Fascination

As far as Lesbian Vampire movies go (yes, there are enough of these movies for it to be considered a legitimate sub-sub-genre) most of them are labeled trash even by the very people who count themselves among the fans of such films, so I really wasn't expecting much from this movie.  Well, I was expecting it to be terrible, but not much else.  I confess, this is the first Lesbian Vampire movie I've ever seen, and maybe it's a bad example for me to start out with, because though it has a slew of flaws, this movie actually isn't that bad.  At least not as terrible as I thought it would be, not by a long shot, and I found myself enjoying watching it, which is something I never expected to happen.  This movie has probably ruined me for the Lesbian Vampire sub-sub-genre.  Now I'll track down other Lesbian Vampire movies and be all disappointed because I expect them to be intriguing like this movie was.

Let's not go nuts here or anything, I'm not saying this movie was spectacular or Oscar worthy, and for a lot of its running time it is incredibly stupid, but it DOES have a plot, and an interesting one at that.  It takes a stab at adding a new layer to the vampire mythos (maybe it doesn't MEAN to do this, but it does so just the same by making its "vampires" different in some cool ways). The movie opens with some high society women in 1905 receiving what was supposedly a new treatment for anemia: drink a glass of ox blood (ew ew ew!!!  I'm glad I can just take iron pills).  Some of the women seem to be enjoying the treatment a bit too much, though.  The scene changes and we meet a group of crooks who just killed a man for his gold, and one of them betrays the rest by stealing the gold, taking another thief's wife as a hostage, and fleeing.  She tries to seduce him and escape, he rejects her, which pisses her off and she kicks him in the nuts and gets away, and he takes refuge in a creepy castle surrounded by a moat that seems to be conveniently empty except for two beautiful women.

What follows is to be expected: The women engage in some soft-core sex with each other, then they seduce the thief, the other thieves show up and complicate things.  There are some deaths here but not much gore beyond the "blood splashed on people's skin" variety (at one point a woman is supposed to be killed with a scythe, but there is no cut anywhere on her body, just a splash of blood on her face, which would be hilarious except the image of the killer walking around naked except for a black cloak killing people with a scythe is so cool it almost makes up for the rest).  I have to wonder why the dipshit thief stuck around the castle when the two women kept warning him that something terrible was going to happen when their friends showed up later and the clock struck midnight.  One even tells him that death is coming, and still he takes it like a joke (he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, obviously).  When the other women show up, a night of fun and games soon turns into something more sinister.

I won't give away what happens, because the climax of this movie (hee hee hee, "climax") has to be seen to be appreciated.  A bunch of women naked except for sheer cloaks would be awesome enough, but when the nature of the "vampires" is revealed, it becomes even more fun.  This movie is a lot of soft-core sex and nudity, mixed with some blood and depravity and murder, and some interesting ideas about "vampires" thrown in, and I had a lot of fun watching it.