The Velvet Vampire

THE VELVET VAMPIRE opens with a woman walking alone at night. She's suddenly attacked by a biker (Robert Tessier) with an unexpected result. This is no ordinary, defenseless female. This is Dianne LeFanu (Celeste Yarnall), the title character.

After meeting a young couple (Michael Blodgett and Sherry E. DeBoer) at an art exhibit, Dianne invites them to her remote, desert estate where the real fun begins.

This is a wonderfully trippy example of early 1970's horror, packed to the gills with semi-erotic nudity, wonky dream sequences, vicious vampire attacks, and wild dune buggy action. There's also a certain clunky charm that adds to the overall enjoyment of the film.

If your tolerance for cheeeze is high, you'll have no problem with the visible swim trunks on Blodgett when he's supposed to be stark naked during the aforementioned dream scenes.

While the supporting actors are rather wooden, Ms. Yarnall is quite convincing in her seductively eeevil role.

The absurd, crucifix-filled finale is the icing on the cake...

A vampire in the middle of the desert? That is just what is the subject of this somewhat forgotten, semi-erotic tale made in the only decade one would make a movie about a female vampire with inclinations toward both sexes: the seventies! Now before I get too far, let me say that this film is unique in several ways. It has as its vampire a vampire that defies almost all of the traditional myths about vampires. This one, named Diane, can go about freely in the sun. She can see her reflection in the mirror. She sleeps in a luxuriously large bed(all the more room to entertain her guests). She does feed on blood. She is reputed to be over a century old.. She has a deathly aversion to the Crucifix. What does all this mean? I really don't know, but I am of the opinion that the director and writer were portraying a real vampire rather than a mental vampire(one that believes herself to be a vampire). Diane, played deliciously by Celeste Yarnell, meets a guy and his wife while at a club in Los Angelos. They are invited to her house in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert. Once there, we see Diane and company explore a mine shaft, visit a ghost town, have sexual relations in three different pairings, ride on a dune buggy, and see Diane suck the venom out of a bikini-clad Sherry Miles's leg. This is a strange film not always sure where it is going, but it does lots of things fairly nicely. The acting is pretty good. Yarnell, aside from being beautiful, gives a good performance despite the flaws she inherited with a script fraught with problems. The script keeps cohesive though never explains anything really and tries way too hard at the end. The sex scenes are really quite tame by today's standards. I liked the guitar score throughout much of the film. Though I believe the movie tried to heap much on its being seen as a risqué film in its favor, the film is much more than that. It is far from great, but it is definitely worth a look.

Invited out to a strange mansion, a married couple arrive at a strange woman's home in the desert where she shows them around the area, but when she suspects something is wrong with the host they eventually come to believe she's a vampire and tries to get away alive.

Overall, this was a decent enough if flawed genre effort. What gives this the most to like here is the nearly ethereal approach to the main vampire this takes. The whole ruse about getting them out to the desert mansion and then baiting them against each other with her secret lustful looks, spying on the couple in bed from her hidden chamber behind the mirror, the straight seduction scenes on the husband, or the visions shot through the slow-motion style which is all incredibly enjoyable. This here makes the trip feel more suspenseful the longer they stay knowing what the end game here eventually leads to. That becomes quite fun as the film goes along as the gradual realization of what's happening is brought out. While the looks and remarks she gives hint at the seduction, the oblivious nature of her vampiric tendencies offers a lot of great scenes featuring her attacking and killing others to feed on their blood. This even makes the finale quite fun as the seduction tactics are revealed for some unexpected targets signaling some shocking revelations that take place, and when combined with the closing epitaph and nicely done sleaze in the seduction scenes has a lot to like about it. There are some issues with this one. One of the biggest factors here is the lagging storyline that tends to switch into numerous plot points whenever it's convenient to do so. The couple goes from hating each other to loving depending on the nature of the scene, the ruse to keep them there is wildly inconsistent and plots are dropped at random intervals merely because it sees fit to do so, almost as if it were all made up on the spot. This also explains the inconsistent vampire lore, being out in the daylight, and other factors that ignored tropes for no reason which all brings this one down.

Rated R: Nudity, Violence, Language, and sexual scenes.

Okay, first things first, Velvet Vampire emphasizes neither Vampires, nor Velvet. This film has much more in common with that strange sub-sub-genre of 70's sexual awakening films where a person, or couple, meets an unusual and erotic woman, or man, and travels to a far off place secluded from the reality of everyday life never to return home the same again. In this case it is a couple made up of beefy bodied, effeminate-featured Lee, and his extremely awkward wife, Susan. They travel to the middle of the desert as guests of the weird, beautiful and eccentric Diane LeFanu, the Velvet Vampire. Most of the film involves the erratic far-out shenanigans of these three and slowly but surely the vampire angle builds.

While VV may not involve a lot of hissing, pointy teethed nightcrawlers - it does weave a strange entrancing spell mainly due to the sheer utter weirdness of the trio of folks at its core. These are three actors you would never normally see in a film. Coupled with a very unusual vampire location - a dessert villa - this is tale of the undead that likely has not been seen before or since. And again - it is very 70's!! For this reason alone, I highly recommend a viewing to all fans of Gothic, Vampire or Strange 70's Flicks - as it offers a slightly skewed version of each.

At first, this looks to be another of the "erotic vampire" movies that were so popular in the 1970's, especially in Europe. But this American movie is actually quite different from Hammer's "Carnstein trilogy", the Rollins and Franco vampire films, and other European cult classics like "Vampyres" and "Daughters of Darkness". It doesn't really have the lesbian vampire angle that was often the bane of many of the European films. It's more of a love triangle with a free-spirited hippie couple (Michael Blodgett and Sherry Miles) finding their swinging lifestyle tested by a mysterious and very seductive woman (Celeste Yanell). There is one incredible polymorphously perverse scene where Yanell sucks snake venom out of the Miles's leg, and there are several heterosexual scenes between Blodgett and each of the women (usually while the other is secretly watching), but the plot is never completely overwhelmed with softcore groping,lesbian or otherwise.

The movie also has a very unusual (and very American)setting. It takes place in the Mojave desert near an abandoned mine and an old graveyard (where there are hints of cannibalism and necrophilia). It is atrociously acted (with Miles being the worst offender), but surprisingly well photographed, really making the most of its non-traditional horror setting. The vampire herself is also quite non-traditional. She has a reflection, is not overly adverse to sunlight, and may not really even be a vampire but instead someone suffering from insanity or a rare blood disease a la "Martin" or "Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary".

This movie may not quite compare some of the European vampire classics of its time, but it's better than some (Franco's "Female Vampire", for instance),and it's miles ahead of recent, derivative crap like "An Erotic Vampire in Paris". I'd rank it among the more interesting American vampire films of the period such as "Count Yorga" and "Lemora, Lady Dracula".