Martin – review

Authors: George A Romero & Susanna Sparrow

Release date: 1978

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Martin was young and good-looking, a shy boy, perhaps even a little backward. But Martin had a secret, one he couldn’t share.

His uncle knew the family had brought the poison with them from the Old Country. He was waiting for the day he could destroy Martin and Martin’s evil.

Others knew – a woman Martin had met on a train, a woman he’d followed from a supermarket. But they were dead…

A chilling story of an ancient evil unleashed on a modern city.

The review: The film Martin is rightly viewed as a classic. It was first screened in 1976, in festivals, but this novelisation came out in 1978 just before the film's general release. The book only carries Romero’s name on the cover but Susanna Sparrow is recognised as the co-author.

This really is one for those who love the film. There are some differences – for instance Martin throws the train victim out of the moving train rather than setting an elaborate suicide tableau. The almost shy intimation of Martin raping his victims is drawn brutally, almost changing the character’s perceived persona by forcing the reader to face his depravity head-on, and the consensual sex later in the story is also more graphically drawn. As well as Martin’s communication with the talk radio we get an inner monologue, building the character that little bit more (though John Amplas’ magnificent performance really communicated by look and body language all we needed to know in the film).

We also get some moments of believed lore that are not explored in the film such as, beyond not casting a reflection, the mirror was supposed to sap the vampire’s strength and the use of painted eggs, the rotten insides sucked out and spat at the vampire as an apotropaic.

The health warning is the slim volume is hard to find and, unless lucky, comes with a hefty price tag - you can, however, digitally loan it from The Archive. For fans of the film 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Martin (Second Sight Films 2023 release) – review

Martin is, of course, George Romero’s foray into the vampire genre, which was released in 1976 (in festivals). The film has been reviewed here, and the score remains the same, and so this review is for this Second Sight UK release and not the actual film. Note that there are both Blu-Ray and HD releases, as well as a limited release with slipcase, soundtrack, art cards and book. I am concentrating on the general release.

The film itself looks as great as I think it will. The transfer is beautiful but the grain within the film stock remains (and rightly so). It is a new 4k restoration, which was supervised by the film’s original DP Michael Gornick. As to the version, this is the standard US/UK version of Martin. It does not contain the fabled 3-hour cut (though it is mentioned several times in the extras) nor does it contain the Italian Wampyr cut – which I have on my older DVD and that version, due to the re-edit and the Goblin soundtrack, honestly, is awful and so no loss there.

Martin in vampire costume

The disc carries 4 commentaries. The first two sees George A Romero, John Amplas and Tom Savini on the first, and George A Romero, Richard P Rubinstein, Tom Savini, Michael Gornick and Donald Rubinstein on the second, and they are archival commentaries. I think the first of the two is the better but both are rich with anecdote. Of the new ones, Travis Crawford’s goes more into the input of various crew, whilst Kat Ellinger’s has a bit more media studies theory, often around the Gothic and with an interesting take on the differences between American and European Gothic.

John Amplas

Other extras are Taste the Blood of Martin, which is a feature length documentary about the film and a location tour – with a prominent appearance from star John Amplas. Making Martin: a Recounting, which is a film that does what the title suggests. Scoring the Shadows is a short but satisfying interview with film-score composer Donald Rubinstein. There is a short film by Tony Buba, ‘J Roy - New And Used Furniture’ – Buba’s family home was the location for Cuda’s house in the film and this is a short documentary film, contemporary with Martin, from a series he did about the town of Braddock (J Roy, who is the focus of the film, played the church Deacon in Martin). Finally, we get the trailer, TV and radio spots. As you can see, this is packed with extras.

The Blu-Ray release deserves a solid 9 out of 10 (as a Blu-Ray/4K release) with headroom for the limited set and the additional physical material it contains.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Painkillers – review

Director: Roxy Shih

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

A take on the vampire genre that pushes it to being a psychological disorder, this one might pass the uninitiated by. Under the hood it is a morality play about addiction but perhaps does not go far enough into its own darkness to explore that meaningfully – laying the simile on thick but not allowing the primary protagonist enough rope to walk the character to the gallows, as it were.

attack

It starts with a scene outside a warehouse club. We get a couple kissing and then we see a woman (Mischa Barton) leave the club and start talking to a friend on the phone, wondering where they are. As she walks down the road a woman, Carla Franken (Maria Olsen, Folklore), approaches her asking for help. Carla then, catching the woman off guard, attacks her, cutting her wrist and starting to drink the blood from the wound.

halcyon days

We move to an idyllic moment; a father, John (Adam Huss, Demon Slayer), is playing soccer with his son Brian (Tate Birchmore). Their play is interrupted by a phone call. Despite Brian’s protest they have to leave – John is a surgeon and on-call. As they drive John suggests that it is dark already and so they wouldn’t have been able to play much longer anyway. To distract his son, he plays a game of switching the headlights off for a few moments. He crashes – though not during the headlight game…

distressed Chloe

He awakens to see his wife Chloe (Madeline Zima, the Vampire Diaries) looking at him. He has been unconscious for two days. He asks about Brian and Chloe’s reaction tells him all he needs to know. He starts howling in anguish, the medical staff trying to give him painkillers as his body seems wracked in pain but they seem to have no effect. We see a montage of tests being performed but they cannot discover what the source of his pain is – except to say it seems to be an emotional/psychological reaction. Chloe (who was a nurse) mentions PTSD though this is dismissed as it doesn’t fit the symptoms.

Adam Huss as John

The pain is utterly debilitating, causing him to shudder and shake constantly. At Brian's funeral he is approached by a man who introduces himself as Herb Morris (Grant Bowler, True Blood) – he has been told about John through a doctor contact and can help him. John dismisses him, but takes his card. Later, whilst trying to eat, he accidentally smashes a glass and cuts his hand… he licks the blood and something happens... later still he deliberately cuts himself and drinks the blood. Chloe finds him in the morning, blood at his mouth and an open wound. But he has stopped shaking – the pain has gone.

Grant Bowler as Herb

He goes to see Herb who tells him that he has a very rare type of PTSD that manifests in pain through the body (this is tied into guilt). Blood causes the pain to stop for a while but it has to be fresh human blood. Drinking your own blood only works the once. Ok so it is a strange mash up of psychiatry (in the PTSD) with the physical reaction to only a certain freshness and species of blood. The V word is mentioned and the myths (sunlight, garlic, mirrors etc) are dismissed. There is an interesting idea behind Herb’s story, who developed the condition during 9/11 (and thus the text can be read as the US collective response to that tragic event) but his lack of guilt at what he does to both victims and those he supplies belies the capacity for a guilt so expansive that it causes his condition (grief would be a better cause textually).

farming

John tries to go it alone but is soon back with Herb. Of course, Herb is a dealer and needs to keep his junky hooked and compliant. His method of supplying fresh blood is morally reprehensible but he keeps the morality grey by preying on sexual offenders and other criminal types. The story follows John on his downward spiral and subsequent attempt at redemption, but he never seems to go as far, negatively, as one would expect when one looks at the way the tropes are normally played. It is by not going as dark as it might have done that this feels too safe in its story.

blood on lips

I did think that they might have looked to pull a cure out of the bag – after all this is a ptsd based on traumatic guilt, if he could learn to forgive himself (for what amounts to an accident, they didn’t crash when he was being an idiot with his headlights) then surely he could cure himself – but it doesn’t take this route. His path to redemption isn’t that steep because he never spiralled as low as he might, as I mentioned. By playing this too safe the film loses something and is not quite the horror or the thriller it tries to be. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

A Love Like Blood – review

Author: Marcus Sedgwick

First published: 2014

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: I've chased him for over twenty years, and across countless miles, and though often I was running, there have been many times when I could do nothing but sit and wait. Now I am only desperate for it to be finished.

In 1944, just days after the liberation of Paris, Charles Jackson sees something horrific: a man, apparently drinking the blood of a murdered woman. Terrified, he does nothing, telling himself afterwards that worse things happen in wars.

Seven years later he returns to the city - and sees the same man dining in the company of a fascinating young woman. When they leave the restaurant, Charles decides to follow...

A LOVE LIKE BLOOD is a dark, compelling thriller about how a man's life can change in a moment; about where the desire for truth - and for revenge - can lead; about love and fear and hatred. And it is also about the question of blood.

The review: A love Like Blood is a book that works precisely because it steps away from the atypical vampire tropes and delivers a first person account of obsession and blood with a wonderfully strong narrative.

Charles Jackson, the narrator, was called into active service towards the end of the second world war and was a doctor in the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps). Whilst stationed outside Paris, following the liberation, his CO takes him to a private museum as he wishes to see a piece. Whilst in there Charles sees an Assyrian bowl that depicts a man copulating with a decapitated woman – the woman having been identified as a vampire and the image serving as a talisman against such creatures.

Charles has already confessed to having a strangely obsessional reaction to blood and when he looks inside a bunker in the museum’s grounds he sees a man apparently drinking the blood of a woman. The RAMC were unarmed but, rather than go to her aid, he backs away. By the time he returns the man and the woman(‘s body) are gone.

It is the first time that he crosses paths with the vampire but not the last and he, meanwhile, returns to civilian life and takes up haematology as a specialism. When he falls for a woman who is involved with the vampire (identified at that point as a Estonian Margrave of considerable private means) disaster follows and, following disaster comes obsession.

The vampire is, more properly, a living man suffering from clinical vampirism. All in all it is the voice of the narrator (who himself is of flawed character) that carries the novel but I did like the way Sedgwick played with the sexual and obsessional tropes associated with the supernatural vampire. Definitely worth a read. 7 out of 10.

Vampire – review

Director: Shunji Iwai

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers


In 1886 Richard von Krafft-Ebing, an Austro-German psychiatrist, published the book Psychopathia Sexualis, a study of sexual perversion and within its pages he identified several individuals who had blood fetishes, tying sexuality and blood consumption together. Cases within the book, such as the case of JH, are not generally homicidal. So, what if there was a serial killer who drained their victims blood? Then (on the exsanguinated bodies alone) the press would label them as a "vampire" and headlines such as "vampire killer on the loose" would appear. If they took that blood and drank it, if that was part of their pattern, then surely the label of clinical vampirism would fit… though I am sure that clinical vampirism that was homicidal would be very rare.

Kevin Zegers as Simon

Vampire is director Shunji Iwai’s first English language film and Lionsgate have done their best to tie it into supernatural vampirism with the red eyed, fanged bust of the DVD cover. However it is not, in any way, about a supernatural vampire. Rather it is someone who suffers from clinical vampirism. A comment on IMDb suggests this is based on a real Japanese case. I’ve found a suggestion in researching this that a man in Japan murdered three people by enticing them to enter a suicide pact with him, however I have not verified if this is true.

Keisha Castle-Hughes as Jellyfish 

When the film starts we see a girl, known online as Jellyfish (Keisha Castle-Hughes), stood by a fence. A man, Simon (Kevin Zegers), pulls up and introduces himself. They met online, on a site called Side by Cide, and they have agreed to die together. He has asked her to bring her laptop so that he can delete all the traces of their conversations. They drive off, buy coffee en route and she stops for a last meal – though he is resistant to it and refuses to come into the restaurant – forcing her to buy take out.

draining Jellyfish

Strangely she is not put off by his behaviour. He asks how she wants to die. She doesn’t want pain and is scared of guns. He suggests that they bleed to death, it is quick and painless he says. He takes her to a warehouse and starts setting equipment up. He encourages her to take a sleeping pill (she does ask why he isn’t taking one) and then lays her on a chest freezer, He puts intravenous needles into each arm and leg and drains her blood into bell jars.

drinking Jellyfish

When he leaves the warehouse he puts the equipment into the back of his car and removes one jar. He drinks from it in long gulps. How do we know this man is not a “real” vampire? His reaction to the blood is atypical, after he has driven away from the murder/euthanasia scene he has to pull over to vomit the blood back up. So, this is Simon, biology teacher, quiet and unassuming and clinical vampire. He prowls the suicide chat rooms looking for people to enter into pacts with and kill (he also changes his MO occasionally, we see him later suggest that he take a suicidal woman’s blood for research as he is looking for the “suicide gene”).

Simon's mother

We then get a series of vignettes that follow him. We see the cop (Kyle Cameron) who is investigating his apartment as a window cleaner has seen Simon’s mother (Amanda Plummer) in a truss attached to loads of helium balloons – she has Alzheimer’s and wanders. The balloons prevent her leaving the apartment and help her get on and off her commode. He takes Simon fishing (a scene that feels off kilter due to the odd camera angels used) and introduces him to his sister Laura (Rachael Leigh Cook) – who turns out to be an obsessive stalker.

Trevor Morgan as renfield

One of the more disturbing vignettes occurs when Simon, under his guise of Blood Baron, attends a ‘real’ vampire gathering. As well as the tedium of their host’s two hour long, vanity vampire film Simon finds himself gaining the dubious attentions of Renfield (Trevor Morgan), who has had custom fangs made and is clearly coming on to Simon. When he finds last messages from murdered girls on Simon’s smart phone he realises that Simon is the one that the press have dubbed the Vampire. He uses this as leverage to get Simon to go out with him, in his fake taxi, where he abducts, rapes and murders a woman (biting her jugular with his fake fangs). This isn’t his first apparently – he talks about cooking their flesh and grinding their bones – and his actions disgust Simon, who sees it only as rape. Remember, at this point, that all Simon’s victims are willing (though he has misled them as to his involvement) and their deaths are peaceful.

off-kilter camera-work

The film feels languid as you watch it, a feeling intensified by the soft piano soundtrack and Simon’s unassuming manner. It is also very long – probably half an hour too long if I am going to be honest. There is a flashback scene at the very end that seems to show Simon’s first kill but it is pointless given where we are in the film’s story. The true ending (before the flashback) steps out of the dour but real feeling that Shunji Iwai had instilled through the film and adds an un-realness that does recall the camera work of the fishing trip but seems out with the rest of the film.

Simon giving blood

The acting generally is very good but the DVD sound causes the quieter dialogue to become lost at times and as the dialogue drives the film I found myself putting the subtitles on to ensure that I didn’t miss anything. The dialogue itself can seem a little stilted but mostly worked. There is a definite nod to Dracula. Not only do we have Renfield but Simon gets Laura’s name wrong and calls her Lucy and he has a Japanese foreign exchange student in his class called Mina (Yû Aoi) who he ends up giving his blood to.

This film is going to be hated by many. Firstly it is marketed as though it is a supernatural vampire film and so will confound expectations, it is languid (as I say) and, for its worst sin, it is overly long. I thought it okay, but would have liked to have seen a judicial use of the editor’s scissors. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Bad Sister – review

Author: Emma Tennant

First Published: 1978

Contains spoilers

I have the novel the Bad Sister in the Emma Tennant omnibus of the same name. The Omnibus also contains the novels Two Women of London and Wild Nights. This review is looking at the Bad Sister only and I must thank my friend Leila who put me on to the book.

The story is actually a female centric reworking of the 1824 novel by James Hogg, “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner”. Though whilst the earlier novel concerned a world of angels, devils and possession, this novel concerns vampirism – though, in some senses, it is almost hidden within the pages. Whilst it is primarily a reworking in some respects it could also be a sequel.

It is told from two points of view. An unnamed TV journalist is re-investigating the murder of Michael Dalzell, the owner of an Estate in the Scottish borders, and his daughter Ishbel. The larger part of the novel is handed over to the journal of a woman named Jane, allegedly his illegitimate child.

The journalist looks into Dalzell’s past, he was a drinker and gambler (indeed he eventually lost his estates through gambling debts). On the night before his wedding, having lost hard in a London gaming room, he is confronted by a woman named Mary, a shop-girl whom he had a dalliance with and is now pregnant with his child. Some years later it appears that Mary turned up at his estates with Jane, her daughter, and a mysterious woman called Margaret or Meg. For those who knew him he seemed unusually tolerant as they squatted in one of his cottages, especially after it turned into a women’s commune and some of the alleged behaviour that went on, though other evidence suggests that he actually gave the cottage to Mary.

A friend of Jane, Stephen, contacts the journalist and provides Jane’s journal  The prose style changes here and becomes very thick in the language, poetic and almost lost as Jane describes her life and her relationship with Meg, a woman she reveres and fears and holds some kind of power over her. Meg is sending Jane on ‘journeys’, preparing her, and has promised her a mysterious man (through her journal she is dismissive to the point of abhorrence of her boyfriend/partner Tony). The man is Gil-Martin and this is why I said sequel as Gil-Martin is a central character in the original novel, and the journalist mentions summoning him from the seventeenth century – which is when the original book was set.

The aim of these journeys is to prepare Jane to kill her bad sister. Through her journal we lose sense of who the bad sister is; is it a part of Jane, is it Miranda (Tony’s friend, or possibly ex or current lover), is it Ishbel. The inference is, from the journalist, that Jane killed her sister. Though the journal does not mention her father contemporaneously to the journal, the journalist is sure that she killed him under hypnosis (the police suspect is his daughter, though which one is never clarified). All that said, the journal might be the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic and a psychiatrist says as much.

The vampirism comes into the book later in the journal. To prepare Jane, Meg bites her and suckles her blood. This leads to changes in Jane, she feels ill during the day and when she walks into a kitchen filled with garlic bulbs she is overcome by the stench (garlic is mentioned later, in the scene the bulbs are described but never named). When she strikes at “the bad sister” it is in the form of Miranda, Jane’s teeth grow and she bites her. By this time she has no reflection, though perhaps Miranda is her reflection. She then leaves this world through one of the journeys, as Meg promised, though how she did this and got the journal to Stephen is one of the story’s idiosyncrasies. Such things are fine as the book deliberately leaves us on unsure ground.

Whilst Jane says she is leaving by ship, she also describes the appearance of Gil-Martin near her mother’s cottage. The coda to the story is the journalist hearing of strange goings on near Dalzell’s old estates, with workers unwilling to chop down a copse of trees due to supernatural disturbances on the work site. He investigates and finds a shallow grave, marked with a stick. The grave contains a well preserved corpse, the face smooth, the dyed hair grown out in the grave. The stick that marked the grave also pierced through the corpse's chest. It was positively identified as Jane.

Was she a vampire? She believed she was and that Meg was, according to her journal. She, at the very least, acted like one and may have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia or a.n.other mental health impairment, possibly including clinical vampirism. There is the suggestion that she was under hypnotic compulsion, but she might just have been a vampire. We are left to wonder.

The journal section is not the easiest of reads, as I say it is poetic and lush to the point of being thick. It doesn’t become too much of a chore and the style is absolutely necessary. Overall though I was convinced, the more I read, at just what a good film the straight retelling of this book would make. It would be an artistic, confusing traipse through the psyche of a woman possibly manipulated psychologically or supernaturally, possibly deluded and possibly a vampire. 6.5 out of 10.

The Science of Vampires – review

Author: Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D.

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers


The Blurb:

• Are any vampire myths based on fact?
• Bloodsucking Villain to guilt-ridden loner—what has inspired the redemption of the vampire in fiction and film?
• What is vampire personality disorder?
• What causes a physical addiction to another person’s blood?
• Are there any boundaries in the polysexual world of vampires?
• How would a vampire hide in today’s world of advanced forensic science?
• What happens to the brain of a vampire’s victim?


Since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897, the concept of the vampire has evolved from supernatural creature of the night to reluctant bloodsucker to the sympathetic creature of today’s popular culture. Featuring interviews with forensic experts, creative artists and real-life bloodsuckers, The Science of Vampires offers a fascinating investigation into the myths and realities of the vampire, exploring every aspect of the dark force that has played host to our fears of infection, depletions, alien influence, and disease. From vampirism’s roots in ancient legend, to its scientific evolution as a very real mental disorder, Ramsland proves just how immortal, enigmatic, and seductive the lure of blood can be.

The review: This was a difficult book to pin down, eclectic might be a good term but let me illustrate this with a definition. Ramsland defines vampirism, for the sake of the book and as a starting position, as “more of a feeling than a creature: the dread of losing control to something that invades us and slowly drains us while holding us enthralled.” This is all well and good (though there are the vampires who quickly drain and violently terrify) and, indeed, it is a roughly catch-all definition for a lot of the genre. However it is too wide, perhaps, to give a focus and this is where the book fails.

The book takes a potted trip through the media vampire, recognising the malleable nature of vampire media, but concentrating mainly on Dracula, I am Legend and (rather heavily) Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. It looks at folklore and killers with vampiric traits (some listed are only debatably vampire orientated killers, though admittedly Ramsland does draw doubt on some cases herself) and then wanders into the vampire lifestyle/spirituality scene.

Perhaps the title is the problem, I was certainly looking for more on ‘if vampires were real how could we scientifically explain them’, but I think overall it is the diffuse focus that causes the problem. The book is a catch-all rather than concentrating on folklore, media, murder, lifestyle or spirituality. I, as a reader, did not feel that all the questions in the blurb had been explored satisfactorily.

That all said, I enjoyed what was there and my own personal focus on vampires is diffuse enough that there was meat amongst the literary bones I was picking through. Mixing the metaphors, however, it was a long meandering trip and by the end I had aching feet. 5.5 out of 10.

Corazon: ang Unang Aswang - review

Director: Richard Somes

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

Just as he did in his 2008 film Yanggaw, director Richard Somes takes us on an intelligent and interesting look at the aswang myth in the film Corazon: ang Unang Aswang (or the first Aswang). Like the earlier film it doesn’t actually manage to tick all the right boxes – as I’ll discuss – but it does do a heck of a lot right.

The film is set in 1946 and there are several comments about the Japanese occupation, in many respects this is the tale of a community so shell-shocked through the atrocities of war and the pressures of occupation that they have turned inwardly onto themselves. It also led to some minor continuity issues (such as rather modern looking jewellery worn by lead character Daniel (Derek Ramsay)). It takes place in a small town called Magdelana, which services a farm or plantation owned by Matias (Mark Gil).

Derek Ramsay as Daniel

As the story starts Matias is thinking of letting the farm (and its ruined soil) go. Meanwhile Corazon (Erich Gonzales), a young woman who is married to Daniel, is at a local healers as she is being given a herbal infertility treatment. The woman, unfortunately, is leaving the area soon and mentions another woman, Herminia (Maria Isabel Lopez), who is said to deal in miracles. We see, out in the forest, Daniel capturing and killing a boar.

Corazon and Melinda

A young girl approaches Corazon, as she walks through the town, and starts a conversation with her. Her mother drags her away. The women state that Corazon and her mother were prostitutes for the Japanese and say Corazon has damaged her uterus through numerous abortions – actually there is no evidence that this is anything more than spiteful gossip, though we hear that Corazon’s mother vanished during the occupation. As Corazon leaves the town she is approached by a wild looking woman, Melinda (Tetchie Agbayani, who was in Yanggaw). The townsfolk turn on Melinda, throwing stones at her.

pain of a lost child

Talking to her father, who is seriously ill, Corazon discovers that Melinda had been part of the resistance to the Japanese and had been forced to watch her child being killed. This, he suggests, caused her to become the devil. There is also the rumour of cannibalism. He mentions boar’s heads being used to scare of the Japanese as they thought they were monsters. Anyway, to cut a long story short, her father dies and Corazon goes to Herminia, she follows the instructions and becomes pregnant. However the baby is stillborn. Corazon goes mad with grief, is turned upon by some of the town’s women and eventually runs into the forest and eats the baby. At this point she becomes aswang (though the word is not mentioned until the end of the film).

ang Unang Aswang

Is she an aswang – in her mind she has become something bad that will punish the village by killing and eating the children. Her hair goes wild, her teeth begin to blacken and her face becomes sallow, through living in the forest, rejecting personal hygiene and her raw meat diet – though, to be honest, at times she looks less like a forest mad woman and more a goth queen. She rips the head and skin from a massive boar (that Daniel had killed in his frustration at not being able to find his wife) and wears them, crawling on all fours at times, and leading to rumours of her transforming into an animal. She is not a supernatural being, but quite, quite mad.

in the forest

This I liked, it was an attempt to look at the aswang myth through a rationale, non-supernatural lens and it worked. The acting may not have hit the mark at all times, the story might have been too diluted with other issues happening and it might have come across as more drama than horror, but this concept worked well. What didn’t work as well was the overly saccharine ending. Perhaps what is needed is the stronger aspects of this film merged with the stronger aspects of Yanggaw – that would be a winner. Somes is clearly on a mission and I think he is eventually going to pull it off.

5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Vampire: A Casebook – review

Editor: Alan Dundes

First Published:1998

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Finally, the truth about vampires.

Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Eleven leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood.

The Vampire; a Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word “vampire”; Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it—in reality or in fiction.

The review: It is good, from time to time, to move away from the media vampire and look at the folkloric original creature. Very different from the glamorised media vampire, the folklore nevertheless underpins the media and is interesting in its own account.

The Vampire: a Casebook is, like any such edited volume, a mixed bag, some essays striking a chord and others not so. Whilst I realise that the collection has some age it is worth mentioning that a couple of the essays remark upon Dracula, in passing at least, and suggest that Stoker “patterned Count Dracula after an actual fifteenth-century Romanian prince, known variously as Voivode Dracula and Vlad Ţepeş.” This is not true, of course, Stoker borrowed a name and a footnote, and there is no evidence that he did any more than that - despite wishful thinking in certain quarters.

Highlight essay, for me, concerned Greek Vampires and was contributed by Juliette duBoulay, and mention should also be given to the Paul Barber essay – whilst containing nothing additional to his seminal Vampires, Burial and Death it is always a joy to read his work. I felt that Philip D. Jaffé and Frank DiCataldo missed a trick in their discussion on Clinical Vampirism by concentrating on fairly modern cases and not at least referencing the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the 19th century.

I was not convinced by Dundes argument, using Freudian psychoanalysis, that the root of the word vampire was the Greek Pī, “to drink”, but I enjoyed the journey to that suggestion. All in all a good, if eclectic, scholarly look at the folklore vampire (veering off into clinical vampirism). 7 out of 10.

Doctors Wear Scarlet – review

Author: Simon Raven

First published: 1960

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Be warned…

Doctors Wear Scarlet has a distinctly macabre and spine-chilling theme. It starts, harmlessly enough, with a young man’s infatuation for a beautiful Greek girl. Their relationship was strange, to say the least. Some might say perverted. Its exact nature could be summed up in a single word – vampirism.

The review: I had wanted to read Doctors Wear Scarlet for some time and, back in 2009/10, it was thanks to the blog Mondo Vampire that I at last got around to reading it when I was offered a guest blogger opportunity. Unfortunately Mondo Vampire is no more and so I have republished the review here. When it comes to the actual book, mine is a second hand copy and proved to be the most bizarrely decrepit and brittle book I have come across arrived – but it is not the actual physical book but the words contained therein that are ultimately important.

The words, in this case, carried a good reputation but had led to the rather poor film Blood Suckers. Despite actually following the plot of the book fairly accurately the book succeeded where the film spectacularly failed and that boiled down to one thing – characterisation.

The book gives a back story to Richard Fountain, the subject of our story, which fills almost half the volume. Such attention to detail might be frowned on by today’s publishers but, given that the explanation for the vampirism is (sort of) psychological, it is rather important in this.

I say that the vampirism is psychological because Raven actually makes a good job of giving half hints that the superstitions that this cult – for it is seen as part cult, which initiates into its ranks, and part infection – might actually be supernatural in basis. I’ll explain.

When we, eventually, get our lore we are treated to the traditional side of vampirism and the superstitions that surround it (though I must point out that Raven was erroneous in some of his traditions, which were more cinematic/fiction based). We are then treated to a psycho-sexual explanation and a level of sadistic and masochistic interplay is blamed. Yet we are aware that there is some degree of hypnosis involved – this is explained as those who are chosen for initiation have such abilities inherently, but such ability would also seem to be a rare and supernatural power. Also we get omens offered through dreams and by the king of the Gods; again this would seem to be perversely superstitious and unnervingly supernatural.

I felt that Raven was aware, as an author, that he was deliberately obfuscating the explanation and, despite offering a rational explanation for vampirism and setting his book deep in the heart of English learning, all those who are possibly infected and subsequently die are staked through the heart before being buried… suggesting that man cannot escape the supernatural no matter how rational he believes he has become.

There is a lovely passage that I wish to share, describing a vampiric attack; “…her mouth was still caught in the hideous grin which she had worn as she struck her face a her victim; and spread over her cheeks and lips, dribbling from the bared white teeth, was the blood, wet and shining red…”

This brings us neatly to the prose. Raven’s writing is strong but I was thrown off stride as I read it. Firstly, the characters, whilst well developed, annoyed me in their arrogance. These are the sort of over stuffed academics and public school chaps who once (and still) controlled England – a group of over-inflated traditionalists, overbearing with their arrogance… but any issue within that should be my own problem and not the book’s.

However one passage struck me as very odd was a misogynistic passage that described a secretary. “…in any case diversion was now provided by a young slattern, who brought in a tray with three cups of coffee on it and some damp biscuits.

“‘Made out of some vile essence,’ said Holmstrom. ‘Get out this second, you frightful slut.’

“Whining something about no need to be personal and coffee essence saving trouble, the depressed daughter of humanity slopped through the door.”

This single passage made me sit up and wonder about the whole of the book. Raven wrote a book of vampirism as a form of sexual sadism and one wonders whether he looked inwards or looked, in disgust, out towards the halls of academia. For it struck me that we only really meet two women in the book in any (light) detail. There is Penelope, supposedly the fiancé of Fountain but actually a tool of manipulation for her father (who is controlling of Fountain and his life), not really liked but (barely) tolerated by the narrator; she is a cipher for her father’s machinations and little more. Then there is Chrisesis – drawn as a vamp, a devil, a sadist and Fountain’s corruptor. We get a disparaging comment towards the end regarding women being allowed to observe college feasts and the unwarranted attack on a woman quoted above.

With generosity I chose to believe that Raven was commenting on the cloistered world he set his book in, rather than celebrating it. Perhaps the book was just a product of its age.

Never the less, it is an interesting view of vampirism and, draws rounded if disagreeable (male) characters. My own critique and discomfort aside (and no one said that a book had to be comfortable to be essential or well written), I’ll say this is an important book within the vampire cannon, 7 out of 10.

Originally published on Mondo Vampire

Killer Love – review

Director: Lloyd A Simandl

Release date: 2002

Contains spoilers

Lloyd A Simandl obviously has a thing for the Báthory legend as this is the third film by him, which we have looked at, that uses the Countess in one way or another; the other two being Blood Countess and Demon’s Claw.

In this case Báthory is a background to the story and not a character herself. It also nearly became a ‘Vamp or Not?’ rather than a review as there isn’t really a vampire in this, nor someone who uses blood to bathe in ala Báthory. Rather we have bad science and serial killing.

the mask

The credits are interspersed with images that have been videoed, scenes that look like vacations, auctions of girls via the internet (yes, before the Hostel films Simandl had something a little similar, certainly some of the girls our serial killer gets are from the internet) and other sources. Watching is a masked figure and, to be fair, the mask offered a tad of atmosphere though it wasn’t worn by the killer but another of his victims, strapped to a chair and being initiated into the killer’s demented world.

David O'Kelly as Raymond

The killer is a man called Raymond (David O’Kelly) and I will say we have a cornucopia of accents from Eastern European (we are meant to be in Bohemia) to English with our killer and the cop we later meet, Karlion (Noel Le Bon), and American thrown in with the film’s main heroine, Danielle (Kari Wuhrer) – who at least is meant to be American. Raymond looks a little like a demented Phillip Schofield (sorry that’s a UK reference) who has taken to wearing satin shirts and leather trousers.

funny kind of love

During his speech to the unnamed victim he tells her that Elizabeth (Báthory) knew that blood was the source of fulfilment but never knew the love that he feels for all his girls. He suggests that one of the girls reached enlightenment and is still with him – that suggested an accomplice but is actually a red herring; the girl is not mentioned again and, though he has an accomplice, the relationship between him and his accomplice is more familial. He suggests that he will make her, the victim, live forever – the inference being through her blood in his veins.

Teresa and Danielle

Meanwhile Danielle is being driven through the Bohemian countryside by Teresa (Tereza Duchková). Danielle is working on a thesis on Báthory (making her a student, though it is strange that they don’t mention the fact that she is a mature student as Kari Wuhrer is three years older than me and was mid-thirties when this was made… I’m just saying). They are staying in a cabin, suggested by Teresa’s university – and we see hidden cameras within. That night Danielle has a prophetic dream of running through the woods, chased by Raymond as he stands above her with a knife in hand and weaves around like a moron (having planted some drugs where they will be found by the girls).

about Báthory

The next day the two girls go look at a sign about Báthory and, honestly, that’s about all they do. There is a scripted moment where Danielle feels guilty because they are sat around looking at the landscape rather than researching and then she turns round and suggests that she has all the research she needs. A few photos of the signpost, one wonders if the trip from the US was worth her effort! Incidentally the post sets off a psychic reaction that is not followed up on.

Teresa plays Dracula

They decide to stay overnight and then head back to civilisation in the morning.They find the drugs (in a Venetian snuffbox cast in the shape of a mask), get stoned and Teresa does her Dracula impression as they talk smutty. However, the appearance of Raymond soon puts a dampener on their fun and games. Danielle wakes in a cell, Teresa is masked and watching video feeds of girl collection and both are being drugged (as are the other girls he has in cells). However, being a spunky American, she has the wherewithal to knee him between the legs and escape his underground lair. She ends up in hospital where she has to convince the cop and a doctor, Dr Cook (Elin Spidlová), that she is telling the truth and isn’t just a mad junky (due to the track marks he left in her arm).

cramping

I mentioned bad science… Raymond bleeds the girls through tubing into jars. These he transfuses into his own veins, so it is a blessed miracle that he isn’t dead yet. Why is he doing this? Because he suffers, we later hear, from porphyria. Yes it is more bunkum based on Dolphin’s discredited theorem of vampirism… Báthory, the film claims, was also a sufferer (not that we know of) and there was a sufferer in England who was known as the Vampire Killer as he took blood (not actually likely, porphyria sufferers do not crave blood). It also claims sunlight aversion (forgetting the media source of vampires and sunlight, Murnau having invented the destructive connection in Nosferatu) and garlic aversion. He keeps cramping due to ulcers.

Renfield Syndrome?

Actually, given the obvious joy in which he revels in rolling in the blood (despite supposedly collecting it to alleviate his condition) and thus murdering the girls to achieve that end, the likelihood is he has an underlying Renfield syndrome – though this isn’t mentioned. He ties the blood into love so one wonders whether there was a sexual element to this also – Simandl ain’t saying.

Danielle imprisoned

Which is the odd thing about this film, Simandl does not throw in the softcore sexploitation for which we know him well and which probably would have raised the score slightly! The acting is good enough for what the film is, but the film isn’t really anything to write home about. Bad science, confusing cuts back and forth through time (in the film timeline and via Danielle’s mysterious psychic flashes) that seemed to be more filler than anything else. Implausible coincidences (in respect of the accomplice) and some of the worst police procedure ever. Not a great movie; 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Daddy’s Girl – review

Director: D J Evans

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers

Daddy’s Girl has been released in the US as Cravings and has a cover with fangs on it. This is on some levels a spoiler for the film but actually a misnomer, for we are not talking a fanged, un-dead vampire – as the US cover would suggest – but someone psychologically disturbed. That said, the film actually has (potentially) a supernatural element as well, as you will see.

The film starts off with scenes of psychiatrist Stephen Hughes (Richard Harrington) cycling home intercut with scenes of his wife Clare (Alex Dunn) as she smokes a cigarette, looks to use her mobile phone and then runs a bath. She gets in and slits her wrist. By the time Stephen gets home there is bloody water running under the bathroom door. He breaks it down but it is too late.

Six weeks later and he has an Estate Agent (Roger Evans) selling his apartment for him, he is also on a large amount of medication. We see him speaking to a woman in a hospital – we later discover it his mother – and then he bumps into his boss and friend, Eisner (Mark Lewis Jones), and tells him he wants to go back on duty; he is ready. He is given some case files but, as he leaves the hospital, we can tell he isn’t ready when he sees Clare – though it is actually a random woman who he thought was Clare, he then realises.

His first case is Nina (Jaime Winstone) a young girl whose case seems simple, if a little close to home, as it appears she has slit her own wrist. Her mother, Liz (Louise Delamere), is very defensive and Nina claims it was an accident. She starts to cough up blood. Stephen goes to see his mother and suddenly Nina is at the bedside with him. As he takes her back to her ward he explains that his mother’s body no longer produces enough red blood cells but also explains that we all die eventually. Nina claims that she is not going to die.

Nina wanders off again and sees a boy hooked to a blood pack – before she is found and returned to her room, she asks him if she can have some. Stephen, by then, has got back to his flat to find that the bath tap is running. The next day he has a plumber, Rossiter (Ifan Huw Dafydd), round. The plumber has lost a foot but still feels phantom pain, which Stephen stops with acupuncture. The plumber – before he leaves – tells Stephen that *she* says she is sorry. It is clear he refers to Clare.

He visits Nina and she tells him that her injury was an accident; she just didn’t mean to cut so deep. She says that when she did she had put her mouth on the wound to stop the blood and drank some – hence coughing it up. Later, whilst Stephen is at home finding his taps on again, Nina sneaks from her bed again. She goes to Stephen’s mother and tries to take her intravenous blood pack. The older lady reacts and falls and Nina runs before she is caught. When we see her she has blood at her mouth and a necklace in her hand. Stephen’s mother doesn’t survive the fall out of bed.

He is at the hospital when Liz approaches him to ask if Nina can come home. He breaks down into tears and she comforts him, something Nina sees. We cut forward and, after his mother’s funeral, he sees Nina hanging around the graveyard. He confronts her and takes her home, however Eisner sees him walking out of the graveyard holding her hand. Stephen is later warned how inappropriate it seemed. We see a session with another patient, Lucy (Katie Owen), and then a session with Nina where she accuses her mother of wanting to sleep with Stephen.

The film starts to build at a steady rate then. Stephen’s bath and shower keep turning themselves on and Rossiter suggests that Clare is trying to warn him about something. This is the possibly supernatural element, though that is not certain. When Stephen discusses this with Eisner, he suggests that Stephen himself is turning them on and then blanking the act as part of his grief. However one has to question why, in that case, Eisner would keep the man working? He and Liz begin an affair, completely inappropriately. In fact Stephen seems to have lost all form of understanding about keeping an ethical distance.

We do discover that, when Nina was six years old, Liz had left her with her father. Liz believed that he was clean – they had split up die to his drug abuse – but he managed to kill himself through an air embolism whilst he was shooting up. Liz found her watching TV. What we see, but she doesn’t explain to Stephen, is that the little girl had her father’s blood around her mouth.

Her need for blood is increasing. She opens up her pet and also has Lucy cut herself so that she can feed from her. How they knew each other isn’t explained but it did strike me that there seemed something deliberate about having one character named Nina (which sounds an awful lot like Mina, and indeed some versions of Dracula change Mina to Nina) and a second called Lucy. Especially as this progressing from drinking one’s own blood to other peoples is a facet of Renfield Syndrome.

Named by Richard Noll after the character from Dracula, Renfield’s Syndrome or Clinical Vampirism is normally found in men but sees a progression from self drinking to craving others' blood, normally with a sexual connotation after puberty. Stephen believes Nina suffers from this though Eisner suggests that schizophrenia or porphyria might be more likely than a ‘dime store novel diagnosis’. Clearly the film maker’s are looking straight to Renfield’s Syndrome, however.

The film works rather well and I loved the ending, which I won't spoil. However some of the reactions just don’t feel natural – especially in that I don’t think Eisner would have kept him working as long as he did. That said, such feelings only occurred to me on thinking about the film, the pace and tension keeps you engrossed in the film. There are also some moments of black humour, a look by Nina back and forth between blender and poodle was darkly humorous – though her actions subsequently were just plain disturbing. This was down to an excellent performance by Jaime Winstone who really came across as a twisted young madam.

This was an unusual entry into the vampire genre and it was vampire genre; the craving for blood, the belief that she would be immortal, the almost sexual connotation all suggested as much. It is a shame, therefore, that the US release should have a blatant undead vampire theme for the cover. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.