THE DEEP ONES: "The Family of the Vourdalak" by Alexis Tolstoy

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Family of the Vourdalak" by Alexis Tolstoy

2gwendetenebre
Edited: Dec 30, 2024, 1:22 pm

Pre-discussion heads-up. Adrien Beau's 2023 THE VOURDALAK, based on this tale, is one of the best vampire films I've seen in years. It brilliantly evokes a sense of the uncanny through the use of an amazing practical special effect. Easy to find on various streaming channels!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTJLvAfAlAc

3gwendetenebre
Edited: Jan 2, 2025, 10:28 am

For 1838 or so, this story moves at a pretty good clip! After kicking off in the then-expected tale-within-a-tale mode, we get a very horny narrator, a nasty vampire grandpa sucking blood left and right, vampire voyeurism, evil wolves, and an action-packed final chase between our horse-mounted narrator and the vampire family. The vampire grandpa skulking around outside in the middle of the night produces some pretty nightmarish imagery. The idea of family dwellings in a small, isolated town becoming infested with vampires pre-dates Salem's Lot by about 137 years. Not a very weird tale beyond some nice folk horror tropes which edge that way, but a surprisingly good horror/vampire tale nonetheless.

The recent film THE VOURDALEK, follows the original story fairly closely but adds enough macabre touches of its own which don't go too far off track and help to appropriately fill out a feature-length running time. I haven't seen the Karloff segment in Bava's BLACK SABBATH in quite a while, but from what I recall, it follows the Tolstoy version pretty well, too.

4RandyStafford
Jan 9, 2025, 5:29 pm

So am I right in thinking that Dorde did an incomplete job staking Gorcha out?

The catapulting vampire boys was a nice bizarre touch.

5gwendetenebre
Edited: Jan 10, 2025, 4:05 pm

>4 RandyStafford:

The Eastern European-based traveling circus act known as "Gorcha's Catapulting Vampire Boys" was a popular attraction through the end of the 19th century. Although Gorcha's ultimate fate is unknown, his hometown reportedly remains vampire-infested.