Sharkula – review

Director: Mark Polonia

Release Date: 2022

Contains spoilers

One half of the Polonia brothers, you have to give Mark Polonia props for cranking out low budget film after low budget film since the 80s. Not that those I’ve seen are very good but grit, determination and perseverance are all there.

As you’ll guess, with this one we’ve strayed into the realm of a vampire shark. We’re also in a particularly poorly shot realm that had no effects budget – all things that will be discussed later.

blood spurt

The film starts with a cgi shark and then we see Dracula (Jeff Kirkendall, Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter, The Temptress, 3 to Murder & Bloodlust) being chased by an angry mob. He is cornered on a cliff. One of the villagers stabs him and we get an awful cgi spurt of blood… now post-production blood can look bad at the best of time, but this looked awfully cartoonish. Dracula falls from the cliff and into the maw of said shark.

fire dancer

We get alliance talk, a suggestion that a dark power wanted Dracula to survive – and later in the film we hear that Dracula turned the shark but became the servant of the shark (don’t get how that happens but… let’s just go with it). We get some scenes (that are interspersed throughout) of a fire dancer. Her reason for being there? Possibly supplicant to the shark but the quality of the filming compared to the main filming (along with them being night shots rather than the ‘day for night’ the film relies on) suggests it might be stock footage the filmmakers thought cool. The credits had a surf music theme with the repeated lyric ‘Sharkula’ that was fun.

Arthur and John

In the modern day and we see John (James Kelly) and Arthur (Tim Hatch, also 3 to Murder, The Temptress and Shadow Track: Vampire Hunter) walking into Arkham, a small seaside town. They have been offered jobs with room and board by Vladimir Constantine (aka Dracula), which they will use to pay for college (clearly mature students). Now let’s talk photography. Just before this we got an establishing shot of a bustling port town, the photography crisp, the camera movement smooth and, I assume, stock footage. The principal camera work is jerky, the resolution poor and plagued with motion blur. It’s awful.

Kyle Rappaport as Renfield

So, they get to the motel (the Bucket o' Chum) and meet Renfield (Kyle Rappaport). They discover they have to share a room and the town, by order of Constantine, has an 8PM curfew. Their jobs are shifting crates shipped in during curfew. Obviously, things start to go wrong – John, especially, is overly curious. He has also spotted Mina (Jamie Morgan) who works in the historical society and is the object of Renfield’s perverted lust and Dracula’s twisted love. We get women chained in the cellar (one sacrificed to the shark and one turned), with Dracula’s coffin down there. Dracula seems less than pleased with the power structure with the shark.

Dracula and the shark

I mentioned the effects, especially the cgi. The practical zombie/revenant masks for the two servants of Dracula looked pretty good, all things considered. We get a tremendously crap bat (why Dracula didn’t transform on the cliff, at the head of the film, is probably overthinking it) and the shark is mostly a drawn (it appears) bat winged monstrosity and also a pair of glowing red eyes in the water (right next to each other rather than the laterally positioned eyes a shark would more likely have) and a (probably partial) rubber head for attack scenes.

Jamie Morgan as Mina

The acting is generally over the top, especially from Kirkendall and Rappaport, and I suspect they had a real laugh with their performances. However nothing will set the world alight performance wise and some is less than great (though the dialogue is somewhat stilted to stagy also). This was never going to be a great film – it’s a no-budget vampire shark movie – but that apparent absolute lack of budget and the extremely poor photography and cinematography conspire to take this out of “so bad it's good” to “just plain bad”. 2 out of 10 is probably bolstered by how fun the “Sharkula” theme song was.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable mention: Night Thirst

This was a 2002 horror portmanteau film directed by Jon McBride, John Polonia and Mark Polonia. I spotted it on Amazon video and, when I noticed the involvement of the Polonia brothers my heart fell. Whilst I haven’t seen much of their work we know them at TMtV for the utterly awful How to Slay a Vampire and that was more than enough.

However, I watch the films so you don’t have to and this purported to feature a vampire. As things go that happens to be in the wraparound section and is thus a bit of a fleeting visitation. The actual segments feature various horror tropes but they aren’t particularly wonderful – if you intend to watch this for the vampire in the wraparound you have been warned.

Jeff Dylan Graham as Jerome

Anyway, for the wraparound, we have already seen a drifter called Van Roth (Jon McBride) walking down the road. We then find ourselves with Jerome (Jeff Dylan Graham, Cremains, Blood legend & Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires) playing a really old video game. He stops, goes to close the garage and something is moving out there. Anyway, he doesn’t find whatever it is and has a bit of a fight with a garbage bag, as you do.

fangs

Van Roth knocks on his door and asks to use the phone as his truck has broken down. The rescue will be a while so he asks if he can hang, mentions the “night thirst” and the stories he then tells are the segments. By the end he reveals he has the night thirst as he is a vampire and Jerome isn’t shocked – he’d already spotted the lack of a shadow… and he has his own secret anyway. And that’s it. A Fleeting visitation of a vampire (unaffected by sunlight, as we see him walking in the day, but casting no reflection).

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Four Nights in Fear Forest – review

Director: Mark Polonia

Release date: 2024*

Contains spoilers

*2024 according to IMDb, however the Blu-ray came out in 2025 and the copyright on the film says 2025

I’ve generally not held the work of the Polonia brothers in high regard, as pieces of cinema, they are definitely at the low-budget end of the spectrum. However, they have a place and a fandom and, I have to admit, I participated in the crowdsourcing of this film. The Blu-ray perk recently arrived and from there comes my review. It does need noting that there isn’t actually a vampire in this – rather an animatronic of Dracula (Jeff Kirkendall, Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter, The Temptress, 3 to Murder, Bloodlust & Sharkula).

animatronics

Animatronics is a good place to start as the film title clearly apes Five Nights at Feddy’s, and the plot apes the recent rash of AI gone bad/possessed animatronic slashers. What causes the four monster animatronics to go bad isn’t definitively explored. They are at a Haunt called Fear Forest (we get a lot of documentary guest comments on the place, too many perhaps) and there is a flashback scene to 1995 where there were a group of kids killed and that is put down to satanists but, whether they managed to have the animatronics possessed is debatable. They are noted for random (dangerous) movements beyond that, mention is made of the genius builder of them (and so it could be down to him) and we also get a lightning strike in the contemporary timeline that seems to bring them to life.

prisoners

The contemporary timeline sees Fear Forest shutting down and park owner Malachi Bones (also Jeff Kirkendall) is working with prisoner rehabilitation to remove the exhibits. To that end Emma Brown (Yolie Canales, also Sharkula) has brought a group of prisoners to the theme park and their four days at the park will end or knock time off their sentences. They are Serenity (Greta Volkova, Tales of Dracula), Luca (Tim Hatch, Terror of the Master, also 3 to Murder, Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter, The Temptress & Sharkula), Skylar (Jamie Morgan, also Sharkula) and Caleb (Michael Korotitsch, also The Temptress & Sharkula). Because of their prisoner status, and because Skylar plans on running, the threat of the killer animatronics does not come immediately to light.

Dracula

I’ve mentioned that Kirkendall also plays the Dracula animatronic but the others are also played by one or more of the central cast. So, Greta Volkova and Michael Korotitsch both play the Mummy, Jamie Morgan plays the Bride and Tim Hatch plays the wolfman. The animatronics look rubbish (replete with cheap Halloween masks) but, other than comments on the exquisite craftmanship, that doesn’t matter – you can imagine them in a cheap end Haunt. The film is pretty much a slasher and it is only the fact that it is styled after a vampire that gets it onto the TMtV radar.

Jeff Kirkendall as Malachi Bones

Now I mentioned the Polonia brothers’ films at the head of the review and, startlingly, this turned out to be one of the better ones that I've seen. It doesn’t make it good cinema but it flowed that bit better. There are issues that could have been avoided; Michael Korotitsch gave an admirable performance despite the awful fake facial hair, as a for instance. Talking about performances, Jeff Kirkendall gave a weird but deliberately understated performance as the odd Malachi Bones (and the reason he looks the same age as a video from 30-years before is addressed), which was perfectly suited to him and one of the best I've seen from him. There is a place for low budget filmmaking such as this, there is a market for it. If you are part of that market I suspect you’ll get a kick out of this. 3 out of 10 reflects a realistic score but the film remains ideal for that z-grade malarkey.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

How to slay a vampire – review

Directed by: John & Mark Polonia

Release Date: 1995

Contains spoilers

Oh dear, oh dear. Some people should just not be allowed to get near a camera… ever.

The basic story of this turkey is that two brothers (John and Mark Polonia), sons of a drunken red-neck mother, discover a vampire (Count Francis) wrapped in a rug in the cellar. They try to kill said vampire by stake, hanging, cutting the heart out, decapitation, garlic, the cross and holy water. Nothing works.

The vampire awakens, farts (I’m not kidding) and escapes, and so they try to hunt him down. With a series of some of the worst jokes committed to celluloid, this film has to be one of the worst scripted films I have ever come across. Not even the referential moments highlighting that this is a film within the film, including the hilariously unfunny mike-boom gag, raise a titter and someone should tell these people that making a joke of child abuse isn’t funny.

The acing is entirely sub-rate, the sound awful and the sound effects worse. The sfx are non-existent.

Eventually, having staked a teddy bear rather than their quarry (and remember they are hunting this thing with stakes when that didn’t work earlier), they kill the vampire by opening a garage door and catching him in sunlight (that he was walking in, in previous scenes) and then flush the ashes down the toilet.

Normally I’d offer a little more plot detail, but there is none. Normally I would try and find some glimmer of goodness in a film, but there isn’t one. Normally I would try and explain some of the more awful moments, but I really cannot be bothered… Not that I want to short change readers of this blog, you understand, but because this really is one of the most singularly worst excuses for a movie I’ve ever seen and it seems only fair that I put no more effort into the review than they did into the movie (and I think I’ve already exceeded that). There is nothing in this to recommend it, I can’t even suggest that you watch it to see how bad it is. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Stay Out – review

Director: Jeff Carroll

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

This is a low budget film that, in its just under 70-minute running time, does plenty wrong and yet has something that might have been built upon. It involves the Polonia Brothers – as a production company and one of them is involved within the filmmaking also. They are known, of course, for their zero budget films and I can say, at least, that this is better than their dreadful How to Slay a Vampire.

opening fangs

Before I go into the film proper, I have to point out that this seems to want to riff on Jordan Peele’s marvellous Get Out – the titles are similar, the poster art is reminiscent of the earlier film and there is a race aspect, along with a look at interracial relationships. This film opens with some (I assume stock) footage of Miami and that then moves into some more nightmarish imagery that includes fangs. If the rest of the film had carried the tone of the opening, then this would have been a better effort.

Caitlin and Tyshawn

After the credits we are in a car driven by Tyshawn (Fransley Hyppolite) – a note on the actors, I hope I have attributed them to their roles correctly, neither the IMDb page nor the closing credits connect them to character and I had to google and hope to find corresponding pictures to identify most of them. In the front is his girlfriend Caitlin (Celine Alva) and Paul (Dante' DiGiacomo) is in the back with girlfriend Nikayla (Bianca Glemaud). They are off to spend Spring Break in Miami. To the viewer it becomes quickly obvious that the opening Miami shots were indeed stock footage… but stock footage with a much crisper and superior standard of photography.

Paul and Nikayla

They lose GPS and start to discuss racism – assuming the area they are in is white supremacist. Here I had one of the biggest problems with the film. Not the messaging around racism but the dialogue, firstly for being badly written – and delivered, though to be fair it might have been the quality that impacted that, given it didn’t feel natural at all. Secondly this was incredibly on the nose – Get Out could conceivably be accused of being on the nose also but it was first and foremost a brilliant deconstruction, fantastically acted, inventive and incredibly well written. This, however, just throws the concepts it wishes to discuss at you without nuance – the message is good, the conveyance of the message clumsy.

Jenna

I need to mention that the scenes in car seemed odd because there was no view through the windows. Be that as it may, they get a flat tire. They fix it (no sign of a jack in any scene with a wheel, by the way) and then they get another flat. There’s no cell service and so they walk to a motel (that looks more like a community hall with bar). In the hall are the two oddly acting custodians Jenna and Bradley (who Tyshawn describes as being robot people) and, having been told there will be no rescue until the next day, they get the beers out and aim to make the best of it. 

The gang

One by one they vanish and the first to go is Paul, who looks for a toilet and doesn’t come back. Nikayla goes looking for him and we get a convoluted journey through locations that would appear to be unconnected with the building the primary location is in and utterly failing to correspond with the outer establishing shot. Along corridors she goes, then in a lift (up, I’d hazard) and then immediately down stairs, outside amongst abandoned looking vehicles and then through corridors again. It feels wrong. Anyway, she finds him unconscious, tied and being bled into blood bags…

female vampire

As for the vampires… At the end of the film we get a highly suspiciously delivered exposition (one of the friends wakes and the male vampire decides to tell her everything for no good reason) that reveals they are Nosferatians from a planet with a black sun – so they cannot go out in our sun. They find blood vastly improved due to human sun exposure, however. They have also worked out how to posses bodies, to allow them to walk in sunlight (another Get Out parallel with a mind taking over a body). They seem to have also created zombies that appear at the finale.

everyone caught by the vampire

So, too on the nose with its messaging, a rather blunt instrument, and really poor use of locations that seemed to be mashed together without a care as to whether it felt right. There are day for night shots that feel more like day and confuse the timeframe the film purports to be in. The dialogue feels unnatural (for Bradley and Jenna this is purposeful but it is the dialogue for the protagonists that really lets this down). Yet, despite it all it didn’t outstay its welcome and I wanted to like it. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK