The Vampires Night Orgy

Ok so there are no orgies, but who cares?

Hey this one isn't bad at all. Bus load of tourists takes a wrong turn and winds up in a town that at first seems un-inhabited but it turns out is filled with cannibalistic creatures who only come out at night. They're not really vampires but attack their victims en-mass and tear them to pieces. They also disable the bus so the stranded tourists can't escape. After all, we wouldn't want 'din-din' to run away, now would we?

Surprisingly, there's not a lot of gore in this considering the theme, but there's enough creepy atmosphere in this setting that it makes it mildly entertaining. The townspeople chasing the car with Jack Taylor and Dyanik Zurakowska reminds me of the chase scene in the recently released DAGON while the "they aren't to be believed" ending is straight out of TWO THOUSAND MANIACS.

You'll have to see all three of them to know what I'm talking about. Still, I recommend this one if you're into 70s Euro horror and want to see some sexy babes in it. Like Helga Line as the local, blood Countess. She was hot.

DVD is ok although the picture quality isn't anything to rave about, plus there are no extras except a trailer.

It's a few steps above anything Jess Franco was putting out at the time. I liked it. Check it out.

6 out of 10

Like so many movies that are dubbed, there is a disjointedness to the dialog that gets in the way sometimes. I'm sure Europeans feel the same way about English language films. When things transpire, it's almost like one character waits for another to say something. It really louses up the suspense. This film begins on a mini-bus and its characters are stunned when a man dies and is put in the back, under a blanket. It gets late and they decide to put off going to their final destination and stop over in a little town. What they don't know is that there is a Vampire subculture living there, who not only feast off the innocent, but give up their own body parts for food if it will lead to more blood for them. There is a mistress of the dark who runs things and makes decisions for them. I won't go through the plot, but there is some humor, some terror, some bad decisions, and a host of pretty scary figures, closing in on innocent victims. It even breaks the movie rule about the killing of a little child. There is some gratuitous imagery, sexual content 70's style, but it's very tame. The movie does make an impression, and is better than many others of its era.

Reminiscent of Piero Regnoli's THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE and Jean Brismee's THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE, Leon Klimovsky's THE VAMPIRES' NIGHT ORGY finds a busload of disparate characters stranded in the middle of a desolate Carpathian countryside and forced to rely on the kindness of strangers... who turn out to be vampires under the domination of an Anne Ricean queen played by veteran Euro-cult actress Helga Line (the ill-starred foreign agent in Eugenio Martin's HORROR EXPRESS). Eschewing fangwork and the usual Gothic trappings of the vampire mythos, Klimovsky and his screenwriters (Antonio Fos had co-written Eloy de la Iglesia's CANNIBAL MAN and CLOCKWORK TERROR) return to European folklore to present shabby, homely revenants whose attacks, while relatively bloodless, effectively communicate a vibe of disgust and dread.

Rounding out the stellar international cast is American expatriate actor Jack Taylor (recently seen in Roman Polanski's THE NINTH GATE), Dianik Zurakowska (CAULDRON OF BLOOD, THE HANGING WOMAN), Manuel de Blas (ASSIGNMENT: TERROR, THE HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE), Luis Ciges (HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES and Pedro Almodovar's LABYRINTH OF PASSION) and Fernando Bilbao (FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD, DRACULA PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN).

Known mostly for war films and westerns, the Argentina-born Leon Klimovsky directed THE VAMPIRES' NIGHT ORGY during a period of exclusive horror filmmaking, which included the popular Paul Naschy vehicles THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN, DR. JEKYLL AND THE WOLFMAN and the superior THE SAGA OF THE DRACULAS (which also featured Helga Line).

A Euro-cult classic, and well worth seeking out.

I haver to say that I quite liked this film. The story is a mix of Brigadoon, And then there were none and a vampire film. A busload of people off to work in a remote castle have to stop in a small village because their bus driver died. The town is deserted on the first night and the group take rooms in the local Inn which on the next day is normally populated. You may guess it: the inhabitants are vampires. In order to feed their guests they chop off their own limbs which leads to a scene that almost made me throw up although no gore was involved. It is simply showing the "giant" wielding the axe to chop off a leg and then a succulent joint of roast meat in the next scene. we all know what they are eating of course and they keep talking about that delicious special flavour. Amidst nudity the members of the group are then chased one by one. The story in itself is not original but the film is very atmospheric with an isolated mountain village in Spain being a fresh and interesting location. The version I watched was the one that was cut down to about 80 minutes. Unfortunatzely they cut the nudity but 80 minutes is actuall quite a good running time for that fairly thin story. So all in all, this is quite an entertaining film. I just find it amazing how many horror films were produced in Spain duriung the last years of the Franco dictatorship.

The best thing in "Orgy" is the opening montage of widescreen images showing the eerily empty village it will be set in--the colors, framing and frozen-in-time architecture are all impressive, suggesting a medieval town depopulated by plague. Then the story starts, which is immediately a bit of a comedown because the English-dubbed dialogue is particularly stilted and awkward. A bus load of people gets waylaid by an accident, forced to accept the hospitality of a countess who's a little too delighted to have some actual "humans" as company for a night or three. Of course we assume these travelers will never leave again. One by one they are attacked by those the Countess has presumably already made into vampires like herself, and then they become vampires too.

The cast is okay, their badly dubbed (presumably by unrelated actors) dialogue notwithstanding. There is a bit of female nudity, and at least one limb-severing. But there isn't much gore, or even blood; mostly we just get grinning groups of people in pancake makeup swarming screaming victims who'll next be seen sporting pancake makeup (and fangs) too. There are no memorable setpieces--Klimovsky is, as usual, a director whose style can best be called workmanlike.

Still, it does look look nice in its widescreen format, with good use of locations. While the soundtrack may be wildly dated--and it sure doesn't help generate suspense--it's also a joy in terms of serving up various types of vintage psychedelic rock, muzak and general pseudo-hip schlock. I didn't recognize any tracks in particular, but if you've heard CD compilations of prime sonic Eurotrash scoring, this is a whole movie of the most primo such stuff.