I Dream of a Psychopomp – review

Director: Danny Villanueva Jr.

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

A psychopomp is a being tasked with guiding the souls of the recently deceased to the afterlife. The movie uses the word in that sense and, of course, prominently in the title of this portmanteau film.

The wraparound in this case follows Kerry Reynosa (Elohim Peña) who survived the car crash that his wife, Evelyn (Kulani Kai), died in. Having experienced a supernatural event when he went to view her body, it becomes apparent that he can now see and communicate with the dead. He is visited by a psychopomp (Steven Alonte) in his dreams who guides him on how to use his gifts. The stories then are designed to explore aspects of death and communicate the lessons he and (in the case of the story that led to the review) Evelyn need to understand aspects of death.

Jillian Lebling as Elayna

In many respects these are not horror segments, however the segment entitled Answers does have more of a horror side to it. The segment we are interested in, Until Forever, may have a vampire but it is much more a musing on the implications of living forever. It starts with a young girl, Elayna (Jillian Lebling), riding her bike along a street at night. She stops and looks over at a church. We then see a man, Obed (Jay Rattle), check that the church door is chained (on the inside), after which he limps away. Elayna, however, has somehow got inside.

Ben Shaul as Adriano

She walks into the (clearly abandoned) church and places a bottle on the floor and then hides in the shadows. A man, Adriano (Ben Shaul), enters and takes the bottle. He drinks the contents (which are not shown but we can guess at blood). He then addresses Elayna and says she can come out. She knows what he is (hence the bottle), though the film never addresses how she knows or, indeed, use the ‘V’ word. The two talk.

turning Gabriel

He laments time, which he calls his enemy, and the fact that he is stuck with forever, that his story has no end. He longs for death, in fact. She suggests that time is her enemy also and removes the wig she wears – revealing her bald head and we understand that she is undergoing some form of cancer treatment. She wants him to give her more time – by turning her – but he is opposed to the idea remembering how he once turned a friend, Gabriel (Reinhold Von Bolt), who became a murderous bestial creature. However, Adriano quickly relents and fills a chalice with his blood… he wants her to reconsider and there is a price to be paid before she can drink…

awaiting payment

This was a very nicely shot segment, with a decent atmosphere offered by the location. It wasn’t, as I said above, horror. Rather it was a musing on the idea of living eternally and what that would mean and the essential stage of our life’s journey that death represents. It wasn’t perfect – whilst shorts have to condense their stories often, the speed at which characters changed their minds made their responses feel feeble. Also, the dialogue felt stagey and Elayna’s dialogue, particularly, felt too old for her. Whilst I get that her terminal illness may have given her an older perspective, it felt off, especially as she was not a child vampire but a young girl. That said, Jillian Lebling’s actual performance was mostly good but her crying felt like acting, rather than natural. All that said, it was an interesting exploration – the score is for the vampire segment only. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Mouth is a Coven – review

Author: Liz Worth

First Published: 2022

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Have you ever seen a ghost? In Starling City, there are spirits on every street corner. Everyone in town seems to have at least one ghastly tale to tell.

So, it’s no wonder that a place like this breeds people like Blue and Julie, who summon demons just for fun and are obsessed with a local legend of a vampire named Matter. They hang out in dark clubs on a desolate downtown street and hope, desperately, that Matter will one day find them.

Because if they could become vampires, all of their problems will disappear. Just like the movies, they’ll never get old, and they will never die. They won’t have to worry about working or making rent, because the mundane world will no longer apply to them.

One night, their wish comes true: It turns out Matter is real. Except Blue and Julie soon learn that being a vampire isn’t exactly like you see in the movies. Abandoned, they are left on their own to figure out how to live as the undead – not to mention what to do with all those dead bodies piling up.

The review: When describing the Mouth is a Coven, Liz Worth has said “The style is literary, poetic and sometimes experimental, with occasionally unreliable characters whose grasp on reality loosens through a haze of occult rituals, blood pacts, and late nights at the local goth club.” I reproduced this because it actually describes the book really well.

It is set in Starling City and, as I read it, I felt it had a vibe of Santa Mondega from The Book with No Name at times, or even Bad City from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, not that it was the same as these locations but there was an air. Within the city we meet, first, Blue and later Julie who both obsess over the urban myth of the vampire Matter and, eventually, help invoke the vampire.

I say invoke as Matter is as much an elder God as a vampire and when brought into corporeal reality possesses a body and so we have vampiric possession in this. Whilst Matter is a God, with an agenda that is beyond mortal wishes, when Blue and Julie are turned their vampirism is perhaps not so grand and brings about definite problems as described in the blurb. In both the case of Matter, as a higher vampire, and Julie and Blue, as pale facsimiles, the volume offered an unusual take on the genre, which was welcome.

The joy of the volume is within the prose, as experimental and lyrical as they are (as per the author’s description) they are also evocative and magical, building characters you want to follow and weaving a world that draws you in. I marked one passage as I read it, not only because it contained interesting, none standard, vampiric imagery within it but because the prose struck me as macabrely beautiful:

“Around here, people talk about things that happened years ago. They say the soil in the cemetery on Cedar Road had gone black, that the man who’d sanctified the ground had a crow’s eye for a heart. It was said that when the dead were buried there, the roots of nearby trees wrapped themselves around the decaying bodies to suck up whatever life was left behind. As winter changed over to spring, the tree blossoms no longer held the youth of new growth, but hung heavy, their petals black with old blood. As spring gave way to the sweat of summer, those trees would glisten, weeping crimson.”

I have mentioned the two texts above that the city itself reminded me of, but I also had a feel within the prose of the works of Poppy Z. Brite and Tanith Lee, again more a vibe than anything else and the setting of the Goth scene, of course, played into that. It was great that the characters were simultaneously compelling but also not necessarily reliable witnesses and I adored the play throughout the book on the power of urban myth and the collective nature of reality. I absolutely devoured this volume and at no point was it less than a joy to read. 9 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Werewolf by Night

The 2022 Halloween Marvel one-shot brought Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal, Vamps), AKA Werewolf by Night, and Man-Thing (Carey Jones) to the screen and, one hopes, to the wider MCU. This, in turn, kindles a hope that this will lead to a more monster-centric strand to the MCU (despite its market saturation). We are due a Blade reboot within it (with filming, as I type, delayed but with Mahershala Ali’s voice, as Blade, appearing in an Eternals’ post-credit scene) and with Werewolf by Night and Blade in the mix (not to mention Deadpool) there is hope for an appearance of both Dracula and the Howling Commandos.

Dracula, alas, is not in this nor, indeed, is a functioning vampire. What we get is an amusing, black and white one-shot that, at under 60 minutes, does not outstay its welcome and summons a feel of monster films of yore.

He's never looked so alive

The reason for the mention is due to a narrated opening in which we see a picture that is clearly a vampire and, later, a vampire’s head mounted on the wall of Bloodstone Curios/Manor (I am using the comic book names for the manor but it is clear that the building has not been repurposed as a curio shop at this point). Both the head and the picture are in bat form. In film Jack, posing as a monster hunter, is asked whether he killed any of the beasties on display and he says not but does point to the vampire’s head saying, “Him, I fought a few times. He's never looked so alive.” It is a fleeting visitation, at best, but the episode is of genre interest if only for the threads it could later connect to.

The imdb page is here.

Hood Vamps – review

Director: Gregory Tucker

Release date: 2003

Contains spoilers

By the credits a 2003 release film, and lacking an IMDb page that I could find, this relatively short feature (it comes in at 72 minutes) appeared on Amazon VOD and only came in SD format. Now, having watched it I can’t really say that HD would have done it any favours unfortunately.

The film follows quite a well-to-do set of people but never seems to manage to pull off the setting, for instance graphic created contents of a cabinet will be mentioned later but underline how the film tried to work around the lack of budget but failed.

a victim

The film begins with a set of TV broadcasts culminating in a news report regarding a serial killer who is attacking single middle-aged men and who has police baffled. We see a man, dead in a chair, blood at the throat and a figure in a hoody. We then cut away to a gallery and the owner (with an accent that was layered with affectation) is speaking to a client on the phone, discussing Egyptian artefacts. He gets off the phone and tells Michael (Antoine Jones) that he must visit the client that very day.

Dominique and the sleaze

Michael isn’t happy as he is meant to be taking his girlfriend Dominique (Tracy Weaver) to an exclusive restaurant that he has waited two years to get a booking with. He has to go to the client, however. We then cut to Dominique, who is a successful business woman (its never clear in what, but I suspect as an advertising executive), batting off a sleazy client with poise and skill. Before cutting back to Michael arriving at his clients’ home.

a vampire's red eyes

The door is answered by Rochelle (Leslie Ballard), assistant to Jamari Jefferson (Earlisa Joiner). She speaks to Michael and the scene underlines just about everything wrong with the film. Firstly, it is here where we get Michael looking at a cupboard with some “interesting pieces”, the camera pans up a (obviously, low-res, computer generated) view of the cupboard, which in reality contains none of the pieces as the budget hasn’t covered such props – indeed later we get a full discussion of a scarab that isn’t there.

bad framing

Then, the dialogue, throughout, feels weirdly unnatural (not even stagey just wrong). For instance, in this scene, a woman who has never met the man before asks “So, are you married or committed to anyone at this time?” The words feel odd, the delivery isn’t great either to be fair, and we know it is just a clumsy tie in with the killer mentioned at the head attacking single men. As Rochelle is speaking to Michael the camera seems incapable of keeping her framed in shot – at times her head is cut from shot. We get inconsistent lighting and focus as camera angels change and the obligatory sound issues that one would unfortunately expect (noise on the soundtrack in one of the scenes being the main one).

weird dreams

Jamari then comes into the room (kind of just appearing) and within moments Michael is dismissed and will be contacted the next day. There is no appraisal of the artefacts for sale (difficult as they aren’t physically represented in the scene, of course). It just feels really clumsy. Jamari is the vampire and she has a kind of impact that Michael (who misses his dinner reservation window but is forgiven because he brought home a fruit salad in a plastic tub and some sparkling red grape juice) then has a nightmare about Jamari that night – though the film hinted later that these were dream invasions.

doing a Palpatine

There is a vampire hunting Jamari through the centuries and a cop, Stone (Gregory Tucker), hunting down the killer (who is Jamari, of course). The lore seems to be made up as it goes along. We do get a victim turning, who becomes a ravening white-faced ghoul and is then killed by the other ancient vampire vanishing in a bad sfx on death. We also get Jamari able to shoot lightning out of her hands in a Palpatine kind of way.

dying vampire

But over all this is just poor amateur filmmaking. Everyone has to start somewhere, of course, and issues like the props/cgi were a brave attempt to fulfil a vision that the budget conspired to thwart. However, the bad framing of actors in shot was very amateurish and damaged the finished output, as did the poor dialogue and delivery thereof. There was some fun imagery occasionally around the vampires, but not so fun that it saves the film. 2 out of 10.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: A Vampire's Heartbreak

This short film directed by Kevin Forte clocks in at just over 15-minutes and was released in 2019.

It follows born vampire John (Anthony Fagan) and the events with his love, and turned vampire, Lori (Cynthia Loren).

However, as the film starts, we see John wake up alone in bed. He reminisces about Lori and very early on we see, within the dialogue, that melodrama is the order of the day. His memories go back to being with her as a mortal. Of her asking to be turned to spend eternity with him and him obliging (turning takes place through drinking a vampire’s blood – we do not see him bite her).

being turned

He remembers her foibles, of her reluctance to kill and therefore he choosing the evildoer as their victim (the first we see is a murderer (Patrick Heraghty) who has killed four victims). All of this is before David’s past catches up with them.

bite

I mention the melodrama and that is, by far, the biggest feel I took from this. There is a wider story that could be drawn from this, however. A scope in the world-building that Kevin Forte could exploit if he so wished.

The imdb page is here.

Blood & Sand: The First Book of Rue – review

Author: Aisling Wilder

First Published: 2020

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Ancient vampire Rue keeps to herself. It makes it easier to fight the constant hunger that plagues her. That is, until the night she catches Grace-a not very good vampire hunter-stalking her through the streets of Dublin. Something about Grace is achingly familiar. And strangely irresistible.

Rue soon learns that Grace is herself being hunted, and is thrown into a battle she never wanted, to save a woman who wants her dead. As Rue unravels the horrifying and treacherous plot, she also uncovers a secret about Grace that could change everything. Along the way, Rue finds herself drawn to the girl, and is forced to choose: Continue her solitary life of safety, or risk it all for love?

Through it all, Rue recalls her creation and formative nights in an ancient world far from the rainy streets of Dublin, a world where she learned to live, love, hunt and kill.

The review: This book by Aisling Wilder is a book of two halves, intertwined together, with one chapter set in modern Dublin followed by one in ancient Ur and then Babylon. Rue, the vampire, was Asharru, a temple priestess in Ur who is chosen by Lilitu (whose name, of course, is thought to have been linked to the later Lilith figure) and turned when the city is sacked. The book then follows her development as a vampire in ancient times and, through this thread, we discover the source of vampirism in this mythology, which is similar to that employed by Anne Rice in the Vampire Chronicles, though the story is unique to this volume and the vampires quite different to that older series.

In the modern day we follow Rue as she becomes entwined with Grace. Though primarily a story of vampires, demons and Nephilim in this volume, we do get an interaction with the fae and, through them, another form of vampirism in the shape of the drinking of dreams. We discover that whilst the more advanced fae can control their feeding, more primitive fae, like sprites, will go too far, drinking a person’s dreams dry and leaving them an “aimless shell”.

The setting of modern Dublin is well realised and gives an evocative setting – we also travel into the dimension the fae inhabit, with realities layered on top of each other. The modern story thread is urban fantasy in style and works nicely, contrasting well with the ancient thread. The characters are nicely drawn, with Rue shown as a vampire trying to eschew feeding on people and struggling with the bagged diet (when we meet her in modern days she has awakened after a black out period that saw her pouring her blood stock literally down the drain). Vampire blood is addictive and will make the mortal drinker slavishly devoted to the vampire, turning is much more involved than simply blood exchange and I liked the idea that damage to the individual whilst mortal will impact the turn – for instance a wound may spend eternity opening, healing and opening again, and mental health damage might cause the turned vampire to lose their mind. We also get information on Nephilim blood, that will allow a vampire to daywalk temporarily, causes much quicker healing but is addictive for the vampire. Blood generally will heal the vampire though more slowly than angelic blood, and the vampire can be damaged quite badly (a substantial fall is going to break bones, for instance), but the vampire cannot heal during daylight hours no matter the amount of blood they imbibe. So, despite her great age, Rue can be vulnerable to danger.

I enjoyed this – it was a well envisioned story, the past and present mapping well together not only in tone and plot reveal but in story impact, but mostly because Rue was a great character, not perfect, she had issues but was rounded well and came across all the better for that. 7.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

House of Darkness – review

Director: Neil LaBute

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

This was watched on the big screen at Grimmfest 2022, released fairly close to the Invitation on its theatre release. I have seen similes drawn as they both have a Dracula connection but they are very different beasts. The other is a Dracula film (even if his name is never uttered in film). For me this broadcasts its vampire status by naming the first female character we meet as Mina (Kate Bosworth), actually named Murray in the credits but not mentioned in film, and naming the second Lucy (Gia Crovatin, Van Helsing) but it isn't actually a Dracula film. There is also the ubiquitous castle (named a castle in film, though also referred to as a manor house, it is an impressively sized building) that has that vampire/castle/gothic tie but I don’t think it was made as much a part of the film generally as it might have been – it is there, it looks impressive and a door refuses to open once (and then opens on its own), but the building isn’t made a character.

arriving

And character is what this is all about. It starts with a cave and… something… in the foreground... not quite clear... but quickly we are at the estate gates opening as a car comes in and in the car are Mina and Hap (Justin Long). We don’t actually learn their names until later in the film. Hap is short for Hapgood and, when this comes out later, Mina mentions having known Hapgoods before. Hapgood is a minor name used in Stoker’s novel. It becomes readily apparent that the two have only just met and he has given her a lift home. There is a moment where there is a sound and she says it is the wind but it may have sounded like a distant howl. She invites him in.

Hap and Mina

The house lights go off just on entry and she says the electric is always cutting in and out and builds a fire in the sitting room. As he enters, he sees a person in a dark alcove addresses them but then there is no-one there, a mirror only. Perhaps Mina was correct when she suggested that out in the country people often see and hear things not there. Now, the thing with the film, is that although it throws in occasional off kilter moments it is driven by conversation mostly. Hap is drunk (his driving her home in that state is mentioned later) and somewhat clumsy. He borders on low-grade misogyny (he gets a text when Mina is making drinks and phones his friend, and the conversation is low grade locker room and overt sexual bravado that includes a request from his friend for photos of Mina – presumably compromising ones – though Hap rejects the request).

Gia Crovatin as Lucy

Mina is playing with him also, steering him to say things that are easily misconstrued as (or actually are) misogynistic dominance and Hap seems uncomfortable saying some of the things but does anyway. She also makes him admit that he can be less than truthful, when he is probably in the realm of lies through omission and little white lies. It does come out that he is separated from his wife. During a kiss Mina does bite his lip and draw blood. When Lucy appears, embarrassing Hap as he and Mina are becoming more intimate as she does so, the dynamics change – not in his favour, though he begins to assume that the sexual opportunity has become more adventurous.

falling asleep

There is a moment where Hap falls asleep and wakes beaten and tied to a chair in the cave. The cave, once he gets out of his bonds, has a burnt-out car and the thing we saw at the head of the film was a pile of men’s shoes but then he wakes in the sitting room. Which is reality? The cave relates to the lore and… Well, it takes us most of the film before we get to the lore but it is more backstory than anything and I won’t spoil it. The vampirism (broadcast through the film and its (often subtle) use of aspects of the megatext) is only overt at the very end of the film and I can’t spoil what happens with that.

Mina and Lucy

What I can say is that this is a film that will divide people, I’m sure. It is absolutely reliant on the skills of the actors who are all excellent. There are power shifts as the conversations take place but if they shift to Hap it is by consent in order to allow him to dig deeper into the hole that he doesn’t realise he is in. He is in turns embarrassed, defensive and assumptive – one gets the impression that he is ill at ease in the art of seduction. However this means the film is very talky – it could be easily reproduced on stage – and many will find this boring. I did not, I enjoyed the performances and I enjoyed the journey. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vampirus – review

Director: Ryan Ohm

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Whilst I think the film title poor, it feeds directly into this film’s pandemic setting – in Chicago during Covid-19 lockdown (shelter in place). However the pandemic, whilst referenced and (with its empty streets) the backdrop to the film, fails to be the primary narrative subject. The setting does, unfortunately, manage to obfuscate some of the acting – especially around primary actor Ashleymarie Jones, who spends a great deal of the film acting from behind a facemask.

In fact, this film is actually about relationships but we’ll get to that.

Eva masked

It starts with a guy (Chachi Sabate) out on the empty city streets. He realises that a couple in shelter are in coitus and peeps in on them. Withdrawing as his phone vibrates he tells the caller that he is just on a walk, denying the truth that he is having a cigarette to boot, and then sees a figure swathed in black, Eva (Ashleymarie Jones). She says that this is when he should run and he does, she follows, sometimes appearing ahead of him (this is the only example or hint of anything slightly supernatural/super-powered). Eventually she stops playing and catches him – as he fails to speak to an overworked 911 – and smashes his head repeatedly till he dies.

feeding

Hidden with the body, Eva speaks directly to us and this is a conceit within the film as she repeatedly breaches the fourth wall. She intimates that she only kills bad people – like the Peeping Tom. I remember thinking at the time that her bar was set really low, that whilst the guy was creepy, her rationalising his execution (essentially) did not actually measure to the severity of the crime. Compared to, say, A Girl Who Walks Home Alone at Night this feels more an excuse than an actual ethic code – we will return to this.

dragging the corpse

So she gets home and is dragging her victim, taped into black bags, into her basement flat when she is spotted by upstairs neighbour Ace (Michael Holding). He is trying to chat her up and get her to hang out when his flatmate Walter (Kyle Dodge) appears and spews down the stairs. This gives Eva her get out but she does agree to return upstairs after she has done a couple of things. Later, sat with Ace she tries to avoid food, has a vivid fantasy of killing him and then does acid with him. She wakes in bed next to him and quickly leaves but we hear him say that he knows what she is.

Michael Holding as Ace

Thereafter he manipulates (through a combination of charm, pleading and blackmail) his way into her life. For herself she does find him strangely charming. They go out (sunlight is a myth in this) and he encourages her to feed on a homeless woman (Paisley Blackburn), but Eva says the woman has done nothing warranting an attack. She does speak to her, and this is where the bar is low; it is when the homeless woman assumes she was going to give her money and calls her out for not doing so, that Eva attacks her. This is not a bad person, just a desperate one and Eva’s bar is shown to be not only low but a salve for her conscience. That said Ace reveals himself, repeatedly, to have no bar and no qualms regarding murder – in and of itself that should be a red flag.

self-feeding wound

Because, all in all, this is a film about a toxic relationship and manipulation – interesting as the manipulated party in this case should have all the power. I do have to return to Eva’s bar and say she does try to maintain it. She has a bandaged, but oft bleeding and ugly wound on her arm and that is where she has fed on herself when she has not found the right type of victim, which can be read as self-harm. She also has a journal, in which she records rules (think Zombieland rules of survival). The vampirism can be spread and Eva refers to it as a condition.

dreams of killing

The acting is varied in quality and, as I mentioned, the wearing of masks doesn’t necessarily help. There were moments that reminded me, tonally, of Habit but this was not consistent. The relationship between Eva and Ace, whilst odd in conception and power dynamic, felt pretty darn natural. Montage scenes padded the film (and one is fourth wall referenced as a part which we might want to avoid) and could have, for the most part, been discarded or curtailed without harming the structure. The film feels like a budget production, though that is not necessarily negative. This, I think, deserves 5 out of 10 (I did consider lower but it felt churlish and the exploration of toxicity is interesting).

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

30 Days of Night (2018) – review

Author: Steve Niles

Artist: Piotr Kowalski

First published: 2018 (TPB)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Bitter cold, endless night, and hungry shadows: the horror franchise that upended the classic vampire story is reimagined for the modern era!

As the sun sets over an isolated Alaskan township ­­not to rise again for a month ­­a new evil emerges from the shadows to terrorize the town... But after a series of strange events and horrific killings, the question becomes what lurks in the shadows? 30 Days of Night is reborn in an all ­new reimagining of the series designed to titillate the mind and horrify the senses!

In 2018, we've grown used to a world were (sic) every day brings more bad news, but in Steve Niles' new take on his own modern masterpiece, every day brings only more darkness...and more unseen monsters in the night.

The review: To note, whilst the Trade Paperback was 2018, the comics this was based on were published in 2017.

The original 30 Days of Night had a brilliant premise but was flawed in that, having originally been over 3 comics it was too short and jumped the survival aspect of the survival horror. With a story that started as 30 days’ worth of night fell on the town of Barrow, we saw the invasion of vampires but then jumped to the end of the time period and never saw what the survivors had to go through properly.

For some reason Steve Niles decided to revisit the original story and this time it was over 6 issues. The distinctive art of the original graphic was eschewed for a much cleaner, more traditional style – I suppose to distance itself from the original, but I believe the original artwork suited it better. However the issue with this is not in the artwork but with the story.

Again, we follow Sheriff Eben and his wife (and deputy) Stella. This time, however, it changes the story and Eben is killed before the vampire invasion starts properly. This was problematic for two reasons. Firstly, for the immediate storytelling – Eben and Stella are on the radio to each other, he is looking for domestic abuser Rich Conner and she is out with hunter Walt (who has found a camp in the snowy wastes). This means the timelines are concurrent. Walt shows her the camp and then goes to show her something else and they find Eben’s body – there is no sense of why this should occur in the concurrent timelines. Then Eben’s body vanishes from the morgue – so we as reader know he is a vampire now but… whilst he saves the town in the finale as in the original, he does not turn himself in an act of self-sacrifice that enables him to fight the vampires, rather he simply emerges and we have no sense of what he has been up to. Indeed we don't really know whether he has killed to feed over the 29 days as it is not properly addressed (saying it is getting harder to fight the urges doesn’t cut it, especially when Walt succumbed to them in a matter of hours).

From a storytelling perspective, removing Eben could have allowed a rich exploration of Stella as she leads the survivors and created perhaps a feminist reading of the story. But no… despite having three more issues than the original (and twice the pages in the TPB), this jumps from initial attack (and Marlowe being killed by person unknown – possibly Eben) straight to day 29. It doesn’t even do a lazy montage to cover the days. This was the opportunity to turn the original brilliant but flawed story into a classic but they botch it. 4 out of 10 reflects that what we have is mostly competent but there is an issue with the storytelling round Eben’s death, it compounds the flaw of the original release and misses a massive opportunity around Stella’s story.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mentions: Corrective Measures

This is a Tubi original film that was directed by Sean Patrick O'Reilly and came out in 2022, and shows a level of ambition for the free streaming platform, especially as it stars Bruce Willis and Michael Rooker (Creepshow: Drug Traffic). Sadly Willis has an aphasia diagnosis and is retiring from movies but, whilst not the greatest film or role, this is not as terrible a film as it might have been, especially compared to some other end of career films. In fact, whilst his role is fairly sedentary, there is a sense of calm dignity around his performance. Rooker, on the other hand, chews the scenery wonderfully.

Bruce Willis as the Lobe

The film is set in a future after “the pulse” an event that has caused radiation sickness for some and super-powered individuals to emerge. The majority of the film is set in a prison for super villains, who wear leg devices and are fed material that both dampen their powers. The guards are brutal, the overseer – played by Rooker – is amoral and Willis plays the Lobe, a super-villain with mind control and telekinetic powers. The Overseer is approaching retirement and wants the Lobe’s stash of ill-gotten billions and the Lobe might just have an escape plan.

Zed the Zompyre

So, the reason for the mention is an inmate known as Zed the Zompyre (Chris Devitt) – the included 'Y' is the spelling from the credits. With a bat-like look, Zed is a background character only. However in the prison riot at the end of the film we do see him munching on a severed leg (with the powers dampener still attached to it). As fleeting a visitation as it may have been, both his appearance and his name would always have been enough for the honourable mention.

on the news

I do also need to mention, however, an end credit sequence that has a segment from news programme PulseWatch (a show we see peppering the film). They report that Zed had escaped during the riot (he’s the one prisoner unaccounted for, they believe). They warn people that he is the carrier of a highly infectious “super virus” and a zompyre… It is a neat little ending for Zed and adds that extra layer of interest.

The imdb page is here.

VampyrZ on a Boat – review

Director: Mark Allen Michaels

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

This, apparently, is the third of a trilogy of films by Mark Allen Michaels, which contain much the same actors (and sometimes the same character names) but are otherwise unrelated – the Fiancé being a bigfoot film and Valentine DayZ a zombie movie. This, obviously by the title, is a vampire movie. But boy is it strange.

After a scene in a boat’s corridor with a couple of guys opening up a sealed room and clearly facing... something... the film cuts to a pier and beneath it sit Del (Curt Lambert) and Max (Dallas Valdez). Del is due to work security on a boat owned by his uncle (Robert Acres) and wants Max to come along. He refuses (citing one-eyed cat ownership as the reason) until Sara (Carrie Keagan) comes along and it is clear she is going also.

meeting with Captain Bob

Having met uncle (or should I say Captain) Bob – who carries an ancestor's peg-leg for good luck – the pair go to the security room and Bob shows him a room – cameras blacked out by the medical research company but heat signatures detectable. There is a person (Kendall Wells) sat, never moving, suggests Del but the strangest thing is the sound he appears to make – that of a bat. Max excuses himself and finds Sara – they very quickly get it on.

pustule

However, all is not well. We hear an insect buzzing and the boat’s chef is bitten by something, develops a pustule and quickly turns. There is a slaughter (off screen) in the mess. Max and Del speak to the medical researcher (Kate Rees Davies) who says the man in the room was at least 400 years old and she was studying him to get all sorts of scientific breakthroughs but also mentions that Sara was a reporter on scene when he was found and he seems to react to her – Max realises she is in danger but it’s too late, she has been bitten and turned.

head wound

So, it’s rescue Sara and the film goes weird. As well as Max being immune to being turned (the reason for which is kind of explained in a mid-credits sequence) he ends up with a huge metal tool in his head and, when it is freed (and his skull superglued) he ends up in a time-loop in which something will go wrong and he’ll get brained, fixed and the loop restarts. He is the only one remembering the loop, it seems. The vampires also seem to vanish at will and it wasn’t clear if they are phasing out, super-fast or unstuck in time.

Carrie Keagan as Sara

Onboard the ship, the skeletal crew seems fairly large and very oddball. There is even a permanent, smoking jacket wearing passenger. It all leads to some very oddball moments and this is the joy and frustration of the film. It isn’t overly clear what the rules are or why the time-loop happens, it all just is but the cast are personable and the set works (shooting took place on the S.S. Lane Victory, apparently). The acting isn’t bad but the scenario doesn’t overtly lead to audience buy in – does Max come across as a retired deep state fixer – maybe… who knows what one would look like, but the May to December romance is perhaps not as believable. If you want an oddball 71 minutes then this will work – just don’t expect any sense of what just happened or horror, particularly. For others this will frustrate. 4 out of 10 is about fair.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Crowdfunding: 1987: Blood of the Bat

Fan films can be really well done and the guys behind the proposed Batman (mashed up with the Punisher) fan film 1987: Blood of the Bat have already made one fan film in this universe called 1986, which you can watch on their Indiegogo page for BotB. That will give you a feel, of course, for what they can produce as will the proof of concept for the new film that is also on the page.

The premise for the new film is Batman Vs vampires and the proof of concept reveals a vampire Penguin.

As always, I post about crowdfunding for information purposes only and any backing is at your own risk. I am not associated with the film or campaign (though I have backed it). Check the campaign out here.

Honourable Mention: Las Antropófagas

This is a horror flick from Ecuador, which was directed by Jorge Bastidas and released in 2019. It is not a vampire film (as such) but it certainly is of genre interest. What we have is a story of ghouls.

Back in 1821, E.T.A. Hoffmann published a story entitled Vampirismus as part of his Die Serapions-Brüder. There is every chance that the story title was added by an editor as the story is essentially a reworking, into a contemporary Western setting, of The History of Sidi Nu’uman. Jump forward a century and Dudley Wright adds the same story into his reference book Vampires and Vampirism and Summers conflates ghouls and vampires in “The vampire, His Kith and Kin” (1928).

feasting (artily)

The story that went through the thread described above was one of a husband with his new bride. As their married life begins, he notices that his bride rarely eats and, he discovers, often sneaks from the marital bed. Following her one night he sees her in a graveyard, where she has revealed herself as a ghoul and with other ghouls is feasting upon a corpse. This, for the most part, is the story presented in this film.

Luis Torres

The bride (or fiancé at the start of the film) is Fátima (Sheyla Carrasco) who is marrying the older, widowed Néstor (Luis Torres). He moves her into his home and becomes concerned about her not eating and visiting her friend Eva (Gaby León) often late at night. One of the reasons for his concern is that there appears to be a killer loose in the village and, worse, the victims' corpses seem to be subsequently disinterred shortly after burial and partially eaten by animals. They eventually get confirmation that the bite marks are human.

Fátima leaves for the feast

Only the young Clemencia (Estéfania Quezada) seems to notice (or at least voice an understanding of) the pattern that they are always disinterred and no one thinks to stake out the cemetery. There is some commentary about the bodies being poisonous due to the embalming process – the embalming done by the local Doctor… who is Eva (so we can assume it is not actually done). Of course, it is Eva and Fátima but the film throws in a convoluted plot of Néstor thinking his wife is having an affair, first, with a young labourer and, subsequently, with Eva before he discovers the truth.

eating the dead

Now, what we don’t get is them transforming into ghouls (as in a creature transformation) and they may just be a pair that have become obsessed with eating dead human flesh. That said they seem pretty addicted to it (there is a high murder rate going on), they do not feast on the newly killed – they wait until after burial to eat them (though that seems to be completed in short order), and apparently do not eat normal food. Anyway, with this bringing the Sidi Nu’uman/Vampirismus story to the screen, and with the conflation of ghouls and vampires, this is definitely of genre interest – though I have to be honest and say that the acting throughout was not great and the pacing seemed off.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK