Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

In the Madeira Island, the mute Countess Irina Karlstein (Lina Romay) is the last descendant of the evil Karlstein vampire family. She lives with her also mute servant and seems to be nymphomaniac, seeking for sex most of the time without satisfaction. Irina likes oral sex with men and women to suck off not only semen, but apparently also blood, killing her male and female lovers. "La Comtesse Noire" is a soft-core movie of sexploitation without story and the only intention is apparently expose the naked body of Lina Romay that works naked all the time. I have just watched the French version released in Brazil, with audios in English (and Portuguese subtitle) and Portuguese only. The funny thing is, if you watch with audio and subtitle in Portuguese, they do not match. This version has an explicit fellatio of Irina with one of her victims and seems to be a home video, with a messy screenplay and an annoying music score that is repeated every time that Lina Romay is naked meaning that along the entire movie. My vote is two.Title (Brazil): "A Maldição da Vampira" ("The Curse of the Female Vampire")

People will tell you all kinds of things about Jesus Franco. He's made about five billion films over the past five decades so he must be doing something right, right? Wrong! Nearly every single film I have seen of his reeks of Eurotrash amateurism. Even more depressingly, the man does not seem interested in making anything other than tedious soft-core porn with wafer thin plot lines that pretentious people like to claim is art because he'll throw in a shot of a mountain or the ocean every once in awhile. I guess some people just need to find an excuse to justify the fact they like watching porn, as if something like this somehow brings T&A flicks to a more respectable level. Unfortunately for Jess, many films from the same decade literally crush his lame efforts when it comes to style, plot, direction, acting and eroticism. "Les Avaleuses" or one of its five hundred different titles is nothing more than dull trash with neither the talent or imagination to make it worthy of note. Franco also is rather obnoxious any time you see him interviewed. He has an inflated sense of his own importance, which in the film-making world is almost nonexistent. On several occasions, I've even seen him insult far more talented directors whose ideas he in turn blatantly steals. I've often wondered if this man is obnoxious, clueless or just senile. It's hard to tell but one thing he is not is a good film director.I hate even referring to this as a film. There is almost no plot and from a technical standpoint it is inept. Things going out of focus all the time is not art, it's laziness and incompetence on the part of someone more interested in zooming in on unkempt crotches than making a decent erotic vampire film. What storyline there is is basically gratuitous nude shots of Franco's wife Lina Romay repeated over and over again. Though a fairly attractive woman, once you've seen a few of these films you're already bored seeing her naked. She's not a very good actress either. She brings nothing to the film or her role other than what God gave her, some of which could use a good trimming. The others nude actresses on display here aren't especially attractive either. Unless you are an obsessive fan of this director (believe it or not, he does have fans) or can't get your hands on more explicit adult material, I wouldn't waste my time viewing this.

A vampire countess and her various sexual conquests, drains the life force from her victims of passion. Countess Irina Karlstein(Lina Romay)often feeds from her male suitors as they are ejaculating! The film opens the possibility of the vampire countess and a proposed rendezvous with a poet named Baron Von Rathony(Jack Taylor)..Franco seems to be building to this meeting(..perhaps a love affair is in the future for these two)as Rathony often hears the fluttering of bat wings in the sky from the patio of his palatial cottage overlooking a sea.Despite what the title says, this flick doesn't follow the usual vampire traits..there isn't bloodletting(..in the typical sense, although there's a scene of whipping that sheds little cuts of blood)and Lina certainly doesn't look like your usual member of the undead.Lina dives in no-holds-barred, willing to bend over backwards for director Franco as she is pretty much naked the entire film having graphic sexual sequences with men and women often rather explicitly. To be honest, the film is less a horror film than a porno flick. Franco's camera ravishes Lina's body, even closing in on Romay's vagina as she spreads her legs teasingly. Whether writhing in passion on her bed(..making good use of her bed post)or bathing with erotic bliss in a bathtub of bloody water, Lina certainly is uninhibited and willing to go the distance. Not shy either is Taylor and other male actors unafraid to show their naughty bits as well. Not for the easily offended. As expected, the film often features jazz as background music often removing the slightest bit of tension(..although, I feel his films often are so coldly presented one feels little tension to begin with). The procedural with detective Franco on the case to prove Lina's involvement with the vampire-type homicides seems uninspired. My favorite scene has Lina's car driving around curves with this silver bat ornament adorning her car hood with bat wings that flap with the wind.My rating is more towards it as a horror film. I think it merely uses the idea of a vampire using lust as her way of surviving. I do think it'll work for those seeking other forms of entertainment.

What an excellent film! Try not to dig too deep but this is classic eurotrash and when you've been away from eurotrash for a while you'll need a stunner like this to remind you how fantastic it can be. Jess Franco has let us down occasionally in the past, but this must surely be his masterpiece. Trust no American issues as they prefer violence to sex and edit accordingly. Don't analyse the plot because you'll miss the point. Beautifully shot by Joan Vincent, this is serious erect-nipple vampirism, with all the longing and the loneliness that goes with belonging to the undead...although there are not many people who look as alive as Lina Romay does in this movie. Absolutely excellent and for a change coherent. Wistful, sexy, hypereal. Genuinely an extraordinary movie.