Vampyros Lesbos
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Movie Reviews of Vampyros Lesbos
Movie Review: very artistic filmmaking
Summary: 5 Stars
i love the symbolism here--everytime nadine wants to make a strike, the camera zooms in on a scorpion walking the premises of her castle. the stripshow performance is also very classy--where the countess much like her actions outside of the club controls the movements of her victims--and switches clothing with them (becomes one with the ones she loves). very tastefully done, and hypnotic to watch-and the two main characters are exquisitely beautiful women--where they complement each other perfectly--the vampire is dark, and her victim white. wonderful.Movie Review: It's Jess Franco, how good can it be?
Summary: 2 Stars
Vampyros [censored for Amazon consumption] (Jess Franco, 1971)
Why oh why do I keep watching Jess Franco films? Well, I do know the answer in this single case: Soledad Miranda. A stunningly beautiful woman, easily on a par with any of today's "supermodels", cut short in her prime. While she made quite a few movies, you can't find too many of them in domestic release on DVD, so you take what you can get, and you're thankful for it. Unfortunately, most of them are Jess Franco films. Ah, well.
Miranda here plays Nadine Carody, a Transylvianian countess who has inherited everything owned by the last of the Dracula family. She, too, is a vampire (though it would be tough to recognize this by the general conventions of the genre; she has, among other things, quite a passion for [censored for Amazon consumption] sunbathing). Unlike most female vampires (at least, those about whom movies have been made), she hates men thanks to a childhood traumatic event, thus the title of the movie. Pretty obvious, huh? Ewa Stromberg, another of Franco's regulars (she and Miranda had previously teamed up in The Devil Came from Akasava) plays a lawyer who is tasked to execute Count Dracula's will. While on her way to the island where the reclusive (when she's not dancing in a strip club, anyway) Nadine lives, she is accosted by an odd little man at her hotel (played by Franco himself-- who looks for all the world like my father-in-law, which didn't help matters much) who warns her to stay away from the Island, for "death reigns there." Ah, wonderful horror movie foreshadowing! She gets to the island, finds out that Nadine is the woman she's been seeing in her dreams, and that Nadine has a lot more to discuss with her than some musty old artifacts that have been left to her-- and that much of the discussion must be [censored for Amazon consumption]...
Yeah, the plot is thin as paper, as is the case with many of Franco's movies, and is only there to provide a framework for all the really attractive [censored for Amazon consumption] people slithering around all over one another. And maybe I'm not a typical male, but you know, really attractive [censored for Amazon consumption] people slithering around all over one another can only take a movie so far. Franco's a competent enough director when he puts his mind to it, and his mind was to it here, but the awful script, the pathetic attempts at symbolism (oh, the poor scorpion!), the terrible pacing, the garish set design... it's a tough movie to watch when Soledad Miranda's not on the screen. Still, to get a Soledad Miranda fix, I'm sure many, many people have done much, much worse. **
Movie Review: Don't fall prey to the hype
Summary: 1 Stars
This movie is a great example of how a bad film becomes tagged with the "cult classic" label. I think that this happened because when it came out in 1970 it was kind of risque, kind of psychedelic, and kind of cool in a trippy, arthouse hippy way. In 1970. But it's 2005 now, and this kind of film, and the school of film making that this came out of is unbearable to our changed sensibilities. People probably were impressed with the gorgeous Soledad Miranda - totally understandable. With her beauty being the only exception, the rest of this movie is extremely poorly done.
Other reviewers make comments about the "thin plot" or how this movie is cerebral, or literary. Baloney! There is no plot - things happen and a moment later it's as if what just happened, didn't.
There's an abundance of pans of ships in Istanbul harbor - shots of a scorpion, shots of a kite, blood dripping down a window - all to the effect that you're watching an amateurish cliche-fest.
The much hyped eroticism in this movie is barely there. The actresses seem like they were not at all interested in touching each other. There's lots of long, silent staring at each other, though. I guess to those who may enjoy taking drugs to enhance their movie watching experience, this may seem very "erotic."
I can't convey enough how poor this movie truly is, but here's one example; Nadine's (the vampire) henchman Morpho shoots his gun at two people on the other side of a set of French doors. French doors that have glass panes. The two guys duck for cover. Yet, they have nothing to worry about, as Morpho's bullets don't break the glass. Maybe he was just a really bad shot, or maybe this is a good example of the shoddy film-making.
Don't fall victim to the reviews that praise this as artsy, intellectual cinema. It's not. It's just bad.