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14. Vampyres (1974), dir. José Ramón Larraz
Saturday, 8 August 2020 17:37This is basically the logical end-point of the explosion of lesbian vampire films in the early 1970s. It begins with two women lying naked on a bed and snogging. Suddenly, an intruder whose face we never see bursts in and shoots them both dead. We only learn at the end of the film that this was a kind of flash-back, as an estate agent showing an American couple around a large, dilapidated Gothic mansion explains that it is "supposed to be haunted" by two women who died in this way. Between those two book-ends, we follow them as vampyres? ghosts? (whatever) as they lure lecherous male drivers from the nearby road by thumbing down lifts, taking them back to the house, drugging them and then slicing their veins open to drink their blood.
( Cut for discussion of sexual content )
It is very seventies in many ways, featuring flowing cloaks and maxi-dresses on the women, flared trousers on the men, and a couple on a caravanning holiday. It also features Oakley Court, as seen regularly in many a Hammer film and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. However, I couldn't honestly recommend it as being much good. Both the dialogue and its delivery were extremely wooden, I think largely because the vampyre women at least, and probably everybody, were dubbed. It also defaulted on the potential lesbitious story line I thought it was going to go down. There were a few scenes of the two vampyre women approaching the woman from the caravan couple seductively while she was out in the woods painting, and I thought / hoped they were going to lure her into their lesbian vampyre coven. However, in the end they seem to have just killed her, just like any of the men, which was boring and unempowering.
Still, I've seen it now, so I can stop wondering if it's any good. It's not, but it is OK.
( Cut for discussion of sexual content )
It is very seventies in many ways, featuring flowing cloaks and maxi-dresses on the women, flared trousers on the men, and a couple on a caravanning holiday. It also features Oakley Court, as seen regularly in many a Hammer film and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. However, I couldn't honestly recommend it as being much good. Both the dialogue and its delivery were extremely wooden, I think largely because the vampyre women at least, and probably everybody, were dubbed. It also defaulted on the potential lesbitious story line I thought it was going to go down. There were a few scenes of the two vampyre women approaching the woman from the caravan couple seductively while she was out in the woods painting, and I thought / hoped they were going to lure her into their lesbian vampyre coven. However, in the end they seem to have just killed her, just like any of the men, which was boring and unempowering.
Still, I've seen it now, so I can stop wondering if it's any good. It's not, but it is OK.
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