Guest Blog - “If it doesn’t look like a vampire, or sound like a vampire, can it still be a vampire?” – TMtV 20th anniversary

We’ve come to the end of the 20th anniversary celebration and, last but not least, I’d like to welcome Simon Bacon to TMtV. We met through vampire groups on Facebook, becoming firm pals, and have had many discussions regarding our toothsome friends. An author and editor, I have corresponded over his vampire monograms and have been lucky enough to be included in several of the academic volumes he has edited.

In discussing the mutability of the vampire the much cited vampire scholar Nina Auerbach writes “we all know Dracula, or think we do… .” Although she was using Stoker’s Count as an example of how even the most “recognizable” of the undead doesn’t remain a fixed character in the popular imagination, it is just as true for what constitutes a vampire. Indeed, in many people’s minds Count Dracula is synonymous with the idea of the vampire with the implication that they must all drink blood, can transform into a bat (and possibly a wolf), are very sexy, wear evening dress with greased back, black hair and speak with a broad Eastern European accent—it should be noted that this is predicated far more on Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s 1931 film Dracula, than Stoker’s 1897 novel (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula about to enjoy a night-time snack with Lucy (Frances Dade) in Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. Universal Pictures, 1931.

However, the cinematic vampire, although providing what some see as the quintessential representation of the King of the Vampires (Count Dracula), seems to be continuously unsure about what a vampire looks like or what makes it one. What follows is an idiosyncratic selection of (and some of my favourite) films that have a very non-canonical view of what a vampire is.

Two of the earliest representations of vampires on film aren’t really vampires as we’d think of them now. They were from the early 20th century and both represented the “dark” side of society. The first features what was then known as a “Vamp,” that was a more sexually malevolent form of the New Woman from the end of the 19th Century and who asserted their independence by preying on wealthy men for their money. Theda Bara was one of the most well known of these and A Fool There Was (1915) the best surviving example of her playing her vampy best. In many ways her credentials as a vampire were more explicit in the marketing around the film and of Bara herself so that there was little to distinguish between her on- and off-screen personas. Apart from being called “The Vampire” in the films titles there is nothing else in the film that would really mark her out as one of the undead (see figure 2).

Figure 2. A triumphant Theda Bera (The Vampire) enjoys the sight of her latest victim who has lost his wealth and his family because of her in A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell. Fox Film Corporation, 1915.

Similarly the French serial Les vampires takes another yet equally oblique turn in what constitutes a vampire. Here, the titular “vampires” are in fact a gang of crooks led by the Grand Vampire that prey on the people of Paris and who think nothing of murder, kidnapping, and terrorism to get what they want. Although the film is well known for a sequence featuring a dancer dressed as a bat (see figure 3), once again there is little to connect the film to actual vampires apart from their metaphorical “feeding” on the wealth of their “prey.”

Figure 3. Marta Koutiloff, played by Stacia Napierkowska, dancing as a vampire bat in the ballet “The Vampires” in Les vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade. Gaumont, 1915.

Back in Hollywood, vampires became one of the pantheon of classic monsters in the 1930s, though even within that there were no strict borders between the various forms of creatures that could be called undead which could range from someone brought back from the dead (by whatever means), to a ghost, a ghoul, a zombie...or even a mummy. As mentioned above Lugosi’s performance solidified the idea of what Dracula was, and consequently, vampires, but even here the Count himself wasn’t sure of what exactly made him a vampire. In House of Dracula (1945), the second film starring John Carradine as the Count, sees the vampire looking for a cure for his vampirism (in reality he wants to sink his fangs into the pretty nurse assisting Dr Edelmann who he seeks help from). What is of interest here is that the doctor takes blood samples from Dracula and under the microscope we see vampiric blood cells attacking human blood cells marking out vampirism as a disease of the blood (see figure 4).

Figure 4. Dracula’s blood under the microscope showing the black tendrils in it is the true vampire as it attacks human blood cells, in House of Dracula, directed by Erle C. Kenton. Universal Pictures, 1945.

We could argue it is Dracula’s blood that is the vampire, not the Count himself. This is a curious idea that has been picked up since in a few screen narratives such as Dark Shadows (1966-71) and the Dracula (2013-14) series by Cole Haddon. The importance of blood, and what we might call the medicalisation of the vampire, is also seen in The Return of Dr X (1939), featuring a rare turn in horror films for Humphrey Bogart. Here at least the “vampire” in question needs fresh human blood, though rather disappointingly for its undead credentials it’s not from biting a beautiful young woman in the neck, but rather transfusing her blood into his own body (the reverse of Stoker’s use of transfusions where they are to combat vampirism rather than promoting it). Here, Bogart as the eponymous Dr X (Maurice Xavier) is brought back from the dead using synthetic blood, however, this no longer works and he needs a special type (type one) of fresh human blood to stay alive. His vampy credentials highlighted by his pale white skin and greased back, black hair--his monstrosity emphasized by a bride of Frankenstein white streak running through it (see figure 5).

Figure 5. Humphrey Bogart as the suitably deathly pale Dr X, in The Return of Dr X, directed by Vincent Sherman. Warner Brothers, 1939.

Post-WWII and the rise of science fiction on film only increased the complications of identifying vampires—even Dracula is affected by the appearance of aliens as seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) where humans are brought back from the dead as zombies and one of these “zombies” is non-other than Bela Lugosi in full Dracula costume. In some ways this was exampled earlier by the science-gone-mad idea in Dr X, but the involvement of aliens would only exacerbate the problematic nature of vampire identity. A good one to start with is The Thing from Another World (1951) where the “Thing” is a Frankenstein’s monster style alien (see figure 6) that has been cut from beneath the Arctic ice where its ship had crashed an unknown time ago.

Figure 6. “The Thing,” played by James Arness, as a vegetal vampire from outer space, in The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby. Winchester Pictures Corporation, 1951.

Once defrosted the creature is driven by a need for human blood, and it exhibits a kind of immortality as parts of it, when cut off, regrow when fed blood. Perhaps more strikingly the creature is in fact a plant of some kind—this correlates to other vegetal aliens that crave human essence such as the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978), and The Queen of Blood (1966). While the creature cannot change its shape in this film—other than its severed parts being able to take on their own lives—later adaptions of the story, The Thing (1982/2011), make such transformations explicit to how it survives and multiplies. Indeed, just as the first “Thing” required human blood to live, the later “Things” require human lives to thrive—oddly echoing the BBC Dracula mini-series from 2020 in which the Count requires blood as “lives” to sustain himself.

Something of this is repeated in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985) where alien vampires, whose spaceship hides in the tail of Halley’s Comet, awaken to feed on human essence each time it returns to the vicinity of the planet Earth (every 74.7 years). The aliens themselves are huge bat-like creatures but can possess the bodies of humans and consume/suck-out soul/lifeforce by putting their mouths over that of their victims (see figure 7).

Figure 7. A guard (John Keegan) having the lifeforce sucked out of him by an unseen Space Girl (Mathilda May) in Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper. London-Cannon Films, 1985.

These are then “sent” back up to the mother ship for the rest of the colony to feed on. An earlier example of a similar kind of vampiric possession as a means of survival was seen in Planet of the Vampires (1965) where the survivors of an alien race are trapped on a barren planet after its sun has burnt out. Using the distress signal of a crashed space ship they attract 2 other ships and then inhabit the bodies of the humanoids piloting them. Of note here is that their vampirism is purely predicated on the possession of humanoid bodies (see figure 8), which although deadly to the hosts—if they’re not already dead—does not provide any kind of sustenance to them (such vampiric possession, though often non-deadly is a more recent feature of vampire narratives such as The Vampire Diaries (2009-17) and The Originals (2013-18).

Figure 8. A deadly game of “guess whose body is possessed by a vampire” featuring Wes Wescant (Ángel Aranda), Sanya (Norma Bengell), and Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan), in Planet of the Vampires, directed by Mario Bava. Italian International Film, 1965.

Returning to Lifeforce, and its idea of feeding off of human essence and “draining” their victims, this is not a million miles away from psychic vampires, most recently and famously seen in the figure of Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows (2019-24) where he purposely bores people to death and/or annoys them to distraction so that he can feed on their emotional energy (see figure 9). This has returned such forms of untypical vampirism back into the popular imagination—it’s actually something that has a longer history in literary vampires seen in The House of the Vampire (1907) by George Sylvester Viereck and “The Transfer” (1911) by Algernon Blackwood.

Figure 9. Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) as the person in the office that everyone tries to avoid, in What We Do in the Shadows, created by Jemaine Clement. FX Productions, 2019-24.

To sum up this rather eclectic list of some of my favourite vampire films, and to mangle and repurpose a well known phrase about ducks, “if it doesn’t walk like a vampire, or quack like a vampire, it doesn’t mean it’s not a vampire!”

Bio: Simon Bacon has authored/edited/co-edited 40+ books on vampires, monsters and gothic horror in popular culture and his Amazon Author page can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Dracula’s Sorority Sisters – review

Release date: 2014*

Director: Jeff Leroy

Contains spoilers

From the director who brought us Dracula in a Women’s Prison this is a throwback to those heady 80s and 90s and perhaps mentioning it owing a little something to the likes of Fred Olen Ray will give an idea of what we are getting. However, first a note about the date.

*The IMDb page said still in production when I wrote this, with no date. I stumbled over it on Fawesome, watched and screenshotted it for review, but when I went back later to check a detail it was no longer available. Whether it will return to the platform I couldn’t say. But whilst posting I noticed it is now on Amazon with a 2014 date, unusually Amazon seems to have it right on this occasion. It also needs to be said that, despite the title, there is no Dracula in this film.

getting home

It starts in Black and White (in the 50s) and Ward (Robert Rhine, Dracula in a Women’s Prison) is getting home from work. A woman (Kelly Erin Decker, Also Dracula in a Women’s Prison & Bloodsucka Jones vs. The Creeping Death) stands in the street, looking oddly at him, but he shrugs any bad feeling away and goes in the house. He is met by his wife, Eva (Nicole Laino), and reveals he picked up a home shot film reel on the way home. Eva sees the woman staring through a window and there is a knock at the door.

attack

Opening it they see the woman, she seems injured and says she hurt herself and then repeating that she can’t find her way home. The phone is out (and the phone seemed anachronistic, but not as much as the keypad by the door) and Ward goes to call an ambulance from a neighbour’s house. Alone with Eva, the woman vamps out and attacks and then attacks Ward when he gets home. Eva manages to take her out with a shotgun but, when their daughter gets home, she has turned, is feeding off Ward’s corpse and tells her daughter to run.

playing with the spark

Cut to the modern day and Murdock (Michael Beardsley) has been daydrinking and been picked up by sorority members Annabel (Missy Martinez) and Scarlet (Jacqueline Fae, Erotic Vampires of Beverley Hills & Haunted Hotties). They get him back to the house, strip, tease and then start sucking the life out of him, which causes a physical decline and eventually they pull something glowing out of him - I assume an essential spark – and take turns running it over their bodies. Once it burns out, Eva comes in – she runs the sorority from her old home, and the energy vampirism is described as cleaner than the traditional way.

Alejandra Morin as Holly

Eva wants to get new pledges and Holly (Alejandra Morin) has tried the other sororities and found them to be too “trust-fund”. Her friend, Lilith (Antoinette Mia Pettis), is not as interested but is going along with her. When Eva meets her she realises that there is something special about Holly's blood – Eva’s blood was special and she evolved as a vampire, for instance she can stand sunlight. Holly’s blood could propel them to the next evolution. There is still the hazing though, plus Annabel is wanting to set up her own sorority and concentrate on hot boys. Plus, Holly’s boyfriend happens to be friends with Murdock and another friend, Felix (Michael Dougherty), has had a run in with Annabel and Scarlet before…

through a camera

Other interesting lore, beyond Eva's daywalking, includes seeing Annabel bite a wound and then sniff blood from a distance, and looking at the vampires through a phone camera makes them show as skeletons (and silicon breasts show up too). This does things as the title would indicate; there is plenty of topless nudity, the plot is secondary to this in many respects and the practical effects show their budget – including the CGI blood spatter, which looks bad as per normal. And yet, there was something about this that kept my attention. Perhaps it was the 80s throwback and like Leroy’s previous vampire flick it doesn’t have pretension to be anything else. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Stephen King’s the shining – review

Director: Mick Garris

Release date: 1997

Contains spoilers

Stephen King’s sequel to the Shining, Doctor Sleep, was a novel based around a group of energy vampires but, whilst Danny Torrence returned as an adult, the Overlook hotel was missing from the novel as it was destroyed in the climax of the original novel. Rather, the climax took place on the site that the hotel had stood upon. When the film Doctor Sleep was created this was changed as it followed the aesthetic and content of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of the Shining. Within Dr Sleep, as in the novel it is based on, the ghosts from the Overlook were shown as vampiric – trying to consume Danny’s Shining - but the hotel itself was also vampiric, the building was identified as consuming the shining also.

the Torrence family

Stephen King was famous for not liking Kubrick’s interpretation of the Shining, however. When a mini-series of the novel was proposed King, himself, wrote the teleplay. That makes the teleplay true to King’s concept, indeed the series was shot in the actual hotel that served as inspiration for the novel, but it still had to compete with the Kubrick film, which is (despite King’s feelings on the subject) a masterpiece.

the Overlook

I’m not going to blow by blow through the scenes. Suffice it to say that Jack Torrence (Steven Weber, Dracula: Dead and Loving It) is a recovering alcoholic who has lost his teaching job after beating a student and has previously injured his son, Danny (Courtland Mead), breaking his arm in a drunken rage. He gets the post of winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, which is snowed off over winter, and moves himself, wife Wendy (Rebecca De Mornay) and Danny to the hotel. He intends to write a play whilst there.

the hose

Danny is psychic, often seeing an (otherwise) invisible friend called Tony (Wil Horneff), a manifestation of his abilities. One difference between this and Kubrick’s is that Tony “appears” in Kubrick’s film as a voice spoken by Danny and represented by a crooked finger – in this Tony appears as a person. Danny is warned about the Overlook by Tony but, being seven, there isn’t much he can do about it. What we do get is an interesting view, in his visions, of something stalking the corridors but only the shadow is seen. This will turn out to be his father but the use of a shadow is, of course, a vampire genre trope. He also sees an animated fire hose with teeth, an unfortunate effect that we’ll get back to.

Melvin Van Peebles as Dick

Once at the hotel Danny meets chef Dick Hallorann (Melvin Van Peebles), a fellow psychic – though nowhere near as powerful – who recognises Danny for what he is. He calls the ability the shining and suggests that Danny shines brighter than anyone he has ever met. He warns Danny from the rooms, one in particular, and tells him that he has seen things occasionally in the hotel but they can’t hurt Danny. They are only pictures and if he looks away and counts to ten, they will go away. The hotel itself seems to have a shine of its own – hence it being a vampiric entity as we’ll explore.

reflected ghosts

Danny is seeing things from the beginning, and phenomena also occurs - poltergeist like falling of chairs, for instance. It is most certainly Danny that the hotel wants but, when it can’t get to him, it turns its attention to Jack. There is an implication that Jack shines also (in a minor way, and hence his susceptibility) but it is Danny’s ability that is fuelling the hotel and ghosts. This sees them ramping up their assaults and soon even Wendy can see/hear them. At one-point Danny realises that pretty soon they won’t be ghosts at all, meaning they are gaining a corporeal presence through their vampirism of Danny’s psychic gift.

the topiary

I mentioned effects and probably the worst is tied into an aspect missed in the Kubrick film altogether. In the movie Kubrick adds a hedge maze (rather effectively and it is reproduced within psychic sequences, at least, in the film Doctor Sleep) and uses it to replace topiary animals. They are here and, as in the book, there are moments when they come to life (an aspect of the vampiric hotel, rather than its associated ghosts). However, they look rubbish, bad cgi blobs with no weight to them as we see them move across the snows.

the ghost of 217

That’s not to say all the effects were bad. The drowned ghost of 217 (237 in Kubrick) looks fantastic in the bath, rotten and lying in a chemical soup. But the hose pipe, the topiaries and floating Tony all looked rubbish – and, given the key role of Tony plus the fact that the topiaries are essentially a set piece, that isn’t good. The dialogue can be a tad hokey also at times (have I committed a faux pas given King wrote it? Perhaps). The direction was, in fact, not as bad as it perhaps appeared as one cannot do anything but compare it to Kubrick’s auteur opus. That said, it didn’t capture the doom-laden atmosphere of the film. The mini-series format probably didn’t help with this dragging in its middle section.

Steven Weber as Jack

As for the key performances. Well, Courtland Mead works well as Danny – a tough role for any child actor, he manages to vacillate between childish reaction to knowing psychic. Rebecca De Mornay gives a strong performance as Wendy and a very different one to that offered by Shelley Duvall. Of course, Steven Weber was always going to be compared to Nicholson and his iconic performance – something that is probably really unfair. His Jack is more sympathetic, certainly, and he offers a strong performance but next to Nicholson it will always come out at second place. The adult actors were also hampered in places by that hokey dialogue I mentioned.

floating Tony

Retrospectively vampiric, like the Kubrick film, the consumption of the psychic energy isn’t mentioned (just that Danny enables it), and whilst it was always going to struggle next to the film, this wasn’t as good as it might have been anyway (in a universe where the Kubrick film didn’t exist). The film is dragged down by some of the effects, lack of atmosphere and some hokey Hallmark channel dialogue that surfaces through the film. Its TV mini-series origin means that some of the things we should have seen we didn’t. 6 feels a tad strong but 5.5 feels churlish and so 6 out of 10 it is.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Bloody Johann – review

Director: Jakub Krumpoch

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

The connection between Faust and vampires is one that rears its head occasionally – with the earliest examples I can think of being 1856 (possible 1855) when Paul Féval connected Goethe’s volume to vampires in The Vampire Countess. This Czech film features the character Faust (Marek Holý) as an antagonist and, as we will see, a master of vampires and zombies.

The film starts with intertitles talking about the deal between Faust and Mephistopheles – who, in this, prefers to go by Mefisto (Jan Dolanský). It tells of how he controls Markéta – a note that she is named Margaret in the English subs I saw, is more often called Marguerite, and is not in Goethe’s story, even though it is mentioned in the film as a biography. Faust slaughtered her family and, in revenge, she murdered their child Helena (Martina Babisova) by drowning her. Markéta did not know Mefisto saved the child and both women were made immortal. There is a prophecy that Mefisto will return.

Martina Babisova as Helena

As the film proper starts we don’t see a winged demon, rather we see a blur where it should be. A taxi driver is phoning home, gets back in his cab and that something attacks him and possesses him – Mefisto has returned. Elsewhere Helena is in a bath, she dresses, puts on makeup and leaves her home – she is a skater girl. An old lady shops, we soon discover she is Markéta (Vera Janku), the local convenience store owner (Duy Anh Tran) helps her and she makes a crack about him not knowing how old she really is. We see, once she gets home, that she has telekinetic powers.

Faust's eyes

A teacher, Jana (Jana Bernásková), is called by her doctor husband, Martin (Roman Zach), as she takes kids to the Faust house. Helena catches up, she’s enrolled as a student. In the house they discuss Faust and Goethe’s novel when Helena starts hearing Mefisto whispering to her. She reaches out to a wall and her hand comes aways bloodied and her blood, that of Faust, releases the magician with an explosion. She (immortal) is unharmed, the class are dead and Jana is knocked down and dazed. Helena runs. The naked Faust, with eyes turned black, lifts Jana and kisses her, leaving her lips bloodied and telling her that she will live on blood. She leaves the house dazed and Martin intercepts her (the House is close to the hospital).

vampires

So, the film then follows Jana as she turns, tracking Helena and Markéta until they meet, and chronicling Faust's antics. Faust steals clothes from youths – ala the Terminator but the film doesn’t show us what he does to them – and then goes into a strip club/brothel with two prostitutes, turns them with a kiss and sets them against the employees and customers. All those they kill become what can only be described as zombies with eye shine who are puppeted by Faust. He builds an army and is found by Jana – after she murders a neighbour, his baby and stabs Martin in the leg.

Markéta's gills

Before they accidentally meet, Helena and Markéta both feed – as it turns out they are both energy vampires. Helena kills a drunk woman and Markéta a girl who robs the convenience store. The vampirism draws the victim's energy/life-force out and they absorb it through gills on their necks. The act makes Markéta younger – played by Lenka Vlasáková – though not Helena; the inference being that the daughter feeds more regularly. Faust’s goal is to kill Markéta for killing their daughter (he is unaware that Helena was saved) and then let lose an undead plague on the city (apparently as he has done before).

feed

The film works but it does have issues. Sometimes it feels like it is being prudish – not showing what Faust did to get his clothes, and all the bar attacks, after the attack on the brothel, are off screen. At others it becomes fairly gratuitous – some of the scenes of the attack in the brothel spring to mind. It seems to not make up its mind. Faust’s wish to attack the city with the undead is not explained, neither is Mefisto’s desire to have him return beyond the chaos he sows. The Jana and Martin section doesn’t overly have a satisfactory denouement. That said it was still watchable, 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Anunnaki The fallen of the sky – review

Directors: Joan Frank Charansonnet & Rubén Vilchez

Release date: 2018

Contains spoilers

I was contacted by a blog reader, some time ago, to suggest I look at this Spanish film, and I am going to have to beg forgiveness but I can’t remember who it was that gave me the tip – but thank you.

The Anunnaki were Gods described in early Sumerian texts but they also have become a focus for some conspiracy theories, with them offering their name to creatures controlling the world from a shadow government and being alien colonisers (ala Erich von Däniken’s crackpot, ‘God was an Astronaut’, theories). This is what they are in this.

Nibiru

So the opening of the film suggests they came from Nibiru (an invented planet tied into conspiracy and thought to be the cause of the apocalyptic catastrophe of 2003… wait... that didn’t happen, of course) and enslaved mankind as they used earth for resource. It suggests they merged human and Anunnaki DNA and eventually left, though some stayed. Apparently they stayed without their advanced technology (or ability to replicate it) as we never see them with sci-fi gubbins. They feed on human blood and suffering (so the later would indicate energy vampirism).

the Anunnaki anachronism

The film then moves to the 13th Century and a group of Anunnaki, led by Uruk, are in a chapel about to sacrifice a human woman. A group of knights are on their way to attack the monsters. The Anunnaki are able to kill her, gather her blood and drink it. The knights break in and there is a fight. Two things to note. Firstly, Uruk is able to “force push” the humans – this is an innate ability and not derived from tech. Secondly, he is wearing a modern leather jacket over a leather Brando jacket – as all the other outfits seem to replicate the clothes of the period it seems like the costume designers wanted to treat obviously store bought modern clothing as his and it looks awfully anachronistic.

Claudia taken

We then move to the modern day and we get a very confused plot around the sacrifice of the chosen one. They chose one victim, a model called Victoria, but soon swap her for a girl (who may or may not be her sister, that was unclear as I watched) called Claudia. All the clans have to agree but Uruk wants to sacrifice Claudia as she is a hybrid (her father was Uruk’s brother, who was executed for fraternising with a human). Claudia is sure people are following her but the police don’t believe her – until one detective does.

force push

Honestly, it’s a big old mess in a narrative sense and one never gets the feeling that the Anunnaki are in control of anything and one questions why they are against a hybrid if they were splicing the two species' DNA back whenever. Claudia is said to be the first human (or new species) who can see the fourth dimension (again, whatever that means) and can force push people also, she eventually discovers. There is another hybrid, but he is a sickly, green skinned creature who is kept locked up.

Uruk

The Anunnaki eyes can go red (and seems to be a telepathic link with each other, Claudia is confirmed as a hybrid when they cause her eyes to do the same), they can sprout fangs, appear to be extremely long lived and, as well as blood, like to eat meal worms and other creepy crawlies. They have horizontal slit eyes that they can cause to look like human round pupils. They, for supposed rulers of the world, all seem to congregate in one Spanish city and not rule very much.

Really, there isn’t much to go into with this, the film really is a bit of a mess. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Freakshow Apocalypse: The Unholy Sideshow

From director Matthew Broomfield this 2007 film is described as the first two parts in a four-part miniseries. I can’t spot the denouement film and so hope it was never done because this is really quite a bad film. The basic story is that there is a secret society, the Order of Mystery, who used necromancy to extend their lives and this practice opened doorways that they had to close every few centuries with ritual sacrifice.

There is also a circus troupe (the extreme circus stuff, all played, from what I can tell, by actual performers) called the Unholy Sideshow who want to get into the Order but this is being blocked because their magic using member is in a feud with an Order member.

biting a wrist

They do a show, kidnap most of the audience and this then leads us into torture porn territory. One of the audience members not kidnapped is down to be the sacrifice. The film’s intertitles suggest that they absorb the victims’ life force – which could be said to be energy vampirism. However the reason for the mention is a member of the Order of Mystery who has fangs, bites a wrist, sucks the blood and then spits it into a goblet for the order to drink from. He is our vampire, but his appearance is fleeting (including one when the zombie apocalypse has started and we see him bite another wrist). Avoid.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

American Cannibals – review

Directors: C.D. Ruiz3 & John Rainwaters

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

This was an odd one as the conceit of a documentary crew making a film about vampires made one think it would be a found footage type film but it certainly wasn’t (no bad thing, at all, to be fair). Rather it was a film that concentrated on the crew as the primary protagonists.

The DVD starts off with a word from the actual filmmakers who suggest that many of the actors involved are members of the Rocky Mountain vampire family – meaning that many of the vampires in film are people who identify, or present, as vampires. One then struggles to see why they would make the film (baring promoting the fantasy they subscribe to) as the film runs on the idea that the documentary crew are investigating self-identified vampires (who they refer to as cannibals through film) but they really are murderous blood-drinking, flesh-eating vampires. The film actually carries a legend that suggests it is based on actual events (err… no). Indeed, an intertitle covers a tad of detail about Richard Trenton Chase (a serial killer known as the Vampire of Sacramento) as well as highlighting the number of people in the States who identify as vampires and then some suggestion that they might not just take willing donors.

demonic faces

So, the crew is made up of Chris (Donald Martin), who seems to be in charge, Mark (Michael Vincent Miceli), who is on cameras and also the second-in-command, Rick (Stephan Hampton-Valle) who is the sound engineer and finally Jessica (Masha Pichugina), who is Rick’s girlfriend and is involved somehow (her role was never clear). As the film starts, Mark is looking over footage they have filmed of an interview of a couple who claim to be energy vampires (blood, they say, is so old school). They claim they are feeding off the crew but no one would notice unless they pushed too hard… Rick suddenly collapses. As Mark reviews the footage, he sees a glitch (and Chris writes it off as such) that seems to (for a split second) distort their faces to something demonic just as Rick stumbles.

interviewing

At Rick and Jessica’s apartment two more interviewees are waiting to be filmed. Only Mark and Jessica are there and they are waiting for Chris and Rick. We discover that the crew put out adverts for interviewees but few have taken up the offer. The two mention they have a meeting once a month (the next day, coincidentally) at a place referred to as “the Cathedral” which is a bit of a vampire party, with bloodletting and a mock sacrifice. In response they are asked if anyone ever gets hurt and they mention attendees signing waivers. They suggest they might be able to get the crew an invite.

vox pop interview

At this point things get weird – they are followed by a sinister homeless guy, their footage is hacked and deleted from three separate servers, they can’t get hold of the pair (and their number seems to be out of service) and mysterious messages come to warn them off their film. With no footage they do some vox pops with people through the day and then decide to go and get footage of the Goth kids at another venue but change their minds and sneak into the Cathedral – and, of course, they are then in danger…

the crew

The trouble is, the acting isn’t great and the photography often awful, becoming lost within darkness in many scenes. With that said I did think Masha Pichugina displayed a presence, however in general I didn’t buy the documentary crew. I do recognise, however, that the film was done on a micro-budget. Certain lines in the dialogue get repeated multiple times, which is simply lazy writing and/or editing, and the scenario doesn’t feel right, with too much unanswered (suggestions that the vampires are able to hack a computer and three servers should have had more of an explanation – is a member of the ‘family’ a hacker, for instance – but then we get a warning message sent on the hacked computer but its unplugged, suggesting it is actually a supernatural intervention).

finger food

The reason for the vampires’ apparent cooperation and then blatant murder and consumption of people, in the middle of a city, made little sense. Are they supernatural – the film would suggest so. However, it wasn’t clear why the people (as in the actors) who identify as vampires in real life and who regularly state being a vampire is not like the movies, would want to then make a film that suggests that they are supernatural vampires, and murderers, and cannibals. It would seem a mixed message, at best, and counter-productive. This struggled, to be honest. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Star Trek the Animated Series: The Lorelei Signal (s1e4) – review

Director: Hal Sutherland

First Aired: 1973

Contains spoilers

Star Trek the Animated Series was an Emmy award winning animation series that aired between 1973 and 1974 and was based on the original Star Trek series. More than that it featured the voice talents of many of the original actors. It seems a shame, therefore, that it was removed from Star Trek cannon but it is still fun to watch despite the fact that the animation is severely dated and the voice acting seems a tad stilted at times. It is actually the stories that make this worthwhile, of course.

This episode was the fourth of the first season and riffs upon the Siren myth (or, more accurately, the Rhine Maidens as Loreley was one of their number). It starts with the Enterprise in a mysterious sector of space where, according to talks between the Federation, the Romulans and the Klingons, several spaceships have mysteriously vanished. Indeed a ship disappears once every 27 years and the anniversary is upon them.

Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura

They receive a signal and, on playing it, Kirk (William Shatner, Incubus) and the other male members of the crew seem somewhat entranced, describing it as calling to them, though the unaffected Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, Spider-Man (1997)) detects no such messaging within it. She eventually asks Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett) to observe the male crew.

'Bones' aging

When they get to the source of the signal, however, Kirk arranges an all-male away party – including himself, Spock (Leonard Nimoy, Night Gallery: Death on a Barge), Bones (DeForest Kelley) and Lt. Carver (James Doohan). They are entranced by the all-female aliens they meet (who lie and tell them the males are in another compound) but feel weak and soon we see them begin to age rapidly.

all female security detail

What I found great about this episode was Lt. Uhura taking command of the Enterprise, putting female security details on the transporters (to prevent any other male crew member beaming to the planet) and leading a female security detail down to rescue the men. It spoke of a capability in the character and of her place within the rank structure, both of which should have been more widely addressed in the physical series. Of course, this episode was written and filmed at a point where gender was invariably portrayed as binary – a view that the Star Trek universe has rightly corrected in its latest TV/Stream incarnation.

one of the aliens

What they discover is that the female aliens, long before, had come to the planet as part of a colonising effort when their own world started to die. What they hadn’t realised was that the planet drained life from humanoid creatures (making the land itself vampiric). The men it drained but the women developed a glandular secretion that allowed them to both manipulate men and drain them of their energy (Bones reckons that they are aging 10 years per day). It has made them immortal, but also infertile, and they have to lure more men every 27 years.

So, alien energy vampires (and a vampiric planet) and a welcome spotlight on Lt. Uhura. I enjoyed this episode. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK