Truckstop Bloodsuckers – review

Director: Galen Pendleton

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

For this we are at Little Hope All-Night Diner and, of course, diners that open 24/7 are an ideal location for vampires, especially those with itinerant customers, The film itself is pitched at character driven comedy and at 75 minutes it really doesn’t outstay its welcome.

After rural scenes we start in the diner and the staff consist of owner Roger (Donovan Workun), who works the kitchen and is not a fan of the life he has landed in and two servers, Jeanine (Aimée Beaudoin) and the younger Kolby (Jillean Tucker). There are a few patrons (including a couple of college kids taking in rural life, it seems) and the servers spot something through the window.

Kolby and Jeanine

That something is Wyatt (Gary Cosgrove), an elderly man who enters the diner naked. Apparently this is a thing and they quickly get an apron on him and sat down, for his part he knows what they hide in the basement, he says… insects. Jeanine is due to go on a date with cop Dan (Ryan Parker) and when he arrives they manoeuvre Wyatt into Dan’s car to take him home first.

feeding on Roger

This doesn’t happen as Kolby is in the kitchen with Roger when he cuts his finger. Fangs emerge and she fights it but soon she is on him feeding from his neck. Jeanine gets a flash of this and leaves the car. Yes, the two servers are vampires with Jeanine having turned Kolby and feeling responsible for her, therefore. Later we hear that Jeanine has been two-years off human blood and is described as Vampire Vegan (meaning she has animal blood).

the crooks

If things weren’t bad enough a drug dealer, Cliff (Jesse Lipscombe), and his associates Smokey (Jeff Halaby) and Wheeljack (Randy Brososky), come into the diner. Cliff is into some self-help stuff believing that things will happen if you want it hard enough. When outside for a smoke he sees Jeanine disposing of Roger's bag-wrapped body in the trash and knows what she is – he lived in Detroit, which is full of vampires, he later suggests – and decides he wants that power for himself…

ready to attack

The whole thing is very character driven sit-com and my thought watching was that this could have been the start of a series. The characters are larger than life, but not so much that they become preposterous, undercut with a little bit of stereotyping that helps move them forward for the viewer. We don’t get a huge amount of lore, a wooden stake to the heart kills but to the shoulder seems to immobilise (through the pain of the injury), sunlight destroys, total draining kills the victim where partial draining allows them to turn and the vampires are physically superior.

Ryan Parker as Dan

I rather liked this. The characters held me, the situation was larger than life but worked. It was neatly self-contained with the diner/kitchen, the basement and an exterior round the diner bins and inside Dan’s car. All the actors were offered solid performances and seemed to have a handle on comic beats. A nice little comedy, 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Handbook of the Vampire: ‘Beyond Humanity’: An Expedition Charting Non-Human Identities

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Adam Owsinki the Chapter Page can be found here.

This was always going to be a tough one for me to look at objectively as it examines those folks who claim to really be vampires. Now, I am cool with people being who they want to be, and I will say it is well written by the author, but my honest opinion is that such folk may have a belief that they are vampires (though some clearly are role players) but the reality is that they are creating a construct and they do not physically need blood. The author ties them in to the general “Otherkin” heading – which involves claims of all sorts of internal identities and, at least, addresses the point that claims within such communities are more often driven by media than by folklore and there is an inherent tendency to adopt things that were simply invented by an artist when plying their craft.

The author breaks down several types of vampires, namely psychic, sanguine, false sanguine, vegetarian, hybrid and lifestylers. The latter, of course, are role playing, they are creating an aesthetic drawn from favourite media vehicles. I was interested to see the author trace psychic vampires, or the use of the name at least, to Anton LeVay but what he described, as the author concedes, were not actual energy sucking vampires. I think it safe to say LeVay could have replaced "psychic vampire" for "narcissist". Although she (Dion Fortune) didn’t use the phrase "psychic vampire", I think Owsinki would have been better reaching as far back as Dion Fortune and her Psychic Self-Defence volume, which speaks of a belief in actual energy feeders.

When it comes to sanguine and false sanguine vampires, then the distinction the author draws is that false sanguine vampires are the so-called vampire killers. Sometimes dubbed vampires in the press, sometimes modelling themselves on vampires, the actual cases do go much further back than touched on – certainly one cannot forget such killers as Peter Kürten and Fritz Haarmann in the 1920s or the 19th century, press-dubbed, Vampire of Montparnasse Sergeant François Bertrand. His crimes included corpse mutilation and necrophilia. That these are “false” vampires is a bias in argument that sees the positive in ethical sanguine vampires equating to a truth, where arguably those who display unethical and criminal activity are closer to some versions of the folkloric vampire. Having mentioned Bertrand it would be remiss not to mention that this chapter does not touch on sexuality as a driver for building a vampire identity, yet those who associate blood consumption and sexuality have been reported on, for an early instance we could look to Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) though the word vampire is not conflated with the phenomena in that volume.

Of all of them, the term vegetarian vampire is perhaps the strangest and the author mentions the fact that consumption of animal blood (rather than human) is starkly out with actual vegetarianism. I have used the term myself, describing fictional vampires with ethical concerns about their feeding, of course.

As mentioned, this was well written and for those with a genuine interest in the phenomena it is a good primer that maintains a sympathetic view to non-human identification. Having tried, in the past, to be open to people self-identifying as vampires, I find I do struggle as it feels like a mental construct patched together from films but it appears that the construct does good for the individual concerned, and so long as dangerous activities are ethical and consensual, who am I to judge?

Hipira – review

Director: Shinji Kimura

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Based on a book written by Katsuhiro Otomo and illustrated by Shinji Kimura, Hipira is a short anime series of short episodes, each coming in at the 5-minute mark. As such it is a difficult one to review as the entire series is actually so short.

That said it boasts some wonderful, stylised animation and is worth catching – though perhaps not at the price the DVDs are being sold at through Amazon. It is also worth noting that the DVD does not have English subs.

Salta

The animation takes place in the town of Salta – a place of perpetual night. Where this land is located is not revealed but it is worth noting that references are made to the human world as a separate place and in one episode a meteor hits the city but, in entering the night sky, it opens a crack in the night that allows sunlight to come through (as though the town is under a canopy?)

ready to cause trouble

The series centres on the eponymous Hipira, a precocious vampire child. He is not yet old enough to be able to turn into a bat and fly (though most of his classmates can). The vampires clearly age in this as we later see the quite doddery Count Dracula, who is the oldest of the vampires. Whilst there is a nod to the vegetarian vampires of (Western) children’s media, and talk of drinking blood orange juice, it is also clear that these are blood drinkers – with a blood cake at one point and a section of the town going on an all you can drink trip to the human world (we are told about this rather than see it).

soul

Hipira has a best friend, which is a human soul called soul. His school teacher tried to make a spirit by processing a whirlpool of souls but the process was interrupted and he created soul, rather than a spirit. He suggests that to drink the blood of a spirit means the vampire will go to Hell – which for a vampire is Heaven. Soul is able to radiate a powerful light and discovers this when Hipira is threatened by vampire zombies (actually more like zombies with no obvious vampiric/zompire side).

vampire zombies

The stories have that touch of Japanese strangeness – such as a giant toad blocking a river, who got that way because of the river water flowing into his ass and bloating him. Hipira and a schoolfriend are rendered as sketches in a witch’s book at one point and a dip in water should restore them – but it is actually a dog peeing on them that does this. Yet it is the strangeness, coupled with the irrepressibility of Hipira’s character, and the beautiful animation, that makes this worth a watch. 6.5 out of 10.

At the time of writing I couldn’t find an IMDb page.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

B Negative – review

Director: Philip Codd

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

This is an English film – modestly crowd funded I believe – and is a comedy but therein lies the rub I’m afraid. The concept was good but, for me, the primary cast didn’t necessarily have the comic chops to pull it off. That said, comedy is very subjective and it certainly wasn’t the worst vampire comedy out there. But what is it about?

Well in many ways it is about an existential crisis – the question of why we are here and what our purpose is. For Barry (Jack Lee) that seems to be coming to a head.

in the clinic

Barry is in a fertility clinic with girlfriend Kate (Louise Willoughby) and, if his embarrassed responses and giggles are anything to go by, he is a tad immature. They have had the fertility treatment pathway described to them and Barry is to go back in later in the week to give a sample for a sperm count. He tells his woes to his dentist, Alfred (Paul Diver), who also seems to be his best friend. He mentions that the shine has worn off, when it comes to sex, after three years together.

in the club

At home Kate comes across as a bit of a shrew (an unfair assessment, it turns out, as the film allows actress Louise Willoughby room to spread her wings later but a fair assessment early on). Barry does not work (she does) and seems more interested in going out than spending time with her. He indeed does go out – with Alfred. Whilst out Alfred mentions that he is a club member (the Ancient Order of Nocturnal Immortal Phlebotomists of Albion) – a club that is dying out through lack of new membership – Barry wants to go and see what it’s all about.

Alfred's fangs

There is an embarrassing moment in the clinic where Barry can’t say what magazine he wants, to help give his sample (the receptionist listing the titles available is actually one of the most genuinely funny moments of the film), and then can’t perform. He goes to the club and asks to join but then discovers that the club members are vampires (Alfred uses factor 50 during the day). These vampires are a little different though – in that they are all B negative and have contracted a virus that targets that group. They say they need to feed off B negative only and the type is rare (in real life just 2% of the population are B negative).

Jack Lee as Barry

Because he isn’t B negative, they aren’t interested in feeding from him (and they only need a small amount of blood with large feeding gaps) but he offers to help drum up new membership (and donors) by making cheesy jingles and a social media campaign. His desire to become a vampire – denied because of his blood type – becomes more acute when he discovers that it is he with the fertility problem. This is our existential crisis – he decided his purpose was to live on through his kids, that denied he wants immortality. They find obscure rules for turning for him – tasks that he can’t or won’t fulfil (from suicide to bestiality, the lists are all either more traditional folkloric triggers or designed to sound like them).

vampire council

Alfred and he soon fall out and he becomes jealous of Kate, who is B negative it turns out. A bit more about the vampires – they are tea-total, at least until Barry drives Alfred to drink, and vegetarian when not imbibing blood (or that chapter of vampires are). It takes at least two bites to transmit the virus, it is intimated that the virus can be passed to other blood groups and they are just snobby. Crosses don’t work (though there must be something supernatural if the tasks will turn someone) and garlic is a cultural divide between chapters of vampires.

Louise Willoughby as Kate

I mentioned Louise Willoughby as Kate and, when she was given space to stretch as an actress, she really did shine. A lot of the other performances were a tad stagy – but it suited the vampires who were kind of lost in a time warp. The weak link to me was Barry, for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t find the character (or performance) particularly funny and it might be for want of a straight man to bounce off (to a degree). Alfred was not that foil – the antagonism was too strong too quick. Secondly, I just didn’t like the character, I’m afraid, his immaturity garnered no sympathy. On a technical level, I was impressed with the photography for a budget film.

Ailsa Oliver as Pops

There were some nice ideas and some ideas that could have stood exploration a bit more. It wasn’t the worst vampire comedy but it didn’t make me laugh particularly. The film had enough to keep me watching, however, but more casual watchers (rather than a vampire fan) might be quicker to turn away. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Vam-PIE-Her

This was a short children’s animation from 2016, directed by Samantha McEachin-Ifill, and strongly fits into the mainstreaming of vampires through the medium of children’s programming that I discuss in Growing Up with Vampires.

In this case, seven-and-a-half years old vampire Willow Coffington (FeliceSkye Hutchinson, who voices both primary characters and narrates) is the outsider – but is so from the other vampires and monsters due to her distaste for blood, preferring Fanga (B Positive) a blood replacement made from blood oranges. So it is that she is hanging out alone at Halloween when she spots something interesting going on in a house.

blood supplement

Human child Olivia is baking a pie for her father. Willow and Olivia quickly become friends and Willow discovers a taste for pie and a flare for baking it. At 7 minutes that’s all there is to it but it is interesting how the outsider element becomes “outsider from the monsters” and that this plays heavily into the trope of the vegetarian vampire – quite a common trope when it comes to kid’s entertainment where blood is thought to have to be avoided if possible.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: The Vegan Vampire

Fear not when this film suggests that the recovered 1928 film is 142 minutes in length – this 10-minute short (that seems to have the celluloid break at the end) is actually a 2010 creation directed by Suzi Terror and made for the Time Capsule competition from the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival (Imagine).

There is little in storyline, to be honest, but absolutely plenty in style but let us address the concept of the veganism suggested by the title. Vegetarian vampires are not an uncommon concept. Sometimes this is a restriction to vegetables – be that carrots for Bunnicula or vegies generally (due to a resurrection faux pas) for (one incarnation of) Duckula as examples – and sometimes it might be a disparaging description of a vampire forgoing human blood for animal blood… but vegan? Well bunnicula probably is, in this case we never find out because the film doesn’t go that far.

Mirte Eggenkamp as the vampire

Rather we have the vampire (Mirte Eggenkamp) rise from her deathlike slumber and go hunting. The first thing to notice is the filter heavy black and white photography looks brilliant. Along with the makeup the photography makes Mirte Eggenkamp look magnificent as the vampire and the short can be screenshot like crazy because it all looks so good. She climbs stairs and enters a student’s room, biting her. However, her body rejects the blood that is meant to give her life.

attack

The feeding scene was bloody (within the confines of black and white) and the subsequent vomiting of blood is incredibly visceral. The vampire becomes more and more hungry – she preys on a mother playing in an abandoned church and the same thing happens, her body rejecting the blood. Weak with hunger she begins to hallucinate and let me say that even the hallucinated rubber ducks worked visually. The orchestral score had worked thus far and becomes demented during the hallucination scene.

There isn’t really more to say with regards this one, except that I recommend you give it a watch and note that it is embedded below. The film’s facebook page is here, and the imdb page is here.

The Forces of Horror Anthology: Volume 1 – review

Director: Roger Sampson

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

The Forces of Horror Anthology is a portmanteau movie where the shorts that make it up all come from the same team, using the same core cast members. This allows a wraparound where troubled girl Libby (Gracie Whitton) is in with therapist Dr Svengali (Lance Eakright).

She is living with foster parents and is having bad dreams. The Doctor has to coerce the tales from her and each one is one of our shorts.

The vampire short was originally filmed as The Origin of the Species and begins with a distance shot of a man and child walking down the road as we POV through the air. The camera settles on a house and into it walks a woman (April Hartman). She looks at a paper with a headline that talks about a ripper type serial killer having killed an eighth family. Suddenly there is a knock on the door.

at the door

At the door is a man, Kyle (also Lance Eakright), with a little girl – his daughter Abigail (also Gracie Whitton). They have broken down and he would like to use the phone. The woman suggests that her neighbour is a mechanic and should be able to help. Kyle says he had already been there and the neighbour had left a note on the door to say he was out. She lets him in and, when she turns, he strikes her.

alltied up

When she comes to she is zip-tied to a chair but remarkably calm. He crows and preens for a little bit (also saying he has dreamt of the house and her). Then she makes a comment about the size of his manhood, she knows that he is really called Eli and the girl is really Brooke – the child of a victim whom he has taken to make ingress into homes easier. She purposefully lured him to the house. Suddenly she is out of her bonds and impervious to any assault he attempts.

vamp face

Eventually we see that she has fangs, skin patterning (perhaps veins) and her eyes change colour. She easily overpowers him and – Heavy Spoiler – invites Brooke to feed. This all builds towards a view that these vampires are a separate species, Brooke is unaware of her heritage till that moment and will only become fully aware when she turns eighteen. The woman (called Adrasteia according to the separate IMDb credits for the short) mentions a war coming and this short does feel more like a prologue to a bigger project.

feed

That said it was pretty neat and I rather enjoyed the anthology as a whole. It was better shot than some and whilst some of the effects seemed a tad B (the zombie makeup was a little makeup heavy, though it worked, and the monster mask of Rawhead did look like a mask) it was generally well done – and some good blood effects. The feed scene in the Origin of the Species was nicely drawn out compared to that 5 second feed often seen in vampire movies. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Derakula – review

Director: Reza Attaran

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

It was almost inevitable, one guesses, that a vampire film should come out of Iran following the success of American-Iranian film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. This feature carries an anti-drugs message that might have been fairly heavy handed but for the fact that Attaran made it the central plank of the situational comedy,.

The film itself is well shot and lifts its vampirism directly from the European source – though the film itself is set domestically. This makes a nice juxtaposition of East and West but with blood drinking being another addiction it also places the evils of the world of Western origin and, whilst somewhat sidelined, it paints a picture of women being the stronger of the sexes. Its side-swipes at social media suggests that some issues are simply universal.

Reza Attaran as Javad

Javad (Reza Attaran) and his wife Mojgan (Jaleh Sameti) seem a normal couple. They banter and she is taken with a phone app that guesses your age and is thrilled when a celebrity likes a picture she’s posted to Instagram. However, before dinner is served for the family Javad decides to go out. Mojgan is concerned with the way he gets when he is out of work. He heads to a local park where several men hang out and do various drugs.

Javad and mMsoud

Life takes an unexpected turn when he takes a lift from a stranger, is chloroformed and kidnapped. The stranger is Masoud (Levon Haftvan) and he dumps Javad in a locked garage before fixing the satellite dish for his wife Susan (Vishka Asayesh) and having dinner along with their young son Farbod. As they sit and talk we notice that Susan has noticeable fangs. Javad, in the meantime, comes around. The garage seems to have quite a lot of blood filled containers but Masoud has left the man with his phone.

spilling blood on self

He tries to phone Mojgan and tell her that he has been kidnapped but she has heard his wild stories before. He hasn’t got any data left on his phone package. Eventually he freaks himself out with his own reflection and stumbles, knocking a bowl of blood over himself. Masoud comes to the garage and promises not to hurt the man, taking him into the house to give him clean clothes. Susan sees him and remonstrates with Masoud – saying that he had promised he had given up blood. She eventually goes back to her father because of the broken promise.

vampiric couple

Meanwhile Javad prepares some opium in tea for himself and Masoud. He does it to run away but Masoud tracks him down and offers him a lift home – should he want one. Instead Javad stays with Masoud and, in the morning, Masoud is amazed that he had a night without wanting to drink blood. When we get the background of the vampires we hear that they are the last of two of the Dracula family lines. Their parents escaped persecution in Europe and moved to Iran and, when his parents died in an automobile accident, he tracked Susan’s father Vlad down. Vlad agreed to their marriage on the proviso that Masoud did like them and swore of blood.

ancestral portraits

During a moment of weakness Masoud had fallen off the wagon, and was unable to quit after that – secretly imbibing blood behind Susan’s back, but Javad realises that Masoud had picked his victim from the park and become addicted not to blood but to the drugs in his victim’s system. He promises to help Masoud and they tell Mojgan that they are going on a trip to Turkey (read cold turkey). However getting Masoud (and himself) off drugs seems to be more an excuse to buy more drugs and whilst Masoud gets Susan back when she realises he hasn’t killed Javad he quickly loses her again when she discovers the drug use.

reflected

There was some interesting takes on vampirism. The vampires had taken to a diurnal lifestyle and tropes like not having reflections only came into effect when they “vamped out” and were ready to attack. Vamping out was marked with their eyes turning red and shadowing around their eyes. When we see the back history we actually get an image of Christopher Lee for a moment. I liked the fact that Masoud was a larger size and thus the film moved away from the stereotyped rake thin (or indeed, ripped) vampire. The film used feline rather than canine imagery – though there is no indication of shape shifting.

Vishka Asayesh as Susan

I also liked the fact that, whilst we saw very little of the two wives, they were, in their own way, much stronger characters than the men. The drug addicts were all men. Susan was painted as very strong – walking out on Masoud for his transgressions. Perhaps this was somewhat down to her European roots as she is quite shocked to hear that Mojgan doesn’t read and gives her a book. For her part Mojgan holds the family unit together and is the backbone whilst Javad is away with the fairies (as it were). She also easily deflects him when he notices the book and queries whether she has read it.

vamp out

The film was well acted and the cinematography was excellent. The comedy, for the most part, worked well. It was primarily situational with a satire aspect. There may have been some cultural nuances missed but there was also some universal themes (such as the impact of social media and the cult of celebrity and cat pictures). There was an undertow that drugs had become pervasive in (male) society – be it deliverymen doubling as dealers or user/dealers helping out at the local schools. My issue was probably that the end felt a little flat. It wasn’t awful, by any stretch, but after such a good building towards the ending I expected more. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Life Sucks – review

Authors: Jessica Abel & Gabriel Soria

Illustrator: Warren Pleece

First published: 2008

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Life sucks for Dave Marshall.

The girl he's in love with doesn't know he exists, he hates his job, and ever since his boss turned him into a vampire, he can't go out in daylight without starting to charbroil.

Undead life in its uncoolest incarnation yet is on display in this cinematic, supernatural drama told with gallons of humor and hemoglobin. In striking, colorful, B-movie style artwork and light-hearted, intelligent writing by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece, Dave Marshall's story comes alive – in a vampiric kind of way.

The review: This is a neat little graphic novel that follows the trials and tribulations of Dave Marshall, vampire. Dave went for a job at a local convenience store and the owner, Lord Radu Arisztidescu, took the young man into the back of the store and turned him into the undead.

Where the graphic novel triumphed was in the deglamorization of vampirism. Dave, forced to obey his maker, has to work the night shift of the 7/11 store for six days a week on poverty pay. Yes the vampires in this have a full range of supernatural powers including mesmerism, turning into mist, fast healing but also that annoying burning allergy to sunlight. However they live in the same drudgery as any working stiff.

Dave’s life is made more difficult as he seems to have a pathological fear of blood. A vegetarian in life he can only really manage plasma and this weakens him, robbing him of the supernatural gifts his contemporaries have and leaving him with all the weaknesses.

The graphic juxtaposes this through the character Rosa. A Latino Goth who Dave crushes on, who is obsessed with vampires. To make matters more difficult, when it comes to getting her attention, is the fact that his predecessor at the store, Wes, takes a liking to her. Cut adrift by Radu as he was useless in the store, Wes came from wealthy parents and embodies financial and white privilege – a subject the novel touches on as well as looking at minimum wage employment and worker exploitation.

When I started reading the novel I was unsure about the art. Technically competent it seemed too utilitarian to me. However the style fit the tone of the book perfectly, aiding in the deglamorization of the vampire, and very quickly I was convinced it was the right choice. Worth your time. 7 out of 10.

Short film: Bunnicula: the Vampire Rabbit

Director: Charles A. Nichols

First aired: 1982

The animation of Bunnicula was part of the ABC Weekend Specials and was based on the children book series that began with Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery, written by Deborah and James Howe. The cartoon diverged radically from the book both in story and in the fact that it gave Bunnicula overtly vampiric powers, which the rabbit did not possess in the book.

For this article I watched the video rip that was on YouTube and the video quality was not the best, so apologies for the screenshots in advance. However it was good enough to view.

our narrator, Harold

The story is narrated by Harold (Jack Carter) the family dog who lives with The Munroes: mom (Janet Waldo), dad (Alan Young) and two kids, as well as the well-read cat Chester (Howard Morris) . Mr Munroe is a scientist at the World Co Food Processing Plant. The plant has been suffering from accidents and as the cartoon begins there is another, with a metal container nearly crushing Munroe and his boss (Alan Dinehart); the rope it was held by has been chewed through. Spooked out locals blame ghosts, one swears he spotted a wolf in the factory. The boss closes the factory down – which is the town’s main source of employment.

Bunny in a box

The family go to pick Mr Munroe up from his final day at the factory. Whilst there, the boys find a shoebox containing a rabbit (sleeping on a bed of earth) and a note – which is unreadable, due to it being in Romanian, except for the name Bunnicula (in the book the rabbit is named by the family as they found it in a cinema when they went to watch a Dracula film). One of the boys comments on Bunnicula sounding like Dracula. Harold, being part Russian Wolfhound (!), can read the note. It says “take good care of my baby”.

drained veg

Anyway, as things progress we see a pattern of vegetables turning white, having been drained of juice. Chester becomes convinced that the rabbit is a vampire. He is sleeping on earth, that sleep is through the day (Harold reminds him that they both sleep most of the day too) and the vegetables have a single puncture like a rabbit’s buckteeth (Harold points out they both have fangs and we should note that, despite the dialogue, the bunny is actually drawn with fangs when in vamp mode and not buckteeth).

using telekinesis

Eventually the neighbours decide that their drained vegetables are down to a vampire rabbit and head to the Munroe’s house as a mob. The dog and cat run with the rabbit to save it (in the books the cat repeatedly tries to kill the rabbit), unfortunately ending up at the plant. The source of the accident reveals itself to actually be wolves breaking in through a pipeline in the forest and looking for food. Bunnicula (out of sight of the cat and dog) reveals it has the ability to sprout batwings, have glowing red eyes and use telekinesis as it saves the cat and dog. That mystery solved, the Munroes then realise that the kids had not been feeding the rabbit and the drained vegetables were due to hunger, Bunnicula sucking the juice as it is a baby, which is accepted as a reasonable explanation and deposits us at the end of our journey.

The animation was passable, the story was just plain silly (and it feels strange to complain about that when the premise was a vampire rabbit) and, if we take the premise as read, the exposition around it was lazy and ultimately, as I say, silly. That said, it did have a degree of charm.

The imdb page is here.

Duck Tales: The Ducky Horror Picture Show – review

Director: Terence Harrison

First aired: 1987

Contains spoilers

I was informed of this episode of Duck Tales by Alex and found it online, at Daily Motion, though it is available on DVD.

It is, of course, a Disney series featuring Scrooge McDuck (Alan Young) and his Grand-nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie (all voiced by Russi Taylor).The premise being that the nephews have been left wqith Scrooge after their uncle Donald joins the navy. Scrooge is the richest duck in the world but is always trying to find ways of becoming richer.

movie monster

The first of his money making schemes in this episode is a movie theatre, in which he plays monster movies. The boys wonder whether monsters are real, and panic when they are confronted by the Frankenstein’s Monster, but he is only an actor drumming up publicity for the cinema and Scrooge tells them that monsters are just in movies, they are not real.

Wolf hires the convention centre

To further make money he buys a wreck of a building and has it renovated to make a convention centre. He is approached by a Mister Wolf who wants to hold a convention there and, hearing that they’ll need a hotel, he offers to hire his mansion out as a hotel also. Of course Mr Wolf is actually a werewolf and the convention is for monsters.

the creature, Drake-ula and the Mummy

We have a full house of various monsters. The wolfman has been mentioned and we also get Igor, the Mummy, the Creature from the Blue Lagoon (as it is renamed), Frankenstein’s monster and bride, the invisible man, King Kong, the blob and, of course, Dracula. Actually Dracula is renamed in this as Drake-ula (get it) and tells the nephews that although he is a real vampire he only bites apples (they keep his fangs healthy).

as bat

The only other real vampire lore we get is the fact that he can turn into a bat (a tad redundant for a duck, but there you go). The episode sees Scrooge on the verge of making his first loss in a business venture and turning it around. It also sees the monsters protesting his cinema because of the way that monsters are portrayed – that is until they realise that the kids love them.

I only bite... apples

It really is standard fare and I guess whether you love it or not will depend on whether you are a Disney/Duck Tales fan, which I’m not particularly. For me, therefore, it was an average episode of an average kid’s show – doing nothing particularly wrong (bar pushing an ultra-capitalist worldview, if you want to get picky), treating the monsters with due reverence and just getting on with it. I understand, however, that some will love it. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.