Vamp or Not? The Home

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

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

Max's Mural

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

Pete Davidson as Max

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

Luke aged

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

procedure

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

Max and Lou

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

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Honeybee – review

Director: Nicki Harris

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

This one passed me by, and its identity as a vampire film nearly passed me by as I watched it, because the vampire aspect, that horror core, is almost non-existent. Yet vampire film it is. On the surface this comes across more as a teen high school drama (with a very lower-case d) and they missed a trick by not turning it on its head when the vampirism was revealed.

So, we are in small town USA and the opening is narrated by Hilary (Connie Shi) who explains that it is a small town, where nothing really happens, where everyone knows everyone and where everyone has roots in the town (her own family can trace back 200 years). Hillary lives with her dad (Andrew Start), goes to school and would do anything for a little variety.

Andrew Start as the dad

That variety pitches up in the form of the Morris family that rents the house next door (and for which her dad is a caretaker). They happen to be watching them arrive and the first is Kadin (Garrett Richmond), getting off his motorbike. If one boy next door was bad enough, out of the following vehicle comes Brian (Nathan Ross Murphy), Jeremy (Will Thames), and twins Matthew (Jason Parks) and Kyle (Justin Parks). Hillary’s dad is all for never letting her out of the house again when mom, Louisa (Suzanne Jaehne), gets out the vehicle. He rushes out to greet them.

the boys arrive

So there are two weeks of school left but they still sign up and then we get a 'new boys walking the corridor scene' with the girls drooling. In reality, they may all be good looking but they were not the unearthly beauties the film wanted to infer. They also seemed oddly close in age. Nevertheless, Kadin and Hilary hit it off and there are some moments of high school mean girl-ness, which essentially stems from Hilary’s mom having had an affair with her (now ex-)friend’s dad before killing herself.

Connie Shi as Hillary

Things sit off key with the newcomers – but for the viewer, not the characters. We see that Louisa is oddly dominating and sends the boys out of the area to steal goods (we don’t see the raid, just the aftermath). Kadin cuts his hand but won’t let Hailey see or help – because his blood is black. However, she washes the black blood off the knife he was cut by, without even noticing the odd colour.

blood at mouth

Louisa is the vampire, presumably the Queen, given the honeybee title, and they are the worker bees. They go to a town, enrol in high school, pick five victims and she feeds on them. Kadin is fairly new, however, and seems to have both a conscience and has really fallen for Hilary. The boys' life and longevity (there is a newspaper clipping with the twins from 1929) is dependent on her – if she dies, they die. A vampire hunter (Pokey Spears) turns up and he turns out to be a worker bee who left (replaced by Kadin) and so has aged. He makes the “wise” choice of checking out the school and luckily only sees Kadin – because, of course, the others would recognise him.

finding a victim

When we get to the vampirism (which starts with picking up a guy in a bar, whose age means that she will only get a week of use from him but that makes it sound that she is youth or life stealing) we see very little – a sort of a kiss bite at a distance, leaving a torn up mouth. This is where this really falls flat. The acting is ok but they have little to work with, the filmmakers could have made a lot of thriller or horror tension – we could have followed the raid, we could see the kills properly and gore could have been added – but they failed to do this. Yet, as a high school drama, it is drama light and as a vampire-high school romance it is lighter still. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Drained – review

Directors: Peter Stylianou & Sean Cronin

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

This is an indie UK film with some clever ideas and, as you’ll see, for the most part I enjoyed it but, whilst well-played, there was an issue with the characters. Nevertheless it proves itself to be a solid little vampire flick with some interesting lore on offer.

It begins with a decrepit man (Matteo Pasquini) in bed with an intravenous blood bag in his arm. A female vampire, Rhea (Madalina Bellariu Ion, Dampyr), feeds from his wrist. We hear it suggested that they are always and forever.

in the basement

In a room elsewhere, with fantasy drawing on the wall, a man, Thomas (Ruaridh Aldington), furiously masturbates over the art, which he has drawn. He is interrupted by a shout from his mother (Angela Dixon). She tells him that John (Craig Conway), the pest control man, is coming. When John gets there it is clear that his mother is flirting but she asks Thomas to take him to the basement. He does, reluctantly, and then goes out. It is clear Thomas has been reclusive for a while, but he goes to the bar where his friend Dano (Andrew Lyle-Pinnock) works.

first time seeing her

As Dano is working, Thomas is drinking alone. He nips outside for a cigarette and sees a woman enter – Rhea – and is immediately captivated by her, to him she looks like the fantasy girl. He watches her dance and, through the camera lens, it seems to us that her sultry dance is for him. She comes over and says that he is beautiful and asks him to dance. She gives her name and, in a foreign language, says that she can feel his heart. He is overwhelmed by a bloody vision. He wakes the next day, alone at home.

Ruaridh Aldington as Thomas

Two weeks later and he watches Night of the Living Dead, turning the sound up to drown out the sounds of his mother and John having sex. Later, to his shock, he is told that John is moving in and that he is being moved out to John’s flat (that he can’t afford as he is unemployed). He has also not seen anything of Rhea. Buying a (very small) amount of credit for his electric supply he sees a homeless guy (Kenton Lloyd Morgan). The man has, what looks to us like, a pair of fang marks on his wrist and he mentions that *they* bleed us dry. He gets a call from Dano as Rhea is at the bar. He rushes over, speaks to her (but she acts like she doesn’t know him) and then her date (Timothy Blore) comes over. Dano knew she was on a date and called him as a wind up. A drunk Thomas takes a bus home and as he gets to the flat Rhea appears.

feeding

She says she was on the bus, and he didn’t see her (likelihood, she followed in flight as we discover later vampires can fly). She requires inviting in (and interestingly, until it becomes her home, requires an invite each visit). She tells Thomas that the date didn’t taste nice. He fumbles getting the electric on and, when the lights come back on, she is on his bed (she has good night vision, she says). She is apparently going to sleep there and suggests that maybe he is the one. Sleep is actually sleep, not sex, with him below the covers, her over them. He wakes in the night to find her feeding on his arm. Apparently, he is delicious. He does ask her to leave but she leaves her number…

together

So, I’ll leave the blow-by-blow there but it is worth mentioning that, come the first morning Thomas freaks about sunlight until it doesn’t burn him. Later Rhea suggests it irritates, maybe causing eczema. Biting does not turn a person – to become a vampire the person has to eat a vampire’s heart. Her biting does give him pleasure but the wounds start to look like track marks and the drug similes are very evident. However, the film also examines co-dependency and toxic relationships.

when the moon is full

More lore we come across concerns the man from the beginning, Andreas, he is actually her husband – the relationship she has with Thomas is one where he craves the pleasure of the bite and any crumb she’ll give him, it is apparently sexless (she rebuffs an attempted kiss and openly calls him nothing but a victim) – but it appears that she does love “the old man”. Old Man is a good descriptor, when asked what is wrong with him, his nurse says he got old too quick; he is 36. Thomas too becomes rapidly ill and loses weight – this is, of course, a drug use metaphor but may also be draining youth from the victim. There seems to be a mental connection with victims and the full moon turns hunger into a homicidal rage of ravenousness.

keening wail

The film looks lovely and the performances are all solid but the relationship highlights where I found there to be a character issue with the film. Rhea and Thomas become toxic quickly, yes, but the characters (despite best efforts of the actors) are not overly likeable. She is cold and aloof, occasionally cruel – turning on sexuality as a tool (though her keening wail, when Andreas dies, indicates more depths and a mental connection with her drained husband), whilst Thomas is feckless and unmotivated. John should have had his streak of black comedy but unfortunately comes across as dislikable, mum is probably the character with the most viewer sympathy but, all in all, I didn’t warm to any of the main characters. This is not a slight on performance or direction, it was a choice, but I would have liked at least one character to hang a hat on. Overall, however, a well shot vampire flick. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Evil Eye – review

Director: Isaac Ezban

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Vampiric witches, you have to love ‘em and these ones hail from Mexico. I saw this film, which they find themselves in, at Grimmfest and whilst it isn’t perfect, it does have a lot going for it, with a primarily female cast and a setting that just drips atmosphere and a sense of the uncanny and just-out-of-touch repressed memories. This is one that summons, what my pal Simon Bacon might describe as, undead memories.

The film starts off, in a forest and with a story – it is a story that is told through the film of triplets who happen to be at an encampment. One of them falls and it is before an old, swaddled woman – she seems an archetypal hag and this is fitting within the lore of the film. The girl stands and the woman reaches out, deftly releasing and taking a ribbon from her hair. The story narrator says that sometimes, when you are in view, evil turns its gaze towards you.

curing the fit

A noise and a small girl, Luna (Ivanna Sofia Ferro), is fitting. Her parents, Rebecca (Samantha Castillo) and Guillermo (Arap Bethke) rush in and push a syringe into a device on her back that is emitting an alarm and flashing a warning light. As the injection takes hold the light turns green – it is her third attack that week. Her older sister, Nala (Paola Miguel), is annoyed, it seems, at the attention the younger sibling gets. When the doctor visits he suggests that her organs are failing and that she should be in hospital now.

Guillermo and Rebecca

Rebecca and Guillermo disagree on the next course of action. He wants to move her to the hospital but she wants to go out to her family as she believes there is an alternative treatment. Rebecca wins the argument, much to Nala’s discontent as she doesn’t want to go. We discover, before they leave, that many of the children in the apartment complex have been ill and it is later described as an epidemic. The drive is incredibly long, the city left far behind.

Ofelia Medina as Josefa

At the family home they meet Josefa (Ofelia Medina), family matriarch who Guillermo and the children have never met. It is clear there is discontent between Josefa and Rebecca. Nala is devastated to discover that there is no wifi or phone signal – she still spends a large amount of time on her phone, presumably packed with offline apps. Also at the house are Abigail (Paloma Alvamar), the young housemaid, and her boyfriend Pedro (Mauro González), the handyman. They live in a cabin nearby and Nala clearly takes a shine to Pedro.

the hag

Abigail starts telling the girls a local legend – that is the story of the triplets. The story goes on to say that the hag was indeed a witch and witches suck the blood of children to steal their youth. This caused the one triplet to start becoming ill. The others realise what is happening and put scissors beneath the mattress as this should ward off a witch, but it doesn’t work and so they go to a sorceress in the forest – who interestingly is listed as being from the Caribbean and this is an area where the vampiric old hag folklore is highly prevalent. She teaches them how to make a Bacá – a magical creature that can grant wishes but also bring misfortune to those who make a wish.

Luna and Nala

There is much more to the tale of the triplets, which I won’t spoil. As it is, mom and dad go off to find the alternative cure leaving the girls with Josefa. Nala is a bit of a brat (but, as the film progresses we do see she genuinely loves her sister) but the treatment by Josefa is essentially abusive. In return Nala becomes convinced that Josefa is a witch and is sucking Luna’s blood at night.

skinless

Lore-wise we have a really interesting mixed bag. I have mentioned the scissors and the blood drinking. Witches will also shed their skin to hunt, storing it in a pumpkin. This reminded me of some of the Southeast Asian lore, which more often sees the body detach but the left body part becomes a weakness as the skin does here. More so it is identical to the Caribbean soucouyant, or Old Hag—an aged woman by day who sheds her skin when hunting blood. Salt is deadly to the witch and rubbed inside the shed skin will burn and kill the witch. That Caribbean connection is enhanced with a view of a ritual late into the film that looks like it originates from that area.

drink blood

It is, however, the atmosphere in this that got me. The house just feels so unheimlich and we get much that points to repressed memory and also a clash between modern and old fashioned. The story itself, whilst the film does its best to obfuscate at times, is pretty easy to work out and I found myself waiting to see it pan out the way I predicted, rather than work out what happened. I mentioned Nala being a brat, but that is deliberate and the child actors deliver what is needed. Ofelia Medina is fabulous as the demented matriarch. I did enjoy this one, 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Aged – review

Director: Anubys Lopez

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Perhaps I have been doing this for too long or perhaps punches are broadcast too far in advance but I kind of knew from just title and trailer that Aged was going to be vampiric in nature. What I didn’t know, of course, was just how we were going to get there. What we did get was a slice of American Gothic that reached back into the past to create a sense of uncanniness. Some aspects were a little on the nose but they worked if you just accepted them for what they are and accepted that our protagonist was virtually ignoring them almost wilfully.

first meeting

Starting in a Texas coffee shop, Charles Bloom (Dave McClain) drinks a coffee. Approaching him is Veronica Grey (Morgan Boss-Maltais), a young woman he has come to meet in order to offer her a job. That job is caregiver for his mother, Mrs Bloom (Carla Kidd). She has, he reports, dementia and he is looking for a live-in carer. This doesn’t seem to be her ideal career choice but he asks her to consider it – his tale makes it clear that looking after her is exhausting him.

creepy pictrues

She clearly, later, makes the choice to go with him on a temporary basis and he picks her up. The house is in the middle of nowhere (no signal) and, as they arrive, she sees the gardener, Joe (Adonis Ringo), he seems terrified and manages to slice his hand open… Charles ignores him altogether and draws her into a house that seems stuck in a bygone era. Now here we have a moment that Veronica wilfully ignores. There are pictures of an old type adorning the walls but all of them have the faces scratched away. It gives us a moment of the uncanny but, if I’d have been her, I’d have turned tail. These pictures are later mentioned in dialogue but ignoring them for most of the film seemed off-kilter.

Carla Kidd as Mrs Bloom

She is introduced to Mrs Bloom – a mention of the aging makeup; it is pretty good but obviously makeup and needed in order to de-age, of course – but when she asks to see Charles, she is told he has gone home to his family. Now he didn’t say he was his mother’s live-in carer but it was implied and I’d have again seen a red flag. The film then draws an uncanny cloak around proceedings. Veronica becomes tired and gets mysterious bruises in her sleep. Mrs Bloom talks about going to university, about a man named Henry (Kelly Kidd) who watches her (and Veronica can’t see but we do later), about how, when she is better, she’ll be able to do things.

distant figure

Veronica early on goes for a walk (looking for a phone signal) and sees a figure (too far for the viewer to identify but possibly Mrs Bloom) who runs at her and chases her back to the house. Later Veronica cannot leave the house without fainting and is eventually told that the house won’t let her leave and that it dislikes being changed… making the house an entity in its own right. We can see Veronica age (a grey streak appears in her hair) and lose time (though she is gaslighted, so whether the assertion that she has been there two months, when she thinks a week or two, is accurate is debatable). Mrs Bloom, on the other hand, begins to subtly become sprightlier.

the bath

How? My overall reaction is that it is energy (and youth) transference but there is stealing of Veronica’s blood by Henry and Mrs Bloom. This is taken to a bathtub and added to the water and roses in there. Mrs Bloom will eventually bathe in it (somehow, probably down to magic, it remains fresh it seems). It all goes down to tuberculosis and Mrs Bloom’s granddaughter (Bria D'Aguanno) dying, leaving Mrs Bloom ill, abandoned by family but unable to die. To bring death she made a deal with an evil spirit, to die she would trap another Bloom in her place. Mrs Bloom is not the original and Veronica, unbeknown to herself, is of the familial line. Mrs Bloom can regain her youth by taking Veronica’s and leaving her to remain in the house.

it won't let you leave

This was interesting just for the sense of uncanny it produced and it was this that was central to the film. There are some light jump scares but mostly the film relies on atmosphere to carry itself. Morgan Boss-Maltais really made the film, giving a strong central performance. It’s nice to see youth stealing in a film though more could have been made out of the house – it really felt like the aim was to make itself almost the central vampiric entity and they could have played more with that. 6 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl

Having upgraded to Blu-Ray, I was giving classic horror Let’s Scare Jessica to Death a re-watch and on the disc was a brief interview with Kim Newman. He mentioned a couple of more modern films that he said owed something (in style) to the aforementioned movie. One was the 2016, A.D. Calvo directed Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl, a film I had not seen but was available on Shudder.

Now Kim Newman had not suggested a vampire connection and I didn’t watch the film expecting one, but what I got was a great, almost psychosexual, drama with airs of Let’s Kill Jessica but, also, I think a touch a Mario Bava – specifically the section A Drop of Water in Black Sabbath. When I thought about the film, as it reached its conclusion, I realised there might be something vampiric about it. Truthfully, I had already thought about Carmilla during the running time (more in a relationship way than anything else) but to explain why, well I’m going to have to spoil the ending entirely. You’ve been warned.

Erin Wilhelmi as Adele

The film follows Adele (Erin Wilhelmi) and the opening shots follow her during the day in the countryside where she lives and, truthfully, it does paint her as lonely. She lives with her pregnant mom (Lainie Ventura) and her stepfather. Her Aunt Dora (Susan Kellermann) requires a live-in carer and her mom wants her to go. Her reluctance is overcome as we see her in the bathroom and her step-father leering, peeking through a crack. The film hints at abuse. So she moves into town, in to her Aunt's house.

picture of Dora

Aunt Dora does not leave her room, has given her the instructions (written) of always shut the door and no house guests, and has left money for her to buy the groceries she wants. The film does a grand job of generating a feeling of unheimlich, the house itself seems like a snapshot of memory (the film is set in a pre-digital year, Adele has her tape Walkman, telephones are house implements and wired but the house has an older feel still). There is a distinct wind sound when the door is open, that is blocked when closed again. We later discover that Dora is her mom’s step sister and substantially older, that she is agoraphobic (and has a heart condition) she never leaves her room when Adele is near and passes notes under the door. We see a photo of her when young with another girl blurred in the background.

seeing Beth

Shopping Adele spots a woman, with whom she seems immediately fascinated (probably due to her sense of style as much as anything). This is Beth (Quinn Shephard). Later Adele goes to a coffee shop with people but seems out of place and leaves before being served. She goes to a virtually empty diner and orders a soda and a slice, before realising she can’t afford the food and amends her order. Beth is in a booth and pays for the snack, asking Adele to sit with her. She noticed her looking at her in the supermarket. They then meet again whilst Beth is running past the house and invites herself in, despite the no guests rule, breezing past Adele's weak protestations.

Beth and Adele

As the two become closer Adele’s behaviours change. She starts buying cheaper brands for her Aunt, allowing herself the difference in change and, persuaded by Beth, buys off the shelf heart medicine rather than filling her more expensive prescription – this will eventually lead to Dora’s death, which jumps us to the climax of the film. Whilst a relationship is growing, and they do kiss, Adele’s feelings become apparently greater than Beth's, and discovering that she has slept with a (strange to Adele) man, she allows herself to be picked up by a random guy for some absolutely dispassionate sex. The pick up is observed by Beth, though she seems to vanish like a ghost (and Adele has been seeing Aunt Dora, perhaps due to guilt, so there is the chance her appearance was a figment of imagination). Beth then visits her at home entering through the door, which was left open by the man after the hook up.

like an apparition

When Adele saw Beth for the first time at the Supermarket, Beth had a pomegranate and Adele bought one, tried it but gave up trying to extract the seeds. That pomegranate seems to have sat on the table and Beth, as Adele investigates a noise, now eats it voraciously. There is, of course, the association of the pomegranate with death and tricking Persephone into returning to the underworld. Adele ends up hiding in the basement, Beth follows and seems to become a floating apparition. The film cuts forward in time and Adele's sister Dory (Frances Eve), with whom her mother was pregnant, arrives at the house, now a young woman, to look after Adele – who seems to be a prematurely old woman.

prematurely aged

So why do I think this is vampiric. Adele seems much older than she should be, her eyes milky and seems to be in Dora’s place (she sits in her Aunt’s rocking chair). However, as Dory goes through the house, we see the picture of a young Dora (framed, unlike earlier) and the girl in the picture is not blurred and it is clearly Beth. The implication for me is that Beth stole Adele’s youth and vitality (as she did Dora's before her) and is clearly much older than we knew. The fact that she devoured the pomegranate, and descended into the underworld to turn into a corpselike floating apparition that menaced Adele (we only see Adele scream and not the subsequent interaction), is clearly symbolic and all of this would indicate to me that she was an energy vampire – at least that is one reading. And I think it a fair reading for a fascinating, really worthwhile film.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK

Fear Chamber – review

Directors: Jack Hill & Juan Ibáñez

Release date: 1968

Contains spoilers

I received a message from Leila asking whether I had ever considered this film as a vampire film – which I hadn’t. However I was immediately excited to realise that it might mean a further vampire film starring the late, great Boris Karloff (Isle of the Dead, Black Sabbath, House of Frankenstein, Mad Monster Party? & host of Thriller). Unfortunately it is not a great Swan Song, one of four Mexican movies that he was contracted for and clearly rather frail when he made it – his character spends a great deal of time bedridden or sat down – the film is rather silly… but we can handle a bit of silly.

into the cave

It starts with a dungeon scene, including skeletons, whipping and screams. Its all filmed in an off-kilter way, as though it’s a bad trip… We shift scene and, though they are hidden within fire proximity suits, we see Corinne (Julissa) and Mark (Carlos East) make their way into caves within a volcano. They are looking for something, a primal form of life that Corinne’s father Dr. Karl Mantell (Boris Karloff) has theorised may live near the earth’s core. He is at home, in contact by telephone whilst his assistant/nurse Helga (Isela Vega, La Señora Muerte) fusses. They find what they were looking for.

a new victim

We cut to the “Beneficent Foundation: Foreign Employment for Young Woman”, as a handy sign tells us. A young woman is preparing for bed inside (though she is unnerved by the artwork and unaware of the man watching from the ventilation grating). After she has fallen asleep a sinister dwarf (Santanón, Santo and Blue Demon Vs the Monsters) creeps in and then the whole wall and her bed turns and she is suddenly in the dungeon. She is terrorised and herded through the dungeon until she is in a cage and forced to watch a satanic sacrifice of another woman.

the priest looks familiar

But wait, keen-eyed viewer… surely the satanic priest is non-other than Dr. Karl Mantell. He calls for her and she is dragged out of the cell and placed over hot coals to be sacrificed and, passes out. A gurney is pulled in and Mantell has shrugged off satanic priest robes and is in surgical scrubs. They take her through to an operating theatre where they take her blood. They brought the living rock back (if it is living; Mantell describes it as not living, also as anti-life later, but eventually concedes that it is living) and are now trying to keep it functioning whilst they use computers to decode its signals (again, a mark of how loosely conceived the film is can be found in the dialogue where sometimes they suggest it gives out signals but has no intelligence and at the same time argue over whether it can lie). Unfortunately, it requires a hormone only found in human blood when the person has gone through extreme terror, hence putting victims through the titular Fear Chamber (generously I’ll suggest that this food source is necessary because it has been removed from its home environment and the hormone replicates the normal food-stuff, as there are not going to be humans around in its natural environment).

the rock creature

So, they manage to take enough blood to feed the rock but not so much that the victim will die (Mantell draws a line here, it seems, though unbeknownst to him, some of his performers/researchers have looser morals and managed to kill at least one victim previously) though this latest victim does have a medical complication. The next day she is convinced it was a dream and sent to her new job that the foundation found her. However Helga has the bowl knocked from her hand by a tendril the rock has developed (which she describes as a feeding tube). Burley assistant Roland (Yerye Beirute, El ataúd del Vampiro) claims communication (telepathic, that the others ignore and dismiss) and says it is still hungry – as do the computer print outs.

grabbed by a stony tentacle

A new woman in the institute, the next day, sneaks out of her room as she is actually a thief (though what she's after is never made clear) and finds the secret door to the lab. Inside she is attacked by the rock creature, which grabs her by the feeding tube and sucks the terror spiked blood from her – an act that leaves her corpse aged. This incident causes Mantell to destroy it and end up bedridden. Corinne and Mark leave for a vacation and so Helga decides to revive the creature and continue the experiments – she later suggests that it seduced her and Roland.

feeding ages the victims

What we have then is a living rock that feeds on human blood, though this is a means to get to the fear hormone it needs. The act of feeding drains the youth from the victim for no adequately explored reason. It is intelligent, deceitful and, they learn to their shock, able to interface with the computers. The dialogue is the worst kind of technobabble at times and whilst there is a moment of topless nudity (when Helga brings a stripper back for the rock creature and she performs) this seemed to have ambitions of a sleazy level of sexploitation that it didn’t achieve. I think it is a little unfair to suggest Karloff phones his performance in, after all he was clearly in poor health, but it is not a great performance from an actor capable of so much more. The film itself deserves probably no more than 3.5 out of 10 – bolstered by the fact that it achieves some sort of drive-in-zen and yet… rock vampire.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Spookies

It’s difficult to know exactly what to make of this 1986 film. Directed primarily (in the credits) by Genie Joseph, the director was building upon work from an unfinished work called Twisted Souls that was directed by Thomas Doran and Brendan Faulkner.

Twisted Souls was the story of a group of people who end up at a house (one with a cemetery as its front lawn) and find an Ouija board. One of the group, Carol (Lisa Friede), becomes possessed (with noticeable fangs, by the way) and the film morphs into a version of Evil Dead without the style and cult appeal of the more famous film. A variety of villainous monsters, including a lawn of zombies, farting “muck men” and some stop-motion creatures try to get the kids.

Linda and Duke

I say kids, but at least one of their number, Peter (Peter Dain), was treated like he was the “straight laced one” but looked old enough to be the rest of the cast’s dad. I should also mention bullish leader of the group, and the one who landed them at the house, Duke (Nick Gionta). His brash form of Bronx machismo was difficult to take with any degree of seriousness given that he seemed to have squeezed himself into one of Michael Jackson’s stage costumes. Of course this was only part of the story.

Billy's Birthday

The film was incomplete and shelved until additional footage was shot and stitched to the film. This involved the cadaverous character Kreon (Felix Ward) who has kept the body of his love, Isabelle (Maria Pechukas), preserved in a coffin for seventy years, luring victims to the house in order to preserve and raise her. This is one of the possibly vampiric aspects as Kreon suggests that he has sacrificed the youth of so many to keep her preserved. In main his victims are now the Twisted Souls kids. He does lure Billy (Alec Nemser), a runaway, to the house before they arrive and host a fake birthday party followed by burial alive – so much for Billy.

Kreon's son

The primary vampire element seems to be Isabelle and Kreon’s son (A.J. Lowenthal). Now, just when and how they had a son is not explored. When she is revived she is aware of him and so the suspicion is that it was before she poisoned herself to escape Kreon – she may be his love but the feeling is not reciprocated. The child (who may be over 70) is a blue faced and fanged thing in a cowl. They talk of him killing but, as he wasn’t in the footage of the original film, this does not happen and so the child does very little in film.

drained by the spider

The final aspect to mention is the Spider Woman (Soo Paek), who lures Rich (Peter Iasillo Jr., Street Trash) off from the others in the house and he’s not suspicious that the woman – who claims to be trapped like them – knows his name. When back at her lair she morphs into an actual spider, whilst he is stuck in a web, and then sucks him dry. Given Rich’s involvement this was certainly meant to be a scene in Twisted Souls.

And that’s it – the mention is primarily for Kreon’s son, just because he looks like a child vampire. The film is nuts but not particularly watchable nuts. The imdb page is here.