Use of Tropes: bloodsucking darkness

Although this Junji Ito short, first published in 2002 and printed in the UK in the volume Smashed, is not a vampire story it does feature an incredibly clever (if strange) story and there is a blood element and vampire bats. There is enough, I think, to touch into genre tropes.

The story actually takes in eating disorders also, so please take note before reading. It follows Nami whose boyfriend breaks up with her, causing her to become obsessed with dieting and this leads her to become bulimic. The bulimia leads to her vomiting blood and she begins to dream of blood raining from the sky and a hand reaching for her. She wakes to find blood on the sheets, assuming she has vomited in her sleep.

After some time, a young man called Kazuya Tani tries to talk to her, expressing concern over her weight loss and offering to be a confidant, if that would help. She shrugs him off. When she meets him again, he looks gaunt and he suggests he has decided to diet for as long as she does. He then takes her to a shed as he has something to show her and it is full of vampire bats. One feeds from his hand and then goes towards her, spitting blood at her, as he admits he lied about the dieting.

detail

Vampire bats will regurgitate blood for hungry members of the colony and he has been feeding his blood to the bats and they have been visiting her when she sleeps, giving her his blood to try and sustain her. She vomits and runs and he chases after her, unfortunately he is hit by a train as he runs across a line, his body dismembered by the machine. The bats suck at his blood trying to reanimate his severed body.

Nami wakes in hospital and discovers she was bitten by the bats, though her parents are dismissive as vampire bats are not native to Japan. After they invade her room she goes searching, convinced that the authorities have not found all of Kazuya and she can hear his disembodied voice saying that there is not enough blood and asking for help. She finds his head and goes to pick it up when it turns into a bat and flies with the colony into the night, then a rain of blood, like she experienced in her dreams, pours down onto Nami.

As you can see there are definitely elements here that fit into the genre, the use of blood for health (whether it is sustaining Nami or not is unknown but the blood loss is certainly causing Kazuya’s health to diminish). The transformation into a bat is, of course, out of the vampire playbook – interesting that it is only his head, of course. This is wonderfully Junji Ito and a great little short.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Screech of the Decapitated

Directed by Michael Tarzian and released in 2005, Screech of the Decapitated is low budget buffoonery of the highest order that is deliberately so. Below grindhouse standard, it revels in the paucity of its effects and the campy knowingness of the deliberately pantomime acting. And, because it does all this, the film manages to raise itself up by its own bootstraps.

It follows showgirls Raquel (Brittany Petros) and Wanda (Shannon Noelle Garrigus), international showgirls, strippers (not that the film plays the nudity card, to be fair) and part-time jewel thieves and agents. They are in Buenos Aires (actually Burbank, but let’s not quibble), driving along and squabbling when they see a man on the side of the road with an axe. Convinced he might be the serial killer known as the Decapitator they stop the car to confront him – after all he is killing in alphabetical order and only up to “E”.

werewolf

The man seems to be in a trance but then suddenly drops to the floor, starts sprouting hair and then becomes a werewolf (and the werewolves are created by the sfx of plain old, cheap end rubber masks). It will transpire that the werewolves are clones created by the alien Nadir (Ed Flanagan, Way of the Vampire) and his concubine Queen Maquzita (Debbie Rochon). So werewolves, aliens… but where are the vampires you might ask.

old fanged ghoul

After escaping to a windmill and bashing the werewolf with an axe, the women find an old man in the building. Getting him to turn around he reveals fangs and so there are more whacks with the axe. Now he has yellow gunk for blood and is credited as Old Fanged Ghoul (Marvin Morgenstern) – but the lines between vampire and ghoul are blurry and he looks the part. Later they end up in a wrestling match with luchadors and one of them turns into a werewolf but the other turns into a bat – indeed there is also a bat attack when Raquel showers that is described as a vampire bat also.

vampire

The other appearance seems to be at the end when the women pick up a handsome hitchhiker, whose eyes glow red as he shows fangs. Enough, through this, to suggest that we have a fleeting visitation of a vampire or two and some definite crap bat moments. I said this was knowing and it was so knowing that it was just likable all the way through, the leads were incredibly natural and clearly in on the joke but it is probably consumed with a side of your favourite beverage and a group of mates.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: the Tom and Jerry Show: Vampire Mouse

In 2014 a new incarnation of Tom and Jerry was produced. I have read criticisms of both the animation style and the writing, though truth be told a new take of a classic was always going to attract detractors. That is not our concern on TMtV, rather we are interested in the appearance of a vampire in one of the episodes.

The episode in question was episode seven, directed by Darrell Van Citters, and featured two stories: Birds of a Feather and Vampire Mouse. Guess which story had the vampire in it!

vampire bat

It is an episode of all the standard Tom and Jerry shenanigans, set in a witch's cottage with Tom as the witch's cat and he starts the episode collecting a mouse's whisker for the transformation potion that the witches are brewing. Having annoyed the weird sisters, both Tom and Jerry end up on the cottage roof, re-entering through the attic. In the attic is a vampire bat.

the future's so bright...

Worried for his neck, and the blood within, Tom scurries from the bat. Jerry, amused by the reaction, breaks a comb to make fake fangs, dons a cape and daubs two red dots on his neck. He then chases Tom around the cottage until Tom meets a newt (as in eye of). The newt tells Tom how to deal with vampires; with sunlight, garlic or a stake through the heart. Tom uses a mirror to direct the new morning Sun, managing to dust several bats can happen to fly into the cottage at daybreak as well as destroy a witches broom and spell book.

Jerry the vampire

There is a gag around the garlic, and a fairly obvious gag in which Tom produces a steak rather than a stake. Overall isn't a bad little cartoon, but it really isn't the classic days of Tom and Jerry. Nevertheless we have the vampire bat (and the further bats in the episode) plus Jerry acting as a vampire. The imdb page is here.

GeGeGe no Kitarō: The Vampire Elite – review

Director: unknown

First aired: 1996-98

Contains spoilers

Apologies that the details are all a bit vague for the director and the date of this episode of the GeGeGe no Kitarō series. This was definitely from the 4th iteration of the Kitarō anime – something you can tell as the main Kitarō (Yôko Matsuoka) character has brown rather than silver hair.

Kitarō is a Yōkai and the last living member of the Ghost Tribe – aside from his father, Medama-oyaji (Isamu Tanonaka), who has decayed so much that there is little more than an eyeball left. This episode features recurring character Nezumi Otoko (Shigeru Chiba), the rat man. Whilst Nexumi is primarily an ally to Kitarō he is more a force of chaos and may be involved in an enemy's scheme. He is known for his noisome farts.

illusion

The first thing to note about the episode is just how cool the opening music is, which is as well – given the musical aspect of the episode. A female professor leaves her college and is walking down the street when she hears a fabulous melody. Following it she sees a man playing guitar, a rose seems to float towards her but it is all hypnotic illusion and he is quickly upon her, sucking her blood. He is the vampire Elite.

Nezumi

There has been a rash of attacks on intelligent, beautiful women and Kitarō is contacted to protect a beautiful researcher. Unknown to him, however, Elite has contacted Nezumi and has offered the rat a million yen for his help. The house in which the researcher is working has shuttered windows. Elite won’t break them open (brute force is not his style) but she will not hear his guitar if they are shut. Nezumi farts into the air ducts, causing the researchers to open the windows in desperation. Elite plays his guitar and mesmerises the researcher.

bat platforms

Nezumi’s other job is to get something belonging to Kitarō, and in a struggle he grabs a handful of hair before Elite, Nezumi and the researcher are carried away on living platforms made out of bats. Oyaji suggests they do not go rushing in to Elite’s mansion without a plan and this involves getting garlic and a religious icon (a cross). Meanwhile Elite takes Kitarō’s hair and uses his tadpoles (no, I didn’t get that either) to weave them into a melody that will hypnotise Kitarō. As Nazumi has outlived his usefulness Elite betrays him.

Elite with Tina the bat

So, lore… Elite only drinks from young, beautiful and intelligent women. They must be intelligent so he is and they must be young so he remains so. Though I am sure unconnected, I was reminded of a rule from Varney the Vampire, “those who know about vampires say there are two sorts, one sort always attacks its own relations as were, and nobody else, and the other always selects the most charming young girls.”. The use of garlic and the cross proves useless, and Elite was seen in sunlight, he claims to be an elite type of vampire un-phased by such things (this is a departure from earlier versions of Elite, I understand). He only has to drain one more woman to become an ultimate vampire, this must be done under the red quarter moon on the Chiisuttar Festival (I have found no reference to this festival and thus assume it was misspelled in subtitles or made up).

Kitarō under hypnosis

Elite has bats to do his bidding but, primarily, he has a bat called Tina. He refers to her as his sister and the ritual should give her speech. Later Kitarō suggests that she would have become a vampire and, as we see her with another bat at the end of the episode, I have made the supposition that Elite was originally a bat and that he has reverted to that form. Elite – as I intimated earlier – does appear in other versions of Kitarō and the 2008 anime had a character called vampire Johnny. When it comes to a score it is difficult in isolation from the resst of the series but I did enjoy this, 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Tales from the Cryptkeeper – Vampire episodes – review

Director: Laura Shepherd

First aired: 1993-94

Contains spoilers

Tales from the Cryptkeeper was a cartoon series based on the live action Tales from the Crypt, aimed at a younger audience and hosted by the Cryptkeeper (John Kassir). We have previously looked at three of the live action episodes, Comes the Dawn, Cold War and the Reluctant Vampire, as well as the spin-off film Bordello of Blood.

beauty has no reflection

The reason I started looking at the series was due to the episode The Sleeping Beauty, as Alex left me a comment on my look at Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty to let me know that the ballet was not the first time the subject had been covered with a vampire twist. Truly there is very little new under the moon. I then decided to look at all the vampire related episodes – some about vampires and others where they appear in passing. All the episodes I am looking at come from the first two seasons, were found on YouTube and, if I have missed a pertinent episode, please let me know in the comments.

The house

The first season 1 episode was called While the Cat’s Away and featured brothers Dwight (Daniel DeSanto) and Stu (Noam Zylberman). They desperately want a new dirt bike and are going to ask their Dad (Don Dickinson) – who happens to be a travel agent – to buy them it. When they arrive the travel agency clearly isn’t doing too well but a customer phones asking for a no expense spared trip to Transylvania, the brothers leave the shop having heard his address.

vampire

Stu has decided to go to the house, whilst the owner is away, and steal something in order to pay for the bike. Younger Dwight is persuaded to go along with this. The derelict house is filled with secret passageways and monsters – including three identical looking vampires who play a very small part in the episode. There is some nice breaking of the fourth wall when they discover the treasure is the first edition of the Tales from the Cryptkeeper comic and it is their story.

chamber of horrors

The episode Works In Wax aired in 1993 and followed the adventures of Craig (Stuart Stone) a young boy whose favourite place is the wax museum. He is friends with the janitor William (George Buza) and the owner, Mr Rottmucker, lets him in for free. On this occasion, however, he is charged entry but he pays and goes to his favourite exhibit – the chamber of horrors with models of Count Dracula, the wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster.

Count Dracula

He discovers that Mr Rottmucker has died and the museum has been taken over by Mr Boswick (Cedric Smith), despite the fact that Craig knows that Rottmucker left the museum to William – but they do not know where the will is. Craig ends up falling into the three displays and being transported to a place where the tableaus are real. This kind of scenario (falling into a world represented by the waxwork) had previously been done in the film Waxwork.

vampire hunters

In this Craig falls into Count Dracula’s scene first and sees a bat fly towards a crypt pursued by vampire hunters. He follows and realises that the two hunters are going to stake the Count. He hides out of view and emulates various vampire voices to make it appear there are ten vampires in the crypt, gets the hunters to throw down their stake and steals it. The hunters rumble the ruse and chase but he throws the stake and the Count gets away as he lures the hunters in another direction. Having saved the Count he returns to the museum. The Count appears again at the end of the episode when all three monsters hunt down Mr Boswick.

bats in the woods

The episode the Sleeping Beauty first aired in 1993 and followed the misadventures of two twin (not identical) princely brothers; Melvin (John Stocker) who was somewhat nerdy and 10 seconds younger than his brother Prince Charming (Stephen Ouimette) – also known as Chuck – who rode on his steed Splendour – also known as Steve. The quest was to find Sleeping Beauty (Karen Bernstein).

beauty's true form

As they progressed through the haunted forest, Charming kind of slept his way through while Melvin was plagued by wolves, snakes and demon trees. The barrier of thorns seemed to part for Charming and the two brothers were left to explore the castle. Eventually they reach beauty and Charming kisses her (having once more checked his reflection, a perpetual habit). Chuck sees that she has no reflection and she shows her true face.

vampire horse

The castle is a ruse and all the other would-be-suitors, presumed killed in the forest, are vampires in the castle too. Now I don’t want to spoil how Melvin escapes the predicament but I will say that Charming and Splendour (or Chuck and Steve, if you prefer) do not get away scot-free as they end up contracting vampirism – a fate worse than death for Charming as he can no longer check his reflection. I mention this because of the relative scarcity of vampire horses.

in the movie

Fare Tonight was a season 1 episode that first aired in 1993. Now, at the head of it the Cryptkeeper, dressed as Sherlock Holmes, suggests that it is a detective story that involves a werewolf… he is wrong. The episode starts off black and white and we see a vampire. Two girls, Mildred (Marsha Moreau) and Camille (Valentina Cardinalli), are in the cinema watching a classic vampire movie. When a punk takes the mickey out of their screams they show (fake) fangs and scare him off.

Camille and Mildred

Camille believes in vampires but Mildred is sceptical. However, with fake fangs stuck to her braces, Mildred agrees to meet Camille in a diner in a rotten part of town that night – the indication is that Camille has proof. In actual fact she has a newspaper with a story about odd goings on – which Camille puts down to a vampire. Friendly limo driver Eugene (Robert Bockstael) is going to borrow the paper but then gets a job. Camille, the next day, has built a vampire detector and the two girls go out to hunt the vampire. Their efforts, through the episode, are somewhat slapstick and Buster Keaton is mentioned.

stake \at the ready

When the detector shows a vampire nearby it appears that he is Eugene’s latest client and, worse, the client wants Eugene to drive him to Stoker street – a part of town with very little but disused warehouses. The girls jump onto their push-bikes ready to give chase and save Eugene… In this episode we get the use of garlic, the destructive power of sunlight, turning into a bat and turning into smoke or fog.

video game bats

When season 2 started the show added the Old Witch (Elizabeth Hanna) and the Vaultkeeper (David Hemblen) into the wraparound as the two characters tried to steal the show from the Cryptkeeper. The first episode was Game Over, which aired in 1994, and is a bit of a cheat as it didn’t have vampires in it as such.

vampire bats 

It followed the fortunes of Buddy (Zachary Bennett) and Vince (Miklos Perlus) who were two high school kids who would skip school to play video games – when we first see them they are playing the game Monster Blast. Now we get some bat graphics in the game and, when the game seems to become real and attack them, we see them attacked by vampire bats. Given the inclusion of werewolves and zombies I have assumed that they were vampires in bat form (we never see them in any other form) but we do also get a giant leech.

Mike and Ben

The final episode of Season 2 was a full on vampire episode called Transylvania Express in which two surfer dudes, Mike (Damon D'Oliveira) and Ben (Rob Stefaniuk), discover that their vacation is not to Australia but Austria. When they contemplate getting the Transylvania Express an old woman food seller throws stakes and garlic at them before scurrying off.

manbat

They try to buy tickets but the ticket seller (who later appears to be a conductor also) refuses them passage on the midnight train saying they must wait until morning. They decide to sneak on board, narrowly escaping a werewolf in the toilet and Frankenstein’s Monster but find an empty coffin in the cargo car. They immediately connect the coffin with a shapeshiting dude (or vampire), showing considerably more awareness than they do in the rest of the episode.

the vampires are coming

It transpires that are several vampires aboard and most of the episode is madcap chases up and down the train. Garlic, stakes and sunlight all come into it as do crap bats, manbats and general physical displacement. All in all it was a fun episode despite the two main characters being a low rent Bill and Ted.

The series was good fun and never took itself seriously. It was a lot milder than the more adult orientated live action series and involved a fair amount of slapstick. All in all the episodes together probably peak at 7 out of 10.

The series imdb page is here.

Macskafogó – review

Director: Béla Ternovszky

Release date: 1986

Contains spoilers

I was led towards Macskafogó by Alex, but it has taken me a while to get around to it – which is a shame because it was a good fun animation.

Called Cat City when it was released in the states, Macskafogó actually translates into Cat Catcher. The version I watched (in parts on YouTube) was the Hungarian release that had been subtitled by a kind fan. I understand that there are a lot of language jokes in the film that will mean little unless you speak Hungarian. The US version changed the names of characters to avoid reference to the Eastern bloc and changed the musical moments.

vampire

It takes place in an alternate universe where, 80 years after Mickey Mouse, the cat crime syndicates are trying to wipe out the mouse population. A mouse scientist has developed a super weapon and mouse agent Grabovszky (László Sinkó) is sent to retrieve the plans for the weapon. The first vampire reference we get is in a musical number set to a promotional video that introduces the Four Gangsters – a gang of rats who are sent after Grabovszky. One of them takes the form of a vampire during the sequence – it lasts for about 2 seconds.

The bat closes in

Just barely a Honourable Mention then until we follow the intermouse Agent Lazy Dick (István Mikó), a fat, trumpet playing mouse who was sent very publically by a different route to act as a decoy. The plane he was on has crashed in the jungles and Dick ends up stuck up a tree to avoid a crocodile. He is sleeping as we see a bat like shape and he is plucked from the air by a vampire bat. The bat carries Dick off to the Mayan style pyramid where his colony live.

vampire leader

But what bats; as well as having side fangs like a typical genre vampire these are Mexican bats. Their wings are ponchos and most of them wear sombreros and they are essentially blood sucking banditos. The leader of the vampire bats tells Dick that they aren’t going to devour him, just suck all his blood, but then lets him play his trumpet one last time as the last request of the condemned mouse. The bats are taken by the music and begin to join in. By the end of the song the leader has decided that they can’t kill Lazy Dick.

the band Vampiros

Now I think we’d still be on an Honourable Mention but the bats come into it again, at the end of the movie, actually saving the day – and at this point they become integral to the film. We even see them form a band with Dick (who reveals he now has fangs). The film was fun but I can’t agree with the IMDb pundits who suggest it is the greatest animation ever – of course I am missing a big part of the joke by not speaking Hungarian. Even so this probably deserves a nice, solid 6 out of 10. Worth tracking down and worth watching subtitled if you can.

The imdb page is here.