The Vampire and the Vigilante – review

Director: Rene Perez

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

This is a fairly short feature coming in at 75 minutes and, whilst it doesn’t outstay its welcome, it is in many respects too short. There are two primary stories that overlap and then converge. For a budget piece they do pretty well with effects, but veer off in places and the aesthetic choices sometimes seem odd.

Siren's lure

It starts, however, in the middle ages, one guesses. A woman (Emily Grace Turner) narrates as we see her by a castle. She seems carefree and as a warrior enters she beckons him and moves ahead of him, just out of reach luring him towards her. Her narration suggests that her role is to lure men for her Master (Tony Jackson); she rings a bell as she lures him and then gets to a place where the Master grabs him from the shadows. The set up reminded me, as I watched, of the luring the girls were forced to do in Requiem for a Vampire. She says she is a part of a sisterhood able to flame desire in men – not totally stated but suggested later they are sirens – the film then cuts to the present and another member of the Sisterhood, Tori (Samantha Kruse), in the woods.

Michael Paré as Gabriel

A man, Gabriel (Michael Paré, Sicilian Vampire, Blubberella, BloodRayne 3: The Third Reich, BloodRayne & BloodRayne II: deliverance), has met a female cop and is asking for a file on a murderer and rapist whose case was recently dismissed in court. She resists at first, more to protect Gabriel, who is not getting any younger. It is clear that he is a vigilante and eventually she concedes and gives him the file. We cut to a bar and he is having a drink, the camera searches out the patrons and one is a man playing pool on his own. Gabriel sees a woman come in and offers to buy her a drink (her reaction is an aggressive no rather than assertive, veering on slanderous despite his polite demeanour and language, and begged the question of what they were trying to communicate with the scene). The pool player leaves and he follows, cocking his gun when he gets outside…

sunlight gear

Out in the woods a painter, Percival (Joseph Camilleri), is sketching a model when he hears a gunshot. Duty calls he says to the unseen model. He tracks through the woods, finding Tori and asks if she heard the shot, which she didn’t. He then directs her towards the (assumed) hunter. She puts a tape, labelled Siren Songs (which is an AOR track, in reality), in a ghetto blaster, puts on a dress and goes lure him. The hunter doesn’t seem that interested, at first, until she gets her boobs out. He then follows and is lured down a hidden mine shaft. Percival, in the meantime, has got the Master from nearby caves. Getting to the victim means going outside and so he wears gear against the sun – though the German war rig, with back mounted respirator, was a strange aesthetic choice in costume design.

Emily Whitcomb as Natalie

We then meet Natalie (Emily Whitcomb), on the phone with her grandpa, who has sent her grandma’s cross for her birthday. She has to pay for his medication that day and gets an envelope from under her mattress but it is empty. She goes through to her roommate and accuses the roomies’ boyfriend of stealing the money – he has form, he once stole her debit card and she had to close her current account as a result, hence the cash stash. The boyfriend comes back, has a go at Natalie (as a sidebar, the roomie is black and he talks about Natalie’s privilege as an excuse for stealing from her, but he presents white and I was a tad unsure as to what they were trying to do with the dialogue; whether satirical, comedic or something else) and then clocks her on the head, knocking her out.

Percival and Tori

She comes round to a knock on the door. It is Tori – she and Percival have been sent to find a corrupt and female victim and one assumes they came there looking for roomie, who is a sex worker to feed her and boyfriend’s drug habits. Desperate for money, and told that she will only have to strip, Natalie reluctantly agrees to go with her and, as soon as she is in the car, is knocked out with gas. I don’t really want to say much more but she ends up being given to the Master, turning and crossing paths with Gabriel…

industrial Geiger

The lore is pretty simple: consecrated religious icons hurt, sunlight is an issue and a bite turns. The Master apparently has some level of telepathy and is a monstrous looking vampire. I mentioned the aesthetics and the effects. The most jarring aesthetic was seeing the Master’s House (why he has both a house and lives in a cave system is unanswered). It is clearly opulent from the exterior (and an establishing shot). Inside it is like an industrial version of H R Geiger with a touch of boneyard, and looks like the inside of a Haunt. It jarred. As for the effects, the Master looks quite good but, for instance, his ears look overtly rubbery and this is simply down to doing effects on budget. I was also struck that one blood spurt, from a gunshot, looked great and seemed to be practical, where for another they used cgi and it looked as awful as cgi blood spurts tend to.

Tony Jackson as the Master

Michael Paré is great as the aging vigilante, managing to add to the character with little more than some stereotyped character background but some of the performances were stagey. The film seemed well photographed and digitally crisp, thus the grindhouse film damage effects seemed somewhat out of place – I understand the point, but less defined photography would have worked better with the aesthetic. The film, as mentioned, didn’t outstay its welcome but the story felt short and, whilst it reached a conclusion for the immediate story, it felt like it was missing a chunk off the end –  that being said I do also recognise it gave a 'to be continued' and would like to see part 2. 6 out of 10 is a generous score for a brave effort with heart, where the heart draws it above the flaws.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Creepshow Season 3 (Blu-Ray review) – review

Director: Various

First Aired: 2021

Contains spoilers

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

This season consisted of 6 episodes with 2 segments per episode, just like Season 1 did but, like the second season, boasted two vampire (or vampiric segments) and both were worth watching.

the plant/corpse drinks blood

The episode 1 segment Mums was a vampiric plant (or plant/corpse hybrid) and was a solid little episode that stood the test of a rewatch. The story centres on an abusive father (Ethan Embry), a murdered mom (Erin Beute, Vampire Diaries) and the revenge she, and their son (Brayden Benson), manage to exact on dad for her murder.

the krasue

At the other end of the season we get some political commentary and a krasue in episode 6’s Drug Traffic. For me, a highlight of the season in its own right, it was great to see Michael Rooker in Creepshow and very exciting to have the krasue (the creature type is not mentioned by name and so remember the krasue is the Thai name for a vampire type that appears across South-East Asia under a variety of names). This had a nice twist on the lore at the end.

Michael Rooker as Beau

Other highlight segments, for me, included the other segment in episode 6 entitled A Dead Girl Named Sue, which takes part in the Night of the Living Dead universe as the zombie outbreak has just begun and episode 4’s Meter Reader, which was a demonic apocalypse episode, with a great atmosphere and a story that did borrow a theme from the vampire short the Family of the Vourdalak. Just to note the other segment in that episode, Stranger Sings, featured a siren.

mum's flowers

The Blu-ray set has a Comic Con panel and some behind the Scenes footage but feels a little light on extras compared to the other 2 sets – then again it is a strong set of episodes. As the review is for the Blu-Ray set I am holding this to 8 out of 10 overall, slightly behind the season 2 set. However, the widescreen transfer looks very good and it is the episodes that are the main course.

The imdb page is here.

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

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Blood Lust

This Benedict Mart film from 2016 was one that I really wanted to be a straight-out vampire flick – though I know before watching it that it features sirens. Unfortunately, it came out a little less than a definitive genre pic, despite flesh eating. Maybe it was the hastily explained lore vs very little observable flesh eating. It is certainly of genre interest but just missed out having that definite V factor for me.

It starts with an artist, drawing on a rocky shoreline as he narrates for us the legend of the sirens – this fellow narrates a few times through the film. With sketches and some stills of the sirens themselves we are told of three sisters, in film revealed as Callie (Rikke Leigh), Lydia (Eloise Juryeff) and Tess (Helen Rule), tasked with accompanying (and, through that company, protecting) Persephone. But they abandon her and Hades kidnaps her and so the Gods fling the sisters to a distant island (somewhere off Britain) and turn them into the “ravenous” sirens. Whilst the sketches show them with wings, in film they only have human form.

Rikke Leigh as Calie

We get a scene with Chef Annie (Chloe Partridge) who is cooking whilst husband Dan (Matt Silver) looks on. He drops a heart she asks for and his comment makes it clear they have had relationship problems. He goes downstairs to throw the heart in the bin and someone clubs him from behind with a wrench. When he eventually comes round, in hospital three days later, he discovers that Annie is dead, murdered. Sometime later he is struggling with his job as a food critic as he can only face vegetarian food (much to his editor’s chagrin), not even when cooked by friend Ryan (C. Thomas Howell, Kindred the Embraced, Blood Wars, Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood & Justice League: Gods and Monsters). He has met and is falling for a woman online – she happens to be Callie.

the sisters together

So, long story short (though to be fair the film is quite short at 74 minutes), he becomes concerned when he hears strange things when Callie is on the phone to him and then cuts off contact. Then he gets a text message from her saying ‘Rescue me’ and so goes to the island where she runs a guest house with her sisters. It is readily explained that Lydia sent the text (and we also discover that should one of the sisters leave it will mean the death for all three – though I suspect that actually meant their immortality would end, otherwise why would any of them choose to leave). The sisters feed a drink to guests, which causes their secrets to come out, though they can also charm the stories with song, and they then eat the evil-doers.

the bite

There has to be more that isn’t explained as Lydia also lures Ryan to the island and so she must have some insight, though apparently not enough to simply know who is definitely bad and who is good. The issue is that whilst we get to see some stalking, a few (not overly gory) attacks and them cutting up meats, we get little in the way of horror level gore and no real feeding scenes (though we see them serve a cooked heart to hotel guests). We do get one neck bite – but it is more in anger than for feeding. It is within narration we are told by the narrator that they are “feasting on the guilty a little too eagerly” and so we know the fate of their victims through this but it all seems a little too shy, like the filmmakers pulled back from a horror that could have given us a vampiric narrative and failed to properly display the trope. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Entwined – review

Director: Minos Nikolakakis

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

I watched Entwined on the basis that I would (hopefully) be getting a decent dose of folk horror (which it is, with an aura of the fairy-tale) but also discovered something that has a vampiric aspect. Whatever our lead character is (and I suspect she is based on a dryad, but there are is an element of siren also), she is most definitely an energy vampire also.

This leaves us with an impressive, lyrical, directorial feature debut for Minos Nikolakakis that also has some deliberate nods towards Dracula.

nearly a collision

Panos (Prometheus Aleifer), a doctor, decides to leave his city life behind after his father dies of cancer and, despite protestations from his half-brother George (John De Holland), moves to the countryside and specifically the village of Alyti. On the drive there, distracted by his mobile, he barely misses running over a young woman (Anastasia Rafaella Konidi), who runs into the forest. He is the first doctor the village has had and they seem unresponsive to him. At night he hears music playing.

Panos bored

One night he follows it, driving out of the village and finding a small house in the forest (the music coming from a phonograph). Inside is Danae, the woman he almost ran over. As he speaks to her he notices a patch on her arm, where the skin is scaling, and almost liked cracked bark. There is movement from another room, her father (Kostas Laskos) she says and tells him to leave but the old man, outside, nearly hits him with a bottle. In the village he has one patient, a woman with a gouged face who mentions the forest and who pines for her missing son.

the old man attacks

He returns to Danae during the day and enters the house but sees, through boards into another room, her having sex with the old man. The old man comes out and attacks him and Panos instinctively pushes him, cracking the elder's head open, and so rushes him to the village before heading back to Danae – though the village cop has mentioned to him the evil ones being marked so you can recognise them. He puts cream on Danae’s arm (later he discovers patches of the bark-like scaling on her back) and she gives him food and drink. Suddenly fatigued, she tells him to lie down, but when he awakens she says three days have passed.

Anastasia Rafaella Konidi as Danae

Panos tries several times to leave but the forest will not let him. It seems to grow thicker and the way to the road is lost to him, always returning to the house. Danae, for herself, suggests that she need to keep the house fire always burning as “It’s the life-blood that keeps the house alive” this felt a tad Dracula-like tonally, but it is later we get the real Dracula connection, when she says, about a locked cellar area, “I beg you, do not wander in any part of this house. It is ancient and has many memories… some that are best left unremembered. Besides there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely.” This, of course, is almost lifted from the novel, indeed, the last sentence being almost verbatim.

finding a mirror

Danae says this when he is looking for a mirror. We have seen subtle aging in Panos but, after consummating their love, we see him age rapidly, and later she marries him in a handfasting. The lack of mirrors (one of which he finds in the cellar when he steals her key) is to hide this from him. She is draining his youth away and we see her, at one point, literally draw the breath from him. That and the fire (burning wood) allow her to remain in human form – “you and only you that prevents me returning to my roots” – with the bark coming through occasionally and the handfasting taking place at the tree she says she originated from. It is for this reason I mentioned thinking her a dryad, though the record she plays almost has a siren quality to it, the music seemingly travelling an impossibly long distance, drawing a lover and holding their attention.

Danae and Panos

I was really taken by this, it does feel like a fairy-tale – the photography lending itself to that aesthetic and the relationship between the two becoming co-dependent and weirdly abusive (beyond the vampirism taking place), with Danae emotionally attached to the man she is quickly killing. Of course, the viewer realises as Panos ages that the old man was the missing son mentioned by the villager, so her previous victim, and we do see him pass due to old age. A slow burn, for sure, but worth 7 out of 10, for me at least.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK

Star Trek the Animated Series: The Lorelei Signal (s1e4) – review

Director: Hal Sutherland

First Aired: 1973

Contains spoilers

Star Trek the Animated Series was an Emmy award winning animation series that aired between 1973 and 1974 and was based on the original Star Trek series. More than that it featured the voice talents of many of the original actors. It seems a shame, therefore, that it was removed from Star Trek cannon but it is still fun to watch despite the fact that the animation is severely dated and the voice acting seems a tad stilted at times. It is actually the stories that make this worthwhile, of course.

This episode was the fourth of the first season and riffs upon the Siren myth (or, more accurately, the Rhine Maidens as Loreley was one of their number). It starts with the Enterprise in a mysterious sector of space where, according to talks between the Federation, the Romulans and the Klingons, several spaceships have mysteriously vanished. Indeed a ship disappears once every 27 years and the anniversary is upon them.

Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura

They receive a signal and, on playing it, Kirk (William Shatner, Incubus) and the other male members of the crew seem somewhat entranced, describing it as calling to them, though the unaffected Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, Spider-Man (1997)) detects no such messaging within it. She eventually asks Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett) to observe the male crew.

'Bones' aging

When they get to the source of the signal, however, Kirk arranges an all-male away party – including himself, Spock (Leonard Nimoy, Night Gallery: Death on a Barge), Bones (DeForest Kelley) and Lt. Carver (James Doohan). They are entranced by the all-female aliens they meet (who lie and tell them the males are in another compound) but feel weak and soon we see them begin to age rapidly.

all female security detail

What I found great about this episode was Lt. Uhura taking command of the Enterprise, putting female security details on the transporters (to prevent any other male crew member beaming to the planet) and leading a female security detail down to rescue the men. It spoke of a capability in the character and of her place within the rank structure, both of which should have been more widely addressed in the physical series. Of course, this episode was written and filmed at a point where gender was invariably portrayed as binary – a view that the Star Trek universe has rightly corrected in its latest TV/Stream incarnation.

one of the aliens

What they discover is that the female aliens, long before, had come to the planet as part of a colonising effort when their own world started to die. What they hadn’t realised was that the planet drained life from humanoid creatures (making the land itself vampiric). The men it drained but the women developed a glandular secretion that allowed them to both manipulate men and drain them of their energy (Bones reckons that they are aging 10 years per day). It has made them immortal, but also infertile, and they have to lure more men every 27 years.

So, alien energy vampires (and a vampiric planet) and a welcome spotlight on Lt. Uhura. I enjoyed this episode. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

What We Do in the Shadows – Season 3 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2021

Contains spoilers

A most welcome return, and whilst most will know this, for the uninitiated What We Do in the Shadows began life as a New Zealand based feature film (itself based on an earlier short film) and was transplanted to Staten Island for its series run (see reviews for seasons One and Two).

Despite the geographic (and main character) changes it was still in the same universe and characters from the film have appeared in the series. The premise of a film crew covering the lives of a group of vampire housemates remained the same though the characters were original to the series.

Laszlo and Nadja

Three seasons in and the vampires are now beloved characters. There is Nandor (Kayvan Novak), along with his human familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and her husband Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry, Snow White and the Huntsman) – who is by far my favourite character, and energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch). As the season begins the vampires are holding Guillermo in a jail cell (in the basement) whilst they contemplate what to do with him.

Guillermo 'imprisoned'

In the finale of season 2 (having escaped death in season 1, after accidentally killing Baron Afanas (Doug Jones, Universal Dead, Hocus Pocus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron & Night Angel)) the vampires are drawn to an event, which turns out to be a pretext for their execution by order of the vampiric council. In the meantime, Guillermo had discovered that he was of the Van Helsing line and a born vampire hunter, so he rescued his master and friends – by killing every other vampire there.

In council robes

What the vampires fail to realise, as they slowly (over months) deliberate the familiar’s fate is that the cell can’t hold him and he is leaving by day and doing household chores that the vampires think just happen (as well as buying edible food in place of the raw chicken they've been giving him) . The (main) Vampiric Council get in touch to say that they have decided, due to their apparent ruthlessness, to make the housemates leaders of the Vampiric Council of the Eastern Seaboard of the New World. Laszlo isn’t interested (his reasons for being a vampire are NSFW, though they don't include being a bureaucrat) but Nadja and Nando have to come to terms with power sharing. The new dynamic worked well for the comedy – though for me Laszlo was side-lined to a degree and the show worked its way naturally to a finale that has changed the dynamics (and focus) completely.

the Sire

I need to mention episode 6, the Escape. The Eastern Seaboard Vampiric Council have responsibility for the Sire (Vaios Skretas). An ancient vampiric creature who is believed to be the source of vampirism in all vampires. After forgetting to feed him, he escapes. There is a general panic as it is believed that if you kill a vampire any progeny die – something Laszlo dismisses as he and Nadja didn’t die when Baron Afanas died – then a penny drops and they dig up his charred and half missing remains, which are very much still alive.

Kristen Schaal as the Guide

I don’t want to spoil any more but will mention we find out what happens when housekeeping hoovers up a vampire’s native earth. This was a good solid season that perhaps concentrated mostly on Nadja and Nandor. However, Colin Robinson and Laszlo did get some spotlight, at least. I need to mention Kristen Schaal (Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant) as “the Guide”, the vampire council liaison who was marvellous. The fourth season promises to be interesting given the way season 3 has left off but, obviously, this review is for the season just aired and it was, again, a joy. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Siren X – review

Director: Hideo Jôjô

Release Date: 2008

Contains spoilers

Siren X ticks the boxes of being a pinku eiga film – the Japanese form that lies somewhere between a softcore film and sexploitation. It is just over an hour long, has some (rather tamely portrayed) sex scenes (whether enough to be a pinku eiga is debatable but there are a few), is terribly low budget and looks to have been filmed on a low-end camera.

In this case, whilst we have a siren, she is a very unusual vampire who, as she says “has to suck sperm and desire to maintain… …life”. This makes her a sexual vampire who needs both a physical and energy feeding medium.

the crew

It begins with a van driving to a remote lake outside Tokyo. This is the crew of the “documentary” series Mini-Skirt Adventures. The premise is that they hunt phenomena such as ghosts and UFOs with anchor Mamimi (Yuria Hidaka) wearing a mini-skirt with fan service up-skirt shots being the hook for the programme. As well as Mamimi there is director, and Mamimi’s boyfriend, Hayami (Eiji Nakamura), cameraman Yamada (Takashi Naha) and Yohei (Yûya Matsuura) who is almost a dogsbody who creates low budget sfx for the show to pass off as real phenomena.

filming

It is amusing that an under-current within the show is Mamimi’s reluctance to front it and be exploited for her body (given that she is a female character in a pinku eiga film). The lake is said to be haunted and they, at one point, put Yohei in the water (wearing a wig and dress). We see the siren behind him, they do not. Having filmed in the woods (and found a skull, which is real and not the prop Hayami assumes Yohei planted). A storm breaks and they seek shelter at a nearby house.

feeding the crew

The house is home to Reika (Yuma Asami) – who, of course, is the siren. She feeds the crew but after a row between Mamimi and Hayami, the starlet runs away. Hayami and Yohei go after her – but she flags down a passing van and leaves the place. Meanwhile Reika has come on to Yamada. The other two crew members return to the house and see the two together and Hayami starts to film them but strange things occur and then white material spews from Yamada’s mouth and Reika kisses it away as Yamada dies. She approaches the other two asking who is next but they run and drive away.

feeding at the neck

The two men (to a greater and lesser extent) are haunted by the memory of Reika who seems to be drawing them back to the house (literally siren like). However, lets go back to her feeding method – she might need sperm and desire but it seems that sex with her makes the sperm come out of the victim’s mouth rather than the normal place. Indeed we see another victim rip their own throat open and her drink from that as they bleed sperm from the neck. It is unexplained and whether deliberately weird or designed to sidestep the more traditional sexual methods of extraction, which may have elevated the film to hardcore, is unclear.

appearing behind Yohei

This is an odd duck and no mistake and, on the surface, is a rubbish film with overly simplistic narrative, unexplained strangeness and limited acting. However there is a subversive aspect to the text – for instance the pinku eiga actress whose character protests against being exploited or the in-film documentary creating poor sfx that shadow the film’s actual poor sfx (or indeed become it at times). For this reason and for the strange vampire type I’ll raise what is, actually, a poor throwaway sexploitation flick up to 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? SiREN

This 2016 film directed by Gregg Bishop was inspired/spun-off from the segment Amateur Night from the film V/H/S. Now given that I reviewed that, it might seem odd that this is a ‘Vamp or Not?’ However, the short was low on detail and this has much more detail (or at least origin) than that did.

I will say that I received some comments re V/H/S criticising the inclusion of a review for the film on a vampire blog, as the creature was (according to those commentators) a succubus. You know what, that certainly wasn’t clear in the short, definitely open to interpretation. In this there is an opportunity to again look at lily (Hannah Fierman, V/H/S, the Vampire Diaries & the Unwanted) but whilst there might be succubus traits (and the writers might have been influenced by the mythology) there are some aspects that just don’t gel with that. Be that as it may, there are close parallels anyway between the succubus and the vampire.

Justin Welborn as Mr Nyx

So the film begins in a graveyard. The Sheriff, cops and a man named Mr Nyx (Justin Welborn, Psychopathia Sexualis) enter the church. There are bodies throughout the church, a magic circle that Nyx recognises as being incorrectly drawn and bloody footprints across the floor and up columns. When the Sheriff asks if they (the dead) were Satanists, Nyx calls them amateurs. The thing (Lily) attacks the cops but Nyx speaks to her and gently puts a leg iron on her…

the stags

Jonah (Chase Williamson) and Eva (Lindsey Garrett, also The Vampire Diaries) are roleplaying, though it isn’t going too well. He’s about to go on his stag night. The trip has been organised by his ne’er-do-well brother Mac (Michael Aaron Milligan) and involves friends Rand (Hayes Mercure) and Elliott (Randy McDowell) and they go to a strip club in Garden City. The club is disappointing but a man approaches Mac and tells him that he can lead them to a happening place.

welcoming the stags

The guys drop mushrooms and then follow the stranger, getting more nervous the deeper into the countryside they go (though later it seems they aren’t too far out). They go into a secluded mansion where the security are oddly attired, some hidden within black hoods and others with blanks face masks. Led downstairs they sit around the stage and, after the act finishes, Nyx comes out and leads them off. Jonah is taken to a “peep show” and the others to a living room where the price for Jonah's show is given as their favourite memory of their mothers.

escaping with Lily

Jonah sees a girl, Lily, and she starts to sing and he has flashes of various sexual experiences. Afterwards, convinced she is a sex slave, he gets Rand and they break her out. She manages to get her manacle off and starts killing and pursuing Jonah (as does Nyx). So what do we find out about her. Well she is devilish or demonic – summoned into our plane. She can produce bat-like wings and a long, dexterous tail and her hands/feet can transform into talons. She is also strong, for she can carry a man off. There is the obvious siren aspects – the name of the film for one and the song that mesmerises men and makes them relive sexual experiences or see ideal partners. Now Bane (as a source example) does not list sirens as a separate vampire type with their own entry – though they are listed in her encyclopedia as a variant of “mermaid vampires” and a couple of listed vampire types are said to have “siren-like qualities”.

post chomp

Lily is obviously a reference to Lilith, who has connection to both the vampire and succubus myths. Succubi are often eaters of energy through the sexual act – and thus an energy vampire – however Lily doesn’t seem to be such a thing (presumably she consumes flesh, and we do see a couple of neck chomps, but we primarily see her simply killing by tooth and claw). Lily does physically mate with Jonah – indeed she rapes him by singing and making him believe he is with Eva and then penetrates him (whilst she is atop him) with her tail. However Nyx suggests that her kind mates for life, not the behaviour of a standard succubus.

wings

So, we have definitive demonic origin (in V/H/S this was not certain and she could have been another, albeit supernatural, species) but we have the very specific siren song. We have the sexual connotation and yet a monogamous aspect. She is more “with it” than in V/H/S where she seemed more ethereal and appeared to have less of an interest to what was happening around her. In V/H/S she was just there, perhaps using her apparent vulnerability to hunt, in this she was summoned and then enslaved.

That broader knowledge pushes me away from Vamp – though she does have some connections in through Lilith and through the succubus aspects, which makes me place this as something of genre interest at least. Not Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Sirens

Another film I came across on Amazon Prime, this comes in at 13 minutes in length and (especially given the title) I am not overly sure that these are meant to be vampires but given fangs and a flesh-eating propensity I’m going with the flow.

The short was directed by Peter Papas and stars Bill Goutzinakis as a voyeur. When we meet him, he is going around taking surreptitious photos. Firstly of a couple, then of a woman jogger (mainly of her ass) and then he sneaks into the ladies after her (the camera does not follow but we assume he has taken an intrusive photo).

We then go to a mall and he follows a woman up an escalator holding his bag so that his video camera can capture her ass and perhaps even up-skirt footage. He goes to get his photos developed and then goes to his car. The escalator woman is in the car park and gives him a hard stare – though whether that impacts his fate is not revealed.

Three is a magic number

He drives to an alley and is going to pleasure himself watching the footage of the escalator woman. During the film there is a flash of imagery – three women's statues (as per the film poster). Three women appear in the alley. They walk past his car and he gets out, with camera, to follow them. However they appear to have gone into the back of a van and beckon him to go to them.

fangs

He does do and suddenly there are fangs and they start taking chunks out of him. They are flesh eaters as much as blood drinkers and the van is rocking away as they devour him, literally. Of course they might be actual sirens as opposed to vampires (they do lure him, although they do not have a sea connection that we are shown) but the fact that there are three of them is also reminiscent of Dracula’s brides and I think there is enough here just to mention the film to you.

At the time of writing I could not find an IMDb page.