Playgirls and the Vampire

A party of showgirls, their manager Lucas and musical accompanist/factotum Frank seek refuge in a remote castle for the night after a storm blows up. At first the denizens of the castle – Count Kernassy, his Mrs Danvers-style housekeeper and gimp groundsman – are hostile to the idea but something about one of the showgirls, Vera, startles Kernassy and compels him to agree to the party's staying. He does, however, issue a stern injunction: No one is to leave their rooms after night falls and go wandering.

Katya ignores this warning and Lucas's advice to "try not to be more foolish than usual" goes off exploring and, sure enough, meets something…

The next morning the other find her body but, assuming she fell out a window – "she wasn't the most intelligent girl I had ever met" Frank opines – are not particularly perturbed.

Bad weather keeps the party stranded at the castle for another night and, after Katya's body disappears from its grave the secrets of the Kernassy family and the castle come to the fore: The Count's ancestor – and exact double – is a vampire and Vera is the reincarnation of his long lost love, whom he now has designs on as his undead bride…

This black and white Italian horror, written and directed by Piero Regnoli, comes across as a conscious attempt to blend the styles of Italian and British gothic, as represented by I Vampiri and Dracula AKA Horror of Dracula, combining the black and white visuals and modern-day setting of the former (on which Regnoli had worked in his more usual writing-only capacity) with the freer approach to sex and violence of the latter.

These days, of course, Playgirls and the Vampire is tame stuff, with some diaphanous nightwear, a strip routine that gets interrupted before it gets revealing and a bare breasted vampire girl but little else.

But however cheest, clichéd and formulaic it might be, the film is undeniably fun. Whether you'd actually want to actively seek it out is another matter…

Picture and sound on the Region 2 DVD from Salvation are as you would expect for a 40 year old obscure Italian horror – serviceable but nothing more.

The extras comprise an essay by the film's US distributor Richard Gordon, which provides some insight into the business of low budget exploitation film distribution and promotion at the time; a theatrical trailer and stills gallery, and a "Salvation Showcase" short film, Blood.

The blurb on the DVD would suggest that the reason for the short's inclusion (other than the admirable aim of supporting up and coming genre film-makers) is that both it and Playgirls and the Vampire have a certain Jean Rollin quality to them. This is true – the feature feels like an early Rollin in places, while Blood reminds one of, say, The Living Dead Girl – but one nevertheless suspects the real motivation for the short's inclusion was to up the DVD package to a more marketable 18 certificate when, otherwise, a PG or 12 would have been given.

One for the dedicated Eurohorror fan rather than the casually curious.