October Movie Challenge: Alucarda (1978)

Alucarda is described as being one of the bloodiest movies ever.  Well...maybe for 1978 sure.  It has its fair share of blood, nudity and screaming.

The story is kind of like Carmilla, but not. It's kinda alluding to Dracula, but doesn't. And it kinda has vampires, but doesn't.  The movie is almost a lot of things, but never quite it's own thing.

Alucarda, and their pronunciation of it makes her name sound unique and interesting, is an orphan who may be the daughter of Lucy Westerna.  She begins a fascination with another orphan Justine (certainly a nod to de Sade I am sure).  They spend their time at the Catholic run orphanage running around in the woods.  Soon they meet up with a band of unsavory gypsies and everything goes to hell.  Quite literally.
Next up is a trippy scene of nudity, blood and implied satanic marriage. Oh and a satanic orgy.

The movie had a lot of potential but it never quite lived up to it.


--
Tally so far:  6 Total Watched / 5 New

What do you find scary?
October Horror Movie Challenge hosted by Krell Laboratories.

October Movie Challenge: Female Vampire / Erotikill (1973)

Another Jess Franco / Lina Romay collaboration, although this is actually their first one.  In this she plays Countess Irina Karlstien (I think it was supposed to be Karnstien, of Carmilla fame) as a mute vampire that can only survive if she kills her lovers at the moment of orgasm.

The unedited "Female Vampire" version is more or less porn.  The edited "Erotikill" emphasized the horror elements.

Through out the movie Lina wanders around naked jumping from victim.
The characters seem to take magic and vampires as a given.  The medical examiner after an autopsy claims the victim was killed by a vampire and hardly anyone blinks an eye about it.  Maybe vampires were more common in Madeira then and I just don't remember it.

The most interesting thing about this movie are the number of different versions out there.  The version I have is 104 minutes. I have heard there is a 110 minute version as well but I have no idea what they cut from this one.

Erotikill had more blood than Female Vampire; which is to say it has some scenes of bloody mouths.  In the behind the scenes piece Franco wanted to be ambiguous about whether it was blood, semen or other fluids.  I guess the censors felt blood was less offensive.
Erotikill is only 70 minutes.



--
Tally so far:  5 Total Watched / 4 New (I am only counting these as 1 movie total)

What do you find scary?
October Horror Movie Challenge hosted by Krell Laboratories.

October Movie Challenge: Fright Night 2 New Blood (2013)

Fright Night 2: New Blood (2013)

Fright Night 2 is described as a sequel to the 2011 remake, but really it is the exact same story as the 2011 and 1985 versions.  It is also listed as a horror/comedy, but there is really little of either.  Sure there is some gore and killing of victims, but nothing really compared to other ones I have seen.  Lots of fake blood splatters.

The differences are this one takes place in Romania and Jerry Dandridge is now Gerri Dandridge and is actuality Elizabeth Bathory.

All the same characters but they lack any of the charm of the earlier movies.

There is a neat scene where Gerri/Bathory uses a bat-like sonar to find some kids in a sewer.   The vampire creature she turns into in the end of the movie is kind of cool too, but that is about all the movie has going for it.

Too bad really, I was hoping for more.


--
Tally so far:  4 Total Watched / 3 New

What do you find scary?
October Horror Movie Challenge hosted by Krell Laboratories.

Kickstart Your Weekend! Chill Edition

Once again we are being teased with a new version of Chill.

Chill 3rd Edition: A Horror Roleplaying Game
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playattentiongames/chill-3rd-edition-a-horror-roleplaying-game

My love of Chill is long, deep and well documented.  This new version looks really great.
The previous Chill 3.0 was good, but never made it out of playtest.

You can read more about the new Chill here: http://growlingdoorgames.com/chill.html

I have to say I am curious by what I see here!

October Movie Challenge: Fright Night (2011)

Fright Night (2011)

Remake of the classic 1985 Fright Night.  This time staring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell and David Tennant.

The original Fright Night blended horror and comedy quite well, this one...less so, but it is still an enjoyable flick.

Colin Farrell makes for a good vampire, but lacks the suaveness that Chris Sarandon brought to the role.  Though he does make for it in being dangerous.
Peter Vincent is changed from Roddy McDowall's horror host to David Tennant's creepy extreme magician.  It's not a bad change really, Tennant is great in anything he is in.

Like the first Fright Night this one is a fun romp through vampire mythos and generally doesn't take itself too serious.  Chris Sarandon even makes a cameo appearance.

It's a fun update, but no real new ground here.

--
Tally so far:  3 Total Watched / 2 New

What do you find scary?
October Horror Movie Challenge hosted by Krell Laboratories.

Review: Actual Factual: Dracula - A Compendium of Vampires

Actual Factual: Dracula - A Compendium of Vampires is an unassuming book. The cover is stock art (I am guessing, not sure) and the preview is text with a small amount of art.  That and the $40 price tag (sale price $18) might scare some people off.

That would be a mistake.

Inside are 472 pages of detailed vampire types from all over the world.

In this book we are given a basic overview of vampires (aka the stuff everyone knows) and then we move quickly into the relationship between Vlad the Impaler and Vampires.  I will honestly say that this section, while entertaining seems tacked on.  The book would have been fine without it, but is likely better with it.

Next we get into the heart of this book.  The Compendium of Vampires.
The A to Z section detail vampires from around the world and not only represents the bulk of the book (340+ pages), but also the bulk of the research.

Each entry contains the name of the vampire, pronunciation and translation of the name. Also listed are it's country or area of origin, type of creature (creature, spirit, demon...), how it appears, prefered prey, how often it attacks or feeds, Modus Operandi, abilities, defenses against it and how to kill it.  Not every creature has everything listed, this is not a Monster Manual, but there are enough. In some cases the author has used her own imagination to fill in the blanks.  This is fine really, given that the author is Theresa Bane.
But I guess if you want something purer you can go to her pages of resources.

There is a bibliography, which is almost as interesting to read as the entries themselves.

What follows next really puts this book into a different category of usefulness, the indexes.
First is a more common index of words, names and other things you might want to find in the book.

Next is an index of Abilities.  So if you need a vampire that is Beautiful (as an ability) then you have GREEN OGRESS 124 and SUCCUBUS 274.

There is an index of Appearance.  So "barbed tongue" gives you:
ASWANG MANDURUGO 23
BICHOHINDU 44
GROBNIK 125
KRVOIJAC 164
UPIER 294
WIESZCZY 330 (one of my favorite barbed tongue vampires).

An Index on Creation.  Indexes of How Often it Attacks, How to Find, Origins, Prey, Types, and finally Weaknesses.

Now what would have been a nice touch would be to hyper link all these indexes to the main document.  But I am not complaining.

What the book lacks in art, there are only a few pieces, it makes up for in research and utility.
You can debate on whether or not Creature Y is a vampire or not, but I can't fault the authors for doing all this work.

All in all a great book.  A must have if you are at all a fan of vampires or use them in your games.

October Movie Challenge: Vampire Academy (2014)

Well this one was forced on me because my youngest wanted to watch it.  I am calling it horror...cause...well have you seen it?

Oh it is not good.

The plot is basically Vampires and their half-vampire/dhampir body guards all go to highschool together.  So vampires here age.  Ok.

And they go to High School.

Now to be fair this is based on a YA series and I don't think it translated well to the screen.  Sure. Harry Potter did (are there vampires in Harry Potter?) but not everything will.

There are plenty of horror elements and the vampires did remind me of the living and undead
vampires from the Hollows series. So I can at least get behind that.

The idea of a training ground for vampires has it's roots in the Scholomance.

--
Tally so far:  2 Total Watched / 1 New

What do you find scary?
October Horror Movie Challenge hosted by Krell Laboratories.