Piranha Women – review

Director: Fred Olen Ray

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

This one was suggested by my friend Leila but I did already have it on my Tubi watch list. In fairness I can see a fair argument to suggest this is not Vamp. We get flesh eating, but not particularly blood/fluid/essence eating and the transformation might be likened as much to a fish-like lycanthrope as a vampire. But I have decided to accept it, for no other reason that it contains vampiric breasts. Also the director is Fred Olen Ray, who is a stalwart of both low budget horror generally and vampire films specifically and so I suspect any genre merging was conscious.

Shauna and Gary

It starts in a bar, where else, and Gary (Houston Rhines, the Sisterhood) sits at the bar and orders a vodka rocks. A woman, Shauna (Keep Chambers), sits with him and mentions that her car has broken down. Gary is in town for a meeting and offers to drive her home and though she feigns reluctance we do notice that when she phones her friend (to say don’t pick her up) she actually doesn’t call. Cut to a pool and she goes underwater to go down on him, he starts to twist in agony as the water turns red. As she surfaces, she reveals sharp piranha teeth.

Sof Puchley as Lexi

Richard (Bobby Rice) is cooking breakfast when his girlfriend, Lexi (Sof Puchley), comes down. She looks tired and drawn and he explains he didn’t want to wake her. She has, it becomes readily apparent, cancer and is pretty much at end of life. She mentions meeting another cancer patient, Allison (Carrie Overgaard) who is almost cured thanks to experimental treatment. She has arranged an appointment with the Doctor, Sinclair (Shary Nassimi). He makes her promise to talk over what he says before deciding and goes to work. At work he discovers he has been passed over for promotion in favour of Jeff (Nathaniel Moore), who writes 'sexier' reports.

vampiric breasts

Lexi meets Sinclair and decides to go for the treatment – he has shown her an aquarium full of piranha and explained the treatment involves injecting piranha DNA. She calls Richard and says for him not to disturb her and so he goes for drinks with Jeff. Jeff and Richard meet Allison and Shauna. Jeff leaves with Allison, Richard blows Shauna off as he is monogamous. Jeff meets his end, of course, and we see that as well as piranha teeth in her mouth, her breasts also open and have such teeth – attacking with three mouths.

piranha teeth

The next day Lexi seems a million times healthier. At work, Richard gets Jeff’s promotion (as Jeff doesn’t turn up at work and plagiarised his reports), is questioned by the police over Jeff’s mutilated body and discovers Lexi has left him to go and live in a commune with the other piranha treatment women. As the film is just under an hour long the plot lurches from main point to main point with speed. The cops are sceptical and yet don’t fancy Richard for the crime. He knows what’s going on awfully fast. Richard learns from Sinclair himself that piranha’s need heat and can be killed by ethanol glycol (though a bullet sems to do the job just as well.

melting

So, with regards the ethanol glycol – some goes in the pool and a piranha woman in it seems to be being electrocuted until she turns into some kind of swamp thing (and still needs shooting). The other odd bit of lore was the idea that rain water will make a piranha woman transform and then melt – why that happens is anyone’s guess. This is just throwaway silliness but we get vampire like women (they seem to be able to control their transformation unless induced by an outside liquid source), with vampiric boobs and a short, unobtrusive running time lurching to an unsatisfying denouement. Cheese will carry it so far, however, 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On Blu-ray @ Amazon UK

Necropolis: Legion – review

Director: Chris Alexander

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers


On the surface this film, a new release from Full Moon Features, might not seem like a vampire film – indeed I considered doing a “Playing with Tropes” for it. However, it is a reimagining of the 1986 flick Necropolis, which I class as a vampire film – albeit a vampiric witch. Like the original there is some (brief, in this) evidence of energy vampirism. Plus, the blurb on IMDb describes antagonist Eva (Ali Chappell) as a “satanic vampire sorceress”.

bearing a cross

The film is also directed by Chris Alexander, whose arthouse vampire films are: Blood for Irina, Queen of Blood and Blood Dynasty. I have a soft spot for these films and Alexander’s use of symbolism and inference. I have to say there is a tension I detected in this between Alexander’s love of arthouse and Euro-horror and the need to create a cohesive narrative for a Full Moon Feature schlock-horror.

ripped out heart

Starting in the past we meet Maynard Gandy (Joseph Lopez) holding a portrait of Eva, his wife. A farm hand (Adam Buller) comes in to tell him that the barn is secure and he will make his way home. He then decides to tell Gandy about Eva, suggesting that he has seen her go in the chapel and this is not the first time. He leaves and then Gandy seems to enter a vision and the farm hand returns holding out his ripped-out heart.

Joseph Lopez as Maynard Gandy

In the chapel Eva stands above a sacrificial victim (Goldie Rocket), and flanked by two neophytes referred to as gatekeepers (Zoe Georgaras & Stephanie Delorme). Her somewhat risqué outfit reveals that her breasts have mouths, with sharp teeth, rather than nipples. This is reminiscent of Eva in the original film, who has six electoplasm-producing breasts, and (much) later this Eva’s breasts will gush milk for her neophytes. She intones about “she who must live”. She cuts the hand of the victim, licks up the blood and then holds her to a breast – the mouth seeming to suck energy from her before it gnashes the flesh for the blood – yes, it’s a rare sighting of a vampiric breast.

eyes turn white

Gandy comes in and tries to ward her by holding out a cross. She comes forward and he starts to recite (what I assume was) an exorcism. Her eyes turn white and he stabs her in the heart… Modern day and Lisa (Augie Duke) comes around from what may have been a dream. She is in a bookstore about to do a signing of her book “Beyond Darkness” but her real reason for being in the town is to research Eva. She is approached by Zia (Lynn Lowry, Mostly Dead, My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?! & Rabid), who cuts the line, to warn her of uncovering Eva’s story – even mentioning her name gives her power. Lisa, of course, doesn’t listen.

Augie Duke as Lisa

Indeed, she is staying at Gandy’s farmhouse – and we get a cut foot dripping through the floorboards and causing a beating heart to reform (rebirth through spilt blood, of course, is heavily a genre trope) as well as possession. However, I don’t want to go any further as, with a short 61-minute run-time, we are quite a way into the film. Knowing the director’s work, it was clear this was a Chris Alexander vehicle, relying on his lead actress (with precious little dialogue) to project the narrative through actions, expressing her descent physically. However, there is more dialogue in this than in his previous work. It does suffer from not expanding on the story more conventionally – we don’t see any backstory to Eva becoming what she is (was she possessed, seduced, always demonic and married to Gandy for reasons known only to her dark heart?) EDIT: Chris Alexander has contacted me to say that the Eva backstory is given in a one-shot comic.

reforming heart

That said the effects are interesting – perhaps some of the fast cut moments, designed to be nightmarish, are much as one would expect relying on the disorientating impact of the editing as much as anything, but the heart reforming (for instance) looked great (perhaps a tad too much blood for a small cut in the foot, but who cares, it looked fab). The greater use of effects – and, of course, who can resist the idea of vampiric breasts, Ken Russell couldn’t – give this a fuller feel than perhaps his Irina films.

Lynn Lowry as Zia

This has clear elements that are related to the original film but it is definitely a reimagining rather than a remake. I can’t help but think that some viewers, searching for schlock, might be put off with the more Alexander-esque elements – but conversely it was actually those elements that did it for me. That said I stand by the idea that it needed a more expressly broadcasted narrative (and it had plenty of potential running time it could have used to do so). 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK (Full Moon Channel)

Vamp or Not? Trapped Ashes

This is a modern portmanteau film that owes a little to the Amicus films of yore. Indeed the actual twist in the tail is one that anyone who has watched early Amicus portmanteau movies will spot.

The portmanteau section sees a tour of Ultra Studios and six folks taking the VIP tour of the otherwise deserted lot. We have aspiring actress Phoebe (Rachel Veltri) and her boyfriend Andy (Jayce Bartok), architect Henry (Scott Lowell) and his wife Julia (Lara Harris), Egyptian Theatre worker Nathalie (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier) and B picture director Leo (John Saxon, who was in Queen of Blood). It seems none quite remember how they got their tickets.

The Tour Guide (Henry Gibson) drives up to the infamous set of the film Hysteria – in which several trapped people where forced to tell horror stories – and the tourists insist on looking inside the so called house of horror, claiming VIP privileges. The Guide warns them off but they insist and they spend some time looking around. Of course they become trapped and it is suggested by the guide that they try telling stories as in the film – but reminds them that the stories should be true.

Of course the stories become our filmed segments and I particularly looked at this for the Ken Russell directed ‘The Girl with the Golden Breasts’, which is the first segment. Knowing a little about it in advance I always thought it would be a ‘Vamp or Not?’ The second story, ‘Jibaku’ is a disturbing short about a spectral lover and a descent into Buddhist Hell. Imagine my delight when the third story, the Monte Hellman directed ‘Stanley’s Girlfriend’, also had vampiric overtones – two ‘Vamp or Not?’s for the price of one. The last story, ‘My Twin, the Worm’, is the story of a girl who feels that the tapeworm in her mother’s stomach, when she was in the womb, shares a bond with her.

The ‘Girl with the Golden Breasts’ is Phoebe’s tale and begins with her explaining that she had come to Hollywood to be a star. Unfortunately things have not gone the way she planned. Having been rejected from another casting she assesses, through running mascara, her life and decides the problem is her breasts. She decides that plastic surgery is the way forward.

She goes to see Dr Larry (Winston Rekert) who seemed, to me at least, just a tad creepy. He explains the problems with implants – showing her some truly horrific pictures of boob jobs gone wrong. He, however, does not use silicon or gel. His implants are made from reconstituted flesh from cadavers. When Phoebe seems shocked he likens it to a transplant.

Phoebe goes ahead with the operation and, as soon as she is under, Dr Larry’s mask comes off. He smokes and drinks through surgery and spits on scalpels. The operation is, however, successful and when we next see Phoebe she is in the shower and delighted with her new boobs. In the shower her finger catches and bleeds – she assumes on a ring.

Phoebe lands a job on a sci-fi film and is being filmed in a love scene with Zack (Scott Heindl). They are under covers when he yelps with pain. Filming stops and he complains that she gave him a hicky on his chest. She thinks she must have got over excited and the crew cheers her enthusiasm. She ends up sleeping with him for real and we see her breasts pulsate, post coital, against his back. He comes back later and complains about insect bites.

As she has bug spray they get down to it again but, as he kisses her breast, he screams. Blood pours from his mouth and the pain is so excruciating that he threatens to cut the end of his own tongue off to escape. Actually, this is one of those cinematic moments that leaves you swearing blind that is what you saw, but on closer inspection it is clear that he is released at the last moment. He runs – as you would. She looks at her blood splashed breast and the nipple opens to reveal teeth – rather like a lamprey. In fear she tries to find Dr Larry but he has moved on and the nurse suggests she goes to a San Pedro research facility.

The facility – more like a shack than anything – is full of wrapped cadavers and also has the frozen body of Dr Larry. A TV comes on, with a camera above it, and three men in drag (including a cameo by director Ken Russell) are displayed on screen – all doctors. Phoebe believes they will kill her but she is their creation. The breasts feed on blood offering youth and vitality to the owner. It is an irreversible experiment – they all have them.

Back in the house Leo wonders about her vampire boobs – actually using the V word – and Andy admits he has never seen them as she keeps them covered during sex. The metaphor for the vampirism involved in fame is obvious and we have a science created creature (Phoebe) – using dead flesh – that feeds on blood to maintain youth. More than that we have the most unusual vampiric feeding since Rabid in one of the most quirky and strange little shorts I have watched for a while.

‘Stanley’s Girlfriend’ is a change of pace in the film as a whole and involves the younger life of Leo – who is played in the short by Tahmoh Penikett. He is a script writer at that point in his career who has had some small success when he meets another up and comer, Stanley (Tygh Runyan). Stanley is actually based loosely on Stanley Kubrick and the two become friends. Their favourite pastime is playing chess and talking through the night.

One day Leo arrives at Stanley and he has a new girl, Nina (Amelia Cooke). She is somewhat of a temptress, obviously highly sexed and allegedly an insomniac. The chess games continue for a while, until Stanley makes a mistake in a game and then Leo does not see him for a month. During that month Stanley lets all his work slide.

Leo gets a call and goes round but Nina informs him that Stanley has gone to Europe. Despite his better judgement he and Nina end up in bed together. At the end of their intercourse she scratches at his chest and then dips her head down, licking at the blood from the wound. Later, Leo’s work suffering as he becomes obsessed with Nina, they receive a telegram from Stanley – he is staying in Europe and she admits that she told Stanley of their affair. Perhaps it is his resultant, guilt laden, anger that causes her to leave.

Forty five years pass and he sees neither Nina or Stanley again and then he hears that his friend has died. Stanley has left him a film to be shown in a private viewing. Stanley apologises, he set things up so that Nina would seduce Leo simply so that he could escape her. Over the years he found pictures from long before that seemed to look like her – but it couldn’t be, could it?

Stanley had heard legends of a witch that would drink the blood of her lovers and through that gained immortality. Then he found a pre 1900s nitrate film that showed a woman in a graveyard (Amy Markle) being fed upon by someone. We watch a film, in which Leo watches a film that film’s this other film. The camera closes in and we see that the attacker is Nina – as it bleeds to colour she says Stanley.

The witch and the vampire were, traditionally, closely linked and this definitely has blood drinking to gain immortality. This, as with the first segment, is Vamp. I found the film as a whole to be interesting and well shot. It definitely had a sexual-horror aspect and there was an undertone of don’t trust a woman through the segments. The twist in the tail of the portmanteau underlined this and whilst said twist was obvious, the experience of the film as a whole didn’t suffer for it.

The imdb page is here.