My Babysitter's a Vampire (4 Stars)

This is the sixth film in my high school marathon. My last film, "Can't hardly wait", was at the upper end of high school, i.e. graduation day, the final day of high school. "My Babysitter's a Vampire" is at the other extreme. It's the first day of high school for Ethan and Benny. It's an exciting time, and they want to show everyone how cool they are. First impressions are important. The trouble is that their dorky best friend Rory is showing them up. They try to distance themselves from him, with know success.

Then comes the babysitter. Usually Ethan looks after his eight-year-old sister when their parents are away, but the week before high school starts Ethan allowed Jane to wander outside. As a result, his parents have booked a babysitter to look after them. Worse still, it's Erica, an older girl at high school.

When Benny hears about the babysitting he's excited. Erica is one of the hottest girls in school. Benny insists of coming round to see her. Please, Benny, she's three years older than you. What do you expect to achieve?

But things don't turn out as expected. Erica is invited to a party, so her best friend Sarah steps in as babysitter. As far as looks go, Sarah's a close second. But when Ethan sees that Sarah doesn't have a reflection in the mirror he realises she's a vampire. She tells the boys that she's a fledgling vampire. Yes, "fledgling" is the word she uses. In the film's newly invented vampire mythology, a person doesn't become a full vampire until he drinks human blood. Sarah is delaying the change by drinking rat blood. Yeuk! She can't do it indefinitely, because if a fledgling doesn't drink human blood within 28 days he'll die.

Erica is at a party being thrown by vampires. Sarah wants to rescue her before she's bitten. Ethan and Benny accompany her, which is gallant, but they can't help her. They just get in her way. The party is at the home of Sarah's ex-boyfriend Jesse, the one who made Sarah a vampire. Rory is also at the party, meaning a bigger rescue effort is necessary.

Just one last spoiler. Sarah and the boys arrive at the party too late. Erica and Rory become vampires.

This lays the groundwork for a big vampire showdown, and it also paves the way for a spin-off TV series with the same name. It's a very good series, which I've watched once and want to watch again. Don't be put off by the silly title.

Be honest. Wouldn't you let Erica bite you?

The film is now out of print, but you might be able to pick up a copy on Ebay if you're lucky. It was also on Netflix for a while, but it's now been removed. That's sad. It's not a film that deserves to be forgotten.

My Babysitter's a Vampire (4½ Stars)

This is my ninth horror film in November 2019. I picked it spontaneously today. I've owned it on DVD for years, but I didn't notice until today that it's available on Netflix, and it's in full HD, which makes it look better than my DVD. In the box below I give links for those who want to buy the film on DVD from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, but I really think you should watch it on Netflix instead.

Kate Todd puts all other vampires in the shade.

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk

My Babysitter's a Vampire (4 Stars)

It's interesting to watch the activity on this blog. Usually my new posts are read the most, probably because my regular readers are catching up with what I've been writing. But sometimes I write a post, it's ignored for months, and then it suddenly gets a lot of hits. My original post of "My Babysitter's a Vampire" is an example of this. I wrote the review back in October, seven months ago. But now it's been read a lot over the last few days, I have no idea why. Maybe the series has just started again on television, so it's getting new fans? Whatever the reason is, I decided to watch the film again today and increased its rating by half a star.

Even though I like having a lot of traffic for my blog, I would rather have a little good traffic than a lot of fake traffic. What do I mean by that? For instance, I used to get a lot of "readers" for my Axel Braun reviews. At first it made me happy, but then I used Google's Webmaster Tools to check how people were finding the posts. They were searching for things like "watch glee xxx", so Google sent them to my post "This ain't Glee XXX". When they arrived at my page and found out it was only a review, not a download site, they probably cursed and searched elsewhere. I do not offer illegal downloads, I never have and I never will. Especially not downloads of Axel Braun's films. Where pornography is concerned too many people think it should be free, but Axel works hard and he deserves to earn money for his films. If anyone really wants to watch one of his films for free, I'll make you a deal. Come round to my house, I'll put a DVD on, and we'll watch it together. That's the only way I'll help you see it for free.

In the sidebar you can see a list entitled "Popular Posts". These are the articles that have been read most often in the last 30 days. The list changes from day to day, but there are certain posts that have been in the list for a year or more.

"The Green Mile" is my most popular post ever. This is due to people searching for "Miss Lotta Leadpipe", which is the name of the erotic comic that Percy was reading in the film. My site is the only one that tells people that this comic doesn't exist. Moreover, it was a film error, because no female domination comics existed until the late 1940's.

"What must be said about Günter Grass" is also an ever popular post. This is because people are still trying to find out the truth behind his scandalous poetry. Maybe I should write more off-topic posts if they're so popular.

Some posts have temporary popularity due to events elsewhere. For instance, the actress/model Busty Heart appeared on a French television show, which led to enormous popularity for my post on "The Dictator". This was so extreme that the traffic on my site doubled for four months, due to French readers accessing this post.

This graph shows my reader numbers from 2010 to 2014. It took me a few months to be noticed, but since then 3000 per month has been usual for me. The exception is November 2013 to February 2014, when I was getting 6000 readers per month, half of them for "The Dictator".

My recent post about the documentary "Unhung Hero" is currently the most read post. It has twice as many readers as the second most popular post. Judging by the search terms people are using, they want to read about Patrick's girlfriend Kasha. I'm sorry to disappoint you, I can't tell you more than what I know from the film.

I don't know what's given "My Babysitter's a Vampire" its current boost. If it continues for a few more days it'll push its way into my top 10 most popular posts. Let's wait and see.

Please leave a comment and tell me which one of these three vampires you would like to bite you: Rory (Cameron Kennedy), Sarah (Vanessa Morgan) or Erica (Kate Todd). For me personally it has to be Erica. Kate Todd is one of the hottest actresses on television today. I admit that Vanessa Morgan looks almost as good, but for me it's not just about looks. In the film and TV series Sarah is a good girl, while Erica is a bad girl with an attitude. Bad girls are more fun.

TV Series: My Babysitter's a Vampire

Newspaper snapshot from My Babysitter's a Vampire, Season 1 Episode 3. Click here to enlarge.

It seems from this newspaper that the inhabitants of Whitechapel, Ontario, where the series is set, are fluent in Pidgin Latin. The text begins "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Ut vestibulum diam et erat mollis elementum". The great orator and defender of the unjust Cicero would be turning in his grave.

This television series is based on the film with the same name. Unlike "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" it continues from the film with the same characters played by the same actors. In fact, the series jumps straight into the action without introducing the characters, so anyone who hasn't seen the film first would be confused. If anyone wants to know if the series is worth watching, here are two compelling reasons:

Kate Todd without fangs

Kate Todd with fangs

Kate plays Erica Jones, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who bites on the first date. But then again, she has to, because there won't be a second date. I would be begging her for a date.

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On a personal note, this is the 1000th post since I started this blog in September 2010. Yesterday I sat for a long time wondering what to do. I didn't know whether to make a special post, or just post a picture of the letter M. I used to have a great interest in typography, back in the early 1990's when fonts were in rare supply on PC's and very expensive. I lost interest when TrueType was introduced and the font glut began. After long deliberation I decided to continue with business as usual and make a normal post.

Nevertheless, here's the letter M that I planned to use. It's too good to waste. This is the letter M from the typeface Palatino, designed by Hermann Zapf in 1948. I've used the version that was digitised by Bitstream Inc, respectfully renamed Zapf Calligraphic. The italic version of this font is considered by many to be the most beautiful font ever created. Microsoft refused to pay the licensing fees for using Palatino and has created a similar but inferior clone called Book Antiqua.

The letter M is significant in typography, especially computer typography. The size of a font is described as the M height, more commonly spelt as "em height". Fonts are calibrated to the size of the capital letter M. This means that if a font is a 36 point font, the capital M is exactly half an inch tall from top to bottom. (One inch is 72 points). This is a mark of quality in the free computer fonts that can be downloaded from many sources. Fonts in which the capital M doesn't match the font size are poor quality and shouldn't be used.

Hermann Zapf without fangs

Maybe I'll make a few posts in the future featuring my favourite fonts. They will all be old fonts, because I haven't concerned myself much with computer typography since the mid 1990's. I'm open to recommendations of high quality new fonts, if my readers know any.

This month my reader numbers are soaring up to record levels. But are the readers really paying attention? If you've read the post this far, please leave a comment congratulating me on my 1000th post. I'm curious if anyone will do this.

My Babysitter's a Vampire (3½ Stars)

Ethan is a 14-year-old boy who lives with his parents and his 8-year-old sister Jane in a sleepy little Canadian town called Whitechapel. When his parents go out they leave him to look after his sister, but he doesn't do a very good job of it, so his parents hire a babysister from his school, 17-year-old Erica. On her first evening Erica is invited to go to a party, so she sends her best friend Sarah to take her place. And that's where the real fun begins. Sarah is a fledgling vampire. As usual, every vampire book, film and tv series redefines vampire mythology. In this case a "fledgling" is a vampire who has not yet drunk human blood. A fledgling can feed on animals for 28 days, but after that he dies if he doesn't drink human blood. Sarah is still in her first week and has already decided to feed on rats as long as possible.

Sarah's ex-boyfriend Jesse is the leader of a vampire cult who is trying to repopulate Whitechapel with vampires after a century of remaining in hiding. Sarah and Ethan, with the help of Ethan's best friend Benny, try in vain to prevent their friends becoming vampires in their battle against Jesse.

This is a fun film that has spawned a television series with the same name. It's a spoof on the whole vampire genre, with frequent references to "Twilight" (called "Dusk" for copyright reasons) and "Vampire Diaries" (called "Bloodsucker Diaries"). It's aimed at young teenagers, even though the characters are older than the characters in the first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", which was a more mature show. It has promise, and I'm now interested in seeing how the story continues in the series. I wish I'd had a hot looking babysitter like that when I was 14. Some boys have all the luck!