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

Short Film: Nosferatu Rising

This is a short film that director Sean Genders released in 2018 and comes in around he 7-minute mark. I have to thank friend of the blog and correspondent Billy for making me aware of it.

There is not too much to say about this one, after an establishing castle and bats shot, we see four vampire hunters enter the castle and an Orlock styled vampire, credited as Nosferatu (Jac Charlton), high above them.

Inside the castle is a captive woman (Elena Renn) and the hunters have come to save her. They carry pretty steampunk inspired weaponry, for instance a steam powered stake thrower and an illuminated holy water squirter. The vampire has the keys to her manacles, of course. The look of the vampire was really nicely done but the film is pretty dark, murky even. I suspect that was both an aesthetic choice and as a way of obfuscating the joins.

The imdb page is here.

Handbook of the Vampire: Black Vampires and Blaxploitation

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Jerry Rafiki Jenkins the Chapter Page can be found here.

Opening with the thought that “Blaxploitation film history… …is, in part, “a vampire story””, Jenkins' chapter proves to be a solid look at the Black vampire film and the ideas, explored within, of Africanism Vs African American and the concepts of Black Maleness and Femininity. The texts that the author uses are, for the primary ones, Blacula, Scream, Blacula, Scream and Ganja and Hess. Within those there would seem to be more a social connection between Scream, Blacula, Scream and Ganja and Hess then there are between Scream, Blacula, Scream and Blacula, which was interesting in and of itself. I think I would like to have seen Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Spike Lee’s remake or reimagining of Ganja and Hess, at least touched on, though the chapter is not lacking by its absence.

Perhaps a touch more unusual choices as texts were Vampire in Brooklyn and, more so, Def by Temptation - not in terms of content, they fit into argument well – but more in them being texts used less often by authors. There was, I felt, much more room for exploration of the themes that was curtailed simply by word limit and the author has opportunity, I feel, to expand on their themes in much more depth – perhaps even to the point of a monogram and it would certainly be a monogram I would read. Inciteful content and solid writing make this an excellent entry in the Handbook.

Deep Undead – review

Director: Dave Castiglione

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

This is a budget flick that has had the Blu-Ray treatment by Vinegar Syndrome and has a respectable score on IMDb, which as you watch you wonder why? In some respects I fear being harsh, after all it was early work by inexperienced filmmakers and writer/director Dave Castiglione came up with a concept that became a brave attempt at, evidentially, biting off more than he could chew. On the other hand, it is a blooming difficult watch.

divers

The film begins with a couple of divers looking around a shipwreck. Kudos to this budget production for pulling off underwater sequences but… this is ten minutes of pretty murky footage of divers round a wreck, with no real narrative driving it. One scares the other and then one clutches their head and, at the end of the sequence, they have both died. This cuts into a news report about spills from a drum of radioactive waste produced by a nuclear power station by the lake.

Pamela Sutch as Megan Flowers

The report is by Megan Flowers (Pamela Sutch), a reporter who believes more is going on there. The report mentions that the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) are investigating. Indeed they have arranged for a diving team, led by Kirk Taylor (David Maul) and contracted to the power company, to go into the lake to find the missing divers. The team fails to do so and Taylor has to go in when it appears his team is in trouble. They end up pulling out their diver, Cujo (Vince Butler), but not finding the bodies. There is, they have discovered, radiation round the wreck and Cujo reports seeing an angel who breathed life into him – and has neck punctures they put down to fishing hooks.

Flowers and Ronnie

Flowers tries to get some info but Kirk ain’t talking. Kirk’s girlfriend Ronnie (Dawn Murphy) is going to the beach with her daughters, Kimberley (Caitlin Morgan) and Lisa (Christina Rose), when Flowers approaches them and manages to get Ronnie talking. She leaves them on the beach just before Lisa gets in trouble in the water and yells that something has hold of her and suggests she has been bitten. Ronnie gets into the water to pull her out – Lisa's leg is caught in a fishing net but the body of a diver bobs up also – and Flowers runs back to the beach, only to be grabbed by someone in hazmat gear.

hospital vampire

Meanwhile Kirk loses his contract with the power company, who offer the divers direct employment for ropey sounding work. Cujo becomes ill and the NRC order a purge of water with the divers still in the system. So, we have conspiracy and big business and regulatory bodies acting rogue… but what about vampires. Well, there is one in the wreck (Debbie D, Vampyre Tales & Requiem for a Vampire) who was bitten by another as the ship wrecked in the 1920s and who has, as far as I can tell, been hibernating until the increased heat of the waters (and, I assume the radiation) woke her. Who is the main vampire? I won’t spoil but will say they sound as though they are a separate species to humanity.

plastic fangs

This is a struggle. The narrative isn’t best communicated and scenes drag on. There are logical lapses aplenty also. However, I can’t take away from the fact that there was an ambitious idea here and a budget film using underwater photography was impressive. Other moments are just bizarre – a vampire visiting another in the hospital and the pov over a pair of plastic boobs was just odd. Similarly, Flowers breaking herself and the kids out of a hospital, meeting up with a conveniently parked Kirk (all with a comment about the kids being safer with them) and then taking them out in a rubber dinghy whilst he night dives to the wreck… well their idea of safety isn’t the one I have. I must also mention the line where Kirk describes his wetsuit as having material that shields radiation, hilarious as it is a suit with no arms leaving them exposed, Flowers buys that, at least. Not great but ambitious, 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK