Vamp or Not? No One Gets Out Alive

I was put onto this 2021, Santiago Menghini directed film by Simon who suggested it was ripe for a ‘Vamp or Not?’ Based on an Adam Nevill novel, the story is transplanted from the West Midlands of England to continental USA and looks at illegal immigration within its running time.

The first scenes are archival footage from Mexico in 1963 and the archaeological expedition led by Professor Wells, we see varying scenes and an ornate stone box being lifted out of an underground chamber. Before the film moves to primary character Ambar (Cristina Rodlo) it sees another young woman (Joana Borja) sat in a house phoning home – she made a mistake and has been having bad dreams. Strange things happen, the TV picture seems to warp, footprints appear on the floor, the electric fails and in another room the box comes into view. Off screen we hear her scream, we see pinned butterflies and moths on display and one comes back to life. The lights come back on…

Kinsi and Ambar

Ambar arrives in the USA in the back of a truck, smuggled in by human traffickers. She, we learn later, spent time and money looking after her very ill mother and now, with the little she has left, she has travelled to the US to make a new life. The film quickly establishes her getting a job in a sweatshop and developing a friendship with Kinsi (Moronke Akinola). She has to get a new home when the hotel she is using asks for ID and finds her way to a house run by Red (Marc Menchaca, The Outsider). He has just inherited the house (it is the one from the prologue) and only women are being given rooms – though there is only one other resident currently. Because of her status (from south, as it is put, and paid cash) he asks for a month’s rent in advance.

Cristina Rodlo as Ambar

Ambar is after a fake ID and Kinsi knows a guy. Unfortunately, the Texas ID she wants has suddenly jumped to $3000 – though other State IDs could be got for $1000. We eventually discover that the reason she wants a Texas ID is because she had contacted a distant family member, Beto (David Barrera), who had said he couldn’t help with a job interview because she wasn’t a US citizen and so she lied and said that she had been born in Texas. Ambar is suffering from vivid bad dreams (often involving her dying mother and featuring the box) and thinks she sees/hears people in the house. She sees a man, Becker (David Figlioli, Angel) and confronts Red about his presence but Red explains Becker is his brother and lives in the private rooms with him.

Marc Menchaca as Red

Eventually Ambar wins the award for the most naïve character when Kinsi offers to loan her the difference for the ID, hands over all her cash and Kinsi absconds, quitting her job. Ambar gets fired and has no money and the house is oppressive… So, what we know – that is pertinent to the ‘Vamp or Not?’ – is that Red and Becker are Wells’ children. They came home when Becker’s treatments had become too expensive (its not clear what the treatments were for). The box has cured Becker and he is as obsessed with it as his father was – Red is complicit out of love but there is also an apparent tension with Becker, who has told him he only needs ‘a few more hits’ the language being deliberately that of addiction, and Red trying to help Ambar despite that being against his brother’s design. The ghosts we see in the house are the victims of the box – much like the ghosts in Oculus are victims of the mirror.

emerging from the box

The box would seem to be a conduit – with a front face removed we see two views inside it, one where it stretches off forever and allows a creature to appear passing through the box to our place, and one where it is a normal box with the skeleton of an infant in it (interestingly, when we see this there is a butterfly at the rib cage, remembering that some vampire myth has the butterfly as the vampire’s soul). The box (or the creature probably more accurately) has been invading dreams and when its victim is left (on a stone altar) it comes out and the victim sees the loved one they have often been dreaming of – there is a moment of consent needed, consent to the loved one (and staying with them) consents to the attack. The creature itself looks absolutely fabulous and I wish we saw more of it.

the creature

The vampiric aspect comes in with the creature seemingly taking the head of the victim (there is a set of teeth under the fleshy hood it lifts the victim into) and through this, apparently, they steal their energy and soul, if the ghosts are anything to go by. It can then use that energy to renew life (the butterfly at the head of the film) or heal its human ‘priest’ – we see a snapped leg move back to shape and heal. I say priest as there seems to be a ritual aspect to this, the victims in robes with a green dust coating their flesh and their face painted with streaks of blood. There is a more direct association of butterflies, with them gathering near the box, and one wonders whether the filmmakers wanted to suggest a definitive connection to the soul? I think the vampire/butterfly connection is coincidental to this motif but this entity appears to be vampiric.

The imdb page is here.

Classic Literature: After 90 Years

Milovan Glišić’s 1880 vampire story Posle Devedeset Godina, or After 90 Years, had been on my radar after seeing the film based on it, Leptirica. However the story had – as far as I knew – never been translated into English.

James Lyon, as well as writing the vampire novel Kiss of the Butterfly, was in a unique position being a vampire fan and author, living in Serbia (indeed he is an expert in Balkan history), who has actually visited the water mill central to the legend the story is based on… and I might have suggested that the story desperately needed translation.

You might ask why? The vampire originates, through the vampire panics, in Serbia – Arnold Paole originated from Ottoman controlled Serbia and the word vampire reached Western Europe, and more specifically entered into English, through descriptions of his case. The insights that a folk derived piece of literature can offer the student of the vampire (both in folklore and the media vampire) are important and, in many ways, quite unique.

This story does not feature Paole but the folktale vampire Sava Savanović and the lore that the story uses is lifted from Slavic folk tradition. The aforementioned film follows the story fairly accurately – though the characters are somewhat different in motivation – until the film grafted on a large coda not present in the story. But with the release of the translated book you can discover just how close for yourself.

I’m not going to mention lore particularly in this article as I cover that in the foreword for the translation, which I wrote.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vampire Tales – volume 1 – review

Author: Various

Artist: Various

First Published: 2010 (this format)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Morbius the living vampire and Satana the Devil’s daughter!

The reluctant revenant and the sinister succubus – two of Marvel’s most preternatural protagonists – go up against demons, cults and mortals even more monstrous than themselves! Featuring black-and-white horror tales from the 1970s horror boom and some of the genre’s greatest talents, collected for the first time! Plus: adaptations of classic terror tales from literature!

The review: Vampire Tales first appeared in 1973 and was more a zine than a comic book, with articles as well as short comic tales – some standalone and some revisited each issue. This small, digest sized volume contains a full reprint of issues 1-3.

The articles are a little bit cheesy but they are often amusing. There is a split (running over 5 issues) look at Summer’s The Vampire; his Kith and Kin and I was amused by the article listing some of the worst vampire films ever (though some doozies had yet to be filmed in 1973, obviously, and so are not listed).

However, like me, you are probably more interested in the comic strips. As I suggested, some (like Marvel mainstay Morbius) have an on-running story – in the case of Morbius a battle with the Demon-Fire cult. Morbius himself is an interesting character, his vampirism was created by science (as he tried to cure himself of a blood disease, in Spider-man) and he is conflicted, haunted by the deeds his hunger forces upon him.

The other on-running story is that of Satana. More energy vampire or succubus than blood-sucking vampire I was interested to note that she also ate the souls of her victims – that took the form of butterflies or moths.

The first issue has Marvel’s retelling of Polidori’s the Vampyre: a Tale and a personal favourite story was an adaptation of August Derleth’s Bat’s Belfry. There were one or two stories that went off track into demon or werewolf territory, which seemed a shame as I am sure there was plenty of vampire material available.

There is no mistaking the fact that the artwork is 1970s and is lovely for it and the reprint is just that, no colourisation has been entered into. All in all a great trip back into comic history. 8 out of 10.

Kiss of the Butterfly – review

Author: James Lyon

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

The blurb: "The smell of blood is in the air, I sense it even now. People thirst for it; the entire country is mad with desire for it. And now we are going to war with our brothers because they look like us, and because we can smell our blood coursing through their veins. It is madness. I know not what will come of it. I had hoped to celebrate one more St. George’s Day together with you, but it is not to be. I fear we shall not see each other again in this life. For now I grow ever colder, the sun can no longer warm me…”

A mysterious letter starts a university student on a journey into the war-torn lands of rapidly disintegrating Yugoslavia. Naively trusting his enigmatic professor, the student unwittingly descends into a dystopian crucible of decay, destruction, passion, death, romance, lust, immorality, genocide, and forbidden knowledge promising immortality. As the journey grows ever more perilous, he realizes he must confront an ancient evil that has been once again loosed upon the earth: from medieval Bosnia to enlightenment-era Vienna, from the bright beaches of modern-day Southern California to the exotically dark cityscapes of Budapest and Belgrade, and to the horrors of Bosnia.

“Kiss of the Butterfly” is based on true historical events. In the year of his death, 1476, the Prince of Wallachia -- Vlad III (Dracula) -- committed atrocities under the cloak of medieval Bosnia’s forested mountains, culminating in a bloody massacre in the mining town of Srebrenica. A little over 500 years later, in July 1995, history repeated itself when troops commanded by General Ratko Mladic entered Srebrenica and slaughtered nearly 8,000 people, making it the worst massacre Europe had seen since the Second World War. For most people, the two events seemed unconnected…

Vampires have formed an integral part of Balkan folklore for over a thousand years. "Kiss" represents a radical departure from popular vampire legend, based as it is on genuine Balkan folklore from as far back as the 14th century, not on pop culture or fantasy. "Kiss of the Butterfly" offers up the real, horrible creatures that existed long before Dracula and places them within a modern spectrum.

Meticulously researched, “Kiss of the Butterfly” weaves together intricate threads from the 15th, 18th and 20th centuries to create a rich phantasmagorical tapestry of allegory and reality. It is about divided loyalties, friendship and betrayal, virtue and innocence lost, obsession and devotion, desire and denial, the thirst for life and hunger for death, rebirth and salvation. “Kiss” blends history and the terrors of the Balkans as it explores dark corners of the soul.

The review: Well it is a good, long blurb that probably cuts down the length of the review somewhat… Actually, that is rather unlikely because, as regular readers know, I love to delve into the lore contained within the novels and films I review and this is just teeming with lore.

To give a very quick overview, the novel is set during the Bosnian War as student Steven Roberts is encouraged to travel to the former Yugoslavia by his teacher Marko Slatina. He is to study the ethnography of the region – the folklore – but the path he has been set on keeps returning him to the myth of vampires and the Order of the Dragon. Of course we have been to this setting before in the 1993 film Pun Mesec Nad Beogradom, or Full Moon over Belgrade, so the concept of the war and vampires and draft dodgers, will be familiar to any who have had the opportunity to see the film.

However Lyon’s book goes much deeper into Balkan myths and, in many ways, is a book of two distinct parts. For the first half of the book (literary interludes aside) we travel with Steven as he explores the myths of the region, comes to terms with being in a nation at war and also tries to come to terms with his own personal demons (the loss of his faith, in organised religion at least, and the premature death of his young wife). This half of the book feels academic and possibly had a, at least distant, kinship with The Historian (though I found this much better researched and written).

The second half of the book, as Steven discovers that the things he has researched are real, organised and not enamoured with prying eyes, sees the writing style shift up a gear as the action springs to life and supernatural events unfurl around the main characters. However the vampire is allegorical as well as real and this is seen clearly early in the novel when Steven hears a Serb policeman state “The Moslems have all become Turks, they have become vampires who want to suck our Christian blood”.

Despite the use of allegory within the novel, ultimately we are dealing with an actual phenomena and one that draws its lore from traditional Balkan vampire mythology.It needs to be noted that, because of the involvement of the Order of the Dragon, we get an appearance within the text of Vlad Ţepeş but actual vampire cases, such as that of Peter Plogojowitz, are also mentioned. The vampires are shape-shifters – often taking the form of butterflies but also able to become werewolves (wolf-man type) or anything else they should want to become. We have seen several times the idea that a vampire’s soul takes the form of a butterfly. Here we hear that in Balkan mythology all souls take the form of butterflies.

In their natural state the vampires are “simply large inflated bags of skin, and as they feed they swell up. If they’ve gone without feeding for long periods of time, then they appear emaciated. So the typical well-fed vampire will appear bloated or inflated.” The vampire’s powers are connected with their shroud – hence the need to keep it safe. We hear they must go to their grave on Good Friday and that each time a stake (that must be hawthorne) kills a vampire it becomes empowered, a multiple kill stake being very powerful indeed.

The vampire is disorientated and vulnerable for the first 100 days after reanimation but after that gathers its wits and becomes much more dangerous. They can gather into groups of 12 – 12 being a quorum. As a quorum they are very powerful, much more than the sum of their parts, however, put more than 12 vampires into a room together and it will kill them (as they turn into gloop). It is the evil influence of a group of vampires that had caused the Bosnian war. We also hear of vampirovic or kresnik – what we more commonly refer to as dhampir – the child of a vampire and a mortal, who are immortal hunters of vampires. Interestingly, if the vampirovic has a child then they lose their immortality.

In many respects I have only scratched the surface of the lore Lyon invokes and, for the lore alone, I would recommend this book. But more than that, I really did enjoy it, very much. These were a breed of vampires steeped in evil and saturated in traditional lore; dangerous, deadly, obsessive and… well let us just say that Lyon’s tale has clearly only just begun. 8 out of 10.

Leptirica – review

Director: Djordje Kadijevic

Release date: 1973

Contains spoilers

Leptirica (the she-butterfly) is another one of the great sins of vampire cinema, in that it is begging for a fully restored DVD release – possibly as a double set with Kadijevic’s 1990 reworking of Viy, Sveto Mesto.

This film is fascinating because of the very pure Slavic lore the film taps into. It is based on the story “Posle Devedeset Godina” or “90 Years Later” by Milovan Glišić. The story features a folkloric vampire who goes by the name Sava Savanović. The film is so rich in lore that I will, with genuine glee, spoil the story completely.

It begins with a man, Zivan (Slobodan Perovic) leading his horse to a mill. He calls for the miller, Vule (Toma Kuruzovic), and when he gets no response he carries his grain in. Vule has been napping, lulled to sleep by the sound of the mill. There are the uncanny cries of an owl, which Vule shoos to, and Zivan asks whether the miller sleeps there at night, he does, and whether he is afraid. Outside the mill we see Radojka (Mirjana Nikolic) on a hillside, identified by Vule as Zivan’s daughter and, as he puts it, as pretty as a butterfly.

He enters the mill again and, after a while, the eerie owl calls begin again. He exclaims ‘drop dead’ before falling asleep. We see the mill stop. A pair of eyes appear, monstrous, looking in at Vule through the boards of the wall and then we see a dark, hirsute and clawed hand touch the flour – poetically contrasting the white and black. A hooded creature is seen, its teeth sharp are monstrous and it bites at Vule’s neck. When it leaves the mill restarts but Vule is dead.

He is found the next day by one of the villagers and we discover that he is the third or fourth miller killed in the last year. Vampires are mentioned as is the word vukodlak – a particular Slavic name for a vampire, indeed Sava Savanović himself is mentioned; but all of these are dismissed as silly folklore. Meanwhile a young man, Strahinja (Petar Bozovic), has gone to Radojka. It is clear that they are in love but she says that Zivan has invited suitors for her hand. When Zevan appears she tells Strahinja to run and is subsequently told off by Zevan for being where she is.

Strahinja asks Zevan for Radojka’s hand in marriage but is given short shrift as he is poor. He decides he will leave the area as he cannot stand watching her marry another. However the men of the village see him and suggest he becomes the new miller, something he agrees to. Again, on his first night in the mill, the mill stops and again the eyes look into the mill. Strahinja falls, pulling bags of flour with him, and somehow – through luck and clumsiness, it seems – manages to survive the night, though at first the men fear the white apparition (he is covered in flour) they see.

The men decide to find the grave of Sava Savanović. They question an old woman, Mirjanicka, and eventually get an idea of where the alleged vampire’s grave should be. The search seems futile until one of the men decides to get hold of Zivan’s stallion. We have come across using a horse to find the grave of a vampire before and at this point I would like to start referencing the book The Vampire: A Casebook edited by Alan Dundes – for the sake of this review I have used the edition on Google Books. In the chapter “In Defence of Vampires” by John V A Fine Jr we find a quote by Vuk Karadžić, “they take a black stallion without any spots or marks to the graveyard and lead it among the graves where it is suspected there are vukodlaks, for they say that such a stallion does not dare to step over a vukodlak.”.

Whilst they are getting the stallion we see Radojka in the woods, she listens to the sound of the owls and it seems that there is almost a sexual tension in the air. Meanwhile the men have found the grave and start to dig until they find a coffin and they hammer a stake through the unopened lid as the priest prays. This, again, has a folkloric root but, of course, one we are more familiar with. However more interesting is the appearance of a butterfly from the coffin (through the hole in the lid). The men try to catch it but fail. Returning to The Vampire: A Casebook and South Slavic Countermeasures against Vampires by Friedrich S Krauss we read, “the others present watch for the appearance of a moth (or butterfly) flying away from the grave. If one does fly out of the grave, everyone runs after it in order to capture it. If it is caught, it is thrown onto a bonfire so that it will die. Only then is the vampire completely destroyed. If the butterfly escapes, however, then, alas, woe to the village…”

The men obviously haven’t read Krauss and are somewhat happier in disposition then they should be. They are quite taken with Strahinja and suggest that he should simply take Radojka as his wife – something the priest concurs with. Someone also, interestingly, suggests that Zivan is not her father but an uncle, maybe. They go get her and an angry Zivan watches from a distance. He catches the butterfly and vows vengeance. Tradition states that Radojka must stay in a house guarded by a woman for one night but Strahinja tells her that he will go to her.

He sneaks into the house and is undressing her when he discovers that she has a gaping wound in her abdomen – perhaps as though a stake had pierced her stomach. She starts to transform before him, becoming fanged and then hirsute. You should remember that there is little difference, traditionally, between the werewolf and the vampire and thus her appearance is not so unusual.

She leaps on his back, but she is not attacking him – not at this point. She grabs his mouth and, if we look forward in time to Kadijevic’s Sveto Mesto, the actions are identical to the hag coming to Toma. She is hag-riding him and she directs him straight to the grave. When she lets go she continues to push him forwards, towards the grave. Strahinja starts to pull at the stake that still protrudes from the coffin and Radojka reacts as though the stake is being pulled from her. He retrieves the stake and she falls, all we see is her white nightdress and the coffin opens. In a moment of duality the vukodlak Radojka emerges from the coffin, in black, she turns and runs at Strahinja who lifts the stake before him.

The film ends in the morning with Strahinja led motionless in the meadow and the butterfly sat upon his temple. So the film has ended, but what a film. It packs in such a lot of traditional Slavic lore that for the dedicated fan of the genre it is a must see film. I liked the use of the butterfly, which was much more dignified than the use of moths in the Blood Beast Terror. We should remember that Stoker himself mentioned a vampiric affinity with moths in Dracula when he suggested “he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf”. In this however, I think the butterfly was representative of the vampire’s soul or spirit.

The film is creepy and rather atmospheric, the mill being a great location. This fits in with tradition. Returning to the Vuk Karadžić quote, he tells us that, “in times of hunger vampires often gather near mills and around granaries.” It seems a little dreamlike in places though I suspect that the film showed its hand too early with the attack on Vule being so explicit – the argument that it wasn’t something supernatural, that the men have, seems half-hearted at best at that point, especially as they take little convincing to use traditional detection methods thereafter.

That aside an important film begging for a full re-mastered international release. 7.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.