La sangsue

The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance - what a laughable title, it's so utterly misleading. It's not surprising that the film-makers try and mislead us though because this is one terrible movie.

The story basically involves a murder mystery in a castle on a remote island.

Very little happens in this film. And when something does wake the viewer from his stupor, it invariably is unintentional comedy in the form of atrocious dialogue delivered by a hopeless group of voice-artists. These guys are so bad they make the actors they deliver voices for appear like a group of remedial-level morons. It really is hard to determine how bad the acting is when you have dubbing this abysmal. But the voice-artists cannot be blamed for the script. It's a travesty. Unintentionally funny at best, pathetic at worst. The story in general is, to say the least, uneven. The women characters are particularly idiotic; the men are either creepy or tedious.

The whole enterprise smacks of pure exploitation of the audience. It doesn't remotely deliver what it promises and even when the murders (finally) start happening, they all occur off screen. All we get is a few half-hearted severed head shots.

A few people have said that this movie is a giallo. I cannot agree less with this opinion. Anyone who enjoys Italian thrillers should give this movie a wide berth as there is nothing remotely thrilling about it. It's basically a soft-core porn film with a horror angle. But it's not very erotic either.

I can't recommend this to anyone.

A Count in Ireland invites a troupe of attractive actresses to his island castle in the early 20th Century. Once there his guests literally lose their heads, one by one. Sadly this Count is no vampire, instead we have a murder mystery fashioned around Gothic horror. An Italian movie, this falls short of being a genuine giallo. This film is slow, dull and the English language version suffers with awful dubbing. We get day for night scenes, when a storm rages the film makers have inserted some stock footage - in black and white! Set in Ireland but obviously not filmed there. There is plenty of soft core sex and nudity (bums and boobs), but this is not enough to save this from boredom.

You know something? It amazes me just how much that some film-makers get away with. 'Bloodsucker leads the dance' is billed as a vampire movie, yet it turns out to be anything but!! It's little more than

a cheesy soft-porn 'whodunnit' murder-mystery thriller

Atrocious dubbing and misleading synopsis aside, this film does have

a few things going for it. Firstly, the music score is quite airy and atmospheric, and the period costumes are quite nice, and the sets are quite elaborate (even though quite a few of them can be seen in the film, 'Nude for Satan')Mind you, some of the set do like as if they're made out of Cardboard.

There are also some convincingly grisly scenes of severed heads to spice things up a little.

At the risk of giving too much away, what I noticed about this film is the way in which it plays around with the viewer's suspicions and makes you think at first that the creepy butler was behind the murders. I shan't reveal who the real killer is, though!

All in all, this film won't win any Oscars, but if you happen to be into Italian 'Giallo' cinema, then you can't go wrong with little number.

Strange, mediocre movie, a late specimen of the Italian gothic horrors that were very popular in the Sixties and early Seventies. More an excuse for showing what its ancestors couldn't (i.e., lot of naked female bodies, several love scenes, even a couple of lesbian ones)that a real horror, this convoluted tale revolving around a charming count and an old curse that stalks the women in his castle is very slow for more than a half of its total and in the end fails to deliver any chills and even the final explanation is boring and silly. This is very unfortunate as the male lead is Giacomo Rossi Stuart, that was very active during the Sixties in several interesting Gothic samples (like Operazione Paura by Mario Bava, the better of the Italian directors of this genre).

(aka: The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance)

Lots of naked babes in this one with a couple of lesbo scenes thrown in. The film is supposed to take place in Ireland but it looks more like Rome and the Adriatic to me.

Gothic lesbians get invited to a Count's island castle for the weekend. One by one they seem to be missing their heads due to a madperson running around.

It's not very scary or bloody and the rooms look like they are lit with floodlights even though candles are lit. Go figure...(sic)

Dubbing is worse than usual and the plot only serves as an excuse for the eroticism and nudity. Directed by euro horror actor Alfredo Rizzo, this is one snoozer.

Pretty boring 2 out of 10