Vampiress TV Review: "What We Do in the Shadows"

The Gist: Based on the movie of the same title the series much in the same light as the show "The Office" follows a first person documentary/ reality tv format.  In it a film crew documents the everyday lives of a group of four vampires living together in Staten Island with them talking to the crew about the everyday happenings in their lives. Three of the tenants are old world vampires while the fourth is an energy vampire who feeds by sucking the energy out of rooms through boring stories and ruining fun.  The three blood drinking vampires try to avoid him as much as possible.

Female Vampire Factor:

 The female of the house is Nadja (Natasia Demetriou)

As the series goes on Nadja sees and eventually turns a nerdy college girl named Jenna who becomes her fledgling.

Jenna even after becoming a vampire struggles socially.  Eventually we find out while Nadja is teaching her to seduce and feed that she has the vampire ability to become invisible.

Season 1 of the series includes several cameo's from famous actors and actresses playing vampires.  The first of which is former SNL actress Vanessa Bayer who plays an emotion vampire name Evie in the episode "Werewolf Feud"

An emotional vampire is someone who feeds off of sympathy from others.  She ends up working in the same office as the energy vampire Colin Robinson.  They start out in competition feeding off of their co-workers by making them miserable (him with his long boring stories and her announcing a new crisis in her life every day to the office) but eventually join forces and even develop a short lived romance.

Season 1: Episode 7 "The Trial" includes a ton of vampire cameos.

 In this episode one of the head vampires comes to stay with the clan in their long island home.  Eventually they teach him to ditch his old ways and he starts to enjoy life in the modern new world.  Eventually he gets too comfortable even being up during daylight hours when the vampires familiar opens the door to the home at the wrong time exposing him to daylight instantly killing him.  This leads to the roommates being put on trial by an all star vampire counsel.  The one who leads them to the trial is played by a vamped out Kristin Schaal.

The council of vampires is pretty much a who's who of people who have played vampires in film and television.  This includes the three original stars of the film adaptation as well as Danny Trejo (From Dusk Till Dawn), Paul Ruebens (Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie) & Wesley Snipes (Blade) (Dave Bautista also make a cameo in this episode as a vampire inmate waiting for his trial).  As far as the females of the counsel we have Evan Rachel Wood (True Blood).

 and the leader is Tilda Swinton (No Lovers Left Alive)

The running gag in this case not being that they're playing their characters from their films but instead that they weren't acting in their movies and the actors themselves are vampires as they are all playing themselves.

Vampiress TV Review: "The Strain"

The Gist:  A CDC Doctor teams with a vampire hunter in order to try to save New York from a plague that is turning people into blood sucking monsters.

Clarification: This series aired on the FX network in the United States from 2014 to 2017 and was based on a graphic novel series of the same name. In it a master vampire devises a plan where he turns the citizens of New York into vampires starting with the passengers on a plane that is transporting him there with the goal of creating an apocalypse for humans

Unlike your standard vampires these are alien like creatures who feed through elongated tongues that can be launched at their prey with stingers on the end.  The stingers also transfer worms which turns the victims into vampires as well so any feeding creates new vampires.

Female Vampire Factor: The biggest issue as far as this blog is concerned is it's explained in season 1 that once a person is turned they lose all humanity to the point that they become different creatures altogether.  By that meaning they don't even have human bodies (including no sex organs) and when they are fully changed they barely look human anymore.

 There are only a few exceptions to this rule. One is that their thirst for blood and stinger develop very early in their transformation so their first feeding they generally still look somewhat human.

The other is situations where the master vampire can chose to give vampires some form of humanity if he feels they would be useful to him as something other than a mindless blood drinking monster.

That Brings us to the estranged wife of the main protagonists, Kelly (Natalie Brown).

Kelly's human looks were restored in the shows second season as the master felt she was special and her looks could be used to lour Dr. Eph and more importantly their son into a false sense of security when she's around. It is explained that when someone is turned the first thing they do is go after the people they love as their memory just associates the people in them as food which Kelly does when she's first turned in season 1, feeding on their babysitter and her kid before looking for her son. The looks Kelly gives when her blood lust gets the best of her shows how great this could have been if they kept their human looks on the show.

 Also the master when he "adopts" Eph and Kelly's son assigns a woman to him who also retains her human looks for his comfort.

From a female vampire standpoint it gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  The two that are there are great though but they are definitely few and far between .  From an entertainment standpoint the shows first few seasons were very good and I highly recommend them.

The Vampiress Episode: "American Horror Story"

Season 5

"Hotel"

American Horror Story is a television series which has aired on the FX Network in the US since 2011.  The show acts as a mini series with every season acting as one story with a start and end with every new season acting as a new story with new characters (though usually played by the same actors). 

Season 5 has a slight relation to the first season as it is the first to have a recurring character from another season appear  ( the murder house Realtor Marcy).  The season revolves around a haunted hotel called "The Cortez".  The Hotel is owned by the Countess played by singer and Vampire Enthusiast Lady GaGa.

The Countess is an immortal vampire who lives in the hotel along with her vampire boy toy.  Problem is she gets tired of her men (and women) quickly and seems to turn any attractive young person who steps foot in it which becomes a lot once the hotel is bought by a famous fashion designer.  Unfortunately she is also broke so her plan as of this writing is to marry the fashion designer then have him killed for his money. 

There are several side plots on the series one of which revolves around the countess kidnapping and turning children for her to filter blood through.  The kids drink the blood of dirty people, she then has the children bled and drinks their blood. This will later cause a problem for the countess as one of the children is the kidnapped and believe murdered son of a police detective who's staying at the hotel while trying to solve a murder investigation revolving  a cheating couple who died there (a murder which is separate from the vampirism and each killing being a representative of the 7 deadly sins).

Another Vampire subplot has to do with a 1970's B movie actress named Ramona Royale played by Angela Bassett.  Bassett who also played in Vampire in Brooklyn  plays a former love interest of the Countess who was turned by her in the 1970's.  At the point of this writing she's seeking revenge for the Countess killing her lover.  The countess did it out of spite as she doesn't approve of others creating vampires.  

Despite the Entertainment Weekly article about this season showing small fangs on GaGa the vampires in this series are fang-less with vampirism being explained as just a disease where your immune system is super powered through drinking blood (which is awkward as they are confirmed to be the living dead). The show is more about shock value than anything really horror movie like though there have been a hand full of jump scares from odd demon like creatures showing up in the hotel along with the murder sub-plot.  American Horror Story can be seen every Wednesday on the FX Network.

UPDATE:  On Episode 4 of the season entitled "Devils Night" the countess was confronted by the mother of the above mentioned child and estranged wife of the police officer living in the Hotel "Dr. Alex Lowe" (Chloe Sevigny).  Lowe found her child and took him home just to witness him drink their dogs blood and demanded to know what was wrong with him.  The Countess' response was the truth and informed her the only way she could be with her son again was to become like him.

As the above picture indicated you can see she chose her son over her life and after a bit of lesbian kissing and GaGa boob blood drinking Dr. Lowe is now a vampire.  This brings the shows female vampire count to 4 including the front desk clerk played by Kathy Bates who was turned in the previous episode but not counting the female children who barely exist on the show. 

Lady Gaga to play vampire on TV series

Entertainment Weekly has an article up with an interview with Lady GaGa about playing "The Countess" in the upcoming season of the FX series American Horror Story subtitled "The Hotel".  The Countess owns a hotel and deals with personal issues regarding her personal life (past loves, existing as a high profile socialite while feeding on human blood etc).

  While every headline about the above magazine cover states that this is her "in character" I can't help but notice how much of a resemblance she has here to Catherine Deneuve from the 1983 vampire film The Hunger which says to me this is probably not the case.

Deneuve in "The Hunger"

Either way we will find out when the series premieres on October 7th.  Until then you can check out more images of GaGa as a vampire in my Celebrity Costume Gallery.

Preview trailer for "The Strain"

Here is the first full length trailer for the new FX vampire series "The Strain" which debuts Sunday, July 13th.  For more info on the series check out my preview HERE.