THE LAST VAMPYRE

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: morbid thematic elements

Rated:

One of the more complex and psychologically fascinating of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is The Sussex Vampire, a chilling case brought to the famous Baker Street detective concerning a woman believed to have intentionally harmed her child. The baby is revealed to have two fang-marks in his neck, and his mother was discovered bending over the child, blood marking her lips. This adaptation has taken a much darker turn, involving serious vampire folklore, superstitious villagers, and several threatening individuals. The story might be entertaining on a superficial level, but is very morbid and morose. The original story is better, since The Last Vampyre suffers from its own creepy, hallucination-formed premise and a disturbing climax.

1780. A cart laden with straw careens down the narrow road. The driver keeps looking over his shoulder fearfully, while the woman in the back of the hay wagon screams in agony. She's about to have a baby. Drawing up before the church, the man swiftly carries her inside, then runs back outside, and drives away. Flames lick into the night, burning the foundation of a magnificent country house. A single figure wanders through the ruin, screaming as the roof caves in and the burning timbers engulf his fragile form. A hundred years later, the people of the small township are still superstitious. One of the distant cousins of the family they burned out has returned for research purposes, a traveler and expert on the Inca Indians of Peru. Stockton (Roy Marsden) is attempting to piece together his family history. But the locals believe he has the same sinister intentions as his ancestors.

Newcomers to the village include the local adventurer Ferguson (Keith Barron) and his young Spanish wife Carlotta (Yolanda Vazquez). They've newly returned from Peru to the lonely country estate to raise their newborn as an English gentlemen. The son of Ferguson's first marriage, Jack (Richard Dempsey), longs to be accepted by his new mother but the animosity between them soon comes to a head. He does everything possible in order to cause trouble, playing his violin loudly during the baby's customary napping hour, insulting his mother's personal maid (Juliet Aubrey), and making a mockery of his father's good name. That evening, after great family discourse, Stockton comes to call. The following morning the baby is inexplicably dead. The family know Stockton -- who is a strange fellow -- touched the child. The townspeople believe him to be something evil.

Concerned for his parish, and fearing they may be driven to murder the town's newest tenant, the local minister seeks the assistance of Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) to investigate. Accompanied by his friend Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke), Holmes visits Sussex. What he finds is local superstition run rampant, hideous tales of vampirism, a local fascination with the undead, the women of the town behaving strangely, and other elements to support the minister's fear something evil may be at work among his parishioners. The story starts off promising but swiftly begins to wallow in its own darkness. The scene exchanges are poorly scripted, jumping back and forth, giving illusions. Half the time you don't know if the characters actually observe what we see on the screen, or are merely imagining things. The script never clears up some of its loose ends, like how the young women of the town came to be so ill, or how the young maid was attacked.

The casting wavers from very good to horrible. Jeremy Brett ranges from being an articulate Holmes in the series to a blundering idiot, and this is one of his worst performances. He shouts almost every line as though he were deaf, and there's no hint of enthusiasm or interest in any of his dialogue. I don't know whether he was forced into taking the role or just had a seriously bad director. One of the best performances comes from Roy Marsden as the local vampire. He oozes just the right amount of creepy sexuality needed to give the illusion of power. The man is extremely charismatic, particularly when it comes to confrontations. The scene in the graveyard is particularly effective. Richard Dempsey's performance as the attention-starved cripple boy is also very memorable, particularly in the last half.

For a vampire story it's less gory than it might have been, but blood plays prominently in several scenes. The minister illustrates folklore and we observe a series of flashbacks involving Stockton. In one of them he has a violent quarrel with the local blacksmith, who then begins spitting up blood (an internal hemorrhage). One of the women is attacked (unseen) and stumbles around a tree with blood dripping down her neck. A man comes into a woman's room and finds another woman leaning over her; when his wife turns, blood stains her lips. (There is a reasonable explanation.) A racing wagon loses a wheel, smashing into a tree and killing its driver. Nightmares (or "visions") plague a young woman grievously ill and she screams that she's being attacked. Holmes is witness to an eerie illusion of the light in a ruin, causing him to believe he'd seen a ghost. Stockton behaves strangely on one occasion, attempting to strangle himself and screaming out nonsense about murder. Townspeople exhume a grave; one man opens the coffin, intending to drive a stake through the corpse's heart. He is then hit across the back of the head and keels over against the cadaver. A figure leaps from the top of a stone parapet, falling to his death (his cape catches on a beam and strangles him).

Stockton speaks over dinner on the subject of death and the afterlife, bringing up mystical philosophies and concepts. His office contains many books on witchcraft, sorcery, ancient medicines and magic, and other controversial findings of the time, including books on vampires. The villain, while not a vampire, does have powers of absorbing energy from other people. An emphasis is placed on the church, although even the rector has his doubts on whether or not there are actual vampires. There's also brief sexual implications and content. The Spanish maid shares an intimate relationship with the stable boy. (Nothing is ever shown except them going into a stall and dropping out of sight.) A woman lowers the top of her nightgown (all we see is the back of her bare shoulders) and asks her husband to "come" to her. There's a weird out-of-focus close-up of her face presumably as her husband forces her.

For the most part I was intrigued, but found the story overly morbid, the gruesome elements unforgivable, and Brett's Holmes grating on my nerves. The original story has greater impact, as well as being more evasive in many respects. Vampires have always fascinated people but, as Holmes points out, "to explain their fear" of the dark. Evil does exist in many forms, but never as blood-sucking undead.