Vampyres

Two young women's lovemaking is suddenly, brutally interrupted as a gunman bursts in and unceremoniously blasts them into oblivion.

While it's never really explained what relation Vampyres attention grabbing opening bears to the rest of the film, it neatly establishes a mood of mystery coupled with a willingness to be explicit in the representation of sex and violence.

Cut to a travelling salesman, Ted (Murray Brown). The hotelier is sure that he's seen Ted before. Ted doesn't think so.

On the road, Ted picks up a hitch-hiker, Fran (Marianne Morris), one of the two women we saw being murdered, who invites him back to her mansion house nearby for a drink.

Ted thinks he has got lucky, but doesn't realise that Fran and her partner Miriam (Aunlka Dziubinska) are vampires whose favourite ploy is to pose as hitchhikers, lure unsuspecting men back to the manor to fuck, kill and feed on before then disposing of the bodies in carefully staged automobile accidents.

Inexplicably, Fran does not dispatch Ted there and then, instead letting him live the night. The next morning, feeling hungover and believing that the deep gash on his arm must have come a piece of broken glass, he blunders in on Harriet and John, a young couple who have parked their caravan on the mansion's grounds.

But, after having his wound cleaned and thanking them, Ted inexplicably heads back towards the house. Belle Dame Sans Merci, indeed…

This arouses the suspicions of Harriet, who earlier noticed Fran and Miriam on the road and feels compelled to investigate…

Thanks to the uninhibited performances of the cast and ability of the film-makers to take their subject matter seriously, Vampyres is one of the few British made erotic horror films actually works, managing to avoid the awkwardness and half-heartedness that typified the likes of Hammer's Lust for a Vampire and – more positively – creating a remarkably strong mood, shifting with ease between the intangibly poetic and oneiric and corporeal fucking and killing like some mutant combination of Dreyer's Vampyr and George A Romero's Martin.

Though Vampyres Marianne Morris and Anulka were cast first and foremost for their looks and willingness to bare all (Anulka having been a Playboy centrefold in 1973 – link here) , their performances are far better than one might expect from a couple of models with little or no acting experience, conveying the murderous passion of the two vampyres with conviction. The physical contrast between the two – the brunette, physical Morris and the blonde, ethereal Anulka – adds an element, as does (pretentious film student time) the sense of distanciation achieved by their dubbing.

And while some commentators have suggested that the greasy haired, paunchy Murray Brown makes a poor male lead and is the weak point in the casting, I don't think he's that bad. Instead his unattractiveness adds an everyman quality. You can believe Ted and other losers like him falling easy prey to the mysterious vampyres – "I can't believe my luck" as one victim says – even if it's also hard to discern what Fran sees in him to cause her not to kill him immediately.

James Clarke, who would go on to direct a number of similar low-budget sex and horror hybrids for producer Smedley Aston (Expose, Prey) provides an effective, if at times overstated, score.

While certainly not for everyone's tastes, Vampyres manages to be both erotic and horrific, playing it remarkably straight and avoiding unintentional laughs. That is an achievement in itself.

Blue Underground presents Vampyres on Region 0 NTSC, in 1.85:1 widescreen (though elsewhere there are suggestions that the OAR was more like 1.78:1) and mono audio and, most important of all, completely uncut.

The low budget nature of the film, coupled with the preponderance of night time and interior scenes, mean that this was never going to be a brilliant visual experience. Nonetheless the DVD transfer is probably as good as can be expected. The film looks better than it did when I saw it on the big screen a few years back, with some details and lighting effects that I don't remember noticing then.

The mono audio is adequate if unspectacular, with the dialogue and James Clark's effective score coming through just fine. (Oddly, the voices for both Morris and Anulka were dubbed.)

The extras on the disc are mostly those originally presented on the old Anchor Bay Region 1 disc, itself now released on Region 2.

The most substantive extra is the audio commentary with producer Smedley Aston and director Larraz. They talk when they have something worth saying rather than feeling the need to speak all the time regardless of the value of what is being said as in some commentaries.

The difference between their personalities – Aston English and proper, Larraz more temperamental, outspoken and earthy – makes for an interesting contrast, all the more so when coupled with the division of labour between them. Smedley talks about some of the more practical aspects of the production – which scenes were shot where or that the sports cars featured were his own to save costs – and of the difficulties the film had with the British censors, who objected to its heady mixture of sex and violence. Larraz talks more broadly, giving his opinions on a wide range of film-related topics – which national cinemas are good, what films he would like to have made – and makes some remarks that are simply laugh out loud funny:

Jesus Christ, I can see Anulka's pussy. That's not on my video copy

The director also offers an interpretation of the film in which Ted, the murderer of Fran and Miriam, returns to the scene of the crime one night, falls asleep after downing a bit too much wine, and dreams.

Fans of Brit horror will also be interested to know that Oakley manor, once part of Hammer's Bray complex and seen in several of that studios films, was used for some locations shots, and the film-makers memories of working with old time craftsman Harry Waxman, cinematographer on The Wicker Man amongst others.

Overall, a good commentary.

Two trailers are presented – the oh so tacky US one and a more stylish international one – along with comprehensive photo galleries.

For this release, Blue Underground have also included a new (2003) 14 minute documentary Return of the Vampires of interviews with Marianne Morris and Anulka, both looking remarkably well preserved and remembering the film with obvious affection.

There's also a brief "Anulka glamor gallery", with pictures from her modelling days, and a tantalising sequence of stills from the "lost" caravan scene, which explains how Ted gets away from the vampyres.

Finally, the DVD now also includes a PDF of the long OOP second edition of Tim Greaves Vampyres one shot. While some of the detail therein is necessarily now out of date – the whereabouts of Anulka were unknown, for instance – or repeats points from the commentary, it puts the typical half dozen pages on screen essay to shame.

Whether these additions are enough to convince those with the R1 to upgrade is questionable. But for everyone else who is wondering which disc to go for, the fact that Blue Underground's has more and is a Region 0 disc makes it a no-brainer.