Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Female Vampire Blu-ray Movie Review

I vant to suck your...well, not blood, exactly...

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater October 18, 2012

Ah, Jesús "Jess" Franco, the trashiest of the Euro-trash directors, the seamy eye behind nearly 200 limp and sordid films, most of them some combination of lazy horror and flesh-baring softcore sleaze. He might have a cult following, but he's gained it only by being prolific—prolifically bad. His breakthrough, if you can call it that, was 1961's The Awful Dr. Orloff, a gothic chiller in the Hammer Film Productions mold and Spain's first bonafide horror movie. Increasingly, though, he moved away from this relative reputability—coinciding with his move to the more sexually liberal France in 1970—and started churning out slow-paced, low-to-no-budget grindhouse snoozers effluent with writhing naked ladies, S&M imagery, psuedo-poetical dialogue, and a withering aptitude for good filmmaking technique. Don't get me wrong, I understand all of the reasons why some people "like" Franco's films—the ironic, so-bad-it's-passably-entertaining enjoyment, the kitsch factor, the copious nudity, maybe even the fact that Quentin Tarantino is a noted admirer—but I don't think any fan can claim with a straight face that Jess Franco is a competent director, let alone a good one. Then again, I suppose "good" here is entirely beside the point.

The Bare-Breasted Countess

This week Kino Lorber and Redemption Films are releasing two of Franco's seminal 1970s schlockfests—Female Vampire and Exorcism —and in the case of former, I use the term seminal very literally. Yes, Female Vampire is about a supernaturally cursed woman who subsides entirely on sexual fluids. Played by Lina Romay, Franco's muse and longtime companion, the mute Countess Irina Karlstein is introduced walking toward the camera in a foggy wood, wearing—for reasons inexplicable beyond simple titillation—naught but a black cape and a belt. Franco's camera shakily lowers down and zooms in on her pubic triangle, then back up to her eyes, with no apparent regard for keeping any of this in focus. Toward the end of the shot, Romay gets close enough that she actually bumps into the lens. You could make a drinking game out of these frequent amateurisms. The cinematography is credited to "Joan Vincent," but this is just a Franco pseudonym. I'd want to use a pseudonym too.

When Irina approaches a farmhouse, the farmer comes out and asks her what she wants. Wordlessly, she leads him up to a fence and goes down on him—this is shot as tastefully as possible, from behind his back—and at the moment of la petite mort, the man also experiences la grand mort, as the countess finishes him off in more ways than one. His dying scream echoes down into the valley, and the film establishes that we're on Madeira, a Portuguese island that was the countess' ancestral home. A female journalist named Anna (Anna Watican) accosts the countess at a swank coastal resort and proceeds to ask her a series of yes-or-no questions—remember, Irina can't speak, for whatever reason—and from this interview we get a surge of exposition, including the fact that the countess' ancestors had a "bloody reputation," and that the locals are wary that she's back in the environs.

With this plot nonsense out of the way, Female Vampire quickly gets down to business, and by business I mean "protracted softcore sex scenes, some of which end in orally-induced murder." I'd venture to say that the lithe Romay—a self-proclaimed exhibitionist—probably spends a solid quarter of the movie in bed, sucking her thumb suggestively, humping a body-sized pillow, grinding up on the bedpost, and rolling around naked and restless while her dopey manservant lustily ogles on. And this is just when she's alone. She also tempts a man into her bed (riding him after he's, uh, expired), visits Anna in the middle of the night for a sapphic make-out session, and gets chained up and whipped in an S&M dungeon owned by two kooky aristocratic women, one of whom gets killed by Irina's oral fixation. All of these scenes are rather artlessly shot, with Franco clumsily zooming in and out on erogenous zones with the horny visual ADD of a teenaged boy let loose on a porno set. I've never seen someone work so hard to make onscreen naked women so unappealingly boring.

Meanwhile, the town coroner, Dr. Roberts—played by Franco himself—begins to suspect Irina is behind the rash of recent deaths. ("He was bit in the middle of an orgasm," he says of the first victim, and with a straight face continues, "the vampire sucked his semen and took his life away.") There's also Baron Von Rathony (Jack Taylor), a mustachioed writer who—when he's not reading from local guide books—obsessively falls for Irina, hoping to join her in immortality. The film shoehorns a half-assed tragic romance into the last act, with Irina loathing her own load-guzzling nature but unable to resist taking Rathony to the ultimate completion. Oh, the pathos! Obviously, you don't watch Female Vampire for the story. Why would you watch it, then? I'll leave that to the Franco apologists and/or the seedier side of your imagination. Let's just say this ain't a tear jerker.

Female Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino Lorber and Redemption Films have acquired a print of Female Vampire that's in watchable but far from perfect shape, and the resultant 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray transfer is true to source, with no clean-up work but no unnecessary digital tinkering either. Although the 2-perf 35mm image is exceptionally grainy and usually soft, it has a naturally filmic look, untouched by digital noise reduction and edge enhancement. Specks, flecks, and instances of small debris are in abundance, and there are several scenes that are gouged by harsh vertical scratches. Elsewhere, you'll spot mild brightness fluctuations and frame jittering. It's all noticeable, and slightly distracting at times, but if you watch a lot of low-budget 1970s horror, you're already used to seeing dinged-up, worn-out prints. The level of clarity does get a significant boost from prior standard definition editions, however. Even though Franco clearly has no real regard for accurate focusing, when the picture is dialed in correctly, there's at least some fine detail visible. And while the color in the print can look a bit faded at times, this is better than being artificially pumped up and oversaturated. Given that it's extremely unlikely that Franco's films will ever be given thorough, frame-by-frame restorations, this is probably the best that Female Vampire will look for some time to come.

Female Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Female Vampire goes down on Blu-ray with two audio options—lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo tracks in either French or English. Both are functional and listenable, but obviously constrained by the film's age and low-budget sound design. The dubbing, for instance, is blatantly noticeable —if I had to stick with one, though, I'd definitely choose the French mix—and you'll hear a few hisses, pops, and crackles, along with a slight brittleness in the high end. The piano theme music sounds decent enough, as does the weirdly unsexy vocal number that plays over most of the protracted sex scenes. Voices occasionally peak, but the dialogue is at least balanced and comprehensible. The disc also includes optional English subtitles.

Female Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Erotikill (1080p, 1:10:57): Ironically, the version of the film titled Erotikill is the less sexually explicit cut. The plot stays the same, but all the kills are sanitized and the sex scenes shortened.
• Destiny in Soft Focus (1080p, 13:37): A new retrospective interview with an ancient-looking and snaggletoothed Jess Franco, who thinks back on the making of the film and talks about wanting to make "a vampire with heart. Not a motherf--ker, but nice."
• Words for Lina (1080p, 12:39): Film critic and co-star Jean-Pierre Bouyoux recalls working with the late Lina Romay on the film. Choice quote: "Even though she was Spanish, she acted like a Parisian guttersnipe."
• Trailers (1080p): Includes trailers for Female Vampire, Exorcism, The Rape of the Vampire, The Nude Vampire, and Requiem for a Vampire.

Female Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's no accounting for taste when it comes to horror or erotica, so I don't begrudge anyone their Jess Franco film fetish, even if I don't share it. (I think he's tedious and mysteriously over-hyped.) The director's cult will certainly appreciate this new Blu-ray edition of Female Vampire, which— considering the type of film we're talking about—I'll admit at least has a novel premise. If you're completely new to the Euro-sleaze master's seedy oeuvre, however, I'd advise checking out some trailers or footage from the film on YouTube before stumbling into a blind-buy scenario. Recommended only for a niche audience of low-budget 1970s Euro-horror fans.