Cheap Vampyres (DVD) (José Ramón Larraz) Price

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Taking its cue from the lesbian vampire cycle initiated by maverick director Jean Rollin in France, and consolidated by the success of Hammer's 'Carmilla' series in the UK, Jose Ramon Larraz' daring shocker VAMPYRES pushed the concept of Adult Horror much further than British censors were prepared to tolerate in 1974, and his film was cut by almost three minutes on its original British release. It isn't difficult to see why! Using its Gothic theme as the pretext for as much nudity, sex and bloodshed as the film's short running time will allow, Larraz (who wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym 'D. Daubeney') uses these commercial elements as mere backdrop to a languid meditation on life, death and the impulses - sexual and otherwise - which affirm the human condition. Shot on location at a picturesque country house during the Autumn of 1973, Harry Waxman's haunting cinematography conjures an atmosphere of grim foreboding, in which the desolate countryside - bleak and beautiful in equal measure - seems to foreshadow a whirlwind of impending horror (Larraz pulled a similar trick earlier the same year with SYMPTOMS, a low-key thriller which is all mood and very little action, until it erupts into a frenzy of violence during the final reel). However, despite its pretensions, VAMPYRES' wafer-thin plot and rough-hewn production values don't really amount to very much, and while the two female protagonists are as charismatic and appealing as could be wished, the male lead (Brown, past his prime at the time of filming) is woefully miscast in a role that should have gone to some beautiful, twentysomething stud. A must-see item for cult movie fans, an amusing curio for everyone else, VAMPYRES is an acquired taste. Watch out for Bessie Love, star of the silent era, in a brief cameo at the end of the movie.

Originally released on DVD by Anchor Bay in incomplete form (29 seconds of carnage were accidentally omitted from one of the climactic sequences), Blue Underground's definitive disc - beautifully presented and packaged - restores all the missing footage to its rightful place. Picture quality is as good as the low-budget film stock will allow, though it's still a little grainy in places, and the mono sound is adequate. Extras include trailers, interviews with Morris and Anulka (both are older and wiser, yet still radiant), and a lively audio commentary with Larraz and producer Brian Smedley-Aston, along with an unexpurgated version of Tim Greaves' much-admired booklet 'Vampyres - A Tribute to the Ultimate in Erotic Horror Cinema', here presented in DVD-ROM format which this writer was unable to access.

NB. Blue Underground's DVD includes an insert which replicates vivid artwork for an Italian release print (OSSESSIONE CARNALE), featuring a prominent Techniscope credit. However, the movie wasn't photographed in any kind of scope format, and viewers are assured the disc's 1.85:1 ratio is correct.

87m 29s
1.85:1 / Anamorphically enhanced
Mono 2.0
Optical mono [theatrical]
No captions or subtitles
All regions

As far as an erotic vampire movie goes, look no further
Where to begin.....
As far as an erotic vampire movie goes, look no further. As far as a savage and gory vampire movie goes, look no further. As far as an interesting story goes with great cinematography to boot, look no further.

This movie came out in 1974 and had to be edited by the censors for release in most countries. The footage that had been cut has been put back in for this excellent dvd release from Anchor Bay. It was directed by Spanish director Joseph Larraz and filmed in England on Hammer Studios sets.

The story goes something like this:
Two women are making love in a bed and someone walks in on them and shoots them. Next thing we know a man (Murray Brown) is driving through the countryside and picks up a woman (Marianne Morris) along the road. They go to her place which just happens to be a huge manor home in the middle of nowhere. They end up having sex and the next thing he know it is next morning. He feels weak and notices a nasty cut on his arm and the girl is nowhere to be found. He gets in his car a drives a little ways along the dirt road leading out of the estate when he runs across a couple who have picked this site to park their trailer and go camping. They help the man bandage his cut and after a little while he leaves. He runs across the strange woman he picked up the night before and they go back to the estate. Her friend (Anulka Dziubinska) has picked up another man and before too long the two couples have made their way to the bedrooms. The first man makes love to the woman but this time we see her sucking blood out of the cut on his arm. Her friend walks in and they go to the other bedroom where he lover is lying face up up on the bed covered in blood. They both start an orgiastic feast on the man and when they are done they drag him out of the room.

The next morning the first man wakes up and and makes his way to the highway in his car when he slows down for a car wreck along the road. The bloody body behind the wheel is the man he had seen at the house the prior evening. He drives back to the estate and starts wandering around and winds up getting locked in the cellar. The girls return, find and release him, and he goes back up to the bedroom.

Meanwhile, while all of this has been going on, the woman on vacation in the trailer has become terribly interested in the goings on at the estate and keeps trying to get her husband interested. He feels it is none of their business and is content to go fishing and wishes his wife would just be happy with her paintings that she has been working on.

That night, the girls at the estate bring home another man they picked up and they end up going down to the wine cellar. Before too long he is a bloody mess and the first man has now left and made his way to the trailer.

The couple in the trailer are horrified to see the condition that the man is in so the husband goes out to the car to go get help. Before he can take off the women attack him in the car and kill him. The wife goes out to check on him and starts screaming when she sees his bloody body in the car. The two women then attack the wife and she is dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the cellar where they strip her and then feast on her.

I have probably given away too much, but I won't give away the ending. I have read that some people thought the end was stupid and some people liked it. I happened to have liked it a lot. This is a pretty unique vampire movie and it is too bad it didn't do better at the box office, maybe then we would have had a sequel! ...

AESTHETIC, SATANIC, INDULGING
YES, THIS IS A FLIM THAT RISES ABOVE THE REST IN THE VOLATILE TIME OF EROTIC VAMPIRE FILMS IN THE EARLY 1970'S. TWO VOLUMPTOUS, BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRES USE THEIR FEMININE TALENTS AND THE AGE OLD ONE NIGHT STAND AS A FACADE TO LURE OVER-ANXIOUS MEN TO THEIR BREATHTAKING, DECREPIT OLD COUNTRY HOME. THE MEN FALL ALL TOO EASILY FOR WHAT THEY THINK WILL BE A SEXUAL RENDEZVOUS WITH TWO STRANGE, DARK WOMEN. AFTER THEY ARE ENTERTAINED, THEY FALL VICTIM TO SAVAGE DEATHS, BLOODLETTING, AND HUMILIATION. THE BRITISH COUNTRYSIDE AND THE BREATHTAKING OLD HOME CREATES A SUPERIOR AMBIENCE THAT IS CONDUCIVE FOR AN UNFORGETTABLE, EROTIC, LURID FILM. THIS FILM WILL LEAVE YOU WANTING NEVER TO RETURN TO REALITY. DARK, EVIL, BEAUTIFUL, IMPERATIVE.