Review: Vampyres

Two bewitching young ladies (Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska) invite unsuspecting men to their abode…and their ultimate bloody demise. Murray Brown is the next intended victim, with Sally Faulkner and Brian Deacon playing a caravanning young couple who witness some very disturbing things from their window. Michael Byrne has a brief cameo as a horny guy lured by the title characters.

A good vampire film deserving of more notoriety, this 1974 flick from Spanish director Jose Ramon Larraz (“Symptoms”, “Stigma”) only falters in the repetitive structure of the film. After an initial burst, it’s a tad slow where there’s just a little too much walking around waiting for rather similar things to happen. Otherwise, this one’s a bloody winner that I was glad I’d finally caught up with after wanting to track it down for about 20+ years.

The film doesn’t fuck around early on, getting to the goods right away, though it’s hot stuff that doesn’t exactly lead to a happy ending if you catch my drift. The real surprise for me was that this was one of the few horror films to feature a pretty explicit and equal measure of both sex and gore that didn’t have one cancelling the other out. The mixture is actually really effective and not a turn-off at all. Aside from the Sapphic and gory delights provided by lovely lead actresses Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska, one is immediately struck by the 70s awesomeness provided by composer James Clarke (who also wrote and directed a few films), a big highlight of the film. Also on-song is the lovely cinematography by Harry Waxman (“The Nanny”, “The Wicker Man”), it’s a very, very attractive and atmospheric film. The soundscape is particularly eerie, too. In fact, in terms of production values and genre, this is like a more explicit Hammer horror film, and very much up my alley as a result (Apparently the house was indeed used for some Hammer films as well as “Rocky Horror”). At times it’s even eerie and scary, not something I’d normally ascribe to the lesbian vampire subgenre (“Vampyros Lesbos” is the only other contender springing to mind in that regard, and even that’s just eerie, not scary). The performances are good too, with the exception of Sally Faulkner, who is a bit weak. That’s interesting given she was easily the best thing about “Alien Prey”, which also had a Sapphic horror bent to it (albeit with an alien invasion meets “The Fox” plot). The best performance by far comes from Murray Brown, who is terrific. Morris and Dziubinska are perfectly fine, as is a middle-aged Michael Byrne in a brief bit towards the end as a foolish chap getting in way over his head. The screenplay is attributed to the director’s wife Diana, but in reality was written by the director himself from a story by Thomas Owen.

There aren’t that many really good lesbian vampire flicks out there that are both well-made and arousing. Here’s one of the ones you really need to see, although I should stress that the film isn’t just concerned with the Isle of Lesbos. Yes, it’s a bit repetitive but it’s sexy, gory, atmospheric, well-shot and scored. Pretty much everything you could ask for with this kind of thing.  

Rating: B