The Legend of Lake Hollow – review

Director: Chris Hollo

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

The wendigo is a strange creature to place under the vampire taxonomy, when it comes to film depictions, as it can sometimes be portrayed as an anthropomorphic monster that doesn’t quite fit in the genre and sometimes a more human like dead (or alive) thing. The eternal hunger it feels for human flesh helps push it that way, especially if it was once human. I have been criticised for featuring a wendigo film here before, and I do tend to look at these things on a case by case basis and, in this case, I felt there was enough to warrant a review.

arrival

The film starts with two friends, Dan (Kyle Rankin) and Carson (Brendan Bald) arriving at a cabin in the woods. As they approach the cabin a trail camera goes off (with a visible flash, which I understand is not how they work, as the flash would scare the animals). Inside, after a comment about finding the cabin in an advert provided by someone from Dan’s work, and whether Dan was using it as a work trip, Carson discovers that despite no Wi-Fi there was Bluetooth and it connects to the trail cam. He grabs the photo it took of them and then something blurry but uncanny from the night before.

Mark and Shay

Consideration of the picture is interrupted by the sound of a vehicle – probably Dan’s brother Mark (James David West). It is Mark but, rather than coming alone for the lad’s week away, he has his girlfriend Shay (Liz Atwater) with him and she has brought her best friend Laurie (Meg Barlowe). We discover that Mark disapproves of geologist Dan’s job – he works for a fracking company. There is a sub-plot that he has come partly to run some exploratory tests but, despite being mentioned by the wendigo (Micah Oser) later, it is so low key dealt with it really doesn’t add much of an environmental thread.

Meg Barlowe as Laurie

Having met the creepy caretaker, Al (Will Waldron), the weirdness in the night is Mark awaking to the sounds of sex and seeing the flash of the trail cam go off. He goes out to check it (of course the Bluetooth signal reaches the cabin) and sees figures in the water who then vanish. The next day he and Laurie go to find Al’s cabin, while the others check trail cams and look around. They don’t find Al but find his injured grandson Grady (Austin Copps) who says that he needs to get away and that *they* normally leave them alone and suggests he was attacked and his grandfather was taken by the lake folk. They get him back to their cabin but their vehicles have been pushed into the lake and the landline malfunctions (Mark can hear 911, they can’t hear him and then it goes dead).

lake folk

Of course, the true enemy is a wendigo. The lake folk seem to be ghosts but do appear to be semi-corporeal. The wendigo can shapeshift into any victim and so most of the kills are offscreen so the viewer is left guessing whether a person is real or the monster, but the film doesn’t capitalise on the sense of paranoia that should create. The cabin (which is very modern, given it is a lure for food) has wendigo carved above the door, which is a bit of a giveaway. The film uses a plot device lifted from Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island with regards the lake people.

true form on camera

The cameras were placed there by wendigo hunters and were blessed, so it can’t remove them, and the camera captures its true form. Whilst it appears to be the deer skulled version at first, that is just a mask and it is a cadaveric human, who has been there centuries and who, in the form of a beautiful woman, married the cabin builder in 1880 and then ate him over the winter and now rents it out when hungry (and had it fitted with electricity etc). So it is an eternal, shapeshifting (but dead looking) cannibal and I think that is enough to class it as a vampire.

wendigo unmasked

The acting is ok, and rather it is the script that fails to generate the tension and also assigns strange character reactions – especially from Laurie who falls for Grady instantly and mostly overlooks any weirdness around him. The fact they can’t get help leads to consideration of hiking out of there. But the 25 miles will take 2 days and so it’s dismissed… except it is 25 miles following the road they drove in on and they could surely cover that off in a day, if they wanted (and would soon be well away from the lake). As I mentioned, the environmental thread is underexplored. I’m going for 3.5 out of 10. It feels a tad churlish but 4 just seemed too generous and the biggest issue is that it fails to be a horror (the ghosts don’t particularly spook and the kills are off screen) but doesn’t hold enough tension as a thriller.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Handbook of the Vampire: Canadian Vampires

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Murray Leeder & Andre Loiselle the Chapter Page can be found here.

This chapter of the Handbook takes a look at vampire films, and some literature, coming out of Canada and recognises a comedic seam running through many of the films so that even the more obscure films perhaps not touched on, such as the Death of Alice Blue, do fit within that comedic seam. The authors capture a good proportion of the Canadian output, however, and suggests that traditional vampires are migrants to the country, which of course is a place of colonial settlement. There are, however, good examples of properly horror based Canadian vampire films, with David Cronenberg’s Rabid being a prime example (which, itself, was remade by the Canadian Soska Sisters).

It was interesting to discover that there are several soucouyant novels from Canadian authors and Leeder & Loiselle make the connection between the vampire and the Wendigo and also drew attention to Algernon Blackwood’s story, the Wendigo – one I will have to find and inwardly digest.

Murray Leeder always delivers a well-turned prose and this collaboration is no exception and offers the reader a grounding study of the vampire in Canadian film and literature.

Use of Tropes: Ghostkeeper

Now the wendigo (or windigo, in this) is an odd one in that it originates from Native American myth and thus is not the standard, undead, vampire. It is, however, cannibalistic and whilst sometimes drawn as an antlered spirit is also sometimes drawn as a person. It is safe to say it has crossover into the vampire myth/archetypes, especially when drawn by filmmakers, and is worth looking at on a case-by-case basis.

When it comes to this 1981 Canadian film, directed by Jim Makichuk it is more difficult as the film is more a slasher than anything else and we see little of the windigo (John MacMillan) and even less of any cannibalistic activity – indeed that is almost implied rather than shown. As such I have decided to look at this as a film that uses a vampiric trope, the supernatural creature who consumes flesh.

arriving on snowmobiles

It starts with a snowmobile pulling up outside a store high in the Rockies. Marty (Murray Ord) and Jenny (Riva Spier, Rabid) dismount and go in the store, the storekeeper (Les Kimber) proves not particularly engaging with them, especially as Marty comes off as an obnoxious entitled prat. He does direct Jenny towards some coffee to warm up. A second snowmobile pulls up and Chrissy (Sheri McFadden) comes in the store.

the lodge

They talk about where they are all staying (its New Years Eve and there is to be a party) and Chrissy speaks about exploring. The storekeeper warns them that a storm is coming in and suggests not exploring but they ignore him. After a ride they come up to what might be a logging road through the trees, with a keep out sign. Despite Jenny’s protests, they ignore the sign and head up it – at the end of the trail is Deer Lodge. Chrissy crashes her snowmobile and they decide to go in, despite it looking abandoned.

Riva Spier as Jenny

Now, just to note that the lodge was, situated in mountain snow as it is, reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. This hotel is smaller and is more a location than a character (and is not a vampiric building) but the similarity is there. They force a door open and the hotel does appear abandoned, they discover there hasn’t been a guest for five years but they later realise the heating is on. Exploring Jenny feels like someone is there and we see a face spying on her.

Georgie Collins as the Ghostkeeper

After night has fallen they hunker down next to a fire, with obvious flirting between Chrissy and Marty, He goes to find another bottle of wine and something attacks him in the kitchen. Chrissy and Jenny run in, after hearing his cry of surprise, and he has bested “it”, which turns out to be an old lady (Georgie Collins). She is assumed to be a caretaker (later she mentions that her son, Danny (Bill Grove), is around somewhere) and she reluctantly gives them rooms for the night. She never actually gives her name and is credited as Ghostkeeper.

Bill Grove as Danny

Whilst Chrissy goes for a bath, the couple argue. Jenny knows Marty wants to sleep with Chrissy and just wants him to be honest. For his part, being a prat as noted earlier, he just points out to her that she has no problem spending his money. As the film goes on it is suggested by the old lady that Jenny has the strength of character to take over (I’ll come to what) and Danny holds Chrissy underwater in the bath – not killing her but making her unconscious – and then carries her into an icy area of the hotel (basement area) and slitting her throat leaving her to the creature locked in there.

the book

So, the old lady is the caretaker of a windigo and beyond seeing it be given Chrissy we don’t see much action from it. An intertitle at the opening of the film suggests they are ghosts who live on human flesh to survive, Jenny finds a book on native legends that says that these giants can be kept by certain people, normally woman, who possess an ancient power handed down from one to the next along with a newspaper report on mutilated corpses. This supernatural flesh eating then is the trope, along with a concentration on the "familiar" servant. The film itself has a touch of the slasher (with Danny pursuing Jenny with a chainsaw), Marty quickly loses it and the film piles on lots of uncanny atmosphere.

John MacMillan as the Windigo

It is in producing this atmosphere, where the film is at its best, helped in no uncertain terms by Georgie Collins whose performance offers both strange and sinister in turns. The film itself is quite small, adding to the atmosphere, with a limited cast and feels very much of its time. Indeed, if made today then the intimation of flesh eating would undoubtedly have been more explicit but the focus on atmosphere offers the film more of a charm than it perhaps should have had.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: The Retreat

The Retreat is a 2020 film that was directed by Bruce Wemple and is a film that concerns itself with the wendigo. However, there can be some overlap between wendigo and vampire and this uses a trope from the vampire genre very knowingly. It is also a film that plays with psychosis and insanity and whilst I felt that it did so very well, I could understand why some would dislike that aspect as it disjointedly bounces through perceived realities.

That sense of altered perceptions starts from the get go when we see Gus (Grant Schumacher) in the woods, seeming quite desperate, and then the voice of a psychiatrist (Peter Stray) cuts in, asking where he thinks he is and then moving to him and best friend Adam (Dylan Grunn) driving into the Adirondack High Peaks.

Rick Montgomery Jr. as Marty

Adam is getting married in two weeks and his bachelor party is him and Gus doing four days of winter hiking. Their base, before the hike, is an air bnb run by Marty (Rick Montgomery Jr.), who knows about the wedding and has got beers in. Also staying that night is another hiker, Ryan (Chris Cimperman), a heavy drug user who is looking to take an oft-untravelled route. Marty has several pictures in the house of the wendigo, in the antlered guise and when I said the use of tropes was very knowing it is within this scene that it is spelt out.

picture

Gus asks about the pictures and Marty explains that they are the wendigo and it is worth reproducing his dialogue. “The Native Americans, they have a legend that it protects the forest, but for the most part, it’s a monster…” “Well, it can take the form of say, a… a vampire-beast thingy. You know, hunt by the sound or the scent of blood, or it can come in the form of a… a spirit. It possesses a human and makes them a monster.” So, this is the primary trope, hunting for blood through the scent of blood. The spirit aspect leads us towards a form of vampiric possession therefore.

hiking

Marty goes on to say that it “Preys on the most selfish… the most corruptible.” So the guys start off whilst still dark (which makes Adam’s concern about reaching the lean-to where they will spend the next night whilst there is still light a tad alarmist, given he wasn’t concerned about losing direction in the dark when they set out). Gus is uncomfortable and there are shinning eyes in the dark but it is that first night when he suggests they drink hallucinogenic tea (that Ryan gave him) where things go wrong.

wendigo hunting

Adam had a sip, but Gus chugged the rest and, in the night, thinks he hears something. He leaves the lean-to in order that he might investigate and finds himself facing a wendigo. Now there are two types we see – one, the antlered kind, is always in the distance, watching and manipulating (we hear later that they like to psychologically play with their victims) and others like this, humanoid – perhaps previous victims turned? Gus gets a knife and manages to stab the beast as it pins him down but, in the light of day, Adam is missing and he eventually finds him stabbed and dead.

cannibalism

Gus loses it and the film is his story. We discover, through flashback, that he is selfish and petty – resenting Adam’s relationship for the way it impinges on their friendship. He buries the body in the snow but it then seems to follow him. There are moments when he is found and rescued, moments where Adam is alive, moments where his reflection speaks to him and moments back in civilisation. All this might be a result of the hallucinogen, it might be his guilt or it might be the wendigo torturing him. The idea that they hunt by the scent of blood is specifically returned to as a plot device and there is a moment of cannibalism.

horned wendigo in the trees

Is it a vampire film? No, whilst there can be crossover these are monsters (in reality or of the mind we are not sure) and the humanoid (or ex-human) ones seem animalistic in their actions (almost like hunting dogs), whilst the antlered one seems more like a malevolent forest spirit. However, the invoking of vampires in the dialogue, laying out the trope of the hunt for blood, makes this of genre interest certainly.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vitaortus Book 3 - review

Author: Dea Schofield

First Published: 2014


The Blurb: After the shape-shifting violence of the night of the Brumalia in Vitaortus Book Two, Devi Trevathan, Prime Channel, has trouble forgiving her new sanguinivorous friends. She refuses to speak to her Champion, Lord Alexander Gregory, but there is a price to pay. The Vitaortus now have a mysterious disease which threatens the plants’ survival. Meanwhile, bizarre happenings are spreading out from remote Pacific islands which Alec and company have been investigating. Ex-CIA assassins, demons, zombies, revenants, sorcerers, spirits–and of course, new species of Vampire—all figure in Gregory finding his way back into Devi’s good graces. But the Washington DC-based religio-political group, The Brotherhood, has dire plans for her, as well as for all mankind. A supernatural wild card has joined them with a nefarious plot to wreak havoc, terror, and apocalyptic consequences. Can Devi, with help from her supernatural friends, stop it?

The review: Is hosted at Vamped.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Blood of the Dragon: The Journals of Vlad Draculya the Impaler – review

Author: David T Pudlevitcz

Illustrator: David St. Albans

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers


The blurb: Being the only true journal of Vladislaus Tepes Bassarab called Draculya; Voivode of Wallachia, Knight Order of the Dragon, Defender of the Faith and the Realm of the Holy Roman Empire, Count of Transylvania, Protector of Moldavia, Bey of the Ottoman Sultans, Alchemist, Necromancer, Vampyre! Penned by his own dead hand.

The review: The first thing to say about Blood of the Dragon is that it is a tome of considerable length. Published as penned by Pudlecitcz and illustrated by St Albans the first conceit of the book is that it is a publication of the actual journal of Vlad III, bookended with chapters around the archaeologists forced to do so by the vampire.

This vampire is the creature of Stoker’s novel but it was Stoker who led the fight against the vampire and Dracula is (an inaccurate, according to the vampire) recollection of those events.

The bulk of the novel takes in the events surrounding the birth and life of Vlad III and ties vampirism in at an early stage in his life when Vlad and friends, whilst in Constantinople at age 9, are attacked by a vampire. Vlad is forced to help detect the grave and destroy the vampire – and this includes pouring the vampire’s blood over the boy. Unfortunately blood gets into a cut on Vlad’s tongue and the “vampiric ally” attaches itself to the boy – therefore much of Vlad’s bloodthirstiness in life was due to being a living vampire.

You can see this as a type of vampiric possession and Vlad is lucky to survive with soul/will intact and not become a minor undead. Eventually the ally is exorcised but Vlad will, subsequently, invite another ally to become a parasitic/symbiotic part of himself and this is what allows him to live beyond death.

The book invokes a variety of names and types of vampires, draws in some figures such as Erzsébet Báthory and the Comte de Saint-Germain (as periphery mentions more than anything) and layers fiction onto history (and some pseudo-history) in a satisfying way. The archaic turns of phrase actually work in context – especially compared to other books where they jar. Most fundamentally the book draws on Lovecraftian mythos at its heart.

This version of Dracula can walk during overcast days, when well fed, but temporarily dies in sunlight (the book actually misses, given it was supposedly written at the end of the 19th century, that sunlight was not listed within vampiric myth in any great measure, if at all, until the release of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens). This Dracula feasts on negative emotion as much as the blood it is conveyed on and steals souls for his master as he does so (to reveal more than this is too much of a spoiler).

The most important thing the book manages to do is give the character a strong voice; it is a narcissistic, egoist voice, prone to self-contradiction and repeating salient points – but it is a genuine voice. Worth the entry price, indeed. 7.5 out of 10.

Vamp or Not? Ravenous

Recently I received a message from Leila, who suggested I watch Ravenous with a view to a ‘Vamp or Not?’ The film was from 1999 and directed by Antonia Bird and I was aware of it, however I always assumed it fell simply into the cannibalism camp.

As it stands that is sort of correct, in fact it features a windigo (or wendigo) – a cannibalistic creature from Native American traditions. Given the tendency to link vampires with many other mythological creatures it is surprising that the wendigo is not tied to the vampire myth more often. Certainly the usual suspects – be it Summers or Bane – do not feature the creature in their volumes. That said they were tied together in the film Dracula, Lord of the Damned.

getting a new posting

After a Nietzsche quote, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster” and a further anonymous quote that says “eat me” the film begins. It is set in 1847 and Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is being awarded a medal for his efforts in a battle. Following the ceremony the men are all given steaks but Boyd can barely look at his. As he cuts into the rare meat his mind flashes to bloody images of war and he runs from the table to vomit. The general, Slauson (John Spencer), tells Boyd that he is no hero and he is sending him as far away as possible – that being Fort Spencer in California. As we stay with Boyd he appears to be suffering from PTSD.

buried under the dead

Boyd arrives at the fort in winter and meets the forts oddball personnel – ably commanded by Col. Hart (Jeffrey Jones). We discover Boyd’s history. He was in a battle against Mexican soldiers but froze. His company were massacred and he played dead. He was dragged off and placed in a pile of bodies, the blood from the dead running down his throat. He pulled himself out of the pile but something had changed. We see him, in flashback, break a guard’s neck with his bare hands and he then took the fort.

Robert Carlyle as F W Colqhoun

Things change when Boyd spots a man in the dark, starving and exhausted. His name is F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) and he tells the tale of settlers, lost as they were misguided by a Col Ives, and stuck in a cave through winter. He says that they ran out of food and, whilst he was out of the cave, one of the settlers died and he returned to find the others cooking the dead man’s legs. They ate their erstwhile companion but Ives changed and quickly their numbers dwindled. Colghoun left the last remaining woman with Ives and escaped.

the wendigo

Hart decides to investigate and takes a contingent out to the cave but they soon discover it was a trick and Colqhoun has led them to a place of slaughter. Before they go George (Joseph Runningfox), a Native American, tells Boyd that he believes this to be a tale of a wendigo and shows him a picture of the creature. When pushed he suggests that white men eat the flesh of Jesus and the skin with the picture on has Christ on the reverse, indicating a connection of sorts. Also, en route to the cave, Boyd actually asks Colquon if he felt different when he had eaten flesh and he affirms this, suggesting an increase in strength.

Guy Pearce as Boyd

Boyd ends up the survivor of the party, having shot Colqhoun and watched him sit up immediately afterwards. He leaps from a cliff to escape (or perhaps kill himself) and survives as trees break his fall – though he breaks his leg badly, with the bone stuck out of the flesh. We see him physically push the bone back in and then he eats of the flesh of another soldier. We then see him walk back to the fort – injured, yes, but able to walk on what is a severe break.

Cross on head

Later Colqhoun – under his alias of Col. Ives – suggests that he had been dying of tuberculosis and suffering from depression when he heard of the legend of the wendigo, how a man eating the flesh of another man would absorb that man’s spirit and become stronger but also filled with a terrible unending hunger that only gets worse with each cannibalistic meal. When Ives and Boyd have their showdown Ives paints a cross on his brow in blood and is always wearing a crucifix around his wrist, tying in the Christ (or perhaps antichrist) aspect.

blood on lip

So… is it Vamp? Well vampires are known to be flesh eaters as well as blood drinkers, on occasion, and Boyd was changed by drinking blood rather than full on flesh eating and, symbolically at least, came back from the dead. The film suggests a supernatural aspect with the quick healing (later we see Colqhoun’s bullet wound has not just healed but vanished without a scar) and increased strength. There is the theme of the endless, increasing hunger that is a common vampire trope. On the trail to the camp a man is injured and Colqhoun cannot resist and licks the wound whilst the man sleeps – waking him and forcing them to bind him. I can’t help but think that the reference to tuberculosis was purposeful given the US connection between the disease and vampirism.

a mad glint in the eye

I said that the usual suspects of the widened vampire myth do not seem to cover wendigos but some writers do. Grace L Dillon in the Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters suggests “The windigo’s cannibalistic behaviour recalls the vampire, the zombie and the werewolf. ‘Like the vampire, it feasts on flesh and blood,’ writes Columbo.” (pp 591-592) In this case we have a change in men just by eating flesh, but that change is supernatural and confers some of the traits often seen in vampirism – hunger, increased strength and rapid healing.

Boyd at Fort Spencer

What seemed strange, within the plot, was the small intake that was necessary to turn. Whilst Colqhuon clearly had eaten of many, and we could (from a cannibalism perspective) almost assume a contraction of Kuru, Boyd seemed to have become wendigo from a small amount of blood entering his system – this gave him the strength to overcome his fear and take the enemy fort. One thing that seemed strange was the fact that cooked flesh was just as effective when it came to healing and also (implied) for turning - especially as the flesh seemed to be a conduit for energy vampirism given the comments about absorption of spirit. Whilst that indefinable something that would have screamed Vamp was not there, on the evidence in film I think suggesting that this is, in the broadest sense, Vamp is fair.

raising a glass

As for the film itself, it was a revelation. Carlyle and Pearce are as good as one would expect. There is a quirkiness to this and black comedy that belies some serious themes – such as PTSD and other mental health impairments (when we consider that Colqhoun was clinically depressed). The oddball unit reminded me just a touch of MASH. I’d seriously recommend this one.

The imdb page is here.

The Vampire Almanac volume 2 – review

Edited by: J-M & Randy Lofficier

First published: 2015

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Featuring Alsinka the Virgin Vampire, Captain Vampire, Carmilla, Countess Carody, Dracula, the Gyaos, Nosferatu, Lord Ruthven, Princess Asa Vajda, the Vampire Brothers, the Vampire Countess, the Vampire City and the Two Orphan Vampire Girls.

The appeal of the myth of the Vampire is surely due to the fact that it deals with the resurrection of the dead, something that lies at the core of most of the world’s religions. The stories contained in this collection feature some of the most famous vampires in literary history. Some predate Dracula, whilst others are modern incarnations of the myth. Writers from all over the world bring a diversity of points of view to this potpourri of vampiric lore and legends.

The myth of the vampire, from all the poetic manifestations of the World Beyond, is one of the most endearing… …To try to piece together a history of vampirism is a dubious enterprise; it is much better to enjoy vampire stories! I do not believe in vampires. I believe in what inspired their creation. Roger Vadim (from his foreword).

The review: Following on from The Vampire Almanac Vol. 1 this was another collection of original tales based on pre-existing vampire characters. Having read the foreword, which was a piece written by director Roger Vadim in 1960, I was most impressed to discover that the first tale – Matthew Dennion’s Hercules in the Shadow of Evil – was one that mashed Hercules with the Japanese monster vampire Gyaos from Gamera Vs Gyaos. Indeed it was a Gamera origin story.

Micah Harris added some interesting concepts into the Ruthven story May the Ground Not Consume Thee by suggesting that “his kind draws strength from holy ground” and further suggesting that it was actually the Orthodox Church’s actions that created vrykolakas. Brian Gallagher added in mention of the alleged vampire Jure Grando in his Carmilla and the Witch.

So Much Loss by Anthony R. Cardno was probably my favourite story in the volume, looking into the Dracula aftermath, specifically around the victims of the Bloofer Lady. I should mention Steven A Roman’s story as a favourite also, bringing Graf Orlock and Irma Vep together.

Matthew Dennion did a further tale, Soul Sisters, with Asa from Black Sunday aiding the Salem witches (though how she escaped from her cross warded coffin is not explained) and Countess Carody from Vampyros Lesbos appears again in a trilogy of stories by Win Scott Eckert. There is a nice conceit in Henri Bé’s the Girls of Midnight when the Two Orphan Vampires meet Jean Rollin.

It would also be remiss not to mention the story the Vampire of New Orleans by Jared Welch, which features Paul Féval’s Vampire Countess, as Jared is a regular visitor to, and commentator on, the blog. In it he ties a little tighter the connection between the vampire genre and the Faust legend, also connecting in the Comte de Saint-Germain.

All in all I thought that the volume, whilst superb, didn’t quite match the first volume but it did keep me glued to the page and it is well worth being in your collection. 8.5 out of 10.

The Blackcoat Press page for both volumes is here.

Dracula, Lord of the Damned – review

Directors: Ian Case, Brian Clement & Theodore Trout

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

This is a tough one to review as it is a film with a very low budget, lots of ideas and, clearly, it is a labour of love. That said, when negative about it I will try and be constructive, as for everything negative there was a counter-balance of a brilliant idea.

The film is a remake of Dracula and so is ambitious from the get-go. I have read that this is one of the few that retained all the central characters – not true, Arthur Holmwood is expunged from the cast and aspects of the story are changed but then again there has been no make of Dracula that stuck to the story.

Harker arrives

As the film opens we see that it has been shot with a purplish filter and made to look grainy. Of course this helps hide some of the excesses but also it summons up the phantom of films long gone, especially Nosferatu. It is 1872 and the opening is narrated by Jonathon Harker (David McPherson). The Nosferatu aspect is mirrored in the fact that Harker is a realtor rather than a lawyer and from the firm Renfields no less. The music is quite lovely and rather evocative, whilst the digital rain overlay is rubbish and detracts. As Harker arrives by boat one questions the sense of this overlay, given that the rain seems to cause nary a ripple in the waters. A small point but one to bear in mind.

Theodore Trout as Dracula

The credits jarred, not because of the illustrations, however, which were stylistic pen and ink and suggested a Vlad Ţepeş identity for Dracula (Theodore Trout, Exhumed) but because of the rock song that came in on the back of the excellent instrumental strains just before (later use of Toccata and Fugue in D minor maybe should have been avoided also). The castle looked excellent (I am sure that parts of it were Whitby abbey) and then Dracula appeared. Like Orlock, he appears from a womb like doorway but rather than emerge he stands behind the threshold. He is armoured, as a warlord should be, but his welcome, and the delivery thereof, initially sounded odd. As the film progresses, however, Trout’s idiosyncratic delivery actually grew on me, taking his vampire in different directions to previous performances. I was not as struck with David McPherson’s performance unfortunately.

wall crawl animation

Whilst in conversation we discover the origins of this Dracula's vampirism; that he was killed in battle and then rose again three days later. If this sounds quasi-Christian we get more of an insight when Harker mentions the name Jesus and it throws Dracula into a rage. We discover, as the film progresses, that Dracula does not see himself as a vampire but as a saviour on a divine mission. This could be said to be delusion on his part, indeed he has forgotten exactly what he is, and perhaps we could suggest that he is antichrist. Other moments should be mentioned around the castle sequence. We see Dracula wall crawl but it is combination of animation and Claymation. This could jar but the overlay of effects that sit above the film, rather than sew seamlessly in, are so deliberately used that they become part of the style.

rotted form

We see the brides, but they are numbered more than three and the sequence of them with the baby is brutal. The peasant woman (Alexandra Steinmetz) seeking her stolen infant is kept in but, rather than be set upon by wolves, she is hung and left to dangle before Harker’s window. There is a scene where Harker searches for a means to escape and finds Dracula’s coffin. His initial appearance as a corpse was interesting (we will return to this), as was the fact that he also took a form like Orlock in Nosferatu, but the traipse through the castle itself was overly convoluted and could have done with some judicial trimming in its length and the pacing does sometimes become a little slow through the whole film.

Lucy and Mina

Turning to the England sequence and Lucy (Denise Brown) is a woman of means and her maid is Mina (Amanda Lisman). There are only two suitors, Dr John Seward (Ian Case) and Quincy Morris (Randall Carnell) and Lucy accepts Seward’s proposal. However the script goes to lengths to draw Lucy as a wanton hussy. Both men gain entry to her bedroom, whilst she is only wearing a robe, much to the shock of a housemaid – as an aside, why Quincy needed to deliver a note for Seward, who was standing next to him, was beyond me and seemed only to give Morris some dialogue – and she admits that she will have an affair with the Texan after marriage. This misses the truth of Lucy in the novel, to my way of thinking, who was innocent but perceived as wanton within the Victiorian patriarchal perspective of men like Van Helsing (Mike Grimshaw).

Renfield

The Renfield (Hal Hewett) in this retelling is a homicidal madman, we are told that he has a desire to ingest life so as to live forever and this means eating things whilst they live. However, as we meet him, he has not just eaten flies and spiders but has cannibalised humans (eating them alive too). More might have been done with Renfield in the film but, also, one couldn’t help but think he would more likely have been hung for his crimes rather than hospitalised.

Nosferatu form

Interestingly Quincy suggests that the vampire is known in his country as the wendigo – this is a generally unused folkloric overlap and we must remember that the US had imported the standard vampire myth from Europe, had its own “vampire panic” and so would probably not have conflated the myths. Wikipedia gives a quote from Basil Johnson that suggests that the creature, from Algonquian folklore, was “gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Weendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Weendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption”. This description might offer a suggestion of the walking dead but versions of the myth have men turning into wendigo after indulging in cannibalism or being possessed by a cannibalistic spirit, rather than being the restless dead per se. Even so – given the extra atrocities attributed to Renfield in this film – an opportunity to expand on the wendigo aspect via that character was lost.

Lucy returns

The vampire Lucy section was interesting. I liked the fact that the sense of giving her a blood transfusion was questioned as she might reject the transfusion (blood type is not mentioned, it hadn’t been discovered). Van Helsing, we are later informed, was in the country to investigate a plague of influenza – though he realised it was vampirism early on – and so he suggests that, at the stage (of vampirism) that Lucy is at, anyone’s blood would do. After her death, the vampire Lucy appears nightmarishly to Seward in his bedroom, holding a baby, lucid, bloody and yet glowing (to covert him to one of the righteous of the rapture). The subsequent dramatic staking scene is perhaps lessened slightly by the comedic sound effect of a shovel bopping her on the head.

taking Mina

It was interesting that in the subsequent attack on Mina we see the vampire in "Dracula mode" holding her, in an almost romantic pose, but then he is seen as Nosferatu taking her from behind in an animalistic rape. Again the scene is undone with a comedy sound effect, this time a chewing noise as Dracula takes a bite out of a bible flung at him. At the conclusion he is shown a mirror, Van Helsing says he does not reflect but Dracula sees himself as a Nosferatu. Later the brides are shown themselves and are dead, mummified things and the truth leads them to beg for release.

hanging the peasant

The fact that I have looked at the film in rather a lot of depth underlines the fact that despite some unfortunate sound effects, perhaps less than A grade acting on some parts and some ropey visual effects, this has a lot to interest those who know Bram Stoker’s tale and that it is filled with innovative and interesting ideas. How many versions of Dracula actually show Renfield’s trepanning? It is far from perfect but has much to offer and my score will balance the innovation against the less positive and cheesy aspects. 5 out of 10 seems fair, though one must enter expecting a unique vision.

The imdb page is here.