Vampyres (1973)

(aka: Daughters of Dracula; Satan's Daughters; Vampyres, Daughters of Dracula; Vampyres, Daughters of Darkness)

Directed by Joseph Larraz (Jose Ramon Larraz)

Produced by Brian Smedley-Aston

Starring Murray Brown, Marianne Morris, Anulka Dziubinska, Brian Deacon, Sally Faulkner, Michael Byrne, Karl Lanchbury

Hands up all of you who grew up on Hammer's Karnstein trilogy! Keep your hands up if you secretly wished that they were a little bit raunchier than they were titillating! It's definitely a product of its era (the seventies), it's dated, and it's creakingly low budget in a fashion that only Hammer knew how to milk to maximum effect. It's also one of a kind, comfortably sitting alongside Harry Kumel's superior "Daughters Of Darkness" (1970) as more a promiscuous little cousin than an out and out sister-piece. Ah, WTF, I love this movie!

Opening with two gorgeous, naked, curvy women, a four-poster bed, and the flickering flame of a bedside lantern, this luscious landscape is jarringly curtailed by a shadowy figure and a fusillade of bullets. Bare flesh, torrents of blood, and a vista of death give way to the credits and images of bats, only to return us to the present day lost in rural England moments later. A castle property in rural England. Two beautiful women (Morris & Dziubinska) who lure men to their nocturnal doom amidst the country roadsides. Ted (Morris), an unconventional and disheveled wander happens upon both, finding himself locked in a feverish relationship with the brunette, Fran (Morris). Miriam (Dziubinska), Fran's bisexual lover, warns her of her indiscretion (keeping Ted alive), but Fran is smitten with her new love. Blood-drained bodies mount on the country roadsides, and holidaying newlyweds John (Deacon) and Harriet (Faulkner) become voyeurs to mounting trail of blood surrounding them. What is Fran and Miriam's terrible secret? Are they the ghosts of murdered lovers, or they something much, much more deadly?

Larraz's film is much akin to being locked in the sweating madness of a deep fever, assailed by images and hallucinatory fantasies that are seemingly inescapable. From an era that produced some of my favourite genre fare, this is indicative of what the horror field could offer when it was operating at its finely tuned best. It is grand guignol gothic given the Continental spin by a Spanish director, yet retaining a richly English ambience. Far more sexually charged than any of its peers, my best description of it would be a creaking, dark, blood-drenched wet-dream of a film. Like Jean Rollin's dream-like fantasies, it's an exercise with an atmosphere all of its own, infinitely more preferable to any of recent memory's vapid, bloodless, and prudish blood-suckers (barring Coppola's erotically charged "Dracula", but that was a bit more commercial, wasn't it?). Devoid of convention, it is a vampire film without fangs, coffins, stakes, or bats, making it all the more evocative in nature. Even though the Carpathians are mentioned tenuously near the climax, the word "vampire" is never uttered.

After years of only ever having seen the censored Australian VHS edition (Yep, you read that right! Although rumours have long persisted that the Aussie version was uncut, I wouldn't consider a 73m version of this film "uncut"), Anchor Bay's disc came as a revelation. Jose Larraz's commentary was even more revealing, but for the sake of not ruining his rather frank comments therein, I'll leave the fans to have a listen for themselves to be pleasantly surprised. Much has been made of the amount of grain present in AB's disc, but honestly, what did you all expect? Exterior night scenes, and the stock footage borrowed from Bray Studios (!), do exhibit quite an ugly amount of grain, but overall (for a film of this vintage and origin) the presentation is remarkably good. The soundtrack is additionally free of distortion, which is quite a marvel considering, leaving James Clarke's score sounding the best it probably has since cinema screenings back in '74. It was a pleasure to see the film looking as good as this did occasionally grainy image or not.

Anchor Bay comes up trumps with a fine smattering of extras to keep the fans (myself included) happy. Special mention is in order for the Audio commentary by director Larraz and producer Smedley-Aston, as the two play off each other with great repartee. Smedley-Aston is a fountain of information relating to the production of the film, and Larraz (in his quaint broken English) is a joy to listen to as he recalls many wonderful anecdotes about the film and his career. This is possibly one of the best commentaries for genre-related material outside of Grindhouse's "Cannibal Ferox" disc. Additionally, there's the European and US theatrical trailers included, which juxtapose the differing marketing angles taken by different territories (the US trailer is a scream! I remember trailers this bad!). A biography of Larraz and Stills Gallery from Smedley-Aston's personal collection round out what was only ever going to be a limited package. Nice treats, nonetheless!

This is one my favourite genre films of all time, which is obviously why it has just got such a good rep from me. Hell, I can remember as far back as this thing doing the rounds of Australian drive-ins back in the seventies on a double bill with "The Case Of The Smiling Stiffs"! (Oops, showing my age!) Sad to say, but AB's disc is not quite as uncut as it purports to be (around 30 seconds of footage is missing from varied points of the climax), but if you've never seen it before then this disc will be more (much more depending on where you live) of an experience than you can imagine. Now, if only some-one could get off their backside and release James Kenelm Clarke's "House On Straw Hill" (aka: "Expose") in an equally restored, letterboxed edition on DVD that would make a very tasty companion piece to this film, and round out my collection nicely! (Yeah, I'm a BIG Linda Hayden fan, but who would've guessed…)

Review by M.C.Thomason