Vampyres (1974)

Directed by Jose Ramon Larraz
Starring Murray Brown, Marianna Morris, Anulka Dziubinska
Rated X (Uncut version)
UK

They shared the pleasures of the flesh, and the horrors of the grave!

Vampyres is one of the finest examples of the early 1970's lesbian vampire cycle. This very welcome exploitation micro-genre is firmly rooted in the mythos suggested by Camilla, an 1872 novella by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu about a female vampire and her powers of same-sex seduction. Sapphic-minded vampiresses were first introduced into the cinema with 1936's Dracula's Daughter, but the lezbo-ball really got rolling in 1960 with Blood and Roses, Roger Vadim's relatively subtle Camilla adaptation. The blood, tits, and girl-on-girl antics that we all know and love, however, is a specifically 70's-centric affair. British horror-gods Hammer produced an amazing, explicit, highly erotic trio of lez-vamp flicks in rapid succession: The Vampire Lovers (1970), starring Ingrid Pitt; Lust for a Vampire (1971), with Zeta One's Yutte Stensgaard, and 1972's groovy Twins of Evil, starring Playboy playmates Madeline and Mary Collinson. Europe was busy churning them out, as well. Daughters of Darkness (1971) was a Belgian lensed retelling of the Countess Bathory tale with bonus girl-girl action. Always one to sniff out a trend, prolific Spanish Z-movie auteur Jess Franco jumped into the fray with the psychedelic Vampyros Lesbos in 1971, and loony Frenchman Jean Rollin spat out an almost endless stream of them: The Naked Vampire (1970), The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), Lips of Blood (1975), etc. There are others, as well, but the first wave of lesbian vampire films capped off with 1983's drowsy The Hunger. They came roaring back in the 90's with a pile of low-budget softcore flicks, most of them starring Misty Mundae, or at least one of Misty's friends, and they show no sign of going away any time soon, as evidenced by 2008's blatantly titled Lesbian Vampire Killers.

Surely, these films have some psychosocial significance, and they've been analyzed to (un)death by post-feminists and cinema-snobs for decades, but let's be honest about it: guys like watching chicks make out with each other. And if you can throw a little blood around while you're at it, well, you've just sold a fuckin' ticket, sir.

Above: Lust for a Vampire

Vampyres arrived around the end of the initial spurt of lez-vamp films, so it contained all the tropes blueprinted by the Hammer films. It also boasted a uniquely continental flavor, since it was shot in England but directed by a Spaniard. A sleaze-beast from the get-go, Jose Ramon Larraz began his directorial career in the UK, but relocated to Spain in the mid-70's. He has a jaw-dropping resume piled high with primo exploitation: The House that Vanished (1973), The Violation of the Bitch (1978), Madame Olga's Pupils (1980), Edge of the Axe (1988), and so on. If you're looking for salacious stories slathered with sex and violence, layered in atmosphere and shot with an eye for the surreal, than the underrated Larraz is your man. Vampyres is easily his most well-known film, and for good reason: its got lots of blood, lots of tits, and lesbians.

Vampyres opens in a very arousing/alarming manner. Two big-breasted Betties lez out in a big fluffy bed, but are rudely interrupted when some maniac with a gun shows up and blows them into splattery smithereens. Cue the acid-rock guitars, garishly colored credits, and wildly flapping bats that denote a proper 70's vampire flick.

Cagey Ted (Murray Brown) checks into an inn for the night. The creaky old bellhop recognizes him from 'years ago', but he denies ever being there before.

Meanwhile, a young couple, John (Brian Deacon) and Harriet (Sally Faulkner), drive down a country road on their way to a campsite. They pass by a beautiful woman in a flowing dress who appears to be hitchhiking. Harriet - who sports a Helen Reddy style bowl cut - swears she saw another woman hiding behind a tree, as well. John shrugs them off, correctly assuming that some other chump will pick up the hot hitchhiker. Sure enough, some mustache guy in a blue Mini-Cooper ambles up and lets the woman in.

Later on, our happy campers find a cozy spot deep in the woods, directly across from an ominous, seemingly abandoned mansion a (Oakley Court, a frequent Hammer house, and, more famously, the house where the Rocky Horror Picture Show was shot). They settle into their camper for an uneasy night of sleep, but Harriet is woken by some strange noises.

She looks out the window and sees some lights on in the supposedly abandoned mansion. Worse still, she is startled when a hand smacks the window of the camper. She demands that John get up to see what the fuck is going on. He dutifully trudges out into the pouring rain with a flashlight, but sees nothing. He comes back in and tries to convince Harrriet that she was just dreaming.

Amazingly, Harriet survives the night. When she wakes up the next morning, she looks out the window to see two young women in black dresses marching through the woods toward the mansion.

Meanwhile, the cops are investigating a deadly crash on the country road. Looks like mustache guy wasn't as lucky as our friends.

Harriet harps on about her morning vision, but John is frankly sick of listening to her. "Since we've arrived at this spot, everything seems strange to you," he pish-poshes. "You see phantoms and ghosts just about everywhere." So that's the end of that discussion. After a healthy breakfast of toast and Sultana Bran (?), Harriet goes outside to paint a landscape while the brooding John fishes and chain smokes down by the riverside.

Meanwhile, Ted is out for drive when he happens upon a busty, doe-eyed hitchhiker (Marianna Morris, The Amorous Milkman). Naturally, he picks her up, and she asks for a ride home, as it's getting dark. He agrees, and off they go. She tells him her name is Fran, but she doesn't tell him much of anything else.

They drive to her home - the spooky mansion, of course - and Ted invites himself in. They wind through the labyrinth of rooms until they finally get to Fran's quarters, which are festooned with weird accents like a zebra skin rug and Hindu statues.
They have a nonsensical discussion about what, exactly, Fran does for a living ("I search for interesting people", she finally tells him), and then they make savage 70's love. Twice.

As you would expect, Ted then falls into a deep slumber. When he wakes, he finds Fran still in the bed beside him, either dead or in some sort of trance. He stumbles around the room, but is too tired to leave, and he falls back to sleep. When he wakes the second time, it's morning, he's got a nasty gash on his arm, there's blood on the sheets, and Fran's gone. Groggy, weak, and soaked with cold sweat, Ted gets dressed, lights a smoke and Scooby Doos around the joint, looking for Fran. But Fran split, man.

Ted leaves, but finds that he's still quite groggy. He visits John and Harriet at their camper and asks for some help. They bandage him up. He thanks them and heads out. As he's leaving, Harriet asks him if anybody lives in the weird old house. "That's a question I've been asking myself since last night," he says, mysteriously. And I still don't know the answer."

Instead of going back to the inn - or home, or anywhere else sensible - Ted just goes back to the mansion and stakes the place out all day. Fran finally arrives at some point that night. She apologizes for leaving so abruptly, but tells him she had to be somewhere at dawn and couldn't make it back until now. He shrugs it all off. The sex must have been phenomenal. She invites him back in, but sheepishly tells him she's got company - blonde beauty Miriam (Playboy's Miss May 1973, Anulka Dziubinska) , and some dude in a tweed jacket named Rupert (frequent Larraz collaborator Karl Lanchbury). "I'm sure you'll like them," she purrs.

The four have a lovely time smoking cigs and gulping down goblets of red wine, but they start to run out, so Miriam and Rupert head down to the wine cellar to fetch some more.
While they're gone, Fran tells Fred that Miriam also live there, that she's her girlfriend. Not her 'girlfriend' girlfriend, just, you know, they like to hang. Rupert, on the other hand, is just some dude who gave them a ride. Ted is slightly alarmed, but mostly aroused, and somewhat drunk.

Meanwhile, in the camper across the way, Harriet is still bitching about their horrible camping spot and its approximation to whatever wickedness is going on in the old dark house. John just wishes she'd shut up about it, already.

Back at maniac mansion, Ted and Fran fuck again, and while he enjoys a post-coital snooze, Fran gingerly laps at his oozing arm wound. Later she steps out into the hall to see a delirious, gore-soaked Miriam. She follows her back to Miriam's room, where a thoroughly mangled Rupert thrashes away in a pool of his own blood.

He struggles to get free, but Frank picks up a dagger and stabs him deep in the guts with it, opening him up so the two vamps can get at the red stuff inside. Satiated, they wrap Rupert up in a sheet and drag him downstairs. Then they take a sensual shower together.

The next morning, Ted wakes up alone again. He has a what-the-fuck moment (finally), when he realizes all the mirrors have been taped over.

His growing unease is exacerbated when he vrooms down the road a bit but is blocked off by police, who are pulling the mangled corpse of Rupert out his twisted mess of a car. Ted heads back to the mansion to get to the bottom of this madness. He heads down the wine cellar, and accidentally locks himself in.

Meanwhile, Harriet's out in the woods, painting another picture. The vamps glide up to her to see what she's up to. Instead of killing her, however, Fran rubs her thumb on Harriet's forehead.
"I always knew we'd find each other," she says. "By this sign, I'll recognize you."
You don't really need any secret sign, Fran. Just look at her. I mean, Harriet's pretty butch.

Fran and Miriam head back to the mansion. When they get there, Ted's still banging away on the locked cellar door, whining for help. Fran lets him out and takes him upstairs. She disrobes, and so does her, ready for another round of vampire pussy, but he passes out from lack of blood.

Miriam comes into the room, and they have a bloody three-way, with Miriam sucking out dribbles of Ted's blood and then furiously making out with Fran, their lips and tongues freely exchanging Ted's vital fluids. It's pretty nuts.

Harriet goes sleuthing, and ends up in the mansion's cellar, where she finds Fran sleeping.

Miriam spots her and slinks into the shadows. And then John shows up and asks her just what the fuck she thinks she's doing. She tries to explain that these undead girls are in there snoozing, but he shoos her out. Ted, meanwhile, is up in the bedroom, gasping for help, but he's too weak to alert the campers, so they split.

Darkness falls, and the girls bring home their next victim an international playboy (Michael Bern) in a shiny sports car. Miriam and tomorrow's lunch warm their bones by the fire while Fran goes upstairs to stifle a raving Ted, who has finally figured out the two women are stone-cold, bloodsucking killers. It's about fucking time, Ted.

The playboy is really digging their wine, and being a connoisseur, tries to guess where it's from. He is stumped, and the girls tell him it's from a remote part of the Carpathian mountains. You know, Transylvania. Apparently this guy's never seen a vampire movie in his life, because he accepts their invitation to go down to the cellar to check out the flasks.

Meanwhile, back at the camper, Harriet takes off her shirt, revealing her soft, feminine curves and ample chest. Who knew? She turns down the lights and slips into bed to make gentle big-boned love to John.

While that's going on outside, the playboy is having the time of his life in the cellar, chugging wine and goofing around with the girls.
"It's almost too good to be true," he says.
"Nothing's too good to be true," says Miriam. "The only problem is that life's too short."
Just what are you driving at, blondie? The wine keeps flowing, everybody starts mashing lips, the tits come out, and it's a full-on threeway, right there in the musty basement. Of course, it ends quite badly for the playboy, but what a way to go, right?

Half-dead Ted manages to stumble out of the house while the girls slurp on the playboy. He even makes it to the camper to ask John and Harriet for help. But will they be any match for two pissed-off lesbian bloodsuckers?

Depends. How long is it until dawn?

Bloody, brutal, frequently scary, and erotically charged, Vampyres is a cult-horror classic. Boners will most certainly be popped - I mean, just look at these two - but be prepared to sleep with the lights on afterward.

Clip: Vampyres trailer!

- Ken McIntyre

Nude on the Moon (1961)

Directed by Doris Wishman
Starring Lester Brown, William Mayer, Marietta
Unrated
USA

"Here are your messages, Mr. Huntley."
"The devil with the messages. We're going to the moon!"

Sexploitation pioneer Doris Wishman was one of the very first film-makers to bring cinematic nudity to the general public; prior to her nudist camp cycle, it was grubby 8mm loops in your drunk uncle's basement or nothin'. Wishman's first film, 1960's Hideout in Sun, established the aesthetic: throw a few half-sketched characters into a situation that forces them to interact with nekkid people. In the case of Hideout, two bungling bank robbers take refuge from Johnny Law in the warm, sunny embrace of a nudist colony. In the more high-concept Nude on the Moon, two cockamamie 'scientists' build a rocket and visit the moon, which just happens to be populated by naked girls. Hey, it was 1962. Nobody had been there yet. Could be anything up there.

Wishman was often referred to as 'the female Ed Wood', and the reasons why become glaringly obvious right off the bat. Right away you know that something's amiss, because the entire (awesome) theme song is played over a static painting of the moon. No credits. The credits don't actually start until after the song is over. Never mind the middle, Doris starts padding the running time before the credits even roll. The song, "I'm Mooning Over You (My Little Moon Doll)" is performed by Ralph Young, later of popular 70's easy-listening duo, Sandler and Young. Once you hear it, there's a good chance it will never escape from your brain, so be forewarned.

After that languorous intro, we meet our two space stooges. Dr Jeff Huntley (Lester Brown, in his debut - and final - role) is an impetuous scientist with heady dreams. His partner, known simply as "Professor" (frequent Wishman collaborator William Mayer), is the more grounded of the two. Older and wiser, he goes along with Jeff's schemes, but complains pretty constantly.

Also on deck is Kathy (one-time, singularly-named actress Marietta), Jeff's secretary. Kathy clearly pines for Jeff - she even keeps a bizarre painted portrait of him in her desk drawer - but he barely knows she's alive. I'm not sure what the appeal is for Kathy, since Jeff is a dick, but love is notoriously blind.

Life plods along at the lab until one fateful day, an excited Jeff bursts in to tell the prof that his uncle just dies and left him a princely sum of one million dollars, an almost unfathomable amount in 1961. So what's he going to do with it? Buy a castle? No, he wants to use the dough to build a rocketship and fly to the fuckin' moon. While the professor is amused by this news, he's also a little concerned. He tells Jeff that maybe he should think about pursuing something a little less dangerous, like getting married - to Kathy, for example - and raising a family. Jeff tells the prof off. "I'm not interested in getting married," he says. "All I care about is science." Then he takes off. The professor takes this rare quiet moment to feed his pet monkey, which he keeps in a tiny little dog house.

I'm not sure why they keep brewing up chemicals if they're trying to build a rocketship to the moon, but that's what they do. They spend quite a bit of time staring at bubbling beakers and spouting scientific-sounding nonsense in order to meet their six-month deadline for the moon trip.

Finally, the fateful day arrives. The professor and Jeff drive out to god knows where to take their trip to the moon. They open up a gate that has a "Huntley Rocket Project" on it and stare at something off-camera.
"Well, there it is," says the professor. "Isn't it beautiful?"
How would I know? You have not shown it to us, sir.
So then they both climb some scaffolding that does look like it could be a rocketship bay, only there is clearly no rocketship attached to it. They climb in, tell mission control that they're "all set", and then they shoot off into space. This effect is achieved, naturally, with a model rocket. By the way, no spacesuits for our heroes, no way. They prefer denim for space flight.

Things seem to be going ok, but then the professor, followed quickly by Jeff, falls into a sudden slumber. When they wake up, they've landed safely on the moon.

Now, they put on their spacesuits - they're Ace Frehley sorta deals, with motorcycle helmets and rubber breathing tubes. Naturally, the astronauts are taken aback when they get off the ship to find trees, grass, and blue skies outside. They expected the usual: dust and rocks, or perhaps green cheese. They wander around for awhile and discover that there's chunks of solid gold littering the ground. The prof wants to scoop a bunch of it up to take back with them so that they can use it to finance their next trip, but grumpy Jeff insists they move on, as they are there for "science, not gold." Reluctantly, the professor agrees, and they wander around some more. They encounter a man-made wall with a ladder propped up against it.

"Look, there's a ladder," says Professor Obvious. And so he climbs it.
On the other side of the wall, there's a park where topless men and women (and a couple naked kids) frolic. A couple of brawny moon-men (you can tell they're from the moon because they have pipe cleaners on their heads) spot the peeping prof and snatch him.

Jeff, who is still standing there on the opposite side of the wall, finally decides to climb the ladder and see what's up. Naturally, he gets snatched by the no-nonsense moon men as well. Soon, both astronauts find themselves locked up in a coral grotto. That's when it hits you: everything in this screwy place is made of coral. Maybe it is the moon!

Actually, Nude was shot at Coral Castle in Miami, a popular tourist spot with an awesome/sad backstory. Seems there was this Latvian teenager, Edward Leedskalnin, who was engaged to his true love, sixteen year old Agnes Scruffs. For reasons unknown, Scruffs jilted our man Eddie, so he left Latvia and ran away to Florida to escape his heartbreak. When he got there - in 1920 - he started obsessively building a structure out of coral. He continued to build this odd "Coral castle" for 28 years, usually at night, away from the prying eyes of his neighbors. How he moved the incredibly large and heavy slabs of coral back and forth remains a mystery, but build and build he did. He eked out a very modest living by granting tours of the property, but otherwise kept to himself. One day in 1951, Eddie started to feel ill, she hopped a bus to the hospital. When he got there, he found out he was suffering from malnutrition, and died three days later. He left no real explanation for why he dedicated thirty years of his life to the Coral Castle, but then tourists asked him, he'd tell them it was for his "Sweet sixteen". And that is officially the most heartbreaking fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Billy's Idol's 1986 hit "Sweet Sixteen" was about Eddie. The video even opens with a shot of him in front of the Coral Castle.

Anyway, ten years later, Doris rented the joint and stocked it with booby girls. Back to the story.

So the guys are locked up. Meanwhile, the bosomy queen of the topless moon people (Surprise! It's Marietta again!) has a telekinetic meeting with them (one of whom happens to be about 60) and tells them she's not sure what's up with these new dudes, but she'll have a meeting with the Great Council and figure it out.

So then she has said meeting at a big rock table, but it happens to be with the exact same crew. Maybe the Great Council was busy. She decides the Earth Men are friendly - one blonde disagrees, but what is she gonna do? She's not the fuckin' queen - so they let them out.

Happy to have their freedom, Jeff and the prof wander around, taking photos of rocks and trees. They're surrounded by topless girls, and they take pictures of rocks and trees. Meanwhile the girls do their best to distract them by fiddling with their spacesuits, playing catch really slowly, splashing around in the pond, and taking naps. A couple of the girls goof on the prof's dumb mustache. Moon humor.

The fellas get enough "interesting data" together (Honestly, no notes are needed, are they? You just go back home and say, 'There's naked girls and hunks of gold on the moon!', and that'll pretty much explain everything), but before they split, Jeff wants to hit on the queen. While he does this, "Moon Doll" plays on the scratchy soundtrack again. Jeff gives the Moon Queen a candy bar, which she gobbles up while it's still in the wrapper. This cracks him up. The two fall instantly in love.

The grumpy old prof comes by and tells Jeff that it's time for them to go, since they're running out of oxygen. Dunno why they'd need oxygen, since the moon appears to have the same atmosphere as Miami, but regardless, Jeff says he doesn't want to go back. He wants to stay there and feed candybars to the queen.
"I'm in love," he says. "For the first time in my life, I feel for someone, and it's wonderful."
The queen feels it too, but she knows their love is doomed. So she bonks him gently on the head and sends him on his way.

Jeff and the professor make it their rocket and blast off back to Earth. Jeff's sore about having to leave the queen, but even worse, he forgot his fuckin' camera, and the prof forgot his satchel, so there's no proof of their trip. When they get back, the professor has some scientists look at the rocket ship, figuring that might convince them, and they tell him they don't even think the thing could get off the ground, never mind go to the moon. Now the prof isn't sure where the fuck they went.


Jeff has no regrets, though. Especially when Kathy walks in, and he suddenly notices her resemblance to a certain candy-freak from outer space.

While its never reaches any heights of outrage or high-camp, the good-naturedly goofy Nude on the Moon is still a howl to watch. From the wretched acting of the two leads to the mismatched shots (Shot one: it's day. Shot two: it's night), Nude is threadbare, nonsensical, and thoroughly charming.

Sci-fi sex-flicks would get weirder and raunchier as time went on (see Flesh Gordon, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, Zeta One, or even Bimbo Cheerleaders from Outer Space for a few prime examples), but Doris, as she was often wont to do, did it first. Ten years later, she was making some of the most over-the-top sexploitation films of the 70's - and that's saying something - but Nude is very much a fluffy, lighter-than-air Nudie Cutie. Fun stuff.

Here's the trailer!

- Ken McIntyre