Olalla – Streaming Now!
The provocative film by Amy Hesketh, based in the story by Robert Louis Stevenson, OLALLA, tells the story of a gothic and decadent family of genetic vampires who need human blood to survive and prolong their lives, and where incest is the only way to maintain the family line. They don’t mix with the outside world and when they do the consequences can be disastrous.
The film centers in the avatars of Olalla, her daughters, Olalla and Ofelia and her brother Felipe. Olalla the mother and Olalla the daughter, both interpreted by Amy Hesketh, are somewhat fractious, they can’t control their impulses thus endangering the entire family.
Hesketh starts her story where Stevenson’s ends. A new guest arrives to the family’s hacienda starting a struggle for the attentions of Olalla between the newcomer and Felipe, the vampire’s brother. Olalla sinks deeply in her madness and unable to control her tenebrous instincts, first attacks Roberto, the guest, and soon after the village’s priest. That act is the last straw for the terrified villagers who storm the hacienda, capture Olalla, tying her to a cross, whipping her and burning her alive.
A century later, the surviving daughters, Olalla and Ofelia, genetic vampires who age very slowly, live isolated from the world around them, staying away from any danger. Olalla, seeking a normal life, moves away from her family, finds a lover, but can’t help herself from killing him, placing herself and her family in danger. Ofelia calls Uncle Felipe who attempts to teach a hard lesson to Olalla, punishing her for her transgressions. Will Felipe be able to control Olalla and thus save the family? Or will he eliminate her, as Ofelia insists?
Review: Vampires and blood, love and sexual tension, but wait, there’s also Mambo!
Amy Hesketh is the writer, director, and star of OLALLA, in which she has created a Vampire film like no other, because Olalla is a Vampire like no other. The movie thumbs its nose at almost every establishment Vampire tradition. No Danse Macabre for these Vampires. No. But there is Mambo! No sucking of blood from neat little puncture wounds on the throat. But there is chilled blood in the fridge sipped from fine crystal. Or, if you’re Olalla, the black sheep of the clan, you occasionally do it the old fashioned way, rip out the throats of your victims, and leave a bloody mess.
You don’t have to be a non-conformist Vampire to identify with Olalla. There’s a little Olalla in all of us. With its roots in a story by Robert Louis Stevenson (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”), Olalla is portrayed with a sly undercurrent of self-deceptive innocence by Hesketh herself. She yearns to be an ordinary woman and go shopping, but she does not have “ordinary” in her blood. She tries but cannot long stand to pretend, like the rest of her family does, not even after the repeated encouragements of a skillfully applied riding crop, wielded by the family’s dedicated enforcer, Felipe, played with exquisite intensity by Jac Avila.
Felipe is convincingly and sympathetically portrayed in flashbacks as Avila’s younger self by Alejandro Loayza. He has worried about Olalla’s well-being, and that of his family, since childhood (these “genetic” Vampires age, but slowly). Felipe’s sense of responsibility for his family’s wellbeing is a heavy burden, especially considering what happened to Olalla’s mother (played in heart-wrenching flashbacks by Hesketh herself).
Olalla’s sister, Ofelia, cares about the family, too, and is fed up with her sister’s antics, endangering them all. Ofelia remembers all too well what happened to their mother. Mila Joya plays Ofelia as a playfully seductive predator, with a subtle undercurrent that made me wonder just how many throats she herself had ripped out, in secret.
Other fascinating characters include the family’s two uncles, played in synchronized precision by Beto Lopez and Fermin Nuñez, and then there is Erix Antoine’s unforgettable Bruno.
All in all, I recommend OLALLA for anyone who enjoys Vampire films that take you where Vampire films have never gone before. Plus, don’t forget, not only is there blood and Vampires in Olalla, there’s Mambo!
Am I correct in that you really do not have a full cast for the Crux 4 series?
You folks are looking for cash, but instead of finishing and releasing the Crux Bound episodes with Simonne which are supposed to be complete filming-wise, Jac is playing with AI.
Nothing wrong with setting up some ideas (except you are not going to have any crowd scenes), but a little focus on priorities.
The plan is to close the deal with the cast when we’re ready to commit to the project, and that will happen when we have enough resources to embark in the production without the risk of coming short and fail. At such time our director will get the commitment of all the actresses who will play the protagonists, with set dates, and so on. He will also cast for the rest of the characters. That’s the normal process.
In the meantime we are busy with our Stream Channel, adding films, working on the promotion and doing all the things needed to reach our high goals. It is very complicated work and it’s getting done … slowly, one step at a time.. one subscriber at a time, one film at a time. It is slowly growing, that’s why we have the Three Months For 25 bucks going until the end of this month.
It’s something we will be doing for months and when we are done setting up all the films we have, we will continue with new stuff. There are a number of possibilities we’re considering to increase the number of films.
Jac is working on the post production of many of our delayed projects. The last few weeks were very complicated, he had to work on two of our projects that are entering a deal to have a wider release and to accomplish that goal some of the requirements are to upgrade those films’s assets, Jac is working to meet the DIGITAL SOURCE SPECIFICATIONS. At least four of our films are getting that wider release.
He’s also working on the post of the films that were completed a while ago but the post productions was delayed for many reasons. He’s currently finishing Agent Honey Trap. But he’s also editing the CruXbound films with Simonne, the two of them.
AI is something new for us and we’re looking into possibilities of using it with live shooting. Like using some establishing shots with a lot of people and then having our footage integrated into that. It sounds difficult, specially with the limitations of the current AI apps or whatever they are.
We had an offer, after Jac got what he’s using now, for an AI generating app that apparently can be used to have consistent characters and locations for different clips. That sounds great, but he won’t put the money down before testing it.
bulbe good i see you manage hailuoai.video well !!!
Nice work !!
It’s not hailuoai.video, it’s a different AI app. Different company. It’s worth exploring for the potential AI has, however, nothing replaces the amazing work we do with our people, the amazing actresses, the actors, the crews… all of it. Jac spent a few hours one afternoon producing a bunch of clips with different characters, using AI, it was a good distraction for him, to keep his mind away from the pain of losing Rocky, he might put together a longer clip with all the material he got to show what it does, maybe.
Jac is also finishing the film with Dani, probably this week, and he’ll jump into the one with Ligia. That’s the work for now.
That’s it for now, info coming soon.
