Love, Death & Robots: Season 1 recap and review

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Sucker of Souls

I think this was my favorite episode of the entire series. It starts will a frantic chase through some old tunnels, a mercenary type guy dragging along a desperately straggling older academic type. “What the f**k was that, doctor?” yells the mercenary. “I think you know,” answers the academic.

They are covered in blood and being pursued by something otherworldly. We immediately think vampire. A time jump to just before the chase reveals the doctor and his grad student Simon unearthing some kind of ancient tomb, as Mr. Flynn, the mercenary is occupied with a crossword puzzle.

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Simon translates the tablet, “entombed here, the devourer of children, the black prince, the sucker of souls.” Well, that doesn’t sound good. It’s not long before Simon is attacked by a vampire creature, his blood rejuvenating the old vampire’s body.

Flynn and the doctor try their best to save Simon, but he is split right down the middle. All they can do is try to save themselves.

Flynn and the doctor flea down the tunnels, as we saw at the beginning. Flynn works with a team of two other mercenaries, Micky and Gary, and he tells them to get the weapons ready.

The doctor exclaims that the vampire is Dracula himself. Just as Flynn is about to get eaten, a cat distracts the monster. Dracula hates cats; legend has it that feeding on them makes his flesh burn.

So Flynn grabs the cat to scare Dracula away so that he and the doctor can escape. They make it to their base of operations where Micky and Gary are waiting for them.

They find a secret door and escape through the passage, leaving behind a brick of C4 to blow up Dracula. It does its job very well but also triggers a tunnel collapse. They get trapped in a cave with a ton of other vampires.

We’ll never know what happened to them, but the screen goes black and shrieking is heard. This is my favorite for a number of reasons, partly because it has everything I love in a vampire story – ancient archeology, atmospheric setting, blood and gore, action and strategy, and plenty of humor.

It’s fun, it’s weird, and really quite funny. Some of the characters reminded me a bit of The Fifth Element, with the Ian Holm type academic expert, the Bruce Willis type ex-soldier, and various eccentric companions. It just works.