Image of Lina Romay from Female Vampire (1973).
No — please. It’s my favorite kind of film (even though I watched Fido tonight and *loved* it). My neighborhood is going to be a mess this year, and no one is having a party, so my column this week is my top ten (okay, very offbeat retro and uber-campy barely softcore) lesbian vampire films. Here’s a snip, to hopefully add to your Halloween viewing list:
(…) “The Hunger” was great, though “Vampyros Lesbos” is overrated. Terrified women running from serial killers and monsters are as over as that “sexy schoolgirl” in a bag outfit. In essence, our hunger is only appeased by movies which contain a mixture of lip-licking sexual perversities, delightfully taboo desires, warm and familiar occult influences, a dose of ritualistic sadomasochism whenever possible, powerful and wicked naked girls, campiness fit for any queen, and the satisfaction of knowing that being evil is way more fun than being good any day of the week. Feel free to peruse my list of favorite, unapologetically obscure and ultra-campy softcore vampire flicks from the last century. Join the forces of darkness (and don’t forget the cocktails) for the comforts that an evening of pure feminine evil can provide.
10. “Vampyres” (1974). Directed by the Spanish Jose Larraz and starring Marianne Morris and Anulka, this enjoyable film is hailed as one of the rare treatments of vampirism as an explicitly male fantasy in which women are simultaneously objects of terror and desire. Two malevolently sexy female vampires live in a lovely, decaying old mansion and casually lure passers by into their lair for lunch. Their lunch, that is. One of the victims sports a woody for one of the vampires, and decides to stay, aware of the fact that he’s just her favorite snack, all the while becoming weaker and weaker … Chock full of that good old amour fou, this film lives up to being labeled with “hallucinatory eroticism” and delivers an artfully claustrophobic, sexually explicit tale difficult to forget.
9. “Countess Dracula” (1970). Starring stacked British siren Ingrid Pitt, this movie is enticingly hailed as “the most erotic Hammer film,” presumably because it has more states of undress than any other made at that time. In it, Pitt plays the role of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess” to the delicious and oversexed hilt. It seems that our poor little rich countess needs to bathe in the blood of unsuspecting virgins in order to retain her supple, uh, youth. Set in the colorful Middle Ages in perfectly gloomy castles and with those easy-to-remove period costumes a la Hammer Horror, it’ll make you want to say “clean the tub tonight, dear, we’re having guests …”
8. “The Bare Breasted Countess,” a.k.a. “Female Vampire” (1973). Jess Franco, a man with a reputation for many excesses himself, came from Spain to direct nearly 200 films. His style branded him as Europe’s Ed Wood, with campy hit-and-miss, violent-erotic movies that are mostly miss and whose weaknesses lie sadly in production values. But when Franco is “on,” you are captive to nothing short of offbeat, brilliant filmmaking. Such is the case with “The Bare Breasted Countess,” starring Franco’s fetish-actress Lina Romay. This nearly X-rated confection centers on the delectable Romay as the mute and mysterious Countess Irena Karnstein, taking a bloody little (then modern) holiday in Portugal. Apparently for our vamp, her sustenance is only satisfying when orally extracted from trouser snakes and sweaty little crevasses — arguably a display of nature at its best. Romay’s portrayal of unconscious animal eroticism is pretty flawless, the story ends rather nicely, and the entire film is a pleasure to consume. Urp! (…)
Link.
