The Brides – review

Author: Charlotte Cross

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers  

The Blurb: Told through letters and diary entries, The Brides is a chilling reimagining of Bram Stoker's Dracula – with a devastating sapphic romance at its heart.

'Come to me, and be mine for eternity'

1884. When Mafalda journeys to Budapest to care for her grieving aunt, her secret love, Lucy, hurries from London to comfort her, with chaperone and lady’s maid in tow.

But lady’s maid Alice, blessed and cursed with the Sight, is tormented by terrifying visions. When chaperone Eliza falls prey to a disturbing wasting illness, the women hope to seek the healing waters of Transylvania. At a nobleman’s invitation, they set out for Castle Dracula.

In the depths of the forest, miles from civilization, their host reveals his true intentions; a monstrous ambition which will tear the women apart.

And not all of them will survive.

The review: This is a prequel to Dracula with a touch of sequel. By that I mean that, whilst the majority of the book is an epistolary story from 1893 (and designated 10 years before the events of Stoker’s novel), there are parts set in 1903 as Sir John Seward, as he now is, tales a new position in an asylum and not long later receives charge of Lady Lowell, a zoophagus individual who, it becomes apparent, has a shared history from 10 years before the Crew of Light defeated Dracula.

The rest of the story follows Mafalda Lowell as she and her mother travel to Buda-Pesth to care for her maternal aunt whose husband has recently died in a dual. Mafalda’s orphaned schoolfriend, Lucy North, lives at Mafalda’s parents’ home and the two young women are in a secret sapphic relationship. I had a slight irk in the Lucy character’s name as it sailed too close to Lucy in Dracula. Lucy with chaperone Eliza and maid Alice (who has the second sight) are soon travelling to Buda-Pesth to stay with the family.

Of course, into this comes Dracula and it is obvious from the title that some of the primary female cast will become his brides. In this respect the novel is good at creating a female centric set of characters and still managing to situate them in the timeframe, with the societal misogyny of the time and their responses to that. It is also a rather clever origin story for Dracula’s vampire women and explains small moments from the original novel such as why the vampire women speak English (as Harker understands them). There isn’t much in the way of additional lore introduced except for the use of lemon verveine (or lemon beebrush) which Alice uses to hold off the second sight and which is found to ward off evil. There is a passing mention of hagriding connected with Alice’s grandmother.

The novel is a slow burn – with the vampiric action coming towards the end of the novel (bar some disturbing dreams that Alice has and, of course, Seward’s remembrance). That slowly builds also, with Dracula a shadowy figure on the periphery of the story when he enters the frame until right towards the end. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this, 7.5 out of 10.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Directed by Brian Taylor and released in 2024, this feels like a film to maintain rights to the Hellboy (Jack Kesy, the Strain) franchise but, whilst it gets nowhere near the fabulous first two Hellboy films, it worked better, for me, than Hellboy (2019). This sets itself in the 1950s and locates itself in Apalachia.

It was Leila who mentioned it having a specific vampiric aspect to it – thank you for that – but, before we get to it I should cover the way the film opens; Hellboy and fledgling BRPD field agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) are riding a boxcar, transporting a spider that has become possessed. Hellboy starts hearing… something… when the spider suddenly grows to a colossal size and breaks out of its dormancy. Roughly here is where we can see the budget strain as the cgi is not of the highest grade.

Bobbie and Hellboy

Having the boxcar fall off the train, subsequently defeating but then losing the spider, as it escapes into mining tunnels; Hellboy concludes that there is something in both the air and soil that caused the spider to react. That something is the malignant Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale), agent of the devil, a wealthy man who was hung (hence the crooked neck) and now collects souls for the devil, getting a copper coin for each that will, eventually, make him wealthy again. As they explore, they meet Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) who was seduced by Effie Kolb (Leah McNamara) into dealing with the Crooked Man, ran away and ended up in the army and has returned to set things right. It is with these two that we get the vampirism.

Leah McNamara as Effie

Tom has been told that his mother died when he was away, and his father (Anton Trendafilov) has not been seen for some time. When Effie first confronts Tom, on behalf of the Crooked Man, she is riding a horse and gifts him to Tom, saying he is nearly spent. Tom removes the harness and it reverts back into his (dying) father’s form. So we have some hagriding and with it actual transformation of the victim to horse. The power of transformation is within the enchanted bridle. Hagriding, of course, is a form of energy vampirism. It is a brief moment in film, though at the end of the film we see that Effie has now aged, played old by Svetlana Atanasova. Presumably the defeat of the crooked man (not a spoiler, this prequels the other films) frustrated her ability to use the stolen energy to remain young.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Santigwar – review

Director: Joven Tan

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

The Filipino folklore of the aswang is often given a comparative association with the vampire, but we should remember that aswang is both used as the genus of a specific folkloric creature and also as a generic term meaning monster.

In this film the term aswang is used, but the main hunter (the Santigwar) also says that these are specifically kamadlang. This isn’t a term I had come across before, and a google left me none the wiser (feel free to educate me on the term in the comments especially if I have taken the name out of context). Be that as it may we have a group of creatures that can shapeshift (though they take on a drooling monstrous form and we do not see other typical aswang shapeshifting), cast magic it appears, and eat human flesh (and virgin flesh specifically for power).

conducting ritual

It begins with an old woman, Nana Rosa (Lui Manansala) – who we later discover is the queen of her aswang clan – ritualistically chanting. Nearby is a young man, whom she bites at one point. In a house that has charms hung at the windows, two young girls (Hasmin (played older by Alexa Ilacad) and Lea (played older by Michelle Vito)) have a box. Their father (Dan Fernandez) stops them from playing with it; it is a Santigwar box, containing weapons to fight evil.

hagridden

They have their evening meal but something is out there and we see something dropped into a pitcher of water to contaminate it. Mother, Siony (Mary Jean Lastimosa), drinks some water and starts to choke, and in a really interesting moment we see her in a mirror and it appears she is being ridden – tying somewhat into being hagridden. When she dies her face seems transformed, twisted – later we hear that she was a daughter of Nana Rosa but abandoned the clan when she fell in love with a human Santigwar and this killing is for revenge. Again later, we learn that after this dad packed the younger Lea off for her safety, whilst he and Hasmin sought to find and kill Nana Rosa.

Jay and Benny

Cut ten years forward and a group of lads are in a diner, they are Aldrin (Marlo Mortel), Carlo (Marco Gallo), Jay (Paulo Angeles) and Benny (Keann Johnson). They are waiting for Aldrin’s girlfriend Ara (Pam Gonzales) as they are going out to her family’s place in the country – though the studious Benny (well, he wears glasses) has to be persuaded to come. As they travel there, there is some not so gentle ribbing of Benny for being a virgin… strange that Ara is the one who brings it up in the first place…

Aubrey Miles as Ynes

So, as they drive they have a near-miss-collision with Hasmin and her dad, almost running them down (albeit unconvincingly) – the latter now seeming rather infirm and during the incident Hasmin picks up the scent of Ara, and later discovers that the region where Ara's family lives is desolate following an epidemic. At the house there is a sister and cousin, Melai (Michelle Liggayu) and Sabel (Emie Conjurado), as well as Ara’s mother Ynes (Aubrey Miles), who seems very interested in Benny – even cooking him a special part of the evening meal. Of course, there won’t be any Mrs Robinson action, as they need him to remain a virgin. But you can guess that the lady aswangs will split the guys up in a divide and conquer routine, keeping them busy until Nana Rosa decides its time for them to die…

Hasmin prepares her weapon

And here it goes wrong… beyond paper thin characterisation there just isn’t enough done with the hunting section. There is little atmosphere and, although there is a death, no real peril as we don’t overly care for the characters. As the aswang hunt the guys, Hasmin is hunting the aswang – she again pretended to be nearly run over (by the slowest moving vehicle ever) in order to warn Benny to leave – strangely he took no notice of her... I mean “leave this place” portents whispered by a strange girl you’ve nearly run over twice in the day surely must hold gravitas?

transformed

The aswang, when transformed, have weak eyesight but strong senses of smell and hearing. Hasmin has a green water that masks someone’s scent and boils in the bottle when an aswang is near. She kills by knife (with another liquid poured on it, type unexplained) and, with her first kill, takes time to salt and burn the corpse – otherwise they can come back… This rule is not religiously followed thereafter, and I don’t know why, as Benny took the time to bury a friend whilst being hunted by a family of aswang.

aswang

This one suffers for the lack of character development, atmosphere and, quite frankly, balls out violence. It might have been a fair action/gore horror had the filmmakers gone that way – but they didn’t. I can’t help but feel that mum and dad’s origin story would have been a more interesting film also. The creature makeup is just that, makeup, and they look like unfrightening drooling things rather than creatures of terror. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

10/31 – review

Directors: Justin M. Seaman & Zane Hershberger

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

So, I stumbled over this one on YouTube (the Kings of Horror channel) and as far as I knew it was just a Halloween themed horror anthology (there is a horror host but she appears at the beginning and end only).

It just so happened that segment 1 contained a ‘world’ vampire type and segment 2 had a vampire (and an unusually situated one at that). They also happened to be two of the better segments. So, what are we waiting for, let’s look at them…

Tyler and Kevin

Segment 1 was directed by Justin M. Seaman and is called Old Hag. Now the hag (Jedediah Giacchino) is definitely seen as a vampire type (often crossing into witch/vampire) in the Circum-Caribbean and African diaspora but also appears within European folklores (and gave her name to the psychic vampirism of being hagridden). In this, when eventually described, there is a portrayal of her sitting on her victim’s chest and strangling them – tying into the Nightmare and folkloric vampirism.

Cindy Maples as Kathy

The segment sees us at a bed and breakfast on Halloween. Tyler (Nickolaus Joshua) and Kevin (Mitchell Musolino) are aspiring filmmakers who have answered a Craigslist ad to make an advert for the guest house. As requested, they have brought a proposed script and their equipment. Owner Kathy (Cindy Maples) suggests they film straight away – they can always stay over. As things go on Tyler keeps seeing the Hag, at first thinking her a guest. Kevin, dismissive, takes up the offer of the bed for a night.

chest sit

Kathy keeps on yawning through and one might suspect that she has been drained of energy. She admits that she never sleeps properly (bar one night of the year) and it is not a stretch to believe that the activity that prevents her sleep can be described as an energy vampire attack – as though she is the year-round sustenance and the boys are due to be gorged on. We do get a proper chest sit and throttle…

Jeff and Stephanie

Segment 2 was Zane Hershberger’s Trespassers. It starts with a couple, Jeff (Chad Bruns) and Stephanie (Sable Griedel), who leave a Halloween night film early because it was rubbish. He is new to the town and she still wants to be scared so she takes him to the old Martin place. This place, she tells him, was the land belonging to some gypsy people who were run off and the land bought out by a Mr Martin (Dave Joseph). However, a scarecrow (Jedediah Giacchino) appeared and Mr Martin went mad and killed his family.

the scarecrow

The abandoned house is still there but Stephanie wants to see the scarecrow. More, she wants to answer the mystery of what that scarecrow was and so cuts it down. Under the sackcloth, however, is a rotten face – a face that awakens and bites her neck… It then reforms into a horrific vampire form. But, you may ask, is it a vampire… beyond the neck bite and the fact that it seems to produce mist and is called vampire in the credits, Jeff works out that it was attached to a cross and that Mr Martin killed his family because they had been turned… but… it is still there of course, and Stephanie has been bitten…

vampire

These were great fun little shorts (and probably the best in the whole anthology). I liked the putting the vampire as a scarecrow thing, it was really fun and the denouement is satisfying. The photography was well done and all in all this had a lot going for it if you like your anthologies. The score is for the two vampire segments, which are unusual and deserve 6 out of 10. As I write you can find the film here.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Dead Awake

One form of vampire in the Caribbean and African diasporic folk traditions is the Old Hag. Her presence is part of a wider archetypal form as the hag appears through various traditions, sitting upon the chest of a paralysed sleeper, strangling them.

Whilst strangling might not sound that vampiric, the attack of the hag would seem to be an example of energy vampirism, draining the lifeforce of the victim, and the 18th Century vampire reports out of the Slavic areas actually made more play of strangulation than blood drinking (indeed it is arguable that the blood drinking was an addition to the reports in order to ‘explain’ the blood at the mouth of (and in the coffin of) suspected vampires when dug up for examination.

That being the case you might wonder why I am bothering was a ‘Vamp or Not?’ of Phillip Guzman’s 2016 film Dead Awake and not just classing it as a vampire film without investigation. Simply put it is because things are never that simple – though the film is about the Hag.

it's coming

It starts with mention of sleep paralysis and a fan beats as a door creaks open. Beth (Jocelin Donahue) lies paralysed before suddenly bolting upright. We then see her in a corridor, fearful of a door towards the end, she anxiously enters an apartment and is greeted by a surprise party. The apartment belongs to her boyfriend Evan (Jesse Bradford) and her twin sister Kate (also Jocelin Donahue) is at the party. We do get a potted history through the front end of the film. Kate is a lawyer, Beth is a recovering addict who now lives back with their parents.

Kate & Beth

There is a discussion about sleep as a friend, Linda (Brea Grant), is having night terrors and Beth mentions the paralysis and a presence of evil. She leaves the party upset. She goes to Kate during the day to tell her about the events and to explain that she is going to see a sleep specialist Dr. Sykes (Lori Petty). Kate goes with her and the Doctor suggests that sleep paralysis is quite common and in more extreme cases can cause hallucinations. Kate suggests Beth not fight it.

Kate becomes haunted

Kate awakens seeing through Beth’s eyes (a twin thing, I assumed) as the thing crawled over the bed towards her. She awakens panicked and calls home telling her father (James Eckhouse) to check on Beth. The twin has died in her sleep. At the subsequent funeral Kate is approached by a strange man, later revealed to be Dr. Hassan Davies (Jesse Borrego, From Dusk till Dawn the series). It is revealed that he was working with Beth (and because it didn’t seem to be helping she went to the more mainstream Dr Sykes).

painting of the hag

Essentially the hag starts haunting Kate, but then also Evan and Linda (who is killed by the hag). Hassan suggests that she is drawn to belief (so if you believe in the hag she finds you, Kate’s belief causing Linda and Evan to believe and be haunted). The hag seems to be able to construct dreams and pose as others within them (she lives in the space between dreams and awakening) and not fighting her was the exactly incorrect advice. Hassan has theories but no proven method of severing the connection between the hag and her victim.

strangulation 

We see the hag causing fear and we see her strangling her victims. What we don’t necessarily see is her feeding on their energy in any way. It is suggested that she tastes fear (but the phrase sounds more ornately descriptive than lore accurate). So, Vamp? She is the old hag, she is supernatural and she selects victims. We get no sense that she feeds from them – but neither is that denied – and she does strangle her paralysed victims – which is right for the hag and also the folkloric vampire. I am swinging towards ‘Vamp’ simply because the film does play within the hag’s folkloric boundaries. At the very least it is of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

Viy (2014) – review

Director: Oleg Stepchenko

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

I am a fan of the story Viy. The original short by Gogol has been filmed several times. Black Sunday is allegedly based on the story but the connection is very loose indeed. That said the film is definitely a vampire movie. The 1967 adaptation, Viy, eschews much of the vampiric aspect from the story but does include hagriding – a traditional form of psychic vampirism. It also has the central witch animate after death reminiscent of the Strigoï vii and mort. It would be remise not to mention Sveto Mesto, a fine adaptation in its own right.

fairytale feel

This version was actually slated for release in 2009 (along with another adaptation that seems to have been lost at the moment) to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol’s birth. It unfortunately seemed to vanish itself but I kept a weather eye out for it. Recently I discovered it had been released on Russian DVD – but without other language subtitles. Then I discovered it had also been released in Thailand. The Thai DVD has either English or Thai audio and subs – the English audio being partially dubbed as the film was produced in Russian and English.

caught in bed

Why partly in English? Because the film adds much to Gogol’s basic story and the film starts in England in 1701, where the Lord Dadli (Charles Dance, Underworld Awakening & Dracula Untold) is storming through his house accompanied by a group of servants. He approaches a certain room with stealth, so as to not to alert the occupants – his daughter (Anna Churina) who is in bed with Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Green makes a run for it whilst professing his love. He is a cartographer and will make his fortune, he suggests. He gets to his coach – a steampunk like coach drawn by horses but controlled from inside the cab and complete with road measuring wheel at the back.

sitting vigil

Cutting across Europe, we hear a voiceover tell us about the eyes of Viy, an eternal God. In a beautifully realised fairytale landscape we see maidens put wreaths with lighted candles into a lake, Tradition says if a man picks up a wreath he and the girl are destined to be together. Nastusya (Agnia Ditkovskite) walks from the lake calling for her friend Pannochka (Olga Zaytseva). Pannochka is lying deathlike in the water when she grabs her friend who falls in herself. Nastusya is saved by some half unseen beast like shape with seven horns. Pannochka’s father, Sotnik (Yuriy Tsurilo), comes to his daughter who dies in his arms but first says that a seminary student, Khoma (Aleksey Petrukhin), must read the three nights of prayer above her.

after the third night

Khoma is brought to Sotnik who offers him 1000 gold coins to perform the vigil. We see him taken to the church and become locked in but the next scene is actually the third night of vigil. He is singing prayers when he notices the coffin is empty. Flowers seem to fly and he draws a chalk circle around himself. The flowers seem to be caught in a vortex, flying around the circle and around the great crucifix. A spectral creature lunges towards Khoma. The scene is over in a flash and then we see the village priest, Otets Paisiy (Andrey Smolyakov), given Khoma’s fee to deliver. We see him above Khoma’s body, having dropped the coins, crying that the church is cursed. He has two Cossack brothers board the church up (though they steal the coins first) and one loses an eye after a fall from the roof when he tries to board-up a hole.

the seminary students

At this point I was a tad disappointed. Khoma’s story seemed to have been greatly curtailed – don’t worry though, his encounter with the hag and the first two nights of vigil are relayed later on in flashback. As Jonathan makes his way over Europe, sending letters back to his love, he has no idea she is pregnant. I was unsure about these cut scenes to his lover – they added little to the film. With supplies low, Jonathan picks up two seminary students, Gorobets (Anatoliy Gushchin) and Khalyava (Ivan Mokhovikov). They tell him how they and Khoma stayed at the watermill of the village and Khoma vanished.

hagridden

This leads us to them being allowed to stay by the old woman who lives in the mill and her sexual overtones towards Khoma. We actually see that her silhouette is that of a young woman… with a tail. She jumps on Khoma’s back and rides him through the night sky – in a reflection he sees that her face is that of Pannochka. This hadridding is the only overtly vampiric aspect to the film, the blood drinking that comes into the original story is lost and the Strigoï vii and mort like aspect is deliberately blurred (in a way that is too spoiler heavy to explain). It is telling that the stories round the hagridding and the first two nights are third hand, as Khoma is dead (or missing, according to his friends) - could they possibly be true?

Viy with eyelids lifted

The film plays with a theme of superstition and science but deliberately blurs the lines. The villagers are treated to a sign consisting of demonic visions but it is apparently the product of magic lantern technology (not too much is done with this, unfortunately). The English scientist is driven to the village when cadaverous wolves with glowing eyes that seem to be able to vanish into smoke chase him down. He uncovers a very earthly conspiracy but is driven to do so after visions where he sees Cossacks becme demons and then meets Viy himself. Viy is well done visually but the death that comes from his eyes (if his heavy, long eyelids are lifted) is reserved for the sinner and he is portrayed almost as a benevolent nature God who is pushing for justice.

groping blindly

The imagery through the film does work well. The first two nights of vigil are particularly well done. One has Pannochka blind, groping for Khoma as demonic roots and vines engulf the church interior. The second has a flying coffin that bleeds when struck with a hatchet. The story, however, is partially stifled by the new additions. I got the feeling of screenplay changes altering direction and leaving little reminders of previous drafts that were superfluous. That’s not to say that the story is bad (after all, the Gogol story is still central) and the changes that were made to the primary characters worked well enough – but it could have done with cleaning up.

flying

The dubbing was somewhat annoying – but unavoidable if I was going to see the film. Hopefully an original dialogue version with English subs will become available at some point. I liked the fact that the seminary students looked as though they had walked out of the 1967 version and I did enjoy the film (not as much as some other versions, but nevertheless). 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Sveto Mesto – review

Director: Djordje Kadijevic

Release Date: 1990

Contains spoilers

Sveto Mesto or a Holy Place is a flick I’ve had for a while but it was friend of the blog House of Karnstein who recently let me know that subtitles had appeared for the film. It is based on Gogol’s short story Viy and owes much, in some respects, to the wonderful 1967 film Viy.

For those who don’t know, the story had a definitive edge of vampirism to it. The films concentrate more on the witch aspects of the story. However we get psychic vampirism and what we see is the strigoï vii (or living witch/vampire) who becomes the strigoï mort (undead vampire) on death. I did a ‘Vamp or Not?’ on the 1967 film and all films based on the story – if accurate to that model – will be reviewed even if the vampirism is low key/well hidden. Note that this is going to be a spoiler heavy look at Sveto Mesto.

The film begins with three students walking down a road, looking for a cabin. They are lost and can hear wolves. As two forge ahead, Toma (Dragan Jovanovic), holds back. He sees a carriage coming down the road, apparently, at first, driverless he sees that there is a woman (Branka Pujic) inside. Toma chases after it and eventually meets his friends. He wonders how they were not killed by the hurtling carriage and they wonder what he has been drinking – they saw no carriage.

They reach a dilapidated shack and ask for shelter, explaining that they are student priests. The old woman within eventually allows them to stay but splits them up – Toma gets a shed. After seeing the empty carriage nearby, he has led down for the night when the old lady comes in. He thinks that she is after sex, a notion he quickly refuses given her age, and indeed finds himself thinking that again when she leaps, screeching, onto him. Until, that is, she grabs his mouth and hag-rides him. To be hag-ridden, attacked by a witch who uses you a steed, was thought the source of nightmares, sleep paralysis and a form of psychic vampirism.

Toma starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the holy words break her hold on him. They fall to the floor and he starts violently beating the witch. Suddenly he stops; she has transformed into a young woman – the woman from the carriage. She kisses him tenderly and he kisses her back, his kisses becoming more passionate and then, suddenly she appears dead. He runs and, by the morning, he is back at the seminary.

He is called to the headmaster, and bumps into his friends who laugh at him suggesting that he slept with the granny and then ran off – but he must have been good as she made them breakfast in the morning. The headmaster tells him that he has been summoned by Master Zupanski (Aleksandar Bercek) as his daughter is dying and Toma is to pray for her. Zupanski is a patron of the church and school and thus Toma has no choice. He is handed to Doros (Danilo Lazovic) and Spira (Rados Bajic), who are to take him to Zupanski – despite his protests.

When they arrive Katarina, Zupanski’s daughter, has died and Toma recognises her as the girl the witch became. This of course means that he is her killer, though no-one else is aware of that. Toma is to sit in the church for three nights praying for the girl as that was her request – she asked for Toma by name. It is round here that the film takes a slightly different route (rather than direction) to the 1967 Viy and in some ways it is closer to the original story.

The first night sees Toma alone in the church. He approaches the coffin and is looking at the girl when her eyes open. Falling back he draws a circle into the thick dust of the floor and the girl leaves her coffin. She circles him, walking the perimeter but not crossing the invisible barrier he has created. In the morning she is back in her coffin.

During the day – over the next two days – the locals tell stories of Katerina, of how she broke the dog trainer, Nikita (Predrag Miletic) so that he is a shell of a man and they openly refer to her as a witch. They do not, however, relate a story like the one in the Gogol original, which had her drinking blood. There is a story, however, of a cat with glowing eyes going to the maid Lenka (Maja Sabljic) and her stabbing its paw with scissors – Katarina having a wounded hand the next day. This is a little lycanthropy-esque as well as witchy but also we must remember that Carmilla would transform into a cat and thus the cat has a definite place in vampire mythology also.

There is something odd with regards the family. Not only does Katarina faint as she approaches the church (in one of the stories about her) but the father has had a nude painting of her commissioned (now unfinished). This gives a hint of incest and, incest, traditionally, might be a trigger for vampirism. The mother is dead and we get some snippets – the portrait of her is deliberately lingered on by the camera and later it is blank and the father sees his dead wife stood nearby. The peasants suggest that the mother wanders the fields howling like a wolf. This is not elaborated on further, though we do hear a wolf howling at night as well as in association with the ciarrage.

The point where I became somewhat disappointed with the film was within the ending. In the story (and the ’67 flick) the strigoï mort calls down all sorts of spirits and monsters on the third night of vigil. Not so in this. The girl marches upon Toma who falls into her empty coffin and then she kicks the living Hell out of his man bits. He passes out and awakens, as the funeral party enter the church, in the coffin with her corpse draped over him. The father assumes necrophilia and he is pulled from the church and killed. It just seemed, whilst it worked, much too mundane.

However the film does not end there and there is an entire coda section that brought the film full circle and which I won’t spoil but can say I rather enjoyed.

The film’s photography is odd. I rather enjoyed the look and feel of the film, but there is a thickness to it that makes one feel like you are watching a 1970s production rather than 1990s. It is, overall, a good production of Viy (other than the mundane climax).

All in all I want to hold this, score wise, at 7.5 out of 10. Well worth tracking down and watching but it suffers when held next to the 1967 movie, which is much more magical.

The imdb page is here.