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Plot: vampire recounts her life, losses and regrets over the centuries.

Have you ever wondered what and how a Jean Rollin vampire film would have looked like on a modest budget (at least in Hollywood terms) of $8 million? Byzantium offers a glimpse into what such possiblity might look like. This was absolutely the last thing you’d expect of Neil Jordan after nearly twenty years of putting distance between himself and the poisoned gift that was Interview with the Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles (1994). Together with Frankenstein Unbound (1990) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) it was some of the best gothic horror that Hollywood had to offer. While it did not usher in a new decade of gothic horror revivalism it was able to stand on its own merits and deserved every accolade/criticism bestowed on it. Byzantium does the exact opposite by examining how vampires would acclimate to the capitalistic pressures of modern urban metropolitan life and the hardships they face as women.

Neil Jordan is a master technician and his features (regardless of subject) are always exquisitely photographed and oozing with style. Jordan, after all, debuted with the fantasy horror The Company of Wolves (1984) or an adaptation of Angela Carter's gothic fairytale deconstruction that used werewolves, Little Red Riding Hood, and psychology as a metaphor for puberty and a young girl’s sexual awakening. It was truly hypnotic and spellbinding and let you know exactly what it was from the very start. After leaving the fantasy and horror genres behind Jordan specialized in biographical – and social dramas, usually concerning the Troubles of Northern Ireland and the exploration of human sexuality – often combining the two in prestige pictures as The Crying Game (1992) and Michael Collins (1996). Ten years after The Company of Wolves (1984) Jordan got his big break in Hollywood with the Anne Rice adaptation Interview with the Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles (1994) or his calling card (and most enduring work) in the eyes of pulp fans the world over and a modern interpretation of the mopey, sadboi vampire ur-character. On television he was behind the historical drama series The Borgias (2011-2013). Byzantium was the first time in nearly twenty years that Jordan returned to his old stomping ground of the vampire. It’s not hard to see why he would be attracted to Moira Buffini’s play A Vampire Story and her screenplay adaptation of it as it elegantly blended various elements of history, folklore, feminist socio-political ideas (the trials, tribulations, and smalll-minded prejudices women of all walks of life face in patriarchal male-led societies; the bourgeoisie using the downtrodden and the disenfranchised for their own material gain) and universal themes as friendship, unity, and overcoming hardship. Headlining are the multiple award-winning duo of Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan with Kate Ashfield from Shaun Of the Dead (2004) in a supporting role.

Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. The only way to tell her story is to write it down and throw the pages to the wind. Old man Robert Fowlds (Barry Cassin) has been collecting the discarded pages and has connected the dots. Meanwhile, Clara (Gemma Arterton) has been working in a stripclub and after a lapdance turns violent a figure from her past materializes. Werner (Thure Lindhardt) chases her across the city. As Clara lures Werner to her apartment and kills him Eleanor has finished exsanguinating old man Robert. Realizing the gravity of their situation Clara and Eleanor set the apartment on fire and flee the city. The daughters of darkness commute to a nearby coastal town. There Ella meets Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) just as Clara meets lovelorn Noel (Daniel Mays). As the two women get comfortable in their new living situation figures from Clara’s past come haunting them. Head of the Brethren Savella (Uri Gavriel) does not suffer anyone crossing the laws he has laid out to ensure their survival. He dispatches Darvell (Sam Riley) and Ruthven (Jonny Lee Miller) to exterminate them for their transgressions…

Interview with the Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles (1994) came with all pomp and excess that harkened back to the best Italian, Spanish, and Filipino vampire films of the most ancient days. If the stark and minimalist look of this British-Irish fantasy thriller (they apparently are still deadly afraid of scaring audiences by calling this a horror) is anything to go by you’d almost believe that Jordan took an interest in French fringe filmmaker Jean Rollin and his late 1960s/early 1970s erotic vampire horror fantastiques and isolated moments from Jess Franco vampire romps. While the atmosphere is meditative, introspective, wistful, and at all times melancholic Byzantium starts off in a seedy stripclub where voluptuous Arterton is giving a client a sultry lapdance. It doesn’t get more Franco than that. There are endless shots of idyllic beaches, there are opposing sects like in Fascination (1979) and at one point Ella is baptized in blood very much in the way of Grapes Of Death (1978). For the Francophiles these vampires don’t sprout fangs and can withstand daylight, during the beach kill Clara does the Jesus Christ pose just like the chicken coop/fence victim in Female Vampire (1973) and Clara too ends up bathing in (a waterfall of) blood like Lina Romay in said movie and Soledad Miranda in Vampyros Lesbos (1970) before her. Like in any good Rollin flick the vampires are a pair of young girls, although this could just as easily could be seen as a genderswapped take on the Lestat-Louis pairing of Interview with the Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles (1994) with Frank in the Claudia role. Here Eleanor is somewhere between Claudia and Lestat in that she’s cultured, articulate, a misanthrope, and a philosopher whereas Clara is Louis-by-way-of-Lestat in that she’s guilt-ridden, sexually aggressive and impulsively self-destructive. She too has a habit of torching her domiciles, there’s piano playing and Jordan continues his Little Red Riding Hood motif with Ronan. Thematically this feels like a fusion of the razorsharp socio-political commentary from Baby Blood (1990) with about half the plot of The Living Dead Girl (1982).

Byzantium too singularly concerns itself with beautiful people living an immortally condemned life of hedonism and debauchery and effortlessly fails to be sexy at any point. Early on Clara is described as, “morbidly sexy” as she suggestively wiggles her bum in a baby doll during a lapdance. Despite said scene being set in a stripclub (and commenting on the plight and exploitation of sexworkers and the inherent perils of prostitution) it’s also repelled by the naked female form. Shortly thereafter Ella is called, “an aberration” for whatever reason. In typical Hollywood fashion Byzantium is deadly afraid of nudity in any form. To its credit director of photography Sean Bobbitt beautifully captures the pastoral British-Irish environs, beaches and lush marshes as well as the filth-ridden, neon-drenched streets of modern metropolitan hubs rife with urban decay – be they societal, systemic, or infrastructural. Just like Interview with the Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles (1994) had faint but pronounced gay undertones Byzantium has a clear and defined undercurrent of feminist/progressive politics and disseminates an aggrieved polemic on generational poverty and disenfranchisement, entrenched gender roles in paternalistic societies, the limited agency and career possibilities of women without degrees or menial labor skills, and how apparently their only option for upward social mobility is preying upon (in this case very literally) desperately lonely (and sexually deprived) men of any age, but preferably their own. The score from Javier Navarrete is a bit stock sounding whenever it gets electronic and will sometimes wander into standard horror territory. Had it only consisted of the serene piano melodies then perhaps it would have been stronger. While Navarrete is far from bad we’d be interested in what Simon Boswell could have done with this.

It largely eludes us as to why Byzantium isn’t as beloved or well remembered as Interview with the Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles (1994). And just like twenty years earlier Jordan was able to secure two of the biggest British/Irish stars of the day, in this case Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan. Arterton and Ronan are versatile actresses and more than worthy every of the many and different awards they have, individually and collectively, collected over the years. Actresses of this caliber don’t agree to banal projects and especially not lowly horror films (still an uncultured, philistine genre in the eyes of many). This is as much a feminist manifesto as it is a socio-political commentary on modern life with the thinnest veneer of horror. Byzantium is not your average vampire film and more of a meditation on the late-stage capitalist corporate dystopian hellscape and all the societal ills that come with it than a thriller in the traditional sense. What must have drawn Arterton and Ronan to this must have been the interpersonal dynamic between the two women as they navigate the dangers - mortal and otherwise - of modern life. That it just so happens to look like fringe Eurocult films from nearly half a century earlier is a neat bonus. If this can serve as a gateway to some into exploring the prime work of Jean Rollin then Byzantium admirably rose to its task. If not, then you just saw a very good movie.

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Plot: disabled morgue worker will stop at nothing to resurrect his lost love.

The Spanish Lon Chaney, Paul Naschy, is rightly associated with horror and the macabre as that was his genre of choice. Through out his long career he played most, if not all, of the Universal Classic Monsters. His most famous and enduring is, of course, El Hombre Lobo (the Wolf Man) but he also played Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy. At earliest this happened in the second El Hombre Lobo episode Assignment Terror (1969). While that was unarguably his bread and butter Naschy frequently utilized the conventions and trappings of the genre as vehicles for other, more ambitious ideas. El jorobado de la Morgue (or The Hunchback Of the Morgue) was one such vehicles and probably the earliest one at that. It put a macabre spin on a beloved fairytale and did so much with so very little. In other words, never underestimate the little guy. For one reason or another The Hunchback Of the Morgue is often mistakingly overlooked in favor of his popular El Hombre Lobo series.

Besides his El Hombre Lobo Naschy played an array of different roles, either historical or fictional, Paul Naschy had a penchant for recognizing which trend or was worth capitalizing upon. Whether it was history, superstition, religion, or a certain cinematic innovation catching his eye Naschy always had a screenplay ready to be filmed. As such he assembled a respectable host of worthwhile secondary features and lesser known memorable characters. These include, among others, his Gilles de Rais (1404-1440) inspired nobleman/alchemist Alaric de Marnac from Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973) and Panic Beats (1983) as well as the similarly inspired Barón Gilles de Lancré from The Devil's Possessed (1974), and the The Mummy (1932) inspired The Mummy's Revenge (1973). During the giallo boom he contributed The Killer Is One of Thirteen (1973) and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974). Then there are The Exorcist (1973) ripoff Exorcism (1974), the Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956) imitation The Jungle Goddess (1974), the Witchfinder General (1968) and Mark Of the Devil (1970) knockoff Inquisition (1977), the Biblical parable The Traveller (1979) (or his liberal reworking of the Old Testament theodicy scripture of the Book of Job) and his own deranged take on Andrzej Żuławski's The Devil (1972), or the late peplum The Cantabrians (1980) that chronicled the Cantabrian Wars. As things tends to go, these secondary features didn’t always generate the same kind of interest or debate.

In the banner year for erotic gothic horror that was 1973 Count Dracula’s Great Love was his response not to the psychotronic-pop art excesses of Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1971) but the Karnstein trilogy from Britain’s house of Hammer. He envisioned it as a bodice-ripping, bosom baring period horror and a celebration of the (preferably disrobed) female form with a selection of the hottest starlets of the day. However, nothing is ever simple and production was anything but smooth sailing. French New Wave star Haydée Politoff (briefly a muse for Éric Rohmer) suffered a head injury when she was involved in an accident on a winding mountain road and crew sustained injuries when sets collapsed on them. To make matters worse Ingrid Garbo and Mirta Miller fell seriously ill when a chemical compound used for the special effects turned out to be toxic and had an adverse effect on both. Faced with no other option but to temporarily halt principal photography so that Politoff could properly recover Paul Naschy proposed to producer Francisco Lara Polop and director Javier Aguirre that they retain director of photography Raúl Pérez Cubero and special effects man Pablo Pérez and the cast and crew they had in place and film The Hunchback Of the Morgue instead. It only required minimal location shooting in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg, Austria for some exteriors and the rest could be filmed back at home in Madrid. The ruins of Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Valdeiglesias - or the monastery that had featured prominently in Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) - was a key location. With the main cast and crew at the ready, all Naschy had to do was invite some marketable guest stars. As fate would have it, by the time cameras stopped rolling Politoff, Garbo, and Miller all were recuperated and filming on Count Dracula’s Great Love could resume. In the end, everything worked out.

In Feldkirch, Austria on the border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein med students Udo (Fernando Sotuela), Hans Burgher (Kino Pueyo, as Joaquin Rodriguez 'Kinito') and his friend (Antonio Mayans) are engaged in a drinking contest and the boys are enjoying the beer as much as their female company Eva (Sofía Casares, as Sofia Casares) and her friend (Iris André, as Iris Andre). Everything seems well until one of the waitresses (Susana Latour, as Susana Latur) scares herself half to death when she lays eyes upon an ominous stranger. Drunkenly Udo staggers outside dropping a photograph. Kindhearted Wolfgang Gotho (Jacinto Molina Álvarez, as Paul Naschy) tries to help the drunken student but is scolded for his charity. You see, Gotho was born a hunchback and his deformity has him ostracized, scorned, and shunned by pretty much all townspeople. When Udo collapses from acute alcohol poisoning his body is brought to the morgue of the municipal hospital. Gotho takes great pleasure in dismantling the boy’s body for the way he treated him when he was alive. Saturated in dejection the only ray of light in his lovelorn miserable existence is Ilse (María Elena Arpón, as Maria Elena Arpon – not using her international market alias, Helen Harp) who stays at the hospital. Alleviating his suffering is Ilse’s genuine kindness and attention. However, their romance is irrevocably doomed as Ilse is stricken with tubercolosis and terminally ill. One day on the streets he’s ridiculed and pelted with rocks by children because of his birth defect. When medical intern Elke (Rosanna Yanni, as Rossana Yanny) sees this she takes Gotho to her home and tends to his wounds. In awe of such humanity in gratitude he lowly kisses her feet.

Wolfgang enjoys nothing more than bringing Ilse a bouquet of flowers every day and pushing her around on the hospital grounds in her wheelchair. One afternoon their relaxing stroll is interrupted when the four med students from the pub insult and accost her. He takes to defending her honor but the opposition poses too great. Dr. Frederick Tauchner (Víctor Barrera, as Vic Winner) and dean of the hospital Dr. Maria Meyer (Maria Perschy, as Maria Pershy) are friendly to his plight and chastise the students. They help Gotho and as soon as he’s able he rushes to see Ilse again. Unfortunately the assault aggravated her already dire condition and she dies before he can get to her. Dismayed at the passing of his only friend Gotho is enraged when the doctors see her as a vessel for organ harvest. When two morgue workers (José Luis Chinchilla and Ingrid Rabel) try to steal Ilse’s golden necklace he kills them both with a hatchet in a fit of blind rage. He absconds with her body and takes it to his catacomb lair. Dr. Orla (Alberto Dalbés, as Alberto Dalbes) has lost his tenure, funding, and reputation as he was ousted from the medical community over ethical violations and the dubious nature of his research. When he learns of Gotho’s homicidal proclivities he promises to revive his beloved Ilse if he brings him the bodies he requires. Meanwhile, Elke the ginger intern has taken something of a shine to the generous and virtuous hunchback. As the bodies start to mount the commissioner (Ángel Menéndez, as Angel Menendez) dispatches two police inspectors (Manuel de Blas and Antonio Pica) to investigate the sudden spate of violent homicides in the area. Is Dr. Orla really trying to help Gotho or is he just exploiting his desperation for his own selfish interests?

While this might not look like much upon closer inspection Naschy’s script (that he co-wrote with Javier Aguirre, and Alberto S. Insúa) reveals quite some hidden depth. It places the iconic character of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in the plot of Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945) (produced by Val Lewton and based upon the 1884 Robert Louis Stevenson short story of the same name) that starred both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The Stevenson story was inspired by the 1828 Burke and Hare murders in 19th-century Edinburgh, Scotland and there are faint echoes of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein. Much less prevalent, but present all the same, are light shades of the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast. At heart The Hunchback Of the Morgue is a romance, albeit it a very morbid one. Whereas Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) was filled to the brim with beautiful girls in period costumes and a dizzying amount of heaving bosoms The Hunchback Of the Morgue is a contemporary gothic romance with splashes of blood and gore. The opening scene at the alm could have come from a German sex comedy (Tiroler or otherwise) if the deeply-cut dirndls and large pints of beer are anything to go by. The scenes at the hospital feel more like a women in prison flick than anything else. They’re never exactly as sleazy as the Brazilian examples of the genre but it’s the idea that counts. For one reason or another Naschy had something of a predilection towards playing tragic heroes in doomed romances around this time. Dracula (and his human alter ego Dr. Wendell Marlow), Wolfgang Gotho, and Waldemar Daninsky are all but slight variations of the same character that Naschy played in all these things. Italy got to cannibalism with Man From Deep River (1972) and Spain got there a year later with Amando de Ossorio’s jungle safari adventure Night of the Sorcerers (1973). In a break from convention Spain got to necrophilia earlier with this as Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) (with Barbara Steele) was a gothic horror and Joe D’Amato would only delve into the subject with Beyond the Darkness (1979) some six years later.

And once again Naschy was able to assemble a cast of domestic monuments, some of the hottest starlets of the day, and notable supporting actors. First there’s Ángel Menéndez from The Loreleys Grasp (1974), Rosanna Yanni from The Mark Of the Wolfman (1968) (that also starred Menéndez), Malenka, the Vampire’s Niece (1969), and the soccer comedy Las Ibéricas F.C. (1971). Then there are María Elena Arpón from Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) and Maria Perschy from the third (and last) Blind Dead episode The Ghost Galleon (1974), Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974), Exorcism (1975), and The People Who Own the Dark (1976). Also present are Alberto Dalbés and Víctor Barrera from Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973), Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973), and Vengeance of the Zombies (1973) as well as José Luis Chinchilla from The Devil's Possessed (1974), The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975), and Return Of the Wolfman (1980). In a supporting role there’s Antonio Mayans from Nightmare City (1980) and Vampyres (2015) as well as a whole lot of Jesús Franco and Eurociné bilge including, but not limited to, Night of the Assassins (1974), Oasis Of the Zombies (1982), and Golden Temple Amazons (1986). Finally there are reliable second-stringers Manuel de Blas from Assignment Terror (1969) and The Vampires Night Orgy (1973). De Blas continues to act to this day and he even was in the recent (and much delayed) Uncharted (2022) movie! Then there are Susana Latour from A Bell From Hell (1973) (with Christina von Blanc and Maribel Martín) and Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) as well as professional warm body Ingrid Rabel from The Dracula Saga (1973). Compared to other Naschy productions, before and after, this one isn’t as star-studded. Argentine import Rosanna Yanni is worth seeing in anything and María Elena Arpón is one of the unsung stars of Spanish exploitation (along with notable almost-stars as Carmen Yazalde, Cristina Suriani, and Montserrat Prous). For Arpón this was probably her biggest starring role this side of Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972). Screen monuments Maria Perschy and Ángel Menéndez both had seen better days.

No Naschy feature is complete without its share of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and The Hunchback Of the Morgue has at least two. For starters, real rats were used in the catacomb lair when María Elena Arpón is laying upon the medical slab and Naschy is fully engulfed by a ravenous wave. Second, and perhaps more disturbingly, as in Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) (with Christina Lindberg) a real corpse was used for the beheading scene. That is until Naschy became sickened during the throat slitting on the first take and it had to be replaced with a dummy head afterwards. The Hunchback Of the Morgue did well on the festival circuit and won several awards. Paul Naschy won a Georges Méliès Award for Best Actor on the Festival international de Paris du film fantastique et de science-fiction (International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Cinema of Paris) at the Théatre Le Palace in Paris. It also collected a grand total of 5 awards (including one for best script) distributed between this and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974) at the International Fantasy and Horror Film Festival Antwerp (a precursor to the present-day International Film Festival Antwerpen – IFFA) in 1976. Not bad for a Spanish fantaterror that remains underestimated to this day.