Female vampires once ruled the world. Now they are overlooked for glittering guys with big hair. It's time to point out why the female of the species should be the center of attention.
The Gist: A vampire goes through somewhat of a mid-life crisis dealing with relationship problems and wanting kids.
Female Vampire Factor: Technically there are no female vampires in the series but the main character is played by the shows creator Kristen Lucas who obviously isn't male.
Final Opinion: The series starts out ok but then devolves into bad slapstick jokes. Episode 1 pretty much is the best episode of the series which revolves around Vlad and his girlfriend breaking up. From there you get awkward experiences like Vlad at yoga, Vlad at Karaoke, Vlad looking for the product of his sperm donation and Vlad trying to fit in at a college party. Most of the jokes revolve on "him" taking figurative language literal. I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 1 out of 5.
The Gist: During a vampire apocalypse a young female vampire falls in love with a human and decides to help the surviving humans against her kind.
Female Vampire Factor: So since half the country is vampires you see a lot of background female vampires. Especially members of the council.
Only two get real screen time as part of the main story. You have Marie (Eve Mauro)
Marie's "daughter" is the female vampire that's gone missing to go help the humans. It's later found out that Marie is the human commander Gerry's wife and the mother to his son Adam that they believed had been killed. That technically makes Yvonne and her love interest Adam adopted half brother and sister,
Then you have Yvonne (Nicola Posener)
She doesn't feed on humans and is genetically engineered to look like one and can walk in the sun. She is the only main character vampire that fangs out in the series and she only does it when she's being cured of her vampirism in episode 5.
Otherwise only one other femme vamp fangs out in the entire series. A nameless vampire soldier that attacks Gerry in episode 5.
Final Opinion: The is a very good show to be honest. Vampires have taken over the eastern United States and the remaining humans live on the west with no one living in between which is now known as "no mans land". The vampires have developed a way to synthesize blood so instead of living up to a truce with the humans they've decided to exterminate them. The vampiress Yvonne wants to help save the humans as she does not want to be a vampire. While all this is happening foreign governments are deciding whether to cut all losses and just nuke the country.
From a vampiress standpoint you aren't going to get far as seeing any female vampirism since it's more of a conflict show. Basically episode 5 gives you all the female fangs of the entire series so I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.
The Gist: A group of vampires and humans try to co-exist in a safe house during a zombie apocalypse.
Female Vampire Factor: There is one female vampire that gets any real screen time and that is Judith
She is not very trustworthy and believes any human outside of the compound to be dinner even though the humans in the compound give blood to sustain the vampires. This leads to the human protagonist Cara to not trust her as if it weren't for another vampire Micajah who saved her and brought her to the compound she would have been eaten by Judith.
Final Opinion: The concept is good but the execution is very much lacking. The overall idea was to show the developing trust between a human with PTSD about vampires Cara and the vampire she's forced to coexist with Micajah. The main problem is the vampire characters show zero signs of trustworthiness or self control and there seems to be nothing the humans are getting out of keeping the vampires around so none of it makes sense (The good old indy film "must have constant conflict where everyone hates each other but coexists for no reason for dramatic effect" logic). At least in the final season of True Blood which has the same premise there was a mutual relationship where in exchange for blood the vampires would protect the humans. Here the humans are pretty much protecting themselves alongside monsters constantly threatening them and all of them are reporting to a leader who isn't very good at leading. I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 of 5. Judith and the two episodes featuring her are a small bright spot in a series that was lacking them.
The Gist: A teenage girl struggles with life when a dormant gene in her DNA activates and slowly turns her into a vampire.
Female Vampire Factor: Pretty much everyone on the show is a vampire minus a couple exceptions. The main character on the show is a girl named Doina played by Oulaya Amamra
Her whole family minus her and her brother Ladislas already had the vampire gene so they can't come out during daylight and must live on blood.
This made life hard for Doina since that means her mother who raised the family alone after their fathers disappearance can't come out during daytime hours when things start to go bad at school. One day Doina started getting urges. Eventually resulting in her having incidents of biting her boyfriend as the urge to drink his blood was becoming irresistible. This resulted in her beginning to realize the gene had not skipped her and she was turning.
The thing most confusing for her though is that unlike the rest of the vampires in her family she can still walk in the sunlight without burning.
After the first couple of episodes the series goes into Doina being introduced to the other members of the vampire community. This leads to her unraveling the mystery of her families estranged relationship with them that started with a feud between her mother and one of the female elders (below) and exposing a power struggle within that community. On top of that the elders of that community try to take advantage of Doina's magic DNA that allows her to be both a vampire but still able to walk in daylight like a human. She becomes even more valuable when they learn that her blood heals vampires who are wounded.
Final Opinion: This series is a lot of things but a vampire show it honestly isn't other than the first two episodes which seems to be a running theme with these Netflix vampire series. After that it becomes a heavy drama about feuding families and a secret society. No fangs, the occasional eye color change but otherwise biting is just normal biting.
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 Gist: When Erica struggles to fire a writer because of her need to avoid confrontation she's sent back to a time where she went ghost on a guy instead of breaking up with him to try again.
Clarification: Being Erica is a Canadian TV show which aired from 2009 to 2011 on the CBC. It follows the story of a woman named Erica Strange (Erica Karpluk) who sees a therapist who has the supernatural ability to send her back to relive moments in her past.
Female Vampire Factor: In this episode the guy she was dating was a stereotypical nerd. He invites her to a vampire role playing club that he belongs to but she does what she couldn't do before and breaks up with him. Unfortunately for her that wasn't the lesson she needed to learn so she ends up going to the vampire role play and is just awkward and out of place. When her now ex opens up to her about how much doing that meant to him and how being there is the only time he can feel comfortable she learns the lesson to not care what other people think. She goes from being awkward and out of place to actually trying to roleplay but being terrible at it. She comfronts the head vampire
but doesn't last long in the "battle" as the head vampire mistress puts her in her place..
No fangs or any actual vampirism in this episode. If you're into fangless vampire cosplay you might get some enjoyment out of it but can't give it more than a 1 out of 5 Vampire Beauty Rating.
Van Helsing is a television series produced in Canada which has aired since 2016 on the SyFy channel and is based on a graphic novel of the same name.
It falls into the same premise as the other more famous graphic novel turned TV show the Walking Dead in which it takes place in a post Apocalyptic United States where vampires (instead of zombies) have taken over and a small group of survivors try not to get captured or turned.
The main character of the series is a female named Vanessa (Kelly Overton)
She's pretty much Sarah Conner from Terminator 2. Bad ass woman who goes around beating up and shooting things while leading a resistance and wanting to protect her kid. In the beginning we don't know much about her other than she woke up from a coma with both the military and the vampires looking to retrieve her and she has a daughter that's missing but when she wakes up she discovers that she's basically a reverse vampire. That means she has all the powers of a vampire but none of the weaknesses. She doesn't need human blood to live like a tradition vampire but drinking blood boosts all her powers similar to Popeye eating spinach. Also if she bites a vampire they become human again.
As for vampires in this series they fall into two categories, ferals and non ferels. It's explained that once a vampire is turned if they feed on animal blood they pretty much lose all humanity basically attacking anything that moves (basically this series version of the Walking Dead zombies). If they feed on human blood within a certain time of turning they just become a more evil and aggressive version of themselves with blood lust. The non feral vampires barely get any screen time as the series mostly revolves around Vanessa and the survivors she is with. As season 1 progresses we are introduced to a few that includes a very attractive vamp named Rebecca.
We eventually learn that it is Rebecca who has Vanessa's daughter Dylan who has been turned and she's been raising her as her own.
Dylan being a young girl via the unwritten rule of all vampire film and TV is way more powerful and dangerous than any other vampire as she's been enhanced by the vampires scientists to be immune to sunlight and she's barely controllable with the temperament of a feral but the intelligence of a non feral.
The vampires of the series minus the special cases above have all the regular storybook weaknesses. They've gotten around the sunlight problem through polluting the air to where sunlight doesn't get through and the vampires in the series do not have fangs with them basically just looking like walking corpses.
The first season of the series honestly is pretty hard to watch as the series starts out extremely slow with the characters backstories being explained throughout the series very vaguely. In fact I would say that the first half of the season is pretty much skipable and you won't be worse for wear. The end of season 1 and beyond on the other hand is a very enjoyable action series that I would recommend.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a television series that debuted on the El Rey Network and Netflix in 2014. If you've seen the original film then basically you can skip the first 6 or so episodes as all it basically does is take the original plot of the film and expand on it enough that it fills several 45 minute episodes. In other words you get to find out how the Gecko brothers got back together and why the family they eventually kidnap for the purpose of getting them to Mexico was on their road trip in the first place (IE the stuff you probably didn't pay attention to anyway when you watched the film).
Once you get to episode 7 of the series is when you get to the point in the film where Santanico Pandemonium does her iconic dance and also where the series vears away from the film.
While it keeps to the story for the most part little things have been changed for the sake of making it a series. First Santanico's backstory is now much different which makes the movie From Dusk Till Dawn: Hangman's daughter not exist in this timeline (the backstory in that movie was MUCH better than the one given in this series BTW). Next the Gecko brothers are basically the protagonists of the series so their fate in the original had to be changed to accommodate that. Specifically the character Richie who was played by Quinton Tarantino in the original film gets a bit of a reprieve from his bizarre psychotic behavior as it gets explained that it wasn't him being himself (without giving too much away as it's a very good plot twist). Finally Santanico's roll as a whole is much bigger in the series than it was in the film in a plot very reminiscent to shows like Blade: the Series and Kindred the Embraced.
Santinico is played by Eiza Gonzalez
Unlike Selma Hayeks version of the character who was pretty much a dominatrix, this version is more of a damsel in distress type similar to what was explained in Hangman's daughter where she was forced into the position of Santanico but didn't want it. Unlike in Hangman's daughter where as soon as the curse takes over her personality changes to accept it (as does every vampire in the original films) the vamps here maintain all their human personality traits so curing herself of her vampirism is her ultimate goal.
As you can tell she's very hot and lives up to the role when she's in human form. As far as vamping out they do stay true to the original film in that she takes the form of a snake, scales and all. Though unlike the film she does maintain her hair even in snake form.
Also even though the vampires in this film do evolve from snakes when she's super angry she does grow a pair of bat wings.
This is disappointing in the sense that the final movie of the series Hangman's daughter (which was a prequal) got away from that and had all the vampires stay in human form with just snake like fangs. I would say that was just to save money since the straight to DVD film had a much smaller budget than the big screen feature but other vampires in this series keep their human form when they fang out as well (same as the original film). It's basically just luck of the draw in this show. I mean it does happen with her but VERY sparingly and you have to look quick.
It's a good show and very entertaining. The first season can seem a little redundant if you've seen the original movie and some scenes are pretty much ripped from the film so it's like you're watching the film told by someone with A.D.D who can't get to the point. Once you get to the vampire part it starts getting original and a lot more interesting.
Season 2 is where the series goes to an original story. Santinico and Richie go off on their own as vampires while Seth and Kate go off on their own just as they did in the films end so you're getting Santinico helping Richie go through his vampire transition and Kate trying to get Seth to basically make her a replacement Richie on his crime sprees. Also during this time most of the vampire characters of the first season are found to have survived the titty twister slaughter and begin plotting their revenge.
Demi Lovato is introduced toward the end of season 2 as a love interest vampire of evil vamp Carlos played by That 70's show alum Wilmer Valderrama.
Unfortunately she doesn't make it long and is dead by the season 2 finale.
On a promising note the season 2 finale ends with Kate (Madison Davenport) being resurrected as a vampire herself leaving something to look forward to for season 3.
