Now Playing
VAMPYRES
1974
Director
José Ramón Larraz
Starring
Marianne Morris
Anulka Dziubinska
Murray Brown
Brian Deacon
Runtime
87 minutes
Select Showtime to Purchase Tickets
Select Showtimes
VAMPYRES is a movie that understands the value in getting lost down a long dark hallway, not knowing if deviancy or death await once you reach the heavy chamber door at its end.
The film’s director, José Ramón Larraz, was a comic book artist turned filmmaker who specialized in blending sex and violence with inexorable glee. Narrative isn’t of paramount (or even tertiary) importance to Larraz, who here uses Diana Daubeney’s screenplay as a blueprint for drifting gothic miasma of the finest vintage.
In the opening scene, our two beautiful heroines, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska), are gunned down in their shared bed by an unknown shooter. Though incongruous with everything that follows, the opening sets the stage for the proceedings as the now undead women inhabit their decrepit dwelling for years on end, luring in travelers to seduce and feed upon with an insatiable thirst. These lesbian vampire lovers become a spectral curse; doomed to castigate all those who treat their love for each other as something peculiar, punishable, or simply there for them to get off on.
There’s something musical about the way VAMPYRES moves – the insistent rhythm of getting lost inside of an enveloping evening. You feel around in the dark, hoping to find any way to create light, but only discovering cobwebs and dust within the reach of your outstretched fingers. Like some of the best pieces of ornate chamber pop, it’s the work of an artist operating on their own distinct wavelength, while still attempting to splatter paint on a somewhat commercialized canvas. With VAMPYRES, Larraz invites the viewer to be set hopelessly adrift in his own haunted sea of tweedy sexuality and elegant perversion.
The film’s director, José Ramón Larraz, was a comic book artist turned filmmaker who specialized in blending sex and violence with inexorable glee. Narrative isn’t of paramount (or even tertiary) importance to Larraz, who here uses Diana Daubeney’s screenplay as a blueprint for drifting gothic miasma of the finest vintage.
In the opening scene, our two beautiful heroines, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska), are gunned down in their shared bed by an unknown shooter. Though incongruous with everything that follows, the opening sets the stage for the proceedings as the now undead women inhabit their decrepit dwelling for years on end, luring in travelers to seduce and feed upon with an insatiable thirst. These lesbian vampire lovers become a spectral curse; doomed to castigate all those who treat their love for each other as something peculiar, punishable, or simply there for them to get off on.
There’s something musical about the way VAMPYRES moves – the insistent rhythm of getting lost inside of an enveloping evening. You feel around in the dark, hoping to find any way to create light, but only discovering cobwebs and dust within the reach of your outstretched fingers. Like some of the best pieces of ornate chamber pop, it’s the work of an artist operating on their own distinct wavelength, while still attempting to splatter paint on a somewhat commercialized canvas. With VAMPYRES, Larraz invites the viewer to be set hopelessly adrift in his own haunted sea of tweedy sexuality and elegant perversion.