22 May 2021

Werner the Vampyre

If you are familiar with Ann Rice’s novels then you are probably aware that being a vampire does come with issues all its own. For many vampires, being so long lived (if that is the correct way to describe the centuries they may exist) has its burdens and one is that they often fail to move with the times and discover that the era in which they now exist is meaningless to them.  Some vampires find this an almost impossible hurdle to overcome.

So it is with Werner (played wonderfully by Tom Micklem) in this very funny short comedy from Chris Boyle, a director based in London.  Werner (who has more than a little of the Lestat about him) has lived through many ages of man and the twenty first century is something he cannot quite deal with.  However, when he does discover a way to thrive in our electronic era he sets about it with typical vampiric gusto.  Chris Boyle obviously has an in depth knowledge if not a love for the genre he is gently satirising here as Werner the Vampyre is full of undead tropes, (devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations). Werner the Vampyre not so quietly lampoons a category of film fiction here that has, at any rate, been disappearing up its own, ahem, jugular, for a number of years.