The Hunger

David Bowie



IMDb

The Egyptian vampire lady Miriam subsists upon the blood of her lovers. In return the guys or girls don't age... until Miriam has enough of them. Unfortunately that's currently the case with John, so his life expectancy is below 24 hours. Desperately he seeks help from the famous Dr. Sarah Roberts. She doesn't really belive his story, but becomes curious and contacts Miriam ... and gets caught in her ban, too.

- Written by Tom Zoerner

Scientist and physician Dr. Sarah Roberts is conducting research on blood and the role it plays in those suffering from premature and accelerated aging. In her very public work, she is approached by among others a seductively beautiful blond woman who attends one of Sarah's book signings, and John Blaylock, who claims he has just started suffering from advanced aging. She initially believes John is the next in a long line of crackpots she's encountered, that is until she sees how much he has aged in the few hours he has waited to speak to her. It isn't until she goes looking for John after the fact that she finds out that the blond woman is Miriam Blaylock, John's wife. What Sarah does not know is that Miriam is a vampire queen, she who promises eternal youth and life to who started as her mortal lovers as she injects them with her blood with her bite. John is the latest in those lovers, he who has been with her for centuries. Her promise, however, is not altogether true as her lovers do end up aging exponentially once she discards them from her favor, after which they are doomed to an eternity of human life in an always aging and decrepit body. Sarah returns to the Blaylock home both in her want to investigate further John's situation, but also in her mutual attraction to Miriam. As such, she may end up the next in the long line of Miriam's vampire lovers who will also eventually be doomed to a life of eternal aging.

- Written by Huggo


Rotten Tomatoes
The exquisitely beautiful Catherine Deneuve plays Miriam, a centuries-old vampire capable of bestowing the gift of immortality on her lovers -- namely her current partner John (David Bowie). To sustain their sanguinary requirements, the pair cruises New York nightclubs in search of victims (as illustrated in a stunning opening sequence to the accompaniment of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" performed by seminal Goth band Bauhaus). When John awakens one morning to discover telltale signs of aging, it is revealed that his own sustained youth is not permanent, and his physical decrepitude begins to increase at an incredible rate. In a panic, John visits the clinic of scientist Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who has recently published a book on reversing the aging process, but she initially dismisses him as a crank, leaving him to sit in the lobby for several hours... during which his body ages several decades. After learning of his condition, Sarah traces John to his uptown flat. John is nowhere to be found, having been consigned by Miriam to a box in the attic with her legions of undead loves, leaving Miriam to deal with Sarah -- which she does quite effectively, seducing her into a steamy lesbian tryst. Their passion is consummated by a mingling of Miriam's blood with Sarah's, which later manifests itself as a psychic link between the two women and leaves Sarah with a rapidly-increasing appetite for blood. ~ Cavett Binion, 


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The Forsaken

IMDb
A young man gets embroiled in a war against vampires.



Rotten Tomatoes
Genre writer/director J.S. Cardone crafts his own history of the vampire legend in this teen horror outing that takes place primarily in desert locations, à la Near Dark (1987) and Vampires (1998). Sean (Kerr Smith) is traveling across the desert to attend his sister's wedding when he picks up an unusual hitchhiker, Nick (Brendan Fehr). A vampire hunter, Nick soon has Sean embroiled in a battle between himself and a band of the undead creatures led by Kit (Johnathon Schaech). Caught in the middle of the supernatural shenanigans with Sean is Megan (Izabella Miko), who had been nearly turned into a vampire herself by Kit and his followers. Sean and Megan develop a romantic attachment, which encounters a further obstacle when Sean is infected with the vampire virus; only Kit's death can prevent Sean from permanently becoming one of the nosferatu.


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A girl walks Home Alone at night

Rotten Tomatoes
The first Iranian Vampire Western ever made, Ana Lily Amirpour's debut basks in the sheer pleasure of pulp. A joyful mash-up of genre, archetype, and iconography, its prolific influences span spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films, and the Iranian New Wave. (C) Kino


SolarMovie
In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.



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Strange Blood

IMDb
When a brilliant but obsessive scientist goes to extremes to develop a universal cure for all disease, he finds himself infected with a bizarre parasite that begins to transform him into a bloodthirsty madman. Time running out, he must find a way to stop the monster that is growing within and prevent the rest of the world from being "cured."



Horror Society

When I was younger I loved a good vampire film.  Being born in 86 was the perfect time to roll into the vampire films of the time.  When I was 7 or so the VHS boom was in full force and I was consistently renting vampire films when I wasn’t in the mood for other films.  The movies Fright Night, The Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Children of the Night were some of my favorite films to rent.

Vampires was still a sub-genre I loved until today but that has changed with the change of pace vampire films has went through with the release of the Twilight Saga turning them into another romantic staple.  Recently, I was sent info on the upcoming vampire film titled Strange Blood.  This one really intrigued me so I reached out for a review copy and they were kind enough to send me a review copy.

**Spoiler Alert**The film begins with Detective Song (Lim) as he interrogates the beautiful Gemma (Bard).  He is showing her photos of dismembered bodies  when he starts to ask her some questions.  We then learn that she was an assistant to Henry.  Henry was a scientist who was searching for a cure to end all sickness.

He has created a small creature and injected it with every known disease and ailment as a way to come up with a cure.  What he did not count on was the creature developing a defense mechanism and shooting spikes into his hand when he tried to draw blood from it.  He is fine as first but over time he starts to become sick and craves blood.  He starts killing other people but finally sets his sights on Gemma where he infects her before setting himself on fire.**Spoiler Alert**

I miss the days when vampire films were story rich and depicted the vampires as real monsters and not just blood-thirsty pretty boys.  The best vampire films relied on story and not the vampires themselves.  For most, the vampires were just the icing on the cake.  Strange Blood takes us to a time when the story was the focal point of the film with the vampire/vampires coming in second.

The acting in this one is perfect.  The chemistry between Brettenaugh and Bard is perfect and the film hinged on that.  The two are together almost 90% of the time so any unnatural interactions would have ruined the film.  These two feed well off each other and it would be a damn shame if they do not work together soon.

The story for this one is a rather unique spin on the vampire sub-genre.  The idea of a man creating life only to be portrayed by the creature and turned into a child of the night is pretty fucking poetic.  Sadly, there is several scenes that are not crucial to the plot that just seem to drag on and on.  Originality somewhat took the backseat while dialogue rich scenes stole the show resulting in a film that is slow to watch at times.  This somewhat ruins what could have been an amazing film that is extremely dark and story rich.

Finally, the film does have a few on screen kills but they are nothing that impressive.  With a story like this I would expect some very unique vampire kills but those were not given to us.  Overall,Strange Blood is a very unique film that has the story and cast but lost something during the execution.  This one deserves a watch!

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Dracula Reborn

IMDb

• Horror about three journalists who travel from Vancouver to Transylvania to uncover the true story of Dracula. As they visit the area's historical sites and libraries to decipher the various clues behind the famed vampire's existence, the trio's determination to get their article may end up costing them their lives.
  - Written by West 10 Entertainment

TaliesinMeetsTheVampire

Director: Attila Luca 

Release date: 2014 

Contains spoilers 

Not to be confused with the 2012 film, this was originally called Drakula XO but was subject to a name change for the UK DVD release. At the time of writing the review there is no IMDb page. 

You’ll see that the cover was designed to cash in onDracula Untold by using a design reminiscent of the bigger budgeted film’s poster, which should have started alarm bells ringing.

grabbing a jogger

We begin with a jogger (Shauna Baker) taking a morning run. She is grabbed by a cloaked and hooded figure who drags her to one side and bites her. We get to see nothing of his face bar his chin. A note about the blood effects used through the film. The physical blood effects used were rather good. However there is a reliance on cgi blood for spray and splatter that is incredibly poor, often not leading to a splatter on nearby surfaces – they’d have been better having no effect at all. 

Syrup of Figs

We see a guy, Cristian (Eric Kara), and woman, Hannah (Tina Balthazar). He’s bought wine and asks “your place or mine”. The answer is hers and the fact that there is zero chemistry and she appears utterly disinterested helps distract from the fact that he is wearing an incredibly bad wig. He tells her he is an investor in mines (with a comment about people that seemed odd to us and ignored by her). He comes from Paris he says – they kiss, the chemistry stayed at zero and his wig stayed on. 

disgraced

The next day, or another perhaps, there are news reports about killings in Paris tied in with Drakula and the Drakula cult, a girl called Veronique (Aniko Petho) has also gone missing. {The spelling of Dracula is per the spelling shown in film as opposed to the rename for release.} We also see that Hannah is a disgraced journalist who is obsessed with vampires. She phones her friend Emmy (Chloé Dumas) to say that she is on her way to Paris. Now we get the main problem with the film – narrative. 

Chloé Dumas as Emmy

Hannah, Emmy and fellow journalist Nate (Michael Maricondi) are investigating the Drakula cult with the help of Hannah’s ex-boyfriend Xavier (Yannis Baraban) and Cristian (using his French and Romanian contacts). We know that vampires are a reality in this world but the accusations on the news towards the Drakula family does not sit with the idea, also presented in dialogue, that the press are too scared to accuse them. Further to this the idea of a publically known cult doesn’t sit at all comfortably within the premise of the film. 

Yves Carlevaris as Corvinus

The film spends a lot of time following a man, Corvinus (Yves Carlevaris), who in turn is following our intrepid journalists. He is a bald vampire and is portrayed with melodrama affectations that seem bordering on Vaudeville. When he vanishes, reappears in a cloak and walks holding it out to the side, like a refuge from a lost comedy sketch show, one wonders at the film all the more. His laughter seems comic, but there are no laughs. He seems to answer to the hooded man from the beginning of the film… hold on, perhaps all head vampires are bald… who do we see with a bad wig again? Yeah, the twist was spotted from a mile away. 

bite

Sad to say the plot wasn’t. In fact even now I’m struggling to piece together what the plot was. The vampires kill the journalists’ leads for talking to them – but they could have just killed the journalists and have done. They get further leads that are plucked from encrypted files and hidden websites but the film fails to draw us into the investigation. Elizabeth Báthory (Ferencz Rozalia) comes up but, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you why. There isn’t any lore I can really give you: vampires like cloaks, can walk in daylight and have a human and fanged/clawed form. 

walking the cape

The acting from Tina Balthazar seems so distant that it might come from a few miles outside the boundaries of the film – but that might be a fault of the material, which just doesn’t manage to tell a story. To be fair, it isn’t as bad as some films but that just means it fails that aspiration too! Altogether 2.5 out of 10 seems about fair. I think there was probably a good idea before they started but the idea became lost, or maybe totally left behind. 




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Bloodlust

SocktilyouDrop

Shock has landed your first look, via a trailer and photo gallery, at a new vampire thriller called Bloodlust from filmmaker Richard Johnstone.

In the film, currently in post-production, a bus drives 5 young couples to an old castle in an unknown location. They have responded to an advert looking for people to take part in a 30-day medical trial. The company running the experiment, led by the coordinator, explains there will be no contact with the outside world. The group are free to leave at any time, but if they do, they will forfeit their fee: £20,000 per couple.

Mysterious, unexplained events occur around the castle and strange noises are heard in the middle of the night. At first the group are skeptical – they think the company is creating the illusion of a “haunting” to test their reactions, until it is revealed there is something more sinister involved.

HorrorMovieDiary

"Bloodlust!", the 5th adaptation of Richard Connell's classic short story "The Most Dangerous Game", is a weird and obscure but somewhat quite entertaining little b-flick, written and directed by Ralph Brooke, second unit director and/or production manager of 50s schlock like "Man Beast", "Frankenstein's Daughter"or "Missile To The Moon", and husband to Brianne Murphy, the first female director of photography on a major studio film ("Fatso", 1980).

It's not a great film, but it's a funny one. It's a mystery to me why it was spoofed on MST3K because it's faaaar from being as bad as their usual spoof fodder.
I've already seen and reviewed a low-quality version of "Bloodlust!" as part of Mill Creek's 'Cult Terror Cinema 12 Movies Pack' (see here!).
Now, it finally gets a proper HD-quality DVD re-release, thanks to FILM CHESTwho restored it from the original 35mm film elements.

The story is old and well-known: a couple of young adults dock their boat on an uncharted island, inhabitated by a wealthy and sadistic hunter who loves to hunt, slain and stuff humans. Script and direction are all over the place,
most of the acting is rather silly and the overall production looks and feels quite cheap at times.

Still, there's lots of stuff that makes it pretty enjoyable: Wilton Graff ("Valley of the Zombies") is cool as crazed but somewhat super-cool hunter ("What had been an unpleasant duty became a pleasure... then it developed into a passion... and then into a lust! A lust for blood!"),
Robert Reed is decent in one of his first roles before he became world-famous as Mike Brady in "The Brady Bunch", and I just love the unintentionally hilarious performance of Walter Brooke ("I can't go on forever pretending to be
a useless drunk.").

The violence is neat: one guy gets thrown into a tub of acid and we get to see his face decomposing (great scene), one gets shot in his stomach with a crossbow, one guy 'gets' attacked by leeches after he stumbled into a puddle of quicksand, and one gets impaled on metal rods.

The music is solid (Michael Terr, "The Sinister Urge") and the cinematography is nice (Richard E. Cunha, "Giant From The Unknown").

In addition, the HD quality makes the movie look much more gorgeous. I compared several shots of the Mill Creek version (which is also in public domain)and the restored Film Chest version. Beautiful, huh?

Final verdict: a fun little romp, highly recommended to connoisseurs
of 50s Drive-in b-cinema :)

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The Strain Season 1

IGN

WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR.

→ OCTOBER 16, 2014 Note: Full spoilers for the entire first season of The Strain follow.

On paper, The Strain was going to be fantastic. Guillermo del Toro and co-writer Chuck Hogan overseeing an adaptation of their horror novels for television along with Carlton Cuse? About a nasty vampire outbreak in New York City? Starring David Bradley and Corey Stoll? Sign me up. The Strain looked like a slam dunk. But that was on paper. And that’s why they play the games.

With del Toro himself directing the pilot, the horror elements of The Strain were established from the start as the strongest part of the show. Borrowing a lot of the creature design from Blade II (also directed by del Toro), the vampires here weren’t elegant – they were brutal, blunt instruments with gnarly “stingers” shooting out at their victims. Whenever it was time for a vampire attack the show came to life, and the creators’ enthusiasm for the genre was plain to see. The flip side of that, unfortunately, was that aside from those moments it was a show very much in need of that shot in the arm. The dialogue was distractingly poor and the story meant to get us on Eph’s side – his fractured family – was forced and unnecessary.

Still, no pilot is perfect, so it stood to reason that these weaknesses would be addressed as the season went on. But not only did the saga of Eph’s family drag on, several other characters had their personal dramas piled on without adding anything new. The idea that once turned a vampire will go after the ones they loved is a good one, and yet it often seemed like the series was afraid we’d miss that point.

Too much of the early part of the season was devoted to detailing the lives of the plane survivors and their metamorphosis. There was some interesting stuff here – one survivor fought against it, chaining himself up while another eased right into it, “going smooth” in memorable fashion – but when it was all said and done, these characters were dropped or turned into mindless eating machines by the halfway point. There was no payoff to all the time devoted to the survivors, leaving the feeling that the series simply didn’t have enough plot to fill a season.

Despite not being the biggest name in the cast, Richard Sammel made the biggest impression with his time on the show. Eerily still, gleefully sadistic and arrogant, Eichorst was the most well-drawn character from the start. On the other side of that was the marvelous David Bradley as Abraham, who more often than not found himself standing off to the side and gravely talking about what people are prepared to do. With the writers constantly having him hit that same “maybe now you’ll listen” note, Abraham wound up being more of a killjoy than an enjoyably crusty vampire hunter (the lone exception coming when he played dumb about his silver sword so a judge would release him from jail, and even then he reverted back to scolding Nora in the next scene).

As for the Master’s plan to take over, The Strain wanted to have it both ways; with chaos in the streets but most of the populace going about their business as usual. An out-of-control New York is, of course, prohibitively expensive for a TV series to depict onscreen, so instead the sound design worked hard in the last third of the season. Sirens, helicopters and barking dogs were always filling the soundtrack whenever someone was outside. But what was being depicted in the frame was never close to that level of anarchy – in fact most of the time it looked like an average day. Our heroes seemed to be the only residents in all of New York that recognized everything was going to hell.

To watch any show or movie, regardless of genre, you’ve got to suspend some disbelief. When it comes to horror or fantasy, the leash gets even longer. So while Palmer’s one-man takedown of New York City (complete with a hobbled Internet) was absurd, it was a plot point that you glide over as a viewer in order to enjoy the show. The problem came when the series insisted on focusing time and again on the particulars of how it was done, usually in a scene with Palmer meeting one or two officials or Dutch explaining that she had a team of hackers. Instead of bolstering the case for how it would be possible, these scenes only highlighted all the holes in the story.

The series often felt like it was trying to buy time with redundant beats, systematically showing us the family or friends of every major character. This was presumably to raise the stakes by showing that everyone has something to lose, but the stakes were already high enough with the vampire apocalypse on the horizon. And so the show spun its wheels by spending time with Nora’s mother, Jim’s wife and nearly an entire episode on Kelly getting infected and turning. When the focus would then turn back to our main characters their scenes fell flat for the most part, as Eph fretted over how to protect his son or Abraham stared longingly at his wife’s heart in the jar. Only Gus noticeably improved over the season (although it should be noted that there was nowhere to go but up: he was easily the weakest character in the pilot) 

The Strain showed its enthusiasm for horror from the start with brutal vampires and merciless villains, the rest of the series fell flat all too often. A combination of bad dialogue and sluggish writing made for characters that were hard to care about, while more interesting stories like the Ancients and their commandos were briefly introduced only as a teaser for season 2. The good news for next season is that there's plenty of room for improvement.

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True Blood season 7

Rotten Tomatoes

SEASON INFO

HBO's hit drama series created by Alan Ball ('Six Feet Under') and based on the best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris about a perky telepathic waitress (Anna Paquin) in a near-future in which vampires live among us.

IGN

At what point did True Blood lose its way for you? I'm curious. What should have been the jumping off point? Was it the witches in Season 4? Could have been the witches, right? Though many fans out there sure loved Sookie shacking up with amnesiac Eric.

How about Season 5's Vampire Authority? Should the series have ended when King Russell bit the fairy dust? Season 6 brought us Governor Burrell and the plague, along with "Vampire God" Bill. I'm asking because I don't really have a clear answer myself. I just know that the consensus now is that seven seasons was too much. Especially considering the way this final season handled itself.

Now I won't let myself get too wrapped up here in the terrible decision Bill made during the final two episodes of the season, where, after contracting a fast-moving case of Hep V from Sookie (no one came after him for murdering that human estate lawyer?), he decided to just die for no true, investable reason. Despite the fact that there was a very simple cure-all.

He said over and over that it was so Sookie could be free to live a happy life (as it was just somehow naturally assumed that she'd always want Bill more than anyone else), but who's to say that her desire for Bill would vanish after he died? Who's to say that, when we saw Sookie in the final moments of the finale with the anonymous bearded dude that she just wasn't settling again? Bill no longer being around doesn't mean that Sookie won't somehow still love every other man she meets less than she loved him. She just has kids now. Who will probable grow up with a distracted mother who constantly pines for her great, lost love.

Series Finale: What Went Right & Wrong?

14:35

Some of the more bemusing elements of Season 7 came from the main roster deaths, where we saw extremely unceremonious exits for Alcide and Tara (who got splattered off-screen within the first few seconds of the premiere). Alcide's death at the hands of the angry Bon Temps mobgathering was more or less done to illustrate the point that no one, not even Sookie, cared about him all that much. It was basically an unspoken truth that Sookie and Alcide (who'd never been given much more than "protective" in the character department) were a bore and that she was meant for someone else. Which was possibly meant to inform Bill's decision to die later in the season, but all it did was demonstrate how unconscionably fickle Sookie was.

Likewise, Tara had been a character who the show had been actively trying to redeem in most fans' eyes since the very first season. So the show that'd been accused of being overly-precious with its huge roster of characters (even though only a small few of them were interesting and/or likable) decided to give us a bit of anti-closure. It was a complete 180 from the three-episode "Terry Mourning" arc from Season 6 that took a semi-lovable, peripheral dope and turned him into the show's most important character. If someone who'd never watched True Blood had watched those episodes they would have assumed the show had just lost a marquee player.

So "something in between" was needed here. Something that didn't super-romanticize those who were okay-not-great, but also didn't treat them like chum. Even a little bit more would have helped. Tara taking out a ton of vamps before dying. Protecting Sookie, Jason, and others in the process. Alcide too. He could have died leaping in front of Sookie to block a bullet. But then, I suppose, that would have made Sookie even more irksome when she hopped in the sack with Bill two nights later.

Jim Parrack returning as Hoyt was a nice surprise, and the resolution between him, Jess, and Jason actually did tie off their story from long ago. Was it wholly satisfying? No, but it'll do. Hoyt returned to Bon Temps a different man. Sure, he'd just lost his mother, but he came into the mix already arguing with his perfectly sweet and gorgeous girlfriend, Bridget.

And since it was all a way just to split them up so Hoyt could be with Jess and Jason could nab Bridget, they had Hoyt biting her head off after she innocently mentioned having kids. Which made Hoyt kind of a tool and not the Hoyt who we all enjoyed seeing with Jess. No, this was the "time jump to when Hoyt and Jess were arguing all the time" Hoyt. And that's no fun.

Speaking of returns, I liked seeing Sarah re-enter the picture once again - this time as a hot mess on the run from vampires and the yakuza. And her fate, come story's end, was fitting. Eric and Pam were also fun to watch (especially their video store flashbacks with Ginger) though I had a hard time getting a handle on the seasonal "villains" as Eric seemed to go back and forth between being their prisoner and being easily able to massacre them in the blink of an eye. Were they formidable or not? In the end, they just became "whatever the show needed them to be in the moment." Which is how True Blood, for the most part, operates.

Most other characters found love before the end, like Sam, Lafayette, and Arlene. Though so little was known about their significant others that all the pairings wound up meaning about the same to the viewer. Sam and Nicole meant about as much as Arlene and Keith, though I'd suggest that Arlene's pairing actually completed a seven season-long anti-vampire arc for her. They tried to make a big deal out of James moving from Jess to Lafayette, but it was far too late in the game to make us care about James (who was played by a different actor than in Season 6). And somehow Jess wound up the bad guy when the dust settled because she never asked James about his past. Which, when you think about it, was a weird thing for her not to have ever done.

Oh, and then there was Jess' "eating disorder" (which was both introduced to us and solved with in five minutes), the house party where two couples decided to cheat on their significant others (both couples getting caught), the exhausting amount of scenes involving Reverend Daniels, Niall returning to basically tell Sookie "I got nothin'," and Bill's never-ending disjointed stream of flashbacks (that were intended to help "humanize" him, though I foolishly believed they were leading somewhere plot-wise).

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True Blood season 6

ING

Yes, I had issues with True Blood's sixth season, but the new 10-episode structure wasn't one of them. And no, it's not just because there was less True Blood. 10 episodes allowed the show to focus on three main storylines, instead of the usual five or six. It streamlined the show like never before while revealing the simple truth that True Blood stories don't need twelve episodes. Can you even imagine this season getting padded out with two more installments? As it was, a third of the screen time was devoted to Terry mourning.

The downside of 10 episodes though is that it really shines a spotlight, even more than before, on the fact that this show just has too many damn characters. Characters who rarely arc. They just mostly remain the same while reacting in their usual manner to the new dangerous things that happen or the new crazy characters who wander into town. All while often mentioning how insane their lives have all gotten (or how they can't remember the last time things weren't totally bats***) as a way to meta-defend the series for giving us disorder instead of direction.

In fact, the character who had the most noticeable arc this year was Alcide, but his story was boring and his arc really just brought him back to the guy he was before he went alpha male pack-nuts. And even though Tara wound up having a nice scene in the finale with her mother, the 10 episode structure really left her nothing to do this year. But I suppose having nothing to do is better than having terrible things to do, like Jessica, who spent this season doing dumb things for dumb reasons. Which is all more the shame because I like(d) her a lot as a character.

Yes, in place of character development, True Blooders just bounce around from story to story. Although, with less stories this year, there was less bouncing. But that didn't stop Lafayette moving from Sam's story to Sookie's story to Terry's story. Or Jason from Sookie's story to Andy's story to Jessica's story to getting his own story with Violet. Oh yeah, and then rounding third and winding up back in the Warlow story he was in during the first couple episodes. Jason changed at the very outset of the season, once the weird "vampire hate/dead parents" delusions wore off, and at the end he found himself in new, unexplored sexually territory. But please don't mistake any of that for actual growth.

In the midst of all this, the vampires had a fairly straight-forward, blood-soaked story that I wish I could have watched separate from the rest of the season. Governor Burrell, who was one of two main villains (the other being Sarah Newlin) developed a scheme to poison vamps with tainted True Blood. And instead of it being a self-contained seasonal disappointment - especially considering that Burrell perhaps bought it too early in the run - the Hep-V will continue to poison vampires into next season and remain his legacy. Plus, Sarah escaped to Jesus another day. Overall, the vampire/human war brought the most satisfying moments of the season - including Sarah's insanely fun murder-chase with Ms. Suzuki and Bill and Eric's bloody day-walking rampage inside the prison itself.

Sure, the show immediately took back the monster-Bill who we saw flashing his fangs in last year's finale, opting instead for a powerfully prophetic Bill who's shown visions of things to come. In the end though, I'm not sure why Lilith was so concerned about, and took such extreme measures to protect, the twelve vampires who were going to die in the sun room, but perhaps she wanted Bill to just take care of the internment camp as a whole. Still, her presence was murky at best. The show also never made up its mind about whether Lilith was an actual evil monstrosity to be destroyed. Nora, who wound up dying from Hep-V, spent the first few episodes vowing to kill Lilith, telling everyone that only Warlow could do it. But Warlow and Lilith never wound up crossing paths in the modern day and that whole thing got dropped.

Bill and Eric both got to rebound as the "heroes" in the end, leaving the show to flip-flop on itself and switch Warlow back into a true villain. But the show changes it's mind a lot. We know this. Within the first few episodes two characters actually exclaimed "You're dead to me!" at Sookie, only to totally forget they said that one or two episodes later. But Bill and Eric still remained strong parts of the season. Bill's stern, half apology to Andy about the murder of his fairy girls was good, as was most of Eric's stuff; going undercover as an animal rights nerd, turning Willa into a vampire, and, finally, his hilarious fire-burst in the midst of the Swedish arctic once Warlow's blood wore off.

Now let's talk Terry. A character who never should have been given his own side adventures (see: last season's Ifrit). Still, I suppose I'd rather watch Terry battle a Middle Eastern fire demon than a flashback of him feeling sad over a catfish. Look, Terry was fine. I didn't hate Terry. But he shouldn't have been made to be more than what he was - a peripheral character. Ambiance. He was the "kind, gentle guy" of the show, so no one out there should have, you know, loathed him. But long ago, True Blood made the dire mistake of thinking that each member of its supporting cast was integral. And beloved. After they spared Lafayette's life between Seasons 1 and 2 (he died at the end of the first book), the entire core cast was safe. Six years later, they killed off the most expendable members and received a slow clap. The show couldn't leave well enough alone though and, in a gross overestimation of his importance, spent the next three episodes, including an entire half of the penultimate episode, dealing directly with Terry's death.

In fact, the episode about Terry's funeral would have been great if they'd taken out the half containing Terry's funeral. The rest of it contained the gorgeously gory assault on the vampire camp. The Terry stuff was grading, boring, and, to be honest, a little insulting since they foolishly tried to use the sentiment to juxtapose the cartoonish violence being perpetrated by Bill and Eric. Which would have worked is A: Terry was more important than he was, and B: the actual violence over in the prison wasn't played for outrageous laughs. Some have argued that the entire funeral scene was more about Sookie saying goodbye to everyone before she started a new life as Warlow's vamp-fairie bride, but the show didn't even go through with that. So all her talking with Sam and visiting Gran's grave set us up for nothing.

Warlow was a big problem too. Since his character started off as a mysterious, wandering loner with absolutely nothing going on, he was easy to spot. Then the show decided to turn him into a momentary love interest for Sookie, contradicting the malevolent spirit we caught a glimpse of last season. Then, on a dime, Warlow returned to being vicious in the finale, allowing a ton of characters to team up to take him down. True Blood, like Twilight, has always been about men falling in love with a girl because of some intangible, etherial "quality" that has nothing to do with her personality. And Warlow was the most extreme case of that; a creature holding a centuries-long sexual obsession for a small town nobody because of her unique scent.

By the end, the show had taken a leap forward in time and genre, morphing slightly into a zombie series - complete with hordes of wandering (and weaker) "infected" vampires attacking towns looking for blood. I don't mind the shift though. If no one's going to make any huge strides character-wise, then at least we can watch them get savagely ripped apart.

Rotten Tomatoes

SEASON INFO

The sixth season of the adaptation of Charlaine Harris' Southern vampire novels opens on a messy reincarnation for Bill (Stephen Moyer), but no one, including Sookie (Anna Paquin), Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) or Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), knows who or what he is, and they're not anxious to get close enough to find out. Meanwhile, Alcide (Joe Manganiello) takes over as pack master and discovers there are certain perks that come with the job; Andy (Chris Bauer) deals with being a new father; Louisiana governor Truman Burrell (Arliss Howard) declares war on vampires; and the Stackhouses receive a visit from a distant relative, Niall (Rutger Hauer), who arrives to share dire news about Warlow, the vampire who killed their parents?and is now coming after Sookie.

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