Grave Tales

Director: Don Fearney
Writers: John Hamilton, Mike Murphy
Producer: Don Fearney
Cast: Brian Murphy, Edward de Souza, Damien Thomas
Country: UK
Year of release: 2013
Reviewed from: DVD

“This British, feature-length, anthology horror film is the first one of its kind in over twenty years” says the DVD blurb of this exercise in cinematic nostalgia, which obviously isn’t true. Shot in 2011, copyrighted 2012, released (sort of) in 2013, this was preceded (albeit not by much admittedly) by Bordello Death Tales, Nazi Zombie Death Tales and Little Deaths. Even if Don Fearney wasn’t aware of those movies, and assuming that he had no knowledge of the work of Jason Impey, Kemal Yildirim or Tom Rutter (not many folk do, to be fair) he has still contrived to pretend that Cradle of Fear doesn’t exist.

What this tells us is that this is a film made by – and for – people whose knowledge of British horror movies kind of peters out after To the Devil a Daughter. Which is fair enough, I suppose. Know your audience and all that. But it does contrive to make Grave Tales a curiously anachronistic film of very limited appeal.

There are four stories, plus a linking tale in which a young woman (Heather Darcy: Till Sunset) exploring a graveyard meets an aged gravedigger (or is he? da-da-dum!) played by the somehow still living legend that is George Roper, the one and only Brian Murphy. Murphy was 79 when he made this and he shows no sign of slowing down. His actual horror credits are pretty much limited to a small role in The Devils and, um, this… although the feature film version of Man About the House was a Hammer production of course (and remains one of the most enjoyable sitcom spin-off features of the 1970s). More recently Murphy was in the brilliant, long-gestating Room 36, which shares several cast and crew with this film. He is a national institution and we love him and why isn’t he at least an OBE?

Anyway, the gravedigger tells the young woman the stories behind four nearby graves. The first of these, 'One Man’s Meat', stars the sadly missed Frank Scantori (Witchcraft X, Kill Keith, May I Kill U?, Room 36) at his oleaginous best. He plays Norman Elliot, an alcoholic butcher who accidentally murders a homeless girl (Johanna Stanton: Nightmare Box). Riven with guilt, he disposes of the body in the obvious way, putting down to the booze the vampire fangs which seem to appear briefly in the girl’s mouth as he chops her up.

A family who bought this meat – who seem to be his only ever customers – come back for more, but they have become infected and want something a little rarer. Miles Gallant (who does a one-man show about Stan Laurel), Darby Hawker (Stardust, Room 36) and Chloe Ann Withey play the family, and Clifford Allison (Landis’ Burke and Hare) is a doctor from a local institution who comes looking for the girl, an escaped patient who believed she was a vampire.

There is simply too much crammed into these 20 minutes for the story to work, despite Frank’s sterling performance. It would have been better without the doctor, who delivers no useful info and basically just bleats on the same “Have you seen her?” schtick for five minutes. But Frank is great because Frank was Frank, and the neck wound after the first cleaver chop is an impressive prosthetic.

The second story (and they’re none of them particularly memorable so it’s a good job I made notes) is called 'Callistro’s Mirror'. Damien Thomas (Twins of Evil, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger) stars as Mr Baxter, a collector who spots a mirror in an antique shop, instantly identifying it as having once belonged to a notable sorcerer, four centuries earlier. It’s not for sale so he kills the shopkeeper (Edward de Souza: The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Vampire) and sneaks back to his flat where he discovers – quelle surprise – that he can see something in the mirror.

What he sees is a bald guy (Ric Truman) being pawed by two topless lovelies (Katie Langford and blogger/poet Jade Moira Lawrence). Baxter is pulled into the mirror and, after some tussle, the previous incumbent escapes, taking over Baxter’s body, leaving the poor bloke to face centuries of torment at the hands of the two young ladies (who are vampires, apparently, possibly because there were some spare teeth left over from the first story).

It’s another pretty obvious and basic story, which is at least in keeping with the Amicus tradition towards which Grave Tales aspires. There’s some irrelevant stuff about Baxter’s late wife, and Don Fearney himself plays a tramp outside the shop. The highlight of this story – and arguably the whole film – is Kiki Kendrick (Sanitarium, The Stomach) having a ball as Baxter’s blousy landlady. It’s a rare moment of enjoyable characterisation in a film which is for the most part pedestrian and prosaic. More Kiki Kendrick in stuff, that’s what we need.

Tale number three, 'The Hand', is slightly shorter than the others, giving the whole film a running time of 75 minutes. Porn actor Mark Sloan (who also played a barman in the first story) is Stanton, a prisoner on the run who has legged it while handcuffed to another jailbird, Duggan (composer/pianist Marc Forde). Peter Irving (moderator of the Kiss of the Vampire DVD commentary) is a nightwatchman – though it’s not clear what he’s actually nightwatching – among whose equipment Stanton finds an axe. And when the handcuffs prove impermeable to the axe blade, an alternative solution presents itself.

Stanton heads off through some woods and hides in a small lake, for some reason. Four police officers (one of whom looks about 12) spot him from a summer house, but he goes underwater and doesn’t come up. Subsequent investigation by a police frogman finds Stanton’s drowned body chained to Duggan’s hand. Is it gripping that underwater branch, or just wedged? (It’s gripping the branch. There’s nothing subtle here.) For the record, the coppers are played by Marcus Taylor, Russell Barnett (Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit?), Adrian Annis  (Dark Rage, Survivors, My Guardian Angel) and Josh Parris; the frogman is Ross Ericson (writer of The Unknown Soldier, a play which was a  big hit at Edinburgh in 2016).

The final segment is 'Dead Kittens', starring British horror favourite Marysia Kay (who gets an ‘And…’ in the opening credits). She plays Vicky, who is (without explanation) selected to be the new lead singer of pop trio the Dead Kittens. Louise Houghton (Wilby Park) and Nieve Hearity (whose name is spelled wrong in the credits) are the other two. Celia Carron (who sidelines as a Pilates coach) is record producer Sadie and Aubrey Wakeling (apparently now in the States making things like Jurassic Wars(?)) is Mr Varley, the talent scout – or manager or something – who finds Vicky.

After a quick bash in the recording studio, they all head off to Varley’s massive country house to shoot a pop video, directed by none other than dear old Norman J Warren, helmer of Satan’s Slave, Prey etc. Rhiannon Ellison Sayer (who had a bit part in Burton’s Sweeney Todd) is Varley’s posh daughter, who tries to warn Vicky that something is up. The video involves Vicky lying down on a stone altar while everyone else pretends to be Satanists. Wait a minute…

A coda suggests it was all a plot to sell more records because dead pop stars shift units. Which doesn’t make sense because Vicky hasn’t had a chance to become a pop star, has she? Marysia turns in her usual reliable performance but, like most of the actors in this movie, she doesn’t exactly have a lot to work with. Scripter John Hamilton is one of the Satanists, along with George Hilton (Beyond the Rave, Cockneys vs Zombies), Moyb Ullah and Tom Levin.

One of the strengths of 21st century British horror is its diversity and the scope for every sort of movie, however unlikely. So I suppose it’s only fair that there should be a movie which tries to recreate the days of old. But that’s the film’s biggest problem: it is a recreation. It’s not an old 1970s Amicus anthology, just a pastiche of one. Technically it’s competent, though the sound recording (also credited to John Hamilton) isn’t consistently brilliant. But there’s nothing special here, nothing celebratory, nothing to impress (unless you’re enough of an oldtime Brit horror fanboy to just get wet at the thought of a new Edward de Souza movie – there are people like that). Grave Tales is the cinematic equivalent of a pub band playing 1960s covers, featuring a guy who used to be in Herman’s Hermits.

Don Fearney, the motive force behind this film (as well as producing and directing, he is also credited as production designer) is a name in Hammer fan circles. He has organised numerous fan events and also produced several DVD documentaries, often narrated by de Souza. The script is jointly credited to Mike Murphy (editor of the excellent Dark Terrors Hammer fanzine back in the 1990s) and John Hamilton, author of such hugely impressive horror history tomes as Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Films of Tony Tenser and X-Cert: The British Independent Horror Film 1951-1970. Murphy wrote the first tale, Hamilton wrote the other three plus the framing story.

Except that’s not strictly true, is it?

'One Man’s Meat', 'Callistro’s Mirror' and 'The Hand' all started life as Van Helsing’s Terror Tales, the back-up comic strip that ran in most issues of House of Hammer magazine in the 1970s, a fact which goes completely unacknowledged in the credits of Grave Tales. Which is odd, because the very specific audience this is aimed at – ageing Hammer fanboys – are precisely the sort of people likely to own old copies of House of Hammer, and quite possibly have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the magazine’s content. If you don’t have any old copies of House of Hammer lying around, fear not. You can find digitised versions of all 30 issues on archive.org. 'One Man’s Meat', written and drawn by Martin Asbury, was published in issue 5. 'Malvoisin’s Mirror', written by Chris Lowder, art by Brian Lewis, was in issue 6. 'The Hand of Fate', written by Parkhouse, art by Goudenzi, was in issue 22. The settings and other details are different, but the basic stories are identical.

Whatever else one might say about the strengths or shortcomings of this film, for Fearney, Murphy and Hamilton (all of whom I believe to be honest gents) to simply lift someone else’s creative work wholesale and base their own on it without any hint of acknowledgement is reprehensible.

Martin Asbury drew strips for TV Century 21, Countdown, Look-In and TV Comic, and took over Garth in the Daily Mirror after Frank Bellamy died in 1976, drawing and occasionally writing that strip until it ended in 1997 (the current version, running since 2012, is a reprint of Asbury’s strips). Nowadays he is one of the UK’s top storyboarders with credits that include Bonds, Potters and Batmans. I wonder whether he has any idea that his IMDB page should also list a ‘story by’ credit on this obscure indie flick.

Chris Lowder wrote for Action, Tornado, Starlord and 2000AD under various pseudonyms. He also edited several anthologies of dark fiction and even wrote some Sexton Blake stories. Nowadays he’s a freelance editor/writer/bibliographer and seems happy pottering about in amateur theatricals and running his local parish council. Again, I wonder if he knows anything about this film and his uncredited contribution to it.

Parkhouse is Steve Parkhouse, another prolific name in British comics with extensive credits in 2000AD and Doctor Who Comic, for whom he wrote Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Doctor adventures. He has also worked for Marvel and, slightly bizarrely, wrote a graphic novel about the Sex Pistols. It’s probably safe to assume he is likewise in the dark about one of his old stories having been adapted for film.

Given the minuscule budget of Grave Tales and the nature of British comics – which, historically, paid writers and artists a flat fee with no rights and fuck you – I’m not for a moment suggesting that any of the above three writers have been ripped off and should have been recompensed. Who knows who owns the rights to the original comic-strip content from House of Hammer? If indeed anyone does. But it does seem very remiss not to acknowledge the source material and the original writers. (Slightly complicating matters, there was a short-lived horror anthology comic called Grave Tales in the early 1990s, published by Hamilton Comics. However that was Bruce Hamilton, not John, and has no connection with this film.)

Among those whose contributions do get acknowledged on screen are editor Jim Groom (director of Revenge of Billy the Kid, Room 36 and various Hammer DVD extras), composer Scott Benzie (Room 36, Soul Searcher, Ten Dead Men, Fear Eats the Seoul) and DP Jon Nash. Make-up is credited to Gemma Sutton, now one of the top wedding make-up artists in the UK, with ‘special FX make-up’ by Ben Brown. Richard Dudley and Don Fearney are listed as executive producers in the credit block but only Dudley gets name-checked on screen.

Grave Tales was first screened at the Cine Lumiere in South Kensington just before Halloween 2010 and had an official festival premiere at Southend-on-Sea the following April. At both those screenings, there was a clip of Christopher Lee (as himself) included in 'Dead Kittens' but this was removed before the film appeared on (uncertificated) DVD.

In June 2013 Grave Tales was made available from Hemlock Books, where I was employed as a monthly blogger. I bought a copy with part of my pay-cheque but have only just got round to watching it.

It’s just a curio really, of principal interest for its ageing cast list (and a nice role for the late Mr Scantori), but loses a point for not crediting Asbury, Lowder, Parkhouse and House of Hammer.

MJS rating: B-

Cryptic

Directors: Bart Ruspoli, Freddie Hutton-Mills
Writers: Bart Ruspoli, Freddie Hutton-Mills
Producers: Bart Ruspoli, Freddie Hutton-Mills
Cast: Ed Stoppard, Vas Blackwood, Ray Panthaki
Country: UK
Year of release: 2016
Reviewed from: DVD
Website: http://nextlevelfilms.co.uk

Cryptic is an amazingly good film. By which I don’t mean that the quality of the actual movie is staggering. Yes, it’s good – but it’s not perfect and it won’t blow you away. What I mean is that the fact that Cryptic is a good film – is amazing.

Because of who made it. This is the third horror film from the team of Bart Ruspoli and Freddie Hutton-Mills. They also wrote/produced the middling zombie time-waster Devil’s Playground and wrote/produced/directed the ridiculously titled World War Dead: Rise of the Fallen which, in a crowded market-place, manages to stand out as one of the very worst found footage pictures ever made in this country.

World War Dead was actually made after Cryptic but released first. My understanding is that the executive producers approached Ruspoli and Hutton-Mills, asking them to quickly bang out a zombie picture that could tie in to the centenary of the First World War (tasteful…). Can’t really blame the guys for taking the money and running, and the number of people who have suffered through WWD:ROTF must be pretty minimal, but still it’s not a good film to have on your CV. So it’s fortunate for the duo that Cryptic, which is significantly better than Devil’s Playground and infinitely better than the execrable World War Dead, is now out there to be viewed.

This has certainly revised my opinion of BR and FHM. I was genuinely surprised not just by how much I enjoyed Cryptic but by how skilfully it had been constructed. Where World War Dead was utterly devoid of characterisation or plot, Cryptic is a tightly structured narrative which relies almost entirely on characterisation.

So what I really meant to say, back up at top there, was: Cryptic is, amazingly, a good film. All the right words, not necessarily in the right order.

This is a classic gangster set-up: eight people, one room, loyalties and conflicts ebbing and flowing, tension building until someone lets fly with a shooter. There is a brief discussion about how similar the situation is to “that film, the one with dogs in” to acknowledge that the film-makers understand the territory wherein they are currently working.

The location is a crypt underneath a church (in, presumably, London). Our first two characters are ‘Sexy’ Steve Stevens, a dapper and rational crooked banker (Ed Stoppard: Upstairs Downstairs redux, The Frankenstein Chronicles and Dan Dare audio dramas – rocking a very fine set of threads) and ‘Meat’, a nervous and not terribly bright gangster (typically superb performance by the great Vas Blackwood: Lock Stock, Creep, A Room to Die For). Both have been sent to the crypt by a local Mr Big, as have the next to arrive, brothers Jim and John Jonas.

The Jonas Brothers (presumably named as a gag about the soulless boy band from a few years ago, which fairly accurately dates when this script was written) are both psycho idiots. One is slightly less idiotic than the other and one is slightly more psychotic. But you wouldn’t trust either of them to cat-sit for you or to count to 20 without using their fingers. They are played by Philip Barantini (World War Dead, Young High and Dead) and Daniel Feuerriegel (Spartacus TV series, Pacific Rim 2).

Completing the sextette are Cochise (Ray Panthaki: The Feral Generation, 28 Days Later, World War Dead), an arrogant fellow with intricate designs cut into his beard, and his moll Alberta (Sally Leonard). All six have been sent to the crypt with instructions to locate and guard – but not open – a coffin. Their employer will be with them in due course but has been delayed by illness.
It’s a very Beckett-ian set-up and once again Ruspoli and Hutton-Mills acknowledge their debts with the name of the godfather behind all this is. Meat, Cochise and the others are all… waiting for Gordon.

Two other people show up. One is Ben Shafik as Walter, a posh junkie looking for some drugs he stashed in the crypt. (Shafik was in not only World War Dead and Devil’s Playground, but also the Bart Ruspoli short that the latter was based on, The Long Night.) The other is Gordon’s crooked lawyer (Gene Hunt’s brother, Robert Glenister: Spooks, Hustle, Law and Order UK) who knows all the others (except Walter, obviously) though they don’t know him.

Five gangsters, a lawyer, a banker and a junkie.

The coffin, when located, proves to be a curious metal construction, solidly locked. What – or who – is in there? Meat has an idea, because he has invested in a vampire-slaying kit.

Over the course of the film we learn about the gradual decimation of organised crime in the area, a series of gangland murders which some are saying is the work of a vampire, or at least, someone pretending to be a vampire.

Because, as Steve Stevens assiduously points out, there are no such things as vampires.

But then, if there are no such things as vampires, what is in that coffin and why has the frustratingly delayed Gordon assembled this team to guard it. Guard it against what?

As the plot develops – through dialogue but without being talkie – the characters find themselves in groups of two or three, often discussing the others. Unable to find his junk, Walter is getting withdrawal symptoms. And attempts are made to resolve an unpleasant situation caused by the slightly more psycho of the Jonas brothers having recently raped and murdered a 17-year-old girl.

Eventually somebody cracks and lets off a shooter. Which punctuates the dialogue but thankfully doesn’t tip the film into general mayhem. By now the door is locked and no-one is getting out until Gordon lets himself in. And eventually, inevitably, one of the group, in a dark corner of the crypt, unseen by the others, is killed – with subsequent examination revealing two puncture wounds in the neck.

Five gangsters, a lawyer, a banker and a junkie. And one of them is – possibly – a vampire. Well, you’re spoiled for choice there, aren’t you?

It is a measure of how carefully plotted Cryptic’s script is, that each act of this 90-minute film is exactly 30 minutes long, the inciting incidents for acts two and three occurring dead on the half-hour and the hour. You could set your watch by it. And there’s some lovely, lovely dialogue in the script, some real zingers, many of them delivered by Steve Stevens whose masterful calm clearly infuriates the psycho Jonas Brothers. It’s a cracking script that, while it doesn’t unfold in exactly real time, could probably be adapted into a stage play without too much difficulty.

Notwithstanding all the above, the film falls down in two respects. One is the sound mix. As the group fragments, people hold whispered conversations in corners of the crypt. And sometimes the dialogue just isn’t audible – especially when Ray Panthaki is speaking. You can pump up the volume on your telly but you’d better remember to turn it down again before the next round of shouting and shooting.

The other problem is the character of Alberta, whom you may notice I have barely mentioned. And that’s because she doesn’t really have a character. Which is no reflection on the actor. It’s not that she isn’t given stuff to do. There’s a couple of very funny scenes where two male characters discuss matters while, in the background, Alberta struggles to lift a dead body on her own. And when it is revealed that she is from Transnistria there is debate over whether that is where Dracula comes from.

But there’s just no depth to Alberta, a situation heightened by the seven well-rounded characters surrounding her. Even the junkie has more personality. She is defined by her skin-tight, cleavage-flaunting black leather outfit, her flame-red hair and her eastern European accent. None of those elements define character. She might as well be somebody at Comic-Con pretending to be Black Widow. Maybe Ruspoli and Hutton-Mills suffer from the traditional British male writer’s inability to create realistic female characters. Or maybe they just couldn’t work out what to do with her, beyond using her as a sounding board so that Cochise doesn’t have to talk to himself.

Those cryptic, whispering corners – and indeed the rest of this small but adroitly used set – come courtesy of top production designer Caroline Story (The Seasoning House, Vampire Diary, Its Walls Were Blood). The excellent hair and make-up is by Emma Slater whose British horror CV includes The Borderlands, Stormhouse, Evil Never Dies, Blood Moon, World War Dead, The Rezort and 47 Meters Down). There’s some fine cinematography by Sara Deane (The Horror of the Dolls, World War Dead) and a sympathetic score by Emma Fox. But I think what really stands out is the costume design (not least Ed Stoppard’s terrific coat, which I craved throughout the entire film) courtesy of Raquel Azevedo (The Seasoning House, Truth or Dare, Scar Tissue). It’s somewhat ironic that a movie with so many female department heads should fall down so badly in its non-characterisation of the only woman on screen (a big fat zero on the Bechdel test here).

Ruspoli and Hutton-Mills, whose other feature was prison drama Screwed, are currently in post on sci-fi picture Genesis, which uses many of the same cast and crew as Cryptic. The website for their Next Level Films company says their fourth feature will be called Dark Web, but that’s out of date – it was a comedy thriller that got shelved when they were unexpectedly asked to make World War Dead.

Shot in 2014, Cryptic was released on UK DVD in February 2016 but doesn’t seem to have appeared anywhere else yet. The IMDB lists Chinese and South African releases in September 2014 which we can take with a pinch of salt.

My expectations when I picked up this DVD were low, which only heightened my delight when Cryptic turned out to be such a whip-smart, carefully structured slice of gangster/vampire cinema. It’s a long, long way from the over-the-top bullets’n’bloodsuckers action of From Dusk Till Dawn or Dead Cert. Give it a spin and I think you’ll really enjoy it.

MJS rating: A-

Di Gal Bite Mi

Director: Jc Money
Writer: Jc Money
Producer: Jc Money
Cast: Jc Money, Sharan B, Roll Out
Country: UK
Year of release: 2013
Reviewed from: YouTube

When I came across – quite by chance – this amateur, feature-length, British vampire movie I thought I had found something completely unknown and unrecorded. I subsequently discovered a review on specialist bloodsucker website Taliesin Meets the Vampires but this is still a staggeringly obscure film. There’s no IMDB page, no mention of this anywhere except YouTube, plus that one review and now this one.

In North London, a seductive young woman is actually a vampire, preying on flirtatious, cocksure men. A young man whose friend was killed by the vampire is told by his grandmother (who raised him) the truth about what happened to his parents. He always believed they left when he was eight but actually they were killed by vampires, sacrificing themselves to save their baby (shades of Harry Potter). Grandma says the man who can tell him about vampires is a wheeler-dealing Rastafarian who wears a permanent oxygen mask and reads from (I assume) the Holy Piby. At the end of the film, our hero and a friend discover the house where the vampire sleeps, sneak in and destroy her with a combination of stake through the heart and ripping down the curtains to let the sunlight in.

On an objective level, the film is solidly amateur. Camera work is wobbly and handheld with no real attempt at grading or anything fancy like that. There are lots of characters, many in only one scene. Actors wear their own clothes, improvise their dialogue, and for the most part can't act. Outside scenes are shot guerrilla-style so that quite a few people are in this movie without realising it. The whole thing is either a home movie or a dogme masterpiece – you decide.

But listen, I absolutely don’t care about the lack of basic film-making elements like script, acting, make-up or ‘vampire fang effects that weren’t bought at Poundland’. Di Gal Bite Mi has one big thing going for it, which makes it (I believe) unique in the history of British horror cinema, and the clue is in the title. Under the Shadow was in Persian, The Passing was in Welsh, and this, my friend, is a British horror movie with dialogue in Jamaican Patois.

Filmed in, by, among and for the African-Caribbean community in North London, most of the film is delivered in a Patois – and with accents – so impenetrable to this white Midlander as to be effectively unintelligible. But not to worry because the film is subtitled. Admittedly the subtitles have their own curious take on grammar and syntax, and frustratingly they stop 15 minutes from the end of this 69-minute feature (although by then you’ll have the gist of what’s happening), but nevertheless they make the narrative (such as it is) understandable. And hence they make this film hugely enjoyable.

Some characters do speak more clearly and there are a few white folks, notably a young (Polish?) woman who has a scene where she implores the vampire to come and bite her. She is fed up with her miserable life and wants to become a glamorous immortal. However, a mysterious male voice explains that the vampire (spelled ‘vampier’ throughout the film) only ever bites men. Thirty years ago, she was wronged by a man who cheated on her, and now she returns every three decades to take revenge on arrogant, sexist men. (This of course slightly contradicts the bit about that guy’s parents being killed by vampires, although to be fair his grandma doesn’t say it was this vampire who killed them, just a vampire).

There is a (literally) running gag about a Rasta who sees his friend killed in the prologue, runs off – and keeps running. Every so often we cut to shots of him running along assorted pavements, and characters sometimes mention that they saw a scared Rasta-man haring along the road. Eventually, as the final gag of a light-hearted movie, he reaches Manchester(!) where he sees another vampire and starts running back down south again.

Apart from the above and a couple of vampire attack scenes – surprisingly well-shot with judicious use of fake blood – most of the rest of the film is simply two or more characters discussing the recent vampire attacks. There’s not really what you might call narrative development.

But none of that matters a jot. This is something strange and special. Here we have a horror film, made by people with a basic awareness of the standard genre tropes, but set within a distinctive community: genuine, indigenous black British horror film-making. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Notwithstanding that this is a horror-fantasy romp, this film reflects the community where it’s set and where it was made in a genuine, unforced way. This is not some right-on, Lottery-funded, serious exploration of London Jamaicans by a pretentious, if well-meaning, film school graduate. This is real. This one movie can tell external audiences far more about this community than a dozen serious dramas with budgets and trained actors and proper equipment – and it does so precisely because it was not made for external audiences.

What Di Gal Bite Mi reminds me of most is Nollywood. Though clearly British – and identified on YouTube as Jamaican (which it is, in an ex-pat sort of way) – this feels very much like a West African film. There is the same focus on reflecting the real lives of the audience, but within a fantastic storyline full of action, thrills and laughs. There is the same defiant determination to simply not worry about limitations or restrictions, to just plough ahead and make the film. But whereas such determination in a European or North American context can often be self-indulgent, this is not a self-indulgent film. This movie has been made to be seen. It has been made for audiences. Audiences beyond the amateur actors on screen and their immediate friends and families, but audiences like these actors, who identify with the characters, the settings, the attitudes, the dialogue, the jokes, the sex, the beliefs, the haircuts.

If you enjoy Nollywood films that were never meant to be seen outside of Nigeria, if you love old Mexploitation movies that were never expected to play North of Guadalajara, if you get a genuine thrill from discovering some Thai or Filipino obscurity that has never been subbed or dubbed into English, if you somehow combine this international eclecticism with a determination to seek out the most obscure and esoteric elements of 21st century British horror - so if you're me, basically - then you will derive great pleasure from watching Di Gal Bite Mi.

The man behind this movie is Jc Money whose YouTube channel is full of music videos, short films, animation, trailers and a couple of other features, all produced under the banner of Wah Gwan Family Entertainment (I don't speak Patois but even I know what 'Wah gwan?' means). His ‘ghetto action movie’ Murder Job and ‘ghetto movie’ 135 D Street were posted to YouTube in April 2013 and January 2014 respectively; Di Gal Bite Mi was posted between them in July 2013.

Money is a one-man band: writing, directing, producing, photographing and editing as well as playing the nominal hero whose gran sends him on a quest that ends in the eventual destruction of the vampire. Judging by the order of the cast list, in which everyone uses either a single name or a nickname, I would guess that Sharan B plays the vampire (under a selection of wigs) and Roll Out is probably the running Rasta-man.

While it’s pretty much impossible to google anyone involved in this film – and they’re certainly not on the old IMDB! – I have managed to dig up a little bit of info on Jc Money, or Devon Spence to use his real name. His primary interest is music: he studied music engineering at CONEL (The College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London) and has been performing since 1995. When Jamaican dancehall stars visit London he sometimes gets support gigs and has appeared on bills with the likes of Beenie Man, Bounty Killer and Mavado. As a film-maker, Money is entirely self-taught. He watched other people making videos and hence learned how to shoot and edit, leading eventually to his three (so far) feature-length films.

I was absolutely amazed and delighted to discover Di Gal Bite Mi and can definitely recommend it for anyone who is (a) open-minded and (b) bored with sitting through formulaic horror films.

If you want something different, try a vampire with a reggae beat.

MJS rating: B+

Night Kaleidoscope

Director: Grant McPhee
Writers: Chris Purnell, Megan Gretchen
Producer: Grant McPhee
Cast: Patrick O’Brien, Mariel McAllan, Kitty Colquhoun
Country: UK
Year of release: 2017
Reviewed from: online screener
Website: https://kaleido-dog.com

This ultra-stylish vampire/cop feature scores props from the start by restricting its opening titles to the first 50 seconds. Other film-makers please take note. We don’t want to sit through four minutes of titles with a separate screen for every single cast member, none of whom we’ve ever heard of. Do that for your premiere/cast+crew screening if you must, but recut the opening before anyone else sees it.

One thing which did occur to me during those 50 seconds: ‘Tartan Films presents’. Oh, it’s a Scottish production. That’s fine but, hang on, what do I do if/when Scotland becomes independent? Should I continue to regard Scottish horror films as British horror films? Not really thought about that before. Just geographically, Scotland can’t stop being part of Britain. That’s the name of the island that the English, the Scots and the Welsh all live on (except for folk on Anglesey, the Isle of Wight, the Scilly Isles and all the little Hebrides/Orkneys bits and bobs up north, obviously). But should cinema be defined geographically? The Dead was filmed in Africa, The Dead 2 in India, My Little Eye in Nova Scotia, Grave Matters in the Los Angeles, Dog Soldiers in Luxembourg and South of Sanity in Antarctica. They’re all of them ‘British films’.

I may be getting off track here.

So: Night Kaleidoscope. This is a very artistic, arty movie. It is not a narrative movie. There’s probably no more than about 15 minutes of actual story here; quarter of an hour tops of people actually doing and saying stuff. If you come expecting a gripping storyline, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

In a nutshell (so far as I can work out), there’s a guy in a sheepskin jacket who is psychic (at least, when he’s high) who helps a police detective investigate murders. He has a toke and sees visions of what happened. There’s a new killer in town, but it’s someone (or something) different. A vampire. Actually two. A dominant female vampire and her male acolyte. Sheepskin jacket guy teams up with a young woman (who I think may have lost her boyfriend to the vampires). He captures the male vampire and holds him prisoner in a bathtub. Then after that it kind of all gets a bit fuzzy. There’s some Molotov cocktails (prepared but unused). There’s a locket. I’m honestly not sure how it all ends.

But this isn’t about story. Or character. It’s about imagery.

After those 50 seconds, there’s a trippy, psychedelic, drug-induced montage. Then another one. Then another. By now we’re 12 minutes in and I’m thinking: is this film going to be nothing but trippy montages?

As it turns out: yes. Pretty much.

Actual dialogue scenes are few, far between and consistently brief. Then we’re into another montage. And don’t get me wrong: these trippy montages are terrific. The handheld photography and fast editing and extensive post-production work, all overlaid with a 1980s-style score, creates magical sequences of two to three minutes. Despite being set in an ugly, urban world where everything is made of granite or concrete, where locations look better at night only because you can see less of the crap they’re covered in, nevertheless this is a film full of colour. Not vibrant colour; it’s muted but it’s more than grey. The colour twists and turns as the camera moves. Night Kaleidoscope is the perfect title for this film.

Any one of these montages, dropped into another picture, would be a highlight of the movie. But I’d be failing in my duty as a reviewer if I didn’t point out that, one after another after another, interrupted by ‘scenes’ which are often little more than a couple of lines of dialogue and a hefty pause, all these montages get a bit much. Let’s put it this way. I like mayonnaise. Everyone likes mayonnaise. There isn’t a foodstuff on the planet that can’t be improved with a dab of mayo. But the keyword here is ‘dab’. You wouldn’t want to just eat a jar of mayonnaise. Even if you occasionally nibbled on a biscuit between spoonfuls, you’d rapidly get sick of it.

And I’ve got to say that I did start to get bored of the endless succession of trippy montages. By the end of the first act (or at least, half an hour into this 82-minute movie; I’m not sure something this minimalist can be said to have acts per se) the technique had lost its initial impact and was just becoming repetitive, soporific, even somewhat tedious. It’s simply too much.

Bit of dialogue. Pause. Bit more dialogue. Then in comes the music. An electronic snare drum in a slow 2/4 rhythm, then a synth melody so subtle it’s basically just a repeated loop of rising and falling tone. Every single time. All the music sounds like the intro to a Blue Nile song. And listen, I absolutely freaking love The Blue Nile; they’re one of my favourite bands. But if they recorded an 82-minute instrumental album, I’m not sure I’d be so keen on it. Even if there was an accompanying feature-length video. With vampires.

All the above notwithstanding, this is an extraordinary film. Visual poetry. With some quite gruesome and nasty gory bits in several of the montage sequences. I’m criticising Grant McPhee’s film for achieving precisely what it set out to do, for which I feel a bit bad.

Eventually I twigged what I was watching, and it’s this: Night Kaleidoscope is what you would get if Jean Rollin had directed Trainspotting. And once I understood that it was a Scottish Rollinade, I was able to relax a bit (though I did still find my attention frequently wandering, by that point an almost Pavlovian response to yet another synth snare drum intro).

Here’s what it says in the press release I was sent along with the screener. (Film-makers please note: I very much appreciate press releases, or just good website content, that can contextualise your work. But I usually read them after watching the film because I like to view things with an open mind.) Anyway, it says: “Bridging a fine line between the trashy 70s Euro Horror of Jess Franco, the British Art-House miasma of Nicholas Roeg and the underground experiments of Kenneth Anger Night Kaleidoscope manages to become a unique film of its own.” And then it says: “The film is a treat for the eyes and ears – trippy, psychedelic imagery flashing against a pumping 80s synth rock score – story and logic come secondary to atmosphere and terror, a dreamy nightmare captured on film.”

And I cannae really disagree wi’ any o’ tha'!

What I do disagree with is the headline ‘PUNK ROCK CINEMA!’ and the line “maintains a … punk rock attitude throughout”. If there’s one thing this doesn’t feel like, it’s punk rock. It’s about as punk rock as, well, The Blue Nile.

It may have been shot in a week (in 2014 under the curious title Land of Sunshine), but it has then spent the best part of three years being edited and graded and scored and colour-corrected and flimflammed and zimzammed and all the other digital malarkey that film-makers do in post nowadays. This is a film where every frame has been carefully selected and manipulated to create a specific, deliberate, aesthetic, audiovisual impression. It ain’t two chords and a pair of bondage trousers. I can kind of see what Grant McPhee means, and I have no doubt that he knows his musical chops, his previous feature Big Gold Dream being a documentary about post-punk bands like The Scars and The Jesus and Mary Chain. But some of us are old enough to remember real punk.

I mean, I don’t. I don't actually remember it because I was eight and living in a little village in south Nottinghamshire, a long, lomg way from the 100 Club. But I’m old enough to potentially remember it, had I been aware of it at the time. Which I was wasn’t. Jesus, I was barely aware of Top of the Pops.

Before Big Gold Dream, McPhee’s debut feature was Sarah’s Room aka To Here Knows When, a psychological drama three-hander. The reviews I’ve read of this seem to exactly describe Night Kaleidoscope (except without the vampires), suggesting that McPhee is establishing a distinctive auteur-ial style. Before that he made a bunch of horror shorts. He has also done a lot of cinematography over the years, including his own features and also a lost British horror film, Christmas Hear Kids directed by this film's co-writer Chris Purnell. Shot in 2012 and premiered in 2014, that’s been in the MIA appendix to my British horror masterlist for a few years now. I wonder whatever happened to it.

In terms of actually paying the rent, McPhee does small jobs on big projects, as camera assistant or clapper loader or (increasingly) digital imaging technician. His IMDB page includes Trainspotting 2, Game of Thrones, The Bad Education Movie, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Sunshine on Leith, Cloud Atlas, World War Z and a bunch of BHR titles: Let Us Prey, Under the Skin, Outpost: Black Sun, Citadel, The Wicker Tree, The Awakening, Book of Blood and Doomsday. Also Jim Davidson: The Devil Rides Out – Live (a lesser known Dennis Wheatley adaptation, that one) and Eating with Ronnie Corbett.

Thing is: I don’t know what a digital imaging technician actually does. But if ever a film looks like it was made by a digital imaging technician, it’s Night Kaleidoscope.

The small cast are excellent. The psychic guy in the sheepskin jacket is played Patrick O’Brien who has a widow’s peak and a Dan Dare jaw. Mariel McAllan is his associate. The vampires are corporate voice-over queen Kitty Colquhoun and Gareth Morrison (Outpost 2 and 3). Craig-James Moncur as the detective and Robert Williamson as a drug dealer provide impressive support. Alec Cheer is credited with the music; Ben McKinstrie with the editing; Eve Murray with the production design.

Often I find that I enjoy a film while I’m watching it but then, as I think on it more carefully while drafting a review, I find myself becoming less enamoured. Night Kaleidoscope is the opposite. While watching the film I found myself at times underwhelmed and distracted, but re-evaluating it through the process of writing these 1,700 words or so, I now appreciate it more and have realised that I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I did.

Night Kaleidoscope was released on VOD, DVD and – why not? – VHS in March 2017.

MJS rating: B+

The Vampires of Bloody Island

Director: Allin Kempthorne
Writers: Allin Kempthorne, Pamela Kempthorne
Producers: Allin Kempthorne, Pamela Kempthorne
Cast: Pamela Kempthorne, Allin Kempthorne, Leon Hamilton
Country: UK
Year of release: 2010
Reviewed from DVD
Website: www.bloodyisland.co.uk

Since it was originally released, a full seven years ago, I have been meaning to watch this film, just to see for myself quite how awful it is. Self-released and self-promoted, the movie’s marketing screams ‘terrible’. The film’s website refers to it as a “hilarious cult vampire comedy movie” and “a vamptastically entertaining send-up of every vampire film you've ever loved!” Such hyperbole sets off a klaxon to any would-be viewer (or reviewer).

Comedy, as I think has been well-established over the years, is very difficult to do on a low budget. A few films have managed it - Stalled, Kill Keith, Evil Aliens, Take Me to Your Leader – but plenty more have crashed and burned: Le Fear 2, Stag Night of the Dead, Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit, Zorg and Andy and many others so desperately short on laughs that I can’t even bring myself to review them. Here’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years though: genuinely good comedies rarely feel the need to tell people how ‘entertaining’ or ‘hilarious’ they are.

The film’s website has lots of laudatory, unlinked review quotes from sources I’ve never heard of. To be fair, it did get a positive review in Fortean Times, but that’s not really a journal of cinematic record. There are no external review links on the IMDB (except this one). All but two of the Amazon reviews are five-star raves; the remaining pair are one-star excoriations. The signs are not good.

Everything about The Vampires of Bloody Island just looks terrible. The website, the DVD sleeve, the trailer, everything designed to appeal to a potential audience has the absolute opposite effect. Even the character names on the IMDB page suggest this will be about as humorous as a root canal. Unless you’re an obsessive goth who thinks anything with a vampire in is an instant classic, one’s instinct is to stay away.

But my job (well, it’s hardly a job…) is to watch these things so you don’t have to. Cover me – I’m going in…

Thus, after seven years, I finally picked up a copy and watched it. And, because I write these reviews in a spirit of absolute honesty, I’ll tell you this. The Vampires of Bloody Island is nowhere near as bad as I expected. The cringeworthy marketing does this film a disservice. It’s not the worst comedy ever made. Not even the worst horror comedy ever made. Heck, it’s not even the worst British horror comedy about vampires ever made. A few minor aspects of it are moderately clever.

Let me be clear: in no way am I saying that this is A Good Film. The Vampires of Bloody Island is painfully unfunny amateur rubbish and I cannot with a straight face recommend it to you in any way unless you are obsessively completist about vampires and/or British horror. It’s awful. Just not as barrel-scrapingly awful as I previously assumed.

Hey, credit where credit’s due is my motto.

The set-up is this. Morticia de’Ath (Pamela Kempthorne) is a centuries-old vampire living in a castle on an obscure Cornish island, tended to by her mute zombie manservant Grunt. Her goal is to be able to go outside in sunlight, towards which end neighbouring mad scientist Dr N Sane is working on an elixir. The one remaining ingredient is the blood of a mortal, born of vampire, who has returned to their birthplace of their own free will.

To this end, some decades ago Morticia had a daughter by a mortal man, who then took the baby away and raised it alone. In London we meet Susan Swallows (also Pamela Kempthorne), a clutzy  employee at a soft drink company which produces, among other disgusting flavours, Garlic Cola. Grunt surreptitiously arranges for Susan to be sent off as a sales rep to Bloody Island, Cornwall. She is accompanied by her colleague Kevin Smallcock (Allin Kempthorne) who maintains that his surname is pronounced ‘Smelkirk’.

On arrival at the island, Kevin and Susan are welcomed as guests by Morticia but after a dinner party incident they are thrown into a dungeon along with tweed-wearing parapsychologist Professor Van Rental. Dr N Sane completes the elixir, then Morticia uses it to raise a small army of vampires, but Kevin, Susan and Van Rental escape and defeat the undead using water pistols filled with Garlic Cola. Susan spends most of the third act parading around in her underwear, adding a fur coat to her costume partway through.

You can see that there is some attempt at an original plot here, bolstered out by Kevin and Susan’s journey to Bloody Island. This includes a stop at a prehistoric monument where they first encounter Van Rental, an overnight stay in a guest house where Kevin gets vampirised by a topless Morticia, and an encounter with a ferryman who is terrified by the name ‘Bloody Island’ and refuses to row them across ‘Sheet Creek’.

There are some genuine attempts at humour on show, including unamusing, vaguely rude, sub-sub-sub-Carry On character names. The Garlic Cola stuff is original and justifies the denouement as assorted vampires disappear in a puff of computer graphics. The scene with the ferryman meanwhile is a self-contained sub-sub-sub-Python sketch, the sort of thing that might raise a smile in a village pantomime. You know, some ‘comedies’ I’ve sat through have been so bad that I genuinely couldn’t work out where the jokes were. All due credit to The Vampires of Bloody Island: it is very obvious where the jokes are. That’s because they are old, weak, laboured and for the most part desperately unfunny (and kind of have a metaphorical neon sign above them saying ‘comedy bit’). But at least there are jokes.

The attempted humour, as you can tell, is very broad and unsubtle. If I was asked to sum the movie up in one sentence, it would be thus: this is a film that wants to be Carry On Screaming but ends up as Carry On England.

Still, could have been worse. Could have ended up as Carry On Emannuelle. Anyway…

Speaking of things which are unsubtly labelled, Allin Kempthorne is one of those film-makers who feels the need to put a typewriter caption at the start of every scene telling us where it is, what day it is and the precise time. The first two are always obvious from context (assuming we haven’t got bored and started checking our emails) and the last doesn’t matter. The most extreme example is on the journey when Susan tells Kevin she wants to stop off at somewhere called Devil’s Lookout. We get a close-up of a map, Susan’s finger pointing to something clearly labelled ‘Devil’s Lookout’. Then we see the car pulling up next to a sign reading ‘Devil’s Lookout’. Kevin gets out of the car saying: “Here we are, Devil’s Lookout.”

And a typewriter caption clatters across screen to tell us that this specific location is… Devil’s Lookout!

Last time I saw anything like this was in Summer of the Massacre. And while The Vampires of Bloody Island isn’t anywhere near as bad as Bryn Hammond’s classic tale of ball pein hammers and rubber masks, these typewriter captions are another red flag that we’re dealing with people who don’t really understand how film narrative works.

This is a shame as Allin Kempthorne clearly does know how to make a film. The direction is perfectly competent here. The actual camera-work isn’t great but I’ve seen worse. The editing is actually rather good, particularly in scenes where Morticia and Susan appear together. Through judicious use of stand-ins, the director is able to make us completely forget that these are the same woman. Or nearly forget anyway. Probably the biggest hole in the plot, one that cannot be excused just because this is a low-budget silly comedy, is that that when Kevin and Susan meet Morticia they completely ignore the fact that (a) she looks exactly like Susan and (b) she has bloody great fangs sticking out of her mouth.

All the above notwithstanding, let’s get to the elephant in the room, which is Pamela Kempthorne herself. And I don’t mean that in a personal way, but some of what I’m about to type will seem very personal indeed. That is, I’m afraid, unavoidable. If you take the lead role (actually two lead roles) in a feature film and promote it heavily, and if you spend much of that film in a state of undress, you must expect people to comment on your physical appearance. And the simple truth is that Mrs Kempthorne has neither the figure nor the face to play either of these roles. When she gets undressed, flashing her boobs and her bum, frankly it’s more frightening than the last half-dozen serious vampire films I watched put together.

Morticia is supposed to be a seductive, sexy vampire. And for Allin Kempthorne to cast his wife in the role is pure vanity. If my wife decided she was going to make a film about Ancient Rome and cast me in the lead role as a gladiator, it would be utterly ridiculous. It would make me, and her – and by association anyone else involved with the movie – look like idiots. Because I’m an overweight, underheight, 48-year-old nerd with bad skin, a large nose, overgrown eyebrows, a speech impediment and a haircut that has barely changed since 1973. Kirk Douglas I ain’t. And Ingrid Pitt she ain’t, sorry.

Under her husband’s direction, Pamela Kempthorne swans through the film like she’s some sort of cross between Barbara Steele and Barbara Shelley. When in fact she’s somewhere on a line between Barbara Bush and Barbara Cartland. She thinks she’s Madeline Smith but she looks more like Madeleine Albright. And nobody ever wanted to see the Secretary of State’s tits, not even Bill Clinton.

Nor does Pamela Kempthorne convince as Susan Swallows (hoho, very amusing). Frankly, the daughter looks even older than the mother (which, to be fair, given that the latter is an ageless vampire, doesn’t actually break any narrative rules). While Mrs Kempthorne as Morticia is waving her bazongas about in one scene, seducing Kevin Smallcock (god, that’s funny) in the guest house, the sequence is intercut with Mrs Kempthorne as Susan in another room, curled up on the bed, squeezed into a pair of pink panties emblazoned with the phrase ‘Pretty princess’. I actually had to rewind and pause to work out what it said. I never, ever want to do that again.

We are supposed to accept that, after initial hostility at the soft drink firm office, Kevin keeps making moves on Susan and eventually they fall in love. I’ve no doubt that the Kempthornes are happily married (since October 1998) and blissfully in love with each other, and that’s lovely and wonderful and all. But this is cinema, not real life. And when you see them on screen together, honestly you’d assume they were mother and son.

Compounding the problem (yet somehow also ameliorating it) is that Allin Kempthorne himself is a good-looking guy, with his floppy hair and cheeky smile. When I watched this movie, I kept thinking: well, I wouldn’t climb over him to get to her. Look, when a male viewer who ticks the ‘straight’ box on diversity forms finds your male romantic lead more attractive than your female romantic lead, there’s something wrong with your casting. (Unless of course the male lead is Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt, in which case hell yeah! You know where you can stick your diversity forms then. Don’t try to deny it, you’ve all thought the same.)

On top of which, Allin Kempthorne is also a good actor, especially impressive given that he’s directing himself which always makes life harder. He’s had a few walk-on parts in things like The Colour of Magic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and episodes of Black Mirror, Horrible Histories, EastEnders (as a clown) and Doctor Who (as a mime artist). He has also been a stand-in several times, including doubling for Rowan Atkinson on Johnny English, plus Cronenberg’s Spider, Julian Richards’ Silent Cry and a brace of Harry Potters.

Mrs Kempthorne, on the other hand, is simply one of the worst actors who has ever crossed my TV screen. I know I’ll never win a Bafta (not for playing a gladiator, anyway) but that doesn’t mean I can’t spot an absence of acting ability in other people. And honestly, it’s embarrassing how awful she is. Especially when she’s on screen with her husband. The overall cast of the film range right across the acting spectrum from terrible to quite good.  Leon Hamilton mimes his way through a fine wordless performance as Grunt, while John Snelling as Dr N Sane is like a plank of wood. Oliver Gray as Professor Van Rental is somewhere inbetween.

It’s ironic that the best actor on screen is Mr A Kempthorne and the worst is Mrs P Kempthorne, but that’s the way it is. She was also a stand-in on Silent Cry, actually appears on screen as a witch in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and was a zombie in Shaun of the Dead. I suspect she can carry off non-speaking witch and zombie roles, but two lead roles, both supposedly sexily seductive – no, not a chance. Maybe, just maybe, if cast as some sort of crumbling, cobweb-covered, ancient vampire matriarch who spends the whole movie sat on a throne (and fully dressed), Pamela Kempthorne could have pulled off a bloodsucker role. But that’s not what we get here.

This is what happens when you make a vanity project. And make no mistake, The Vampires of Bloody Island is a vanity project. Allin Kempthorne made it for his wife. He manages his wife’s acting career. He marketed and distributed this film starring his wife. It’s commendable how much he does for her. But it would be untrue and unkind to suggest that the result is anything except a self-indulgent home movie. Keep your wife’s flabby arse in the bedroom Mr Kempthorne because no-one in their right mind wants it on their telly.

When not being film stand-ins, the Kempthornes run a mail order business selling goth/vampire ephemera (and signed copies of their DVD) from their home in the little town of Mountain Ash near Merthyr Tydfil. Which means that they know their audience and their market. If you’re the sort of person who will happily shell out £1.90 for a sachet of ‘Astral Cleansing Ritual Bath’ (“Remove astral debris picked up in everyday life, breaks minor curses and strengthens the auric field.” Which, incidentally, is a funnier line than anything in the script of this movie…) then you will probably freaking love The Vampires of Bloody Island and can safely ignore everything I’ve written here.

Since making The Vampires of Bloody Island, Mrs Kempthorne doesn’t seem to have troubled the screen again, concentrating on such challenging stage roles as Sally Skull in Skull and Crossbones, the Potty Pirates and Ping Pong in Santa’s Naughtiest Elves. Two of Ibsen’s lesser known works there.

A little digging reveals that these pirates and elves are part of a whole cornucopia of characters which the Kempthornes offer for children’s parties, corporate events, walkabouts etc. Allin does close-up magic, both family-friendly and more sophisticated (plus stand-up comedy as ‘Eddie Twist’). Pamela does tarot and palm reading. They both make balloon animals. Walkabout characters on offer include Baron Blood the Vampire, Wizzall the Wizard, Wanda the Wacky Witch, Runefungle the Sorcerer, the Giggling Ghost, Midshipman Arnold Poop-Decker, Jack Frost, the Mad Hatter, Sparkie the Clown, Ditzy the Clown, the Andromedans, the Space Tourists and a frankly terrifying giant humanoid rabbit.

There is also Lord Two-Head, a monstrous character whose second head sits upside-down on top of his regular head. (It’s creepy, but still better than the shitty version of Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie.) This explains one of the mysteries of The Vampires of Bloody Island, which is that when we first met Dr N Sane he is treating a patient who has this curious double head and is never explained. It is a very good full-head mask and really one of the highlights (if such a term can be used) of the movie.

The other bit of the film that I really liked was when Morticia raises her vampire army and they all announce what year they were turned. Two of them were vampirised in the late 1960s so are hippy vampires, sticking to their principals of peace and love. When the big fight breaks out, they refuse to get involved, sitting on a blanket and waving placards (although that doesn’t save them from a deadly blast of Garlic Cola). The actors are Rebecca Finley-Hall (you may remember her as ‘Skank Hippy Crack Bitch’ in obscure 2006 social drama The Plague) and the surely pseudonymous Caspar De La Mare. This is a clever and original idea, well handled, and probably the closest the film ever comes to being genuinely entertaining.

The leader of the vampire army, played under impressive make-up with a plummy English accent, is a ‘war demon’ named General Valkazar. This is Marcus Fernando (also credited as fight director) whose stage career includes puppeteering for the RSC. It’s another good performance that veers towards entertaining. Also in the cast are Carl Thomas and Paul Ewen as ‘Catering Demons', serving at the dinner party scene. Ewen (also credited as key prosthetic artist) is a British horror regular with bit-parts in Cockneys vs Zombies, Zombie Undead, Three’s a Shroud, Blaze of Gory, Seize the Night, The Vicious Dead and Kim Wilde’s legendary goth-horror video Every Time I See You I Go Wild (google it!).

Tacye Lynette who plays the boss of the soft drinks firm (another good performance) does audio descriptions for Sky TV. There’s actually a borderline funny bit in the office sequence when three Chinese ladies are assumed to be customers from China but take offence because they’re actually Irish. Kaila Lee, Amy Ip and Carolyn Seet are ‘Miss Chang’, ‘Miss Wang’ and ‘Miss O’Leary’. Three sexy female vampires who make a move on Kevin (and these ones are genuinely sexy, even though they keep their clothes on) are credited as ‘Mina’, ‘Lucy’ and ‘Morgana’ and played by Sadie Sims, Lisa Pobereskin and Jennifer Grace.

There are also two werewolves chained up in Morticia’s dungeon. One is played by an actor hiding behind the pseudonym ‘Fritz Aardvark Bragpuss’ (sic) and the other is – crikey! – Mick Barber. You may recall Barber's recurring role as a non-speaking, bubble-permed background copper in Ashes to Ashes but you will definitely recall his most famous role as squeaky-voiced, bubble-permed foreground lunatic Tommy in Richard Driscoll’s Eldorado.

Of final note is the film's soundtrack which features a number of goth beat combos including Inkubus Sukkubus, Fever, Theatres des Vampires, The Suburban Vamps and Corpse Nocturna. The opening titles play under a song by Vampire Division called ‘Place of the Dead’ and you’ll have the catchy chorus stuck in your head for days after you watch the film. It goes:

Place of the dead! Place of the dead! Place of the dead! Place of the dead!
Place of the dead! Place of the dead! Place of the dead! Place of the dead!

Ah, they don’t write ‘em like that any more…

So that’s The Vampires of Bloody Island, a film I watched in order to tick it off my list, which proved that you can’t judge a DVD by its sleeve. Although you can get a pretty good idea. The Kempthornes self-released it on their Weird World of Wibbell label in January 2010 with an NTSC version following in August. There was a cast and crew screening back in 2007 and it was shown at the first Horror-on-Sea in January 2013 but seems to have otherwise largely left the big screen untroubled.

Now you might expect this vanity project to be the only Wibbell release but you’d be wrong. They also released something called Learning Hebrew: A Gothsploitation Movie which is synopsised thus:

"When criticism of faith and the freedom to offend is outlawed by the Politically Correct Militia, Bella and her gang of idealistic cyberpunks push Darwinism door-to-door. But with agnostic thugs in the street and the Atheist Revolutionary Army attacking the liberal establishment, Bella and her friends are driven underground into a dark fetish existence, where the future and past collide, allegiances are strained and old scores must be settled."

That was written and directed by someone named Louis Joon and released by the Kempthornes on DVD in 2012. It played Horror-on-Sea in 2014 although it’s not on my masterlist because I’m not convinced (yet) that it’s actually a horror film. Wibbell Productions has also given us Twisted Britain, a phone-shot web series with Allin Kempthorne in his Eddie Twist guise visiting various towns. Currently under development is The First Stars of Vaudeville, a compilation of archive footage of obscure music hall acts.

I absolutely love old music hall acts so if that ever gets finished I will be first in the queue to buy a copy. Seriously.

Just so long as I never have to watch The Vampires of Bloody Island again.

MJS rating: C-