Calling director Jesus Franco a pornographer after watching Vampiros Lesbos would be unfair, but not simply for the face that he's directed many, many films throughout a career of B to Z grade projects. It's also because it would be too easy. The man is, after all, an "artist", or whatever might pass for one in 1970. He was 40 at the time and made a film that, for better or worse, is a part of a legacy of sex-horror trash that must be mentioned in any conversation about sexy naked women and some blood and vampires and stuff. It's definitely not a very good movie, and point in fact it's probably too pretentious to see its own forest full of trees. But it does have some kind of power, some kind of very strange intuition that makes it never too boring - and, if you're *into* a very abstract love/mind-game story of vampire femme fatales then here you go.
In Vampiros Lesbos or, you guessed it, Lesbian Vampires, Jesus Franco tells a story that is about as loosely based on Stoker's mythology as one of the dresses is on any given girl in a sultry scene. A lawyer, Linda Westinghouse (and yes, Ewa Stromberg so looks like Linda Westinghouse doesn't she... actually kind of), is on a beach away from her man and meets a carefree woman, Soledad Miranda, who draws her into her world: she's the sole heiress of Count Dracula's fortune, and has also been indoctrinated into the "coven" of other vampires, and by a slip of the "wine" she brings Linda in as well. Meanwhile, another sexy blonde is going nuts in a mental hospital where a doctor tries his hardest to figure on how to kill the darn beasts.
So, in truth, there is some relation to the original book, much in the same way a hippie living in a sewer eating rats and tripping 40 year old acid is in relation to Jerry Garcia. This is such a work of its time that it might have actually been close to perfection for maybe one day in 1970 or 1971, while the sun was setting and everything was perfect for Franco and his production team and actresses all tanned and sultry, and then it was gone forever and locked into a time capsule. It's loaded with "crazy" imagery, hallucinatory passages of subjective viewpoints from its female characters- perhaps all an allusion to lesbianism and it keeping women trapped who normally wouldn't be under different circumstances(?)- and even an annoying recurring symbol of a scorpion in a pool (yeah, we get it, scorpion, Peckinpah, move on!) The acting also isn't good at all by a couple of the supporting players, like that guy who plays Morpho with the same stone-faced look or even Dr. Seward.
But at the same time, as a time capsule, it holds some pleasures of some minor guilty measure. While its violence isn't directed with much care, Franco is a perverted master of a certain kind of seduction between women on screen, and here he does get some scenes and moments that are creepy and striking and even erotic. I also liked Stromberg and Miranda in their roles, no matter how at-best two-dimensional they were. And the music is both divinely awesome and totally ludicrous with it being funky and smooth and 'hey, Tarantino ripped that off and it is that great', as well as being like a putrid re-rendering of that Pink Floyd song from Zabriskie Point's finale played repeatedly to poor effect. Vampiros Lesbos is one of a kind, so one of a kind that it would take someone with daring and possibly dementia to remake it. I both applaud Franco's versatility in attempting something as maniacal and coolly grind-house-ish, while at the same time realizing I could never in good conscience recommend it wholly. It's one of those.
In Vampiros Lesbos or, you guessed it, Lesbian Vampires, Jesus Franco tells a story that is about as loosely based on Stoker's mythology as one of the dresses is on any given girl in a sultry scene. A lawyer, Linda Westinghouse (and yes, Ewa Stromberg so looks like Linda Westinghouse doesn't she... actually kind of), is on a beach away from her man and meets a carefree woman, Soledad Miranda, who draws her into her world: she's the sole heiress of Count Dracula's fortune, and has also been indoctrinated into the "coven" of other vampires, and by a slip of the "wine" she brings Linda in as well. Meanwhile, another sexy blonde is going nuts in a mental hospital where a doctor tries his hardest to figure on how to kill the darn beasts.
So, in truth, there is some relation to the original book, much in the same way a hippie living in a sewer eating rats and tripping 40 year old acid is in relation to Jerry Garcia. This is such a work of its time that it might have actually been close to perfection for maybe one day in 1970 or 1971, while the sun was setting and everything was perfect for Franco and his production team and actresses all tanned and sultry, and then it was gone forever and locked into a time capsule. It's loaded with "crazy" imagery, hallucinatory passages of subjective viewpoints from its female characters- perhaps all an allusion to lesbianism and it keeping women trapped who normally wouldn't be under different circumstances(?)- and even an annoying recurring symbol of a scorpion in a pool (yeah, we get it, scorpion, Peckinpah, move on!) The acting also isn't good at all by a couple of the supporting players, like that guy who plays Morpho with the same stone-faced look or even Dr. Seward.
But at the same time, as a time capsule, it holds some pleasures of some minor guilty measure. While its violence isn't directed with much care, Franco is a perverted master of a certain kind of seduction between women on screen, and here he does get some scenes and moments that are creepy and striking and even erotic. I also liked Stromberg and Miranda in their roles, no matter how at-best two-dimensional they were. And the music is both divinely awesome and totally ludicrous with it being funky and smooth and 'hey, Tarantino ripped that off and it is that great', as well as being like a putrid re-rendering of that Pink Floyd song from Zabriskie Point's finale played repeatedly to poor effect. Vampiros Lesbos is one of a kind, so one of a kind that it would take someone with daring and possibly dementia to remake it. I both applaud Franco's versatility in attempting something as maniacal and coolly grind-house-ish, while at the same time realizing I could never in good conscience recommend it wholly. It's one of those.