Yes, this is probably my favourite Vampire
Horror of all time, and it also manages to be one of the few, very
few horror movies in
Film History to be genuinely sensual. The Spanish director José
(Joseph) Ramón Larraz was a genre director who made a lot of
B movies during the heydays of the Euro Trash Film era and he was
versatile in doing so. He made psychological drama thrillers,
sex horrors, slashers, satanist movie, vampire film and even porno,
but with Vampyres he got it all together and made his best film.
Two mysterious and beautiful women lives
in an old castle out in the British countryside, and they lure men
to join them in sex
and blood orgies. The gorgeous creatures of the night has to gobble
up thevictim's blood as they have no vampire fangs and they
seem to have some sort of a hypnotic control over their (maybe willing)
victims, one of them even returning to be blood-letted
again by the bloodsucking angels of death.
There's like a damp mist is hanging in
the air and the film has got a thick Gothic atmosphere. The Two vampire
women, played by the
gorgeous Marianne Morris and the Playboy model Anulka, works perfectly
as the mysterious duo and I especially remember the
scene where the two women in the Hour of the Wolf, when dawn is approaching,
are fleeing through the trees on their way to their
cemetery crypt for their day-slumber. Maybe Larraz was lucky here
but i found that scene to be impressive, almost haunting.
"Two Gorgeous women resides in a castle, has sex and feasts on
blood" could be a summary of the film. The grainy but atmospheric
and dreamlike qualitieswere added to the film by veteran cinematographer
Harry Waxman (who also shot i.a. another British Horror
Masterpiece - 1973 "The Wicker Man". And, Thank You señor
José Ramón Larraz for adding the eroticism to this landmark
Vampire
horror, and thanks also to the luscious actresses who made it possible,
Marianne Morris and Anulka, You Vampire Beauties.
This old Blue Underground DVD release
presented the film in a new crisp looking transfer and in 1.85:1 widescreen
ratio, with english
mono audio and with extras:
An audio commentary by Joseph Larraz
and producer, Return of the Vampyres: Interviews with actresses Anulka
Dziubinska and
marianne Morris (14 minutes, and they looked stunning still), Trailers,
Deleted scene in picture stills (camper attack in Caravan)
