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Vampyros
Lesbos
Synapse
Edition
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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5
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Very
odd European horror movie.
If you're expecting
something along the lines of Mario Bava or Dario
Argento then this isn't your cup of tea. This
isn't truly a sex film, either, not in the conventional
sense at least. I really just don't know what
it is. "Bizarre" and "dreamlike"
are all I can conjure up to describe it. It's
got one weird mamajama of a music score, that's
for certain, ranging
from psuedo-surf rock to ambient acid-lounge grooves.
Oh, and there's quite a bit of naked female flesh
on display.
Seductive Portuguese beauty
Soledad Miranda (The
Devil Came from Akasava) plays Countess Carody,
a wealthy recluse who lures young women to her
private island off the coast of Turkey. The
Countess, a
descendent of Dracula, is
a lesbian vampire, but also an erotic performance
artist at a night club — or something. (Not a
whole lot of plot here, folks, and what little
there is meanders about without any real focus.)
The bulk of the story concerns the Countess' seduction
of a woman named Linda, played by Ewa Stroemberg,
who looks a bit like Geri Halliwell of the Spice
Girls. Other characters become involved somehow,
and there are various weird occurances involving
lots of zoom shots. Women get naked. The Countess'
silently sinister manservant, Morpho (José Martínez
Blanco), hovers in the background.
Actually, there isn't much horror to be found
in the movie's rather languid narrative. This
is one of those flicks you can watch and let your
mind wander off for awhile and you've still not
missed very much.
Miranda (who perished in a car crash within
a year of making the film) is sexy and beguiling,
but she can't carry this muddled bit of psychedelic
silliness alone. Uber-prolific director Jesus
"Jess" Franco (The
Awful Dr. Orlof, Lust
for Frankenstein), helmer of a gazillion movies
in Europe and South America, amply demonstrates
with Vampyros
Lesbos
that, well... he's a very strange man.
This is weird stuff, y'all.
Best viewed while imbibing certain substances.
(Provided you'll sit through just about anything
to look at naked women.)
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disc, which comes in a funky blood-red keepcase,
features some interesting liner notes by Video
Watchdog's Tim Lucas.
While not pristine, sound and picture quality are
more than adequate; the film is presented in German
with easy-to-read English subtitles. The trippy
theatrical trailer is the only bonus feature. 4/10/01 |
| UPDATE
Since this review was written the Synapse DVD has
gone OOP. Image Entertainment is slated to release
a new version (using different source elements)
on October 5, 2004. |
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