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Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Overrated and overhyped

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

A newly wed young couple are heading to England via the ferry but stop the night at an out of season hotel in Ostend. They are the only guests until a striking middle aged looking woman called Countess Bathory and her young female companion arrive. Now anybody with a half decent knowledge of vampirism will recognised the name Bathory as the real life murdering, sadistic & bloody Hungarian countess from the 16th/17th centuries. Filmed in Belgium but English language, this is simply a beautiful work of art. Every frame is sumptuous, fantastic use of colour and in my opinion is up there with Polanski's Dance of the Vampires as one of the best looking vampire films ever made. It may prove too slow for horror fans looking for regular amounts of blood but for those who appreciate finer things allow yourself to become immersed in this, late at night with the lights out. Nudity and lesbianism had become popular in the genre at this time and this film has it's share of erotica, but it's integral to the story rather than just showing flesh for the sake of it.

Better than expected.A newlywed couple are staying in a hotel when a mysterious woman and her assistant arrive at the hotel. Then strange things start happening in the hotel and surrounds...I was expecting some sort of 70s B-grade schlock-horror fest. However, this is better than that and had the potential to be great. For the first 60% or so of the movie, plot and its development are solid, interesting and engaging. There is a degree of character depth too.However, much of this is negated by the final few scenes. After keeping the plot development tight and interesting, the director relaxes control and things get random, silly and a touch pretentious. A pity, as the movie was shaping up for an intriguing ending.

Daughters of Darkness is one of those films where the viewer can generally be sure of what will happen from one moment to the next, but it's still interesting enough to keep watching. It's fairly predictable, up until the last second, which unfortunately you find yourself wishing that perhaps you're wrong...and finding out you were right all along.It's a good enough story, though, with characters boasting many facets and many levels of depth, although unfortunately the surface is barely scratched with most of them. That's also kind of a disappointment since the cast of characters is so small, it's not like they couldn't have explored deeper. The actors were most all up to the task, so why does it seem so shallow in so many ways?The direction, the cinematography, the hair, the makeup, the costumes -- all of it is splendid. Unfortunately by the last half-hour, it's all started to spin its wheels, and the experience has begun to sour. By the last shot, you're done with the movie and more than slightly irritated that you were asked to invest 100 minutes into something that really didn't deserve them.But the Countess was so seductive and interesting, and the young couple were so strange and intriguing, and you knew the story like any old tale, but you hoped that familiarity wouldn't spoil you on it. And when it did anyway, you felt betrayed, as betrayed as you should, yet you still took away a particular feeling from it, something you did like, even if it was ultimately not an overwhelmingly positive experience.This is a film with far more style than substance, and what substance there is remains mostly untapped. There's far too much time-wasting and actor-wasting, too many scenes that don't add up to anything, and an ending that will literally make you angry.Is it worth watching? Once. And only once.Don't make the mistake of going down that road again: it presents far more than it can back up, and that perhaps is the most unfortunate quality of all in this film. It is, at its heart, even flimsier than the shallowest Hammer vampire number, and not nearly as fun as any of them, ultimately. It could have been much better. If only it had bothered to make a good ending of itself. But a bad ending can ruin even a good story, and this was just barely adequate, struggling to breach the surface of mediocrity and pastiche.There is a visual splendour to it, and it is enjoyable to watch and digest as a piece of art. The characters are not all so superficial as they may appear, but any depth remains sadly unexplored, perhaps tragically, by the resolution or lack thereof. Some plot threads are completely dropped, others misappropriated, and all in all this ends up an unsatisfying mess by the last fade to red.If you like unconventional vampire films, give it a try. It won't have any secrets for you, and it won't have any surprises, but it might be amusing for a couple of hours. Don't expect it to become a favourite though.

This viewer will admit right off that he is more accustomed to horror movies of the more traditional kind. However, that doesn't mean that he can't appreciate what a movie like this tries to do. Harry Kumel's "Les Levres Rouges", a.k.a. "Daughters of Darkness", as I am sure has been said numerous times before, has higher aspirations than cheap thrills. (That doesn't mean, however, that fans hoping for a trash quotient won't get it, as there is a fairly generous dose of nudity, male and female, in one key scene.) It's stately, intelligent, and very deliberately paced, with a clear focus on character and ambiance. Now, there are some genuine shock moments and scenes of sudden violence, but they are few and far between.The action, so to speak, is mostly set inside a vast, opulent hotel that a honeymooning couple is visiting in the wintertime. So, it is actually almost empty, until the couple, Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet) make the acquaintance of sophisticated Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig), who just might be THE Elizabeth Bathory of real-life infamy, and her sultry companion, Ilona (Andrea Rau).Enhanced by lovely music composed by Francois de Roubaix, the movie, just like its cagey main character, has a certain, seductive allure going for it; it's hard not to be captivated by Seyrigs' performance and hang on to every word she speaks. One can sense that her presence can only lead this young couple to some pretty dark places, as passionate impulse takes over and the violent side of Stefans' personality is more prone to emerge. In fact, as this story plays out, The Countess doesn't seem as bad as Stefan turns out to be.The other actors do a fine job of reinforcing the notion that a substantial part of acting is REACTING, as their characters feel the influence of this sexy stranger. The atmosphere and mood of this movie are simply excellent, as right from the get go, there is a very somber feel to the characters and dialogue. Stefan and Valerie go so far as to admit that their relationship is not really based on love. Character details like this are given throughout; Stefan reacts with more than casual curiosity to being present at a murder scene, and when he and the Countess recount the horrific acts of Elizabeth Bathory, it arouses them more and more; Valerie yells at them to stop, and is it the sordid nature of what they speak, the fact that they're getting turned on, or both, that is unnerving Valerie? What the characters realize about themselves and the others becomes vitally important to what unfolds.With its elements of lesbianism, eroticism, and sadomasochism, this is an interesting piece of cinema for patient viewers.Seven out of 10.