Female Vampire (1973)

Jess Franco is skilled director,made a lot of good movies,but this is awful and don't dignifies his extensive career,a low profile movie drives to a peeping audience,a vampire without blood and a propper teeth,who sucks blood in another place of body,soft porn without plot,sexploitation that almost reach a point of pure porn movie,lack of soul and veracity!!Lina Romay had a great potential to do a real scary female vampire!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 4

Lina Romay plays wanton vampire Countess Irina Karlstein, who wanders around in a sheer black cape and a big leather belt, sucking the life out of her victims, not from their necks, but from a bit further south (this is a Jess Franco film, so I think you know where I mean).I bought an uncut and uncensored Dutch 'Collector's Edition' DVD of Franco's Female Vampire from eBay quite a few years ago believing it would have English subtitles (not unreasonably so, since the seller said it had). It didn't, and so it languished on the shelf gathering dust.Last night, I finally got around to watching the film regardless of my not understanding what was being said (no, I hadn't learnt French in the interim) and to say I was bored is a massive understatement. Despite the usual Franco quota of bare boobs and close-up crotch shots courtesy of star Lina Romay (and a few other strumpets), the film had me struggling to stay awake, its dreamlike (ie., uneventful and painfully slow) approach and almost complete lack of plot making for a really dull experience.1/10, although I was very nearly tempted to give it 2/10 for Romay's hilarious self-gratification involving a phallic bedpost and cylindrical pillow, and for the bit where a blind man fondle's a dead woman's snatch.

There's no question that Franco was inept in many ways, starting with some unbelievably dumb stories. Not what the story is about but how, usually awkward, wooden, unnatural in anything that resembles life. Still, he led a pretty admirable life, shooting films, composing music, traveling around sunny locales, meeting and undressing some pretty women with his camera. I can think of ways much worse to spend my time on earth.And even more appealing to me, there's something to be said about his mentality towards films, probably immersed whilst doing it but quickly moving on, unattached. It's freeing to see. So when all is said, you have probably decided what use you have for any of these films. This isn't one of his best, far from it actually. For me, that's Eugenie De Sade and Vampyros. I rate it low, because it is bad in all the parts, even the sex which is neither erotic nor dangerous as he probably thought. What he explains about the 'world of pleasure' are childish notions.Still, what it is has its attractive aura. The very loose structure, a woman simply walks around having sex, the languid locations in Madeira, the vapid look on Lina Romay's face as she glides unattached in the nude, the overall air of casual commitment to dumb (as in inarticulate) passion. Oh, he's still the dull man from interviews but this improvised void endears. It's like we're on vacation, leisurely pacing around as we do some trivial stuff (shooting a softcore film) in order to be far from home.

I am a Franco-phile, but the man tries my patience at times. Despite some striking images of semi-naked women striding through fog-enshrouded forests and a magnificent score by Daniel White, the director's technical sloppiness capsized my enjoyment. His zooms are shaky, even wide shots are often soft, and music cues between scenes are often cut off without justification. It's sad that Franco cared so little at times for his own aesthetics and tolerated shabbiness.Lina Romay, Franco's replacement muse after Soledad Miranda died tragically, plays the bloodsucker of the title, a tragic figure doomed to wander in the shadows of the Spanish countryside, her thirst for blood eternal, her hunger for sex insatiable.The film is a series of erotic encounters (some hardcore) interspersed with meandering dialog scenes and pretty scenery. It is slow and wants to be hypnotic, but the terrible dubbing renders it dreadfully melodramatic at times and its poetry is constantly undercut by a subplot starring Franco himself.Romay is flat as an actress and comes across as an erotic try-hard, too, never even coming close to filling the shoes of the celluloid enchantress Miranda."Female Vampire" is a disappointment.