Vampiress TV Review: "Cliffhangers"

                                                                     Season 1

"The Curse of Dracula aka Dracula 79"

Cliffhangers was a TV show that aired only 10 episodes on NBC in 1979.  The premise was a one hour program that would feature 1 episode of a short serial every 20 minutes.  One was about a crime solving journalist and one was a sci fi western hybrid.  The one I'm covering here is the horror themed serial "The Curse of Dracula"

 The premise of this short was a woman named Mary along with her boyfriend Kurt Von Helsing were hunting Dracula.  Their issue with Dracula being that Kurt is obviously of the same bloodline as Abraham Van Helsing and Mary was the daughter of one of Dracula's victims.  

They find out Dracula is a night school professor so Mary sits in on one of his lectures.  After the Class Mary confronts him about her mother and his response regarding her was more of a long lost love than that of someone he victimized. He then talks about how she reminds him of her and pretty much falls for her to the point of obsession the rest of the series. 

For the remainder of the show Dracula tries to turn Mary and make her his newest bride while Kurt tries to stop him.  Our first female vampires of the series are introduced in the episode "Demons of the Dark" as it's revealed that Dracula has bitten and turned three students in his class that he uses for the remainder of the show as hench people.  One a guy named Darryl who is killed off pretty quickly actually and also a girl named Christine.

The third student Antoinette has a much larger role than the other two students as she is infatuated with Dracula to an obsessive degree and is very much jealous of the attention he gives Mary.  This results in her plotting to kill Mary behind his back in hopes that once she's gone he'll love her.  

Unlike your average "Dracula has brides already but is obsessed with someone else" stories he does actually succeed in partially turning Mary and she does get a few fang out moments where she fights the urge to bite Kurt.  Especially when they're trying to cure her through treating her with holy water once an hour that results in her losing it.  

It's during the point where she's turning that we're introduced to her mother Amanda played by soap opera legend Louise Sorel who is shown to not have died as her daughter thought but was turned into a vampire by Dracula and was in hiding while planning a way to kill Dracula herself.  She makes herself known once she sees that Dracula has targeted her daughter the same way she was and tries to help her fight her vampire urges before she completely turned. 

 
Final Opinion:  This was a fantastic Dracula based series that I have fond memories of seeing on reruns in the 90's that I can't recommend enough.  Sorel as a vampire is unforgettable and the first scene where Mary fangs out is super hot as she sees Kurts exposed neck and hears his heartbeat and begins to breath heavy as her fangs slowly start to appear before Amanda makes her first appearance also fangs blaring to stop her from feeding on him.   I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5. 

Vampiress Review: "Monster Mash"

The Gist: Two teens after their car breaks down in a storm end up in a mansion inhabited by a mad scientists and a bunch of very lonely monsters.

Female Vampire Factor: There are four in the film.  The main vampires are Dracula and his wife Natasha.  Natasha is played by former soap star Sarah Douglas.

Dracula and Natasha are having marital trouble as Natasha is convinced (rightfully so) that Dracula has eyes for other women.  This thought of course being confirmed since he always has three scantily clad brides with him that act as backup singers (one of which being In Living Color Fly Girl Carrie Ann (far left).

As far as the vampirism goes the "Draculettes" are the only women to actually fang out in the film which happens during Dracula's dance number "Old Eternity Blues".

Final Opinion: So this is a movie version of a stage play based on the 1967 hit song Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Picket who himself stars as Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the film.  The script was updated for present day (in this case 1995) and consists of a lot of dated jokes based on pop culture references of the time. I give the film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  The damsel in distress of the film played by Full house star Candace Cameron does get bit by Dracula but she does not turn leaving the Draculettes being the films only real vampire T&A.

Vampiress TV Review: "Freddies Nightmares"

"Prime Cuts"

Season 2

Episode 15

Freddy's Nightmares was a horror TV series which ran from 1988 to 1990.  The show was done in the same vein as the popular short story based horror series of the time like Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Darkside and the Twilight Zone.  Like those series a host would introduce a horror story with the story being different every week.   In this case the host is horror movie icon Freddy Krueger from the "A Nightmare on Elm street" series of films played by Robert Englund.

Female Vampire Factor: In this episode a group of friends go camping in the woods.  Things get interesting when their guide ends up being a very attractive woman named Tracker played by 80's sex symbol Sandahl Bergman.

As they get further into the trip one of the men named Johnny starts to notice that Tracker has some weird tendencies.  First she freaks out when they start handling the stakes to put up the tint.  Then when one of the guys cuts himself, she helps by sucking the blood as "anesthetic".   Finally he notices that she freaks whenever he handles his cross neckless.

Johnny also has issues seperating fantasy from reality as he has very vivid dreams.  In the beginning they're about a helicopter crashing but after meeting Tracker they're all vampire related. 

Eventually one of the guys in the group goes missing.  Johnny eventually finds that Tracker has him tied up and is feeding on him. He confronts her but instead of her trying to feed on him she tries to seduce him.

He rejects her and tries to save his friend instead but on the way out they fall off a hill and before she can attack he wakes up. The whole thing was a dream.  In reality they were in a plane crash, Tracker was the pilot and Johnny was the loan survivor of the passengers.  The two were stranded in the woods after the crash and eating the bodies of the dead to survive.

The rest of the episode revolves around Tracker and Johnny having a budding romance while Johnnys gold digging fiance finds them then gets herself stuck in the same area.  While all this is happening there is a serial killer in the woods as well.

Final Opinion: Needless to say the episode goes downhill pretty quickly once the vampire portion ends.  It becomes a soap opera rather quickly and the women become super annoying as they fight over Johnny.  I'll give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5.  Had the episode stopped with the twist of the plane crash it would have gotten a higher rating. 

Vampiress TV Review: "I Didn't Do It"

"Bite Club"

Season 2

Episode 18

The Gist: "I didn't do it" revolves around a twin brother and sister and their friends and aired for two seasons on The Disney Channel in the US from 2014 to 2015. 


Female Vampire Factor: The Characters Jasmin and Lindy run into a strange man named Vlad who is trying to recruit people to give blood.  Lindy is happy to do so but Jasmine turns the offer down when she sees the guy has fangs. 

Lindy returns after giving blood light headed by Vlad.  Jasmin notices that she has two marks on her neck and believes that Vlad bit her.

Jasmin shows up later to watch horror movies with Lindy who is now in all black and laying like a corpse on the couch.

Lindy then sprouts fangs and chases Jasmin around before eventually revealing that the whole thing was a prank.

Final Opinion:  The vampire portion of this episode was great and Olivia Holt with fangs was a perfect payoff even if just as a prank.  Problem is this was only a small portion of the episode with the other two plots ranging from weird to just hard to watch.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5.

Where to Watch

Vampiress TV Review: "The Passage"

The Passage is a television series which premiered January 14th,2019 on the Fox Network based on a trilogy of books of the same name by Justin Cronin.

In the series a secret government lab is experimenting with death row inmates in trying to make humans disease proof.  Unfortunately one of the side effects of the experiments is the test subjects get superhuman abilities and develop a taste for blood. In other words they become vampires. 

The lab decides that age is a factor in why people are turning into monsters in the experiment so they decide to find a younger subject.  A child.

Federal Agents are sent to find a young orphan girl whose mother had recently died of a drug overdose.  When one of the agents Brad Wolgast (Mark Paul Gosselaar) gets suspicious of the labs motives he decides to take her himself instead of delivering her to the lab.  This result in him becoming a fugitive as he tries to protect the young girl from the government.  It's later revealed that he had a daughter who passed away and almost sees her as a replacement.

Female Vampire Factor: We're introduced at the beginning of episode 1 to the previously experimented on convicts.  While most of the early experimented on subjects lose their humanity and look like walking corpses the last one did not.  A young woman by the name of Shauna Babcock who was on death row for murdering her parents (Brianne Howey).

Like all the others Shauna is completely non verbal.  All the experiment subjects have certain quirks once they've turned and hers is to just stare at certain people and she seems to have taken a liking to one of the agents named Clark Richards.

It's eventually revealed that the way they communicate is telepathically through peoples dreams as many of the people who work in the lab report to have nightmares involving the experiment subjects either attacking them or talking to them.  After the above face to face Shauna decides to visit Clark in his dreams kissing him before letting him know that later he's going to make up for lying to her before vamping out resulting in him waking up.

The show is narrated from the point of view of the little girl with the idea of the episodes being memories of the past that will lead up to a present where the vampires (or disease) have probably taken over. It reminds me very much of The Strain but obviously with traditional vampires instead of the Strains leech people versions. 

If you're a fan of vampires as nightmarish creatures worth being afraid of I can definitely recommend this. 

The Sexy Female Vampires of "Being Human" (UK version)

Being Human is a series that aired on BBC 3 in the UK for five seasons starting in 2008.  It follows the story of a ghost named Annie, a murder victim stuck haunting the house she died in, a werewolf named George who's neurotic and doesn't have much common sense so he seems to get in his own way a lot to an annoyingly hard to watch degree and a vampire named Mitchel who's trapped between trying to live with humans and being peer pressured into eating them.  All three live together in a flat in South Whales trying to live a normal life but constantly dealing with the stresses of their conditions. That is until the fourth season which became a reboot after the majority of the original cast announced their departure following season 3's finally with all being gone by season 5 which without any of the characters that carried the show became the shows final season.

For my review of the American version which aired on Syfy click HERE. 

Lauren Drake (Annabel Scholey) 

Lauren is a one night stand of the vampire Mitchel who he turns after he loses control in the shows pilot episode.  Once she is resurrected and without Mitchel to guide her she becomes whats best described as a blood junky getting blood from wherever she can find it. She is conflicted between hating Mitchel and wanting him sexually and uses sex appeal to try to get Mitchel into her life (including vampire porn).  By the end of the first season she can't stand what she's become and asks Mitchel to end it for her which he does.  Her only fang out moment is her introduction as a vampire below from the shows first episode.

Cara (Rebecca Cooper)

Cara is one of vampire leader Herrich's hench women in season one of the series.  After Mitchel stops Herrich and takes over the vampires in season 2 he places a rule that vampires cannot feed anymore.  In Episode 3 of that season "Long Live the King" Cara breaks this rule by feeding on some teenage girls that she saw picking on another girl (who she turns) and is eventually punished.  She never does anything vampiric for the rest of the series and her character eventually kills herself in season 3 when the reincarnated Herrich rejects her.

Season 2, Episode 6: "In the Morning"
This episode has a flashback where a priest saves a young girl from a group of vampires who attacked her mother.

Daisy (Amy Manson)

Daisy is a vampire introduced in the shows second season.  Her and her maker come to town to attack George for revenge for killing Herrick.  Eventually we find out she's really a bit of a nympho who pretty much wants to screw George and then Mitchell.  The only time we see her fang out is episode 7 of the season titled "Damage" in which her and Mitchell attack a group of passengers on a subway after Mitchell loses his humanity as retaliation for the loss of his fellow vampires by slayers.  She eventually disappears and we find out matter of factly in season 3 that she was murdered by a werewolf.

Emma Hargraves (Melanie Walters)

Emma along with her husband are introduced in the second episode of the third season titled "Adam's Family".  In that episode George and his werewolf girlfriend Nina take in an orphaned vampire named Adam after his father passes away.  When they feel they can't take care of him and with Mitchel wanting nothing to do with him Mitchel suggests a friend who can find people who can take him in.  Once Emma and her husband Richard take him in poor Adam finds himself in the middle of a vampire swingers house filled with a bunch of people dressed in S&M outfits.  Basically this episode is softcore cougar porn.  While Emma doesn't fang out in the episode there is a female at the party being licked on who does have fangs out.

Season 4, Episode 3: "The Graveyard Shift"
In this episode the flatmates have to protect George and Nina's baby Eve from a group of vampires.  One of which is a female.

Michaela Thompson (Laura Patch)

Michaela is an odd goth woman who frequents the cafe where Hal and Tom work (the vampire and werewolf of seasons 4 and 5 respectively) also in the third episode of season 4.  She ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up back at the flat with Hal and Tom when they rescue her from the vampires sent by the old ones to attack the cafe.  Eventually those vampires end up confronting them there and hold her hostage.  They slit her throat presumably killing her but then at the episodes end it's revealed that the vampire Regus turned her and has decided to form a relationship with her.

Golda (Amanda Abbington)

Golda was a vampire in the 6th episode of season 4 titled "Puppy Love".  She comes in as the main antagonist of the episode preparing for the arrival of the "old ones" but is eventually stopped by werewolves Tom and Allison.

There were other female vampires in the series but I only included those who fanged out and had enough screen time for anyone to notice.

Vampiress TV Review: Van Helsing (TV show)

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.