Vampyres (1975)

the audience applauded

Best movie ever!

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the most popular exploitation sub-genre's in the 1970's was the lesbian vampire flick. It was hinted at as far back as the 1930's, using Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novel Carmilla as their primary influence, but not fully embraced until the late 1960's by Hammer Studios. As censorship wavered and the grindhouse circuit was born, films became more exploitative and the European low-budget film industry became flooded with movies by film-makers like Jess Franco. Spanish director Jose Ramon Larraz's UK-set Vampyres is one of the most fondly remembered. But, as those familiar with grindhouse movies will be fully aware, that doesn't mean it's particularly good.In an old mansion isolated in the woods, lesbian vampire couple Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) stalk the surrounding area in search of men to prey upon. They take the men back to their mansion, kill and feed on them, and then leave their bodies by the side of the road in their crashed car. A young couple, John (Brian Deacon) and Harriet (Sally Faulkner), park their camper on the mansion grounds. Harriet notices strange behaviour from the vampire couple and witnesses the physical deterioration of Ted (Murray Brown), a young man taken in by Fran.Shot at Oakley Court, location of many a Hammer horror and Dr. Frank N. Furter's castle in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Vampyres has that lush British old-school horror feel about it. The problem is, it feels like a fifty-minute film stretched out into ninety minutes, full of endless walks, curious glances, inane conversations and dull erotic scenes. When the horror does come, it doesn't hold back on the blood, featuring a couple of quite unsettling scenes of violence. It just takes so long to get there that it hardly feels worth the wait.There is also a gaping plot-hole in Fran and Miriam's approach of staging the murders as car accidents, which becomes ridiculous after we see Fran stab a victim in the back. They wait for their victims by hitch-hiking in broad daylight, and are even seen doing so by Harriet as the couple approach the castle. Just how long would it take for the police to put two and two together as the bodies quickly pile up? However, it's surprisingly well-acted, especially by the seductive Marianne Morris, whose scenes are all the more erotic when she keeps her clothes on, and the cinematography, reminiscent of Hammer, is lovely.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

If you're going to watch just one of these 'lesbian vampire' films, I recommend that you see Daughters of Darkness. But if you're going to see a few, you might stop here as well; just watch with one eye in Italian horror of the time - if the score doesn't clue you in - so you know what you're getting into.The novelty of these films, at least what was thought to be at the time, lies in swapping the formulaic traditions of the Hammer stage for feverish visions free to wander; often into sex. This is what we get here, a sensual dream about wanton desires, a bloodlust for sex and discovery. Like Jean Rollin used to do it, but with even less the touch of an adept surrealist.One strand of the plot is about beautiful women hitching rides from a countryside road to their secluded château in the woods nearby. The men all eagerly acquiesce to the seduction, to be part of the dream, because the promise of sex is implicit. Of course they are sooner or later drained by desire.The other part of the plot involves a couple who camp in the vicinity. The woman has seen the mysterious figures lurking in the woods, and again by nightfall, and so begins to imagine a story from these elements, a story involving the unspeakable horrors that from our end we get to see inside the house. But the man hasn't seen any of what she has. So he blithely goes fishing. She paints the ominous-looking house in an effort to represent, thus render finite, comprehensible.Of course by the end she ventures to investigate.

Cult reputations can be a bitch. There's just no way a modest boobs 'n' blood shocker from 1974 can survive seasoned gore hound scrutiny three and a half decades down the line, even with the heavily hyped reinstatement of a few minutes of footage deemed too extreme at the time. For those already bracing themselves for massive disappointment, a reality check may be in order. An attempt to outdo genre giant Hammer, commercially compelled to up the ante in terms of both carnage and carnality at the dawn of a new decade, VAMPYRES was made by people with a background in the British sex film industry, unlike its cross-oceanic counterpart hardly a fertile breeding ground for any artistry or ambition beyond the obvious.A comparative dark horse among the fornication filmmaking fraternity of the inhibited isles, primarily because of his Mediterranean lineage (then still synonymous with being carnally knowledgeable if not downright depraved in the minds of English-speaking "respectable" citizens on both sides of the Atlantic), José Ramon Larraz had already earned his stripes as a purveyor of psychologically wrought "erotica" rather than the snickering tits 'n' titters peekaboo farces far more prevalent in UK flea pits. WHIRLPOOL, DEVIATION and SCREAM...AND DIE! testified of a timidly developing auteur sensibility, something barely heard of in an industry interested solely in reaping maximum box office from minimal investment. It's tempting to speculate that the unending censorship problems that befell VAMPYRES, combined with the lukewarm critical reception afforded his crossover SYMPTOMS that same year, inspired the director's impromptu return to his fatherland for a career only intermittently highlighted by anything out of the ordinary such as EL MIRON (The Voyeur) or THE COMING OF SIN.A stalwart editor who had learned his trade on quintessential British cinema classics like Tony Richardson's TOM JONES and Nic Roeg and the late Donald Cammell's PERFORMANCE, Brian Smedley-Aston graduated from performing second unit chores on TV shows like Shirley MacLaine's ill-fated SHIRLEY'S WORLD to producing pseudo-porn (as close to the real deal as the BBFC would allow) with the Fiona Richmond triumvirate of EXPOSE, HARDCORE and LET'S GET LAID, very much in order of diminishing ambition. Apart from the country's then top sex symbol Ms. Richmond, and by extension her sugar daddy and fabled Revue Bar proprietor Paul Raymond, another constant on these progressively threadbare productions was his good friend James Kenelm Clarke, a classically trained composer employed on tons of '60s BBC shows. Pressed into duty as a makeshift movie maker, latter proved most adept at plying his erstwhile trade, contributing an effectively eerie score for his big screen calling card.Defiantly uneventful to the brink of art-house abstraction, VAMPYRES must make mighty strange viewing for contemporary audiences weaned on the Misty Mundae variety of bodacious bloodsuckers. It's hard to tell how much of this narrative minimalism's intentional or dictated by an allegedly active three week shooting schedule to accommodate its pittance of a budget. More low key than his outré compatriot Jess Franco, Larraz actually seems liberated rather than constrained by any potential limitations, mining the "breathing room" between set pieces for atmosphere both convincingly Gothic and genuinely erotic. Contributing extensively to the effect is the film's undoubtedly most respected artisan, veteran cinematographer Harry Waxman who shot the lofty likes of Ken Annakin's SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON and Roy Boulting's THE FAMILY WAY, equally at home wallowing in the mire of Tony Sloman's NOT TONIGHT, DARLING and Andrea Bianchi's WHAT THE PEEPER SAW.Questioning its catchpenny title, movie's vaguely Carpathian anti-heroines aren't even vampires in the traditional sense - inviting a double bill perhaps with Jean Rollin's subsequent and equally genre-bending FASCINATION, but I digress - but rather ghostly manifestations of a pair of naughty noblewomen cruelly punished for their "unnatural lust" in the cryptic pre-credits sequence. Haunting the grounds where they were slain, they appear at twilight, flagging down solitary motorists and taking them back to the mansion for some heavy petting and bloodletting, using daggers or shards of glass. One middle-aged Lothario named Ted (Murray Brown, Jonathan Harker to Jack Palance's Dracula in Dan Curtis's TV version) catches Fran's fancy who chooses to drain him more daintily than previous victims. Left to his own devices during daylight hours, Ted's perfectly capable of making his way back to civilized world so it's a clear sign of his amplifying addiction that he literally keeps coming back for more. His being recognized by local hotel's ancient retainer subtly suggests the possibility of the perpetrator's reincarnation.Film's weakest aspect is the inclusion of a couple camping nearby as observing outsiders and unnecessary audience identification figures, a thankless assignment for Brian Deacon (the catalyst caught between Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson in Michael Apted's TRIPLE ECHO) and Sally Faulkner, so good in Norman J. Warren's PREY, the latter at least granted the benefit of a memorably gruesome death scene. Mouthing most of movie's clunky dialog, these two inevitably wind up more hindrance than help. Models with limited acting experience, both professionally post-dubbed, Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska (a familiar face from '70s TV commercials) acquit themselves rather well as delectably dark and frostily fair suck sister respectively, their body language speaking veritable volumes in luxuriously lengthy liaisons. The BBFC holding a longstanding track record for nixing the mix of skin and hemoglobin, their since lifted veto accounts for the missing minutes. Larraz regular Karl Lanchbury, central stud in Trevor Wrenn's wall to wall shag fest EROTIC INFERNO, receives the most spectacular send-off in movie's most excerpted encounter.

finally got down to watching this film after seeing the interesting cover shot at a video shop and to say the least i enjoyed it. a rather intriguing take on vampires this time involving two women who are lovers and seem to inhabit a seemingly abandoned castle or estate along the desert English countryside. while the storyline and plot is rather slow paced, i did however, enjoy the lovely scenery. the two lead actresses anulka and marianne morris are attractive and easy on the eyes throughout the film and it is easy to see how they can lure and seduce their victims. however,the extremely gory and graphic death scenes were quite shocking even for me and i thought were un-necessary. over-all it was a well shot and played out film and i'd recommend it to anyone interested in the genre.