else.

One interesting idea was allowing us to meet a male White Lady of Fau. Normally female this ethnically French type of vampire is a seducer and the male one we meet is gay. We meet a vampire (wurdulak) turned vampire hunter as she tries to stop the monsters she perceives herself and her kind to be. There are characters we have met before and new characters too.

V-Wars is begging for a TV series. It’s clever and sassy and there is a wild variety of vampire types that could be played with in that format. In the meantime we have the books and this one holds its own against the others in the series, the use of multiple writers with Maberry’s overall control allowing the series to remain fresh and yet follow its path without irrelevant meandering. 9 out of 10.

Vampire Wars – review

Author: Perry Lake

First published: 2014

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: For thousands of years, ancient vampire lords ruled the Night. Their queen, the coldly beautiful, immortal, and all-powerful Lilith, ruled them distantly, ignoring their squabbles over territory and victims. Then came Vlad the Impaler, once history's most bloodthirsty fiend, now reanimated as an undead creature of the Night. Facing the vampire legions of the brutish Vardalekos, the loathsome Viy, the diabolical Jhiang-Shi, the monstrous Mmbyu, the cunning Erlik, and the seductive Nycea, Vlad Dracula seeks out allies, be they undead or lycanthropic or mortal.

You've read Bram Stoker's “Dracula”. Now see how Vlad the Impaler fought and struggled to become Dracula, the King-Vampire. A part of THE LEGEND OF DRACULA trilogy, this book is a collection of twenty short stories about the infamous Count and his undead legions as he strives for the ultimate goal—the throne of the supreme King of the Vampires!

The Review: It’s frustrating when I read a book like Perry Lake’s Vampire Wars. In the first instance I have to say it was filled with fantastic ideas but I also felt it a little lacking in the prose style – though I trust my criticisms are constructive.

The book itself is made up of vignettes, shorts if you will, which cover an expanse of time from Dracula’s resurrection through to the nineteenth century. Being shorts (and the book being one of three, which I am assured can be read in any order) there is some degree of narrative repetition but that is to be expected.

It runs on the ‘Vlad Ţepeş was Count Dracula’ premise (calling the castle “Castelui de Vlad Ţepeş” jarred as the man wouldn’t have referred to himself by the sobriquet Ţepeş) but how did he become a vampire? The beginning of the book suggests he was resurrected by Faust and held as a slave for over a decade until he seduced Gretchen, turned her and became dominant over Faust who was turned also. I liked the idea, and I do like drawing Faust into the vampire realm – a trend (I believe) begun by Paul Féval in the book the Vampire Countess. Then a later story mentioned he was turned in the Scholomance and these separate origin stories appeared to jar until I realised that he was killed post the Scholomance and it was his vampiric form that was brought back by Faust – the full story isn’t within this volume.

The vampires in this are burnt by the sun (mostly) though they can stand some exposure as they age. I liked the fact that they died during the daylight hours. There was an interesting lore around reflections, that the true state of the vampire was seen – Gretchen seeing a decaying corpse, Vlad seeing a ghostly skeleton and the reflection fading to nothing as their true form completely decayed. The invitation rule is deemed not to hold true if the house bears the vampire’s blood (ie if it is held by their mortal family). The ability to transform is not something all vampires can do and also relies on their true form to be sufficiently decayed to allow the dissolution of their body.

Holy items burn but it is not denominational – the Ganges, being a sacred river, would burn a vampire. Vampiric resurrection is achieved by applying human blood (preferably virginal and certainly not undead) to the remains under the light of the full moon. If a victim is preyed upon by a vampire and that vampire is destroyed, an occult law prevents the victim being further predated by another undead for seven years.

As well as these ideas – all of which I was impressed with – there are a cornucopia of vampires from myth, legend, literature and movies. Mostly this extended cast works, some of whom are active characters and others who are mentioned in passing. We get Ruthven, Carmilla, Erzsébet Báthory, Viy and Lilith (who is the vampire Goddess Strigoica, also called Kali). In passing we get such characters as Angelus (from Angel) and Mamuwalde (from Blacula). We get different vampire types mentioned including a vampire horse, vetal, and penanggalen. Most of the cornucopia worked well – though the tying in of Lord of the Rings was perhaps a conceit too far.

However, I said I had issues. Firstly it was within some of the language used. Lake deliberately chose to use thee and thou’s in the dialogue and, to be honest, they didn’t work, were inconsistent with the other language used for dialogue and just felt forced. Better to have avoided them in my opinion. I think the greatest failing of the book was, however, based within the short story style.

It was clear that many of the stories could and, more importantly, should have been expanded on. There was, because of the brevity of the prose, a dearth of descriptive prose and even more so a lack of characterisation. Some characters appeared to only die again in the same vignette, unfortunately still two dimensional. Others died off page (such as Faust). But there was an inability to really care as there was never a connection built with the characters. Of course they are all villains (the vampires are not good guys) but expanding the story and characterisation within the vignettes, indeed expanding the book to several volumes, would have made the reader care. At times I felt I was reading an extended summary rather than the final prose.

This is unfortunate because, as I said, there are fantastic ideas in volume and Perry Lake has a lot of story to tell… I just think he needs to take his time and tell those stories more fully. 5 out of 10 balances great ideas with a need for expansion (and the need for the loss of the cod-archaic dialogue). The homepage with an excerpt is here.

Mystics in Bali – review

Directed by: H Tjut Djalil

Release Date: 1981

Contains spoilers

This Indonesian flick is also known as Leák. The Leák of the title is a type of vampiric witch from Balinese folklore, also known as a Leyak, and is similar in trait to the Malaysian Penanggalan – a vampiric creature we have come across both in the Mike Mignola DVD comic that came with Hellboy: Blood and Iron and less successfully in Kapop.

The main difference between the two creatures is that whilst the Penanggalan is simply a vampiric creature which floats around as a head that has its stomach and intestines, the Leák is more complex. A witch like creature that practices black magic, they are able to shapeshift as well as fly around in a Penanggalan-like way. This film contains both a Leák – actually the Queen of the Leák (Sofia WD) – as well as the neighbouring Malaysia’s Penanggalan.

American Cathy (Ilona Agathe Bastian) has come over to Bali to learn the secrets of the Leák. She has previously learnt voodoo and wishes to write a book on the most powerful (or dangerous) of black magic practices. She has met local Mahendra (Yos Santo) – known as Hendra – and has asked him to help her. Eventually he agrees to try to find the Leák for her. To note, as well as the blooming awful dubbing – I mean it is bad – Cathy is as wooden as a log. I understand that Bastain was just some tourist spotted by the producers, so perhaps she can’t be blamed too much.

Now one of the problems with this movie is that the scenes don’t hold together so well. We have a trip to a Balinese cemetery where the bones appear to be disinterred – no real explanation is given for trip or bones – and a woman following Hendra and Cathy. She just appears every so often and it is only in the end of the film we discover she is his ex, watching over him despite the fact that he dumped her for some American tourist but… onto the meat of the story.

Hendra gets permission to take Cathy to see the Leák and they are caught in a thunderstorm of unnatural origin before being faced with the witch herself. First thing to note… the cackle, oh my word how the crone can cackle. Then the voice, she is dubbed in a faux-Yoda type voice that makes it very difficult to take the whole thing seriously. Finally the look, corrupted of face, long of nails, wild of hair. Honestly, if they had done the laughter softer (and thus more sinister), dubbed her better and had better general effects she might have been a genuinely creepy screen-presence. She agrees to teach Cathy and leaves her arm behind, to crawl Thing-like in a blur of bad SFX.

The next night they return and the Leák is hiding in a bush. She asks for the tribute requested (that we didn’t hear asked for, bad scripting) and takes the jewels from Cathy’s hand by rather long, glowing tongue. She then uses said tongue to drink blood brought for her in jars – she’s walked a long way and so is thirsty. Finally she draws a spell onto Cathy’s thigh by tongue – a way to lend Cathy Leák power. The next night she should come on her own.

Cathy is taught by dancing and laughing with the old woman whilst the lessons are telepathically communicated to her. She tells Hendra that she will soon be a Leák master and then explains, in a flashback for our benefit, how she and the Leák changed form into pigs the night before.

For his part Hendra is worried and goes to see his Uncle, who just so happens to be a wise-man whose family have opposed to the Leák for some time. He wants to discover if there is a counter-spell that can rescue Cathy. One would have thought he’d have considered all this prior to introducing her to the Leák Queen – numpty. There is a spell and Uncle gives him a mystic dagger too.

Of course it is far too late. The Leák is going to use Cathy’s head, as she puts it, and causes it to detach as she has made Cathy become a Penanggalan. This fits in with folklore, which suggests that a Penanggalan can be created through a powerful curse. Also fitting in with folklore is the fact that Cathy has fangs. The idea that her body should be preserved in vinegar whilst her head is out and about is lost, however.

Her attack on her first victim is straight out of Penanggalan folklore. She flies into a house where a pregnant woman is, knocking the poor old midwife through a wall in the process, and descends between the woman’s legs to devour her unborn baby. However, Cathy is not feeding herself, but rather collecting for the Leák who is using the blood to become young once more.

Uncle gets involved and he decides that Cathy is irredeemable and thus puts thorns (or toothpicks!) in her neck to prevent reattachment – broken glass is the folklore weapon of choice but close enough. Traditionally this would be enough to kill the Penanggalan as it cannot reattach by sunrise but the Leák is involved and more shenanigans are afoot – culminating in a bad SFX magical battle.

One unusual twist on the traditional folklore was having the Leák unable to stand the sun and, indeed, it is through the sun that the Queen dies. Traditionally the Leák look like ordinary people in daylight. We also get some different shape-shifting through the film, into snakes (Cathy throws up mice the next day) and into fireballs.

But is it good? How could you ask? Bad effects, bad plotting, bad dubbing and dialogue, wooden acting and Yoda sound-a-likes… It’s blooming terrible and yet absolutely necessary as it is the only place you’ll see a serious attempt (despite all I’ve just mentioned) to portray both a Leák and a Penanggalan. 3 out of 10, with that caveat.

The imdb page is here.

Dangerous Seductress – review

Release Date: 1992

Director: H Tjut Djalil

Contains spoilers


This Indonesian film is on a vampire filmography I have and has a note that it is a remake of Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl. Let us just squash this rumour right now. This has absolutely nothing at all in common with ‘the Living Dead Girl’, not one iota of the story is similar. This is a wholly different beast. It actually mixes up the witch and vampire genre quite considerably but, whilst it straddles both camps, it most definitely is vampiric.

The film starts of with a cityscape view and then we get a car chase, one of the most strange and bizarre ones put to celluloid. It involves a thieves’ car and a cop car. There is a thief in the back of the car and two up front and the front passenger keeps hitting the driver as they are being chased because the driver shot a cop in the robbery. When I say hit I mean punched, but somehow without causing a crash. The cops and thieves are firing at each other. The fire fight involves both pistols and machine guns and they are all the worst shots in the world. Eventually the cops call for backup, once they are out of the city, and backup is a police motorbike. This drives at the robbers, with the rider firing, leaps over the thieves car and hits the cop car.

Now, you’d think that was the end of it but the thieves go careening into a graveyard and crash after the driver receives yet another punch, which leads to the puncher being impaled (and yet still able to complain). The cops come along and ram them, enabling the driver to speed off again and crash. The resultant crash causes the loss of an arm and a finger and is witnessed by American Linda (Kristin Anin) as it is outside her home. Ambulances come and go and then the ‘fun’ begins… we get the most bizarre resurrection scene.

Wind shifts some dirt and a piece of jewellery is revealed (actually it turns out later to be more like a possessed, hand carved makeup mirror). Blood drips from a tree onto it and it opens. The un-retrieved severed finger makes its way along the floor (honestly, I couldn’t make this up) to the jewellery and it snaps shut on it as though it had eaten it.

Lightening starts to hit the ground and in the flash we see a woman (Amy Weber) appear (I assume this was her spirit) and then disappear again. A leg bone finds its way to an uncovered skeleton and reattaches itself and then flesh starts to form on the skeleton. Eventually it reveals her face, but the body is still rotten – a wail is emitted (and continues on and off through the scene). She stands and a dog comes over and tries to steal the skeletal leg. It is beheaded for its trouble, and its blood shoots like a jet straight into her mouth.

We see her face form fangs as more of her body reforms. She tries to move but her feet, which are in a hole, are grabbed by hands and she cannot move. She wails some more and her nipples glow a blue/white. Why do her nipples glow? For the same reason that her bum glows later and someone else’s nipples glow – so that we can’t see them. The Queen of Darkness has returned but is held in a hole!

Somewhere in America Suzy (Tonya Lawson) has given up waiting for her boyfriend John (Joseph Cassano) to get home for their anniversary dinner. He gets there eventually and seems drunk, he gives her a ring, is forgiven and gets amorous with her. When she refuses him he beats her and tries to rape her. It is quite a disturbing scene, to be honest, one would say brutal. She gets away with the prodigious use of a glass and a cupboard rail.

In Jakarta Linda is having a birthday party. Actually we get about five minutes of her dancing with her fiancée Bob (John Warom) and I’ll mention the film’s pacing later. A friend comes in and he has brought a colleague called Beko (Mick Carmichael). Beko has brought Linda an occult book for her birthday – as you do; give the American model, whom you have never met before, the ancient Indonesian book of spells! The phone goes and it is Suzy, who happens to be Linda’s sister. Linda gets her on a flight to Jakarta.

Linda has to go on a modelling shoot in Bali (I promise we are getting to a point) and leaves Suzy, and the book. Suzy says a spell to gain beauty, strength and glamour and, as a result, summons the Queen of Darkness into a mirror. Suzy will have all she wishes, but the Queen will use her body to gain sustenance… ahh the point, at last. Suzy becomes the dangerous seductress, getting men and feeding from them. Will her family realise in time? Perhaps so, if the mysterious holy man in Bali can warn Linda but, ultimately, could we care?

Lore wise this is mad. Suzy gains magic powers, this is much more than your atypical eye mojo, we are talking full on spells and witchcraft. This only seems to happen at night, she is attacked during the day and cannot defend herself. She seems to be able to turn the head of every man she meets. Once alone her mystic tattoo, which appeared when she made the deal, glows and she grows fangs – she doesn’t tend to bite though.

She dispatches the men in a variety of ways. One, for instance, she spear guns in the leg, pinning him to a wall, and then stabs him in the neck with a stiletto heel. The spurt of blood goes straight into her mouth in a jet. Once back at home she looks to the Queen in the mirror and slits her own throat, the blood jets into the mirror, feeding the Queen. We get an odd reference moment when some lads are talking and one describes her first murder as being committed by a weird Dracula, another refutes that and says it was obviously a weird feminist. If they were making a point in the dialogue I missed it, but I doubt it also.

She is immune to bullets it seems but the strangest crossing of lore was the Queen appearing as a floating head. I wondered whether this was an attempt to link the Queen with the Malaysian vampire myth of the penanggalan. Remember that Malaysia and Indonesia have a land border. Indonesia does have similar head only vampire legends and so it could be one of those that was being referenced.

The film has two major strikes against it, beyond the story I just described. The first is the acting, which is sub-porn. Now, to be fair, for some of the actors English will not have been the first language but there isn’t a single good performance. Everyone sucks equally.

The other issue is the pacing. From five minutes of Linda and Bob dancing, to other dance moments, to model shoots and even (supposedly seductive) pool games. The director seemed obsessed with slowing the pace of the film down for no good reason. One feels these scenes, in the main, were meant to be sexploitative, but the film failed on that score also – the European filmmakers were doing a much better job at titillation decades before.

Not a great movie, but with enough weirdness to warrant taking at least a quick look if you know what you are getting yourself into. 1.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Hellboy Animated – Blood and Iron – review

Directed by: Victor Cook & Tad Stones

Release Date: 2007

Contains spoilers


This is the second Hellboy animated to be released and, as you can guess by it being here, it contains vampires. The film is feature length and has the stars of the Hellboy live action movie performing voice acting duties. The DVD itself comes with a plethora of extras – two of which I’ll get to at the end of the review and a 32 page comic. Now, I was a little excited about the comic as it is a story called the Yearning and has skeletal creatures lusting for blood at the beginning. However these are bone ghouls and not vampires.

The other thing to note is that the edition I received from Play.com is an exclusive boxed set that comes with a Hellboy bust-up toy. A little diorama of Hellboy Vs. The Bat God, the toy has nothing to do with this actual film but, well hey… I’m a sucker for a toy in a DVD set!

At the head of the feature, the credits come over some marvellous 3D animation of a graveyard, though the film itself is in standard 2D. The story proper begins with Hellboy (Ron Perlman) stalking through sewers. He ends up in battle with a minotaur type creature, with a metal arm, and aided in his fight by Abe Sapien (Doug Jones). A fight scene later and Hellboy is victorious – though his efforts have been observed and a woman’s voice questions why he opposes his own kind.

Now the film does something interesting. We get a back story regarding Professor Bruttenholm, or ‘Broom’ – voiced in modern times by John Hurt and as a younger man by James Arnold Taylor – the story focusing on his first real field trip and his battles with the vampire Erzsebet Ondrushko (Kath Soucie). What the film does is run the sequences in flashback in reverse chronology, according to the extras an almost accidental format born of the feature being under length.

One should note that Erzsebet is obviously based on Erzsébet Báthory, and so why they did not use that name is beyond me.

The first flash back we see is Broom with members of the Transylvanian constabulary, the fiancée of a young missing woman and a priest, as they make their way into Erzsebet’s lair. In the main room skeletons hang from the walls, or are in situ on the rack and the priest seems to have visions of the girls alive and tortured.

Broom notices fresh blood on the floor and it leads to a wall. They break through the wall and enter a secret room. The missing young lady, Anna (Grey DeLisle), is on the floor, by a bath of blood, with punctures in her neck. On seeing this and Broom's intentions, the priest backs away and runs. Broom has the fiancée stake his love to save her soul.

The remaining men then open Erzsebet’s coffin, but it is empty. Blood drips onto Broom’s hand and they sweep their flashlights upwards. One of the constables is being held on the ceiling, his neck bitten by Erzsebet. Panicking the men run, with Broom telling them to hold. They manage to escape but, off screen, are ripped apart by wolves with glowing blue eyes.

Broom is alone and the room comes alive with blue flamed candles. Erzsebet appears before him and he takes a hip flask from his pocket. She mocks his need to fortify himself with a drink but he flings the contents towards her, the flask is filled with holy water that burns at her face, stripping her of her beauty.

Enraged she leaps at Broom, the momentum carrying them both through a curtain and a window into the dawn. Broom catches the balcony ledge as Erzsebet plummets through the sky, her body consumed by flames. It has all been a dreamed memory and Broom awakens. However, looking in the mirror he feels the back of his neck and has blood on his hand, he sees Erzsebet in the mirror. Hellboy enters and banters, once the demon has left the room Broom realises that his hand is clean but he knows something is afoot.

The genius of this is that, after this and scattered through the remaining film, we move back in time in flashback, rounding out the story and discovering the motivation of the characters. This adds a depth of dimension to them which is fantastically detailed.

In the modern day the BPRD (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) agents are being sent on various missions. The final one is to a haunted house (the Hampton House) as a favour to billionaire Oliver Trombolt (J Grant Albrecht), a friend of a Senator. Knowing this is a publicity stunt they intend to only send new agent Sydney Leach (Rob Paulsen) but Broom intervenes and has Leach, himself, Hellboy, Abe and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) all sent to the house, rather than their originally planned missions. Though he doesn’t share his reasons he carries garlic. Incidentally the comic I mentioned shows the mission Hellboy was meant to go on, which he does after the Hampton House

Investigation of the house shows it is teeming with ghosts, but they all seem to be female, of Eastern European origin and asking for help. Broom reveals that they are all victims of Erzsebet, and realises that someone is trying to bring her back via the artefacts from her castle that Trombolt has bought.

We get more background on Erzsebet. Whilst alive she was obsessed with beauty and killed some 613 maidens to bathe in their blood, but her atrocities only became worse after she died and was raised as a vampire. We discover that she was a priestess of the Goddess Hecate (Cree Summer).

Now, to a degree, this is where things do fall slightly flat. Erzsebet is indeed brought back but her return is for Broom to deal with. Thus something must be done by the filmmakers to distract Hellboy and that something is a fight against a manifestation of Hecate. This, in itself, is not a bad concept – it was Hecate observing him at the beginning – but there is no depth to it. I would say that, compared to the rich back story of the Erzsebet story it seems tagged on. However the bizarre part is the back story is the tagged on bit. This almost makes the film an accidental success.

Vampire lore is pretty standard. No reflection (the reflection at the beginning is part of a dream/vision remember), control of wolves, blood drinking, aversion to garlic, holy water and crosses (which are dependant on the bearer’s faith). They can be killed by stake or sunlight.

The voice acting works well, though perhaps the character Leach distracted from what is a fairly dark story as a newcomer and thus fairly wide eyed and innocent. The soundtrack is fitting to the piece. The actual animation works well, though I wouldn’t say it is the most attractive or stylistic I’ve ever come across.

I mentioned extras on the DVD and there are two that deserve highlighting. You can access Professor Broom’s story, which is the back story from the film but in correct chronological order. There is also an e-comic called Penanggalan. Whilst it is somewhat short, and without a huge amount of depth, its nice to see this rare Malaysian vampire being highlighted.

All in all an entertaining animated feature with good depth – albeit accidentally. 7 out of 10.


The imdb page is here.