Vamp or Not? The Night Sitter

Directed by Abiel Bruhn and John Rocco, this 2018 film features witches but there can be an overlap into the vampire or use of vampire tropes. In this case I think there is an inference that we can look at and, if that inference is accepted we may well class this as vamp. However, it also needs pointing out that the three witches are referred to as the Three Mothers and this directly refers to the witches of Dario Argento's Three Mothers series – and the lighting through this film reminded me of Suspiria, deliberately so I’d say.

The film follows Amber (Elyse Dufour, Drakul), a woman entering into a rich area to babysit – however it is clear that the name is a pseudonym and in reality she intends to rob her employer. The employer is Ted Hooper (Joe Walz) a paranormal investigator whose show hasn’t really got off the ground and who hasn’t seen a genuine supernatural event in twenty years of investigating. His wife died a year before and Amber is to sit for his son Kevin (Jack Champion). Kevin spends most of his time in his room drawing sinister pictures of three dark figures – later he tells Amber he is being haunted by them, they come in his dreams but his mother saves him.

pizza time

Also in the house will be Ronnie (Bailey Campbell), son of Ted’s date Charlotte (Deanna Rashell), he is a bit of a tearaway. Amber has noticed a door that Ted says leads to his office and is locked and so Amber has contacted her friend in crime Rod (Jermaine Rivers), telling him to bring both his van and lock picking kit. Ronnie also wants in to the office, to see what cool stuff is in there, and he actually finds the key (which seems all too convenient and, by the end of the film, we discover it was). The relationship with Kevin and Amber is interesting in that he sees her take watches and money from his father’s room and whilst he mentions it he seems keen to believe her “Robin Hood” excuse and they do seem to quickly, and naturally, bond.

the grimoire

Anyway, Ronnie and Kevin get into the office and Kevin looks at a grimoire regarding the Three Mothers (we later discover it was written by the witches' acolytes, after they were executed, and the ink contained their ashes), gets a papercut and bleeds on a page, which absorbs the blood and summons the Three Mothers who then terrorise the people there including Amber’s not quite boyfriend, Martin (J. Benedict Larmore) who is trying to talk her out of crime, neighbour Vincent (Ben Barlow) and Rod’s girl Lindsey (Amber Neukum). So how are they vampire – well we discover they were child killer witches who were executed at Salem and so we have the trope of blood reconstituting from ashes (in the ink, of course). This is a different background to Argento’s Three Mothers, who are living (if ancient) and scattered across the globe. But I mentioned an inference…

Ronnie's end

They kill Ronnie first and we see him strung over a tub and his throat slit, with them catching the blood in it. Later we hear them say of Kevin that “We've already tasted his blood. Soon we will bleed him dry.” That also comes with the knowledge that, back in the day, they bled children either quickly or over weeks. The inference comes into it when we are told “They tend to play with their food.” The inference being that bleeding the children is the source of their food – in other words their blood. If we accept that inference, we accept them being vampiric witches and, as one of them possesses Lindsey, we also get vampiric possession.

a witch

If I had an issue with the film, it was the fact that they chuck in the kitchen sink. The family dog Finley is killed (off screen, we hear its whimper) but then it seems that it is now some sort of Hellhound, in his kennel with glowing eyes, but they do all that to do nothing with it. Equally the possession seemed odd when we see they can take on other people’s forms and are corporeal. However, the film kept a good pace after a slower start and the lighting that reminded me so much of Suspiria was gorgeous. As for the Vamp or Not, if you accept the inference their food is the blood of children then it is Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Animals

This 2009 film directed by Doug Aarniokoski had been on my radar but I had assumed it to be a werewolf film and, whilst I do enjoy a bit of the hirsute shapeshifters from time to time, I just hadn’t got around to watching it. However, I picked up a Blu-ray set of films from Germany, entitled Vampires, and this film was on it under the title Wolves. The title change underlined that previous assumption but it was on a set named for the V word and the other two films (The Last Sect & Temptation) are definitely vampire flicks. It was beholden on me then to have a look and see if a random supernatural film had been added or, well, could it be a vampire film?

almost invisible

The creatures within the film are never named, though mention is made of them being people more centred on their animal side. The opening narration explains that “Each of us caries, buried deep within, the seed of our animal nature. Evolution, civilisation, have domesticated our impulse to feed, bite and breed, without conscience or reason. But there still lurks a rare kind, that can change at will. Some follow the natural order and live in peace. Others, who have been corrupted by the taste of human blood and hunt for flesh and pleasure, they are predators lurking amidst the human herds and they lure us across the line that few can cross and fewer survive. The line between man and animals.”

Marc Blucas as Jarrett

So, these are our creatures and the taste of human blood is mentioned. The film follows Jarrett (Marc Blucas, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), a man who had escaped small town life with a football scholarship but an injury had sent him back and he makes a meagre living as a labourer. At the head he is driving when his car hits a deer and he steps into the treeline to find it. When he does, the deer has a lump ripped out of it and he feels like he is being watched and gets out of there. We see a semi-transparent, translucent women watching him (she comes into the film, of course, and, when revealed, she is one of the good animals).

Vic bloodied

Elsewhere, Vic (Naveen Andrews) is driving a car with Nora (Nicki Aycox) in the passenger seat. Nora says she can’t do *it* anymore, though Vic is having none of it and makes her don a wig. *It* is luring two men back to where she and Vic live. After some teasing, and making one of them strip, Vic emerges, fanged and mad, and attacks one. The guy in his tidy whites runs and Nora lets him go, much to Vic’s chagrin, and he has to get the car, drive after him and knock him down. Angered, Vic says he is leaving and may not be back. Nora retorts that she may not be there when he returns. To that he suggests that he’ll find her, like always, and kill whoever she is with. In the exchange we get the idea that Vic turned her into the monster she feels she is, we also see their relationship as totally toxic.

Nicki Aycox as Nora

Anyway, she blows into Jarrett’s town (she says her bloodline are from there, it is not clear if she is talking about her human heritage or animal heritage) and they start a torid affair, during which he loses his job, is bitten by her, turned and fed (cooked) human flesh. This all comes abruptly to an end when Vic tracks her down and takes her back. Though he is fast healing, Jarrett has not had the animal state explained and has not gone far enough in the process to become his inner animal at that point. The aftermath sees Jarrett’s friend and local innkeeper Jules (Andy Comeau) dead and a relationship blossom between Jarrett and Jane (Eva Amurri), another friend and barmaid. Any normality ends when Nora flees Vic again and returns to town with him hot on her heels.

animal fight

So, what we see is some face morphing, fanged teeth and them becoming almost mist-like and transparent (or semi, at least) however they can fully transform into some form of translucent beast, drawn in bad cgi (yes, I know this is a good few years old now, but it will have been poor at the time of release). The beast kind of looks like an anthropomorphic dog, rather than a wolf. However there is a definite blood drinking aspect to this when Jarrett is told “they survive on human blood”. They are durable and fast healing – even without being fully turned Jarrett survives being inside a burning and exploding car. Severe wounding by one of their kind requires eating the heart of one of their kind to survive/heal. They seem to hunt using sex and one assumes they exude pheromones but this isn’t actually confirmed. But is it Vamp? It straddles with aspects of werewolf (with no lunar side to it) and vampire (surviving on blood) but all told, yes, it’s vamp. This then fits with Stoker who, in Lady of the Shroud, declared “The Wehr-Wolf is but a variant of the Vampire.” 

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Monster House

For those who are unaware, I have a keen interest in the idea of the vampiric building and wrote a chapter, Vampiric Buildings: Life Soaked into Mortar and Blood into Earth for Palgrave’s Handbook of the Vampire. I was aware of the 2006, Gil Kenan directed, Monster House and think I did see it back in the day. However, I decided to take a look with pretty fresh eyes (I remembered next to nothing about the content) and a view to see whether we could call the house of the title a vampiric building.

The film starts the day before Halloween in US suburbia, within a nostalgia dictated timeframe. It starts with a very young girl riding her trike and greeting inanimate objects. Suddenly the speeding trike stops, the animation follows a leaf but the inference is that she has flown off the bike. She hasn’t, but she is stuck on the verge of a lawn, for some reason unable to move (I’ll return to why later). Suddenly the door flies open and house owner Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi, Paris Je T’aime, Hotel Transylvania 1, 2 & 3) comes screeching out of the house, yelling at the girl and in the tirade asks if she wants to be eaten alive – she runs off crying and he breaks and takes the trike.

Steve Buscemi voices Nebbercracker

This is watched from over the road by DJ (Mitchel Musso), a young boy who has been observing the antics of Nebbercracker and logging them. His parents are going away for the weekend and have arranged for Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to babysit. Meanwhile, his friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) arrives but his ball ends up on Nebbercracker’s lawn. DJ notices that he hasn’t reacted and goes to retrieve it but the old man emerges and, in the tussle, collapses – DJ thinks dead. Paramedics come and pick him up – the viewer notices that grass seems to grow and grasp one of the gurney wheels, which breaks off and is then consumed by the earth. That night DJ receives phone calls from the house – making him believe that the ghost of Nebbercracker is haunting him.

the house awake

Now, we have heard local rumour from Bones (Jason Lee), Zee’s boyfriend, who lost his kite, as a kid, to Nebbercracker, who suggests the old man had been married, fattened her up and ate her (bringing in a cannibal theme – though the story is gossip and not truth). Kicked out by Zee he taunts the absent old man (and by default the house) only for the front door to open and his kite be there. With a similar lure used later with Chowder’s ball it indicates an intelligence (and memory) at play. The house consumes Bones. The next day DJ and Chowder save a prep school student selling candy, Jenny (Spencer Locke, the Vampire Diaries), and the three realise they have to neutralise the house before trick or treaters arrive.

the gang

Getting some half-baked advice (that is accurate) they are told they have to “strike at the source of life – the heart”. This is, of course, a vampire trope. They decide that the heart must be the furnace and they have to douse it (the house chimney has been active despite being empty). We have also seen that the house can morph its physical self and the front door becomes a mouth, with teeth (and the veranda can widen the maw), it opens a gullet within the hallway and the hall carpet becomes a tongue. 

Constance's grave

When Nebbercracker is released from hospital (and the kids have just escaped from inside the house) DJ realises that the house is Nebbercracker’s wife Constance (Kathleen Turner). We get the story that she was an unwilling circus freak – the Giantess – and war veteran Nebbercracker helped her escape. He was building the house when trick or treaters caused her to fly into a rage, fall into the foundations and be buried in concrete – that has become a shrine/grave for her. He soon realised that her spirit had possessed the house, that she would attack those who approached and hated Halloween. Nebbercracker was actually protected the neighbourhood and had been essentially a prisoner of his own making for forty five years.

with legs

So – is the house a vampire. Well, possessed by Constance’s spirit it is certainly a monster and arguably (through Constance) undead. It is sentient, intelligent, remembers both what happened to Constance and those who have been near. It is polymorphic, able to change from a creepy house into an animated creature – at the end of the film it takes two trees as legs and becomes mobile. The idea of striking the heart was correct. The question is, does it feed on the victims? That isn’t clear. We do know that those it consumes in the course of the movie all survive but that does not mean to say that normally it would not digest them or drain their energy – the film is silent and probably deliberately so as it is a PG movie. Assuming it does, I think we can call this a vampiric building and one whose source (ie the possession) is communicated to the viewer – in other vehicles these things can be simply alive and bad.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

I love the idea of vampiric objects and Death Bed: The Bed That Eats could be deemed to feature just such a thing – which is what we will explore, of course. It was a film that was directed by George Barry but didn’t get distribution in 1977 when completed. Yet it managed to gain a cult following through bootleg releases and eventually was formally released in 2003.

The film concerns a bed that eats people, indeed that is described as always hungry, with the film narrated by an artist (Dave Marsh, voiced by Patrick Spence-Thomas). The artist was not consumed by the bed – possibly because he had tuberculosis – but imprisoned behind his own painting, probably in a state of undeath and likely in a liminal space. The style of the art has led to an assumption that the artist was in fact Aubrey Beardsley.

the first couple

Split into three parts – Lunch, Dinner and Just Desserts – in lunch we see a couple arrive on foot at the house. The bed, as well as hungry and sentient, displays its reach by closing and locking doors into the house except for one leading to the cellar where it sits. It eats the couple and the method of doing so includes a digestive fluid bubbling up around them, in a foam, and them being drawn into the bed and its digestive area – which is bigger than the spatial reality of our world. We also see that victims can be drawn up from under the bed into the same liminal stomach. Angered by the artist taunting it, it telekinetically destroys the house, leaving only the cellar.

flowers bloom

Next three women, Dianne (Demene Hall), Suzan (Julie Ritter) and Sharon (Rosa Luxemburg) arrive. Dianne needs to get away from the city and a friend who is liquidating the estate the house belonged to has allowed her to use the house – though its destruction is clearly unknown. The bed seems to fear Sharon and her presence injures it, though it eventually devours the other two. Its reach is shown when it kills Suzan as it mysteriously removes her bones from its liminal stomach so they are buried in the grounds and red flowers appear at the spot.

demon's eyes

The reason it fears Sharon is discovered when the artist explains how the bed came to be and to be alive. A demon resided in a tree and decided to float on the breeze until it saw a woman (Linda Bond). Invisibly it seduced her and then created the bed and took human form (bar his red eyes as a demon’s eyes are always filled with blood), calling the woman to him. They made love on the bed, but its unnatural nature killed her – more accurately put her in a state between life and death – and she was buried in the grounds. The demon was saddened by this, its eyes shattered and it cried tears of blood onto the bed. 

the bed

That blood brought the bed to life and gave it the hunger that defines it. Incidentally the events occurred in 1897 – the year Dracula was released. The demon fled to a tree again, though when it sleeps (every ten years) it finds the bed in its nightmares and the artist can briefly communicate with the living. For the bed to be destroyed the original woman needs to be resurrected and make love to destroy it; “a coupling began and a coupling will destroy”. It fears Sharon (and is injured by her presence) as her eyes remind it of the original woman whose death led to its birth.

a victim

So, the death methodology for the bed doesn’t fit into vampire tropes – though the resurrected woman could be said to be undead. The creation of the bed, as a sentient thing, through a demon fits in with some folklore, whilst using blood as a catalyst, and its hunger is clearly a trope that fits in with vampirism. We see it devour food, wine and hear it eat a fly, but it clearly wants human flesh and blood. So, is it vamp? Obviously not in the conventional sense but its uniquely demonic origins and supernatural powers, the fact that its hunger (and means of filling that void) sits within a liminal space, the devouring of flesh (and absorption of blood spilt on its sheets) suggest that if you have a broad view of what it means to be vampiric then I think you could class it.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? The House Was Not Hungry Then

This was a 2025 feature, directed by Harry Aspinwall and the title kinds of says it all. For context I am fascinated by the idea of vampiric buildings and actually wrote about them for Palgrave’s Handbook of the Vampire. Many fans of the traditional vampire form will likely baulk at the idea, but I accept a very broad spectrum of what is a vampire or vampiric.

Some may also baulk at this film as a piece of cinema; almost entirely using static cameras in various rooms of the titular house, to describe it as a slow burn might actually be an understatement. The house has seen better days, unfurnished as wallpaper peels etc. but its sparsely modern look undermines a traditional Gothic air that may have added atmosphere. And yet, I did find myself drawn in.

view of the man

The film takes us through the static cameras so that we can explore the house. Then there is a distant peel of thunder as cars pull up. There are four people come to view the house, shown in by a man (Clive Russell, Neverwhere & Dracula (2020)). He tells them about the house but never leaves the vestibule, visible to us through the glass of the door. As the family look around a sound builds in the background and one by one the people just vanish, the only trace a piece of clothing that flutters down, in one case. Later we see the man eating a Pot Noodle and talking to the house.

the house speaks

At night there is a knock at the door and then the sound of breaking glass and a girl (Bobby Rainsbury) climbs in. She, we discover, is estranged from her father but whether they lived once in the house or nearby was not clear to me. She is searching for him and eventually discovers he is in a hospital or nursing home. The house seems to take to her. Early on we see words on screen, and it feels like chapter titles at first, but we soon discover that it is the house talking to her, the voice silent to us. This establishes that the house is sentient. The conversations are driven, acting wise, by her as the house dialogue is only shown to us as subtitles and sometimes not at all.

squatting

The film then is about her grief re her father and her avoiding the other man when he visits the house; it turns out that he is not an estate agent but the owner of the house deliberately drawing people there (and trying to avoid a compulsory purchase order that will lead to its demolition). Is it Vamp though? Well, the house, we have established, is sentient and is described as hungry. Reference is made to when the house was not hungry (which, if you read the film that the girl once lived there, then we can assume it was not hungry then) and also that its hunger is increasing. How it feeds is unknown, the victims vanish somewhere and whether it then digests them or their energy, is silent in the text. The sentient aspect of the house can detach from the house and reattach to something (a replica of the house in this case). All in all, I am going yes to it being a vampiric building but appreciate that others may disagree.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Wormtown – review

Director: Sergio Pinheiro

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

When is not a vampire film, actually a vampire film? I struggled with how I would approach Wormtown, a film I first watched at Grimmfest 2025. There is a vampiric parasite at the heart of this – as I’ll explore – and more so it takes beats from I Am Legend, though probably more so the Omega Man. The festival programme said the film had “just a pinch of classic vampire lore and a sly tip of the hat to Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.” I nearly went down Use of Tropes, but there is something essentially Vamp at its heart (for the infected literally and for the film figuratively).

worms in the eyes

It starts with Mayor Joshua (Jim Azelvandre) going for an eye exam. The optometrist has opened up at night for him as he has noticed a light sensitivity. As the eye is examined, worms are seen inside the eye. So… this is the first thing to note. At the heart of this film are worms and this gives a feel of the Strain (I’ll return to the light sensitivity) and, like in the series the worms are easily passed on. The worms have a blood consumption element and we’ll come to that.

a nocturnal existence

So, the film proper takes place where a large proportion of the town populace are infected. The mayor runs a radio broadcast that is the only signal available and plays gentle country folk and talks about the idyllic little town. The populace sleep through the day and the town comes alive at night and, a tad like the Omega Man, modern technology – mobile phones, Bluetooth and the internet – are all shunned. So the infected, like in the Omega Man, shun technology – but there is a reason, as the signals hurt the worms. They develop skin lesions too, much like in the Omega Man, and they act in a cult like way. The film does examine cult behaviour.

Rachel Ryu as Kara

There is a reason, however. When infected, various worms develop acting like a colony. The primary one is the heart worm, larger than all others, coiled round the heart it feeds on the host’s blood – this being the vampiric element I mentioned. They also develop brain worms, which we can assume moderates behaviour. There are uninfected and three women, living in a warehouse area and trying to solve the infestation, are our primary characters. They are Kara (Rachel Ryu) – who is disaffected, hating their life – and the lesbian couple Jess (Caitlin McWethy) and Rose (Emily Soppe), the latter being the scientist amongst them (she taught science at the high school). There are also uninfected living more normally in town, who have the cultists trying to recruit them nightly and there is an Amish community nearby, left alone as they produce foodstuff.

Jess bloodied

At the head of the film some kids get caught out at dawn and one, Tommy (Milo McDonald), is caught in the sunlight. His mother Alice (Maggie Lou Rader) can’t get to him because of the sun and he starts haemorrhaging blood and worms until he dies. The scene is like a vampire in the sun (with added worms). Jess, out scavenging, finds the body, takes worm samples, films the heart worm in the chest cavity and (when Alice cries out from her home) falls into the corpse. This causes a panic, Rose cleans the blood off back at the warehouse, finds a worm burrow, and manages to cut the worm out of her back. However, the worm-folk take it as a desecration of the corpse.

daylight outfits

As the film develops, we discover that Mayor Joshua is holding secrets. One being the state of his body, with the flesh raw and open. Through him we discover this will happen to all the worm-folk, as he puts it, eventually there is more worm than flesh and they are literally eating the infected – they are parasites, they are not in symbiosis. He is also hiding the truth of what is happening in the wider world. He has Rangers, storytellers he says, but essentially the law and some of those move in daylight in specially designed clothing. We also discover that uninfected smell repulsive to the infected and their vision alters so that the dark is bright to them. One character becomes infected and something goes wrong and two heart worms develop and one has to be extracted – it is a visceral scene and a painful process.

sunlight haemorrhaging

I really like this when I saw it at the festival, and enjoyed it more on second view. The vampire tropes are obvious and the worms themselves vampiric, however (though very different) I tonally got a bit of a feel of Stake Land. The practical effects are brilliant, especially the sunlight haemorrhaging. The story perhaps meanders a little and some of the cult themes could have stood a bit more exploration. But I have a soft spot for this one. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Guest Blog - “If it doesn’t look like a vampire, or sound like a vampire, can it still be a vampire?” – TMtV 20th anniversary

We’ve come to the end of the 20th anniversary celebration and, last but not least, I’d like to welcome Simon Bacon to TMtV. We met through vampire groups on Facebook, becoming firm pals, and have had many discussions regarding our toothsome friends. An author and editor, I have corresponded over his vampire monograms and have been lucky enough to be included in several of the academic volumes he has edited.

In discussing the mutability of the vampire the much cited vampire scholar Nina Auerbach writes “we all know Dracula, or think we do… .” Although she was using Stoker’s Count as an example of how even the most “recognizable” of the undead doesn’t remain a fixed character in the popular imagination, it is just as true for what constitutes a vampire. Indeed, in many people’s minds Count Dracula is synonymous with the idea of the vampire with the implication that they must all drink blood, can transform into a bat (and possibly a wolf), are very sexy, wear evening dress with greased back, black hair and speak with a broad Eastern European accent—it should be noted that this is predicated far more on Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s 1931 film Dracula, than Stoker’s 1897 novel (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula about to enjoy a night-time snack with Lucy (Frances Dade) in Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. Universal Pictures, 1931.

However, the cinematic vampire, although providing what some see as the quintessential representation of the King of the Vampires (Count Dracula), seems to be continuously unsure about what a vampire looks like or what makes it one. What follows is an idiosyncratic selection of (and some of my favourite) films that have a very non-canonical view of what a vampire is.

Two of the earliest representations of vampires on film aren’t really vampires as we’d think of them now. They were from the early 20th century and both represented the “dark” side of society. The first features what was then known as a “Vamp,” that was a more sexually malevolent form of the New Woman from the end of the 19th Century and who asserted their independence by preying on wealthy men for their money. Theda Bara was one of the most well known of these and A Fool There Was (1915) the best surviving example of her playing her vampy best. In many ways her credentials as a vampire were more explicit in the marketing around the film and of Bara herself so that there was little to distinguish between her on- and off-screen personas. Apart from being called “The Vampire” in the films titles there is nothing else in the film that would really mark her out as one of the undead (see figure 2).

Figure 2. A triumphant Theda Bera (The Vampire) enjoys the sight of her latest victim who has lost his wealth and his family because of her in A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell. Fox Film Corporation, 1915.

Similarly the French serial Les vampires takes another yet equally oblique turn in what constitutes a vampire. Here, the titular “vampires” are in fact a gang of crooks led by the Grand Vampire that prey on the people of Paris and who think nothing of murder, kidnapping, and terrorism to get what they want. Although the film is well known for a sequence featuring a dancer dressed as a bat (see figure 3), once again there is little to connect the film to actual vampires apart from their metaphorical “feeding” on the wealth of their “prey.”

Figure 3. Marta Koutiloff, played by Stacia Napierkowska, dancing as a vampire bat in the ballet “The Vampires” in Les vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade. Gaumont, 1915.

Back in Hollywood, vampires became one of the pantheon of classic monsters in the 1930s, though even within that there were no strict borders between the various forms of creatures that could be called undead which could range from someone brought back from the dead (by whatever means), to a ghost, a ghoul, a zombie...or even a mummy. As mentioned above Lugosi’s performance solidified the idea of what Dracula was, and consequently, vampires, but even here the Count himself wasn’t sure of what exactly made him a vampire. In House of Dracula (1945), the second film starring John Carradine as the Count, sees the vampire looking for a cure for his vampirism (in reality he wants to sink his fangs into the pretty nurse assisting Dr Edelmann who he seeks help from). What is of interest here is that the doctor takes blood samples from Dracula and under the microscope we see vampiric blood cells attacking human blood cells marking out vampirism as a disease of the blood (see figure 4).

Figure 4. Dracula’s blood under the microscope showing the black tendrils in it is the true vampire as it attacks human blood cells, in House of Dracula, directed by Erle C. Kenton. Universal Pictures, 1945.

We could argue it is Dracula’s blood that is the vampire, not the Count himself. This is a curious idea that has been picked up since in a few screen narratives such as Dark Shadows (1966-71) and the Dracula (2013-14) series by Cole Haddon. The importance of blood, and what we might call the medicalisation of the vampire, is also seen in The Return of Dr X (1939), featuring a rare turn in horror films for Humphrey Bogart. Here at least the “vampire” in question needs fresh human blood, though rather disappointingly for its undead credentials it’s not from biting a beautiful young woman in the neck, but rather transfusing her blood into his own body (the reverse of Stoker’s use of transfusions where they are to combat vampirism rather than promoting it). Here, Bogart as the eponymous Dr X (Maurice Xavier) is brought back from the dead using synthetic blood, however, this no longer works and he needs a special type (type one) of fresh human blood to stay alive. His vampy credentials highlighted by his pale white skin and greased back, black hair--his monstrosity emphasized by a bride of Frankenstein white streak running through it (see figure 5).

Figure 5. Humphrey Bogart as the suitably deathly pale Dr X, in The Return of Dr X, directed by Vincent Sherman. Warner Brothers, 1939.

Post-WWII and the rise of science fiction on film only increased the complications of identifying vampires—even Dracula is affected by the appearance of aliens as seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) where humans are brought back from the dead as zombies and one of these “zombies” is non-other than Bela Lugosi in full Dracula costume. In some ways this was exampled earlier by the science-gone-mad idea in Dr X, but the involvement of aliens would only exacerbate the problematic nature of vampire identity. A good one to start with is The Thing from Another World (1951) where the “Thing” is a Frankenstein’s monster style alien (see figure 6) that has been cut from beneath the Arctic ice where its ship had crashed an unknown time ago.

Figure 6. “The Thing,” played by James Arness, as a vegetal vampire from outer space, in The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby. Winchester Pictures Corporation, 1951.

Once defrosted the creature is driven by a need for human blood, and it exhibits a kind of immortality as parts of it, when cut off, regrow when fed blood. Perhaps more strikingly the creature is in fact a plant of some kind—this correlates to other vegetal aliens that crave human essence such as the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978), and The Queen of Blood (1966). While the creature cannot change its shape in this film—other than its severed parts being able to take on their own lives—later adaptions of the story, The Thing (1982/2011), make such transformations explicit to how it survives and multiplies. Indeed, just as the first “Thing” required human blood to live, the later “Things” require human lives to thrive—oddly echoing the BBC Dracula mini-series from 2020 in which the Count requires blood as “lives” to sustain himself.

Something of this is repeated in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985) where alien vampires, whose spaceship hides in the tail of Halley’s Comet, awaken to feed on human essence each time it returns to the vicinity of the planet Earth (every 74.7 years). The aliens themselves are huge bat-like creatures but can possess the bodies of humans and consume/suck-out soul/lifeforce by putting their mouths over that of their victims (see figure 7).

Figure 7. A guard (John Keegan) having the lifeforce sucked out of him by an unseen Space Girl (Mathilda May) in Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper. London-Cannon Films, 1985.

These are then “sent” back up to the mother ship for the rest of the colony to feed on. An earlier example of a similar kind of vampiric possession as a means of survival was seen in Planet of the Vampires (1965) where the survivors of an alien race are trapped on a barren planet after its sun has burnt out. Using the distress signal of a crashed space ship they attract 2 other ships and then inhabit the bodies of the humanoids piloting them. Of note here is that their vampirism is purely predicated on the possession of humanoid bodies (see figure 8), which although deadly to the hosts—if they’re not already dead—does not provide any kind of sustenance to them (such vampiric possession, though often non-deadly is a more recent feature of vampire narratives such as The Vampire Diaries (2009-17) and The Originals (2013-18).

Figure 8. A deadly game of “guess whose body is possessed by a vampire” featuring Wes Wescant (Ángel Aranda), Sanya (Norma Bengell), and Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan), in Planet of the Vampires, directed by Mario Bava. Italian International Film, 1965.

Returning to Lifeforce, and its idea of feeding off of human essence and “draining” their victims, this is not a million miles away from psychic vampires, most recently and famously seen in the figure of Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows (2019-24) where he purposely bores people to death and/or annoys them to distraction so that he can feed on their emotional energy (see figure 9). This has returned such forms of untypical vampirism back into the popular imagination—it’s actually something that has a longer history in literary vampires seen in The House of the Vampire (1907) by George Sylvester Viereck and “The Transfer” (1911) by Algernon Blackwood.

Figure 9. Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) as the person in the office that everyone tries to avoid, in What We Do in the Shadows, created by Jemaine Clement. FX Productions, 2019-24.

To sum up this rather eclectic list of some of my favourite vampire films, and to mangle and repurpose a well known phrase about ducks, “if it doesn’t walk like a vampire, or quack like a vampire, it doesn’t mean it’s not a vampire!”

Bio: Simon Bacon has authored/edited/co-edited 40+ books on vampires, monsters and gothic horror in popular culture and his Amazon Author page can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Vamp or Not? The Home

I was contacted by Simon Bacon regarding James DeMonaco’s 2025 feature, saying that it was “defo vampy” though warning it was medical rather than supernatural. Well then, let’s see.

The film starts with Max (played older by Pete Davidson, and young in flashbacks by Jagger Nelson) led coughing on a couch, in a run down apartment, the TV talking about climate change – there is an aspect of eco-horror to this but it is generally under-explored. A flashback shows a celebration in his foster home as his foster-brother Luke (Matthew Miniero) prepares to leave for college.

Max's Mural

There is a theme of “thicker than blood” to describe their foster relationship and Max has that tattooed on his chest. Adult Max is artistically talented and breaks into a derelict building to paint an eco-awareness mural. He is arrested and, in the cell, remembers the time when he was told by his foster parents (Jessica Hecht & Victor Williams) that Luke had committed suicide at college. His foster father comes to him and says that he had a word with a judge and cut a deal to have Max avoid jail time (a little harsh for painting a mural, one feels) for community service. He is to work four months at a retirement home.

Pete Davidson as Max

He gets there and is told what his job involves and to not go to the fourth floor as special care patients are up there. Yet, from the beginning, things seem off. He stumbles onto geriatric, masked sex, discovers he can’t really sleep and hears screaming through the vents. He quickly investigates the fourth floor and is attacked by a screaming man (Stuart Rudin, Stake Land), leading to him being caught and reprimanded. But things keep getting odder and he begins to unearth a government conspiracy…

Luke aged

And here we have the spoiler alert as I need to drill into the aspects of “Vamp or Not?” There is a conspiracy, but not the fabricated one the residents draw to entertain themselves at Max’s expense. The residents are worshippers of Dea – called in film the God of Youth but Dea was simply Goddess in Latin. His foster parents are in on it and send foster children to the home to be used as a source of vitality for the residents and certain staff. The screaming man is Luke, aged beyond recognition and he was trying to save Max, not attack him.

procedure

The idea is that the home’s doctor, Sabian (Bruce Altman), discovered a gland behind the right eye, which is the source of a person’s youth and vitality and dries up with age. He is draining the gland of its “nectar” by piercing the eye, pushing through to the gland, and the residents subsequently drink it. Max has been drained nightly – hence believing he isn’t sleeping – but at a ceremony they intend to take much more. They say he will end up feeling 100-years-old and, as we have seen with the other fourth floor residents, draining the nectar prematurely ages them. For the recipients it staves off aging further and increases their libidos.

Max and Lou

I guess we could liken the victims, in this case, to the undead. Aged beyond recognition, sat in a half-life that is no life at all, perhaps embodiments (Luke is at least) of undead memory. The vampirism is very similar to that displayed in Brand Upon the Brain! (which called the extracted fluid nectar, also) and The Leech Woman - though this is the product of a gland, like the Leech Woman, rather than the brain itself, which was the case in Brand. Very much Vamp, this did carry me along for the journey.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK