Le Vourdalak (2023) directed by Adrien Beau

 

It's hard to talk about this film without spoilers, it's has some interesting elements better experienced as a surprise. Spoiler free, this is a film about a nobleman finding shelter after being robbed on the road and getting caught up in a family's tragic story of death and horror. It is based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak. I had already read it before seeing this so I had an idea what was going to happen. It's mostly well acted, nicely filmed, slow and hypnotic with some scares and a villain that works when it really shouldn't. 

Spoilers

A vourdalak is basically a vampire and this movie is based on one of the oldest printed vampire stories. it follows much of the lore of the time it was written so its has some nice touches, like vampires eating their shrouds that add a creepier than normal feel to it. The grandfather leaves to fight in the war but warns the family that if he isn't back in 6 days, he has died and if he is seen again to reject him as he will have become a vourdalak. He returns just after the deadline and his son takes his emaciated body into the house despite the protestations of the family. 

The grandfather is a vampire like you haven't really seen in film. Sure he is a living corpse but he is also played by a life sized puppet. This should be comical but it isn't.. at all. It is done well but doesn't really hide that it's a puppet. It has charisma and does manage to scare the crap out of you a couple times. it does what traditional vampires did and begins to transform the rest of the family into undead creatures. 

The nobleman is seen as a dandy, at first. Over time he grows and we see more than a prissy rich guy but someone willing to combat the undead for the family that took him in. He is in love with the daughter but that takes a back seat when the grandfather goes after the young grandson. The film ends with a couple of surprises and strays from the original story but overall it is a good adaption. 

The father is played really well and the rest of the cast does too. The weakest link is the daughter/love interest. She is a too odd to get a sympathetic handle on. Vassili Schneider as the brother is another departure from the novella. He is sexually ambiguous in some ways, dressing like a woman at times but also strong when he needs to be. His family is accepting of him as he is and this normally admirable trait is definitely misplaced when the father accepts the grandfather back into the family. Being a vampire is a little beyond acceptance, in my opinion of course. 

The pace is slow but that helps the viewer accept what is happening and while there is some gore it's restrained. The filming is mostly subtle and natural. There is a night/day issue that crops up quite a bit and it's hard to get an idea if hours or days have passed. it's not a deal breaker as the story and actors really draw you in. 

Dracula (1979) Directed by John Badham

 

This could easily have been called "Frank Langella's Dracula" since his presence is the driving force throughout. After rising to fame on stage in the role that was electrifying on Broadway and on tour for years (yet somehow never revived since) a new film version HAD to feature Langella. 

The film is not a film version of the play which had amazing hand drawn sets by the infamous gothic artist Edward Gorey and instead became much more like a Hammer studios reboot, adding a good amount of gore and some over the top set pieces but none of the humour we had seen on Broadway. Dracula is graceful and articulate, no Transylvanian accents here and a high budget allowed for interesting, if not always effective, special effects and costumes. 

Things to love about movie are the John Williams score (though his self "referencing" from other of his score is very noticeable) and the locations are beautiful dripping in gothic horror elements and the lovely matte painting work involving Dracula's Carfax Abbey. I guess the interiors of Carfax Abbey are also striking, but also they seem to be trying to replicate Gorey's illustrations in the real world which doesn't really work. There are bats, including a GIANT bat head at the rear of the main hall. Who built this place? It's way over the top where most of the other locations and props are less prone to self parody. 

Things to love less are the lack of connection or sympathy for any of the characters. They and the scenes they are in vary in tone and never congeal into more than a series of events. The characters of Lucy and Mina names are switched, Renfield has no role in the story. The movie starts with Mina somehow leaving her room unnoticed in a violent storm to get to a boat she saw crashing into the shore from her window where she sees a wold jump off the boat and go into a cave where she find not the wolf but Dracula? It's hime but we only see his hand take hold of her hand then...  it's never mentioned she was there or how Dracula got from the cave to his new house and Mina doesn't seem to know him at all when he visits later on. The end is equally nonsensical. After a complex series of events to save Lucy that isn't terrible but goes on a little long, the count is killed after being hoisted up on a hook to the sunlight on the boat he is trying to escape on and is burnt by the sun. We only see the start of this process and the shot makes it seem that he transformed in to a kite and flies away over the ocean? Lucy seems free of him but she sees the kite-count and gives an enigmatic smile. What? 

While the film doesn't really work, Langella 100% does his best despite the efforts of maybe Badham to rob the vampire of all mystery and repeating shots over and over. We see Dracula's feet only leaving a carriage etc, a shot which leads to seeing him completely at least three times. There are multiple shots though a web with a spider on it as a character walks beneath. We get it, they are caught in Dracula's web... move on. It's frustrating to see the real potential of a great film wasted but it's worth taking a look for the good elements if you can handle the bad ones. 

Les deux orphelines vampires (1997) directed by Jean Rollin.

 

Once again we found ourselves watching another Jean Rollin film. To my credit, it was a double feature and I stopped the second film early on. This was only slightly better than "Requiem for a Vampire" and only slightly less confusing. The premise is pretty interesting, however. Two blind orphans live with nuns in... Paris? ...New York? ... but can see at night with everything having a blue tint, except when they forget to add it or the budget doesn't allow it. They are also somehow vampires. I liked the idea of being blind in the daytime and sighted at night and 2 vampires hiding their secret by living in an orphanage run by nuns was intriguing. Sadly, the plot is a mess and makes little sense. The orphanage is clearly in Paris but the girls run around New York, I guess it's a flashback but it, like most things in this movie is not made all that clear. The two run into other supernatural creatures, or not, they might just be crazy people. One seems ot be another sort of vampire who lives in Père Lachaise Cemetery has massive bat wings in place of arms and wears a tight disco outfit not seen since Studio 54 was open. 

Like his other films, it drags on and characters wax poetic about their fate. The vampire children are pretty reckless and tell anyone who will listen they are vampires it seems. After being adopted they get drunk and one is shot by their adopted parent who thinks there is an invader on his property. They run away and the the one gets shot and they drown each other in a river. 

A positive for this film over his others is in this one the underage girls are not naked and having sex all the time though they are sexualized. Their blindness is sometimes forgotten and time is pretty fluid. The visit Père Lachaise Cemetery, fall asleep, wake up hours later yet somehow the 2 other couples they passed early in the day are still there. 

Rollin is known for these vampire films although he has made plenty of others types of movies but I am not sure why he has a following. I guess we have seen three so far so I shouldn't criticize! 

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch

 

Starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, this is a art film take on vampires. Swinton and Hiddleston are have been a couple for the last few hundred years but are currently living apart. Their characters are named Adam and Eve which I found a little annoying to be honest but there wasn’t much other religious symbolism in the film. John Hurt plays Christopher Marlowe and the script makes it clear that he wrote the Shakespeare plays and Adam was behind some of the world’s most famous poets and musicians while Eve has had her share of relations with famous historical people. This is an element that I find ridiculous in many films with vampires or any long lived characters. They always seem to know or worse, have been famous people throughout their lives. Like in stories of reincarnation, no one is ever a pig farmer, that are always Cleopatra. The unlikeliness of that just irritates me. 

This a Jarmusch film so the story is sort of light on details or structure and instead relies on how interesting you find the people in the story. I do think this works for him and it doesn’t fail him in this film either but it’s the performances of the main actors that keeps you watching. He introduced some elements that took me a while to figure out why they were important, like how the vampires wear gloves when out and about, but not all the time. Adam does seem to mopey at times but is still manages to elicit sympathy. John Hurt and Tilda Swinton are the highlight of any production in my opinion and they don’t disappoint here. 

Interview with the Vampire (season one) 2022 created by Rolin Jones

 I have been a fan of the Ann Rice book since it was released in 1976 and I still have my original paperback copy. The back cover had models portraying the main characters in a formal portrait and that image of them stuck with me and became how I visualized them. There were followup books, though the first of them "The Vampire Lestat" took awhile to come out the rest were written much quicker and soon Rice had several series of supernatural series covering all sorts of occult subjects, with varying degrees of success in my opinion. A film version of "Vampire" was released in 1984 and while it had some lovely cinematography and a well know, good-looking cast it was TERRIBLE. Miscast and, apparently due to the objections of Tom Cruise, it erased all the gayness which made the book so fascinating when it was released. Cruise tried to make his version of Lestat the highlight of the film and Will credit him for making a huge effort in the role. However taking away the character's queerness took away the character and all that effort was not enough to save the project. 

Now we have TV series based on the same material and I was not too hopeful how it would come out. I knew in advance they had changed the time period and were going to play quite a bit with the original storyline of a book I simply LOVE. Louis de Pointe du Lac is now a rich black brothel owner, not a white plantation owner and the story has shifted about 100 years later than the novel. The original story still exists in it's original form by way of this being a second meeting of the now old, dying of Parkinson's journalist (Eric Bogosian) once again meeting with Louis who wants to redo the interview after admitting he wasn't entirely honest the first time around. He provides evidence of his current version with diaries and newspaper clipping etc to show his good faith and also to give us, the viewer, more insight into other characters in their own words. 

As the interview progresses, the familiar story is presented in different ways and some elements are changed completely. Louis has a servant (Assad Zaman) who arises the suspicion in the journalist that even this new interview might be given by an unreliable narrator - and he is not wrong. 

I don't want to spoil things as this series is absolutely fantastic and gives us the tone and feeling of the book while at the same time letting it be its own thing. It adds to the book, a rare thing, and does not shy away for the queer elements (not at all) and introduces new ones like Louis having to deal with racial and sexual prejudices which really adds to the character in ways I wouldn't not have predicted. Jacob Anderson IS Louis, the pouty, miserable vampire of the books but with much more context. And my goodness is he beautiful both physically and as an actor in the role. Sam Reid grew on me as Lestat and his wrath and mental instability is terrifying. His French accent is a little off for me so it took me longer to buy him as Lestat but he really succeeded in getting me on board. Bailley Bass is Claudia, the young girl who is made a vampire to complete their little vampire family. In the show she is not a 5 year old but a teenager and Bass runs away with the adolescent rebellion as only a vampire stuck forever in a teenager's body can. Being transformed so young, killing and living as a supernatural creature is all she knows and that makes her more dangerous than maybe Lestat and Louis could have anticipated. 

This series has been beyond good and doesn't seem to have a huge backlash some other reboots or followup properties have in recent years. Some of that is the quality of the show nullifies the dumb internet bigotry and some might be is has slipped in under the radar just enough to have avoided the attention of Russian trolls. Hard to say. There is some what I would call light nudity and sexuality but there is some pretty nasty violence... I mean several times during the season I was really taken aback by it. It isn't without purpose, however. Everything in this show seems to have purpose and leads somewhere interesting. The second season can't come soon enough. 

Count to Twenty with Liam Neeson

"Monocle in the left eye - this is Transylvania"

And You Thought He Only Sucked Blood!

Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl

I don't know what to say about this...

R.I.P. Count Yorga

Count Don Ricklesula - You Hockey Puck!

From Innocent Blood. John Landis who had a great start, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, was just a suckfest on two legs - a great script, a great cast, poorly executed like it's an undead fucking Pretty In Pink. He's probably close to being the #1 contributing factor to my 20 year disenfranchisement from American movies.

But I'm back. Who cares?

Lastly, this looks like somebody shot it off their TV but I have stopped uploading owing to YouTube's Big Brotherish Insta-reject software......bye bye major web 2.0 cool thing.

Grim, Bleak, Gory and Sweet!

No, not the latest names of some new boy band, but best words to describe "LET THE RIGHT ONE IN". If you only see one Swedish vampire movie this year, this should be the one:



As in most vampire tales, it really is a love story. A SWEET-ish one at that! (Ha-can't help it!)

Les Filles C'est Fait

(music by Charlotte Leslie)

Video footage from 'L'amante del Vampiro'.Now that I've been banned from YouTube I've got to put my videos somewhere. And to think, it wasn't because of filth!

Manson Vampire

Robert Quarry as Deathmaster..... savor the bogus hippie goodness! I do have to say, when you see it in its entirety, they got the whole cult mumbo jumbo right.



Directed by frequent shower-upper-in-stuff Ray Danton.

Lemora: A Child's Tale of The Supernatural (1973)

Continuing the Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith theme, I thought I would weigh-in on a fabulous cult horror film that Cheryl starred in in the early '70s. This is a film I remember seeing on local television in Boston as a teenager in the wee hours of the morning on one of the VHF channels at the time 27, 38 or 56.

I was mesmorized by Cheryl's earnest performance as lost girl Lila Lee, and by director Richard Blackburn's truly creepy, atmospheric no-budget filmmaking.

Speaking of creepy Blackburn also tackles the role of "The Reverend" who simultaneously wants to save Lila's soul and deflower her body.

Cheryl Gilb gives a weird performance as Lemora (the lemon-fresh vampire, just kidding). The touchy-feely bloodsucker treats our woozy heroine (according to Blackburn Smith was wasted out of her gourd for the entire shoot) to a sensuous sponge bath and seemingly much more as the scene fades out.

Anyway, this is out on DVD and I highly recommend checking out "Lemora" for fans of schlocky but swell '70s horror.

The Yin and Yang Of Ib Melchior

Ib Melchoir wrote quite a few things in his career, but I find two films of his on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. I actually like them both. One, for being innovative with a small budget, the other for showing how bad low budget films can be. These films are of course, “Planet of the Vampires” and “Reptilicus”. “Planet of the Vampires” (also known under I think 1000 other names), which is truly a film that shows that low budget is not always low concept. This film was obviously an huge influence for Ridley's Scott's “Alien” (see clip), it's miniscule budget still managed fantastic set pieces and really hot leather space outfits with matching skull caps that somehow managed to contain some of the biggest beehive hairdo's in Sci-Fi (I NEED one of those outfits, or at least the skull cap!)

“Reptilicus”, on the other hand, is a film about piece of dinosaur tail that grows into giant monster that throws up on people to kill them. This film also includes a 10 minute tour of Copenhagen (did the tourist bureau put up the cash for this thing?) and in the uncut version... hard to believe every centimetre of film wasn't used no matter how bad, it even included a “musical number” of the mentally challenged maintenance man singing a song about Reptilicus to a group of children for no apparent reason. (see clip)

Other highlights in his career were also interesting. He wrote “Death race 2000”, was the creator of “Space Family Robinson” (or “Lost in Space”)... he seems a writer stuck somewhere between genius and complete schlock!