Undescribable Perfection

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

I got a bit of a mixed feeling about this vampire flick. The vampires itself doesn't have fangs and the script itself is a bit weak surely concerning the plot. But still it is one that you must have seen.The two vampires are played by Marianne Morris (Fran) and Anulka Dziubinska (Miriam). The latter is the most famous one because she used to be a page 3 girl and appeared in playboy in 1972. Both have a lesbian relation and do go a lot in their nudies, Marianna goes more than Anulka did but it's also clearly to see that the director avoided to show pubic hair. On that part he succeeded mostly, here and there you can see a fraction of a second some pubic hair but he couldn't avoid it with the most famous name in this flick, Sally Faulkner (Harriet). She goes naked all the way and goes full frontal in one love scene towards the end of the flick. She's also the only actor here who really made it into the British scene and appeared in a lot of series. The other actors only acted for a few years around the seventies and early eighties. Karl Lanchbury (Rupert) maybe recognized by some due earlier attempts to be in horror flicks like Scream...And Die (1974) also from the same director.The director itself, José Ramon Larraz, does ring a bell with exploitation and drive-in geeks. But this is his most famous flick for the usual viewer but Los Ritos Sexuales Del Diablo (Black Candles) (1982) was also a hard to get flick, it is now available on region 1 DVD on a grindhouse compilation together with Evil Eye.Be sure to catch the full uncut version on Anchor Bay. There isn't that much of red stuff in it but the atmosphere and acting made this flick still worth watching. Not an usual way to tell a vampire story but it do offers something towards the scene. Gore 0/5 Nudity 2,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I watched this again as it is on the box of blood I bought a few years back. I bought the set mainly to get this movie and I am glad I did. I watched this once at Dead by dawn on the big screen about ten years back and thought it was beautifully shot but did not really like it. Then I watched it the next year at Harvey Fenton's ten years of Terror festival. I liked the nudity but could not really get into the movie.So I sat down to day after I had finished watching Die Screaming Marianne and Frightmare to get into this movie again. I am glad I did its superb. The location is fab and so British, the photography is stunning. Some of the early morning shots made me want to walk through those gardens.Sally Faulkner, what a babe, I was thinking looking at her. I just wish I could meet someone as pretty as her. She is a superb actress and really brings the movie together with the great busy body nature. Also she is so sexy through out. So much so I wish she had been one of the vampires if you know what I mean!The vampires themselves were great. Evil and beautiful all at the same time. It was wonderful to see the amount of gore in this movie. Also it is set in the period was titillation movies were taking the country by storm and it does this with avengance but still keeps the horror intact. Pity the makers of the rather plain virgin witch could not have followed suit.

Cult reputations can be a bitch. There's just no way a modest boobs 'n' blood shocker from 1974 can survive seasoned gore hound scrutiny three and a half decades down the line, even with the heavily hyped reinstatement of a few minutes of footage deemed too extreme at the time. For those already bracing themselves for massive disappointment, a reality check may be in order. An attempt to outdo genre giant Hammer, commercially compelled to up the ante in terms of both carnage and carnality at the dawn of a new decade, VAMPYRES was made by people with a background in the British sex film industry, unlike its cross-oceanic counterpart hardly a fertile breeding ground for any artistry or ambition beyond the obvious.A comparative dark horse among the fornication filmmaking fraternity of the inhibited isles, primarily because of his Mediterranean lineage (then still synonymous with being carnally knowledgeable if not downright depraved in the minds of English-speaking "respectable" citizens on both sides of the Atlantic), José Ramon Larraz had already earned his stripes as a purveyor of psychologically wrought "erotica" rather than the snickering tits 'n' titters peekaboo farces far more prevalent in UK flea pits. WHIRLPOOL, DEVIATION and SCREAM...AND DIE! testified of a timidly developing auteur sensibility, something barely heard of in an industry interested solely in reaping maximum box office from minimal investment. It's tempting to speculate that the unending censorship problems that befell VAMPYRES, combined with the lukewarm critical reception afforded his crossover SYMPTOMS that same year, inspired the director's impromptu return to his fatherland for a career only intermittently highlighted by anything out of the ordinary such as EL MIRON (The Voyeur) or THE COMING OF SIN.A stalwart editor who had learned his trade on quintessential British cinema classics like Tony Richardson's TOM JONES and Nic Roeg and the late Donald Cammell's PERFORMANCE, Brian Smedley-Aston graduated from performing second unit chores on TV shows like Shirley MacLaine's ill-fated SHIRLEY'S WORLD to producing pseudo-porn (as close to the real deal as the BBFC would allow) with the Fiona Richmond triumvirate of EXPOSE, HARDCORE and LET'S GET LAID, very much in order of diminishing ambition. Apart from the country's then top sex symbol Ms. Richmond, and by extension her sugar daddy and fabled Revue Bar proprietor Paul Raymond, another constant on these progressively threadbare productions was his good friend James Kenelm Clarke, a classically trained composer employed on tons of '60s BBC shows. Pressed into duty as a makeshift movie maker, latter proved most adept at plying his erstwhile trade, contributing an effectively eerie score for his big screen calling card.Defiantly uneventful to the brink of art-house abstraction, VAMPYRES must make mighty strange viewing for contemporary audiences weaned on the Misty Mundae variety of bodacious bloodsuckers. It's hard to tell how much of this narrative minimalism's intentional or dictated by an allegedly active three week shooting schedule to accommodate its pittance of a budget. More low key than his outré compatriot Jess Franco, Larraz actually seems liberated rather than constrained by any potential limitations, mining the "breathing room" between set pieces for atmosphere both convincingly Gothic and genuinely erotic. Contributing extensively to the effect is the film's undoubtedly most respected artisan, veteran cinematographer Harry Waxman who shot the lofty likes of Ken Annakin's SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON and Roy Boulting's THE FAMILY WAY, equally at home wallowing in the mire of Tony Sloman's NOT TONIGHT, DARLING and Andrea Bianchi's WHAT THE PEEPER SAW.Questioning its catchpenny title, movie's vaguely Carpathian anti-heroines aren't even vampires in the traditional sense - inviting a double bill perhaps with Jean Rollin's subsequent and equally genre-bending FASCINATION, but I digress - but rather ghostly manifestations of a pair of naughty noblewomen cruelly punished for their "unnatural lust" in the cryptic pre-credits sequence. Haunting the grounds where they were slain, they appear at twilight, flagging down solitary motorists and taking them back to the mansion for some heavy petting and bloodletting, using daggers or shards of glass. One middle-aged Lothario named Ted (Murray Brown, Jonathan Harker to Jack Palance's Dracula in Dan Curtis's TV version) catches Fran's fancy who chooses to drain him more daintily than previous victims. Left to his own devices during daylight hours, Ted's perfectly capable of making his way back to civilized world so it's a clear sign of his amplifying addiction that he literally keeps coming back for more. His being recognized by local hotel's ancient retainer subtly suggests the possibility of the perpetrator's reincarnation.Film's weakest aspect is the inclusion of a couple camping nearby as observing outsiders and unnecessary audience identification figures, a thankless assignment for Brian Deacon (the catalyst caught between Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson in Michael Apted's TRIPLE ECHO) and Sally Faulkner, so good in Norman J. Warren's PREY, the latter at least granted the benefit of a memorably gruesome death scene. Mouthing most of movie's clunky dialog, these two inevitably wind up more hindrance than help. Models with limited acting experience, both professionally post-dubbed, Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska (a familiar face from '70s TV commercials) acquit themselves rather well as delectably dark and frostily fair suck sister respectively, their body language speaking veritable volumes in luxuriously lengthy liaisons. The BBFC holding a longstanding track record for nixing the mix of skin and hemoglobin, their since lifted veto accounts for the missing minutes. Larraz regular Karl Lanchbury, central stud in Trevor Wrenn's wall to wall shag fest EROTIC INFERNO, receives the most spectacular send-off in movie's most excerpted encounter.

Two female bloodsuckers, seen murdered by a mysterious figure in black whose identity is never explained at the opening of the film, seduce travelers on a road that passes near their abode-of-the-moment, a decadent castle, isolated from the outside world thanks to a heavy presence of green(trees and bushes) resting at it's opening with only a path giving anyone an idea that something lives within. The castle is the very definition of secluded, and an ideal place for a vampire couple's lair..particularly when they look as gorgeous as Fran(Marianne Morris) and Miriam(Anulka Dziubinska). Ted(Murray Brown), a mysterious man himself, who rudely shakes off a hotel employee who claims he's seen him before, becomes Fran's slave of lust..unlike other males who follow the femme vamps to the castle, Fran spares Ted's life because she's perhaps in love with him. After rambunctious sex, Ted awakens the next morning, weakened hardly able to balance himself realizing a long gash on his arm, not to mention blood on the bed sheets. The gaping wound will be a small supply for Fran(..and sometimes Miriam)for Ted finds himself unable to pull away from her. He's bewitched by Fran and remains a blood-drinking source for the vampires giving them nourishment when other horny males do not pass by their road. We are voyeurs into the world of Fran and Miriam and their selection process watching as they wrangle men with their feminine wiles and promises of sex. We are also eyes into their attacks on the victims, like rabid dogs as they stab and drink while the tortured souls succumb to blood loss and death. The film also follows a married couple, John(Brian Deacon)and Harriet(Sally Faulkner)who are on vacation, deciding the rest their camper within the castle's grounds not knowing what horrors lie in wait for them.One thing's for certain, as directed by José Ramón Larraz, the film doesn't go skimpy on what fans for erotic Euro-horror crave for, ultra-violence, nudity, and sex are in abundance. I felt the gaping wound on Ted's arm began to take the form of a female vagina as the vampires, over a period of time, feed from it. The castle setting really enriches the film and thanks to the splendid use of candlelight, many night time sequences(..of course, around Midnight is when the vampires bounce on their male victims, who are often overcome by drunkenness)are particularly chilling. I love the claustrophobic confines of a wine cellar where the vampires house their Carpathian vintage, underneath the castle, led to by a long tunnel. My favorite scene, beside the shower Fran and Miriam take together, is the vampires attack on the wine connoisseur in the wine cellar..it's quite a lengthily established sequence as they set him up by leading him to their special volume of wine. The attacks themselves are drenched in blood..the victims covered in the red stuff as Fran and Miriam have at them passionately. The female leads really get into their vampire roles. The final twenty or so minutes become particularly blood-thirsty as Fran and Miriam go on a rampage slicing and drinking from several unfortunates. I'm not sure I understood how they become vampires, though..their affliction and violent deaths by gunshots at the opening really doesn't get a necessarily good explanation as to how they became what they are. This is a film, though, that's more on style and image than substance. José Ramón Larraz certainly has talent and brings together some spooky exterior shots at night of the castle and the setting reeks of death and decay. Lots of lesbian activity not to mention some sexual interludes between Fran and Ted. And, Marianne Morris loves to remove her clothes slowly..the camera loves her mysterious dark dark brown eyes.One might ponder why John and Harriet remain on the grounds for such a long period of time..particularly when Harriet suspects Fran and Miriam of something as they stroll off into the distance before dawn. There's a really strange meeting that occurs between Fran and Harriet where the female bloodsucker speaks as if they had met before..yet, this is never addressed in the film again. Some of these holes bothered me a bit but the overall experience was quite noteworthy. Fans of lesbian vampire flicks, in particular, should enjoy this one.