Blood of the Virgins

Argentina's first vampire film is a potboiler enlivened with plenty of sex and violence. At its best moments, it recalls Jean Rollin's stylish vampire movies with almost surreal scenes of sexy female vampires wandering through the night in their negligees and seducing innocent men. At its worst, this is a tepid, often boring and predictable yarn that runs through all the old clichés without adding much in the way that's new in the genre, and it suffers from a serious lack of pacing in the second half. The plot is the old tried-and-trusted story of "a group of blokes and birds spend the night in a spooky location and are attacked by vampires" which seemingly fuelled an endless array of European horror films during the '60s and '70s. Director Emilio Vieyra (also responsible for the truly demented CURIOUS DR. HUMPP) has confessed that he's a big fan of detective stories and the second half of this film plays like a mystery, with a man investigating the strange illness of his girlfriend which is caused by... well, I'm sure you can guess.

Where BLOOD OF THE VIRGINS excels is in its exploitational aspects. There's a great prologue (which reminds one of the mini-movie at the beginning of VAMPIRE CIRCUS) in which a vampire is thwarted when his prospective bride marries her cousin. The cinematography is colourful at all times, although some of those '60s fashions are definitely a bit garish. Be sure to check out the incredible nightclub sequence near the start of the film in which travelogue footage is interspersed with naked strippers dancing on a table while a guy in huge joke-shop glasses ogles them in disbelief. Definitely dated, and played for laughs anyway. Another bizarre aspect of the film is the repeated red-tinted shots of seagulls we see in place of the more traditional bats. Now, I like a change as much as the next man, and the use of seagulls is something a bit different, but why? An explanation would have been helpful!

Unfortunately, the characters are a bit dull and lifeless, the cast wooden and unmotivated. The hero in particular is one of those "tweed suit" guys with long sideburns whom you just can't help disliking. The vampiric Count is a direct Dracula rip-off and doesn't get much dialogue, being more of a silent menace like Christopher Lee in Dracula, PRINCE OF DARKNESS. The film does pick up for an action-packed finale, shown in unflinching detail with gore splashing everywhere, but this scene comes as too little to late. BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE is a nice try, but a poor excuse for a horror film only for those really obsessive completionist horror fans.

Buxom blonde Ofelia (Susana Beltrán) is pressured by her family into marrying Eduardo, even though she loves Gustavo (Walter Kliche). What she doesn't know is that the man she really loves is actually a vampire. On Ofelia's wedding night, Gustavo sneaks into the marital bedroom as Eduardo is getting busy with his new wife, stabs the man through the neck with a dagger, and ends Ofelia's life by draining her of blood.

Later, when Ofelia has been buried, Gustavo goes to her grave to see her rise from the dead as a bloodsucker. The pair are reunited. Cue groovy, animated, psychedelic titles…

Titles over, we are introduced to a group of hippies/beatniks who are on holiday, sightseeing, skiing and attending swinging parties where the women take off their clothes to jiggle their bits. While driving down a remote road, the gang's van runs out of fuel, leaving them stranded, cold and miles from their destination. Fortunately, one of the them is familiar with the area and knows of an abandoned lodge not too far away, so the group head for shelter, unaware that vampire Gustavo and his big-breasted 'bride' are lurking nearby, waiting to feed.

Directed by Argentinian Emilio Vieyra, who also gave us the bizarre cult classic The Curious Case of Dr. Humpp (1969), and the rather entertaining oddity The Deadly Organ (1967), Blood of the Virgins is packed with wild visuals, jazzy music, soft-core sex, a smattering of gore, and hot women with large breasts (Vieyra might not be able to tell a seagull from a bat, but his good taste in women is in no doubt—as well as Beltrán, there's also gorgeous brunette Gloria Prat as Laura, one of the vamps' victims), all of which makes it a reasonable time-waster despite the rather routine plot and some atrocious acting.

A group of obnoxious swingers are touring the vamp's area when their hippie van collapses,leaving them to spend an unforgettable and seemingly unlivable evening at the Count's lodge.The Count has kept an unwilling yet equally undead bride in his clutches and the blood begins to flow...I kind of enjoyed this trashy little flick,however there are some incredibly dull and boring spots.The acting is very bad,the atmosphere is non-existent,but if you are a fan of exploitation flicks,who enjoys watching bare breasts of some fine looking Argentinian ladies you may want to give this blood-sucker a try.Cinematically we're treated to numerous topless Go-Go dancers who wiggle wildly to cool-school jazz while inserts of sea gulls double for vampire bats.Vieyra's genre credits include:"The Deadly Organ",the mind-blowing "Curious Dr. Humpp" and of course "Blood of the Virgins".My generous rating:6 out of 10.

Obviously, this is not a great movie but it has its charms (several pairs of them actually). It has lots of Argentinean mujeres sin ropas, it has a male vampire who seems to be sucking his blood out of something else on his female victims besides their necks, it has a female vampire in a see-through teddy who becomes so engrossed in softcore sex sessions with her male victims that she often forgets to bite them at all, it has long, strange interludes of topless go-go dancing, it has a recurring red-tinted shots of birds flying for some reason, and it has the old familiar stranded-travelers-in a-haunted-castle plot except that the travelers are all Argentinean hippies and the whole thing is in Spanish! As you might have guessed this is from the same director as the "Curious Dr. Humpp" (aka "The Vengeance of Sex"). It features the same two top-heavy actresses, Gloria Pratt and Susan Beltram, except that they're in color here and naked frequently enough to give their infamous countrywoman Isabela Sarli a run for the money in the sexploitation sweepstakes. It was probably not as good of film as "The Curious Dr. Humpp" originally, but it's in better shape because unlike the earlier film it seems to be in it's original south-of-the-border form and is not heavily padded with American-shot inserts of some truly unattractive Times Square "actresses". Not a great movie, but if you see only one 1960's Argentinean vampire movie this year, make it this one.

South America isn't best known for producing films; but there were a handful of decent horror films coming out of places like Mexico and Brazil in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Argentina is one of the less well known for producing horror; although they did deliver The Curious Dr. Humpp in 1971, and also this film in 1967. Blood of the Virgins (not to be confused with the probably superior Harald Reinl film from the same year) is not a great film by any means and I can certainly understand why it doesn't exactly have a strong fan base as it could have been a lot better, but it is at least a decent way to waste seventy five minutes. The film starts by focusing on two lovers; Ofelia and an eerie stranger named Gustavo. Ofelia is due to be married to a suitor and naturally her lover doesn't take too kindly to that so, being a vampire, he decides to kill the husband and turn Ofelia into a vampire so the pair can spend all eternity together. We then cut to 1960 where a bunch of dumb kids take shelter in an abandoned lodge after breaking down.

The start of the film actually seemed like the opening to a really interesting vampire movie; so it's a real shame that writer and director Emilio Vieyra got lazy and decided to go with the old 'bunch of kids' routine rather than focusing on the far more interesting story of Ofelia and her vampire lover. I guess he figured that the kids would sell better and that's a shame as the film becomes completely routine after the first fifteen minutes. The atmosphere is good at the start of the film too as the director keeps things nicely shrouded in mystery, but this too evaporates after the film moves into its second stage. Naturally, the acting is nothing to write home about and nobody particularly impresses for doing anything over than delivering a camp performance. There's a fair bit of gore, which is nice except for the fact that it all looks very cheap and fake. Overall, I probably would have better things to say about this film if the opening fifteen minutes were stretched out over the seventy five minute running time; but nevertheless, Blood of the Virgins is just about worth a look for horror fans.