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Vampyres

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Finally saw it. -- So what's all the fuss about?
Review: Well, after literally decades of hearing tales of the notoriety of this film and seeing the most highly titillating stills from it prominently featured in my vampire movie books, I finally took the "daring" plunge and actually sought it out and watched it. -- And my opinion of it? Well I dunno, maybe I've been letting my naughty imagination get the best of me all these years or maybe my moral standards are especially low, but my reaction was kind of "oh, is that all there was to it?"

For all the hubbub, I was actually expecting there to be much more sex, violence and gore than there turned out to be. By today's standards, I actually found it quite tame. Yes, there is a lot of nudity in it, but none of it is of the full-frontal variety showing the genital area. What simulated coitus there is, is neither particularly graphic nor convincing. And the worst of the film's violence all occurs off-screen. Granted, if you find lots and lots of fake blood scary, you MAY get a chill or two. But heck, these vamps don't even have FANGS fer cryin' out loud!

Anulka doesn't really have to act much, just stand/lie there and look pretty. Marianne Morris does do a bit more and does make an adequate female vamp. And the much-hyped lesbian scenes are also quite limited and nothing particularly special by today's standards.

What I did like very much was the ambience that the wonderful locations of the manor house and the English countryside in autumn give to the film. I would say that it was this, and also the tasteful direction which shows a nice appreciation for the value of quiet and silence, which combine with the actors to create a film a bit better than adequate.

Overall I'd rate this movie a bit better than 3.5 stars, and thanks to the outstanding job they have done on this DVD I have no problems with bumping it up to a full 4 stars. Not only does the film look fabulously and immaculately restored, but the extras are also good. The best part was the 15-minute interview segment with the actresses today. I would say that Anulka Dziubinska looks even hotter today, some 30 years later. -- No small feat, and certainly a very rare occurrence!

You also get a commentary from the director and the producer of the film, as well as a still gallery of a missing scene, an Anulka modelling career still gallery, plus the usual trailer, and even a computer file version of the classic but out of print book on this film. All in all, a wonderful package. Blue Underground deserve to be very proud of the excellent job they have done on this DVD. It's great to see a classic B-movie like this given the proper respect it deserves.

As for me, well I guess I'm still in the market for a lesbian vampire flick which lives up to the expectations I've created in my head all these years. (Attention, filmmakers....!) What I'm looking for is something more extreme and graphic than this, but still without the yucky tackiness of porn and with the polished production values and great atmosphere of this film. (--Yeah I know about the Donald Glut videos, but I said WITH production values.) So the market is out here, folks. Now let's see what you can do.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna go run off my fave lesbian vampire film of all time, "The Vampire Lovers". Yeah nowhere near even as graphic as this one, but just brimming with delicious atmosphere, and ahhhh, Ingrid Pitt... (*swoons*)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Still the best erotic vampire movie ever.
Review: Where to begin.....
As far as an erotic vampire movie goes, look no further. As far as a savage and gory vampire movie goes, look no further. As far as an interesting story goes with great cinematography to boot, look no further.

This movie came out in 1974 and had to be edited by the censors for release in most countries. The footage that had been cut has been put back in for this excellent dvd release from Anchor Bay. It was directed by Spanish director Joseph Larraz and filmed in England on Hammer Studios sets.

The story goes something like this:
Two women are making love in a bed and someone walks in on them and shoots them. Next thing we know a man (Murray Brown) is driving through the countryside and picks up a woman (Marianne Morris) along the road. They go to her place which just happens to be a huge manor home in the middle of nowhere. They end up having sex and the next thing he know it is next morning. He feels weak and notices a nasty cut on his arm and the girl is nowhere to be found. He gets in his car a drives a little ways along the dirt road leading out of the estate when he runs across a couple who have picked this site to park their trailer and go camping. They help the man bandage his cut and after a little while he leaves. He runs across the strange woman he picked up the night before and they go back to the estate. Her friend (Anulka Dziubinska) has picked up another man and before too long the two couples have made their way to the bedrooms. The first man makes love to the woman but this time we see her sucking blood out of the cut on his arm. Her friend walks in and they go to the other bedroom where he lover is lying face up up on the bed covered in blood. They both start an orgiastic feast on the man and when they are done they drag him out of the room.

The next morning the first man wakes up and and makes his way to the highway in his car when he slows down for a car wreck along the road. The bloody body behind the wheel is the man he had seen at the house the prior evening. He drives back to the estate and starts wandering around and winds up getting locked in the cellar. The girls return, find and release him, and he goes back up to the bedroom.

Meanwhile, while all of this has been going on, the woman on vacation in the trailer has become terribly interested in the goings on at the estate and keeps trying to get her husband interested. He feels it is none of their business and is content to go fishing and wishes his wife would just be happy with her paintings that she has been working on.

That night, the girls at the estate bring home another man they picked up and they end up going down to the wine cellar. Before too long he is a bloody mess and the first man has now left and made his way to the trailer.

The couple in the trailer are horrified to see the condition that the man is in so the husband goes out to the car to go get help. Before he can take off the women attack him in the car and kill him. The wife goes out to check on him and starts screaming when she sees his bloody body in the car. The two women then attack the wife and she is dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the cellar where they strip her and then feast on her.

I have probably given away too much, but I won't give away the ending. I have read that some people thought the end was stupid and some people liked it. I happened to have liked it a lot. This is a pretty unique vampire movie and it is too bad it didn't do better at the box office, maybe then we would have had a sequel!

The dvd is presented in widescreen 1:85.1 and has a commentary on the disk by director Joseph Larraz and producer Brian Smedley-Aston. Larraz was 70 when the commentary was recorded a few years ago and is at times quite funny. At one point he yells "Eh, I can see Anulka's .... That's not on my video copy!" There are also a couple trailers, film bios and a stills gallery. The movie goes for around $17-20 and it is easily worth the money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AESTHETIC, SATANIC, INDULGING
Review: YES, THIS IS A FLIM THAT RISES ABOVE THE REST IN THE VOLATILE TIME OF EROTIC VAMPIRE FILMS IN THE EARLY 1970'S. TWO VOLUMPTOUS, BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRES USE THEIR FEMININE TALENTS AND THE AGE OLD ONE NIGHT STAND AS A FACADE TO LURE OVER-ANXIOUS MEN TO THEIR BREATHTAKING, DECREPIT OLD COUNTRY HOME. THE MEN FALL ALL TOO EASILY FOR WHAT THEY THINK WILL BE A SEXUAL RENDEZVOUS WITH TWO STRANGE, DARK WOMEN. AFTER THEY ARE ENTERTAINED, THEY FALL VICTIM TO SAVAGE DEATHS, BLOODLETTING, AND HUMILIATION. THE BRITISH COUNTRYSIDE AND THE BREATHTAKING OLD HOME CREATES A SUPERIOR AMBIENCE THAT IS CONDUCIVE FOR AN UNFORGETTABLE, EROTIC, LURID FILM. THIS FILM WILL LEAVE YOU WANTING NEVER TO RETURN TO REALITY. DARK, EVIL, BEAUTIFUL, IMPERATIVE.


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