Vampyres

Vampyres is a truly atypical genre film. The girls have no fangs, their victims do not become vampires, and theirs is not so much an aversion to sunlight as a dislike. It eschews traditional bloodsucker conventions in favor of atmosphere and eroticism, and the result, though English in origin, seems more like one of the Continental horror films being made at the same time--probably thanks to Spanish director Jose Larraz.

Marianne Morris and Anulka are gorgeous and sadly sympathetic as the two undead lovers. Though slowly paced, there is an ample amount of suspense and a great deal of gore, as the beautiful ladies lick the spurting blood from the open wounds of their victims. The film also contains some of the most incredibly erotic sex scenes in any horror film (please see the uncut X-rated version). Add a Gothic mansion, plenty of lush autumnal scenery, and poetic shots of the vamps running through a graveyard at dawn, and you get a thoroughly beautiful motion picture that you won't soon forget.

If you're thinking about working the midnight oil, don't. Showcasing the "femme fatale" category comes this European cult classic, and I'm glad to find it better than most....as long as it's not an action-adventure feature filled with lurid junk. Sex and eroticism aside, the feminist vampire idea actually works and does deliver extensive chills to make it worth the late-night shift. As horrifying as it sounds, it is effectively bloody and doesn't keep you away from the occuring eroticism. While we have the sensation of being in the dark and shivering in our seats, the movie sometimes doesn't know where to turn. A lot of wandering around creates confusion and lessens the full feeling of eeriness. I'm not sure if you've seen the Hammer movies, and neither have I, but there's enough in VAMPYRES to satisfy your blood-curled taste for fear. I'd be dead wrong to hate movies that have loads of sex. This one counts, and because it has the right type of atmosphere. Good for its kind.

Okay...this film's not for everyone. It's filled with 70's-style Euro-trash lesbian and hetero sex, loads of gore, and was shot in three weeks on a rather, ahem...modest budget, by a director who could barely speak English. The script was probably 30 pages long. But there's something afoot here. It's not un-artful, it has flashes of real chills, and it's dripping in subtext, something today's Jason/Freddy/et.al. films sorely lack. The relationship between the male protagonist, who suspects the woman making love to him is a vampire, and the vampire herself, who chooses to slowly drain him of blood rather than kill him outright like her other victims, is bizarrely moving (and kinky) on a few levels. This film won't make you forget, say, the Christopher Lee Hammer films...but it will be hard to forget in and of itself and for its own hard-earned merits.

The American Cinemateque gave a hundred or so lucky viewers the opportunity to watch what is likely to be the only surviving 35MM print of this film. Having seen dozens and dozens of Vampire-themed pictures, VAMPYRES certainly rates as one of the better little-seen titles in the sub-genre. Erotic, atmospheric and genuinely creepy, this film deserves fuller treatment in genre cinema studies. It is certainly the most 'oral' of all vampire pictures (you'll fully comprehend what I mean when you see it). A perfect double bill with the similarly themed (and even better) DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS.

Have you ever been bored of either the pathetic shot-on-video goth fantasies that seem to clog up the shelves, or even good old Jess Franco's cool but boring sleaze epics? This film is pretty much alone in the Lesbian Vampire genre in that it has real zeal - the girls really seem to get into their roles and the result is the most erotic non-porn feature I've ever seen. Excellent stuff.