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nTitle: Vampyres (1974)
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nDirector: Jose Ramon Larraz
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nCast: Marianne Morris, Anulka, Dziubinska
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nI’ve been catching up with the whole Lesbian Vampirensub-genre and it’s been a trip. Weirdest thing about these movies is that mostnof them are very well made and beautiful to look at, also, most of the timenthey lean more towards being artful and beautiful to look at. Vampiros Lesbosn(1971) and The Living Dead Girl (1982) surprised me in that way, as did Daughters ofDarkness (1971), which I like to call ‘the classy one’. Vampyres always gets mentioned as an important part of the subngenre, so I decided to finally give it a spin. Up to this point, I’d seen nothingnbut good lesbian vampire movies, this I’m sad to inform was the first of thenbunch to disappoint me. Why? Well, my disappointment lies in the film being sonsimple minded, I mean, there’s no meat to this film. The story starts withnthese two lesbian chicks making out in bed and suddenly this mysterious dudencomes in and shoots them. Talk about coitus interruptus! So anyways, after thatnthey become vampires. Their modus operandi in order to feed is to use theirnfemale powers on men who pass by their castle. Then they ask for a ride andnwham, guys fall in the trap like flies on a spider web.
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nI don’t mind simplicity in a film if said film compensatesnwith something else, like for example style, or action. Gore will do the tricknas well. Maybe even funny elements? The only thing this film has to offer isnnudity, and tons of it. These vampire girls are naked practically throughoutnthe whole film, in fact, the film starts with the girls naked in bed! I don’tncomplaint when there are beautiful women up on the screen, but when that’s allnthe film has to offer, and everything else falls flat, then the film feels likena poor excuse for a porn film. It feels empty. I mean, this literally feelsnlike soft porn. I didn’t get this empty feeling with films like The Vampire Lovers (1970) or even Vampiros Lesbosn(1971). In those films, the nudity is tantalizing and yeah, why not, gratuitous,nbut at the same time, the nudity wasn’t these films main focus, the nudity isnlike an extra. Plus, there was always the beautiful cinematography, thenlocations, the atmosphere, the gore! Vampyres lacks a lot in all these places,nall it has going for it are the naked girls, everything else is simply put:nboring as hell.
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nThe films plot reminded me a bit of Clive Barker’snHellraiser (1987) because it is a film about women using their sensuality tonreel in their victims, unfortunately, Vampyres has none of the shock value seennin Hellraiser. The film did have a couple of chances to be shocking, but itncompletely wasted them to completely bore us to death. For example there’s thisnscene in which the girls feed on this guy, and we see blood all over the place,nbut where are the wounds? The blood seems simply put on the actors beforenfilming the scenes, it wasn’t gushing out of any wound. And speaking of wounds,nthere is this one scene that kind of got my attention in which one of thenvampire girls slits this dudes wrist and starts sucking on the open wound, itnwas a pretty nasty sequence, which by the way just went on and on and on. Inhave to admit it had me cringing, but unfortunately that’s as far as this movienwent in terms of getting a reaction from me. The other thing I did enjoy wherensome of the shots of the castle during the night, these scenes where trulyneerie, made even cooler because this is the same castle in which The RockynHorror Picture Show (1975) was shot in! I thought I recognized that castle!
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nNow if you’re the kind of person who is satisfied with anfilm that focuses entirely on nudity and sex, then by all means indulge! Thesenactresses are beautiful and well, they do go down on each other on more thannone occasion. Speaking of the sex scenes on this movie, they are feral, almostnanimal like. The girls are vampires so that’s to be expected I guess, but onendude is like all beastly when he has sex with one of the vampire vixens. So anyhow,nI wasn’t impressed at all with this one, I’d recommend it to hardcore fans of vampirenfilms, but even then you might be disappointed because there are no fangs, nongore and none of the traditional things you’d expect to see in a vampire film.nYou almost feel like these girls are simply weird girls who like to drink blood.nVampyres was my first real disappointment in the lesbian vampire sub genre, I recommendnseeing other films in this genre before wasting your time with this one.
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nRating: 2 out of 5
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