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j-thompson4
Reviews
Thirst (1979)
Aussie Vampire Films?
An Aussie vampire film? Never would have thought. Not to denigrate my country's film industry, but ... well, it's not known for producing bloodsucker flicks. The exception is this little oddity, released in 1979 and now hidden away in the 'horror' section of video stores across the country.
Having heard of the film for several yrs, and seen the cover at my local video store (Chantal Contouri drenched in gore), I decided to check it out. The result: one of the most genuinely horrifying films to emerge from Australia in recent decades. Not horrifying in the sense of 'The Delinquents', where it's horrifyingly bad and let's just sit back and have a good laugh. I am talking, this film is a recorded bad dream. Reality and nightmare blur, blood spurts, and Amanda Muggleton sneers as one of our screen's most genuinely evil villains. Contouri was fantastic, too, as the hapless young woman abducted and brought to a blood farm and made to honour her ancestor, Elisabeth Bathory - bloodsucker extraordinaire, and the figure at the heart of those other 70s horror films 'Countess Dracula' and 'Daughters of Darkness'. The scene where she sprouted fangs and kills a colleague really jolted this horror movie afficionado.
Visually, the film has dated: the hairstyles are tres out-of-date, and the colour cinematography was reminisce of those chocolate commercials I grew up watching on TV as a young boy in Melbourne. Problems also lay in the script's lack of depth. There was no psychological make-up to the characters, they had no history - and this made it very hard to relate to them on an emotional level (Contouri's character in particular). Nevertheless, this is an intriguing and eerie film that will appeal to fans of Australian cinema and horror films alike.
Scream and Scream Again (1970)
Screaming Yet Again ...
I first caught this film on late night television many years ago as an impressionable youngster. I remembered it fondly (and not without a laugh) as a quirky, kitschy horror/sci-fi/political thriller whose odd parts (forgive the bad pun) were held together by shots of a runner in a hospital bed, screaming as he progressively loses his limbs.
Years later, when I rented this film, my views changed very little. Time has passed, and the movie appears even more dated than it did when I first watched it in the early 1990s. Dated, quite often in a 'good' way, too. For example, check out the hilariously inappropriate jazzy/60s music that permeates the scenes of murder, violence and intrigue (though the singing in the nightclub has been removed from some video copies, presumably - as one other reviewer suggested - to avoid copyright problems).
The film's loose series of episodes added a nightmarish feel to the proceedings. The subplot with the runner losing his body parts is just brilliant, and Marshall Jones gives a delightfully awful performance as the sadistic Konratz, stomping around a Nazi Germany- type country that seems unrelated to the runner or the investigation into a series of vampiro-sex crimes. Then Vincent Price pops up as a Mad Doctor Type, and Chris Lee as a government agent ...
That these episodes are ultimately not sewn together satisfactorily in the conclusion (forgive the second bad pun) is a disappointment. I know, I know, this film is trash, it's not to be intellectualised. But there's a fine line between being cryptic and mysterious, and just teasing your audience for no real purpose than to tease them. I would make a joke here about SASA not being the sum of its parts, but you know what I mean ...
Nevertheless, still kitsch fun, some laughs and cringe at that jazzy music score. Time to scream again?
Les lèvres rouges (1971)
CULT CLASSIC MAKES A COMEBACK
I first read about this film in the mid-1990s, and have been interested in seeing it ever since. So when it was released recently in Australia on DVD, I eagerly snapped up a copy. I had to satisfy my curiosity about this odd-sounding movie. Also, I had (semi)academic reasons: I am currently completing a thesis (at Melbourne University)on the relationship between vampires and capitalism.
So what's my opinion? Well, I can certainly see how it has achieved cult status. There's the ultra-decadent mise-en-scene, the sometimes banal dialogue (and its equally banal delivery), creative use of colour (check out those red flashes), and some genuinely odd imagery. And, of course, there's Delphine Seyrig. She plays the vampiric Elizabeth Bathory as a beautiful ghost who haunts the rich and unhappy, sometimes wearing silver lame, others in butch Dracula cloak and slacks, purring and preening and occasionally sucking blood.
Certainly, the sexual politics of Daughters of Darkness were a worry. There's the dubious equation of lesbianism with death and violence. And while Bathory may warn the young Valerie(played by Danielle Quimet) of how men objectify women, the young woman is herself portrayed as an object for the Bloody Countess to seduce and exsanguinate. Indeed, Bathory's not above seducing Valerie's sadistic husband (played by John Karlen) with descriptions of her family's brutal past.
Otherwise, Daughters of Darkness is an engagingly odd and visually arresting - venture into vampire-land. I'd be very interested in hearing others' opinions about it, esp its visual eccentricity and its sexual politics.