Eaves has conceived The Witches Hammer as a mix of vampire and action film. The film that The Witches Hammer reminds of the most is Razor Blade Smile (1998), a similar British-made micro-budgeted film that also featured a tough kickass vampire heroine who worked as a trained killer for a top secret organization. The Witches Hammer throws up an appealing initial concept – I must admit to being kind of annoyed as it is an idea that I had a few years ago and thought would make for a cool vampire film – that of conducting a vampire variation on Nikita/La Femme Nikita (1990), the Luc Besson film wherein a woman was abducted and forcibly turned into a lethal assassin for a covert organization.

What I liked about The Witches Hammer was the way that James Eaves has made a concerted attempt to craft a back-mythology. There’s something here akin to what Underworld (2003) and its sequel Underworld: Evolution (2006) attempted. (In fact I actually preferred what the low-budget The Witches Hammer does to either of the A-budgeted Underworld films). The background of the supporting characters is treated with imaginative depth – one especially liked the character of the Victorian vampire Charlotte Apone who devours her own father and is so overweight that no vampire hunter can locate where her heart is. Eaves throws all sorts of interesting ideas into the mix – a breed of vampires who are so old that they cannot withstand any light, even moonlight, and must hide in crypts. There are some amusing interpolations of classic vampire imagery – like Claudia Coulter returning to her coffin aboard a train as morning comes and asking Jonathan Sidgwick to tell her a bedtime story. It’s quite an ambitious story that the film swings – the only complaint might be that there could have been more in the way of background given over to explaining what Projects 571 and 572 are and why there are such things as genetically engineered vampires.

Eaves also offers up some smart pieces of writing and wry dialogue. Adrian Johnson wakes Claudia Coulter up from a morgue table after she has been shot whereupon Coulter grumbles: “I’ve just spent six hours in a cold body locker listening to the autopsy of a hit-and-run. I’m tired; I have the hangover from Hell and pieces of my own brain in my hair. If you say a sentence with word ‘plan’ in it, I will rip your throat out,” which gets the response, “So who’s a grumpy bitch then?” Or where Coulter and Jonathan Sidgwick venture into the crypt and she complains about him calling his torch ‘Mr Torch’ – “Mr Torch? Why not Mrs Torch or Ms Torch?” and then as it abruptly goes out “I stand corrected – definitely a Mr Torch.”

Eaves eschews much of the go-for-the-throat impact that other low-budget horror filmmakers usually aim for – the level of gore is very light, there’s no nudity and only the slightest suggestion of eroticism. (Indeed it wouldn’t take much editing for The Witches Hammer to be issued with a PG-rating). On the minus side, Eaves tends to be a little too reliant on special effects to carry his story rather than mood or his actors. The vampires spend a little too much time baring their fangs and snarling and having their eyes digitally flash, which is something that has become a little too much of a cliche in modern low-budget vampire films. Eaves is a self-confessed fan of tv’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and employs the effects that were used there – of vampires instantly turning to digitally-rendered dust when staked (which Buffy came up with in order to get around having to show vampires getting stakes through the heart on tv). What we end up with through this though is a film that is too reliant on digital flash when a much more modest realistic impact may have had much more effect. There is also too much of a tendency towards comedy relief whenever it comes to the characters of the vampire Charlotte (Sally Reeve) and her dwarf manservant Oscar (Jason Tompkins) – especially a sequence with Jonathan Sidgwick trying to brain Tompkins with a saucepan in a kitchen, which overtly topples into slapstick.

The action scenes tend to feel like they have been boiler-plated in as set-pieces at regular intervals – but these are convincingly done and come with a stylish, well-choreographed kick. Argentinean-born model Claudia Coulter has an impressive presence as the heroine of the show. She has a natural ability with all the lithe poses when it comes to kicking the requisite ass – a lot more so than Sarah Michelle Gellar ever did in Buffy. And, unlike a lot of action heroines, she is not buffed and hyper-masculine but sexy and tough and moves through the acting scenes with a tightly controlled presence.

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