La sangsue

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).

"It's very dull here" says our leading lady about a half hour in. You said it sister! Never have I seen a more lethargic group of potential vampire victims, and the Count's droning on will put you to sleep rather than strike terror into your heart. There's brief nudity and a lesbo clip watched surreptitiously by a voyeur maid, but really pretty tame. Embarassingly cheap, I did a double take when I couldn't believe they actually spliced black and white stock footage of a storm at sea into this otherwise entirely color, if anemic, motion picture! After an hour, without a hint of even a drop of blood on the horizon, and the killer's footprints showing up on the floor (!), I had to give up.

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.

As I watched this film on Netflix, I was given the Redemption version with eight minutes of terrible introduction before the film even began. I would strongly encourage anyone who watches this to skip ahead to the film... (the DVD is probably the same, and there is no excuse for that).

Critic Robert Firsching said, "In the hands of a better filmmaker, it might have been an interesting pastiche, or even played as a clever spoof, but Rizzo appears to have made the whole thing up as he went along." That may be fair, as it seems to have very little plot and revolve around getting different characters in bed with each other.

Fans of Mario Bava might recognize a few faces: we have Giacomo Rossi-Stuart ("Kill, Baby, Kill") and Luciano Pigozzi ("Blood and Black Lace"). Those looking for horror will be disappointed, though. Despite the title claiming there is a "bloodsucker", this is not a horror film or a giallo in any real sense. It is an Italian sex comedy, and little more.

Alfredo Rizzo directed only eight films, but appeared as an actor in 97. He was certainly a better actor than a director.

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.