Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: José Larraz
Starring: Marianne Morris, Anulka Dziubinska, Murray Brown, Brian Deacon, Sally Faulkner
If Hammer's Karnstein trilogy (The Vampire Lovers; Lust for a Vampire; Twins of Evil) is the commercial entry point to the world of '70s vampiric eroticism,
and the films of Jean Rollin the esoteric ultimate destination,
Vampyres lies somewhere in the middle, a British horror with
a very continental sensibility courtesy of Spanish director
José Larraz.
The movie opens with two female lovers - Fran (Marianne Morris) and
Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) - gunned down after being caught in the
throes of passion. Cut to some later point and Fran and Miriam are now the
undead, living in an abandoned country manor and surviving on the blood of
the various men they lure with the promise of sex (a promise, it must be
said, they fully deliver on).
Most '70s sexploitation movies have all the erotic charge of Donald Trump
holding hands with Theresa May, but if Vampyres doesn't stir
your loins you probably have even less of a pulse than its undead stars.
Morris and Dziubinska are an entrancing double act, and they genuinely
seem enchanted by each other during their intimate scenes - there's none
of the awkward fumbling seen in many erotic horrors of this period. This
may be down to the contributions of screenwriter Diana Daubeney,
who was married to Senor Larraz at the time. Many of the key horror movies
of the '70s -
Halloween; Suspiria; Messiah of Evil - were co-written by their directors'
romantic partners, and the female input here lends
Vampyres a verisimilitude largely lacking elsewhere in the
lesbian vampire genre.
Morris and Dziubinska may have been chosen for their striking looks, but
both give subtly impressive performances here. Watch the cheeky little
glances they give each other while a victim-to-be delivers a mansplaining
lecture on the finer points of wine.
It's difficult to justify calling Vampyres a feminist horror
movie, given it was made primarily for an audience of men in raincoats,
but I don't think it's a coincidence that we root for Fran and Miriam as
they dispatch a series of male plonkers, only changing our allegiance in
the final act when they turn their attention to a potential female victim.
Shot in the scenic surrounds of Oakley Court (also the setting for Hammer
horrors The Brides of Dracula, The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies), Vampyres offers one stunning image after another. The
cinematographer here was no less than Harry Waxman, whose CV
includes such British genre classics as
The Day the Earth Caught Fire, The Nanny and The Wicker Man, and Vampyres ranks among his best work, looking
particularly gorgeous in its recent restoration. The sound design is also
a standout. Eschewing an oppressive score, Larraz instead accompanies his
atmospheric scenes with an eerie effect that sounds like wind blowing
through a metal tube, which I suspect may have been borrowed by Ridley
Scott for Alien later in the decade.
Vampyres is on Shudder UK now.