Taliesin meets the vampires

Bite School 2: Bite Squad – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:40:15 +0000

Director: James Balsamo

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

To get the chronology right, this is a 2025 sequel to James Balsamo’s 2015 film Bite School (at the beginning of this Balsamo’s character Tony meets briefly meets the character George and they say that it’s been 10-years). It is subtitled on some of the artwork as Bite Squad and on others as From Dusk Til Bong, which was a 2022 Balsamo flick which also featured his Tony character. All three films are in the Blu-Ray set “James Balsamo’s Thrilling Three Pack”.

Robo Dracula (whole)

When I reviewed Bite School, I said “This is not a good film, by that I mean as a piece of cinema it does not rank particularly high. However, it doesn’t try to rank high either.” This is just as true of this, if not more so. Tony and George meet in a garden (the sets are very limited in this) and observe a group of vampires with a naked sacrifice. The head vampire is speaking tech speak and has the head of Robot Dracula (Joe Castro). Wires attach (and enter) the sacrifice and draw her energy to bring him new life.

Camazotz

Tony is the chosen one, who will destroy Robo-Dracula with help from the bite squad and the film is filled with talking head interviews as a mockumentary being filmed by someone in the school at the centre of the first film. There are, therefore, plenty of excuses for cameos of musicians and genre stars. Before he can get Robo-Dracula there are other head vampires he must destroy – starting with Mayan bat God Camazotz. In a sequence that involves Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe having his flesh stripped by drawn bats, Tony whips Camazotz but, rather than destroy it, uses it as a ride.

Mimeula

Following that we get him going to France to take on Mimeula (Stu Silverman) a vampire who turns a woman into a mime when he bites her. He also goes to Germany to defeat Krampus – yup Krampus is a vampire in this. This sequence of the three head vampires takes less than ten minutes of film time. We get a scene with Vlad Ţepeş, back in the day, being bitten by a skeletal bat creature and thus becoming a vampire (who will eventually be Robo-Dracula).

Krampus

There really isn’t much else when it comes to story. It is just gags, low budget props (cardboard circular sawblades, for instance) and a parade of characters and cameos. Yet, still, Balsamo is having a hoot – as are many of those in it. It failed, however, to keep my attention as well as the first one (probably because the story was even thinner than the previous). 3 out of 10 but, again, like the first film it is more than the sum of its score (though perhaps closer this time round) and James Balsamo fans will know what they’re getting and enjoy it.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Short Film: Vamped (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 11:55:31 +0000

Directed by Eli Valencia, this short is just under 13-minutes in length. Set in a world were, apparently, vampires are a known thing, this follows Mina (Liia Kasenova), a college student.

She is called by friend Joaquin (Jose Soreque), who is trying to entice her to a party – a vampire themed one. Despite classes the following day she agrees to go, so long as they leave if she dislikes it.

bitten

They arrive and attendees are playing spin the bottle, with a 7-minutes in heaven forfeit. The bottle lands on Keiran (Jonah Martinez) and then Mina and so it is off to the bathroom for, what Mina describes as, the longest seven minutes… Until he moves in and bites her. She pushes him off, leaves the bathroom and demands Joaquin takes her home.

Joaquin and Mina

The film then follows her as she tries to navigate her new normal. A google search suggests to her that the scientific consensus is that there is now known cure for vampirism, Then there is her friendship with Joaquin to consider… The storyline may sound simple, but the filmmakers manage to cram plenty into the short running time.

The imdb page is here and the film can be viewed here.

Honourable Mention: A Haunting on the Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000

This 2023 sequel to The Haunting of Hill House by Elizabeth Hand was authorised by Shirley Jackson’s estate as an official sequel to the seminal novel. The book obviously features Hill House, and the ‘haunting’ therein but also touches into witchcraft and, with the recurring appearance of a supernatural Fetch of a hare (or multiple thereof) has a touch of folk horror to it. There are some interesting (literal) echoes from the original story.

I put haunting in parenthesis because it is mentioned through the book that it is not a haunted house, rather that the house is aware, an entity of its own. The phenomena in the house stems from that. It is further suggested that the house both hates and needs the occupants and it is this need that leads us to an Honourable Mention again as the reason for the need is perhaps hinted but not explicit. The house is owned by Ainsley, who is part of a coven of three, the others unhappy that she occasionally rents it out as to do so is dangerous – the three watch over it and Evadne, one of three, asks of one of the group in the house, “Hill House—how do you think it survives?” adding “Ainsley’s done virtually nothing to maintain it. No one has. Hill House looks almost the same today as when it was built a hundred and forty years ago. Why do you think that is?” The implication being that it takes something from residents within and maintaining itself through that. This is almost, but not quite, spoken again later (or that was my reading, at least). It becomes clear that those it manages to “take” remain in spirit, perhaps as puppets for the house, which sits against the idea of the house not being haunted.

The only other vampire adjacent comments is character Nisa suggesting that they may need garlic. We get the tale, within the dialogue, of one of the characters meeting a woman who suggests she met a haint (a restless ghost or spirit) who impregnated her. Mentioned as haints do occasionally get mentioned in vampire texts.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vampires of the Velvet Lounge – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:11:25 +0000

Director: Adam Sherman

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Cheese… Ok, actually loads of blood (with both good and bad sfx, as I’ll explain) but a right royal portion of cheese, and this Erzsébet Báthory (in this Elizabeth) flick is great fun because of it. I have to admit I went in with low expectations but it certainly lifted me way beyond that. The cast, built in an ensemble way I felt, mostly seemed to be having a blast, especially on the vampire side.

drinking absinth

It starts, however, with a series of intertitles explaining the Elizabeth Bathory (Mena Suvari) backstory and then we see various smartphone style screens as these vampires have taken to hunting by dating app (not a new concept, but one that certainly works). Someone hunted in such a way is Eric (Timothy V. Murphy, Broil), who has arranged to fly to where Elizabeth is and meet her in an absinth bar she has mentioned. I also need to mention the cracking version of Ain't No Grave that plays over the credit sequence at the start of the film.

meeting the green fairy

When he gets to the bar he finds Joan (India Eisley, Underworld Awakening) and Helena (Sarah Dumont) working the bar (and both vampires, also). They tell him all about absinth and the green fairy and he confesses he feels he has been stood up and proceeds to get drunk… to the point he does see the green fairy, which is Elizabeth taking that shape in his perspective. She lures his very drunk ass outside and hunts him down, her now apparent bat wings occasionally looking like green fairy wings in his perspective. A point here re blood. The film uses both cgi and practical effect. The practical blood looks great and is drawn copiously into shot so that the film feels a tad splatterpunk. The cgi blood (and in this scene, neck rip) looks blooming awful.

Dichen Lachman as Cora

So Cora (Dichen Lachman), who suffers bad dreams, is a former soldier and assassin who now works for a group who hunt monsters. She is sent out on recon and observes (and films), through a crack in a doorway, Elizabeth blood bathing as three supplicants happily agree to have their heads cut off with giant scissors wielded by vampiric Chuck (Mark Boone Junior, Vampire$ & 30 Days of Night). The viewer is clear that Elizabeth knows that she is there. Cora and her superior, intelligence operator Alexis (Rosa Salazar), are ensconced nearby but are using a VPN to suggest that Cora is based a couple of States away as she chats to Elizabeth by app. They are looking to strike at the vampires, though it is clear that Elizabeth is using mojo to actually seduce her.

lawyer bros

Throw into the mix a group of corporate lawyers. Luke (Tyrese Gibson) is going through a divorce and is depressed and his buddies Randall (Stephen Dorff, Blade) and Malcolm (Lochlyn Munro, Tracers 4: Jack of Clubs, Dracula 2001, Hansel & Gretel Get Baked, Lost Girl & also Broil) want to cheer him up. He has been chatting to Joan online and they decide to all go visit (with them getting dates with Elizabeth and Helena – all three vampires having a website together). Also throw in the mix that Elizabeth is becoming worried about Joan’s behaviour; she is mixing blood with absinth (and sometimes just drinking booze straight) and interested in sex – in short becoming erratic to Elizabeth's pov.

blood bathing

There is some interesting lore in this. Cora is repeatedly taught to think happy thoughts as such thoughts can keep a vampire out of your head – if they get in there they can absolutely control you. Cora's issue is that, given her past, she has no happy thoughts. They fly, are superfast and strong but cast no reflection (in mirror or water). In fact the vampire women do each other’s makeup in a setup reminiscent of Vamp. When a question is raised as to why they then show on digital media/photography, the answer is that digital and AI are of the devil and so are they. Sunlight destroys, silver is effective, a stake and beheading will destroy the vampire (though not necessarily so) and ingestion of vampire blood turns.

bat winged

The cast seem to be having a great time in the main, Mena Suvari and India Eisley especially are chewing up the sets and their larger than life characters are great fun – unfortunately Sarah Dumont’s Helena is pretty much side-lined as a character and so she doesn’t get the same opportunity to shine. Unfortunately Dichen Lachman plays Cora as a deeply stoic character and so comes across as less fun but that contrasts nicely with Elizabeth. The story is simple and, as mentioned at the head, cheesy with comic book and splatterpunk elements that was simply great fun. My big gripe is some of the cgi work in the sfx – the obvious green screening was fine and, to be fair, I rather liked the wing effects in the main, but cgi blood looks poor generally and sat against well done practical effects showed it up even more. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

It Feeds – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:39:07 +0000

Director: Chad Archibald

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Vampiric entities appear in films, not necessarily undead – perhaps demonic, perhaps an inhabitant of another dimension – but they want to feed. Of course I was going to watch a film called It Feeds, it may or may not have proven to be about a vampiric creature, but the title was certainly an attractor. As it happens the entity proved to be an energy vampire.

in the classroom

It starts with Cynthia (Ashley Greene, Twilight & Sequels) stood in a school setting, the blackboard covered in writing attesting to the wolf. She walks as the wind blows through the school and enters an office, a coach (David Thompson) sat facing away and a child (Jayden Kirton) in a cage. If it all looks dreamlike, well it kind of is because it is a brainscape. She tries to encourage the child to let himself out of the cage but he is scared. Eventually he tries but the coach turns and a whiskey glass explodes, cutting her arm. The child retreats, she says they can try next time and she begins to chant under her breath.

Ashley Greene as Cynthia

She opens her eyes in the real world, removing her fingers from the forehead of her client Larry (Dov Tiefenbach, the Strain). Cynthia runs a home psychiatry practice, but she has the ability to step into people’s minds – though what happens to her in the mind happens in reality, so she has a cut arm from the glass. As the film progresses, we discover her clients are sworn to secrecy, they were driven from one town by superstitious townsfolk. Her husband had the same ability but he attempted to wrest an entity from a client and subsequently hung himself. Cynthia’s 17 years-old daughter, Jordan (Ellie O'Brien), screens her clients and does online research to help. Occasionally Cynthia has been able to tip the police as to wrong doers who hurt her clients.

entity behind her

There is a banging on the door and it is a young girl, Riley (Shayelin Martin). She has snuck away from her dad, Randall (Shawn Ashmore, The Ruins) , and she is desperate for Cynthia’s help – apparently a previous client, Agatha (Juno Rinaldi, Jennifer’s Body), had mention Cynthia to Randall and Riley overheard. Jordan is screening her and she talks about a thing she sees. She suggests it stares like a starving dog and is in the room, it caused the scars on her arms (which look like burns), she claims, and it is always hungry. Cynthia walks into the room and can see it, when Randall bursts in and drags his daughter away.

Ellie O'Brien as Jordan

Jordan wants to help the girl but Cynthia refuses to help, she knows it is a real, malevolent entity and out of her skill area. However Jordan manages to follow up, find their home and is captured by Randall for her troubles. Randall’s wife was a nurse who did overseas nursing and it is implied picked the entity up there. It essentially devoured her over time, draining her life and causing massive physical deterioration – the hospital she ended up in believed it was some sort of flesh-eating disease hitherto unknown. When she died, Riley was in the room and the entity passed over to her. Randall has been kidnapping people and the entity has eaten them through Riley (as a conduit) – the energy transference burning them. The entity speaks to the host and, when we hear it speak it says “Feed Me”. In the kerfuffle that follows, Riley dies, Jordan becomes the host and Cynthia has to defeat the entity – not helped by Randall deciding to defeat the entity himself with a plan to bury Jordan alive and let her die with no-one near to become the next host.

enthroned

This was interesting, the idea of being able to enter a patient’s trauma to help them psychiatrically was neat, though similar has been done before. However the entity was a nice touch. Definitely an energy vampire, but one never sated, in its own dreamscape it sits on a throne like chair and controls vine like tendrils. There are moments were you do have to suspend disbelief – Jordan is bound, Riley brings clippers and puts them in her behind-her-back-hands rather than snips the cable ties round the wrists. This led to a tension moment and a delay in escape. But, then again, Riley is a scared child. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable mention: Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated – Season 1

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sat, 30 May 2026 11:01:10 +0000

This was the first season of the 2010-2013 incarnation of Scooby-Doo as a serial cartoon where there was an overarching story arc. In actual fact, I did look at this season’s vampire episode, the Secret Serum, previously. Now, when I reviewed that I said “There is an estrangement between Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) – who were, it appears, an item. Plus Fred (Frank Welker) and Daphne (Grey DeLisle) seem to have issues, making the gang drift apart in different directions by the end of this – distractions; what we want is mystery solving not soap opera teen romance. For heaven’s sake we are watching a talking dog…”

vampire film

I do not take that back – the introduction of character romance (and romantic failings, in the case of Velma and Shaggy) seemed a distraction as I watched the whole thing – but there was enough mystery solving and Scooby-ness to keep me going back to it (indeed, I might be the father of an adult son but I’ll always maintain that Scooby is for all ages). In Fact, despite the more soap aspect, the season was perhaps darker than other Scooby-Doo series and, as it happens there were (beyond the vampire episode) some vampire connections through the season that were worth mentioning here.

the Bloody Stake steak house

First of all was a restaurant in Crystal Cove (the town that seems to attract fake paranormal activity at a rate of knots). A steak house, one assumes, called the Bloody Stake, which has a vampire logo. The restaurant appears in three episodes of the season and is most notable for Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (Frank Welker) being refused any more helpings on the "All You Can Gorge" night.

stake in hand

We see Shaggy and Scooby about to indulge in the Vincent Van Ghoul (Maurice LaMarche) movie marathon at one point. Due to this we see a tad of a vampire film staring Van Ghoul as a vampire hunter, stake in hand, with the implication that he is fighting off an army of vampires. Van Ghoul is, clearly, based on Vincent Price and I understand that Warner Bros received Price’s estate’s permission to use his likeness and voice.

vampire bust

Van Ghoul actually appeared in the 13 Ghost incarnation of Scooby-Doo and, in this season, his fans Shaggy and Scooby actually meet him when they win a competition to have dinner with him (which is a set up for a new ‘scare’ reality TV show Van Ghoul has, but leads them to saving him from a monster). In the house we see a Poster for O’Vampy, one of his films, and a vampire bust/mask out on display in the horror icon’s mansion.

teen Vamp literature

Lastly, the gang becomes embroiled for a second time with professor and horror author H.P. Hatecraft (Jeffrey Combs, Holiday Hell, Frightmare, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead & Dark House) – as an aside, Hatecraft is obviously modelled on Lovecraft, who Combs played in Necronomicon. In their second encounter Hatecraft is being ousted by Regina Wentworth (Kari Wahlgren), author of Teen vampire series Dusk (made up of Dusk: Forbidden Love, Dusk: Early Evening and Dusk: Just Before Bedtime). There is a cut-out of the main vampire character causing Daphne to muse at what Fred would look like with “fangs and skin the color of boiled pork”.

Daphne dates an actor

So, there we have the additional vampire references in Season 1 of Mystery Incorporated. Note that in Season 2 there was the reappearance of the Bloody Stake a couple of times and Daphne dating the actor from the Dusk films – but no real vampire reference otherwise. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Vampires of Dubois County

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:28:00 +0000

Director Patrick Higgs created this 6-minute short for the Southwest Indiana Film Fest and released it in 2014. Done as a bit of a travel commercial for Dubois County it starts with a brief history lesson of the vampires leaving Romania due to persecution and heading to the States (there is mention later that their location was, at one point, influenced by the vampire hunter Abe Lincoln being further south at the time.

blood tears

We are then into a series of vox-pop with various residents (tellingly many have plasters on their necks and there are plenty of lost pet posters). In the main positive – though one factory worker is rather negative about his co-workers. Probably the most amusing is the moment with the baseball team and the coach yelling at a vampire for crying (blood tears) as there is no place for tears in baseball.

It is a silly, amusing little diversion that likely means a little more if you are from that neck of the woods.

The imdb page is here.

Truckstop Bloodsuckers – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:14:11 +0000

Director: Galen Pendleton

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

For this we are at Little Hope All-Night Diner and, of course, diners that open 24/7 are an ideal location for vampires, especially those with itinerant customers, The film itself is pitched at character driven comedy and at 75 minutes it really doesn’t outstay its welcome.

After rural scenes we start in the diner and the staff consist of owner Roger (Donovan Workun), who works the kitchen and is not a fan of the life he has landed in and two servers, Jeanine (Aimée Beaudoin) and the younger Kolby (Jillean Tucker). There are a few patrons (including a couple of college kids taking in rural life, it seems) and the servers spot something through the window.

Kolby and Jeanine

That something is Wyatt (Gary Cosgrove), an elderly man who enters the diner naked. Apparently this is a thing and they quickly get an apron on him and sat down, for his part he knows what they hide in the basement, he says… insects. Jeanine is due to go on a date with cop Dan (Ryan Parker) and when he arrives they manoeuvre Wyatt into Dan’s car to take him home first.

feeding on Roger

This doesn’t happen as Kolby is in the kitchen with Roger when he cuts his finger. Fangs emerge and she fights it but soon she is on him feeding from his neck. Jeanine gets a flash of this and leaves the car. Yes, the two servers are vampires with Jeanine having turned Kolby and feeling responsible for her, therefore. Later we hear that Jeanine has been two-years off human blood and is described as Vampire Vegan (meaning she has animal blood).

the crooks

If things weren’t bad enough a drug dealer, Cliff (Jesse Lipscombe), and his associates Smokey (Jeff Halaby) and Wheeljack (Randy Brososky), come into the diner. Cliff is into some self-help stuff believing that things will happen if you want it hard enough. When outside for a smoke he sees Jeanine disposing of Roger's bag-wrapped body in the trash and knows what she is – he lived in Detroit, which is full of vampires, he later suggests – and decides he wants that power for himself…

ready to attack

The whole thing is very character driven sit-com and my thought watching was that this could have been the start of a series. The characters are larger than life, but not so much that they become preposterous, undercut with a little bit of stereotyping that helps move them forward for the viewer. We don’t get a huge amount of lore, a wooden stake to the heart kills but to the shoulder seems to immobilise (through the pain of the injury), sunlight destroys, total draining kills the victim where partial draining allows them to turn and the vampires are physically superior.

Ryan Parker as Dan

I rather liked this. The characters held me, the situation was larger than life but worked. It was neatly self-contained with the diner/kitchen, the basement and an exterior round the diner bins and inside Dan’s car. All the actors were offered solid performances and seemed to have a handle on comic beats. A nice little comedy, 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Blood Bitch Baby – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sun, 24 May 2026 09:18:51 +0000

Director: Donald Farmer

Release date: 2025*
*The Blu-Ray box and actual film suggest 2025, but there is no IMDb page at time of writing

Contains spoilers

Ah, Donald Farmer, with at least 41 directorial credits to his name, mostly within the low budget horror arena, his films have featured here at TMtV several times and I have to admit they haven’t scored very well when reviewed.

Jessa Jupiter Flux as Bathory

This film gets on here by dint of the primary character being Elizabeth Bathory (Jessa Jupiter Flux, Debbie Does Demons & OnlyFangs). Indeed the film begins with Elizabeth speaking to camera, not revealing her identity as such but offering Bathory’s background. As it turns out she made a deal with the devil that she could maintain youth and immortality on the proviso she find a vessel for the gestation of the devil’s child.

waking from a dream

It starts proper with a woman going down a dark street, afraid, kidnapped, vampirically terrorised... and then Jenny (Angel Nichole Bradford, also Debbie Does Demons) wakes as though this was her disturbing dream. She goes to the bathroom and we see bruising on her waist, put there we assume by abusive boyfriend Kevin (Joe Casterline). We see first-hand the abuse; she has a job interview but all he wants is for her to bring him *his* money.

fangs

The interview is with Elizabeth, looking for a caregiver for her sister Sarah (Jesse Seitz) who needs tying down before nightfall and is violently insane. Freaked when she meets her, Jenny runs to her car but is accosted by a strange man whose actions cause her to faint as Elizabeth approaches, all fangs, and rips his throat out (he seems to turn into an aged corpse when he dies). Jenny awakens in a basement as Elizabeth conducts a ritual to make her the ideal host for impregnation by the devil. Her memory is wiped but she has changed – extracting and eating Kevin’s eye when he threatens her.

meeting Iris

The police have a serial killer on their hands, though local professor Keller (Claude D. Miles) believes it is an occult case. Jenny goers to a diner and meets Iris (Mel Heflin, Queen Dracula Sucks Again), a mooch who ends up getting her away from Keller, who has spotted the blood painted sigil on her chest, and ends up in bed with her. But the devil is due to visit and gestation of a Hellspawn is hella quick…

Jenny eats an eye

At just under 70 minutes, this doesn’t outstay its welcome and there is plenty of full-throated screaming – especially from Angel Nichole Bradford. There is puppetry involved and plenty of low budget gore. This was probably the most enjoyable Farmer film I have watched – which doesn’t make it great, of course, it is still shot on a shoestring and has some really bad sfx (the bodies the police are investigating, for instance). Nevertheless, I’m giving this 3.5 out of 10 as, for some reason, it struck a chord even if the vampirism takes second fiddle.

At the time of writing there is no IMDb page.

The Brides – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Fri, 22 May 2026 09:32:19 +0000

Author: Charlotte Cross

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

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

'Come to me, and be mine for eternity'

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

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

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

And not all of them will survive.

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

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

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

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

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Short Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:43 +0000

Just a quick public service announcement to let you know I am going to put TMtV on a very short hiatus, as I am going away for a few days.

I will be checking comments whilst away and normal service will resume on Friday 22nd May.

See you all soon.

Short Film: Vampire Intervention

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:11:19 +0000

Directed by Ceejay Avilez and Diana Popick (according to IMDb, the film just credits Ceejay Avilez), this 2015 short is 13 minutes and has a film crew following a group of friends, one of whom happens to be a vampire called Elsa (Diana Popick, Verotika). The film follows them as Juan (Victor Canache), Elsa’s housemate, and Kim (Chelsea Rivera) plan an intervention to stop her drinking… blood.

When we watch their lives together it is clear that Elsa has some level of lack of impulse control – for instance feeding on a waitress (Tiffany Bock) who had come to take their order – she later feeds on the interventionalist (Paul Wheeler) who she declares must have been HIV positive as his blood is spicy and thus she couldn’t help herself. It is within this playing with tropes that the short does interesting things.

quick snack

For instance, the HIV comment. There have been vampire films where the vampiric condition is an obvious simile for HIV and there have been instances where the vampire can catch a blood borne infection or HIV itself. I can’t immediately think of one where the vampire treats it as a spice. Equally the vampire has been used as a metaphor for both a drug and a drug user. In this case, whilst the friends believe her to be an addict, she retorts that she isn’t an addict, she actually needs it to live.

the waitress is the order

As well as the needing blood to continue her existence we get some interesting throwaway lore. As well as being “allergic” to a stake through the heart and sunlight, these vampires are susceptible to zebras (and therefore she can’t go to a zoo). Another is a reveal that vampires came into existence at the point when Jesus rose from the grave – an interesting concept that amounts to a throwaway line (that also takes time to disparage a view of vampires through the lens of The Vampire Diaries and Twilight) but could stand expansion – the idea situating close to, but possibly different to, the origin in Dracula 2001. A final bit of lore is the ability to glamour a human.

Will the intervention work… Watch the short to find out. The imdb page is here.

Wallace Peebles: Paranormal Inspectre – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:06:12 +0000

Director: Steven Nesbit

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

I was torn over this, at first I was going to look at this film as an Honourable Mention with the vampire (TK Howard) as a fleeting visitation. But whilst the screentime is low it is central to the plot (such as there is one) and appears prominently on the movie poster.

The film follows a paranormal investigation TV crew. They consist of Wallace (Steven Nesbit), a man so out of touch with reality that he can’t work out pre-recorded call-ins for their podcast and thinks they’re live on air, Poppy (Jennifer Bryer), the sceptic, behavioural scientist and doing a thesis on paranormal investigators, and Chet (Michael Flores), cameraman. Wallace and Chet hate each other, not helped by Chet spoiling shots by walking on camera with food.

the vampire

Chet does, however, find them a paying gig in a warehouse and so manager Morris (Morris Featherstone) gets them a producer in the form of superfan Snow (Kristina E. Howard). Unfortunately, Chet has an ulterior motive, he is being forced to investigate the warehouse by psycho Ethel (Marilee Ensign) who wants them to find the stashed Irish Crown Jewels. This is where the vampire comes into it. Chet starts seeing an animated mouse (David Ralph) and the vampire, guardians of the jewels who are willing to hand them over for the price of his soul. At first it seems that the mouse and vampire are hallucinations but it becomes apparent they’re real.

Steven Nesbit as Wallace

That’s the story, such as it is. There is them being interviewed and so each time they speak to camera they get a new title on screen – which they are aware of as it is filmed in a 4th wall kind of way. The whole humour thread, to be honest, didn’t overly work for me – fart and wee gags and Wallace in a range of unaware to just plain daft. It felt the sort of thing that you could put in a sitcom and, repetition of the humour would eventually warm on the audience and catchphrases would evolve, but in a feature the humour missed more than hit. And the humour was all it really had, the plot was flimsy and the situation repetitive. Standout, positively, was Jennifer Bryer whose tone was spot on.

Jennifer Bryer as Poppy

There is no lore to relay re the vampire, we get a rubber looking mask, a shadow at one point and one bite. Overall, relying on the humour made this struggle in my eyes – but if the humour appeals and tickles you’ll get more out of it. 3.5 out of 10 for me.

The episode's imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Night Time World – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sun, 10 May 2026 11:10:00 +0000

Directors: Various

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

This is a portmanteau film, where the wraparound – entitled The Night Time World and directed by Timothy Paul Taylor – is about vampires but so are the four segments. It has become very easy to stitch a series of shorts into a film and I guess that theming them is a good a way to try and build a cohesive anthology. It feels to me, however, that creating bespoke segments is normally the stronger method.

Doug Henderson as Nada

Nevertheless, we are where we are with a vampire theme but shorts of varying quality and one in particular was probably not a good one to curate into the selection. The wraparound sees podcaster Nada (Doug Henderson) hosting his horror story show. He gets a caller, who seems to be in distress and speaks of a woman (Selina Flanscha) who answered his ad asking to kill him on camera. He gets cut off but she then calls, supernaturally controlling the lines, and their conversation makes the wraparound. It is fluff, to be honest, but Henderson makes for a calm, charming host for the stories.

Shane and Paul

The first segment is called The Backpage, directed by Brandon Lescure and originally released as a short in 2016. It is actually, for me, the best of the bunch. Paul (Brendan Krick) is in a bar with friend Shane (Joe Welkie). They are very much an odd couple, with Paul recently single and not very good with the dating game and Shane a player (or a bit of misogynistic slut). Both their dialogues are cringeworthy for different reasons and designed to be so.

Annabel Leah as Lilith

Shane convinces Paul to try out a massage website for a happy ending and he goes home, surfs the net, realises he has very little cash in his wallet and then spies a Backpage ad in a newspaper. This suggests a masseuse, named Lilith (Annabel Leah) who will come to the client and rates are negotiable. He calls and then falls asleep, woken when she knocks. Paul is nervous, suggests they chat but she soon strips, gets her massage table and kisses him.

drool

With a name like Lilith there is going to be no spoiler in discovering she is our vampire but I need to go into some unfamiliar lore they add in. She drools a foam-like drool onto his face and it is numbing and sedative. It also turns into a waxy residue, which seals his mouse and is used to glue his arms down. She straddles him and a large trunk-like tube comes from her belly and starts to suck his insides out from his groin. It was spectacularly unusual, and she comes across as much succubus as vampire.

Nina Donnelly as Scarlett

The next segment was Scarlet, directed by Sean Brien and released in 2020. It has three friends in a car – Denice (Harley Cubberley), Craig (James Stephen Walsh) and Robert (Greg Young) – watching for a woman who soon comes into view, her name is Scarlet (Nina Donnelly). It is apparent they know what she is and it is down to Craig to deal with her (he has a bag of vampire killing tools and Denice gives him a flask of garlic water). As he seems reticent, Robert suggests going to her, but Craig eventually leaves the car. She seems pleased to see him and leads him away… will he be able to deal with the restless dead? This is a very short segment (around 9 minutes) and has some good imagery but fails to get past a very basic narrative.

having a bite

The third segment is the one I am unsure of why it would be placed in the anthology, called for this Sorry for the Blood, and directed by Adam Michaels, Chaz and Dray Schoenbeck as I watched it I felt like it was lifting its story from Morbius and the vampire (Adam Michaels), unnamed in credit, looked like the comic book living vampire. Turns out this was a Morbius fan film from 2014, which is fine but curating it into a commercial anthology seems risky and, honestly, it was the weakest of the segments as it feels more like a proof of concept than a story.

feeding blood

The final segment was called Indictment and was a 2016 short that was directed by Gene Blalock. A man, Nico (Derrick Scott), wakes in a police cell and is brutalised by the cop in charge (Robert Hugh Starr), having been accused of murdering another cop (Nick Somers), which he can’t remember. As the brutality continues, memories start to return and he begins to realise that he’s been changed. This was my second favourite after the Backpage. Over all, this was a mixed bunch, though the photography was set at a decent standard across the segments and the shorts are worth watching (even Sorry for the Blood has some merit). 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Honourable Mention: All the Girls Love Blood: Kiss of the Devil

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:42:00 +0000

This is real DIY filmmaking, with a series of films so micro-budgeted (at least for the first) that, whilst the director Elliot Passantino has an IMDb page, none of the series have IMDb pages.

The first film, All the Girls Love Blood, was a shot to video film from 2004 and was a pretty poor print and a gritty mob story (with lowbrow comedy element) It followed a couple of undercover bent cops as they tried to avoid being killed by the French mob with Internal Affairs at their heels. As far as I can tell not all the film has survived.

Fatima's witchy sisters

In 2023 a sequel of sorts, All The Girls Love Blood: Full Moon Motorpsycho Mafia, was created. The print is tellingly better, especially as they have merged the two films into a feature on the Blu-Ray release. The story expanded with various Mob families, and a biker Neo-Nazi. A key-element of the narrative was a new psychotropic street drug called Christ. So far, no supernatural but at the very end a mob-boss turns into a werewolf and rampages, though it is revealed to be a Christ induced mass hallucination. Feminist mob-boss Fatima dies at the end of part two and that is important…

eating with mom

The 2025, 65-minute feature All the Girls Love Blood: Kiss of the Devil is somewhat more surreal. We get an FBI agent obsessed with a psycho bunny-suited Mr Hoppy – who appears at the end of part two, and he turns out to be a CIA super-soldier experiment, where they programmed several Mr Hoppy units (in the suits to freak out the enemy). We also get the agent’s Irish mom, played in drag and focal point for a lot of the lowbrow humour in this part. There is a bike gang, more mobsters, an undercover hacktivist group called Unicorn Sky (which is a separate project from the director that crosses into this). It turns out that Fatima’s family are witches too.

Fatima awakens

They try to bring Fatima back and fail but, at the end of the film, another mob lady manages to resurrect her – in the name of Lilith and Lamia – and Fatima comes back as a vampire under her control. This leads to her killing a few people (ripping one’s privates off whilst saying that the presence of Lilith in her resurrection was making her horny). This time it isn’t written off as a hallucination but is an actual supernatural event.

warding with a cross

It is, however, not too long an appearance and I am holding this to being a fleeting visitation. Even her death is off screen – killed by a CIA Laser Spectra piece of kit that leaves her as a fanged skull. Nevertheless, it has a vampire and despite the low budget I found myself drawn into the films – and despite looking awful, more so the first film that was a simple mob story, when the horizon broadened and conspiracy entered into the story the narrative felt more muddled.

At time of writing there is no IMDb page.

Short Film(s): Dead to the Last Drop

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Wed, 06 May 2026 16:32:00 +0000

So, it was quite some time ago that I looked at Maxx Bloodd – Vampire Spy, a short film directed by and staring Rock Savage. The film, apparently from 1993, had ultra-low video quality and no IMDb page (it still doesn’t) but it has now had a Blu-ray release as part of the Rock Savage Collection Volume 1.

Also on that disc is Dead to the Last Drop – a short anthology of three vampire short films. I considered splitting the three films up, but it is the anthology that has an IMDb page and so I eventually decided to keep them together. Irreverent, with casual racism thrown in (but nothing as shocking as the blackface used in Maxx Bloodd), these are shorts for the viewer who likes their straight to video fare to be as low budget as possible.

Mod Mutilator as himself

The first short is called The Omega Wrestler, a title I assume nodding towards The Omega Man. It features the luchador-mask wearing Mod Mutilator (himself) who has settled down to watch wrestling with a concern that he is running low on beer and that he needs pizza. The last bit is easily solved and he orders a delivery.

death by silver kitchen knife

Meanwhile, a vampire queen (L M Woods) pitches up with her minions – including main minion Ivan (Don Woods), who informs her that this is the home of the wrester who killed her vampire sisters – Santo. After MM kills a random vampire with a silver kitchen knife, with the vampire queen laying siege, it becomes apparent he is not Santo and then, after Ivan suggests Blue Demon and this is refuted, Ivan loses his head for incompetence.

L M Woods as the vampire queen

The vampires decide they will kill the wrestler after he unleashes a racist tirade based on their Mexican heritage, and they eat the pizza delivery guy (Kenny Charnock). Separated from his pizza and down to his last beer, he needs reinforcements and this eventually takes the form of Harry Gross (Rock Savage) a psychic investigator in all three films. MM doesn’t want help with the vampires, he wants Harry to bring beer…

Marvin Kennedy as Dracula

The second short is the Vampire Pierre. Harry Gross is visited by a good vampire called Big D, or simply Dracula (Marvin Kennedy). Dracula made a killing investing in blood banks and doesn’t need to hunt people anymore. However, he was seduced by a French vampire named Fifi (L W Woods) who stole his family ring. The ring has the power to call and control zombies. She has stolen it for a French vampire named Pierre (Frank Vassallo) who wishes to use it to rule the world. Dracula hires Harry to get it back.

Rock Savage as Harry

Fifi is sent to take Harry out – though, luckily, he has a spectral gun that can kill things such as vampires – though he’ll soon discover it doesn’t work on zombies. This one stereotypes the French and has some incredibly crap bat on display but also concentrates on the Harry character, who is more a cameo in the other two shorts.

Frank Vassallo as Scarlett Sheik

The Final Short is Bloodsucking Sheiks. The short starts with Nazi doctor Von Cresse (Marvin Kennedy) – a scientist who developed a youth formula in the 1940s – with terrorist Scarlett Sheik (Frank Vassallo). Von Cresse has developed a new formula that will turn a person into a vampire. It is used on the Scarlett Sheik, and they intend to use it on his men also, creating a vampire terrorist cell.

evil mad scientist makes vampire

Agent Rex Jones (Eric Koger) goes to Tiki Joe’s Bar to get his new mission – finding and stopping the Scarlett Sheik. What he doesn’t know is where the terrorist is or what his plot entails. Luckily Harry Gross comes in – he was offered the job first and recommended Rex – who suggests Tiki Joe (Don Woods) might have info – indeed he has heard a rumour that they’ll attempt to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister…

Pierre takes a bite

All three have moments set around race that is poor – though the stereotyping in the Vampire Pierre is probably the lesser as the other two carry quite offensive wording as well as falling back on lazy stereotypes. The Harry character is drawn as quite cool and, to be honest, felt like a non-vampire version of Maxx Bloodd. One for the low budget aficionados and the vampire completist.

The imdb page is here.

Resurrection – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:01:00 +0000

Director: Bi Gan

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Bi Gan’s epic film is a 2 hour and 40 minute long meditation on cinema through the ages, an art film that explores its subject in an oneiric fervour, which demands viewer attention.

The premise is that humanity has achieved immortality by sacrificing the ability to dream but there are dissenters to this, known as Deliriants, whose dreaming threatens the fabric of both time and reality. A woman (Shu Qi) searches for a Deliriant (Jackson Yee)…

shadow of the Deliriant

The first section of the film sees her trying to capture him via a cinema, into an opium den – where he consumes poppy to help him dream and cries tears that supply the den. The film style here is expressionist and the Deliriant referred to as a monster. With his monstrous visage and the use of shadows there was a feel of Murnau and Nosferatu - though this isn’t why I’ve reviewed the film – and with the modern take on expressionism and the silent film I was reminded of Guy Maddin also.

the Deliriant

She eventually captures the deliriant and cannot understand why he wishes to dream but, digging into his back, she finds a projector within him and decides to allow him to watch the films/dreams as he dies – a process that will take two hours for her but be a hundred years for him. I will mention at this point that I think you can read Nosferatu as a meditation on film/cinema just as this is. The film then has four dreams in which the deliriant shapeshifts into a role within the dream (each lead played by Jackson Yee), It is the final dream that concerns us.

Apollo and Tai

The dream takes place on New Years Eve 1999 and the opening sees Yee’s Apollo awaken on a dock, that is drenched in red lighting and peppered with firework explosions. The cinematic style of this dream is that of a Long Take – a signature style of Bi Gan – and has Apollo meet a girl – whose first appearance consists of her shadow – and follows them through the streets. She gives her name as Tai Zhaomei (Li Gengxi) and professes that she has never bitten anyone and wishes to do that, he says he has never kissed anyone. The dream follows them together and individually at the times they are separated. It becomes apparent that she is “owned” by Mr Luo (Huang Jue) who seems to be a local mobster.

Huang Jue as Mr Luo

In actuality, both Mr Luo and Tai are vampires, and he controls her as he holds her grave dirt. Apollo decides to fight for her -though he stands little chance and is severely beaten. They, by the end of the night, make a run for the docks and a ship that is meant to be there and, aboard ship, she admits what she is and shows fang. Mr Luo had not allowed her to drink blood unless it was filtered through him – there is mention of the idea that drinking from a human might make her human – but Apollo is willing to allow her to bite him…

lshowing fang

The vampire segment is technically brilliant, the Long Take working exceptionally well, and the whole film is beautifully photographed. The film, I suspect, will form a staple in some academic exploration of cinema and within vampire cinema texts. It can be like wading through a dream at times, and of course it is meant to be just that, with the film offering more and more, I suspect, on repeated watches. It is not going to be for everyone, certainly not a horror, it will be loved by some but its arthouse nature will make it inaccessible for others. I really enjoyed it, 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Dracula (2025 – RO) – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sat, 02 May 2026 11:39:00 +0000

Director: Radu Jude

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Not to be confused with Luc Besson’s 2025 version of Dracula, this is a strange one and no mistake. Definitely comedy, partly satirical, partly trolling filmmakers and viewers alike, partly plumbing vulgar depths, it runs at a whopping two hours and fifty minutes and in some regards absolutely outstays its welcome and in others keeps the viewer absolutely fixated on the strangeness within.

AI Ţepeş

What this is not, in many regards, is a film that owes much to the novel Dracula (a fifty minute interlude of the film does owe another novel, and I’ll get to that), rather it fixates on Vlad Ţepeş, perhaps rightly so as it is a Romanian film, with quite a bit shot in Sighișoara, where Vlad III was born. So the opening sequence of the film contains various AI renditions of Vlad Ţepeş saying “I am Vlad Ţepeş Dracula, you can all suck my cock.” This opens us up for discussion of the film’s repeated use of AI, always done in an obvious way with glitches welcome and realism ignored.

Oana Maria Zaharia as Vampira

The film then cuts to the (fictional) director (Adonis Tanta), who is making the film we see whilst conversing with various AI models regarding additional sequences – for this runs like an anthology, not all vampire related, with a central film that is cut through the production. The central film features a tourist restaurant in Sighișoara where a cabaret-like play of Dracula takes place, staring a washed up actor (Gabriel Spahiu) playing Dracula and Vampira (Oana Maria Zaharia) playing Mina. The show has a moment where patrons can pay to be with the actors – the woman (Ana Dumitrascu) who pays €1500 to be with Dracula demands her money back when he can’t sexually perform – and ends with them running through the town play-hunted by patrons with stakes. As this story progresses the pair decide to run away (they are essentially human trafficked) and are subsequently literally hunted.

stake in the ass

The sections are of varying lengths, intercut further with scenes with the director, and whilst some are vampire orientated – a vampiric Vlad Ţepeş returning to the house of his birth a (restaurant on the ground floor and) tourist attraction upstairs, or a vampiric and broke Vlad Ţepeş with tooth ache visiting the dentist (a dentist named Dr Caligari); noting various aged and gender actors play Vlad Ţepeş – others are most certainly not vampire stories. An example of the latter being a tragic tale of love (though barely romantic) on a collective farm during the Communist era. At one point we get a vampire (and zombie) satire of capitalism, invoking Marxism and Moretti, as a vampiric Vlad Ţepeş terrorises workers whose role is to play games and level up to then sell the passwords to Americans. That ends with a stake in the ass.

the muppet-headed vampire

Most interesting was the longest segment – at 50 minutes – which was a rendition of Romania’s first vampire novel; Vampirul by G.M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu (1938). It was subject to the same trolling attitude to the creative process with bad AI, an interior inn setting with the bare sound stage floor and cut out customers, a wonderfully acted bridge scene where the 19th century period illusion is shattered by the unedited modern street with cars and modern building in the background and the vampire looking like a man wearing a muppet’s head. SPOILER – the last was silly but almost forgivable as the book is one where the vampire is actually a very human protagonist playing on local superstition and fear. However, it was – despite the irreverence around it – fascinating if only for its heritage but did definitely tickle me in its absurdity.

emerging from the biopic

If what I have described feels strange, in places (a dildo tree and some usage of its strange fruit or with penis-enlargement ads spoken over Nosferatu) deliberately sexually immature, AI slathered so thickly to be a satire of the use of AI, muppet headed vampires and multiple Vlad Ţepeş (including a fanged one emerging from the Romanian historic biopic Vlad Ţepeş), deliberately mise-en-scène that does not miss anachronisms so much as revel in them, absolutely meta moments and a running time that is akin to a filmic marathon – it is all these things and more. But so very deliberately so. Perhaps the experiment works (the on-screen proxy-director suggests at one point that the film might be better called Frankenstein). Perhaps it doesn’t. In fact it is a mix of both and really, as such, hard to score. I am going for a straight down the line 5 out of 10, realising some of the underlying commentary might mean more in Romania but still fascinated and, in honesty, loving the muppet vampire.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Short Films: Destiny The Vampire Mermaid – Crimson Currents & Death in the Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:10:00 +0000

Two short films the first, directed by Rusty Pietrzak and released in 2009, came in at about 13 minutes and the direct sequel, directed by James Panetta and released in 2010, was longer at around 18 minutes. Both starred Debbie D (Vampyre Tales, Deep Undead, Requiem for a Vampire, Around Midnight & Jim Haggerty’s Unnatural Causes) as the eponymous Destiny.

The first short sees a couple of women held by pirate captain Anne Bonny (Laura Giglio, After Midnight and also Deep Undead & Around Midnight). Also held is Destiny and Bonny, with her first mate Mary (Deborah Dutch, 60 Seconds to Di3 & The Vampire Hunters Club), want to know which ship she came from before they fished her out of the sea. Destiny says no ship and, with a trigger word, turns into her mermaid form. Bonny has mentioned that they are trafficking virgins to Prince Dracula (who does not appear in this film but is played by Jim Ewald in the next). Destiny has a score to settle with Dracula (it is implied that he turned her).

Debbie D as Destiny

She was actually searching for a shipwreck with plunder from Atlantis and she and Bonny agree that she can get what she is looking for so long as she brings treasure back to the pirate – do that and she can have anything she wants. She gets an orb that has specks of light representing other mermaids round the globe and gives Bonny a necklace, unfortunately for the pirate, what Destiny wants as a reward is her ship and she strangles then feeds from the pirate – before taking the ship.

Jim Ewald as Dracula

The first film ends there, the next has Mary and Destiny in Transylvania. Despite their uneasy alliance, Destiny’s plan is to be taken into the castle in irons, as a prisoner, and then kill Dracula. Of course, this means they both end up in the dungeon with Peter Van Helsing (James Panetta) whose bag of vampire slaying gear has been left nearby by Dracula, just out of his reach, to torture him. The women team up with Van Helsing… The character of Destiny first appeared in a short from 1999 and was reprised for a short-lived web serial later. The shorts themselves are very much in the straight to video realm.

The imdb pages are here and here.

Succubus: The Bloody Mary Murders (#1-4) - review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:46:00 +0000

Author: Darryl Hughes

Illustrator: Monique MacNaughton

First published: 2023 (#1) – 2025 (#4)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb (#1): VIOLENCE BRED...

She was created in the aftermath of a brutal violent crime committed against her by sons of wealth and privilege that ended the life that she was born with. She was reborn with new "life" in a burst of the soul cooled flames of hellfire, christened by the depths of hell, and blessed by the devil him.

VENGEANCE FED. FEAR NOT THE DARKNESS--FEAR HER INSTEAD!

Brimming with preternatural life, consumed with a hunger for vengeance for the life that was ripped from her and the blood of those responsible, she hunts the darkness and the cold still night for her victims, leaving a mounting trail of carnage and carnality in her wake.

WHO IS SHE?

Her name is Mary. Bloody Mary. Vampire...SUCCUBUS.

The review: This is a series of 4 (so far) comics, available via Kindle and I’m covering of all four, though am linking to book 1 with the link below. Often, when it comes to something tagged as succubus we have to discern whether the entity falls into the vampiric. Mary, central character in this, is very much a vampire.

In life she was brutally raped by a bunch of bros, presumed dead, buried alive, which caused her death, and then emerged from the grave (the succubus side directly touches in to the how she turned, and the actions of the devil are entirely behind it). Now those college bros are finance bros and she is back for revenge. The first is killed, and flayed, which draws both Cinder Duvalle, a journalist, and Patricia “Pepper” Doyle, a homicide cop, into a hunt for the femme fatale.

This was fun, the art worked for the story and, whilst it had some quirks within the narrative (such as Mary, missing and presumed dead, able to access her assets on her return, something that was quirky due to lack of exploration – which was understandable given the limitations of the comic medium), it was a quick, fun read. The story, however, is far from complete at issue #4 and I hope the writer and illustrator get opportunity to finish the series. 6 out of 10.

In Kindle format @ Amazon US

In Kindle format @ Amazon UK

Marriage Bites – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:13:00 +0000

Director: Quinn Gardner

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

This one snuck onto Amazon, almost missed as their search engine for Prime videos goes from bad to worse, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to get when I pressed play. In essence it’s a character driven, horror themed comedy and I was rather tickled by it.

It starts with a couple of vloggers staking out a cemetery. After being scared by Milton (Darren Ewing) from the mortuary, they are confronted by a Goth/rock vampire and then we hear them got off-screen. We then move to Martin (Joe Komara), sat morose at the breakfast table. His voice-over tells us that he and his wife, Linda (Ashley Hargrove), have been married fifteen years and are kind of in a rut. They have a teen daughter, Morgan (Ava Connolly), and he has a boring job. Things are about to change…

bitten

Martin is out at night when a woman grabs and bites him, leaving him fallen to the floor. When he eventually gets up he is a vampire (and has a great set of bite marks). He gets home but can’t enter the house, phones Linda and, eventually, she invites him in – bemused by what he suggests is a role play. Interestingly he knows what he is and knows (by instinct or pop culture?) why he can’t enter the house. He discovers, in the bathroom, that he has no reflection and, when trying to shave by feel, cuts himself and immediately heals.

Linda and Martin

Getting in bed he decides that it will be torture, drawn by Linda’s aroma and neck. He eventually decides to sleep in the garage (or sit up, as he figures he’ll sleep by day). Linda has a dream and in it is Milton from the morgue and he is revealed as a vampire. In the morning Martin is in bed when Linda gets up and opens the shades. Martin leaps off the bed and then discovers he isn’t burning (later he’ll use sunblock as he’s worried about more direct sun). Of course Linda realises what he is and they research off the internet. They also discover he is horny (yes, the pep pops in their marriage), holy water burns (she gets some from a nearby church) and later we discover it will destroy a vampire if they are sprayed with enough. Strangely, given the holy water, crosses don’t work, neither does garlic, but staking kills, they have eye mojo and stabbing in the eye is icky.

doused with holy water

Later we’ll discover that whilst a deep bite turns, a nibble won’t immediately and it takes three, and the vampire is staking a claim to the victim being nibbled. We also discover that the town is suffering a bit of a vampire infestation. Later Martin will get Linda some fake fangs but the vampires can smell the aroma of someone still human. And, you know what, the film works, really quite well. The performances by Ashley Hargrove and Joe Komara are central to this; her exasperated at times, he trying to behave but also embracing his vampirism like a naughty schoolkid, with a genuine chemistry between them. It is their presences and performances that make this a genuinely funny flick. 6.5 out of 10.

The episode's imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Night Patrol – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:45:00 +0000

Director: Ryan Prows

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Gangs, cops, vampires… presented in a gritty thriller style… on the surface this should wow and, at first, it certainly holds the viewer attention and yet it loses itself, cutting from realism (albeit a realism with vampires) to silliness without breaking stride. This really should be better than it is, and that’s a crying shame.

Wazi injured

It starts in an interrogation room and Wazi (RJ Cyler) is injured with a stone spearhead (for want of a better description) stuck out of his side. A cop, Captain Freeman (Nick Gillie), enters the room and has him sign a statement (presumably that he has not dictated), signing a second copy when Wazi gets his blood on the first. Cutting backwards and we see Wazi on his bike. He goes to a car and meets Primo (Zuri Reed). Theirs is an illicit romance, him being a member of the Crips and her a member of the Bloods.

Zulu ring

He has clearly read too much in as he has brought her a ring (quickly suggesting it as a gift not a proposal). The ring actually belongs to his mother (Nicki Micheaux) and is of Zulu origin. Suddenly there is a car there and members of the Night Patrol – an elite gangbusting police task force – are there. Among them is Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long, House of Darkness). He is expected to execute Primo and does. Wazi runs and chase is given but as one of the Night Patrol finds him and is about to approach, he notices the ring and backs off. Hawkins has Wazi’s bike and it has his gang tag painted on it.

Carr and Hawkins

Hawkins is giving a talk to a bunch of highschoolers. A man bursts into the gym, his face covered and fires off a machine gun. Hawkins falls, the man terrorises a student when Hawkins sits up and congratulates his partner Carr (Jermaine Fowler) – the machine gun firing blanks. Outside, however, he remonstrates with him, it wasn’t part of the script. Carr was brought up within the Crips community and Hawkins asks about the tag on the bike – Carr does recognise it, as Wazi is his brother, but suggests he would ask his brother whose tag it is. Later Carr discovers that Hawkins has made Night Patrol and this is the last day rolling together.

Freddie Gibbs as Bornelius

Wazi takes himself to Bloods territory to tell their leader, Bornelius (Freddie Gibbs), that his sister Primo has been killed. The Bloods make him take them to the scene, where her body has been torn apart. The Bloods have a debate as to whether this was the work of demons or lizard people (a taste of the off the rails moments to come). Meanwhile Hawkins is actually trying to infiltrate, rather than join, Night Patrol. His father had been in the group and had vanished. He does go out of his way to protect Wazi for Carr.

metal fangs

So, what is happening? Night Patrol are vampires and they are led by Hawkins' father who is bringing his son into the fold. They forcibly turn him and intend to wipe out the Crips (and all those living in the Housing Project they run). The film, as mentioned, has been gritty thriller (bar the conspiracy spouting Bloods) and this feels like it is continuing when the vampires put in metal fangs. However, we then discover they are ultra powerful – headshots heal for instance. But then a stake through the heart heals too. It appears nothing can hurt them.

vampires, or...

There is a debate about what they are – with Wazi saying vampire – and mentions made of obayifo. According to Bane, obayifo are energy vampires from Ashanti folklore, in this repurposed to Zulu folklore but Ghana is a long way from South Africa. In the film they say (during this fairly long discussion, in the open, as the vampires devastate the Housing Project around them) that obayifo have pink skin, iron teeth and they attack the prey from trees above. They also name them Asanbosam, which according to Bane do hunt from trees though it is feet and hands that are iron and again is folklore from Ghana (and the Ivory Coast). What the film does, more than anything, is draw a line between the white cops and black gang members – at one point suggesting “One thing the colonizers all fear? Our Blackness.”

Zulu artefacts

This might be on the nose but is fine as a central premise (even if the exposition was ill-placed as the three in the discussion should have been up to their knees in vampires). However, where it goes wrong (and MASSIVE SPOILER) is in making the only thing that can kill them being Zulu artefacts but, worse, having the artifacts (ring and the spearhead that Wazi had embedded in his side at the opening of the film) glow green. Honestly, the ring looked like we’d just flipped into a Green Lantern film. We then get Hawkins flying and his jaw splitting and fanged like a Reaper Strain vampire – the realism they toyed with out of the window by this point.

reaper strain

And it is a shame. Even though the central messaging was on the nose, this worked. The gritty realism and the low key on supernatural tropes worked (having metal fangs was a nice touch). But then the mismatched power, the artefacts, the sudden ability to fly… it undermined everything the film had successfully built. Because I liked the film until the ride started getting silly I’m going to settle for 5 out of 10 – if they had maintained the tone and eschewed the superhero-like aspects it would have been higher.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Short Film: The Vampyr: A Gothic Horror

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:40:00 +0000

A little over 15 minutes in length this Will Nutter directed and written short was released in 2025. By the language and visuals, set in the 19th century, it certainly looks great. The black and white photography sets the atmosphere – though it does go, deliberately, very dark in places.

It starts with Edmund (Steven Hardie Colgan) narrating, as he composes a letter to his mother. He has left England and is sailing in pursuit of his love Mira (Skye McVie), who has been taken by a vampyr (Liam Robertson). Once ashore he finds someone to aid him in his hunt, known simply as the Hunter (Donnie Baxter) and together they set off to the castle.

The hunter and Edmund

Of course, one has to assume everyone is on the level… and to discover if they are, you’ll have to watch the short. Colgan carries the film, earnest but bumbling, though Baxter’s Hunter is a gruff, believable veteran of vampire hunting. The castle used for filming (I believe Lennox castle in Scotland) was a great location – though I think I may have tried to scrub the little bit of graffiti caught on camera in post-production. A minor point.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: The Haunting of Hill House

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:20:00 +0000

I had never read Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, which is shameful given one of my favourite films, The Haunting (1963), was based on it. I recently rectified the situation and read the novel, though I didn’t expect to give an honourable mention here.

I knew that the 1963 adaptation was pretty faithful to the book but there is nothing within the film that could have it (and the house at the centre) labelled as a vampiric building text. This is not true of the later (and also excellent) Mike Flanagan adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, which made the house vampiric (and the least said about the 1999 film the better).

The house in the novel, however, is immediately coded as living and sentient (if mad):

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

There is a suggestion that it sought to feed from inhabitants when we are told, “The sense was that it wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe—”. Had the theme been expanded on then I would have been suggesting that the house was, indeed, vampiric but, as a throwaway, I will say it certainly flirts with the trope and this could lead to a vampiric reading.

The mention is offered as Jackson certainly draws the reader to the vampiric on a couple of occasions by associating the house with an imagined vampire inhabitant. In one exchange about housekeeper Mrs Dudley we get:

“‘She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it’s probably part of what she agreed to.’
“‘Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?’
“‘You think he lives in Hill House?’
“‘I think he spends all his week-ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork downstairs.’”

Later we get another mention, whilst discussing Mrs Dudley leaving the house in a car with two others (one of whom was her husband, who the characters had met at the gate of Hill House, but who the second person might have been is never discussed further):

“‘First Murderer must be Dudley-at-the-gate; I suppose the other was Count Dracula. A wholesome family.’”

The use of Dracula is interesting as Castle Dracula was meant, at one point, to be intimately connected with the vampire, collapsing on his death. In this case it is a mention in passing but I would suggest the mention was deliberately used in order to invoke a particular Gothic feel for the reader. Nevertheless, the invocation of Dracula within the text opens the opportunity for me to mention the book here.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Cursed Hearse – review

noreply@blogger.com (Taliesin_ttlg) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:20:00 +0000

Director: Matthew Luke Tucci

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Vampire machines appear in genre films on occasion and, on some occasions, those machines are cars/motor vehicles. In this case, the vehicle is a hearse and that seems rather apt. As I’ll explore, we don’t see the hearse feed, nor do we get a sense of any supernatural healing that some variants of the trope show. We do get a definite impact on the driver/owner though. Perhaps we might consider it possession even.

hearse for sale

As the film starts, we find ourselves in small town USA and we see a hearse with a for sale sign, the vehicle looks derelict. Willoughby (Louis Rocky Bacigalupo, Vampz!), or Will, is sat in a tow truck. It is the third time this week his car has died. The sheriff (Johnny Halloran) stops on by before Will gets the tow truck to drop the car off at his Uncle’s garage and drop him off at work.

co-workers

Work is a tele-sales place, with his friends Lavash (Marat Shad) and Sid (Anthony Mcgee). After shift they are walking, for his part Will is off to his second job at a Halloween store. As they walk he spots the hearse and is distracted by it. His boss at the store is a dick. However, there is something good there in the form of co-worker Rosemary (Arina Bacigalupo). She gives him a lift home and asks him on a date. Home life is weird; he lives with his Nana (Marnie L Hall) but she has a young lover, Greg (Justin C. Schilling). Lavash and Sid are coming over but he runs out on them determined to buy the hearse.

Will and Rosemary

He crosses a bridge, where a blind man seems to sit vigil, and goes to the couple who are selling the hearse. The man is creepy, but his wife comes out and essentially offers him the hearse for $400. When he has left it is clear that it is a set up and they refer to the hearse like a living being. He doesn’t have $400 and so convinces Sid to loan him the money as an investment – Will suggests he will convert the hearse into a limo as a business venture.

vampire breath

So, the car is a vampire and starts whispering to him, making him offers. The car is described as hungry and when we get the backstory it consists of a funeral home director who was part of a cult that fed the hearse the blood of the dead, but it wasn’t enough and she insisted on fresh blood. She is able to somehow possess Will, which gives him long talons, red eyes and a maw full of fangs. When he attacks a victim he expels breath into them, which seems to sedate them. Later he will say he thinks he drank blood, which he did, and a cult member says “How do you think we feed her?” This suggests that she consumes blood through a possessed servant. I’d have liked to have seen the hearse become pristine as it gained blood but it remained as is, and I suspect that was a budget thing.

Vamp face

The film has a neat idea – though some of the lore such as the breath and the symbiosis between car and servant are under-explored. Unfortunately it isn’t sure what it wants to be. It feels like it pulls its punches when it comes to horror and much more atmosphere and tension could have been explored. This may be because it styles itself as a comedy too, but that fell flat for me. There are pregnant pauses and awkward silences in scenes between the actors, as though they are waiting for direction and, to me, it really felt like it could do with tightening up. Not terrible, just shy of what it might have been. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK