vampyres (cinema history class)

Session: Bring Your Own Movie Month, week 3
Movie: Vampyes (1974)
Directed by Jose Ramon Larraz
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Two lesbian vampires (or are they bisexual? it's hard to say for sure) roam the English countryside in search of victims, whom they lure back to their castle for orgies and death. Hilarity ensues.

Background:
Ethan and I first heard of this movie last summer when we saw it at the Cinema Arts Centre's Pay To Get Out Horror Film Festival, and he chose to bring this as his entry for BYOM month. He said he likes it because it feels like one of the later Hammer films, which it does. It's also noteworthy as one of the more-famous examples of the lesbian vampire subgenre. You know, I never thought I'd type a phrase like that into my blog.

Reaction:
It's easy to dismiss this film as nothing more than exploitative trash, especially since it's somewhat weak on plot. But seeing this again (and not in the middle of an all-night festival), I can appreciate the plot better. Of course, the it is somewhat muddled. In an interview with the stars (which we watched after the film) one of them explained that the director,Jose Larraz, kept changing the script. So the first and last scenes seem very out of place and puzzling. I suspect that, as written, the two women are murdered at the beginning (maybe a husband who doesn't approve of their lesbian affair?), and then, in death, haunt the castle and its surroundings looking for blood. That would have made the disconnected beginning and end make sense. And it would have made this a weird cross between a ghost story and a vampire film.

As the film came out, it was hard to figure out exactly what the backstory was supposed to be, and we did spend some time debating it.

Keith did point out that this is a film about addiction. The vampyres are addicted to blood and sex. Their victims display addiction-like behavior to the women, which explains why the stay for their deaths. I mean, seriously. If, after a wild night, I wake up with deep gashes in my arms, I'm hitting the exit. I don't care how great the sex was.

But there's no getting around the exploitative -- both sexual and violent -- nature of this film. There's blood everywhere, and the scenes of the women drinking their victims' blood are quite graphic. Similarly, the sex and nudity are graphic enough and frequent enough that Vampyres often seems like a softcore porn film.

That said, I have to admit that, as much as there were things to enjoy in this film, I came away from it feeling like I needed a shower.

Ratings:
Me: 8
Scott: 8
Sean: 2 (out of 4)
Dave: 9
Joe 9.8
Keith: 9

Bechdel:
It's debatable whether Vampyres passes the Bechdel Test. I don't recall the two leads actually having a conversation with each other. They interacted with each other in various nonverbal ways, but no conversation. If you ask me the movie fails. Joe argues that it passes.

Bonus:
Ethan decided to bring an episode of Happy Tree Friends. For the uninitiated, HTF is a series of cartoons that juxtapose cute animals with graphic violence. Ethan chose an episode, "Tongue in Cheek" in which the anteater character tries to hunt down and eat ants (with disastrous results. I didn't really see a connection (and told Ethan that I thought he shouldn;t bring it). But Keith found a connection -- noting that the extreme gore was in keeping with the movie we had just seen, and that the anteater's obsessive pursuit of the ants was of a theme with the obsession-based plot of the film. It went over better than I thouight it would.