Boys from County Hell (Six Mile High Productions, April 2020)
and Twilight (Summit Entertainment, November 21, 2008)

20 vampire films, all first time watches for me.

Come on — sink ’em in.

Boys from County Hell (2020) – Prime/Shudder

Ah, British and British-adjacent horror comedies. When they’re done right, there’s nothing better, and this one is done right.

I had a blast with this one, I’d put it right up there with the likes of Dog Soldiers, Grabbers, Shaun of the Dead, Doghouse, Severance, and The Cottage. They all have something in common; a close-knit group, localized setting, extreme gore, and flowery language.

This one takes place in Northern Ireland in a verdant county of farmers, builders and heavy drinkers. Moffat & Son are construction workers, tasked with paving the way for a hugely unpopular bypass that is not only going to tear up some fields, but will also destroy a long-standing cairn said to be the resting place of a vampire. The legend hangs so thickly in this county that Bram Stoker himself was influenced by it when passing through, and was compelled to write a book. Indeed, the local pub is called the Stoker and garnished with Spirit Halloween props to draw the tourists in.

Naturally, once the cairn is indeed demolished, all hell breaks loose, and the Moffats, along with their friends and colleagues, must survive the night against a terrifying entity.

The horror is indeed horrific, with the usual viscera spiced up with some truly ghastly blood weeping (from every orifice), and Robert Strange (known for orcs and aliens) is suitably creepy as Abhartach, the vampire. The rest of the cast is stellar, with my personal favorites being Nigel O’Neill (Mandrake) as Francie Moffat, and Louisa Harland (Orla in Derry Girls) as Claire, although I don’t want to downplay the rest of the players — everyone was spot on and their dialogue cracked me up several times.

Really enjoyed this one — highly recommended.

9/10

Twilight (2008) – Prime

I guess this watch-a-thon is as good a time as any to view this one, a film as adored as it is vilified. I really don’t have any strong feelings either way about this film; I didn’t think it was very well made, but I didn’t hate it, so I think I’ll just address the big issues that swirled around it at the time.

Sparkly vampires: Meh, not a deal-breaker. I actually didn’t mind this idea as it was in keeping with Stephanie Myer’s new vampire mythology. I wasn’t a big fan of all the brooding though — definitely a case of too many surly faces.

Rob Patts and Kris Stew: I really like these two — Pattinson was my favorite actor in 2019 (The Lighthouse), and Stewart has been solid from Underwater onward. However, in this film they are not directed well and come off as overly miserable, more than they needed to be.

Team Jacob: Ah, bless him.

Vampire skills: The super-speed and wire work were awful (SFX-wise), especially for a 2008 film. And I didn’t see a single fang. Boo.

The tone: Hated the colour-grading, Catherine Hardwicke’s direction was bafflingly stuffed with nonsensical camera moves, and the editing was dire. Stilted, awkward dialogue. Also, dull narration.

Good points: I really liked the dynamic between Bella and her estranged dad (Billy Burke, excellent), and of the Cullens Alice (Ashley Greene) was fun.

I am fully aware that I’m not the intended demographic for this film, but there have been plenty of other YA romance flicks with supernatural elements that I have enjoyed a lot more.

Oh well, crossed off the list.

6/10

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (H264, September 3, 2023)
and You Shouldn’t Have Let Me In (Alenu Entertainment, March 15, 2024)

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) – Crave/Max

This is a French Canadian film, as is evident by the liberal use of subtitles and poutine.

Sasha is a teenage (68) vampire, part of a loving family who are concerned that she still hasn’t killed her first human. Problem is, Sasha doesn’t want to. She gets sick at the idea, and prefers to slurp from blood bags while brooding around town in the evenings. Eventually her family intervenes, and she is sent to live with her more bloodthirsty cousin in the hope she can be weaned off the bags and onto jugulars.

Sasha is having none of it, and continues to despair, until she runs into a young man who is tired of life. This is Paul, a lonely and picked-upon high schooler with a fondness for rocks and a personal bully who fills his shoes with queso. Sasha and Paul appeal to each other’s plight, and a plan is hatched to help Paul fulfill his final wishes before Sasha finally earns her fangs.

This film is a vibe. By which I mean if you like awkward non-romances with furtive glances, unsubtle metaphors, sitting on the edge of beds, symmetrical compositions, good lighting, a great soundtrack, and the occasional neck-nibble, this is for you. Did I mention it’s hilarious? Well it is, in a gently dark way. Its look is simultaneously harsh and dreamlike, and the two leads (Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard) are perfect (if this was remade in the U.S., the leads would be Kristen Ritter and Nicholas Hoult).

I loved it — but your experience may differ.

9/10

You Shouldn’t Have Let Me In (2024) – Tubi

Awkward title aside, this has all the tiresome social media subplots you would expect from a 2024 film. A bunch of old friends meet up somewhere in Italy for Rochelle’s wedding to Richard, former boyfriend of main protagonist Kelsey. Kelsey has arrived with her gay best friend, Blake, and they join Rochelle and bachelorette party organizer Jenny on the beach. Kelsey isn’t wearing the right attire to be in any of their photos (Rochelle has her 123 million followers to think of) so she wanders off into town where she meets Gianni, the resident Van Helsing, who warns her of ‘evil’ and gives her Chekov’s pendant.

Of course, Kelsey meets Victor (do vampires have any other names? I’d love to see a vampire called Nigel), who is the owner of the villa they are all staying in. Absurdly, Victor has to wait for them to invite him into the building he owns, and from that moment on, he pursues Kelsey (who is the spitting image of his centuries-old lost love) while the others scramble about.

It’s all extremely unoriginal and tiresome. Rochelle doesn’t want to call the cops (after finding her murdered friend) because that will impact her follower count, Blake just wants to get into Gianni’s pants, and Victor is the least charismatic count I’ve ever seen, all blinding white teeth and Jason Priestly hair.

There are parts that I enjoyed; the direction is decent, the setting is suitably gothic, and Kelsey and Blake are quite fun to watch, but overall it’s a bit of a Mills & Boon arm-chewer.

5/10

Count Dracula (1970) – Tubi

Billed as a slavish reenactment of the original Bram Stoker novel, Jess Franco’s take on the story reveals why Dracula works better when it’s adapted with a little pzazz. True, Coppola also stuck closely to the original text, but he was wise enough to sprinkle in plenty of hot actors, rampant knockers, and Tom Waits.

This version, faithful as it is, is rather dull and (somewhat appropriately) lifeless. Big Chris Lee takes it all very seriously, and you can tell this film was important to him after the lurid camp of his glorious Hammer films (which he wasn’t finished with), but this results in a limp-fanged count with barely any physical presence. Herbert (Phantom of the Opera) Lom is fine as Van Helsing, and Klaus (Nosferatu) Kinski was an inspired choice for Renfield, but neither actor was really let off the leash and allowed to demonstrate their natural nuttiness.

Despite some distracting crash-zooms and swish-pans, the film looked quite nice given its abundance of spiders and webs, and I did enjoy Bruno Nicolai’s score, but when all’s said and done, this one was about as memorable as a digestive biscuit.

5/10

El Conde (The Count) (2023) – Netflix

What a way to end this project. Pablo Larrain, a Chilean director known previously to English-speaking audiences for biopics such as Jackie and Spencer, returns to a subject he previously dissected in an earlier film, No, the subject being Augustus Pinochet, the military dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990.

However, rather than a narrative formed from the facts of Pinochet’s attempts to cling to power, El Conde takes place in a surreal alternate universe where Pinochet is a centuries-old vampire who has finally grown weary of immortality. His offspring are gathered to his remote estate, along with his wife and man-servant, to discuss his final plans for the division of his ill-gotten gains, but the accountant that has been hired to help is secretly a nun assassin, ready to drive the demon from his soul.

Bickering leads to bloodshed and loyalties are trampled underfoot as the elderly patriarch both yearns for death but also takes off at night to find new victims to sate his taste for heart smoothies (quite literally). It’s as weird as it sounds, and it just gets weirder, especially in the third act when another political figure appears on the scene (there’s a reason why the English narration sounds like Maggie Thatcher).

The film itself, shot in stark black and white, was nominated for an Oscar for cinematography, and it’s easy to see why. Everything, from the use of lighting to the shot compositions, is sublime, and the acting is great all round, not least from Jaime Vadell as the elderly monster.

9/10

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part I
You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part II
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?
Fan of the Cave Bear
There, Wolves
What a Croc
Prehistrionics
Jumping the Shark
Alien Overlords
Biggus Footus
I Like Big Bugs and I Cannot Lie
The Weird, Weird West
Warrior Women Watch-a-thon

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Neil Baker’s last article for us was Part II of You Can’t Handle the Tooth. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits. (AprilMoonBooks.com).