La comtesse noire

Female Vampire (1973)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Jess Franco's erotic twist on the vampire legend has Lina Romay playing Countess Irina, the last member of a vampire family who plans on ending the legacy. A troubled journalist (Anna Watican) shows up to interview Irina and soon the vampire is putting a spell on her. This film is available in three different versions. A hardcore one, which I've watched before, a horror version and a softcore version, which is being reviewed here. The difference in this take on the vampire legend is that Romay doesn't suck the blood out of the neck but instead sucks the semen out of you know where. When you talk to Franco fans about this film you'll usually start a heated debate but to me this is one of the directors best films. The opening, with Romay, naked of course, walking through a fog filled forest, really sets the tone for the film, which also includes a terrific and haunting score by Daniel White. Romay plays a mute in the film and I think this is one of her best performances because she's able to display a sadness that really works for the film. It doesn't hurt matters that she walks around completely naked throughout the movie and this beauty is certainly her in prime shape. This softcore version is certainly more erotic than horror but this is just fine as I find the movie to be incredibly sexy. There's a nearly ten minute lesbian scene between Romay and the reporter, which is extremely hot. Franco himself as well as Jack Taylor, Alice Arno and Monica Swinn has supporting roles and all add fine work (although it's hard to tell with some of the English dubbing). This version runs a tad bit too long at 101-minutes but if you get caught up in the dream like nature of the film then you really are seeing one of the more unique sexploitation films out there. I've seen the XXX version, which is just downright ugly and kills the beauty of the original film but I'm still trying to seek out the horror version and will hopefully come upon it sometime soon.

Female Vampire (1973) Horror version

*** (out of 4)

I finally managed to get a copy of this alternate version of Female Vampire, which is better known as Erotikill or The Bare Breasted Countess. This is certainly a new film and really separates itself from the better known "sex" versions, which also contains another alternate version with XXX scenes. In this horror version everything is basically the same story wise with the major exception being that Countess Irina (Lina Romay) sucks blood and not other things. The differences in this version are quite major and the biggest is that this cut runs nearly 35-minutes shorter. The opening sequence with Romay walking through the woods features her wearing panties, which eliminates all of the below the waste nudity. All the attacks aren't done through sex but instead are bites to the neck, which also include shots of Romay's bloody lips. The film still has a lot of nudity but most of the below the waste stuff has either been taken out or are alternate shots with Romay wearing clothing. The subplot and relationship of Romay with the journalist (Anna Watican) is also shortened to the point where we don't see the two characters together very often. Other changes include a torture chamber sequence where Romay bites on more necks from women she has captured down there. So, is the film any better or worse? I think this horror version works fairly well as a horror movie but it's nothing we haven't seen before and it really can't compete against Franco's much better Vampyros Lesbos, which is pretty similar. I think taking away the sexual aspect of the story kills all of the originality so to me the sex version will always be the preferred one.

People will tell you all kinds of things about Jesus Franco. He's made about five billion films over the past five decades so he must be doing something right, right? Wrong! Nearly every single film I have seen of his reeks of Eurotrash amateurism. Even more depressingly, the man does not seem interested in making anything other than tedious soft-core porn with wafer thin plot lines that pretentious people like to claim is art because he'll throw in a shot of a mountain or the ocean every once in awhile. I guess some people just need to find an excuse to justify the fact they like watching porn, as if something like this somehow brings T&A flicks to a more respectable level. Unfortunately for Jess, many films from the same decade literally crush his lame efforts when it comes to style, plot, direction, acting and eroticism. "Les Avaleuses" or one of its five hundred different titles is nothing more than dull trash with neither the talent or imagination to make it worthy of note. Franco also is rather obnoxious any time you see him interviewed. He has an inflated sense of his own importance, which in the film-making world is almost nonexistent. On several occasions, I've even seen him insult far more talented directors whose ideas he in turn blatantly steals. I've often wondered if this man is obnoxious, clueless or just senile. It's hard to tell but one thing he is not is a good film director.

I hate even referring to this as a film. There is almost no plot and from a technical standpoint it is inept. Things going out of focus all the time is not art, it's laziness and incompetence on the part of someone more interested in zooming in on unkempt crotches than making a decent erotic vampire film. What storyline there is is basically gratuitous nude shots of Franco's wife Lina Romay repeated over and over again. Though a fairly attractive woman, once you've seen a few of these films you're already bored seeing her naked. She's not a very good actress either. She brings nothing to the film or her role other than what God gave her, some of which could use a good trimming. The others nude actresses on display here aren't especially attractive either. Unless you are an obsessive fan of this director (believe it or not, he does have fans) or can't get your hands on more explicit adult material, I wouldn't waste my time viewing this.

Cultmaster Jess Franco delivers with this "Female Vampire" the jolliest and sleaziest bunch of sleaze you'll ever behold, and that's a guarantee! This in fact is the closest you can get to renting porn while still able to claim it's essential and rare cult, haha!! The star in this film is Franco's favorite toy-girl, the astonishingly beautiful (at least back then) and sexy Lina Romay, who definitely makes up in charisma what she lacks in experience and acting skills. Luckily for her, her character is a mute so can use her body language to the fullest! She plays Irena von Karlstein, the last descendant of a cursed family of vampires who's doomed to travel from one great place to another and survive by making love to random people...The poor, poor girl!! Irana isn't your ordinary type of vampire as she's perfectly able to stand daylight and it ...um...isn't exclusively blood she sucks! Countess von Karlstein really is one of the most unique Franco characters ever and you'll unquestionably love her! Whenever she's not killing people, she walks naked through the woods or makes love to the furniture. In order to add a tiny bit of substance to story, there's a sub plot involving a neurotic scientist (played by Franco himself) who wants to destroy the yummy Irena. So, what exactly is the point of this film? There isn't any...and that's the beauty of it! Like several of Franco's film, this "Female Vampire" is rather meaningless and overall incompetent BUT also very sensual! The photography is magnificent and the musical guidance is very beautiful. The film is slow-paced, elegant and remarkably stylish for being a – let's face it – voyeuristic movie! If you're into euro-sleaze, cult classics and off-category movies .... this is a must! The same film is also available as a different cut and under a different title – Erotikill – but that one is pure pornography!

Female Vampire, or whatever you'd like to call it, is maybe a difficult film to rate/review, because there are supposedly so many different versions floating around. I watched the Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD released in 2000 (ID9105BIDVD). However, even though the film isn't a complete loss artistically, I can't imagine it getting a passing score unless there's a "version" out there that has completely different scenes than the film I watched, because this one was basically horrendous. This is the first Jesus Franco film I've seen so far that I have hated, but admittedly, I don't think I've even seen a quarter of them.

At least for this version of Female Vampire, there's an easy way to tell if you might like it. The film is basically 10 – 15 minutes of dialogue, scattered throughout, with ridiculously bad English language dubbing (no subtitles were available), and about an hour and 20 minutes of poorly filmed softcore porn, featuring mostly unattractive looking people (Lina Romay, the star, doesn't do much for me), alternated with scenes of people sitting and staring, random ocean shots, shots of an odd hood ornament from a car's windshield, etc. Basically, if you're into early 1970s softcore porn, then you should like Female Vampire.

Since Romay ended up as Franco's wife (I'm not sure if they were married before Female Vampire or not), it seems like maybe the film was just an excuse to get her naked and encourage her to have sex with a bunch of different people, including women (by the way, there was one woman whom I thought was attractive--the strawberry blonde--but she doesn't get very physical with anyone).

I actually watched the dialogue scenes twice to try to make some sense of the plot, because it's very "poetic" if we're being overly generous, and mostly incoherent gibberish if we're being honest. The first time through I had difficulty listening to more than a sentence or two at a stretch. Once it stopped making sense, my attention would wander.

But as far as I can tell the plot is something like this: Countess Irina Karlstein (Romay) ends up on the island of Madeira, off the coast of Portugal, presumably because her family owns some property there. For some reason, there are a number of other people on the island who know something about her and who suspect that she's around. When corpses, who have been "sucked dry" by this female vampire, start showing up, it confirms the other characters' suspicions. The other characters include Baron Von Rathony (Jack Taylor), who likes to sit and stare at nature and read us passages from a travel guide, Dr. Roberts (none other than Jesus Franco, using the pseudonym of "Jess Franck" in this version), who does the autopsies on the bodies--which we unfortunately never get to see except for one humorous occasion, Dr. Orloff (Jean-Pierre Bouyxou), a blind doctor of something or other who gives us the weird autopsy occasion (it involves manually checking a female corpse's bite wound), Anna (who seems to have been played by two actresses, Gilda Arancio and Anna Watican), who is a journalist, and some other assorted men and women whom I could never figure out who they were. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Irina is mute through all of this. I don't know why. Maybe Romay has a voice like Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) in Singing in the Rain (1952).

Anyway, some of these characters encounter each other at various times and talk about Irina, the bodies, read more travel guide passages to us, randomly start muttering gibberish--er, uh, getting poetic--and so forth. There is little sense of a dramatic arc, there's no climax (snicker), and so on. Don't forget that this "plot" stuff takes up only about 10 – 15 minutes.

What happens instead is that Franco gives us a lot of lingering shots of Romay in various states of undress, occasionally wearing lingerie, with random out of focus zooms into her breasts, crotch, and so on. Just as often Romay is in various states of undress with another actor or two, and we get the same kinds of crappy shots, which show us extremely arbitrary "sex", before Romay "kills" her "lover/opponent" (in other words, before they stop moving). Most of the cinematography (unfortunately by Franco, as "Joan Vincent") in the film is really horrible. A large percentage of it is out of focus. It is often jerky. The zooms are ill timed, rough and awkward.

There was one softcore scene that was entertaining, if only because it was so odd. Romay starts making love to a bed--licking the bedpost, gyrating against it, mounting a long, round pillow, etc. Of course, the cinematography was crappy again, so it was difficult to award any bonus points.

All of this is accompanied by one of the two pieces of music that Franco paid for--some swanky jazz (almost Vince Guaraldi-ish) and more often, a melancholy orchestral piece that sounds like a mutation of "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows". This latter piece receives some typical porno music variations, if that's the kind of music you're into.

And if the above doesn't dissuade you enough, by the last couple "love scenes", I had to fast forward through them a bit--something I _never_ do with any film--because I just couldn't take it any longer. Boring sex--I would have said it was an oxymoron before watching Female Vampire. The extra point I awarded was for the idea at the end of the film, where Romay is in a "bloodbath". There are almost a couple attractive shots in this scene, even if the "blood" looked more like light pink Kool-Aid.

The story of "Les Avaleuses" is about a beautiful vampire lady who lives for centuries on a Spanish island and needs blood as well as male sperm to survive... Even though the film sometimes has got some lengths and real dialogues are quite rare, "The Female Vampires" can be truly enjoyable as long as you are a serious fan of early 1970s Euro sleaze! Director Jess Franco deserves my whole respect for creating a wonderful gothic atmosphere. The acting skills of main actress Lina Romay are quite well, but her physically performances are even better! This film was released under dozens of titles like "La Comtess Noire", "Lady Dracula 2", "Erotic Kill"..., but I think the number of all different cut versions is not much lower..! The version that I watched took about 90 minutes and contains a blow job scene, a short S&M sequence and some vagina action. But I know there is a film with even more than 100 minutes existing, including some real hardcore pornography. But no matter which version you watch, "Les Avaleuses" is a unique sexploitation experience and definitely one of Franco´s best movies ever!