Saturday, January 31, 2015

Vamp or Not? Dry Bones


There is a huge amount of crossover between the vampire and the succubus. Archetypally they would both seem to come from the same root. Of course, generally, the succubus is displayed as a Demon, both vampire and succubus have a sexual aspect (more so with the latter) and the modus operandi of the succubus is often akin to the energy vampire.

As such I do like to check out succubae films and examine them under "Vamp or Not?" This was a 2013 film directed by Greg Lamberson and Michael O'Hear, a low-budget movie, with comic undertones and actually quite a bit of heart.

the monster in the room
It begins with a mum telling her daughter, Becky (Kaelin Lamberson), the story of Hansel and Gretel whilst her son, Andy (Mark Goodfellow, Blood for Irina), listens on bored. The dad comes home and mum hurries the children to bed. Andy sees a monstrous creature and screams. When mum comes in there is only dirty washing there. He hears voices, but is not believed, and then sees the monster at the end of his bed. She promises to make him feel so good. At this point his abusive father comes in the room threatening to beat him. The monster grabs his father's feet and pulls him under the bed.

Drew and Michelle
Drew (Michael O'Hear, Mostly Dead & Red Scream Nosferatu) is back at his old house. Years of therapy has convinced him that the monster he saw as the child Andy was a figment of his imagination. Still he is unsure about being home. A neighbour accosts him and suggests he burn the house to the ground and do the neighbourhood some good.

memories of Mom
He has a look in the house, which is run down and untidy after being rented as student accommodation. When he gets to his room - which seems pretty much as he left it - he checks under the bed. He is startled when his sister (Kathy Murphy) speaks to him. As the story develops we discover that Andy only came home once, after their mother died. Rebecca has been renting the house but now wants it sold and has bullied her brother into coming home to fix the place up to sell.

graffiti
As the film goes along Andy realises that the creature under his bed was real. He also discovers that it had been preying on the students who rented the house, and it devours a woman (Amelie McKendry ) he brings home as well as his best friend Tom (Paul McGinnis) and Tom's lady friend Cindy (Jessica Zwolak). The monster also has a perchance for daubing the graffiti "dry bones" in red paint on the living room wall. He discovers that his mother called the monster a succubus.

sucked dry
When he talks to a previous tenant he assumes the man is actually the student's father. The twentysomething has aged to looking fortysomething. He watches a program by expert Joseph Sarno (Jason Tannis, also Blood for Irina) that explains that a succubus is a female Demon, that the loss of their wings traps them on Earth, and that there attacks can either slowly drain someone's life force over time or drain them instantaneously. The latter are the attacks we mostly see. This brings us to effects. The actual dried husks looked okay, the idea of Andy squeamishly rolling the desiccated corpses up before burial was amusing but the one time we see someone turning into a husk the effect looked pretty rubbish (however, this was the only really poor effect).

Lilim aproaches
Other lore we get includes the fact that the succubus, Lilim (Debbie Rochon, Vampyre Tales, Red Lips II: Bloodlust, Skeleton Key, a Feast of Flesh, Cremains & Rage of the Werewolf), can take the form of other women or men in order to confuse or seduce - specifically, but not exclusively, for Andy she takes the form of his old crush Michelle (also Debbie Rochon). For some reason Andy not being at home was the thing that trapped the succubus in the house. The way to kill a succubus is to show her a mirror, the vain creature becomes temporarily trapped in the reflection and can be destroyed if the mirror is smashed.

Pretty much this ticks all the boxes and I have to say that this succubus also deserves the appellation Vamp. Also, despite being a low-budget film, I have to say that I really rather enjoyed this effort. It wasn't perfect but it was damn good fun. The imdb page is here.

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