Posts Tagged ‘Vampire’
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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"Cross-o-gram? Oh, yes. Very droll."
This review contains spoilers. Caveat lector.
So, The Nude Vampire: Dr Radamante (Maurice Lemaître) and his colleagues (Bernard Musson, Jean Aron) are evil scientists (is there any other kind), holding a young woman they believe to be a vampire (Caroline Cartier) hostage. For some reason, their plan involves a suicide cult, people in animal masks, interpretive dance, and girls in strange costumes. I’m sure it would have all played into their master plan, except before it can come to fruition, the vampire girl escapes, right into the arms of Radamante’s son, Pierre (Olivier Rollin). She’s recaptured, but not before piquing young Pierre’s curiosity. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Bernard Musson, Caroline Cartier, Exploitation, Jean Aron, Jean Rollin, Jean-Jacques Renon, Maurice Lemaître, Michel Delahaye, S.H. Mosti, Ursule Pauly, Vampire
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Yeah, that's about as dressed as Countess Karlstein (Lina Romay) gets.
Jess Franco has never really been one for tight plotting, which he proves yet again in 1973′s Female Vampire. Franco himself (under one of his many pen-names, Jess Franck) stars as Dr Roberts, a pathologist investigating a series of murders he, quite rightly, believes are being perpetrated by a vampire. Franco’s muse, Lina Romay in one of her first starring roles, plays Countess Irina Karlstein, a vampire who walks around naked and kills some people. Our leading man is Jack Taylor who plays — I dunno, a poet? He doesn’t really do much for the first hour of the film, except trim his moustache and wax philosophical in voice-over. He does have a handsome moustache, though. That’s really all the plot there is. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Exploitation, Jack Taylor, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Jess Franco, Lina Romay, Vampire
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Isabelle (Ovidie) and the winged spirit (Sabine Lenoël)
Unlike Jess Franco, who — as regular readers will remember — has regressed as director, Jean Rollin seems to have quietly grown into an accomplished auteur. His penultimate film, La nuit des horloges (“the night of the clocks”), is an artistic tour de force and by far the best Rollin film I’ve seen. Indeed, by far the best exploitation film I’ve seen in a long while. [...]
Tags: 2000s, Exploitation, Françoise Blanchard, Jean Rollin, Jean-Loup Philippe, Maurice Lemaître, Natalie Perrey, Ovidie, Sabine Lenoël, Sandrine Thoquet, Simone Rollin, Vampire
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Cross-o-gram!
Rape of the Vampire is French exploitation auteur Jean Rollin’s first feature-length film, for which he received financing after a producer saw Rollin’s short film of the same name. Rollin shot a second part, slapped it together with the original short and the result is what is reputedly the first French vampire film. Because of the strike and student protests in May 1968, French distributors froze new releases, which meant that Rape of the Vampire became the most successful French movie of that year. I’m sure Rollin would agree with Homer Simpson, that the two most beautiful words in the English language are “de” and “fault”. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Bernard Letrou, Catherine Deville, Exploitation, Jean Rollin, Marquis Polho, Solange Pradel, Ursule Pauly, 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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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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