Wellington Paranormal: The Fear Factory – review

Director: Jemaine Clement

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

A return to Wellington Paranormal a spin-off series of What We Do in the Shadows. Season 1 had a vampire episode and this episode comes from season 3 and features an energy vampire (though one very different to Colin Robinson from the more famous, vampire-based spin-off that kept the name What We do in the Shadows).

Wellington Paranormal follows the cops O’Leary (Karen O'Leary) and Minogue (Mike Minogue) who, under the guiding hand of Sergeant Maaka (Maaka Pohatu), form the Paranormal Unit of the police force (a very unofficial/secret division). O’Leary and Minogue were side characters from the original feature length film and the series is filmed documentary style that offers a feel not only of the other vehicles in this family of programmes but such series as Cops.

on patrol

This starts with the cops in their patrol car and Minogue considering they should have bespoke jackets with “P.U.” on it – despite it kind of spelling poo. They get a call and find a guy terrified, he has been accosted by a giant man-sized rat which walked on two-legs, the fear being so much he wet himself. Then a woman reports another fear but she is quickly abandoned as a man screams from over the road. He claims to have been attacked by a shark – and he has a bite on his leg to prove it. All three work together, all now have a Mallen streak and all had been to a place called the Fear Factory – a permanent haunt.

the chasm

The cops go there and several of the attraction's actors begin to argue amongst themselves and with the manager Joe (Vaughan Slinn). Minogue arrests them all, a little previous, suggests O’Leary, but certainly they all have to come to the station. After interviewing some actors, they interview Joe, with Maaka in the room. He suggests he is hungry and then asks what Maaka fears and suddenly, where the man was, is a giant spider (Maaka gains a Mallen streak). Joe is placed back in cell but there is a disruption. In his cell a cop sits with feet on the toilet, the floor having become a chasm. They get a plank to try and get him out and, in the confusion, the chasm becomes Joe who leaves the station, becoming the worst fear of each cop he passes.

public speaking to sock puppets

Maaka reasonably deduces that Joe is a shapeshifter who feeds on fear. Indeed, CCTV footage suggests that Joe has become younger after the smorgasbord of fear he has just devoured. It is up to Minogue (whose greatest fears are public speaking, sock puppets and balloons) and O’Leary (who claims to not be afraid of anything) to apprehend him. With them goes recurring character Officer Parker (Thomas Sainsbury) who fears everything. Just how do you stop someone who can become the thing you fear the most?

Parker and Maaka

This was a neat little episode, which like all of them relies heavily on the dead-pan interactions of O’Leary and Minogue. Sergeant Maaka is great support to them but they are front and centre. This is one of the episodes where Parker comes into his own also. I said on the season 1 episode that this are fun but not as funny as their originating film, they are also not as funny (for me) as the other spin-off series but they are worthwhile nevertheless and being short episodes never outstay their welcome. The seasons have a consistency to them but we are judging the episode and this deserves a solid 6.5 out of 10. Thanks to Sarah who got me the Seasons 1-4 collection for Christmas.

The episode’s imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray (Season 3) @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray (seasons 1-4) @ Amazon UK

Nundead – review

Director: Donald Farmer & ors.

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

This is an anthology film, as well as a nunsploitation, and the IMDb page lists a whole load of directors including schlock meister Donald Farmer. Given that the segment I’m reviewing this for was recycled into (I assume, though this could be the recycled piece) Farmer’s flick Debbie Does Demons then I assume he was responsible for the segment.

stake

After an opening with a medieval warrior carrying a pendant, running through woods and finished off in a stream by (revealed to be vampire) nuns, the segment begins with a couple undergoing (and truthfully, it does seem undergoing is the correct descriptor) couple’s therapy. The therapist is a dick, no two ways about it, but he has a plan. He is so horrible to his clients that they see the good in each other! Anyway, after the session a woman (the therapist's ex-wife, it would seem) comes in and there is no love lost between them. However, she says that their son is missing. He was convinced that vampires ran a brothel and went to investigate he has not come back.

got by the nuns

She takes his enthusiasm for wanting to find their son as a reaction to the word brothel… but it seems he is a vampire hunter, he puts on priest’s vestments, grabs a stake and a book – with the pendant from the opening – and off he pops to the brothel. The brothel is the Church of Hallowed Holes – which will be used in Debbie Does Demons, and all the footage as he goes in is also in the other film. The vampire leader awakes as the priest is shown round a variety of fetish orientated rooms and then they attack him (he being wholly ineffectual as a hunter) and lob him in a coffin.

demon  nun

He at least asked about his son, though he got no answer. Then a demonic nun appears and starts killing the vampire nuns and eventually gets him out of the coffin, becoming his ex-wife, who then gives him a hug and that’s the segment. No answer about the son, no real story and footage that will be reused. All in all, it’s a damp squib. There is another segment with a nun who claims to feed on life but the actual segment only really shows slasher tropes. So, the score is for the Hallowed Holes segment and it really doesn’t deserve any more than 2 out of 10 – it fails to hold a narrative, we don’t know what the deal is with the wife, the priest/husband is ineffectual and who knows what happened to his son.

The imdb page is here.

Handbook of the Vampire: Blood Is Life. Life Is Blood: The Psychology of Vampirism

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Nikki Foster-Kruczek and Catherine Pugh the Chapter Page can be found here.

This entry into the Handbook of the Vampire looked into the psychology of vampirism and so like ‘Beyond Humanity’: An Expedition Charting Non-Human Identities did touch into those who identify as vampires, though I felt this had an edge of critical thinking that was less obvious in the other chapter. The authors took a particularly Freudian view of the subject, using the work of Ernest Jones quite extensively. Because of this they looked at arousal through bloodplay, which was noticeably missing in the previous chapter. They also, early in the chapter, posit “clinical vampirism technically does not exist” (3), instead tying the consumption of blood with other fetishes and, later in the chapter, go beyond Freud and look at hemomania, suggesting the need for one’s own blood exhibited with that condition might develop through poor impulse control to a wider need.

What I thought interesting was the take on identity and the idea of narrative identity (defining one’s identity through storytelling). If an individual identifies as other-than-human, then there is difficulty in becoming part of a community and a clash with the typical perception of normality. This underlines the importance of the vampire community for the individual but also indicates why media generated ‘rules’ are adopted into that identity and that the consumption of texts around vampires helps shape the narrative identity and, ultimately, self-identification is the key.

This was a fascinating chapter of the Handbook.

Father Brown: the Dead of Night – review

Director: Carys Lewis

First aired: 2024

Contains spoilers

The programme Father Brown has featured on TMtV before and, like that time, Ian contacted me and told me that the latest episode of the programme had a vampire theme – though more so than last time.

The series is set in 1950s Britain, where the amateur sleuth is a Roman Catholic Priest, the eponymous Father Brown (Mark Williams, Being Human (UK)) and, to be honest, I’ve never watched it after the last episode I featured here.

at the grave

In this we begin with a gentleman, Bernard Ross (Nicholas Woodeson), going through the nighttime graveyard and being spooked by bats. He gets to a grave and screams. Going to a phone box he makes a call and says that she (his daughter (Bethan Leyshon)) has risen as a vampire. The next day Father Brown is preparing for a requiem mass for said daughter when he is told that Ross is refusing to attend – he goes to his home.

crosses

There the door is opened by Gilbert Gallamore (Nicholas Asbury), who is holding a cross (and there is one on the outside of the door also). Father Brown bustles his way in and Ross is convinced that his daughter is a vampire and Gilbert is equally convinced. Before she died, a year before, she had grown pale and ill, she had mood swings and blistered in the sun and eventually she committed suicide. She is buried on hallowed ground because the church deemed her not in her right mind.

Ray Fearon as Silas O'Hagen

Evidence is a desiccated mouse (she’s been draining animals before working her way to humans) and the disturbed earth of her grave. Now… one might have asked why she had only just risen (as she has just started feeding small on mice) but the programme and protagonists do not. Equally, I’d have been concerned about the grave being dug up, if the soil was disturbed and the turf vanished – but the turf is not mentioned. Brown, of course, believes it to be poppycock but things are complicated when Silas O'Hagen (Ray Fearon) shows up, a vampire hunter returned from Romania, and a body appears with apparent fang marks in the neck.

hunter's kit

The episode trades in movie tropes but that’s ok as the setting is late enough that sunlight, for instance, has entered the megatext and public perception. It also uses porphyria but in a way that makes sense and doesn’t try to tie it to folklore or suggest it was known as a vampire disease and actually tie it into the findings around the disease from the 1950s. It also has the vampire hunter selling apotropaic measures to a panicked village which was mildly amusing.

a daughter returned

However, I’m sorry but the episode didn’t do it for me. I guess, as someone not invested in the series, then the series regulars meant very little and I found the figure of Brown sanctimonious (which he may be meant to be). The mystery was a tad vanilla, a moment with the daughter walking the halls was ill-explained (a dream, of course, but the dreamer’s reaction underwhelming). Whilst I know that now the Catholic Church will allow the burial of a suicide, and I don’t know for certain about the time period we are looking at, I found the idea that a 1950s priest knowingly allowed a burial of a suicide on church ground unlikely. Not for me, 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Satanic Hispanics – review

Director: Eduardo Sánchez (segment)

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Another portmanteau film, this one features segments directed by Latinx directors and Hispanic themed stories with a wraparound that sees the Traveller (Efren Ramirez, Constantine: The Saint of Last Resorts) the lone survivor of a massacre.

As the police question him it is revealed that he is an Aztec and an immortal and the segments are the stories he tells the police. This includes the segment we’re interested in, entitled El Vampiro.

Hemky Madera as El Vampiro

Starting at a Halloween party, where there has been a massacre conducted by the vampire (Hemky Madera, From Dusk Til Dawn the Series – season 2). There is one survivor (Missy Merry) and she manages to sneak out of the bar when he goes after her and captures her with mojo – getting her blood on his satin shirt and getting a stain removal pen out to clean it up. A dog walker (Michael C. Williams) sees this and is convinced it is a ‘Halloween prank’.

with Maribel

The vampire is called by his vampire bride, Maribel (Patricia Velasquez). He has snuck out for the slaughter and also forgotten daylight savings time… he has a very short window to get home and the film follows his misadventures across the city – failing to turn into a bat, being attacked by young hoodlums and staked on the wrong side of the chest, trying to mind control two cops and ending up inside a church. The segment is played for laughs.

stake

And as a segment played for laughs it works ok. It isn’t the funniest vampire comedy but it does do it with love, and the segment is perhaps a bit more throwaway than others in the film. The effects are absolutely fine for the segment, with a decent amount of gore, and the bickering with Maribel works really well. It doesn’t shy away from a tragi-comedic ending and it is pretty good, but not mind blowing. With anthologies I score the vampire segment only and this probably rolls in at 5 out of 10, fun but not spectacular – there are more impressive segments in the film.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

First Impressions: Abigail

So, Number 1 son and I went to see the new big screen vampire release, Abigail. This is from Universal and the opening (and recurring) musical theme in the film is Swan Lake. This, of course, ties the film back to Dracula and I have seen press suggesting this is either a remake of or connected to Dracula’s Daughter. Let me scotch that right now, from its narrative it is not in any way, shape or form related to the 1936 film. Indeed, despite the musical call back, there is nothing in this to suggest that the paternal vampire (for there is a vampire dad (Matthew Goode, A Discovery of Witches) and daughter dynamic here) is Dracula. He is referred to by another name and suggests he has been known by many, but that’s the top and bottom.

the crew

Indeed, the film has a lot more in common – in its basic strokes – with the film Blood Trap. In both films a crew of criminals are gathered to kidnap the daughter of a crime boss and become trapped in a mansion where the daughter is revealed as a vampire. There are differences, of course, the daughter is Abigail (Alisha Weir) in this and she is a child (albeit a notably long-lived child she is not the adult daughter from the earlier film) and the crew take her to a mansion (unbeknownst to them belonging to the crime boss) rather than being trapped in the mansion they sought to kidnap her from as per Blood Trap.

Alisha Weir as Abigail

Characters and plotting are different, of course, and the bottom line of this flick is it is great fun. As for lore, the vampires are incredibly strong, dexterous (especially Abigail who is a ballerina) and she displays the ability to fly. Abigail also displays the ability to puppet control someone she has bitten from a distance. There is a commentary about the age of the vampire being connected to the powers. A head shot doesn’t phase her and death comes about through staking, one vampire draining another and exposure to sunlight. The deaths are wonderfully gory with the vampire exploding across the room, and anything in the way, with bucket loads of blood and viscera.

I’ll revisit Abigail with a review and proper synopsis once it hits home purchase but it is one I’d say is worth catching at the flicks.

The imdb page is here.

Corruption – review

Director: Robert Hartford-Davis

Release date: 1968

Contains spoilers

This is another film where medical processes are used in a vampiric way – this time to restore beauty, which makes it analogous to Atom Age Vampire, indeed like that film the disfigured woman’s scarring is on half her face and like that film the mad doctor undergoes a Jekyll and Hyde like transformation – the difference here being that his transformation is not physically into a monster but mentally through the stress of the position he is in.

leaving theatre

It starts with an operation and the lead surgeon is Sir John Rowan (Peter Cushing) who has completed a monumentally long surgical procedure. He goes home and falls asleep to be woken by the telephone. It his fiancée and model, Lynn Nolan (Sue Lloyd), who reminds him of a party that photographer Mike Orme (Anthony Booth) is throwing. When the couple arrive in the car we can tell it is a May to December relationship and once in the party it is clear that Sir John does not belong in this swinging (sixties) scene.

injury

Mike clearly has a thing for Lynn and spurns another model (Vanessa Howard, the Blood Beast Terror) to photograph her. When he starts encouraging Lynn to undo her dress, suggesting the shots get kinky, Sir John intervenes and the two men fight. A photography light is knocked over, landing on Lynn and badly burning her face. In the hospital the fiancé is told they have saved Lynn’s sight and her distraught sister, Val (Kate O'Mara, the Vampire Lovers) arrives.

scarred

Lynn wakes screaming and Val is by her bedside. She is back home and Val tells Lynn that Sir John is working day and night to find a way to rejuvenate her skin. For her part Lynn, knowing that her modelling career is over and knowing she is now disfigured, simply wants to die, asking for a bottle of pills to be left for her. Sir John, for his part, is irritable given setbacks. Eventually he decides he has found a cure and shows Lynn a Guinee pig he claims to have injured in the way she was and cured.

surgery at home

He goes to the hospital and performs an unauthorised autopsy on a car crash victim stealing her pituitary glands. He is caught by his mentee Steve (Noel Trevarthen) who reluctantly turns a blind eye. At home he has made a surgery theatre with laser medical implement (the film was also released under the title Laser Killer) and operates on Lynn with Val assisting. Whether he transplants the gland (ala The Man In Half Moon Street or makes some form of injection I couldn’t tell, but the surgery also involves cutting scar tissue with both scalpel and laser.

the kill (UK version)

The next scene has a dinner party with Steve attending and Lynn’s face is back to normal. Lynn and Sir John are to go on a cruise but they return early as her face reverts to what it was. Sir John decides it is because he used a dead gland and must use a living one (how long it is deemed ‘living’ is questionable given the violent removal, as we’ll see). This sees him visiting a flat of ill repute and here the film has two versions. The UK and US versions have him visit a prostitute (Jan Waters), there is a bizarre scene of her taking a phone call and discussing clients, him getting cold feet and it all leads to an attack that is mostly unseen. In the continental version the prostitute (Marian Collins) strips and he gets cold feet, she demands payment and he begins a frenzied attack. In both cases he cuts her head off. All three versions are on the Indicator Blu-Ray.

Peter Cushing as Sir John Rowan

Long and short, the “living” gland also degrades but slower and Lynn demands another operation before the scarring returns. However, it is Cushing’s deranged attacks on victims that makes quite a ludicrous narrative (which includes a home invasion by criminal beatniks – or British cinema approximations of such, a most audacious train carriage murder/decapitation, and a mass laser killing) watchable. Cushing offers a superb performance, from suave to manic, with regret, shock and pathos. He makes this worth watching. Sue Lloyd likewise offered a chillingly sociopathic performance. There is an undercurrent of misogyny to the murders, which matched the cinema poster tagline “Corruption is not a woman’s picture”. The coda scene fails to hit the mark but I won’t spoil it, nevertheless 5 out of 10 for a superb Cushing performance.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK