Female Vampire
DVD Image Entertainment
1973, 101 minutes

review by Shade Rupe

This movie has always made me laugh. The many titles of this Jess Franco classic confuse the issue of the film again and again: Erotikill, The Many Loves of Irina, The Bare-Breasted Countess, and more. Female Vampire is the most banal of the titles, suggesting almost a piece of direct-to-video dreck, but no, we've got a Jess Franco film here, and starring the bodacious Lina Romay. Calling this film such a simple thing as Female Vampire is almost criminal.
 
Franco's film begins with fog, and into this fog walks Irina, played by Franco's longtime companion Ms. Romay. And as she gets closer, we see she's naked except for a black cape and thick leather belt. And we see her breasts. And we pan down from her breasts to her very thick black bush, and back again. And she walks on.

I find it hard to determine if this is a horror film with a lot of sexual elements, or a sex film with some horror tossed in. I think it may be the former. A favorite shot of this reviewer are the repetitive opening and closing close-ups of Ms. Romay's legs. The black bush sports a pink line, and back to black. Amazing! Mesmerizing. Exactly what Irina's task is, to have her victims submit to her beauty.

Irina is a lost soul, subsisting on both men and women in her desperate lonely immortality. Her ways of collecting blood are different for a vampire film. The neck is last on her list. The insides of thighs are her favorite.

The film was not only titled differently before this 'definitive' version, there were also other emphases placed in the narrative. Erotikill, betraying its own title, focused primarily on her blood hunger. The Loves of Irina offered additional hardcore shots of bloody fellatio.

There's a soft breezy poetry to the film. The sex does nto seem out of place, nor do the blood-drinking scenes. And Ms. Romay is indeed as hypnotic a presence to the viewer as she is to her victims.

Image's disc includes 10 minutes of alternate footage from the Erotikill print, the theatrical trailer, and liner notes by Tim Lucas.
 

Official Website:

http://www.image-entertainment.com