Cover of version with hardcore inserts
Female Vampire (1973)
Fair warning, this review is definitely not safe for work. Jess Franco is a filmmaker of great notoriety. His films are all exploitative and include subjects such as women in prison (99 Women and Sadomania) and lesbian vampires (Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy, and this movie). His films are, at least in my humble opinion, garbage. This particular film has many different titles but is primarily known as Female Vampire, at least in as far as what I’ve heard about it. It also goes by The Bare-Breasted Countess, The Dark Countess, Erotikill, and The Swallowers, among others. Many versions of the film exist and the differences primarily revolve around the extent of the adult content, with violence ranging from tame to brutal (and really stupid looking) and nudity ranging from moderate to hardcore. The version I’ve seen called Female Vampire lacks the violence but includes extensive nudity that falls just short of hardcore.
Shot from an extended softcore masturbation sequence with a pillow
The movie is really just a camera fixated on Lina Romay’s naked body. Lina eventually became Franco’s wife so in some ways it might be interesting in that respect. Obviously, he’s attracted to her and who wouldn’t be attracted to a mute fair-skinned naked vampire chick with jet-black hair bathing in blood, right? She was a good looking woman actually, but from what I understand she still does work like this and she’s got to be in her late 50s or even her 60s, so not to sound judgmental but I can’t imagine time has been that good to her.
Irina Von Karstein (Lina Romay)
The film follows Irina Van Karstein (Romay), a mostly naked vampire who needs to feed on her various sexual partners’ genitals for sustenance. There’s the plot. Sorry my summary paragraph was so darn short.
One of may shameless and gratuitous shots exposing between Romay's legs
Let’s face it, there are endless audiences for horror films of all kinds and skin always gets the attention of audiences as well, so combining the two makes sense in order to get your project attention. However, this does not mean I would defend this film in any possible way imagineable. This film’s sole intentions do not lie in its telling of a story, or even in attempting to create some unique images, it lies simply within its most lazy and shameless catering to the lowest form of filmgoer, that is the ones searching for naked girls in a horror movie.
Von Karstein bathing in blood
Female Vampire is not a porn, nor is it really a horror movie. Nothing about it feels in any way cohesive at all. It’s a purposeless waste of time, an exercise in Jess Franco’s twisted view on the world of filmmaking. I do not understand his films, not because they are too smart for me but because they in no way wish to be understood as more than just trash. In more ways than not, that is just not alright with me. However, I find Franco’s existence to be fascinating at the very least, much like I do Ed Wood, Jean Rollin, and more recently Uwe Boll. Why do some people make movies? What fuels them? Could it really at times just be their most primal drives? The answers do not really matter, nor do the very things that would compel me to ask the questions.
My rating is 1 out of 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment