Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Delphine Seyrig vamps it up as a black and scarlet Marlene in this updating of the Bathory/Carmilla tale with some class, gender and sexual politics thrown into the mix.

This film could so easily have been set in 1920's Weimar Germany and been called a Cabaret of Vampires. The colours! The score! Beautiful, sexy, decadent and nasty. Control and submission.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Brides of Dracula (1960)

Brides of Dracula has no Christopher Lee but instead stars David Peel as blonde, Drac-a-like, Baron Meinster. But at least Peter Cushing's here and Cushing does what Cushing does best - the bounciest and most athletic Van Helsing we all know and love.

Jack Asher as DP shoots like Bava and the film is vivid and full of purples and reds and yellows. The sets are wonderful and how they managed to create those European villages mansions and castles in a small country house in Berkshire, I'll never know. The dressers, sculpters and technicians all deserve medals. A beautiful film.

There are so many memorable performances apart from the aforementioned Cushing. Peel is excellent as Drac... ahem, Meinster and starts as boyish and charming but swiftly turns cruel and quietly commanding. Yvonne Monlaur is very, very French and vulnerable as his Bride to be. Andree Melly as Gina, another bride, is beautiful in a wide-eyed Barbara Steele way. Normally I dislike comic-relief in horror films but Miles Malleson as Dr. Tobler was pretty funny and didn't irritate me all all. I kept expecting Martita Hunt's Baroness Meinster to exclaim "A handbag!". But, out of all these great performances the one that will stick in your memory is Freda Jackson as Greta/Frau Blücher; insane, cackling and hilarious.

Hammer managed to cram a huge amount of vampire mythology into this film that would pave the way for further excursions into Transylvania and I love the way they were so creative with their vampire deaths. Nowadays Brides of Dracula would be considered quite tame (how times change - the original X certificate has been reduced to a 12) but it still has plenty of gothic chills - the scene where a newly created bride claws her way out of her grave is great. There are occasional scenes of gore though including some very good holy water burns. And what a score!

If there is a fault, it has to be the decision to have a blonde vampire. Blonde... really? I'll have no truck with blonde vampires!

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Nosferatu (1922)

Nearly one hundred years old and Max Schreck's Count Orlok is still the scariest of all screen vampires, with Barlow from Salem's Lot (who seems to be based on Orlok) coming a close second. Not just a great of silent cinema but a great film full stop and a corker of a Dracula adaptation.

As much as I loved the colour tints on this Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray which do a great deal to smooth out the time-worn rough edges of the print, I think I may have to get the BFI Blu-Ray as well as they go with a raw and mostly B&W restoration which seems to give the film a slightly more sinister quality.

"Listen to them, the hyenas of the night. What music they make!" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Reflecting Skin (1990)

A prairie fairytale full of biblical symbolism (Cain/Cameron, Abel/Aben, Seth and there's more than a touch of Lilith to Lindsay Duncan's Dolphin Blue) and stunning imagery, told through the warped eyes of a child. The film reminded me a lot of the strange, almost-real world narrated in Tom Wait's Kentucky Avenue.

The Reflecting Skin has more than a touch of David Lynch and Terrence Malick and is stylised, off-kilter, strange, horrifying, funny and touching with a beautiful Samuel Barber-like score. A child's tale of abuse, neglect, loss, religion and sexuality.

EDIT: I've been thinking about the score and I think there's a lot of Gallipoli in it as well.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)

Sure, it's slow but... grubby, crusty, devil worshipping zombie-mummy-vampire-skeleton-templars on fucking HORSES!

WARNING: This film contains the weirdest, most inappropriate and lecherous mortuary technicians ever!

"She was asking for it. Going around flaunting herself. It's as if they want to be bitten." -- Mortuary technician

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Vampires (1979)

My life in 1979, except I had free school meal tickets.

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Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)

Bonkers!

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Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

This review is for the Severin Blu-Ray (UK edition) with German soundtrack and English subtitles in the film's native ration of 1.66:1, which leaves narrow black bars at the sides of the picture.

Vampyros Lesbos starts with a sexy, trippy striptease with the beautiful Soledad Miranda (playing Countess Nadine Carody) writhing away to an organ (fnarr, fnarr), whilst Linda (Ewa Strömberg) and her boyfriend Omar (Andrés Monales complete with "Just for Men" styled hair) ogle from a table. With her hallucinatory dance act the Countess places Linda under a spell and, in the following days, haunts her dreams. Sexy, vampyric shenanigans ensue.

The bones of the Dracula story are tucked away under layers of sex and psychedelia. Linda meets with the Countess to discuss a property left to her in a will rather than the purchase of a house in the novel. She hires a boat to get to the Countess' island instead of a coach to the castle. Then we have the haunting of dreams, the locals warning Linda not to visit the island, a Renfield type character, Linda Westinghouse instead of Lucy Westenra and Doctor Seward (who is a bit of a dick). You get the idea. I think Franco must have been reading the, admittedly pretty dry, book and thought "hey, it's the 1970! Let's sex this up! Nicole, bring me my mescaline".

The relationship between Linda and the Countess is not based on any form of hypnosis but is the result of Linda's frustrated love-life and the Countess' need for more than just blind obedience. Watch the first bedroom encounter between the pair and note that Linda's expression is not of someone under control but that of someone who is nervous and excited. The scene is very similar to a famous scene in the uncut Hammer Dracula (1958). in fact the control in this film tends to come from the male characters, although there are the  Countess' previous victims to consider, who are reduced to dolls in the strip scenes. The Countess later admits her love for Linda when she says "But then I met Linda. Now I'm under her spell". If it wasn't for the gratuitous tits-and-ass I'd never call Vampyros Lesbos an exploitation film and most definitely not a horror film. This is as much a love story as Lady Chatterley's Lover!

The photography is beautiful with deep landscape shots cutting to macro shots of insects. Sure we get loads of zoom shots, but would it be a Jess Franco film without them? The colours are vivid; full of bright reds, deep blues and burnt oranges. They really give the film a Mediterranean feel. Where most vampire films use black as the predominate colour and red as a highlight, Franco reverses this and black is used sparingly, but when used it stands out wonderfully. There are a few shots that are really out of focus but these are few and far between and seem to be the fault of the focus-puller during Franco's frequent zooms.

The soundtrack? It's like distant conversations picked up by a ham radio enthusiast, looped, distorted and played back alongside some R&B/jazz Hammond organ and trippy sitar. Not just one of the classic exploitation soundtracks but one of the greatest film soundtracks of the 1970s.

The performances are, on the whole, excellent and above Franco usual standard. Miranda is great; at times fragile and then cold and aloof, whilst Carody (as Linda) is suitably naive and insecure at the start but slowly develops into a strong assertive woman. Michael Berling is excellent as the patriarchal and controlling Seward.

For gorehounds there is very little blood in Vampyros Lesbos and for those wanting tits-and-ass, there's frequent boobs and bush, one sub-softcore moment and a couple of very nice stripteases - the second being quite brilliant as the Countess slowly removes her clothes and dresses her living doll in them. Just don't watch the film expecting a Jess Franco sex frenzy.

The quality of the picture is very good with strong colours that pop off the screen without being over-saturated. The sound is clear and without noticeable hiss and the subtitles seem accurate.

A story of control versus love and sexual liberation. Seductive, sexy, beautiful and quite brilliant.

"The Queen of the Night will bear you up on her black wings"

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Black Sabbath (1963)

Arrow Blu-Ray. A three story anthology from Italian maestro Mario Bava.

Superb direction, editing and photography. An absolutely stunning use of colour that would influence Dario Argento's films. Boris Karlof hamming it up. What more could you want from a Sunday evening movie?

If you get the chance make sure you watch the "Twice the Fear" comparison between the Italian and US versions of the film. Very interesting.

Amendment; "The Telephone" makes an interesting giallo short.

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Salem’s Lot (1979)

Just one of my favourite horror films (well miniseries really). It absolutely terrified me when I was young and, if I was being truthful, still gives me the willies when I climb a dark staircase to bed. The first appearance of Barlow, transporting the coffin in the van and, of course, Danny Glick at the window. Terrific and, I think, the best Stephen King adaptation.

The only vampire film to beat this would be the adaptation of Robert McCammon's They Thirst and they haven't made that one yet!

Original letterboxd review