Bloodlust is one of the few Australian vampire films we have watched, so we'd like to be able to recommend it. But we can't, because it is dreadful. So bad that it almost makes it into the Sandpaper Your Eyeballs, or ... category.
It contains some of the worst acting we have seen and the worst fake-American accents we have heard; and the appalling acting is made even worse by an awful script. Then there is the obviously very low-budget production values. If it wasn’t for Thirst (1979) this film would be enough to turn us off Australian vampire films forever.
We have endured already, and to some extent enjoyed, quite low-budget films like Mrs. Amworth (2006) and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001). But these films are engaging while Blood Lust just falls flat on its fangs.
Part of what makes the film so unenjoyable to watch is the systematic misogyny of the men in the film: the cops, the gangsters, the rapist petrol-bowser boy! The good news is that they do all meet very bad ends: divine justice is served, but the justice is neither adequately detailed or gruesome for us—or in true rape/revenge form—to be truly satisfied.
The general plot is that three vampire buddies, two chicks and a guy, are bored with living in Melbourne, so they decide to leave. Before going they plan an all-guns-blazing heist of the local illegal casino. Having got away with the money they are relentlessly pursed by the gangsters, two cops (who single-handily make this film the dross it is!) and a mad priest and his minions wielding stakes and crosses.
The film does have some interesting features. The curvaceous blonde vamp ("Frank," played by Kelly Chapman), for one, whose acting is almost as good as her latex costume, despite the awful script. And the rampaging mad priest ("Brother Bem," played by Phil Motherwell) is also quite disturbing, and convincing in his frenzied way.
The treatment of vampire conventions in this otherwise worthless film is mildly interesting. Vamps have no thrall or super strength and, it seems, no wealth. They fight with guns, and they steal money when they need it. More commonly vamps either don’t have to fight, because they have minions do it for them, or they have such wonderful magical/supernatural abilities that they simply crush/destroy their human opponents. Also, vamps are either very rich or seemingly unconcerned about such mundane matters as money. Here, they steal guns, money etc., just like poor, petty criminals.
Fangs are also absent from this vamps, although this not so uncommon for the genre. And crosses and sunlight don't seem to be a problem either for these inner-city dwelling fang-masters.
A review of this film, and screen caps, appears on Taleisin's Vamp Movie Reviews. Taleisin rated it 2.5 out of 10. Seems generous to us.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Blood & Roses, 1960 [77 minute version]
We did a post on Blood & Roses aka Et mourir de plaisir (1960) over a year ago. At the time we said
the only version of the film available today is a DVD rip of a 1990s VHS tape, a tape that is of the mutilated US version of the film. The original version was 87 minutes; but this was cut to 74 minutes by Paramount for the US market by chopping out all of the naughty lesbian scenes and adding a Blade Runner-esque voiceover at the start to explain the story. In the version we watched, the colours were washed out and the image and the sound were ‘soft’, but the film was still brilliant!
Well, last week we received an "upgrade" from VideoScreams: a 77 minute version, in French with English subtitles, in letterbox. It is a cleaner print, with a different start and finish, and includes scenes that are missing from the 74 minute version (it also cuts some scenes that are included at length in the 74 minute version). By my calculation it includes about 9 minutes of footage missing from the 74 minute cut and duplicates another 2 mins of footage using a different voice-over. If the two films were spliced together I think there would be a total between them of ca. 83 minutes. If I had the first idea about video-editing I'd do this immediately!
This new material is very exciting, especially for a film I still consider a "wonderful film, surely one of the best vampire films ever." But it does suggest that the 15 minutes of "naughty lesbian scenes" is a myth, as I'll explain.
As, I assume, I am not the only person interested in this film, I thought I'd give a summary of the differences between the two versions. I will refer to each version as A (74 min) & B (77 min).
Version A starts (after the credits) with a voiceover by Carmilla during which we see a plane take off (from inside the cockpit) and a plane cruising in the sky. The film cuts straight from these scenes (2.00–3.50 min) to a get-together at which a pyrotechnician elaborates on his plan for a fireworks display around some ruins (which turn out to contain the grave of Millarca).
Version B starts with the same cockpit footage, but we then see inside the plane and are introduced to the Doctor (who plays a minor role in the story). The doctor starts telling a story to a group of friends about Carmilla (2.00–3.45 min) and his voice-over fades away as we see four scenes missing from Version A. These are
[1] one of two girls strays into a graveyard to retrieve a ball and is warned by the other that she will get bitten by a vampire (3.45–4.20 min);
[2] the pyrotechnician taking sightings of the property in a car (4.20–4.45 min);
[3] Carmilla & Georgia riding a horse together, laughing (4.45–5.45 min);
[4] the two girls saying their prayers but, simultaneously, threatening each other. Vampires are again mentioned (5.45–6.45 min).
After the opening there are five more places where there is more footage or extra scenes. Some of the cuts of other scenes may be longer too, but I haven't done a side-by-side comparison of the two versions.* Anyway, these five extra scenes I noticed in Version B are:
[5] a thirty-second scene of Carmilla and the maid laughing together (32.00–32.30min);
[6] a minute of extra footage in the scene where Carmilla chases the maid (before killing her) (46.40–47.40 min);
[7] a minute of extra footage in the scene where Carmilla and Georgia are in the glasshouse, talking, during the storm;
[8] a thirty-second scene of Georgia's father arriving, prior to his conversation with Leopoldo about the timing and location of the wedding (65.30–66.00 min);
[9] at least thirty-seconds extra in short bits added to many cuts in the frantic scenes that follow Carmilla fleeing the house (and before her death) (71.30–72.30 min);
Missing from Version B is most of the scene in which Leopoldo and Georgia's father discuss the timing and location of the wedding; and most of the wacky Carmilla/Georgie dream-sequence.
Readers of this blog who are familiar with the film will realise, looking at the above, that the ca. 83 minutes now known to exist do not leave much space for the mythical "naughty lesbian scenes": none of the Carmilla/Georgie interactions really have much scope for grill-on-grill action, and new extra minute recovered of the glass-house scene increases the tension, not the eroticism of the only scene in which they kiss.
The extra scenes do make for a better film: the scene in which Carmilla chases down the maid is much more eerie and disturbing the more you see of it, and with more of their previous interactions.
But the biggest difference between the two versions is the result of one film being Carmilla's/Millarca's story and the other being the doctors. Carmilla's/Millarca's version (Version A) is definitely better; the extra exposition in Version B removes much of the mystery of the story, which is so much a part of the appeal of the film.
So, if I can get someone to edit a version for me, I'll be keeping the Version A intro!
*There is, for instance, about one extra second in the scene where Carmilla, having caught sight of blood over her heart in a mirror and having run from Leopoldo to her room, tears open her dress to see where the blood is coming from. In Version B the extra second allows the viewer to see one blood-smeared breast long enough to recognise it as such before Carmilla collapses in horror at what she has discovered. Version A cuts this second of footage: you see Carmilla tear at her dress and then collapse (and it is never really clear why). This is a particularly notable second of footage; there may be more that made less of an impact.
the only version of the film available today is a DVD rip of a 1990s VHS tape, a tape that is of the mutilated US version of the film. The original version was 87 minutes; but this was cut to 74 minutes by Paramount for the US market by chopping out all of the naughty lesbian scenes and adding a Blade Runner-esque voiceover at the start to explain the story. In the version we watched, the colours were washed out and the image and the sound were ‘soft’, but the film was still brilliant!
Well, last week we received an "upgrade" from VideoScreams: a 77 minute version, in French with English subtitles, in letterbox. It is a cleaner print, with a different start and finish, and includes scenes that are missing from the 74 minute version (it also cuts some scenes that are included at length in the 74 minute version). By my calculation it includes about 9 minutes of footage missing from the 74 minute cut and duplicates another 2 mins of footage using a different voice-over. If the two films were spliced together I think there would be a total between them of ca. 83 minutes. If I had the first idea about video-editing I'd do this immediately!
This new material is very exciting, especially for a film I still consider a "wonderful film, surely one of the best vampire films ever." But it does suggest that the 15 minutes of "naughty lesbian scenes" is a myth, as I'll explain.
As, I assume, I am not the only person interested in this film, I thought I'd give a summary of the differences between the two versions. I will refer to each version as A (74 min) & B (77 min).
Version A starts (after the credits) with a voiceover by Carmilla during which we see a plane take off (from inside the cockpit) and a plane cruising in the sky. The film cuts straight from these scenes (2.00–3.50 min) to a get-together at which a pyrotechnician elaborates on his plan for a fireworks display around some ruins (which turn out to contain the grave of Millarca).
Version B starts with the same cockpit footage, but we then see inside the plane and are introduced to the Doctor (who plays a minor role in the story). The doctor starts telling a story to a group of friends about Carmilla (2.00–3.45 min) and his voice-over fades away as we see four scenes missing from Version A. These are
[1] one of two girls strays into a graveyard to retrieve a ball and is warned by the other that she will get bitten by a vampire (3.45–4.20 min);
[2] the pyrotechnician taking sightings of the property in a car (4.20–4.45 min);
[3] Carmilla & Georgia riding a horse together, laughing (4.45–5.45 min);
[4] the two girls saying their prayers but, simultaneously, threatening each other. Vampires are again mentioned (5.45–6.45 min).
After the opening there are five more places where there is more footage or extra scenes. Some of the cuts of other scenes may be longer too, but I haven't done a side-by-side comparison of the two versions.* Anyway, these five extra scenes I noticed in Version B are:
[5] a thirty-second scene of Carmilla and the maid laughing together (32.00–32.30min);
[6] a minute of extra footage in the scene where Carmilla chases the maid (before killing her) (46.40–47.40 min);
[7] a minute of extra footage in the scene where Carmilla and Georgia are in the glasshouse, talking, during the storm;
[8] a thirty-second scene of Georgia's father arriving, prior to his conversation with Leopoldo about the timing and location of the wedding (65.30–66.00 min);
[9] at least thirty-seconds extra in short bits added to many cuts in the frantic scenes that follow Carmilla fleeing the house (and before her death) (71.30–72.30 min);
Missing from Version B is most of the scene in which Leopoldo and Georgia's father discuss the timing and location of the wedding; and most of the wacky Carmilla/Georgie dream-sequence.
Readers of this blog who are familiar with the film will realise, looking at the above, that the ca. 83 minutes now known to exist do not leave much space for the mythical "naughty lesbian scenes": none of the Carmilla/Georgie interactions really have much scope for grill-on-grill action, and new extra minute recovered of the glass-house scene increases the tension, not the eroticism of the only scene in which they kiss.
The extra scenes do make for a better film: the scene in which Carmilla chases down the maid is much more eerie and disturbing the more you see of it, and with more of their previous interactions.
But the biggest difference between the two versions is the result of one film being Carmilla's/Millarca's story and the other being the doctors. Carmilla's/Millarca's version (Version A) is definitely better; the extra exposition in Version B removes much of the mystery of the story, which is so much a part of the appeal of the film.
So, if I can get someone to edit a version for me, I'll be keeping the Version A intro!
*There is, for instance, about one extra second in the scene where Carmilla, having caught sight of blood over her heart in a mirror and having run from Leopoldo to her room, tears open her dress to see where the blood is coming from. In Version B the extra second allows the viewer to see one blood-smeared breast long enough to recognise it as such before Carmilla collapses in horror at what she has discovered. Version A cuts this second of footage: you see Carmilla tear at her dress and then collapse (and it is never really clear why). This is a particularly notable second of footage; there may be more that made less of an impact.
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Nocturna, 1979
What a lot of crap! This film goes straight onto our Sandpaper Your Eyeballs List.
This vampire-dancing-queen film is just like a porno. The structure is just the same, it has just as little dialogue and plot as a porn film, the music is also just as bad. The sex scene is so appalling that it makes a porno look good. Nocturna’s departure from the porno genre is the early adoption of sparkle vision (a precursor to Twilight perhaps?), a uniquely 80s-ish feature; think music clips of the likes of Bonny Tyler and Roxy Music with a constant stream of soft-focus back-lighting, sparkling, twirling girls, namely the shapely female vamp Nocturna played by Nai Bonet.
The IMDB reviews are far too generous. Perhaps these reviewers saw a different version of the film, because in the version we saw there was not much to recommend it. Perhaps the reviewers are into meaningless dialogue interspersed between endless footage of Nocturna, prancing around to an appalling and interminable soundtrack, while bathing, striding along corridors, walking the streets of Manhattan, basically every thing she does is gratuitous self-promotion for Nai Bonet. The vamp wrote the script (with Harry Wurtz) which propels this film into a whole new world of nasty. These coma-inducing scenes are cut with snippets of a blossoming romance with a blonde haired, snappy dancing, Aussie bloke, who also happens to be mortal; something her ancient grandfather disapproves of.
And this is the plot, such as it is. Vamp girl falls for musician boy, grandfather (Dracula of course) disapproves. Vamp and human elope to Manhattan, Drac goes in pursuit, but is pursued in turn by an old lover who convinces him, in the end, to leave the youngsters to have some fun. This being 1979 much of the action happens at the DISCO making it a kind of Vampire Saturday Night Fever.
There is only one interesting aspect of this film, an unexpected fairy-tale element that is totally unexplored here and not seen in any other vampire film that we can remember. Like the story of the Little Mermaid who gives up her fishiness for a mortal lover, Nocturna also undergoes changes to her supernatural qualities as a result of her love for the muso. During one of Nocturna’s many and endless porn-like dance scenes, she begins to appear in the mirrors around the dance floor. There is no way to tell whether the dancing or the love-affair-with-a-mortal is the active agent in this transformation. The film’s makers were so gormless they do nothing more with this really interesting plot twist and so the viewer will never know.
So, this might be an inoffensive little salute to the disco era, it might be kind of entertaining if you love disco culture, but there is one element to this film that all the reviews we have looked at have omitted mentioning. The creepy little man, played so convincingly by Theodore Gottlieb, who pursues Nocturna from the beginning of the film until she leaves for Manhattan, is truly horrifying.
During Noctura’s bath scene (it seems to be a large part of the appeal of this film) Theodore spits out a monologue about how wants to rape her, kidnap her and force her to stay with him in Transylvania and conspires with her grandfather to bring her back home. Nocturna deals with him like you might deal with an annoying child; she basically dismisses his attentions out of hand which only serves to fuel his rage, in much the same way that a disco enthusiast blogger does in his review of the soundtrack.
Seriously, this script was written by a woman, perhaps the 70s women’s movement hadn’t penetrated Nai’s part of the world 'cause this is really so distasteful that any fun that might be had with the disco camp is totally lost on this humorless woman M!
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Salem's Lot, 1979
Yep, Salem's Lot sounds like a witches-and-burning kind of film but no, it’s about vampires. A whole lot of them, as one big bad vamp takes a small town to hell.
The uber vamp is ugly as … well it would be best not to say, just ugly. He says nothing through the entire film, he just looks ugly and scary and very mean. He has an appetite for anything and everything, kiddies, old folks, pretty young things and of course the tastiest of them all, uuuummm, yummie man of the cloth…
The pace is swift and makes this epic TV series originally shown in two parts fly by, yeah three-something hours. There are even a couple of genuine “jump from your seat” moments and seriously it is hard to scare such seasoned viewers as P & M.
Convention would have it that most vamps want to remain anonymous, killing in secret for as long as they can before an angry mob runs them out of town. However, this vamp seems to want to make a real statement. “Hey, check me out,” “Lord of Darkness” scary and all.
His first victim, a little boy, is not killed outright and vamp’s henchman, Mr Straker, doesn’t seem to care about cleaning up after his master. So the bodies start piling up as the vamps go looking for tucker. It would seem this convention would have gotten in the way of telling a good story so the film makers just allowed for a blood bath. (I am not talking about the 1975 book on which it is based). This is not the only anomaly in this film.
While Salem’s Lot is not of the romantic or sympathetic vampire film type, it does aim to have it’s cake and eat it too. The romantic interest established early between the hero, Dan and local girl Susan, it used to justify a mystifying finish. All the local town folk who are turned into vampires show the same symptoms; they become animalistic grunting and hissing instead of speaking, display a blue-greenish tinge to the skin and a great set of fangs, as well as cat-like glow in the dark eyes.
But the sweet girl linked romantically to the hero doesn’t turn green and nasty; in fact she remains beautiful appearing well dressed and groomed, to seduce the hero in climax of the film. She whispers promises of eternal love and youth. He leans in for a snog and she fangs, snarling with her eyes alight with a supernatural glow. The hero is ready for this moment and stakes her. (Just like the tortured love affair between Lucy Westenra and Arthur Holmwood in Dracula.)
The uber vamp is ugly as … well it would be best not to say, just ugly. He says nothing through the entire film, he just looks ugly and scary and very mean. He has an appetite for anything and everything, kiddies, old folks, pretty young things and of course the tastiest of them all, uuuummm, yummie man of the cloth…
The pace is swift and makes this epic TV series originally shown in two parts fly by, yeah three-something hours. There are even a couple of genuine “jump from your seat” moments and seriously it is hard to scare such seasoned viewers as P & M.
Convention would have it that most vamps want to remain anonymous, killing in secret for as long as they can before an angry mob runs them out of town. However, this vamp seems to want to make a real statement. “Hey, check me out,” “Lord of Darkness” scary and all.
His first victim, a little boy, is not killed outright and vamp’s henchman, Mr Straker, doesn’t seem to care about cleaning up after his master. So the bodies start piling up as the vamps go looking for tucker. It would seem this convention would have gotten in the way of telling a good story so the film makers just allowed for a blood bath. (I am not talking about the 1975 book on which it is based). This is not the only anomaly in this film.
While Salem’s Lot is not of the romantic or sympathetic vampire film type, it does aim to have it’s cake and eat it too. The romantic interest established early between the hero, Dan and local girl Susan, it used to justify a mystifying finish. All the local town folk who are turned into vampires show the same symptoms; they become animalistic grunting and hissing instead of speaking, display a blue-greenish tinge to the skin and a great set of fangs, as well as cat-like glow in the dark eyes.
But the sweet girl linked romantically to the hero doesn’t turn green and nasty; in fact she remains beautiful appearing well dressed and groomed, to seduce the hero in climax of the film. She whispers promises of eternal love and youth. He leans in for a snog and she fangs, snarling with her eyes alight with a supernatural glow. The hero is ready for this moment and stakes her. (Just like the tortured love affair between Lucy Westenra and Arthur Holmwood in Dracula.)
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
The Devil’s Mistress, 1966
Four Cowboys, a preacher and a beautiful girl—what could possibly go wrong? Try five murders and one rape.
The Creature Features Movie Guide (1981) slams The Devil’s Mistress as “hackneyed,” but we are inclined to disagree with John Stanley. So either the crappy 80s film we watched the night before has warped our little brains or simply alerted us what real shit looks like. Either way, we liked this twisted little cowboy tale.
Cue cowboys on a dusty desert trail and the smell of horse sweat. Two of our posse are repulsive right from the get go (Joe and Charlie), one is young and naive (Frank), and the forth—the enigmatic leader of the group (Will)—is tough and complex but seemingly a good guy deep down.
The cowboys are on the run. They come across an isolated cabin in the desert and are invited in for a meal by a preacher man (Jeroboam) and his mute wife (Athaliah/Leah).
Instantly, we know the wife is in danger from the two cowboys who have earlier made it clear they are violent and indiscriminate rapists. The enigmatic leader is suspicious of the preacher and his wife and orders his men to leave. While he and the younger one ride off, the remaining two insist on a staying for a bit of fun: they kill the fearless preacher man then rape and kidnap his wife. The cowboys then regroup.
While M wants this to be a rape-revenge film it is not so easy to classify. While the mute girl is an active party in the deaths of each of the cowboys, she is “the devil’s mistress.” It would appear, therefore, that she is acting on behalf of the devil or at the instigation of the devil. The killings are not clearly motivated by her desire for revenge, a fundamental requirement of a rape-revenge fantasy—although she does seem to enjoy her part. (Whether the preacher man is the Devil himself is also not clear. He says he left Salem with Leah "to escape religious persecution," but he reappears after he has been killed and tossed down a well.)
In fact, Leah’s rape seems to be a deliberate plan by the devil to place temptation before the two cowboys—who have been fantasising and joking about raping and killing a "squaw”—and therefore justifying his punishment of them. This is a perfectly orthodox representation of the Devil, theologically speaking, since it is his function to offer temptation to mortals to test their moral fortitude. If you fail, if the Devil succeeds in tempting you into sin, then God lets the Devil do as he pleases with you and your imortal soul. And the Devil, knowing that these two scumbags would not be able to resist an unarmed man and mute woman, despite the fact that he has just offered them hospitality by feeding them, sets the perfect trap for them. (The enigmatic leader senses the trap, and decamps for this reason.)
As for the revenge: Leah kills two of the cowboys in a particularly interesting way (the other two die by snake-bite and hanging). She seems to have the power to drain the life-energy out of her victims by kissing them anywhere on the body: lips, neck, wrists, any exposed skin. The first time we see Leah in action is when she kisses one of the men who had raped her. She seems to take great pleasure in this embrace, which is highly suspicious. When her victim is immediately affected by the embrace, then weakens and dies, we realise why she was so keen to kiss him.
Stanley describes Leah as a “female vampire” but she has no pointed teeth, she does not bite anyone, there is no blood of any description, and no fancy special effects to explain what she is doing. The draining of life-energy is very similar to the form of vampirism that appears in Lifeforce (1985), but the victims of the “space vampires” in this film (Colin Wilson’s novel—which the film is based on—is called The Space Vampires) draw sparks and ghostly spirits from the mouths of their victims, and the victims are left as withered and desicated as Egyptian mummies. Here, she kisses them, and they just weaken in her embrace.
For a simple film this works really well. The cast is tiny (only six people) and amateurs (five of them appear in no other film on imdb), and the cowboys are stereotypes, but they are wonderfully realised. And, given the way in which the four cowboys have been differentiated (morally), it remains unclear right up until the end what will be their individual fates. Also, although Joan Stapleton may be no Mathilda May (the female lead in Lifeforce) her Barbara Steele-looks are perfect for the film and the scenery is just beautiful.
The Devil’s Mistress breaks conventions of the vampire genre but sticks faithfully to Christian theology. And, although not strictly a rape-revenge film, it skates close to the real deal, offering enormous satisfaction for the female viewer despite Leah’s part as merely the agent of the devil rather than being the devil herself.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Grave of the Vampire, 1974
This low-budget film is actually pretty good and offers a number of interesting twists to the usual vampire story.
First, if biting in vampire films is a metaphor for sex, and the thrall is a way of subduing the female victims into enjoying it, then all biting in vampire films is actually a metaphor for rape (it is non-consensual "sex"). Most vampire films reinforce the bite=sex metaphor by making the vampires incapable of physical sex or of procreation through traditional methods (ie sperm and egg): they reproduce through biting.
This film is unusual, therefore, in that the vampire is a rapist—both when he was alive, and now that he is dead—and can reproduce sexually. Not surprisingly, therefore, he is impotent when it comes to producing more vamps through biting. It is suggested he is capable of producing more undead but, he refuses the one opportunity offered to him and all his victims of the bite die or are already dead.
Second. the story line is essentially a rape-revenge. The central character, a young man named James Eastman, is a half-human vampire. He is the offspring of a vampire who raped James’s mother and killed her fiancé. (This is only the third film of 170 we have viewed with a vampire child conceived sexually; vampire children are also fairly uncommon.)
It is not clear if James himself has taken to biting human victims but his mother fed him on her own blood as an infant. There is also a hint of bloodlust when James caresses the neck of his lover, but he shows no sign of giving to temptation. It is not until the end of the film, when he has fulfilled his Oedipal destiny by killing his vampire-father, that James's latent vampire fangs emerge and he screams wildly to his lover, Anne, to run away.
There is a really interesting moment in the film which combines these two main elements (the collapsed bite/rape metaphor and the rape-revenge film conventions). When the vamp goes to the library (yeah I know, but I am not kidding) he is told that the book that he wants cannot be borrowed so he tries to cast a thrall over the librarian. The librarian seems to be under his influence and unleashes a gorgeous mop of red hair which she brushes and fluffs.
The preening seems to have sexual overtones and of course the vamp and the viewer believe the power of the thrall has worked. But the librarian still refuses his request for the book and asks him to leave when he repeats his request. His reaction is rapist psychology 101: he becomes enraged, blames the librarian for leading him on, only to turn into a cold bitch and refuse him the book/a bite/sex. So he kills her on the spot. The whole scene is quite unsettling.
There a few other genuine shocks along the way. The cop who is tracking our rapist vamp—and who features for most of the first forty minutes of the film—confronts him by his graveside. Since he is the only person who knows what might be going on the viewer expects him to continue to play a prominent role, but in the confrontation the vamp crushes his head with the heavy stone lid to a coffin! Eew.
The acting for the most part is actually pretty good, the human-vamp character, James, is really well acted and developed. Understated, a little strange, though enigmatic and attractive like all good vamps should be. So despite the absence of castles, diaphanous gowns, angry mobs or hunch-back assistants we both liked this film.
First, if biting in vampire films is a metaphor for sex, and the thrall is a way of subduing the female victims into enjoying it, then all biting in vampire films is actually a metaphor for rape (it is non-consensual "sex"). Most vampire films reinforce the bite=sex metaphor by making the vampires incapable of physical sex or of procreation through traditional methods (ie sperm and egg): they reproduce through biting.
This film is unusual, therefore, in that the vampire is a rapist—both when he was alive, and now that he is dead—and can reproduce sexually. Not surprisingly, therefore, he is impotent when it comes to producing more vamps through biting. It is suggested he is capable of producing more undead but, he refuses the one opportunity offered to him and all his victims of the bite die or are already dead.
Second. the story line is essentially a rape-revenge. The central character, a young man named James Eastman, is a half-human vampire. He is the offspring of a vampire who raped James’s mother and killed her fiancé. (This is only the third film of 170 we have viewed with a vampire child conceived sexually; vampire children are also fairly uncommon.)
It is not clear if James himself has taken to biting human victims but his mother fed him on her own blood as an infant. There is also a hint of bloodlust when James caresses the neck of his lover, but he shows no sign of giving to temptation. It is not until the end of the film, when he has fulfilled his Oedipal destiny by killing his vampire-father, that James's latent vampire fangs emerge and he screams wildly to his lover, Anne, to run away.
There is a really interesting moment in the film which combines these two main elements (the collapsed bite/rape metaphor and the rape-revenge film conventions). When the vamp goes to the library (yeah I know, but I am not kidding) he is told that the book that he wants cannot be borrowed so he tries to cast a thrall over the librarian. The librarian seems to be under his influence and unleashes a gorgeous mop of red hair which she brushes and fluffs.
The preening seems to have sexual overtones and of course the vamp and the viewer believe the power of the thrall has worked. But the librarian still refuses his request for the book and asks him to leave when he repeats his request. His reaction is rapist psychology 101: he becomes enraged, blames the librarian for leading him on, only to turn into a cold bitch and refuse him the book/a bite/sex. So he kills her on the spot. The whole scene is quite unsettling.
There a few other genuine shocks along the way. The cop who is tracking our rapist vamp—and who features for most of the first forty minutes of the film—confronts him by his graveside. Since he is the only person who knows what might be going on the viewer expects him to continue to play a prominent role, but in the confrontation the vamp crushes his head with the heavy stone lid to a coffin! Eew.
The acting for the most part is actually pretty good, the human-vamp character, James, is really well acted and developed. Understated, a little strange, though enigmatic and attractive like all good vamps should be. So despite the absence of castles, diaphanous gowns, angry mobs or hunch-back assistants we both liked this film.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Santo and Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolf Man, 1973
M. didn't like Santo y Blue Demon contra Drácula y el Hombre Lobo. At all. Except the wrestling scenes. She did like them. A lot.
P. did like the film. Handsome Count, sexy vamps, diaphanous gowns, sixties/seventies sets (including cool dresses, cars and phones), caves, and to cap it off two masked wrestlers, wearing cardigans (not ironically—but who'd ask them?) throughout the whole film. Niiiccceee. It could only be improved by gratuitous nudity. But you can't have everything.
P. did like the film. Handsome Count, sexy vamps, diaphanous gowns, sixties/seventies sets (including cool dresses, cars and phones), caves, and to cap it off two masked wrestlers, wearing cardigans (not ironically—but who'd ask them?) throughout the whole film. Niiiccceee. It could only be improved by gratuitous nudity. But you can't have everything.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Sandpaper Your Eyeballs, or ...
watch one of these Vampire films:
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952)
The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Satan’s Black Wedding (1975)
Vampire Hookers (1978)
Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula (1979)
Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (1980)
(It will have much the same effect.)
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952)
The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Satan’s Black Wedding (1975)
Vampire Hookers (1978)
Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula (1979)
Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (1980)
(It will have much the same effect.)
Sunday, 6 September 2009
An Ur-film Among the Living Dead
P. has spent half a life-time trying to find one vampire film, or rather to re-find it. In this post he explains why.
If you asked me about it last week, I would have said that I must have first seen my long-lost vampire film late one night in the early eighties. It was the sort of wonderful, crazy film I watched a lot of at the time, and was just the sort of film that might have been shown as part of a Jess Franco double feature with Vampiros Lesbos (1971).
I will call this film of my memory, my ur-film, though it wasn’t the first vampire film I watched by a very long shot. But it was the film that, even twenty years later, kept me ordering and watching one crazy seventies vampire film after another, searching. Now I think I have found my lost film: A Vampire Among the Living Dead (1971).
For the last five years at least, since I started collecting vampire films and systematically re-watching them, I have often wondered which weird film it was that started … well, as this film starts … and which had lots of scenes set in an overgrown and run-down old garden, with a lake … as this film does … but I managed to conflate these scenes in my memory with chunks of other strange European vampire films from the early seventies, so that lots of the films that I bought and watched seemed close to my ur-film, but none quite matched everything I remembered.
I realise now that my ur-film—the great Franco film of my memory—was probably a conflation of a number of weird and wonderful scenes from films by Franco and Jean Rollin (and other similar films like The Devil’s Nightmare (1971), etc). As I watched more and more of these films, trying to find my ur-film, I would see scenes that were close to, or which matched part of, my lost film, but the match was never complete. And as my memory was vague, so I could never be sure whether the scenes were familiar because they were from the ur-film, or they were familiar because I had simply seen the films before. (Which, given the number of films I have watched, happens all the time).
Now that I have found the ur-film, or at least the film containing the scenes I remember most clearly from my ur-film, I realise that it is actually “missing” a whole host of scenes and it includes a host of scenes that I don’t recall at all.
Of course, Franco was forever chopping-up and re-releasing his films under a myriad of titles, so even if I had known the film-title at the outset there is no guarantee I would ever have found the late-night version I watched on TV in the eighties, because it may not have been available on DVD or DVD-R ripped from VHS or recorded from TV in some other place, at some other time. It is almost as if every showing of a Franco film is a unique event, never to be repeated, and can never be reconstructed.
So, it may have been that the ur-film of my memory was not a fabrication and a distortion of memory but a crystal-clear recollection of a version of A Virgin Among the Living Dead that really was pieced together from chunks of film from this and other Franco vampire films, and was shown only in Sydney in the early eighties.
Having read the entry for this film on INDB, and elsewhere, I think this is unlikely. More likely, I simply have gathered together in my mind a series of memorable scenes and, well, remembered them all as belonging to one film: my ur-film.
The other vampire films (the films that seemed a bit familiar at the time, but which were clearly not my ur-film) contained scenes that did match a part of my remembered ur-film, but which were missing other scenes that I remembered quite clearly. I dismissed them at the time, and as a consequence, despite the fact that I now want to re-watch them, I can’t recall them clearly enough now to identify them either! So my ur-film remains vague and elusive.
All is not lost however. I have my ur-film, or most of it, and since we intend to re-watch all of our vampire films again, in chronological order this time, I am bound to identify these other films soon enough. To tease your memories, and to help strengthen my own, I will jot down the scenes I am looking for here, as I remember them, then I will identify the films they come from as I watch them.
As we re-watch the 220 vampire films in our film library, I will also add the titles of the films, and describe the scenes I recognise from my ur-film, but which I failed to recall in advance and list below. Eventually, I will have a list of all of the scenes from my ur-film and we can see what sort of film they represent when gathered together!
Typically, right now I can only remember one scene. It is:
[1] A woman fleeing an attack, with a castle, falls into an enormous spider’s web, at the foot of a circular stair-well, and is attacked by a huge and very fake-looking spider.
If you asked me about it last week, I would have said that I must have first seen my long-lost vampire film late one night in the early eighties. It was the sort of wonderful, crazy film I watched a lot of at the time, and was just the sort of film that might have been shown as part of a Jess Franco double feature with Vampiros Lesbos (1971).
I will call this film of my memory, my ur-film, though it wasn’t the first vampire film I watched by a very long shot. But it was the film that, even twenty years later, kept me ordering and watching one crazy seventies vampire film after another, searching. Now I think I have found my lost film: A Vampire Among the Living Dead (1971).
For the last five years at least, since I started collecting vampire films and systematically re-watching them, I have often wondered which weird film it was that started … well, as this film starts … and which had lots of scenes set in an overgrown and run-down old garden, with a lake … as this film does … but I managed to conflate these scenes in my memory with chunks of other strange European vampire films from the early seventies, so that lots of the films that I bought and watched seemed close to my ur-film, but none quite matched everything I remembered.
I realise now that my ur-film—the great Franco film of my memory—was probably a conflation of a number of weird and wonderful scenes from films by Franco and Jean Rollin (and other similar films like The Devil’s Nightmare (1971), etc). As I watched more and more of these films, trying to find my ur-film, I would see scenes that were close to, or which matched part of, my lost film, but the match was never complete. And as my memory was vague, so I could never be sure whether the scenes were familiar because they were from the ur-film, or they were familiar because I had simply seen the films before. (Which, given the number of films I have watched, happens all the time).
Now that I have found the ur-film, or at least the film containing the scenes I remember most clearly from my ur-film, I realise that it is actually “missing” a whole host of scenes and it includes a host of scenes that I don’t recall at all.
Of course, Franco was forever chopping-up and re-releasing his films under a myriad of titles, so even if I had known the film-title at the outset there is no guarantee I would ever have found the late-night version I watched on TV in the eighties, because it may not have been available on DVD or DVD-R ripped from VHS or recorded from TV in some other place, at some other time. It is almost as if every showing of a Franco film is a unique event, never to be repeated, and can never be reconstructed.
So, it may have been that the ur-film of my memory was not a fabrication and a distortion of memory but a crystal-clear recollection of a version of A Virgin Among the Living Dead that really was pieced together from chunks of film from this and other Franco vampire films, and was shown only in Sydney in the early eighties.
Having read the entry for this film on INDB, and elsewhere, I think this is unlikely. More likely, I simply have gathered together in my mind a series of memorable scenes and, well, remembered them all as belonging to one film: my ur-film.
The other vampire films (the films that seemed a bit familiar at the time, but which were clearly not my ur-film) contained scenes that did match a part of my remembered ur-film, but which were missing other scenes that I remembered quite clearly. I dismissed them at the time, and as a consequence, despite the fact that I now want to re-watch them, I can’t recall them clearly enough now to identify them either! So my ur-film remains vague and elusive.
All is not lost however. I have my ur-film, or most of it, and since we intend to re-watch all of our vampire films again, in chronological order this time, I am bound to identify these other films soon enough. To tease your memories, and to help strengthen my own, I will jot down the scenes I am looking for here, as I remember them, then I will identify the films they come from as I watch them.
As we re-watch the 220 vampire films in our film library, I will also add the titles of the films, and describe the scenes I recognise from my ur-film, but which I failed to recall in advance and list below. Eventually, I will have a list of all of the scenes from my ur-film and we can see what sort of film they represent when gathered together!
Typically, right now I can only remember one scene. It is:
[1] A woman fleeing an attack, with a castle, falls into an enormous spider’s web, at the foot of a circular stair-well, and is attacked by a huge and very fake-looking spider.
The Bestest Female Vampires of All Time
After careful consideration and long deliberation we have decide that the most enigmatic beautiful screen vampires amongst the many we have seen are:
Annette Vadim as "Carmilla" in Blood and Roses (1960) [see our previous post here]
Ofelia Montesco as "Tandra, vampire priestess" in Santo vs. The Vampire Women (1962)
Pia Degermark as "Betty Williams"/"Clarimonde" in The Vampire Happening (1971) [see below]
Maribel Martín as "Susan" in The Blood Spattered Bride (1972) [see our previous post here]
Exactly what it is about these three women it is difficult to say, but the quality common to each of them is the heart-break you feel when the camera isn’t on them. We would both willing give up a pulsing artery for these vamps!
Annette Vadim as "Carmilla" in Blood and Roses (1960) [see our previous post here]
Ofelia Montesco as "Tandra, vampire priestess" in Santo vs. The Vampire Women (1962)
Pia Degermark as "Betty Williams"/"Clarimonde" in The Vampire Happening (1971) [see below]
Maribel Martín as "Susan" in The Blood Spattered Bride (1972) [see our previous post here]
Exactly what it is about these three women it is difficult to say, but the quality common to each of them is the heart-break you feel when the camera isn’t on them. We would both willing give up a pulsing artery for these vamps!
Trouble Every Day, 2001
P. chose this one based on the following blurb, “A wicked vampire killer woman has wild sex with her victims before she rips them apart for food.” That pretty well covers it, but M. thinks it is the male vampire who is the main monster.
The story isn’t told in conventional narrative style. There is almost no dialogue, which may explain the interesting visual aesthetic to the film and clever use of hints and suggestions. It does however leave a lot of room for speculation, which is fun, but leaves us dissatisfied.
Defining this film as part of the vampire genre isn’t easy. M. says cannibal/zombie, P. says vampire. Trouble Every Day belongs to the new vision of vampirism as infection, like The Last Man on Earth (1964)/The Omega Man (1971)/I Am Legend (2007), The Hunger (1983) and Ultraviolet (2006), to mention a few. Some of the conventions are carried over from the traditional story. Unnatural youthfulness, sex and blood combined and a thrall like no other vamp we have seen. Sunlight doesn’t seem to be a problem, no super strength, no ability to disappear into an ethereal fog. There is a Van Helsing-like character in the speechless Léo. Actually a lot of the good stuff is done away with and the bare bones of the vampire appeal is heightened—sex and death!
Our main complaints about this film are its lack of diaphanous gowns, graveyards and gothic and/or 70s décor. In saying that M. actually thinks this is a savvy film, stylish and clever in its direction. The woman married to the male vamp (Tricia Vessey playing "June") is just as cute as button!
Saturday, 13 June 2009
The Blood Spattered Bride, 1972
This film is freakin’ brilliant. Don’t allow the title to mislead you. Although the translation of the Spanish title (La Novia Ensangrentada) is accurate, this film is so much better than the title (and the insane original trailer) suggests. It may have been a B feature, but it is an A-grade film.
The Blood Spattered Bride is a reworking of Sheridan La Fanu’s Carmilla story with an important innovation; Carmilla is a misandrist, separatist-feminist. La Fanu wrote his story before the women’s movement existed, but The Blood Spattered Bride was written at the height of 70s feminism. The film plays on anxieties in the 70s audience about the growing women’s movement and the fear that women’s collective anger will lead them to bone-handled violence. So the director has imbued La Fanu’s homoerotic tale with a political awareness and a misandrist philosophy.
Carmilla is motivated by the desire to avenge the wrong done her two hundred years (or so) earlier. As a blushing bride her newly-minted husband asked her to perform, we are told, “unspeakable” acts on the wedding night. So appalled was Carmilla that she butchered him on the spot (thus the “blood-spattered” bride). Carmilla is found in a catatonic state and after two years without movement she is buried. It is unclear whether she is dead or undead when buried.
[Carol playing Carmilla, while showing Susan all the female portraits that have been dumped in the cellar]
[Susan and her husband search for Carmilla's grave. When they find it, Susan watches in horror as he snaps one her bones]
Fast forward to 1972. Now, the beautiful Susan is the blushing bride (we first see her in her wedding dress, and she looks fantastic). Susan does not butcher her husband on her wedding night, but she dreams about her never-named husband raping her, and about a diaphanously-gowned Carmilla visiting her, and inciting her to violence against her husband. The line between dream and reality, fear and desire, is never very clear.
[Carmilla helps Susan butcher and castrate her husband in her dream]
[But Susan finds the knife Carmilla gave her in her "dream"]
[Susan's husband discovers the "real" Carmilla, buried on an empty beach, while trying to hide the knife. A surreal moment]
Susan is actually a very complex character; and the film is directed in such a way that the viewer really has to work to understand what is really going. So, for instance, it is not apparent on a first viewing that the rape scene at the beginning of the film is, in fact, a fantasy (or, more accurately, a dread-filled day-dream).
In fact, the trustworthiness of all three central female characters—Susan, Carmilla and Carol, the housekeeper’s daughter—is undermined. When we first meet Carol she says she is fourteen when she is actually twelve. Since her testimony is crucial in a later scene, the viewer is left uncertain whether Susan or Carol’s account of events is true (meaning, whether we also accept Susan’s other “dreams” as reality or not).
Also, the validity of Susan’s anger toward her husband is also treated with skepticism. We are encouraged to dismiss her “bad dreams,” and defloration-anxiety, with a bit of psychobabble. But, as the film progresses, it is clear that Susan’s anger is very real indeed. And, although Susan is increasingly influenced by Carmilla—in her thrall—it also becomes obvious that Susan’s emotional state is the product of her own agency.
The issue of credibility is a central point for the complex character of Susan. It is a truly adventurous film in it’s depiction of female sexual desire and the various forms that desire can take; often including unconventional desires like domination and “rape.” But there is a “safety word” in even the most extreme consensual fantasies, which Susan’s husband just doesn’t seem to understand. And in scene after scene, his behaviour gradually steps from awkward to inappropriate to nasty and wrong.
[Susan hides from her husband in the dovecote. He breaks down the locked door to get to her. Is this their game, or his alone?]
The script is so clever that even the viewer is not always sure of when trust has been breached but there is a creeping feeling at these moments during the film that something really important has transpired. The uncertainty Susan displays about her own sexual responses to her husband makes it difficult for the viewer to understand her, or to understand her growing violence. Even she doubts her growing anger toward her husband. However, Carmilla has no doubts that her Susan’s anger is justified.
This twisted version of “sisterhood” is the essential appeal of the film. Carmilla wants to generalize the revenge she took against her husband to revenge against all men. So she encourages Susan to take revenge against her partner, and she seeks to influence an even younger generation, Carol. Her thrall is a catalyst for feminist-political awareness, she is the agent that unleashes female anger and builds female solidarity. It is a great credit to the Carmilla of this film that she is doesn’t speak of calling on dark masculine powers to give her potency to enact her revenge; she is her own dark power.
[Susan's husband drones on, but the women are in their own world]
[That night, Susan and Carmilla sneak out together]
With Susan, Carol and Carmilla joined against the men in the film, the men in the film are forced to join against them. The film becomes an us-and-them morality tale. The message; it is dangerous for the girls to spend too much time together, not just because of the potential for lesbian sex, but because of the feminist awareness. And once the sisterhood are “aware,” the spattering begins!
All three women are frightening figures to mainstream heterosexual society, but Carmilla is truly monstrous to the men in this film: she encourage her sisters to rise up and right the wrongs done to them with a beautiful bone-handled knife.
[Susan waiting for her husband to go to bed. She is planning to kill him]
[That night, Susan attacks her husband while Carmilla urges her on: "Kill Him! … Slash his face! Find his heart and cut it out! Silence him! Punish him for his insolence! … Put an end to his arrogance! … Destroy his masculinity!"]
[Carmilla is caught in a rabbit trap while returning, with Susan, to her crypt]
And the violence is directed at the phallus. Carmilla helps Susan repeatedly stab her husband, and then instructs her to cut his penis off. In another scene Susan attacks Carol’s unnamed father. After slashing him across the face and neck scores of times she shoots him once in the head and once in the crotch. When Susan and Carmilla consummate their union, Carmilla has Susan say "He has pierced your flesh to humiliate you … He has spat inside your body to enslave you." (full text below)
[Susan about to shoot the caretaker in the crotch]
When Susan’s husband finds Susan and Carmilla in a coffin together, naked, he closes the lid, shoots the coffin and the women full of holes.
[Carmilla and Susan in a nice wide coffin]
Immediately after this, Carol arrives, in a red mini-skirt, rings on her fingers and bite marks on her neck. He has her kneel between his legs before shooting her in the head. (Her last words are "They will come back. They cannot die".)
[Carol arrives]
What happens next is truly disturbing: the final shot is of the husband about to slice a breast off Carmilla. The close-up image freezes, with one of his hands tightly holding a handful of breast, the other holding the knife, the blade is pressed into the flesh. The scene cuts to a newspaper headline: “Man Cuts Out the Hearts of Three Women.” The sexual subtext, and sexual politics, of the film give a new meaning to this traditional removal of a vampire’s heart.
Carol’s story is as interesting as Susan’s, and her relationship to Carmilla is almost as complex. She has been helping Carmilla from the start, she brings flowers to her crypt and clearly adores her. It turns out that Carmilla is her teacher, and so her loss of innocence to Carmilla—her developing feminist awareness is articulated, but her developing sexual awareness is only suggested—has quite a disturbing edge to it.
[Susan's husband finds Carol in the crypt, leaving flowers for Carmilla]
Having said this much about the meaning of the film, we should say a few words about the bits we particularly like, the cinematic highlights. (For plot outline, see the Wikipedia entry here.)
The film is beautifully shot, the shots are clever, the sets are sensational, and the actors are breathtakingly beautiful. Only Blood and Roses has a more beautiful central cast. We have scattered screen caps of the highlight moments from the film throughout this post, but some moments are hard to capture.
[The husband's gorgeous house]
[Susan meets Carmilla. The painting symbolises what is to come]
It was only during a third watching of the film, for instance, when we realized that Susan and Carol not only look very much alike (oval face, fair hair), but are almost always seen in very similar clothes: just different enough for this not to be not too obvious. In one scene Susan and Carol are both wearing a cotton shirt, short skirt, and knee-high socks; in another scene they are both wearing dark Corduroy jeans and a pale skivy, and so on. But in both scenes you almost never see the two at the same time, the camera shows one then another.)
Another great example is the morning-after-the-night-before scene. Susan and Carmilla creep out of the house at midnight and spend the night together. The next morning, Carmilla is gone, and Susan arrives at breakfast, late, in Carmilla’s dress. As she swans across the lawn, she slowly runs her hands through her loose hair. Once she sits down, she takes a teacup in both hands and raises it to her lips, only then looking at her husband. It is only then that you notice she has rings on all her fingers, worn jewel-inwards in the distinctive style of Carmilla. (In the final scene, when Carol arrives at the crypt, we see she is also wearing a full set of finger rings in this way, indicating that she has joined Susan and Carmilla.)
[Carmilla's distinctive finger rings]
[Susan comes to breakfast wearing rings Carmilla-style]
You cannot capture such moments in a screen cap. The genius of it is that you can’t see Susans fingers throughout this whole shot, though her hands are almost always in view, the are hidden by the flowing dress at her side, her hair, her neck, the cup, catching you unaware, after you have processed the dress, the tension between the two, the lack of eye-contact, etc.
The stand-out scenes: Susan taking Carmilla’s vow (for M.) Susan's husband finding Carmilla buried at the beach (for P.) The script for the vow follows. Note how the desecration of Carmilla's grave by Susan's husband is elided with Susan's "desecration" or defloration.
C: "Your sanctuary has been ravaged, your tranquility disturbed, your shrine stained, corrupted, grossly invaded by violence. In this desecrated fortress, I search for consolation for my troubled soul. Do not judge me too harshly, for I obey a desperate law that forms both my strength and my weakness. If your heart is wounded, mine bleeds too. Within the rapture of my vast death I live only through your vibrant life. And you will die gently, in order to live through me. I can do no more. As I come search for you so, in turn, you will search for another, to share with you the ecstasy of this cruelty. The only kind of love for you and for me."
After drinking blood from a wound on Susan's hand, Carmilla has Susan recite the following words:
C: "Say it."
S: "I hate him."
C: "Say it again."
S: "I hate him."
C: "Say it will all your heart."
S: "I hate him!"
C: "He has pierced your flesh to humiliate you!"
S: "He has pierced my flesh to humiliate me."
C: "He has spat inside your body to enslave you!"
S: "He has spat inside my body to enslave me."
Carmilla then drink from Susan's neck, and the moaning begins...
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
The Dracula Saga, 1972
Damn, this film is crap. The DVD cover for La saga de los Drácula shouts “Remastered from the high definition original negative” but that just means you get to see the crap more clearly. However, the “alternative clothed scenes,” also spruiked on the cover of this “Special Edition,” are a real blessing, ‘cause Hans (Tony Isbert) is not a pretty sight with his cloths off.
[Handsome Hans (not)]
This DVD was bought on spec because the director, Leon Klimovsky, was involved in numerous Spanish horror films from the seventies and we had watched a Paul Nashi werewolf film from the same year and were hoping for something similar (we won't say as good, perhaps "as interesting"). Well, it wasn't.
But rather than catalogue all of the failings of this film—poor acting, ugly actors, bat-faced and one eyed freaks—or the high points—axe-wielding post-natal psycho-mum, gorgeous red-head vamp—we will just mention a few points of interest that relate to the vampire mythos.
[bat-faced freak]
[one eyed freak]
[axe-wielding post-natal psycho-mum]
[gorgeous red-head vamp]
Firstly tolling bells repel vampires (like they should, but which we have never seen in a vampire movie), there is a strong kin-group structure to the coven (Dad and the kids, are excited to have a new family member on the way), vampirism as a genetic disorder (a baby is born undead, though neither parent was vamped before conceiving), Twilight-esque horror pregnancy (the fetus drains the mother of blood, almost killing her before its birth). In the closing moments of the film the still-born babe (or is it just undead?) is suddenly ruddy-cheeked with the setting of the sun and is seen lapping up gobbets of blood dripping onto its lips.
[Vamp-family at dinner]
[undead baby]
[nom, nom, nom]
The happy vamp-infant nomming away on impossibly red gore is both genuinely creepy and genuinely amusing, reminiscent of both the smiling girl vamp at the end of I Like Bats (1986) who has just killed the gardener (see here), and the red-eyed vamp-puppy at the end of Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (1972) who is supposed to be terribly frightening, but who is so cute that it left us both rolling around on the floor, laughing uncontrollably for at least a quarter of an hour. Grrr.
[puppy of Dracula]
Enough said?
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