| Product: |
Daughters of Darkness DVD Uncensored Widescreen Director's Cut (DVD) |
| Date: |
08.04.08 (77 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Very nicely shot and generally good
Disadvantages: Perhaps a bit slow
A review of just the film.
This is a semi-arthouse vampire movie from 1971, one of the few horror films I can think of to have come from Belgium. It's a very odd blend of lurid nudity and wannabe high art and I suspect it might be partly responsible for the terrible degradation of the vampire film that came about in the 80s and 90s.
Newlyweds Stefan and Valerie are staying in a deserted hotel in Ostend while Stefan overcomes his reluctance to contact his wealthy mother. They are soon joined by an older woman, Countess Bathory, and her pretty young companion, Ilona. But why does the hotel porter maintain that the Countess visited 40 years earlier and hasn't changed a bit? And who's responsible for the series of murders in nearby Bruges? Murders where not a trace of blood is to be found...
(Yes, really. This is a horror film set in Ostend and Bruges. The faded grandiosity of the hotel works well, but it still doesn't seem like the kind of place all these beautiful characters would choose to spend time.)
The Countess is played by Delphine Seyrig, who gives an iconic performance as the ageing lesbian vampire, desperate for love and not quite as in control as she likes to pretend. She looks fantastic with her immaculate hairstyle and wonderful gowns. The rest of the cast are adequate, nothing more or less. The two younger women are both very pretty, and happily we get to see both of them naked. In spite of its subject matter, though, there's not really much sex in the film. There's one fairly raunchy scene right at the beginning, but it's disappointingly light on the lesbianics. There's also precious little blood on display. I think this one has a 15 rating in the UK.
It's shot nicely enough, with a kind of fragile arthouse precision, shots carefully framed and colour coordinated. Occasionally the director will switch to wobbly hand-held camera for scenes which are supposed to be mildly disorientating. The music is a combination of pleasant lounge music and rather melodramatic horror chords, as if the composer wasn't quite sure what was expected of him. The modern couple are very clearly meant to be realistic, while the vampire ladies swan into their lives like old-time movie stars (Bathory is clearly modelled on Marlene Dietrich, Ilona on Louise Brooks) and try to bend them to their will.
Strikingly, none of the characters are particularly likeable. Stefan is a thug, Valerie wet and insipid, and the two vampire ladies are sexually predatory murderers. It's good that the film doesn't buy into the vampires' self-image. They no doubt see themselves as marvellous decadents ensnaring these poor mortals in their web of sexual liberation; in fact the Countess comes across as a rather pathetic lesbian lounge lizard, desperately trying to stay young by seducing younger women. Sadly, later vampire films in this mould would take the vampires at face value, resulting in such tiresome gothwank as The Hunger and Interview With The Vampire. Vampires should be slightly desperate ageing swingers, not fashion models getting everything they want. That's not to say this isn't erotic at times. The vampires' relationship hints at kinkiness that we never get to really see, and Valerie's obviously so much better off with them than with her abusive husband.
I really like this film, but a lot of people will probably be put off by its rather languid pace (the director's cut is 100 minutes long) and lack of anything terribly explicit. I don't think it ever crosses the line into pretension, but others might not agree. There's an intrusive subplot about an inquisitive retired cop who seems to have figured out what's going on, but it doesn't fit with the rest of the film and doesn't even have a major impact on the plot. And there are some really rubbish rain-superimposed-onto-the-picture shots and clumsily inserted lightning flashes, one of the only concessions this makes to traditional horror iconography, and an unnecessary one.
This is available on a few DVD versions - I'd recommend the region 2 Umbrella DVD in widescreen, featuring the director's cut. It will currently set you back about £13 on amazon, which is perhaps a bit steep. But if you like Euro horror and enjoy a film that blurs the boundaries between arthouse and horror, you won't do much better than this.
Summary: A Belgian lesbian vampire movie
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