Baobhan Sith – review

Director: David William Hutchison

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

The baobhan sith is a little used fey vampire type from Scotland. They are listed in Bane, who suggests that they are created when a woman dies in childbirth and, much like a Banshee their wail can predict death. Bane describes them having deer hooves for feet and lure victims, dancing with them to exhaust them before draining their blood. They are dealt with using iron, as are most fey. Bane lists shapeshifting – into women the victim knows, crows and fog – this shapeshifting is omitted from the lore in the film.

opening

The opening of the film has illustrations against which a story is told of three brothers, Iain, Duncan and Willy. They are travelling and the two elder brothers cannot understand why Willy bought a cauldron, which he carries. They camp and a woman in white comes out of the trees, she dances with the elder brothers, whilst Willy sleeps, and then slits both their throats with her long talons. Willy awakens, she attacks him but her attack hits the iron cauldron causing her claws to shrivel. She curses Willy’s line, saying that all women in his line will become baobhan sith after the first child is born (we will discover that is in the line by birth or marriage).

Joanna Kaczynska as the baobhan sith

The film proper is a comedy or at least purports to be that way. I wasn’t overly amused and suspect it was both the script and an element of comedic timing that let it down, however, whilst not making me laugh I did warm to some of the characters. It starts on a Scottish Island and the Laird, Jeremiah Clate (Greg Drysdale), is making a movie – though he is not on set. His housekeeper Valerie (Danielle Farrow) is applying makeup to a person (Joanna Kaczynska) we only see from behind but who we hear making inhuman snarls. The DP calls the Laird, but gets too close to the “star” and, despite a warning from Jeremiah, she manages to claw his throat out. Jeremiah calls the person who got him the photographer.

the inflatable

Documentary maker Senga Sutherland (Janet de Vigne) is tending her carnivorous plants (a pitcher plant and a Venus flytrap). She takes a video call from her agent Larry (Andy Nicholls) just as her daughter Freya (Larah Bross) arrives – having travelled from Canada to spend time with mom (and lie low after a sasquatch penis incident). Larry has just arranged with Senga to continue Laird Clate’s film, in exchange for which she will be able to film his Bog Bloater as it flowers for her documentary. She promises Freya a yacht to get there and a mansion to stay in – when they get to the boat it is an inflatable.

the bogman

The gist of the story goes like this. After giving birth to their son Ivan (Daniel Campbell), Jeremiah’s wife Belinda turned into a baobhan sith. He has researched a cure and discovered that should 60 or more people witness the baobhan sith whilst the bog bloater blooms the curse will be lifted. He tried to cure her once with a gala but it went wrong and she killed the 60 guests (the authorities bought the boat accident excuse) and so he has come up with the idea of filming a horror film, Baobhan Sith vs the Bogman (Bogmen being a druid created zombie, designed to protect them from the baobhan sith). Only one problem, they don’t show on camera but he has discovered that petals from the bog bloater sprinkled on them will make them appear and has put petals in the makeup. Senga and Freya, of course, are caught up in the madness.

Greg Drysdale as Jeremiah

For the lore, the filmmakers have changed the death during childbirth origin lore to that of a curse, but kept that link by having the curse activate after childbirth. Iron is deadly (Jeremiah has a shard of Willy’s cauldron, which when pressed against her forehead can knock her unconscious). She has claws rather than fangs but a scratch (or killing someone with the claws) will cause them to turn into a baobhan sith – so long as they are a woman. Because of this we end up with more than one of the vampire and so we also see vampire deaths (presumably through steel rather than pure iron). We also, later, get a chicken baobhan sith and it is killed by bludgeoning with a vibrator. They do have hooves rather than feet.

Freya and Senga

As I mentioned earlier this is billed as comedy and I wasn’t massively amused. The normal caveat around the subjectiveness of comedy needs to be given, of course, but it tried too hard and the gags fell flat for me. However both Janet de Vigne and Larah Bross did come across as personable and kept me with the film. There was something meta about the low budget horror in which they are making an almost no-budget horror and, of course, it is great to see alternative vampire types make an appearance. That didn’t save it for me, unfortunately. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Kiss of the Moon

Directed by Simon Lewis and released in 2009 this was a short film, low on dialogue with (perhaps) a nod towards Jean Rollin and also Bram Stoker. The latter is very much within the character names, as you will see, rather than what occurs.

It begins with a woman, Vivia (Aliese Kellner-Joyce), stood atop a building (probably a car park) looking down at the street whilst she stands beneath a full moon. She watches a man, Harker (Neil Jennings), who is stood on his own smoking a cigarette. Suddenly hands cover his eyes. It is his girlfriend Mina (Anna Charlett) she seems happy, playful but there is a moment of doubt – she has a secret. I should say at this point that although there is some dialogue, it is sparse and deliberately pushed down so that it feels incidental almost within the soundtrack.

Renfield with Vivia

Vivia is grabbed by a man, Renfield (Anthony O'Callaghan), he seems to be pushing something (a pill?) into her mouth and she screams into the night. Harker leaves Mina (to her concern) to chase after the scream, pulls Renfield away (who runs off) and holds Vivia to calm her. She starts to kiss him, suckle at his hand (he cut himself as he ran to the scene) and then seems to vanish away. Harker returns to Mina

Harker and Mina

They go to a club. Mina looks to score drugs (I assume E) and spots Renfield dealing. Harker doesn’t recognise him and is unaware of Vivia watching him. He scores from Renfield, shares with Mina but he becomes physically jealous when she dances with another guy and she runs out. He follows her, tries to talk to her but she’s having none of it. They split apart but he is soon searching for her again, however they are being stalked.

feeding

At this point the best way I can describe the film, as it goes on, is hallucinatory. Mina sees Harker, holds him but he becomes Vivia. He sees Mina with Renfield in the same spot. How much is the drugs and how much the vampire (only Vivia would seem to be a vampire) is almost irrelevant as the drugs play a role in the hunt. Indeed, we see her feed from a girl that is insensible and whom Renfield had given drugs to.

the other world

I mentioned a perceived nod to Jean Rollin and there seems to be another world, a world apart and filtered, that is the vampire’s realm. This realm is by the shore (actually Dunraven Bay, South Wales, whilst the main of the film is shot in Bristol) and this otherworld signified by the seashore was very Rollin – though whether this was coincidental or a deliberate nod I don’t know. The film comes across very much as a psychodrama and there is an underlying character story that the film moves towards.

This was a tad style over substance but it cleverly (and successfully) left much to the audience to translate rather than spoon feeding. The imdb page is here and they have the film available to stream.

Get Outta Here – review

Director: Nick Leung Kwok-Ban

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

This one really did sneak in and is an oddity in many respects. A Hong Kong movie, with a Western vampire premise, it is best described as gentile. It is a comedy but that comedy is character based as much as anything else and though it does some things wrong it does a Hell of a lot right.

It is interesting to note that lead actor Alex Lam is the son of George Lam, who played a Western style vampire himself in the (not brilliant) Hong Kong romantic comedy A Bite of Love.

the uncovered grave

The film starts with a digger unearthing something that glows. Cut to the morning and we see an aerial shot of the dig site. There is a coffin, lid open and empty, and the body of the site caretaker. The caretaker looks to have been scratched quite badly and there seems to be a sliver of wood that the developer's employee (Louis Cheung) finds. He phones the developer, Mrs Hui (Michelle Lo Mik-Suet), who seems – through much of the film – concerned more with her video game but who, we discover, is absolutely ruthless.

Alex Lam as Joe

We see a bike ridden by Joe Tang (Alex Lam). His clothing seems a little out of time, possibly from an earlier century. He is knocked down by a bus, which drives off. He stands, physically unscathed, but the bike is un-ridable. Meanwhile the developers watch CCTV footage of him rising (the vampires in this show up on film and in mirrors). Near to Joe, a young woman named Apple (J. Arie) is arguing with her boyfriend (Siu Fei) by vid-call. To make a point she slashes her wrist with a broken bottle – the scent of blood draws Joe. As she runs off, without her bag, he follows exclaiming that she has left her luggage.

stealing bloody tissues

He follows her to a seat and as she sits and presses tissues to the wounds, he surreptitiously collects them as she throws them aside and puts them in his hat. Hat and tissues end up in a bin, at her hand – he retrieves the hat and considers the tissues but leaves them. He follows the thin trail of blood and she knows she is being followed and so gets a cab – the 100 yards on to her home. It is little surprise that he comes in then as she sees that her grandma (Anna Ng) is confronting a man from the developers. He intervenes and scares the developer off but is left out on the hallway.

Joe and Dickens

In the morning grandma sees smoke – it is Joe caught in sunlight – and ends up setting him on fire with an aerosol and lighter – this leads to him crashing into the shower whilst Apple is in there. He decides to take up residence with them and soon reveals his vampire nature when he is caught feeding on their chicken. After a bit of a confrontation with their English lodger Dickens (Gregory Charles Rivers) – Joe, incidentally is Oxford educated and suggests he is from England also – they fall into a pattern where they become an odd-ball surrogate family; he protecting them from the developers whilst they help him search for his manservant Ying.

angry face

The vampire lore is fairly simple, direct sunlight burns and a dead vampire turns to stone rubble. They do reflect in mirrors (as I mentioned), a bite will turn and Joe is sworn off human blood – he says he is a Buddhist. We get a confrontation between Joe, a Taoist and a Christian priest and their religious artefacts do not affect him (indeed he has a small Buddha figure). However a soaking with holy water does annoy him. I mentioned that a bite turns and the chicken does, indeed, become a vampire chicken.

Louis Cheung as Ying

I liked how this was put together. Alex Lam makes for an affable and genteel main character who seems eccentric and a little awkward and around this understated but solid performance the more jarring, loud comedy characters of the family orbit. The photography has the same soft, genteel feeling and the soundtrack extenuated this and really fit nicely. I felt Apple was drawn a little too annoying at times but the grandma and Dickens were pitched just right.

staked by flaming vampire chicken

All that said, I felt they lost their grip on the film in the final conflict. There was a graphic novel like cgi effect that jarred and the action didn’t ramp up in a satisfying way. This final battle between the vampires (a battle spoiled by the DVD box's blurb, incidentally) could have been done better. However it did have a staking (though more accurately it was a demolishing of a chest) by flaming vampire chicken – that is worth the entrance fee on its own.

This is, at its best, an eccentric walk through the night with an affable vampire character and comes out at 6 out of 10.

At the time of review there was no IMDb page.