Diva Satänica – review

Words and Art: BRÄO

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: She’s an urban legend. A whispered name.
Some call her Medusa. Others, The Queen of Evil. The Lady in Black.
Vampire? Witch? Demon? No one knows for sure.
But one thing is certain. No one leaves her mansion alive.


And yet, people still go searching for her.
Why? Because she promises you the greatest night of pleasure you’ve ever known… in exchange for your life.


In this haunting tale, we follow Jonathan, a lonely, aimless man consumed by addiction. A string of strange, possibly supernatural encounters leads him to the legend of Diva Satänica, and what begins as curiosity soon becomes obsession.

Rendered entirely in stunning, hand-painted watercolour across 68 full-colour pages, Diva Satänica is a seductive, violent, and deeply atmospheric exploration of desire, death, and dark myth.

The review: This was a comic book I backed via a kickstarter, in its digital form, and it is a great piece of comic art. Pretty simple in its storytelling – a predator who hunts lonely men via a darkweb adult site, there perhaps is a simile with the film Succubus in the idea that she uses an electronic medium to hunt (and seems to have a supernatural control over that medium). She lures the men to her, though that may involve stepping between worlds also, with the promise of a sexual encounter.

This is absolutely beautiful and the creature, known as the Lady in Black, is described in comic both as a vampire and as a succubus. It is apparent that she needs blood in order to climax. The story itself has some adult themes (obviously, given the story as outlined) and some adult illustrations – so take that into account – but beyond the story, the joy of this has to be the wonderful, atmospheric artwork. 7 out of 10. The comic is available from Afterlight comics.

Stephen King’s the shining – review

Director: Mick Garris

Release date: 1997

Contains spoilers

Stephen King’s sequel to the Shining, Doctor Sleep, was a novel based around a group of energy vampires but, whilst Danny Torrence returned as an adult, the Overlook hotel was missing from the novel as it was destroyed in the climax of the original novel. Rather, the climax took place on the site that the hotel had stood upon. When the film Doctor Sleep was created this was changed as it followed the aesthetic and content of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of the Shining. Within Dr Sleep, as in the novel it is based on, the ghosts from the Overlook were shown as vampiric – trying to consume Danny’s Shining - but the hotel itself was also vampiric, the building was identified as consuming the shining also.

the Torrence family

Stephen King was famous for not liking Kubrick’s interpretation of the Shining, however. When a mini-series of the novel was proposed King, himself, wrote the teleplay. That makes the teleplay true to King’s concept, indeed the series was shot in the actual hotel that served as inspiration for the novel, but it still had to compete with the Kubrick film, which is (despite King’s feelings on the subject) a masterpiece.

the Overlook

I’m not going to blow by blow through the scenes. Suffice it to say that Jack Torrence (Steven Weber, Dracula: Dead and Loving It) is a recovering alcoholic who has lost his teaching job after beating a student and has previously injured his son, Danny (Courtland Mead), breaking his arm in a drunken rage. He gets the post of winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, which is snowed off over winter, and moves himself, wife Wendy (Rebecca De Mornay) and Danny to the hotel. He intends to write a play whilst there.

the hose

Danny is psychic, often seeing an (otherwise) invisible friend called Tony (Wil Horneff), a manifestation of his abilities. One difference between this and Kubrick’s is that Tony “appears” in Kubrick’s film as a voice spoken by Danny and represented by a crooked finger – in this Tony appears as a person. Danny is warned about the Overlook by Tony but, being seven, there isn’t much he can do about it. What we do get is an interesting view, in his visions, of something stalking the corridors but only the shadow is seen. This will turn out to be his father but the use of a shadow is, of course, a vampire genre trope. He also sees an animated fire hose with teeth, an unfortunate effect that we’ll get back to.

Melvin Van Peebles as Dick

Once at the hotel Danny meets chef Dick Hallorann (Melvin Van Peebles), a fellow psychic – though nowhere near as powerful – who recognises Danny for what he is. He calls the ability the shining and suggests that Danny shines brighter than anyone he has ever met. He warns Danny from the rooms, one in particular, and tells him that he has seen things occasionally in the hotel but they can’t hurt Danny. They are only pictures and if he looks away and counts to ten, they will go away. The hotel itself seems to have a shine of its own – hence it being a vampiric entity as we’ll explore.

reflected ghosts

Danny is seeing things from the beginning, and phenomena also occurs - poltergeist like falling of chairs, for instance. It is most certainly Danny that the hotel wants but, when it can’t get to him, it turns its attention to Jack. There is an implication that Jack shines also (in a minor way, and hence his susceptibility) but it is Danny’s ability that is fuelling the hotel and ghosts. This sees them ramping up their assaults and soon even Wendy can see/hear them. At one-point Danny realises that pretty soon they won’t be ghosts at all, meaning they are gaining a corporeal presence through their vampirism of Danny’s psychic gift.

the topiary

I mentioned effects and probably the worst is tied into an aspect missed in the Kubrick film altogether. In the movie Kubrick adds a hedge maze (rather effectively and it is reproduced within psychic sequences, at least, in the film Doctor Sleep) and uses it to replace topiary animals. They are here and, as in the book, there are moments when they come to life (an aspect of the vampiric hotel, rather than its associated ghosts). However, they look rubbish, bad cgi blobs with no weight to them as we see them move across the snows.

the ghost of 217

That’s not to say all the effects were bad. The drowned ghost of 217 (237 in Kubrick) looks fantastic in the bath, rotten and lying in a chemical soup. But the hose pipe, the topiaries and floating Tony all looked rubbish – and, given the key role of Tony plus the fact that the topiaries are essentially a set piece, that isn’t good. The dialogue can be a tad hokey also at times (have I committed a faux pas given King wrote it? Perhaps). The direction was, in fact, not as bad as it perhaps appeared as one cannot do anything but compare it to Kubrick’s auteur opus. That said, it didn’t capture the doom-laden atmosphere of the film. The mini-series format probably didn’t help with this dragging in its middle section.

Steven Weber as Jack

As for the key performances. Well, Courtland Mead works well as Danny – a tough role for any child actor, he manages to vacillate between childish reaction to knowing psychic. Rebecca De Mornay gives a strong performance as Wendy and a very different one to that offered by Shelley Duvall. Of course, Steven Weber was always going to be compared to Nicholson and his iconic performance – something that is probably really unfair. His Jack is more sympathetic, certainly, and he offers a strong performance but next to Nicholson it will always come out at second place. The adult actors were also hampered in places by that hokey dialogue I mentioned.

floating Tony

Retrospectively vampiric, like the Kubrick film, the consumption of the psychic energy isn’t mentioned (just that Danny enables it), and whilst it was always going to struggle next to the film, this wasn’t as good as it might have been anyway (in a universe where the Kubrick film didn’t exist). The film is dragged down by some of the effects, lack of atmosphere and some hokey Hallmark channel dialogue that surfaces through the film. Its TV mini-series origin means that some of the things we should have seen we didn’t. 6 feels a tad strong but 5.5 feels churlish and so 6 out of 10 it is.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

After Midnight – review

Directors: Various

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Like its predecessor, Around Midnight, this was a shot on and straight to video effort and so, like that, it carries the caveat that If you are able to track down this anthology film it is going to look just that – with the fuzz one expects from such a film.

This is half an hour longer, however, and feels more ambitious (though it still isn’t great). They get rid of the host and have the wraparound as a woman (Nancy Feliciano) reading a book called After Midnight (thus the segments are the stories therein) – she does become a vampire. All the segments, bar one, are vampire, also. The one that isn’t is about a woman (Heidi Honeycutt) on her own when a virus has killed off the rest of the world it seems.

Sky and Art

The first segment is I Want to be a Vampire in which reporter Art (Johnny Monotone) pitches up at a woman’s house, she’s called Sky (Laura Giglio, Deep Undead), as there have been vampire related deaths reported and he wants to interview her with regards this due to her claims of being undead. He is sceptical, however, despite her insistence she is a vampire and her suggestion that she is 166 years old. He asks for the lights to be put on (vampires are scared of the sun, not lightbulbs) and she takes him to meet her feeder (Cruz Machine) who is strapped up in the closet. Eventually her façade breaks and it is revealed she is a wannabe – but perhaps Art is more than he seems…

bite

In the most complex of the stories (and the segment that struggles the most narratively because of this), entitled A Moment of Darkness, we see a woman in a disco. She is Dr. Janeane Melocarro (Cindy Osbourne). She meets a guy but this is superfluous to the main story. At home she gets a page and goes to the hospital in which there is a violent patient (Tiffany Warren) who manages to bite her and, of course, she turns. Where things become confused is with the vampire visiting her and, it appears, that they knew each other though no indication to that effect was given in the hospital scene.

photographing the dead

The last vampire segment is called the Perfect Subject and it involves a girl (Isabelle Stephen, Vampire Sisters) who has paid a photographer (Rick Trembles) to come and take some modelling shots – first clothed and then nude. He buggers off, much to her disappointment, so she gets dressed whilst another photographer (Michael Will) enters and strangles her because when she is dead she becomes his Perfect Subject. He is somewhat shocked, therefore, when she opens her eyes… guess what she is…

fangs

And that’s it, much more vampire facing but still a low-to-no budget effort, straight to video with a horrible print. There is a market for such films, of course, and this probably deserves the same 2.5 out of 10 that the other got, marred by simple narratives (and narrative confusion in the more complex story).

The imdb page is here.

Short Film: Canine

A nine-minute short film directed by Hunter Woelfle and released in 2023, this is one that certainly has acting (or more accurately dressing) as a vampire but you can read the creature within as vampire also – though this is through subtleties.

It starts with a girl (Isabel Oliver Marcus) flossing and cleaning her teeth before doing her goth style makeup and then putting in fangs. She walks down the street and is unnerved by a car that seems to slow but it eventually passes her. Then she notices bright eyes flashing in a dark pathway.

Isabel Oliver Marcus as the girl

One owner of the eyes comes forward and it is a cat, which she pets. The other set doesn’t come close and eventually she leaves. After she does, we see the eyes rise in the darkness, as though the owner was shapeshifting into something taller. She goes to a party but is sat by herself, at one point spotting shining eyes outside. She leaves and sees the earlier cat dead on the pavement, one if its fangs seems to be missing. She gets home and ready for bed but there are noises that are spooking her…

fang

As well as the eye shine and potential shapeshifting (and the fact that the film concentrates on fangs) there is also some shadow play during the denouement. This was an interesting, ambiguous little short, which relied on atmosphere rather than dialogue. The imdb page is here.

Blood Hunt: Marvel Universe: 1 – review

Writer: Various

Artist: Various

First published: 2024 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: As the massive event BLOOD HUNT kicks into high gear, this collection of miniseries takes a deep dive into how its repercussions affect every corner of the Marvel Universe! The vampire onslaught of BLOOD HUNT reaches across the Marvel Universe - from Wakanda to New Orleans and beyond! Spinning directly out of events in the main series, the Black Panther finds himself transformed into a bloodsucker - and tasked with carrying out a key mission for the vampire overlord! But even a dark transformation won't keep T'Challa from his duties to Wakanda - for better or worse. At the school of magic known as Strange Academy, Doyle Dormammu, Shaylee, Toth, Zoe and German get embroiled in an adventure that will take them around the world - and right into the center of the BLOOD HUNT action! Plus: What happens when vampires face an enemy with gamma-irradiated blood? Find out, together with the Incredible Hulk! Collecting: Black Panther: Blood Hunt (2024) 1-3, Strange Academy: Blood Hunt (2024) 1-3, Hulk: Blood Hunt (2024) 1

The review: This is one of the primary Blood Hunt volumes. From the first Blood Hunt we knew that Blade had turned Black Panther. This contains the details of that story as Black Panther looks to protect Wakanda, whilst forced to do Blade’s bidding. The volume also includes how Varnae, the vampiric spirit possessing Blade, fell in the first place and how the actions of the Gods influenced that. It was interesting that Black Panther meets Adzi, the mother of pestilence as the adzi is an African vampire type.

The Blood Hunt also impacts the Strange Academy – especially Pia, whose own secret (she is a vampire with a mystically bestowed ability to withstand sunlight) becomes an issue when the kids from the Academy go off in search of the Darkhold.

The final story is a Hulk one, with Bruce Banner and the tale of a group of vampires (who have been feeding on immigrants for years) set free by sundeath and attacking Banner in a derelict movie set after he is distracted by their reluctant Renfield.

A solid volume – all vampire facing. 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Take From Me – review

Director: West Eldredge

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Originally titled Love Dogs, I was approached by the filmmakers to review Take From Me from a screener. What I watched, as we’ll discuss, was a slow burn that relied on atmosphere and character, rather than jumps and gore (though there is a tad of blood and they do not entirely eschew jumps, though both are used sparingly).

It starts in a forest with a man running , holding his neck, gasping and clearly pursued. If I have a criticism of the film it became apparent here, as the print was dark and the lighting for this night scene was poor. However, you could make out what was going on, and such outdoor night scenes are little used in the film. Anyway, the man suggests his regret, before the film suggests the inevitable…

John in the woods

John Harker (Ethan McDowell) has parked up and, after a fortifying belt from a hipflask, goes into the forest carrying his bow. He does find some remains, though what of isn’t certain, and moving on he eventually comes out of the trees at a farmhouse. He enters the garage and then starts cleaning up the porch, he also takes down the “for sale” sign. Later we discover that this was his house, shared with (presumably ex-)wife Sarah (Amanda Evans) and the son they lost, Seth (Thomas Parobek). Flashbacks will tell us his drinking started during Seth’s illness and the film centres heavily on John’s grief and loss.

Dwayne A. Thomas as Abe

The nearby town has a small population, and we see John in the bar and also the antagonism between John and deadbeat dad and misogynist Kenny (Dan Cody). The only cop in town is Abe (Dwayne A. Thomas), moved there after a shooting in the city, where he was drunk, he is prohibited from investigating but tries to make amends by running the 12-step programme – he was John’s sponsor, though John no longer attends. Abe finds an abandoned truck, door open, key in the ignition and has it called through to the County Sheriff.

Kyla Diane Kennedy as Lilith

The farmhouse is sold (though he had been maintaining it, it is clear it was no longer his) and he spies the new owner, Elizabeth (Kyla Diane Kennedy) – Lilith for short – when cleaning the porch again. They meet soon after at a hardware store, and she asks him to do some odd jobs around the house for her as a contractor (which is his trade). One of the first things she wants is for John to remove the bathroom mirror, and it doesn’t take long for him to find vials of blood in a basement refrigerator and frozen body parts in the chest freezer. However, he doesn’t report it, can’t stay away (despite obvious reservations) and a relationship starts to blossom.

fangs

The film then follows the pair as the relationship grows. One thing I did like was the fact that he realises what she is and it isn’t a drawn-out process, rather that he settles on it rapidly – not to say he gets everything right, however. He hunts a stag and gives her the blood, which nearly makes her vomit (animals do at a pinch but are clearly unpleasant) and he does go through the house with an open wound at one point! Nevertheless, in a modern world where vampire movies have been a staple for some time, it was good to see him quickly realise the truth. I would have liked to have known more of Elizabeth’s background – we do get an origin story but it is sparse – but neither the film or the character suffered for it not being more fleshed out.

Ethan McDowell as John

The film slow burns, much is concentrated on character interactions and building the characters and the small-town world – not just with the couple, but certainly around Abe for instance. This is carried by both good dialogue and some fantastic performances, with a specific shout out to Ethan McDowell who plays a nuanced character in John. The fact that the film is an hour-fifty and yet, despite the slow burn, never feels like it is lagging is testament to the filmmakers. The photography is generally good aside from the occasional too dark moments mentioned at the head of the review.

searching, bow in hand

This fits in with a wave of pretty bleak, small-town-USA vampire films over recent years, with my mind going to My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It as I watched this – though that is not to say they were the same, just atmospherically I connected them. There are some similes, I guess, with the earlier film exploring the stress on caregivers, where this explores grief (and addiction, though that is a common genre trope and flows out of the grief with regards John). I think the big difference between the two was the earlier film is relentlessly bleak; this nuances any bleakness and allows moments of relief for the characters, which results in the two main characters gaining and maintaining our sympathies. I really enjoyed this one. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

short film: Coven

This short movie by Nicholas Grant comes in just under 14-minutes and was released in 2019. On YouTube it is listed as Coven Season 1: Episode 1 and a look at Grant’s IMDb page indicates there are several more shorts. However, these are not immediately available, and this stands on its own to be fair.

Melissa Brown as Natalia

This is likely because it is fairly simple, but often that’s all we need. It starts with a woman, Natalia (Melissa Brown), asking to be granted… well it’s at TMtV so obviously it is to be made a vampire. She assures the listener, Mina (Paula Ramirez), that she is not like others who have asked – she was born for it.

Andrea and Natalia

Mina does turn her but then explains that she may have turned but she is not part of the coven yet. There is an initiation, she must kill a friend or family member and it must happen before midnight the next night or she’ll be killed. She arranges to meet a friend, Andrea (Aimee Trujillo), at a parking lot but (probably due to posturing) Andrea manages to get back in her car – where she has a cross, Unfortunately she dropped her keys and it becomes a waiting game…

turned

Simple is often effective but this is undermined by a question around the fact that Andrea has a phone, which has signal, and yet she doesn’t call 911 – kindly, perhaps she was too panicked, but that is very kind. Yet, as I mentioned, beyond this plotting issue the short is mostly effective. The only other gripe was some level issues on a couple of lines of dialogue. Nevertheless, it has put me in the mood to see the other episodes.

The imdb page is here.