Thirst (1979)

One mild spoiler...Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri), a successful businesswoman unknowingly descended from the notorious vampiress Elizabeth Bathory, is abducted by a cult of modern-day vampires with a view to uniting her bloodline with that of another upper-class vampire bloodline. The cult - whose membership numbers 70,000 worldwide - harvest humans for their blood on farms and consider themselves a superior race. However, Kate stubbornly refuses to accept her vampire links, which means the cult has to use methods that threaten to cause a split amongst their leaders… Thirst came across as to me as The Prisoner (TV series) coupled with an updated version of the Nazi holocaust camp, and a study of the inevitable adoption of brainwashing techniques of any widespread organisation whose power is allowed to grow unchecked. While it uses vampirism as a theme, it doesn't really serve as a device for horror in the way that more conventional vampire films do. In fact it is more a psychological thriller focusing on the systematic destruction of a person's will. For this reason it's difficult to compare it with any other vampire movie to provide a frame of reference. That doesn't mean this is any better than others of the genre, but it is definitely, well, different.The acting is pretty strong throughout, although Shirley Cameron as one of the more sadistic leaders of the cult, acts like she's in one of those spoof spy thrillers of the 60s: all she needs is an eye patch, a cigar, and a flick-knife in her boot to make the impression complete. David Hemmings, whose pretty looks were already fading while he was still in his thirties, provides by far the slickest - and understated - performance, and seeing him run rings around the rest of the cast makes you wish he had found roles more deserving of his talent. Henry Silva also makes an appearance, although he has practically nothing to do other than die a memorable death.Thirst does have a fairly slow pace that won't appeal to fans of more conventional vampire flicks. It disregards vampire lore - the 'vampires' have no fangs, can stand daylight, garlic, crosses,etc - and for that reason it's to be applauded. Made at a time when the vampire genre was going through something of a hiatus - it at least makes a better fist of transplanting the genre to the modern day than other 70s efforts like the Yorga films and Hammer's Dracula 1973 AD, but it still seems a little unsure of itself and fails to make its basic idea entirely convincing simply because it tries to merge old-style religious ceremonies with production-line technology. For anyone who likes to see movies that at least try something different - even if it doesn't succeed completely - this one would definitely be worth a look.

I can't believe I finally found some information on the movie "Thirst"! My friend tonight suggested looking it up on the internet something I hadn't even thought of! I was telling her about this fantastic vampire horror movie I saw when I was young, in my home town in country NSW . I've always wondered what happened to it & a few years ago went to video stores trying to find out any information.(no-one had heard of it). Then I read in a magazine a few years later a very brief article that mentioned the Australian movie Thirst, & though delighted that I didn't imagine seeing the movie, was shocked that it was Australian.(I don't know how I didn't remember that.) Then I gave up finding anything else on it. Though young, at the time I thought the storyline was so unique and different, though scared out of my wits thought it was a brilliant movie. I was surprised later on that no-one I knew had ever heard of it! I didn't know why! So I'm so glad I found this site. I would love to see the movie again to see if it's as good as I remember, so if anyone knows how I can get hold of it please let me know. Thanks. Kylie.

Below is the first paragraph of my review of another genre-breaking film, Robin Campillo's Les Revenants (2004): My memory of the 1979 Australian film Thirst turns on a single misleading image: blood in milk cartons on supermarket shelves. Well-heeled shoppers push carts to and fro down spic-and-span aisles. Though the film's creators hadn't the nerve, or perhaps the imagination, to carry through -- their vampires are conventionally dangerous since the blood in the cartons is human -- that image broke genre. It suggested a maligned, maybe ghettoized yet worldwide minority not just making do but thriving. To analogize any of several possible real world minorities would be wrong, considering where the film goes. But if Thirst were newer, we'd wonder, is the blood in the cartons artificial, created humanely in a lab? Is it vampire "soy milk"? Are these vegan vampires? Whatever the answer, in that supermarket image Thirst's vampires are us. They're no more horrific than we are. The genre collapses.

Terrible, badly-made modern-day vampire tale. Chantal Contouri plays a businesswoman kidnapped by a league of vampires who run a remote farm where mindless humans are routinely 'harvested' for their blood, which is then neatly packaged in milk cartons.The thinnest of thin plots is padded-out to feature length with endless chase scenes and incomprehensible dream sequences. In fact the entire plot is fully revealed within the first half hour, after which the film has nowhere new to go, so it constantly rehashes the same scenes of blood harvesting, the brainwashing of and hallucinations experienced by the film's heroine, and the spectacle of the sect's grisly ceremonies. The haste in revealing the entire plot so early implies that there will be a major plot twist in the film. None is forthcoming.Best part of the film is the wonderfully high-camp performance by Shirley Cameron as a sinister sect insider. Henry Silva and David Hemmings were clearly imported to help assure the film's boxoffice success but their presence does little to help the film itself. Meanwhile when Contouri enacts terror or anger it comes off looking much like the intense irritation she would experience on finding a parking ticket on her Mercedes sports car.