Vampyres (1974)

I feel so betrayed by this movie. My favourite sub-sub-genre of lesbian film is 70’s lesbian vampire films. Vampyres is a 70’s lesbian vampire film and it sucks! I’m so upset.

The plot of Vampyres is that Fran and Miriam are beautiful vampires who are also lesbians. They use their beauty to lure men to their castle and then kill them. Their most recent victims are a young, innocent, hetero couple. In classic 70’s vampire style, they corrupt said innocent couple with their straw-man radical feminist ideals and sexual perversion.

I feel like I should’ve liked this film. Unlike most lesbian vampire films in which the entire lesbian relationship is the seduction, this one has a solid, established relationship between two female vampires. Because Fran and Miriam are already a couple, it means that Vampyres has more lesbian content than most movies in this sub-genre. Unfortunately, the actresses have no chemistry. These women share no intimacy. Outside of the overly long sex scenes, Fran and Miriam are at such a disconnect they sometimes seem like strangers, certainly not lovers with unknown decades behind them.

Aside from the disappointing lesbianism, Vampyres is mostly just boring. I don’t care about any of the characters nor could I tell you anything about what they want in life. The movie is neither scary nor sexy nor intriguing. The story is deeply uncreative and uninteresting. This is another film where the whole reason for making the movie was for the sex scenes but even those aren’t in any way remarkable. In short,, Vampyres is a wholly unremarkable film.

I’ve seen dozens of films like this and despite how similar they almost always are, I’ve enjoyed almost all of them. Vampyres is the exception. It’s not interesting enough, not fun enough and overall not sleazy enough. A whole lot of nothing happens in this movie. Even if you, like me, love 70’s exploitation film about lesbian vampires and have run through most of them, I cannot recommend giving Vampyres a watch. It is too disappointing and dull.

Overall rating: 4.2/10

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