Vampire Cleanup Department (Review)
Vampire Cleanup Department
aka 救殭清道夫 aka Gao Geung Jing Dou Fu
2017
Written by Yan Pak-Wing, Ho Wing-Hong, and Ashley Cheung Yin-Kei
Directed by Chiu Sin-Hang and Yan Pak-Wing
SFFilm had their annual Hong Kong Film Festival and due to the power of having two tickets leftover from the last festival I went to see two films in this festival! This time, all the films were at the fabulous Vogue Theater, which is a bit of a headache for me to get to but at least parking around there isn’t terrible (also a skunk sprayed my car as thanks for me stopping in time to not hit him as he ran across the road, lol!) While my car now stank, Vampire Cleanup Department did not, but it wasn’t a new paradigm in Hong Kong horror comedy, either. Unfortunately it is one of those middle of the road flicks that are hard to write about, due to me not wanting to slam it too hard due to the parts that were good, but not wanting to praise it to the heavens due to the parts that were bad. It’s sort of a modern take on the Mr. Vampire flicks, except imagine if the one-eyebrowed priest was employed by the Hong Kong government in a secret department. The squad takes down vampires when they pop up, and since this is a Hong Kong film they are of the hopping variety.
We follow Tim Cheung (BabyJohn Choi Hon-Yik) as he moves from hapless schlub to member of the Vampire Cleanup Department. It helps that he is the son of two former members who were killed while on duty, his mother’s last act was giving birth to him after a vampire attack. This makes him a legacy hire but also means he’s got some vampire immunity that is explained just well enough when needed for plot purposes. As the new guy he gets all the garbage details including cleaning up the office via constant sweeping and also memorizing and making the different vampire amulets (the strips of paper with writing on them that the priests put on vampire heads to freeze them or control them.) This framework lets them follow the traditional hero’s journey arc, except with some extra films stuffed along for the ride.
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: BabyJohn Choi Hon-Yik, Chin Siu-Ho, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Hong Kong, Hopping Vampires, Lin Min-Chen, Richard Ng Yiu-Hon, Siu Yam-Yam, vampires
Drink Slay Love (Review)
Drink Slay Love
2017
Screenplay by Eirene Donohue
Based on the novel by Sarah Beth Durst
Directed by Vanessa Parise
A vampire novel about a vampire girl in high school that falls in love with a human, it’s Twilight in reverse! With a bunch of extra stuff thrown in to make the perfect YA fantasy novel. Combine that with a director that obviously knew the material needed to get some campy elements thanks to airing on Lifetime, and some actors delivering some neat performances (and a few skeletonizing the scenery every second they are on screen!), we get a surprisingly entertaining but incredibly cheesy flick with Drink Slay Love!
Vampire teen Pearl (Cierra Ramirez) is confident, way confident, so confident that life is but a bore as she’s so confident she’s already done it all. The invincibility of youth mixed with the actual invincibility of vampires. That all gets shattered like the mirrors that she can only vaguely see her reflection in (it’s complicated!) when she discovers she can survive in the sunshine! Sure, this happened right after a mysterious attack where she almost died but woke up fully healed at home. Suddenly a whole new world is open to her, but only her, the rest of her clan is still killable by the sun.
This coincides with the King of the Vampires deciding the family will host the 100 year huge party where everyone feeds the King their blood and then drinks his blood, which means everyone serves the King. Which isn’t all sorts of screwed up at all. To feed all the vampires coming for the party, Pearl is sent to school to recruit a whole host of victims, as vampires must be invited into houses and high school means she’ll be invited to slumber parties. Or would be if she wasn’t a goth girl. We all know she’s going to soon fall in love and the script gets flipped.
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The Transfiguration (Review)
The Transfiguration
2016
Written and directed by Michael O’Shea
I got fists full of sweet, sweet cash and a break between classes and being sick to actually write, so it’s time to go to a bunch of films at the San Francisco International Film Festival! First up is the amazing vampire film, The Transfiguration!
The Transfiguration is about a disturbed teenager that is obsessed with vampires. Milo (Eric Ruffin) is not just obsessed, he lives and breathes vampires. Literally, as he’s started going out and stalking, killing, and drinking the blood of victims once a month. This isn’t a spoiler, he’s doing it in the opening scene. Exactly why he’s started doing this is slowly revealed as the film burns on. We learn more of Milo’s world view, his family tragedies and his harassment by local toughs.
There is no big bad vampire, the monsters are all in the mind, the demons that enslave us all. Milo lives with his adult brother, Lewis (Aaron Clifton Moten), both alone after their mother’s suicide. Lewis is perpetually on the couch watching television, not because he’s lazy but because he’s just been damaged by life. He used to roll with the gang, but left to go straight and spent time in the military in the Middle East, where he saw things that add to his haunting looks. He does care about his brother, but the only way he knows how to keep him out of trouble is dealing with the gang and the cops, and is completely in the dark about the blood drinking. Aaron Moten is amazing here, conveying someone with so much going on under the hood but still barely functioning because of all the past trauma.
Milo’s regular routine is thrown into a loop when Sophie (Chloe Levine) moves into the complex. Her parents are dead as well, and she’s living with an abusive grandfather. It’s damaged people finding themselves through each other. The more time Milo spends with Sophie, the less time he spends stalking prey and drinking their blood. But Milo knows he’s already gone to far, having a happy ending and normal life isn’t in the cards for him. But maybe he doesn’t have to be doomed to be all bad.
The film switches between the budding romantic film with Milo and Sophie and the dark and haunted world of Milo looking for prey, sometimes rapidly shifting gears in an uncomfortable manner. Milo is obviously uncomfortable about Sophie inserting herself into his life, but he also finds himself growing fond of her. And that begins to disturb him. The only topic that Milo is comfortable speaking about is the discussion of said vampire films. Milo rates the vampire films in term of how realistic they are, in that how accurate they are in depicting what he feels true, accurate vampires are. Sophie keeps trying to get him to read Twilight, and makes references to True Blood (which Milo dismisses as unrealistic!) Milo rattling on and on about them to Sophie begins to pull him out of what he is becoming.
Michael O’Shea’s vampire tale changes up the usual game. The vampires are just flavoring, Milo could be obsessed with any horror creature and acting out as them. The journey is Milo’s jump from embracing his vampire life to being offered a different path. The scenes of violence are brutal, but Milo finding himself gives a path of redemption. The Transfiguration is worth the buzz and worth checking out, just don’t expect the usual horror trapping.
(I’ll also put in a warning that they show real animals being killed in clips from the Faces of Death movies, so be warned if you are like me and not into that stuff!)
Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Aaron Clifton Moten, Chloe Levine, Eric Ruffin, SFIFF, vampires
Rockula (Review)
Rockula
1990
Written by Luca Bercovici, Jefery Levy, and Chris Ver Wiel
Directed by Luca Bercovici
It’s the final of the three films in the Dean Cameron trilogy brought to us by Midnite for Maniacs (the others being Summer School and Ski School), and while Rockula doesn’t have “School” in the title, it does have a lot of songs, so if you ever wanted to see a vampire Elvis impersonator, Rockula has you covered!
Right off the bat (ha!) you know Rockula is going to be great because it has animated opening credits. Well, maybe not great, but it can’t be worse than Catalina Caper, the lowest-grade movie with animated opening credits of them all. Most others rate far higher, and Rockula is some fun fun cheese that if you saw while you were a young, impressionable child, you will have fond memories of for the rest of your life. If you are first exposed as a cynical adult, you’re probably going to be far less amused.
I do remember Rockula from cable as a kid, but not overly so, it’s one of those movies that sort of blurred together with several other films to create a sort of super film that never existed. So Rockula can’t live up to the hype of the most memorable moments of a dozen or so films. But it does have its charm, and Rockula is a movie that deserves a chance.
Ralph is a good vampire boy, in that he isn’t bloodthirsty, he can’t even stand the sight of blood, and just wants to play his music. Also he’s forced to relive a curse again and again because long ago he failed to save the life of his beloved Mona, and ever since history keeps repeating herself as she gets reincarnated, only for them to be destined to meet, fall in love, and for her to swiftly be killed off by a ham bone due to the reincarnated rage of a pirate. It’s a curse, except this time there is the added danger that he knows it might be the last time through.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Bo Diddley, Chris Ver Wiel, Dean Cameron, Jefery Levy, Luca Bercovici, Nancye Ferguson, Rick Zumwalt, Susan Tyrrell, Tamara De Treaux, Tawny Fere, Thomas Dolby, Toni Basil, Tony Cox, vampires
Rokto Pipasha (Review)
Rokto Pipasha
aka রক্ত পিপাসা aka The Vampire
2009
BMDB Link
Written and Directed by Rubel
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These vampires know how to have fun!
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Bangladesh does their own version of Blade, all Bangla-ed up with plenty of fighting, yelling, dr4ama, people with giant swords, singing, child endangerment, ridiculous vehicles, cheap effects, scratched film, excitement, and only lacking in the budget. Rokto Pipasha is amazing cinema, and deserved a larger audience, especially in the West. Since the current audience in the West seems to be just me (There is currently literally nothing about this film written in English!), it’s time for TarsTarkas.NET to do what it does best, exposing obscure foreign fun to the masses. And as Rokto Pipasha is all over YouTube in a format where it doesn’t look too bad, there is really no excuse not to track it down. Rokto Pipasha does not have subtitles, but at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles! You also don’t really need them to figure out what is going on. There are some vampires, some vampire hunters, and a lot of fighting. The villains are obvious, the heroes spend much of their time tracking them down or arguing amongst themselves, and the action sequences are rather well choreographed.
For those of you uninitiated with Bangla cinema, their action movies feature a lot of the things common in action cinema in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. There is a lot of yelling and boasting by heroes and villains before they fight. There are dramatic zooms. A lot of dramatic zooms. In one sequence, vampire hunter Mr. T argues with four other vampire hunters, and we get a reaction zoom to Mr. T, then the first hunter, then Mr. T, then the second hunter, repeating for all. This happens multiple times throughout the film. The action is over the top, bringing in elements of martial arts and super heroes. The characters do punches and kicks that would kill normal people, but because they fight others who are super powered, they often do little damage, except for on whichever character is slated to die in that fight. All the main vampire hunters have a huge weapon, either a ridiculous sword or a scythe or something, and they walk around carrying the giant hand weapon in a world where guns exist. The soundtrack is packed full of stolen music. Rokto Pipasha came out in 2007, so there is no excuse. It’s yet another movie with the James Bond theme, as a weird remix pops up randomly during scenes where characters are looking cool. I also recognized tracks from Gladiator, Star Wars, Jaws, and various Westerns.
Most of the action either takes place in the middle of nowhere or in giant warehouse studios with large hand painted murals as set decoration. There are one or two actual sets that might be part of a hotel or something, unsurprisingly some of the musical numbers also take place here (as those parts will have higher budgets than the rest of the film). And even those locations have walls covered in huge paintings. I would also wager that if I watched more low budget Bangladeshi films, I would recognize some of the paintings.
One thing that isn’t common in Bangla cinema is the characters drive around in ridiculous custom monster vehicles. The cars would be 1000% not street legal in the US, and the vehicle choices make you obvious targets for whoever is hunting you. They also look ridiculous, even though they are awesome. Just check out the wealth of images I took of these monstrosities and try not to instantly want to watch Rokto Pipasha! Another thing that is rare is Western-style monsters like vampires, though films “borrowing” plots from American cinema isn’t that rare in Bangla film. Rokto Pipasha has concepts lifted directly from the Blade movies, but follows enough of its own path that it isn’t a straight ripoff, it just owes a heavy debt.
As Rokto Pipasha is obscure as heck, this will be another classic TarsTarkas.NET longread where I go over everything. Those of you who hate reading will enjoy the large amount of photos and gifs, and everyone will have a good time. Or else I’ll stab you with my vampire sword! The lack of subtitles means the character names are guesses, though I’m pretty sure I’m right about the main vampire hunter Blade ripoff played by Rubel being named Mr. T. The villain vampire in love is definitely named Romeo.
Rubel aka Masum Parvez Rubel stars and also directed and co-wrote the film, along with some writers that I couldn’t find names for. He also delivers the explaination in the beginning and seems to be a big fan of the Blade series. According to a text blurb he put in the film, he “committer himself to give you a good commercial film”, so few films declare their intentions nowadays. Besides Rubel, actor Shakil Khan has a featured role as a villainous vampire in love. Actor names I couldn’t connect with roles include: Bipasha (is this Bipasha Hayat?), Moumita, and Elys Kobra. There is also a cameo appearance from Bangla action star Sohel Rana. The lack of English information in general on Bangla film is a big problem that I hope gets solved someday, and it is made exponentially harder by the few cast members that are mentioned in talk about the film just having a single name. I am eagerly awaiting someone to chime in down in the comments for who is who.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Bangladesh, Bipasha, Elys Kobra, Moumita, Rubel, Shakil Khan, Sohel Rana, vampires
Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo
Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo
aka Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolfman
1973
Written by Alfredo Salazar
Directed by Miguel M. Delgado
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We slept so long our clothes are in style again!
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Unlike the prior Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters, Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo is a slower paced and more methodological monster film. Instead of celebrating B movie creatures and having monsters inspired by Universal classics, Dracula and the Wolf Man here are more patterned after the Hammer horror films. The creatures are still deadly, there is still a huge body count, and even major side characters die! Things just go real.
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Rounders: The Lucha Years
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The lower budget causes more sets to be noticeably sets and not real locations. Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo tries to offset this by having more things take place indoors or inside of caves. The few brief outside at night shots feature lighting of an unnatural blue, which eerily mimics to bright blue and red colors of the stadium backgrounds during the wrestling matches (which are also obviously on a stage and not in a real stadium!) The use of bright colors even extends to the opening credits, where bright red is the tone of choice. The atmospheric score is largely piano with some organ parts. The bright colors contrast with the black and white Santo films that gave off a more Gothic horror feel. The bright color but serious tones doesn’t match the campy drive-in approach of Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters, moving vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo in between the camp and the attempts at serious horror. The dichotomy gives an interesting feel to the film, making it just playful enough that you fall into a lull of disarmament, making the deaths of major characters more shocking.
Does Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo fulfill the required Santo obligations? We have Santo and Blue Demon both wrestling opponents in matches that the movie shows in full. Instead of a mad scientist, we got a mad Satanist (some would argue that’s the same thing, but fuck those people!) Monsters? Check! Santo dating someone whose family is intertwined with the monsters in a complicated revenge plot? Check! Blue Demon knocked unconscious? Check! References to past heroic deeds of Santo and/or Blue Demon that aren’t from any film? Check! Blue Demon captured by the enemy and rescued by Santo? Check!
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When Satanists do the wave…
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One thing Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo does different is the police don’t believe Santo’s crazy story. In any other film, Santo would be called in to deal with the monsters and the police would give him leeway to do whatever he or Blue Demon want. Here, the police laugh at their outlandish tales of Dracula and the Wolfman. Haven’t they paid attention for the last 20 Santo films???
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When will Blue Demon find…his endless love???
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All these boxes are filled with more Santo sequels!
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