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.