Short Film: Junji Ito Collection: Rumors

From the Junji Ito Collection comes this short anime recreation of the manga Rumors This episode first aired in 2018 and, as I mentioned in the look at the manga, the majority of the story follows Soichi making up rumours about himself and spreading them around school.

Part of this involves him pinning up a lipstick advert in the schoolroom that features Miss Fuchi, the unheimlich or even monstrous model who made her first appearance in the manga Fashion Model. The impact on the schoolkids is immediate and creates fertile ground for Soichi to spread rumours that she is in town and terrorising kids.

rumour of attack

The alleged reason for her visit is the nearby swamp, and he spreads further rumours about its properties, suggesting the waters make a bather more beautiful. Unfortunately for Soichi, Miss Fuchi is really in town and is using the swamps to bathe. Soichi has manipulated Midori with the rumours, as he perceives she has slighted him (she actually spotted and exposed his rumours), and she goes to bathe and Miss Fuchi emerges from the waters.

giant sized Miss Fuchi

She is most upset with the idea that he has photographed her – as a model there are to be no unauthorised pictures, but the anime, even more than the manga, gives an idea to the scale of her – making her a veritable giant. Of course, having been very tall but still able to be a car passenger in Fashion Model we are left with the impression that she can supernaturally grow big and Soichi looks tender and tasty…

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Ghostkeeper

Now the wendigo (or windigo, in this) is an odd one in that it originates from Native American myth and thus is not the standard, undead, vampire. It is, however, cannibalistic and whilst sometimes drawn as an antlered spirit is also sometimes drawn as a person. It is safe to say it has crossover into the vampire myth/archetypes, especially when drawn by filmmakers, and is worth looking at on a case-by-case basis.

When it comes to this 1981 Canadian film, directed by Jim Makichuk it is more difficult as the film is more a slasher than anything else and we see little of the windigo (John MacMillan) and even less of any cannibalistic activity – indeed that is almost implied rather than shown. As such I have decided to look at this as a film that uses a vampiric trope, the supernatural creature who consumes flesh.

arriving on snowmobiles

It starts with a snowmobile pulling up outside a store high in the Rockies. Marty (Murray Ord) and Jenny (Riva Spier, Rabid) dismount and go in the store, the storekeeper (Les Kimber) proves not particularly engaging with them, especially as Marty comes off as an obnoxious entitled prat. He does direct Jenny towards some coffee to warm up. A second snowmobile pulls up and Chrissy (Sheri McFadden) comes in the store.

the lodge

They talk about where they are all staying (its New Years Eve and there is to be a party) and Chrissy speaks about exploring. The storekeeper warns them that a storm is coming in and suggests not exploring but they ignore him. After a ride they come up to what might be a logging road through the trees, with a keep out sign. Despite Jenny’s protests, they ignore the sign and head up it – at the end of the trail is Deer Lodge. Chrissy crashes her snowmobile and they decide to go in, despite it looking abandoned.

Riva Spier as Jenny

Now, just to note that the lodge was, situated in mountain snow as it is, reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. This hotel is smaller and is more a location than a character (and is not a vampiric building) but the similarity is there. They force a door open and the hotel does appear abandoned, they discover there hasn’t been a guest for five years but they later realise the heating is on. Exploring Jenny feels like someone is there and we see a face spying on her.

Georgie Collins as the Ghostkeeper

After night has fallen they hunker down next to a fire, with obvious flirting between Chrissy and Marty, He goes to find another bottle of wine and something attacks him in the kitchen. Chrissy and Jenny run in, after hearing his cry of surprise, and he has bested “it”, which turns out to be an old lady (Georgie Collins). She is assumed to be a caretaker (later she mentions that her son, Danny (Bill Grove), is around somewhere) and she reluctantly gives them rooms for the night. She never actually gives her name and is credited as Ghostkeeper.

Bill Grove as Danny

Whilst Chrissy goes for a bath, the couple argue. Jenny knows Marty wants to sleep with Chrissy and just wants him to be honest. For his part, being a prat as noted earlier, he just points out to her that she has no problem spending his money. As the film goes on it is suggested by the old lady that Jenny has the strength of character to take over (I’ll come to what) and Danny holds Chrissy underwater in the bath – not killing her but making her unconscious – and then carries her into an icy area of the hotel (basement area) and slitting her throat leaving her to the creature locked in there.

the book

So, the old lady is the caretaker of a windigo and beyond seeing it be given Chrissy we don’t see much action from it. An intertitle at the opening of the film suggests they are ghosts who live on human flesh to survive, Jenny finds a book on native legends that says that these giants can be kept by certain people, normally woman, who possess an ancient power handed down from one to the next along with a newspaper report on mutilated corpses. This supernatural flesh eating then is the trope, along with a concentration on the "familiar" servant. The film itself has a touch of the slasher (with Danny pursuing Jenny with a chainsaw), Marty quickly loses it and the film piles on lots of uncanny atmosphere.

John MacMillan as the Windigo

It is in producing this atmosphere, where the film is at its best, helped in no uncertain terms by Georgie Collins whose performance offers both strange and sinister in turns. The film itself is quite small, adding to the atmosphere, with a limited cast and feels very much of its time. Indeed, if made today then the intimation of flesh eating would undoubtedly have been more explicit but the focus on atmosphere offers the film more of a charm than it perhaps should have had.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Aged – review

Director: Anubys Lopez

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Perhaps I have been doing this for too long or perhaps punches are broadcast too far in advance but I kind of knew from just title and trailer that Aged was going to be vampiric in nature. What I didn’t know, of course, was just how we were going to get there. What we did get was a slice of American Gothic that reached back into the past to create a sense of uncanniness. Some aspects were a little on the nose but they worked if you just accepted them for what they are and accepted that our protagonist was virtually ignoring them almost wilfully.

first meeting

Starting in a Texas coffee shop, Charles Bloom (Dave McClain) drinks a coffee. Approaching him is Veronica Grey (Morgan Boss-Maltais), a young woman he has come to meet in order to offer her a job. That job is caregiver for his mother, Mrs Bloom (Carla Kidd). She has, he reports, dementia and he is looking for a live-in carer. This doesn’t seem to be her ideal career choice but he asks her to consider it – his tale makes it clear that looking after her is exhausting him.

creepy pictrues

She clearly, later, makes the choice to go with him on a temporary basis and he picks her up. The house is in the middle of nowhere (no signal) and, as they arrive, she sees the gardener, Joe (Adonis Ringo), he seems terrified and manages to slice his hand open… Charles ignores him altogether and draws her into a house that seems stuck in a bygone era. Now here we have a moment that Veronica wilfully ignores. There are pictures of an old type adorning the walls but all of them have the faces scratched away. It gives us a moment of the uncanny but, if I’d have been her, I’d have turned tail. These pictures are later mentioned in dialogue but ignoring them for most of the film seemed off-kilter.

Carla Kidd as Mrs Bloom

She is introduced to Mrs Bloom – a mention of the aging makeup; it is pretty good but obviously makeup and needed in order to de-age, of course – but when she asks to see Charles, she is told he has gone home to his family. Now he didn’t say he was his mother’s live-in carer but it was implied and I’d have again seen a red flag. The film then draws an uncanny cloak around proceedings. Veronica becomes tired and gets mysterious bruises in her sleep. Mrs Bloom talks about going to university, about a man named Henry (Kelly Kidd) who watches her (and Veronica can’t see but we do later), about how, when she is better, she’ll be able to do things.

distant figure

Veronica early on goes for a walk (looking for a phone signal) and sees a figure (too far for the viewer to identify but possibly Mrs Bloom) who runs at her and chases her back to the house. Later Veronica cannot leave the house without fainting and is eventually told that the house won’t let her leave and that it dislikes being changed… making the house an entity in its own right. We can see Veronica age (a grey streak appears in her hair) and lose time (though she is gaslighted, so whether the assertion that she has been there two months, when she thinks a week or two, is accurate is debatable). Mrs Bloom, on the other hand, begins to subtly become sprightlier.

the bath

How? My overall reaction is that it is energy (and youth) transference but there is stealing of Veronica’s blood by Henry and Mrs Bloom. This is taken to a bathtub and added to the water and roses in there. Mrs Bloom will eventually bathe in it (somehow, probably down to magic, it remains fresh it seems). It all goes down to tuberculosis and Mrs Bloom’s granddaughter (Bria D'Aguanno) dying, leaving Mrs Bloom ill, abandoned by family but unable to die. To bring death she made a deal with an evil spirit, to die she would trap another Bloom in her place. Mrs Bloom is not the original and Veronica, unbeknown to herself, is of the familial line. Mrs Bloom can regain her youth by taking Veronica’s and leaving her to remain in the house.

it won't let you leave

This was interesting just for the sense of uncanny it produced and it was this that was central to the film. There are some light jump scares but mostly the film relies on atmosphere to carry itself. Morgan Boss-Maltais really made the film, giving a strong central performance. It’s nice to see youth stealing in a film though more could have been made out of the house – it really felt like the aim was to make itself almost the central vampiric entity and they could have played more with that. 6 out of 10. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

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