Posts Tagged ‘LGBT’
This is why you don't bring a knife to scythe fight.
Note: this review contains spoilers. Proceed with caution.
According to exploitation legend, the story of Fascination started when Jean Rollin imagined two turn-of-the-century women dancing, and indeed that is the image that opens the film. The women are Elizabeth (Franca Mai) and Eva (Brigitte Lahaie), two of a circle of noblewomen, led by Hélène (Fanny Magier), who have developed a taste for human blood and lure unsuspecting men to their midnight ceremonies. Into their clutches wanders Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), a thief on the run from the partners he’s double-crossed. In short, it’s pretty much lesbian vampire story 1A. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Brigitte Lahaie, Evelyne Thomas, Exploitation, Fanny Magier, Franca Mai, Georgie Fromentin, Jacques Marbeuf, Jean Rollin, Jean-Marie Lemaire, Lesbian Horror, LGBT, Muriel Montossé, Sophie Noël, Vampire
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One of Van Gogh's lesser known works: Crazy Woman and Sunflowers.
There are good directors, there are bad directors, and then there are directors like Jesús “Jess” Franco. I like Franco, but the man is a cipher: his œuvre consists of a great many bad films and a few gems; he seems often to be technically incompetent, but he was good enough to A.D. for Orson Welles; his films are often blatantly pornographic and shamelessly exploitative, but a very few of them are honest-to-god works of genius. You can watch ten of his movies, and nine of them will be awful. Then, just when you’re about to dismiss him as a hack, the tenth will be a weird, surreal, seemingly-accidental masterpiece. I honestly can’t decide if he’s just a hack who happened to make a few good films from some twisted law of probability or if he’s a good director who only occasionally cared enough, was given enough money, and free enough reins to put in some effort. My relationship with Franco’s work is a constant search for those aberrations in his œuvre. [...]
Tags: 2000s, Carmen Montes, Exploitation, Fata Morgana, Jess Franco, Lesbian Horror, LGBT, Lina Romay, Snakewoman, Vampire, Vampyros Lesbos
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Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda): mysterious vampire, interpretive dancer.
Linda Westinghouse (Ewa Strömberg) is a lawyer who has a recurring dream about a mysterious brunette (Soledad Miranda, credited as Susann Korda) whom she later, on a date with her boyfriend, Omar (Andrés Monales), sees dancing in a nightclub. The dance involves Miranda taking off her clothes and putting them on a mannequin, which brings the doll to life. “You are very excited,” says Omar to Linda. Linda denies it, but in a session with her therapist, Dr. Steiner (Paul Müller) — who doodles distractedly in his notebook, which quite subtly sets up a recurring theme of masculine disregard for women’s experiences — we learn otherwise; Linda confesses that her dreams of Miranda have more than once brought her to orgasm. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Andrés Monales, Beni Cardoso, Dennis Price, Ewa Strömberg, Exploitation, Jaime Chávarri, Jess Franco, José Martínez Blanco, Lesbian Horror, LGBT, Manfred Hübler, Paul Müller, Siegfried Schwab, Soledad Miranda, Vampire, Vampyros Lesbos
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Harriet (Sally Faulkner) learns that everyone is a critic. Even lesbian vampires.
Before proceeding, I want to warn you that this review contains spoilers for the ending. But this is the internet and you’re probably here to be spoiled, so:
Vampyres opens on a day-for-night shot of a Victorian Gothic country house, then zooms in on a window. Inside the house, we find two naked women in bed together. A man climbs the stairs outside their room, enters, and shoots them to death. You have to admire the efficiency of that opening; it tells us right away what kind of film we’re watching: Zoom and day-for-night? OK, it’s a 1970s British horror film. Naked lesbians? Ah! It’s a 1970s lesbian horror film. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Anulka Dziubinska, Brian Deacon, D. Daubeney, Harry Waxman, José Ramón Larraz, Lesbian Horror, LGBT, Marianne Morris, Michael Byrne, Sally Faulkner, Thomas Owen, Vampire, Vampyres
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Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) knows the importance of colour coordinating your eye patch.
Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) is mute since being raped as a child. One day, she leaves the family farm and follows a man who seemingly can’t stop talking to the city. As you might’ve guessed, it doesn’t end well. The man, Tony (Heinz Hopf), is a pimp who forces Madeleine into prostitution and heroin addiction. After at first refusing, Madeleine soon has her mind changed by a scalpel to the eye. Despite the steady heroin supply, Madeleine doesn’t very much like prostitution, and sets out to get her revenge on Tony and the tricks. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Action, Bo Arne Vibenius, Christina Lindberg, Exploitation, Heinz Hopf, Heroin, LGBT, Prostitution, Rape, Revenge, Vengeance
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Canady girls start training for a life of piracy at an early age.
May Dove Canady (Angela Bettis) had an isolated childhood with only one real friend: Suzy, a doll in glass case. As her mother told her, “If you can’t find a friend, make one.” She works in a veterinary hospital with Polly (Anna Faris), who seems attracted to May but makes fun of her weirdness. Then one day she meets Adam (Jeremy Sisto), a mechanic who claims to “like weird.”
All May really wants is to fit in, to connect to someone, but the more she tries, the more put off people are by her; it’s ironic that she’s most conventionally attractive once she stops pretending to be “normal” and just turns all the crazy dials to eleven (the oddly anachronistic slang is a touch of genius, by the way). [...]
Tags: 2000s, Angela Bettis, Anna Faris, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Jeremy Sisto, LGBT, Lucky McKee, May
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Downtown stars Jess Franco himself as Al Pereira, a down-trodden, debt-ridden private eye. One day a dame enters his office and, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, offers him a job he can’t refuse. The dame (Lina Romay) claims she’s the wife of a local mobster and wants Pereira to get photos of him (the mobster, not Franco) cheating on her. As you might already have guessed, things don’t go quite as planned, and Pereira gets entangled in the con Lina Romay’s character, Cynthia, has got going with her girlfriend, Lola (Martine Stedil). As you do. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Exploitation, Jess Franco, LGBT, Lina Romay, Martine Stedil, Neo-Noir
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Also known as Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay (Bruno Gantillo, 1971).
The 70s: drugs, disco, and lesbian horror. Morgane et ses nymphes is one of the better examples of the latter — atmospheric and sensual, if, as is typical for the genre, a bit slow. There’s a lot of skin on display, and lots of, fairly tame, lesbian sex. Like the best lez horror films, Morgane relies more on a dreamlike mise-en-scène than on cheap thrills, and is better for it. The acting is highly variable, but Alfred Baillou plays the dwarf Gurth with great pathos and Dominique Delpierre is commanding as Morgane.
Endings often disappoint me in lez horror, but Morgane gets it right. Definitely watchable.
Tags: 1970s, Alfred Baillou, Bruno Gantillo, Dominique Delpierre, Exploitation, Lesbian Horror, LGBT
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Also known as The Living Dead Girl (Jean Rollin, 1982).
In this Rollin classic, Catherine (Françoise Blanchard) is raised from the dead by a toxic spill, and returns to her old home, where, protected by her childhood “blood sister”, Hélène (Marina Pierro), she goes on a killing spree. [...]
Tags: 1980s, Exploitation, Françoise Blanchard, Jean Rollin, LGBT, Marina Pierro, Vampire
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