Watch Vampyres For Free

As Good As It Gets

A Masterpiece!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In 1974 director José Ramón Larraz released this blood-soaked erotic film called Vampyres , which told the story of a lesbian vampire couple who would waylay and kidnap various passers-by, both male and female, to take them captive at their luxurious rural manor . British terror movie about two Vampyre women who cause dreadful murders , being originally directed by the Spanish craftsman Jose Ramon Larraz . This horror as well as semi-exploitation movie deals with a lesbian vampire couple (Marianne Morris , Anulka) abducts motorists and drivers , (Murray Brown , Brian Deacon , Michael Byrne) , to hold them at their large mansion in the English countryside in order to kill and feed on them to satisfy their insatiable thirst for chew their blood . Their starving wishes seem to carry out terrible deaths , which are impossible to stop . As they feed them wine, have passionate sex, and then stab them to death while drinking their blood . The alluring female Vampyres shared the pleasures of the flesh , bloody hungry , and the horrors of the grave . They unleash their fantastic skills and become even more violent and sadistic . A couple that has not yet found a place to park their camper attempts to find out the rare events leading to an old mansion in bloody results which end in death .This frightening movie deliberately told contains thrills , chills , suspense , sleazy images and lots of violence and gore , including obnoxious killings . Jose Ramon Larraz master of arty gore and soft-core , brings this ghastly and stylish story plagued with eerie intrigue , nudism and depraved gore murders executed in a luxury mansion ; in fact , the house is Oakley Court, used for exteriors in several Hammer films , and for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) , it was later turned into a resort hotel . It is a straight horror film that features gallons of sleaze upon sleaze and a lot of sexualised violence . The screenplay is credited to Diana Daubeney, director José Ramón Larraz's wife Diana ; according to Larraz and producer Brian Smedley-Aston , she didn't actually write a word of it . She was credited because, as a British citizen, she filled a UK production quota . This is an English exploitation from Hammer Vampyres vein , as Jose Larraz takes here and there from ¨The Vampire Lovers" , ¨Carmilla¨, ¨Countess Dracula¨, and ¨Twins of Evil¨ , among others . Sometimes weak screenplay is added to well-staged murders and some gory special effects . Furthermore , a scary and thrilling musical score creates a real terror . Colorful cinematography in Hammer style with glimmer as well as lurid colors .This much-loved 70s shocker was professional and stylistically directed by Jose Ramon Larraz . The recently deceased (2013) Larraz started in cinema world by casual way when he meets the famous director Josef Von Stenberg running a cinematographic course in Brussels . Larraz was a director of horror and erotic films and former comic book illustrator and fashion photographer . Worked in England as Joseph Larraz, and in Spain, using the pseudonym Joseph Braunstein . Larraz subsequently shot horror classics , cult obscurities, euro-trash , and even some sexploitation . As he filmed his first movies in England , plenty of terror , suspense and sex , such as ¨Whirlpool¨ (1970) , ¨Deviation¨(1971) , ¨La Muerte Incierta¨(1972) , ¨Scream or die¨(1973) and ¨Symptoms¨ with Angela Pleasence and Peter Vaughan . He also shot soft-cores and then Jose Ramon returns Spain filming horror and semi-exploitative movies such as ¨Estigma¨ , ¨Ritos Sexuales Del Diablo¨, ¨Al Filo del Hacha¨ and ¨Descanse en Piezas¨ , imitating the American Slashers of the 70s and 80s . His most successful film is this ¨Vampyres¨ about bloodsuckers who get victims to pull over hitchhiking , played by Playboy young models with sexy bodies , blending arty house , horror and erotic situations .¨Vampyres¨ rating : Acceptable and passable terror movie . Most hardcore Euro horror fans will appreciate the kinkiness of this film as that is what gives it its distinctive flavour .

If you're going to watch just one of these 'lesbian vampire' films, I recommend that you see Daughters of Darkness. But if you're going to see a few, you might stop here as well; just watch with one eye in Italian horror of the time - if the score doesn't clue you in - so you know what you're getting into.The novelty of these films, at least what was thought to be at the time, lies in swapping the formulaic traditions of the Hammer stage for feverish visions free to wander; often into sex. This is what we get here, a sensual dream about wanton desires, a bloodlust for sex and discovery. Like Jean Rollin used to do it, but with even less the touch of an adept surrealist.One strand of the plot is about beautiful women hitching rides from a countryside road to their secluded château in the woods nearby. The men all eagerly acquiesce to the seduction, to be part of the dream, because the promise of sex is implicit. Of course they are sooner or later drained by desire.The other part of the plot involves a couple who camp in the vicinity. The woman has seen the mysterious figures lurking in the woods, and again by nightfall, and so begins to imagine a story from these elements, a story involving the unspeakable horrors that from our end we get to see inside the house. But the man hasn't seen any of what she has. So he blithely goes fishing. She paints the ominous-looking house in an effort to represent, thus render finite, comprehensible.Of course by the end she ventures to investigate.

Cult reputations can be a bitch. There's just no way a modest boobs 'n' blood shocker from 1974 can survive seasoned gore hound scrutiny three and a half decades down the line, even with the heavily hyped reinstatement of a few minutes of footage deemed too extreme at the time. For those already bracing themselves for massive disappointment, a reality check may be in order. An attempt to outdo genre giant Hammer, commercially compelled to up the ante in terms of both carnage and carnality at the dawn of a new decade, VAMPYRES was made by people with a background in the British sex film industry, unlike its cross-oceanic counterpart hardly a fertile breeding ground for any artistry or ambition beyond the obvious.A comparative dark horse among the fornication filmmaking fraternity of the inhibited isles, primarily because of his Mediterranean lineage (then still synonymous with being carnally knowledgeable if not downright depraved in the minds of English-speaking "respectable" citizens on both sides of the Atlantic), José Ramon Larraz had already earned his stripes as a purveyor of psychologically wrought "erotica" rather than the snickering tits 'n' titters peekaboo farces far more prevalent in UK flea pits. WHIRLPOOL, DEVIATION and SCREAM...AND DIE! testified of a timidly developing auteur sensibility, something barely heard of in an industry interested solely in reaping maximum box office from minimal investment. It's tempting to speculate that the unending censorship problems that befell VAMPYRES, combined with the lukewarm critical reception afforded his crossover SYMPTOMS that same year, inspired the director's impromptu return to his fatherland for a career only intermittently highlighted by anything out of the ordinary such as EL MIRON (The Voyeur) or THE COMING OF SIN.A stalwart editor who had learned his trade on quintessential British cinema classics like Tony Richardson's TOM JONES and Nic Roeg and the late Donald Cammell's PERFORMANCE, Brian Smedley-Aston graduated from performing second unit chores on TV shows like Shirley MacLaine's ill-fated SHIRLEY'S WORLD to producing pseudo-porn (as close to the real deal as the BBFC would allow) with the Fiona Richmond triumvirate of EXPOSE, HARDCORE and LET'S GET LAID, very much in order of diminishing ambition. Apart from the country's then top sex symbol Ms. Richmond, and by extension her sugar daddy and fabled Revue Bar proprietor Paul Raymond, another constant on these progressively threadbare productions was his good friend James Kenelm Clarke, a classically trained composer employed on tons of '60s BBC shows. Pressed into duty as a makeshift movie maker, latter proved most adept at plying his erstwhile trade, contributing an effectively eerie score for his big screen calling card.Defiantly uneventful to the brink of art-house abstraction, VAMPYRES must make mighty strange viewing for contemporary audiences weaned on the Misty Mundae variety of bodacious bloodsuckers. It's hard to tell how much of this narrative minimalism's intentional or dictated by an allegedly active three week shooting schedule to accommodate its pittance of a budget. More low key than his outré compatriot Jess Franco, Larraz actually seems liberated rather than constrained by any potential limitations, mining the "breathing room" between set pieces for atmosphere both convincingly Gothic and genuinely erotic. Contributing extensively to the effect is the film's undoubtedly most respected artisan, veteran cinematographer Harry Waxman who shot the lofty likes of Ken Annakin's SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON and Roy Boulting's THE FAMILY WAY, equally at home wallowing in the mire of Tony Sloman's NOT TONIGHT, DARLING and Andrea Bianchi's WHAT THE PEEPER SAW.Questioning its catchpenny title, movie's vaguely Carpathian anti-heroines aren't even vampires in the traditional sense - inviting a double bill perhaps with Jean Rollin's subsequent and equally genre-bending FASCINATION, but I digress - but rather ghostly manifestations of a pair of naughty noblewomen cruelly punished for their "unnatural lust" in the cryptic pre-credits sequence. Haunting the grounds where they were slain, they appear at twilight, flagging down solitary motorists and taking them back to the mansion for some heavy petting and bloodletting, using daggers or shards of glass. One middle-aged Lothario named Ted (Murray Brown, Jonathan Harker to Jack Palance's Dracula in Dan Curtis's TV version) catches Fran's fancy who chooses to drain him more daintily than previous victims. Left to his own devices during daylight hours, Ted's perfectly capable of making his way back to civilized world so it's a clear sign of his amplifying addiction that he literally keeps coming back for more. His being recognized by local hotel's ancient retainer subtly suggests the possibility of the perpetrator's reincarnation.Film's weakest aspect is the inclusion of a couple camping nearby as observing outsiders and unnecessary audience identification figures, a thankless assignment for Brian Deacon (the catalyst caught between Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson in Michael Apted's TRIPLE ECHO) and Sally Faulkner, so good in Norman J. Warren's PREY, the latter at least granted the benefit of a memorably gruesome death scene. Mouthing most of movie's clunky dialog, these two inevitably wind up more hindrance than help. Models with limited acting experience, both professionally post-dubbed, Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska (a familiar face from '70s TV commercials) acquit themselves rather well as delectably dark and frostily fair suck sister respectively, their body language speaking veritable volumes in luxuriously lengthy liaisons. The BBFC holding a longstanding track record for nixing the mix of skin and hemoglobin, their since lifted veto accounts for the missing minutes. Larraz regular Karl Lanchbury, central stud in Trevor Wrenn's wall to wall shag fest EROTIC INFERNO, receives the most spectacular send-off in movie's most excerpted encounter.

Two female bloodsuckers, seen murdered by a mysterious figure in black whose identity is never explained at the opening of the film, seduce travelers on a road that passes near their abode-of-the-moment, a decadent castle, isolated from the outside world thanks to a heavy presence of green(trees and bushes) resting at it's opening with only a path giving anyone an idea that something lives within. The castle is the very definition of secluded, and an ideal place for a vampire couple's lair..particularly when they look as gorgeous as Fran(Marianne Morris) and Miriam(Anulka Dziubinska). Ted(Murray Brown), a mysterious man himself, who rudely shakes off a hotel employee who claims he's seen him before, becomes Fran's slave of lust..unlike other males who follow the femme vamps to the castle, Fran spares Ted's life because she's perhaps in love with him. After rambunctious sex, Ted awakens the next morning, weakened hardly able to balance himself realizing a long gash on his arm, not to mention blood on the bed sheets. The gaping wound will be a small supply for Fran(..and sometimes Miriam)for Ted finds himself unable to pull away from her. He's bewitched by Fran and remains a blood-drinking source for the vampires giving them nourishment when other horny males do not pass by their road. We are voyeurs into the world of Fran and Miriam and their selection process watching as they wrangle men with their feminine wiles and promises of sex. We are also eyes into their attacks on the victims, like rabid dogs as they stab and drink while the tortured souls succumb to blood loss and death. The film also follows a married couple, John(Brian Deacon)and Harriet(Sally Faulkner)who are on vacation, deciding the rest their camper within the castle's grounds not knowing what horrors lie in wait for them.One thing's for certain, as directed by José Ramón Larraz, the film doesn't go skimpy on what fans for erotic Euro-horror crave for, ultra-violence, nudity, and sex are in abundance. I felt the gaping wound on Ted's arm began to take the form of a female vagina as the vampires, over a period of time, feed from it. The castle setting really enriches the film and thanks to the splendid use of candlelight, many night time sequences(..of course, around Midnight is when the vampires bounce on their male victims, who are often overcome by drunkenness)are particularly chilling. I love the claustrophobic confines of a wine cellar where the vampires house their Carpathian vintage, underneath the castle, led to by a long tunnel. My favorite scene, beside the shower Fran and Miriam take together, is the vampires attack on the wine connoisseur in the wine cellar..it's quite a lengthily established sequence as they set him up by leading him to their special volume of wine. The attacks themselves are drenched in blood..the victims covered in the red stuff as Fran and Miriam have at them passionately. The female leads really get into their vampire roles. The final twenty or so minutes become particularly blood-thirsty as Fran and Miriam go on a rampage slicing and drinking from several unfortunates. I'm not sure I understood how they become vampires, though..their affliction and violent deaths by gunshots at the opening really doesn't get a necessarily good explanation as to how they became what they are. This is a film, though, that's more on style and image than substance. José Ramón Larraz certainly has talent and brings together some spooky exterior shots at night of the castle and the setting reeks of death and decay. Lots of lesbian activity not to mention some sexual interludes between Fran and Ted. And, Marianne Morris loves to remove her clothes slowly..the camera loves her mysterious dark dark brown eyes.One might ponder why John and Harriet remain on the grounds for such a long period of time..particularly when Harriet suspects Fran and Miriam of something as they stroll off into the distance before dawn. There's a really strange meeting that occurs between Fran and Harriet where the female bloodsucker speaks as if they had met before..yet, this is never addressed in the film again. Some of these holes bothered me a bit but the overall experience was quite noteworthy. Fans of lesbian vampire flicks, in particular, should enjoy this one.