Editorials
The Most Frightful Foes From the Bestiary of “The Witcher 3”!
Between the possibly-going-to-be-shit-please-don’t-be-shit Netflix adaption getting closer, and CD Projekt’s recent announcement of a new RPG based in the Witcher universe, The Witcher series is still going strong, hanging around our humble hovels like we just refused to pay it for a contract. To give you something to meditate on until then, here’s some tasty folklore behind five of The Witcher 3‘s most terrifying creatures. Note that, for the sake of our reader’s sanity, we’ve chosen to omit the most dangerous of these beasts: very small hills. Enjoy!
Foglets
“he be a light that pass and pass before one until he be bewitched and follow the bright, hopping light on, on as it flashes back and then forward before the eye of the one be possessed.” – The Feu Follet at Otter Lake
“Most important of all, if you see a light in the fog, never, and I mean never, go towards it.” – The Witcher 3
Although the misleadingly adorable sounding ‘Foglet’ seems to be unique to the Witcher, these razor-toothed Necrophages bear more than a passing resemblance to the Feu Follet (French, ‘Marsh Fire) – better known as Will-o’-the-wisp. One dead giveaway, aside from the pun, is the presence of an especially tricksy Foglet in The Witcher 3 named ‘Ignis Fatuus’ — a medieval Latin name for the wisp that translates as “foolish fire”. The similarities don’t end there, though. Just like Foglets, these spirits are fond of luring travelers from well-trodden paths with glowing orbs of light. Unlike Foglets though, they generally don’t chew off their victim’s limbs afterward, although not having teeth is probably a factor here. Small mercies, then.
Lubberkins/Botchlings
The creature in English folklore known as the Lubberkin, Lubber Fiend, Lurdane, Lob, or Lob-Lie-By-The-Fire is a mischievous, Puck-like spirit. A bit of a dick, but fairly benign otherwise. Sometimes it convinces monks to drink too much wine, sometimes it does household chores in exchange for a saucer of milk, but no mention of the floating, translucent spectre that serves as a helpful compass in the Bloody Baron’s quest line.
If we look at the Scandinavian Myling, however, we find a much closer analog to the Witcher’s portrayal of the Lubberkin. The Mylingar were the lost spirits of unbaptized children. These fiendish hitchhikers longed to be buried in hallowed church ground, so were in the habit of jumping on the backs of unwary travelers and steering them towards the nearest graveyard. There are a few other tales similar to the Lubberkin from around the world, but if I wrote them here I’d just be paraphrasing this excellent video on the subject.
The Wild Hunt
“Many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge, and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers, and horrible.” – English account of the Wild Hunt, 1127.
The motif of undead riders is a common one in European folklore, often the portend of some nasty omen or other, but the term Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt) was developed and popularised by Jacob Grimm.
The leader of the hunt varies in the telling. Sometimes it’s Woden (Odens jakt, Swedish: The Hunt of Odin), sometimes it’s Krampus (which would have made a great boss fight), and sometimes it’s the devil themselves. Whoever was at the head, the Wild Hunt rarely meant good news to those who saw them, often stealing the spirits of those they passed to join to their spectral cavalcade. Much like our modern understanding of All Hallow’s Eve, Yuletide was once believed to thin the barriers between the realms of the living and dead, meaning that souls were easy pickings for the Hunt when they ventured out at this time.
We can make a safe guess that Norse myth factors heavily in The Witcher’s interpretation of the Wild Hunt, due to the ship where Geralt’s final confrontation with Eredin goes down. The fingernail clipping-hewn Nagflar (Norse: Nail Fairer) was a sure sign that Ragnarok was well underway, acting as a particularly grizzly troop carrier on its way to fight the gods.
Leshens
Also known as the Leshy (Russian: He from the forest), these glade guardians tended to change their attitude to humans depending on how big of an asshole they were to the trees, sort of like a terrifying Lorax.
Not outrightly evil, but fond of tormenting those who travel too deeply into the forest, encounters with a Leshy can still result in death. Notably, death by tickling, since the Leshy often don’t know where to draw the line. You can also, supposedly, gain the respect of a Leshy by putting all your clothes on backward, freeing you from further torment. The more you know.
Bruxa
This particular breed of bloodsucker comes from a Portuguese myth about women transformed not through the bite of another vampire, but through witchcraft. Boasting the ability to transform into birds, rats, and bizarrely, ants, the Bruxa primary trait, like most vampires, was ravenous hunger — one she often satiated with the blood of children.
Bruxa were supposedly invincible too, although there’s a fair chance the originators of the myth didn’t have access to a big fucking sword made of solid silver, which tends to bypass a fair few folklore caveats.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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