Based on vampire lore, death need not curb
your sex drive. In fact, most post Lugosi vampires are downright voracious—especially
the lesbians. At least, that is how filmmaker-dudes like Jean Rollin and Jess
Franco envisioned them. Joseph [José Ramón] Larraz also contributed to the
softcore Sapphic blood-sucking tradition with the 1974 cult classic Vampyres. It wasn’t exactly a
complicated narrative, but Victor Matellano remade it anyway. Faithful to the
original, Matellano’s English language Vampyres
(trailer
here) releases
today on DVD and VOD.
Fran and Miriam are your classic lesbian
vampires, who lure horny male victims to the gothic abode for a night of hedonism
and feeding. Harriet assumes several of her friends are just running late for
their camping trip, but the vampy vamps have already picked them off. Not
exactly proactive, she and her other two grudgingly platonic pals will just
wait around for someone to find them.
It turns out they will have a ridiculously
long wait. Fran has just picked up Ted playing the lost, waifish hitchhiker. However,
the young Brian Dennehy-looking fellow is apparently her type. Instead of
dispatching immediately as per their standard procedure, she keeps him alive in
a sex-stoked, blood-drained haze. Meanwhile, Matellano periodically checks back
in at the inn where Ted spent the night, just so he could cast British horror
icon Caroline Munro in meaninglessly tangential scenes.
There is plenty of sex and nudity in the
re-upped Vampyres as well as a good
deal of blood-letting, so Matellano covers all the mandatory bases. However, it
is nowhere near as successful creating an atmosphere of mystery or critiquing
gender roles as the thematically similar Blood of the Tribades. Frankly, the remake just sort of looks cheap, which is a
bit of an unfair criticism given its severe budget constraints, but it is still
fair to point out the original looks better, even though it was produced under
similar circumstances.
Vampyres
is
not exactly an actors’ workshop either, but Marta Flich’s potent presence gives
us a hint of the sort of lushly indulgent guilty pleasure could have (and
should have) been. There is also something weirdly compelling about Christian
Stamm’s half-delirious dad-bodded Ted. To her credit, Munro manages to almost
convince us she isn’t completely bored as the hotelier, because she is a total
professional.
Spelling “vampyre” or “womyn” with a Y
always seems perversely contradictory, since the whole intention is to convey
the lack of a Y chromosome, but so be it. While we’re in a pedantic frame of
mind, it also seems rather negligent for a vampyre couple to have a loaded crossbow
affixed to their wall, like some kind of decorative object. At least we cannot
accuse it of being “Chekhov’s Crossbow,” because it will be used eventually. If
you are in the mood for a lesbian vampire film, the 1974 original or either
version of Embrace of the Vampire will
probably better satisfy. However, if this is your thing then have at it, when Vampyres releases today (10/18) on DVD
and VOD, from Artsploitation.
