PLOT: A couple of lesbian vampires lure passersby back to their castle in the English countryside for sex and to feed their lust for blood.
Sexy. Lesbian. Vampires. That’s really all this movie is really about, and with a concept like that, who really needs more than that? Directed by Jose Ramon Larraz, the film is an erotic-horror film like a lot of the horror that came out of Europe during the time. If this were Italian, it would probably be lumped in with the giallo films of Mario Bava or Lucio Fulci around this era. While it’s thin on plot, it delivers in the exploitation expectations you may have for it: lots of nudity and lots of blood; both of these factors make it the cult classic that it is.
There’s a good amount of blood in this. The lesbian vampires can’t help but find people to bring back to their castle thinking they’re about to be a part of a pretty sweet threeway, and it usually spells disaster for these people. Lots of feeding of blood in this one.
Gore Rating: 3 out of 5
Meh. I wouldn’t really say this is all that scary, but it is effective. If you don’t trust yourself around lesbian vampires, then you’d probably get pretty freaked out by this one. What a way to go though, amiright?
Scare Rating: 2 out of 5
You read the plot where I said this was about lesbian vampires, right? Much like the other European horror films of the era, Vampyres is drenched in sexuality. If this were made today, it would be considered softcore porn and probably slapped with an NC-17 rating, as we’ve gotten more conservative in our old age. There’s nothing salacious about the nudity, but there’s a lot of nudity in this, and good nudity at that.
Sex/Nudity Rating: 5 out of 5
OVERALL
This one is a tough one to rate. On the one hand, it’s well directed and the director perfectly sets a creepy atmosphere, but the story it tells is not entirely creepy, simply because there’s just so much sex going on in it. So if it tried to be scary, it didn’t really deliver. On the other hand, if you look at this film at trying to accomplish the sexiness first, then it definitely delivered. There’s some rough horror moments at the end when the sexy lesbian vampires just start to amp up the carnage, but ultimately, any horror is overshadowed by just how oversexed the film is. It isn’t bad, but I doubt I’ll ever watch this film again.
The Main Damie 