Vampiress TV Review: "Let the Right One In"

Let The Right One In is a television series which debuted in 2022 on the Showtime Network.  It is named after and loosely based on the Swedish Novel turned film of the same name which you can read my review HERE. 

While at first glance you start to feel like it is just an urban remake of the film because they do recycle some of the early imagery from the film when it comes to the vampire Eleanor (Madison Taylor Baez) meeting her eventually love interest Isaiah...

you eventually find that Eleanor the vampire in the TV series is the complete opposite of Eli the vampire in the film in nearly every way such as.  

- Eli is a much older vampire who you find out in the films twist has romances with young kids to eventually groom them into being her caretaker once they become adults.  Eleanor at worst should be in her late teens/early 20's but stopped aging due to her vampirism and her caretaker is her actual father.    

- Eli is perfectly fine with having to feed to live.  Eleanor up to the point that the TV show begins has never killed anyone and gets her blood from her father murdering people and bringing it to her.

- Eli uses relationships as a means of convenience knowing her targets are easily manipulated due to their age.  Eleanor actually has true feelings for Isaiah and it depresses her that one day he'll get older and she'll still be a kid.  

Probably the biggest difference between the two versions is that Eleanor actually does have fangs which is kind of backword seeing as Eli from the movie actively feeds on people but doesn't have them and Eleanor does have fangs yet drinks from jugs. Her fangs only come out four times in the shows first season which is how we know she has them. 

The day they find out she's a vampire in a flashback she tries to feed on her mother.  

The day she first meets Isaiah she stops herself from feeding on him (below) 

and when she gets her first kill by attacking the men who kidnap her father which is the first time and only time she kills. 

Because Eleanor is a victim in the show and not the villain, they need new villains, so the antagonists are a family of medical researchers that plan on using her as a guinea pig to try to find a cure for their brother/son who also was turned into a vampire who have no problem with killing her to do it.  

The finale of the first season left off with it looking like Eleanor won't be the only female vampire on the show.  One of the side storylines is the budding relationship between Eleanors father and Isaiah's mother. 

Isaiah's mom is divorced and Eleanors mother died in order to feed her so that left both leftover parents very lonely with their kids wishing they had lives.  Eventually after a short relationship of sorts Isaiah's mom (who is a homicide detective) finds out that Eleanors dad killed her ex-husband/Isaiah's dad when she investigates him after she ghosts her (He did not know them at the time and thought he was a drug dealer working for the researchers).  She ends up following him to the researchers lab and ends up in the middle of fight between him and the researchers family as they were torturing Eleanor and gets gravely injured.  The last scene of the season is her dying on the ground telling them to tell Isaiah that she's sorry. Eleanor tells her she won't let Isaiah lose another parent before biting her.

If there is a season 2 the dynamic of Isaiah having a vampire mom is going to be interesting especially since in this shows lure vampires do not have control unless they feed within a certain time period and must drain their victims completely for the thirst to temporarily go away.  Does this mean Eleanor and her father may have to protect Isaiah from his own mother to prevent her from doing to him what Eleanor did to her mother?  

UPDATE: It was announced in early 2023 that Showtime would be making budget cuts heading into its complete merger with the Paramount + app.  Included in that budget cut was the cancellation of several shows including Let the Right One In.  

Vampiress Review: "Vampires vs The Bronx"

The Gist: It's up to a group of young kids to save the Bronx when they are the only ones to realize that the new real estate developers in town are really a cover for a brood of vampires looking to take over the neighborhood.  

Female Vampire Factor:  Our one and only femme vamp is Vivian (Sarah Gadon)

Vivian spends the first part of the film as an unassuming sweet innocent overly friendly white suburban stereotype who is repeatedly shown as a fish out of water in the urban lower class burrow she's moved into, often being met with paranoia from those who encounter her that she's just there to call the police on everyone. 

 

All the while the vampire related happenings are pointing at a blond man as the main vampire who the kids of the neighborhood identify and try to convince everyone exists.  Obviously no one believes them.

 

It isn't until about one hour in that its finally revealed that the main real estate agent is just a familiar for the vampires and the blonde vampire we thought was the main vampire was just a henchman.  Everything is cleared up when the boys steal a key from the vampires layer.  Vivian then goes around the neighborhood looking for them and after realizing that the owner of the local convenience store has figured her out (he see's that she doesn't show in the stores security camera) she fangs out and drains him. 

 The boys along with one of the local girls who's the only one who believes them eventually end up at the convenience store and realize the vampires got to the owner.  When the local gang bangers and the vampires go after them they escape but run into Vivian on the way.  Not knowing she's one of them they take her back home with them to safety.

When they get back to one of the boys apartments they start to realize Vivian is acting weird.  She's making small talk with his mom in an obvious effort to be invited in. As if she can't come in unless specificity invited.  

When their holy water starts to bubble they realize she's a vampire and out her to the kids mom.  Vivian then fangs outs and admits that she isn't just any vampire, she is the commanding vampire for an expedition to take over the Bronx. She demands her key but gets doused with holy water instead. 

From this point on till she is finally staked during the final fight scene between Vivians vampires and the residents of the Bronx, sweet Vivian is long gone and she spends the rest of the movie pretty much dressed like Selene from Underworld while fanging out and killing or attempting to kill anyone on screen with her that isn't another vampire.

 

 

Final Opinion: This is Netflix's newest original film and I have to say I have no complaints here and give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5.  A movie where the main antagonist is an attractive female vampire who spends the last half of the film fanging out and biting people pretty consistently is as good as a PG horror comedy is going to get.  Not to mention the swerve of an unassuming background character for the majority of the film all of a sudden being not only the main baddy but a primarily vicious one at that was very well done.  Netflix does a very good job of giving some sex appeal to its horror comedy villains even when the main protagonists are children much like in their "Babysitter" franchise.  This definitely has high re-watchability. 

Vampiress Review: "Wolvesbayne"

The Gist: A rich egotistical womanizing business man is attacked by a werewolf and finds himself in the middle of a wore between supernatural creatures he didn't know existed.

Clarification: Russell Bayne is a businessman who is trying to buy up a bunch of land to develop it into some type of project.  Problem is a small shop that sells occult things owned by a young lady named Alex Layton is in the way because she won't sell. 

One night Russell is driving down a backwoods road at night when a lady stops him for help as she wrecks her car swerving as she saw something in the road.  That something ends up being a werewolf who destroys the woman and mauls Russell. He wakes up a few days later in the hospital and after Russell realizes he's turning into a monster he goes back to the shop and accuses Alex of putting a curse on him. 

Once she realizes that he's a werewolf she reveals that she's one as well and volunteers to help him control it.  While all this is going down a group of vampires are after Russell who want him for their plot to no longer live in the shadows and in fear of humans and take over with the help of their resurrected queen Lilith.

Selling Point: This is one of those movies where the werewolves are hot too.  They don't necessarily turn all the way in some cases so just hairy hot girls with fangs at times.

Female Vampire Factor: The vampire queen Lilith is played by Yancy Butler

Lilith is a lot like Queen Akasha in Queen of the Damned.  Many of the vampires prefer their life of solitude meanwhile she just wants to take over and will kill anyone including other vampires who get in the way of that.

The main vampire of film "Von Griem" is where the female vampire factor in this film truly comes from.  Basically he has a stable of sexy female vampires that do all his dirty work.

It's a pretty decent film even if the ending is ridiculously cheesy.  This is a bigger deal once you realize that this is a SyFy Channel film considering the reputation those have.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5.  The film does have an open ending hinting there could be a sequel but obviously after 10 years it's not happening.

The Sexy Female Vamps of "Dark Shadows"

Dark Shadows is a franchise that started out as a daytime soap opera on the ABC network in 1966.  The original run of the show lasted over a thousand episodes (as it aired daily) and finally ended five years later in 1971.  The show also spawned 3 movies,  House of Dark Shadows (1970), Night of Dark Shadows (1971) and Dark Shadows (2012) as well as TWO revivals (one that aired on the NBC Network in 1991 and one that was made but never aired for the WB Network in 2004.

The cast of the un-aired 2004 Dark Shadows revival Ivana Milicevic (Angelique), Alec Newman (Barnabas) and Marley Shelton (Victoria)

While the original series started out in 1966 vampires didn't come into play until 1967 when the character Barnabas Collins was introduced.  It would go into other supernatural entities during it's 5 year run but it was the vampire storyline which carried the series (much like ABC's other supernatural daytime soap Port Charles) and this would even effect the original films as the vampire related "House" was much more successful than the ghost centered "Night" film.

Vampires of Dark Shadows (original run 1966 to 1971)

Marcia Wallace (Megan Todd)

Megan Todd was a vampire in episodes 963 thru 971

Danna Wandrey (Roxanne Drew)

Roxanna was a vampire in episodes 1081 thru 1177

 Those are the only main character vampires exclusive to the original series (there were some random nameless female vampire thrown in here and there).  The rest as you will see are used in different forms throughout the Dark Shadows universe.  One character who always appears in most incarnations of the franchise is the character Josette.  Josette is the original love interest of Barnabas Collins.  As the story goes the witch Angelique was jealous of their love which resulted in her cursing Barnabas with being a vampire for all eternity forcing him to live without Josette who kills herself via jumping off a cliff.

In the original series evil witch Angelique shows Josette a vision of what she would be like as a vampire in episode 425

Katherine Leigh Scott as Josette in the original series

 

In the 1991 revival timeline the story of  Barnabases turning is changed to where Angelique creates a vampire version of Josette who ends up biting and turning Barnabas as seen in episode 9.

Joanna Going as Josette in the 1991 revival

  

This means had the show lasted longer than 13 episodes their would have possibly been a vampire Josette siting but going by logic the Alena/Katherine story on Vampire Diaries  is probably the direction it would have went (innocent new love vs evil lookalike bitch that turned you) since that show seems to borrow from this series quite a bit.   

Now as was popular with the whole "vampire is a guy with a tortured past longing for a lost love" storyline there is always an exact reincarnation of that lost love that appears in the future.  In the Dark Shadows universe Josettes doppelgangers name is Victoria Winters. 

How Victoria ends up in Collinwood changes from series to series but the one thing that is always the same is that she looks exactly like Josette and Barnabas is obsessed with her because of it.  She has vampire moments in two versions of the newer Dark Shadows story...

Bella Heathcote (2012)
(!!SPOILER!!)In the 2012 feature length comedy Barnabas saves Victoria who attempts suicide the same way Josette did by turning her as she fell off the cliff. 

But this is where everything gets weird as from story to story situations stay the same but who lives them changes from genre to genre.  For example in the 1991 series we get a fantastic moment as episode three started out with a great vampire dream sequence in which Daniel Collins (Joseph Gordon Levitt) dreamed that all the Collinwood women (including Josette and Carolyn) were vampires.

The thing about the 1991 series is that it takes many elements from the original show and the movies and tries to recreate them exactly but still change them (if that makes sense).  For example we have this scene that is stripped directly from the "House of Dark Shadows" film but in House of Dark Shadows (top) it was Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett) who turns and in the revival (bottom) it was Daphne Collins (Rebecca Staab)...

This is what I mean by exact reproduction but different.  The stories are exactly the same just with different characters doing it.  Nothing of interest happens to either character really in the 2012 film.  Actually I take that back, Daphne isn't mentioned at all in the film but Caralyn (Chloe Moretz) does become a werewolf. 

Another character that gets the creative license treatment in the 2012 film is that of Dr. Julia Hoffman played by English actress Helena Bonham Carter.  In the original stories Dr. Hoffman becomes a major ally to Barnabus and helps him throughout his undead life.  This changes in the updated film where Dr. Hoffman promises to go that route but eventually Barnabas finds out she's instead been using his blood to try to make herself immortal which he permanently puts a stop too.  This is the only version of Dr. Hoffman who becomes a vampire in the Dark Shadows universe.

Now that we got those out of the way we get to one of my favorite villains ever and thats Angelique Bouchard Collins.  Maybe it's just me but there is just something about the sexy supernatural psycho stalker angle I can't get enough of.  Long before True Bloods Violet and Lorena or Vampire Diaries Katherine and Tesa; Angelique was obsessing over Barnabas Collins and planning on destroying anyone who gets in her way of getting him including Barnabas himself.

In most cases Angelique meets her mortal demise around the same time Josette does leaving Barnabas completely alone with the exception of her ghost until she eventually is reincarnated in modern times.  In the original series she gets resurrected as a vampire by Nicolas Blair and that's when that series got fun as Lara Parkers portrayal of Angelique fanged out quite a bit.

 Sadley due to the horrible shelf life of the franchises revival we never get to see what Lysette Anthony could have done with a vampire Angelique character (though if you want to see her with fangs she plays a vampire in Dracula Dead and Loving it and on an episode of the syndicated series Night Man).

Lysette Anthony as Angelique (1991)

Fact is I could probably end this Dark Shadows blog with Parker but that's not going to happen.  Even though she doesnt' get turned in the end the fact is Eva Green plays Angelique as a full blown sex pot in the 2012 movie and that is worth mentioning.  

 

 Yeah, she'd be a vampire if there were a sequel but that's probably not happening considering she was the only thing worth watching in that film but I can only imagine how great sexpot vampire Angelique would have been.  Since it's not going to happen we can just end this by staring at what we did have. 

    

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