Cult Horror Movies Ruled by Bloodsucking Beauties

[00:00:00]Vampire women in leopard print bikinis, a blood draining stinger hidden under Marilyn Chambers arm, and a seductress who drives a dune buggy through the California desert instead of hiding in a European castle.

[00:00:13]The 1970s clearly had plenty of ideas about blood sucking beauties, and today's video is all about them.

[00:00:23]The Vampire Lovers is based on Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla, and became the first film in Hammer's Karnstein trilogy, followed by Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil.

[00:00:36]Ingrid Pitt plays a vampire who moves from one aristocratic household to another, seducing young women before draining them of blood.

[00:00:45]By 1970, Hammer was pushing its gothic formula much further. The film is packed with innuendo and nudity, and the lesbian element was not hidden in the subtext either. It was central to both the story and the way the film was sold.

[00:01:00]That worried the British censors. Hammer sent the script to the BBFC around the start of production, and chief censor John Trevelyan warned the studio about its depiction of lesbianism. He pointed to The Killing of Sister George, which his office had already forced to undergo significant cuts.

[00:01:20]Hammer's response was simple. They had not invented the lesbianism. It was already present in Le Fanu's original story. Apparently, that argument worked.

[00:01:30]The BBFC backed down.

[00:01:33]The result is part gothic vampire film and part sexploitation, but still a very entertaining one.

[00:01:40]Pitt carries the movie easily, and even when Hammer is completely shameless about what it is selling, The Vampire Lovers has enough atmosphere and personality to remain one of the studio's most enjoyable later horrors.

[00:01:57]For anyone interested in Japanese horror, there is the Vampire Doll, which you may also find under the titles The Blood Sucking Doll, The Night of the Vampire, or Legacy of Dracula.

[00:02:10]Directed by Michio Yamamoto, it became the first film in the so-called Blood Thirsty Trilogy, followed by Lake of Dracula and Evil of Dracula.

[00:02:20]None of the three stories are connected, and despite their English titles, Dracula never appears in any of them.

[00:02:27]The Vampire Doll follows a man who travels to the remote home of his girlfriend Yuko, only to be told that she died in an accident several weeks earlier.

[00:02:36]That night, he sees what appears to be Yuko wandering outside and follows her into a graveyard.

[00:02:43]When he disappears, too, his sister and her boyfriend arrive at the house and begin investigating what happened to both of them.

[00:02:50]There are no vampire dolls here, by the way. And whether Yuko is technically a vampire, a ghost, or something somewhere in between is not especially clear. But whenever she appears, she is pretty creepy, even without the usual fangs.

[00:03:06]I will admit that this is not the most exciting movie on the list, but at only about 70 minutes, it never has enough time to become boring. That, combined with its strange mix of Japanese ghost story and European gothic horror, makes it an interesting little curiosity.

[00:03:27]The Velvet Vampire was co-written and directed by Stephanie Rothman, one of the relatively few women directing films at the time.

[00:03:35]Rothman had started out working for Roger Corman, and the film was made for his New World Pictures after the success of The Student Nurses.

[00:03:43]The story follows a married couple who meet the mysterious Diane LeFanu, an obvious reference to the author of Carmilla, at an art gallery in Los Angeles.

[00:03:53]She invites them to her isolated home in the California desert, where both begin having dreams about being seduced by her.

[00:04:01]It soon becomes clear that Diane is a vampire and that she is interested in both of them, which quickly creates problems for their marriage.

[00:04:09]Instead of living in a European castle, Diane hides in a desert estate and drives around in a dune buggy.

[00:04:17]Rothman also gives the film several strange sequences, including a bed standing in the middle of the desert and fills the screen with red dresses, sheets, curtains, lipstick, and lighting.

[00:04:30]It can be slow and it is not as explicit as some of the European vampire films from the same period.

[00:04:37]But the desert setting, surreal imagery, and Soledad Miranda's very modern vampire make it one of the more unusual American entries in the genre.

[00:04:50]We already met director Jess Franco in our Klaus Kinski video, so let's bring him back here.

[00:04:55]Franco's Vampiros Lesbos follows Linda Westinghouse, a young lawyer sent to a remote island to settle an inheritance matter with Countess Nadine Carody, played by Soledad Miranda.

[00:05:08]Linda is already fascinated by the Countess before they meet and once she arrives, that fascination quickly becomes something much more dangerous.

[00:05:18]The plot is loose and the film often feels more like a dream than a conventional vampire story.

[00:05:24]But the two lead actresses and the constant atmosphere of seduction do exactly what they need to do.

[00:05:33]If you're looking for something more tasteful and arty, there is Daughters of Darkness, directed by Belgian filmmaker Harry Kümel.

[00:05:42]Newlyweds Stefan and Valerie stop at an almost empty hotel in Ostend, where they meet Countess Elizabeth Bathory and her companion Ilona.

[00:05:51]The Countess immediately takes an interest in Valerie. Meanwhile, several young women have been murdered nearby.

[00:05:58]The film is slow, but deliberately so.

[00:06:01]There is nudity and blood, but none of it feels especially cheap or exploitative. And Delphine Seyrig is easily the best thing about it.

[00:06:10]Her Bathory is elegant and quietly sinister.

[00:06:15]This is not another Vampyros Lesbos. It is colder, more restrained, [music] and far more interested in style than shock.

[00:06:23]Basically, vampire exploitation for people who would rather call it art.

[00:06:30]Night of the Sorcerers is about as far from art as we can get, but it does have vampire women in leopard-print bikinis, so I hope I have already sold you on it.

[00:06:40]If not, here is the plot.

[00:06:43]A group of researchers travels into the African jungle to investigate the disappearance of several elephants.

[00:06:49]They are warned to stay away from an ancient sacrificial altar after dark, but naturally, someone ignores the warning.

[00:06:56]Before long, we get blood sacrifices, beheadings, undead cultists, and vampire women running around in slow motion.

[00:07:04]This is, of course, firmly in so bad it's good territory.

[00:07:08]The acting is rough, the effects are cheap, and none of it makes much sense.

[00:07:13]But if you're looking for something ridiculous and fun for the weekend, this is it.

[00:07:20]Vampires follows Fran and Miriam, who live together in an old English manor and hunt for victims along the nearby road. And these vampires do not bother with two neat puncture wounds in the neck.

[00:07:32]Their attacks are messy and almost cannibalistic, leaving deep wounds wherever they can reach.

[00:07:38]The feeding scenes are brutal, but much of the film is quiet and dreamlike with the English countryside always in the background.

[00:07:46]The film was graphic enough to cause problems with British censors. They removed 2 minutes and 21 seconds of sexual and bloody material and director Jose Ramon Larraz later called the result the Vatican version.

[00:08:00]The United States released the film uncut with an X rating in 1975.

[00:08:07]Rabid is not exactly a typical vampire film, but it still deserves a place here. It was one of David Cronenberg's early features and uses vampirism as the starting point for a much stranger body horror nightmare.

[00:08:20]After a motorcycle crash, Rose, played by Marilyn Chambers, undergoes experimental surgery. The operation leaves her with a new opening under her arm and a stinger-like organ that pierces the skin of her victims and drains their blood.

[00:08:34]Rose now needs human blood to survive, but her feeding also spreads a violent infection. The outbreak spreads through the Canadian countryside and eventually reaches Montreal.

[00:08:45]Cronenberg ignores almost every traditional vampire rule.

[00:08:49]It is graphic and often disgusting, but there is much more going on than simple shock.

[00:08:54]And by the way, Rabid earned around 7 million on a budget of roughly $700,000, making it one of the most successful Canadian films of its time.

[00:09:07]Vampire Hookers was shot in the Philippines during the country's great exploitation boom of the 1970s. Many of these English-language productions combined Filipino crews and locations with imported American actors.

[00:09:20]Director Cirio H. Santiago was one of the key figures in that industry and here the familiar American name was horror veteran John Carradine.

[00:09:30]The title promises a much sleazier movie than the film actually delivers. But where else are we going to talk about vampire hookers if not here?

[00:09:40]Two American sailors are spending their shore leave in Manila when their friend Eddie disappears. He has been picked up by a woman at a bar and taken to a mausoleum in a cemetery with the vampire's lair hidden underneath.

[00:09:53]There he meets Richmond Reed, an ancient vampire played by Carradine, along with his three blood-sucking companions.

[00:10:01]After Eddie becomes their dinner, his friends go looking for him and end up inside the same lair.

[00:10:07]The comedy is not always funny and the vampire action is surprisingly limited.

[00:10:12]Still, the title and Carradine's strange performance make it difficult to forget.

[00:10:17]As for the actresses, I do not think I have seen any of them in anything else.

[00:10:22]But the main qualification for these roles seems fairly obvious. They had to be willing to go topless during the feeding scenes.

[00:10:32]Fascination was directed by Jean Rollin, a filmmaker some people see as a poet of erotic horror and others see as a man who made beautifully photographed trash.

[00:10:43]The truth is probably somewhere in between.

[00:10:45]The story takes place in 1905.

[00:10:48]Mark, a thief fleeing his former partners, hides in a chateau in the forest. He finds only two women there, Elizabeth and Eva.

[00:10:57]Eva is played by French hardcore porn goddess Brigitte Lahaie, here in one of her early non-pornographic roles, though hardly a tame one.

[00:11:07]The women warn Mark to leave before the marchioness and her guests arrive, but he decides to stay and see what this gathering of upper-class women is really about.

[00:11:16]Strictly speaking, they are not supernatural vampires. They are members of a secret society of women who have developed a taste for blood, which is close enough for this list.

[00:11:26]Fascination has almost everything associated with Rollin, but compared with some of his other films, it is surprisingly easy to follow and never becomes too self-important. So if you have never seen his work, this may be the best place to start.