Vampiress TV Review: Hercules: the Legendary Journey

 Season 6, Episode 4 "Darkness Visible"

Hercules The Legendary journeys was a television series which aired in American Syndication from 1995 to 1999.  The show would go on to have two spinoffs, the much more popular Xena: Warrior Princess and the slightly less popular Young Hercules which started a not yet famous Ryan Gosling.  All three series would have an episode dedicated to vampires with the Young Hercules and Xena episodes connecting to one another.  The episode of this show would go a different route.  

In this show they associate Hercules with the real life Vlad the Impaler. 

It is Hercules who goes to Vlad's castle after being summoned that it was being attacked by Dampier but by the time he gets there it's too late and Vlad has already been turned into a vampire.  Hercules then has to fight his old friend who wants to bleed him dry for power. 

Female Vampire Factor

In the episode Vlad has taken a village girl who went there for refuge named Nadia and turned her.  You see her attack a guy in the opening shot of the episode. 

She ends up doing most of the vampire stuff on the show as she eventually turns her brother.

and only moments later turns Hercules' partner Iolaus. 

While not a bad episode it is definitely the weakest vampire episode of the three shows with Bacchus being a much better main villain than Vlad on the other two programs with a much more impressive harem of vampiress henchwomen then just one woman and the two people she turned in the episode.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5. 

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 TV Review: Silk Stalkings

"I Love the Nightlife"

Season 6

Episode: 20

Silk Stalkings was a night time crime drama which aired on the USA Network in the 90's.  The selling point of the series was that the crimes on each episode usually happened just before or after a half naked woman was going to have sex with someone. 

In this episode a guy who thought he was a vampire would go to a goth bar and pick of random women.  He would drug them then take him back to his place and during sex two women would show up and they would kill the woman and drain them of blood.  The guy and one of the girls named Lilith sported fangs when they did their kills. 

As the episode went on it became clear that the non fanged one Tara was Liliths side piece.  She never actually sported fangs and it was her that lead to the trio's eventually capture. 

The episode ends with Lilith turning on the male vampire and giving the detectives a crossbow loaded with a wooden stake which finally took him down after guns didn't work.  They then find he was wearing fake fangs and a bullet proof vest.  They then capture Lilith and take her to jail but the last thing we see is that she bit and drained her cell mate. 

Before heading back to the goth club fanging out one last time before the credits roll implying that she was the real vampire the whole time.

 

It was an ok episode only bogged down by the secondary storyline of the female detectives love life where she's in a complicated relationship with a guy going through a divorce from a woman who is mentally unstable. 

Vampiress Review: Salem's Lot (2004)

 

The Gist: An author named Ben Mears returns to his hometown in order to use it for inspiration to write a new horror book and ends up unraveling a plot to turn everyone in the town into vampires. 

Female Vampire Factor: The first female vampire in the film is a woman by the name of Marjorie Glick (Rebecca Gibney).  She is the mother of two young boys who were targeted and killed by Richard Straker at the order of his vampire business partner Kurt Barlow.   After their death Marjorie begins hearing their voices and we eventually see her open a door just to be attacked and killed.  After Marjorie's death protagonist Ben Mears along with Dr James Cody stake out at the coroner's office suspecting they are dealing with vampires.  They are proven right when she raises from the coroner's slab and attacks them, only sabed by Ben's cross made from taped together tongue depressors.

 

The next is Ben's attempted love interest Susan Norton (Samantha Mathis).

She's an aspiring writer that Ben meets at the coffee shop her parents own.  She heads to the creepy house that is the center of all the happenings to help solve the mystery of what happened there years ago that haunted Ben in his childhood and ends up getting captured in the process.  Once Ben kills the vampire Barlow and goes to destroy the house he is confronted by Susan where she informs him that she did solve the case exonerating Ben from the guilt of thinking he allowed one of his friends to die in the house (the kid was already dead when he got there apparently).  She gives him a nice pep talk before being staked by Ben when she vamps out at his young accomplice mark. 

Finally we have young Ruth Crockett (Penny Mcnamee)

Ruth is a rebellious young girl who has the unfortunate luck to have a really overprotective father.  She also gets enjoyment from teasing the local handicapped garbage man Dud who believes that she is his girlfriend.  Eventually she breaks his heart and tells him the truth but that becomes short lived when the vampire Barlow turns Dud curing him of his handicap and Ruth becomes his obsession.  The film ends with Dud eventually turning her and Larry finding her with Dud at the town dump where Dud lived.  Dud and the other kids who are now vampires end up eating Larry. 

Final Opinion:  Out of the two televised versions of the story this is easily the most complete version and is dramatic horror almost all the way through unlike the 1979 version that starts very soap opera like and doesn't get to the scares until almost the very end.  I give this film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.  They cram a lot of female vampires in the last hour or so.  If the story had more in the first 2 hours it would definitely get a 5 but the female vamps are basically one and done with most of the vampirism in the story being done by the kids of the town.

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Vampiress TV Review: Reaper

I Want My Baby Back
Season 2
Episode: 5

In this episode of the CW series Sam whose job is to collect the souls that escape from hell for his father the devil along with his friends are sent out to find a serial killer who drank her victims blood when she is alive.  

Upon meeting her she is freaked out and says that they can't have something.  

She then jumps down from the second floor and reveals herself to be an actual vampire. 

She is then destroyed by Sam via a stake through the heart while she's attacking one of the other guys. 

Final Opinion: OK Episode but the vampirism ends here.  The bulk of the show revolves around the guys trying to figure out what to do with her child as well as Bert trying to work on trying not to lust after his step sister and Morgan trying to hit on Andi.  In other words everything but vampires.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5. 

Vampiress TV review: First Kill

First Kill is a Netflix original series which debuted in 2022.  The story revolves around two teenage girls.  One a vampire named Julliette and one a monster slayer named Calliope.  Both are going through a kind of puberty for their kind in which getting their first kill will launch them into adulthood.  

By chance they end up targeting each other for that but botched it during a round of spin the bottle. 

In the throws of passion Julliette bites Calliope leaving herself open for Calliope to stake her but neither get the kill as Calliope runs away before confirming the kill. 

To make matters worse they fall for each other when Calliope begins questioning her clans blind hatred of vampires when Julliette goes out of her way to save her from the rest of the vampires.  This leads to a rift between the two girls and their families launching a supernatural Romeo & Juliette story. 

Julliette is one of those "vampires that really doesn't want to be one and just wants to be a normal girl" vamps.  She comes from a line of first generation vampires which is why she can walk in the daylight and wasn't killed when staked through the heart. She tries to hold back her vampire urges through taking blood pills but much like regular puberty she has issues keeping her fangs in in emotional situations. 

Thow everyone in her family are vampires with the family being described as a matriarch (vampire leadership being passed from mother to daughter)

 there is only one in the family that falls into vampire in the traditional sense (meaning she openly stalks and feeds during the series) and that's Juliettes older sister Elinor.

Elinor is the prototypical upper class debutont Barbie.  While she does come off very cold overall everything she does is in an effort to protect her little sister including seducing, biting then hypnotizing townspeople to cover up a murder she believedJulliette did. 

Then when she found out Juliette hadn't had her first kill doing everything in her power to help her sister kill while covering it up to the family that it hadn't happened. 
  

Though at the end of the day her motivations are all selfish as she's only truly thinking about how her sister being shunned would affect her standing in the family. 

Final Opinion:  I don't have too many complaints about season 1.  When I first heard the premise I thought it would be a bit corny and overwhelmingly teenage girl angsty ala Twilight or the web series Carmella but was pleasantly surprised to find a well balanced horror drama. I definitely recommend it. Unfortunately in August of 2022 even with a very loyal fanbase Netflix announced the show would be cancelled after only 1 season.

 

Vampiress Episode: "Creepshow"

"Sibling Rivalry"
Season 2
Episode 3

 

 

Creepshow is an anthology type series based on the movie of the same name from 1982.  In this episode a young girl named Lola (Maddie Nichols) tells her school counselor that she's afraid that her brother is trying to kill her. 

She recaps her prior week and his weird behavior.  When the counselor doesn't believe her she goes home just for her brother to once again try to kill her with an ax.  When she says how she'll tell their parents he explains that their parents are dead and she killed them. She then remembers that she fed on her mother after a hug.

Then attacked her father when he was offering her breakfast.

Then she eventually remembers that her friend bit her while she was sleeping during a sleepover the week before which is when she must have been turned. 

The siblings decide to call a truce and that Lola's friend Grace who turned her should be the one to die. Lola ends up turning her brother Andrew then after they kill Grace the episode ends with them going after the school counselor. 

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