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Gebissen wird nur nachts - das Happening der Vampire (1971)
Entertaining B movie
Leering, juvenile, sleazy, unfunhy, with a stench of German sex comedy - that's all true. It has also entertaining and gorgeous elements.
Clarimonde's castle and the surrounding German scenery, including the flower-wreathed graveyard, make fantastic job as Transylvania, thanks to the great cinematography. There are lot of ideas borrowed from the 1967 Dance of the Vampires - the vampire hunters, for instance, one an older man with white shock of hair, other the young man in lust with the young woman they want to rescue from the vampire party. They mug and steal the vampires' clothes to get in - and Dracula is played by none other than Ferdy Mayne, the Count von Krolock from the bosomy but marvelous Dance.
Too bad the jokes here are from the rancid bottom of the sex comedy barrel - including the bare bottomed monk, unfunny and wearisome, like his Bishop with outrageously "funny" German accent. Both are vampirized and free to molest the bare-breasted school girls, while the lesbian teacher is punished when she tries the same act! Some lesbian/feminist film fan would have field day here - apparently the teacher is "dyke" because she can't get a man: in the earlier scene, the male lead - a man with more chest hair than average gorilla - rejects her for Betty. There is genuine nastiness in these sex politics, which make the 2009 Lesbian Vampire Killers seem like Andrea Dworkin and Angela Carter would have made a truce and written a script!
Vampire Blues (1999)
Amateurish
Sleaze auteur Franco's reputation among genre critics is both mystifing and touching. People complaining about Hammer's latter day efforts - not to mention Coppola's Dracula, an artsy big budget Hammer Gothic with Bava - prefer films of THIS director? Head cratching stuff. On the other hand, he had never pretensions of Tarantino - who makes exploitation trash-n-sleaze with big budget - while giving me faith that some day I can publish my personal home video and call it a movie!
So, to Vampire Blues. It's a mix of vacation video and porno close ups, terrible effects and decidedly unglammed female cast. Everyone looks extremely unattractive - including the heroine.
Oh well, Countess von Murnau is great name for a vampire.
Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)
Worse than it sounds
Innocent erotica in the gorgeous paradise? What could go wrong? First, instead of Maureen O'Sullivan or Sarah Wayne Callies, this Jane is Bo Derek. Then add a terrible script and horrible direction by hubby John, and the catastrophe is ready.
Bo may not be much of an actress nor great beauty - even without those ugly tiny braids of 10, she is stuck in the other stylistic nightmare: her sunburnt hair and red face look more realistic than glamorous. There's attempt at "Try to act so young than possible " porn kitsch, bare breasts galore and Richard Harris. He has an atrocious role as Jane's father who runs without pants.
Really, it's worse than it sounds.
Niagara (1953)
Well-matured, superior vintage
It is a good film - not great, but good. Colour is fantastic, of course, one of the last Fox films in the original three strip Technicolor (which apparently had compatibility problems with Cinemascope) . Compare this beauty to sleazy, cheap ugliness which passes as cinematography nowadays!
And speaking about sleaze, with all the hypocrisy and racism of Code, it keeps squalid aspects of Niagara in control, so the film didn't fall (ha ha!) to the sewer.
I know everyone speaks about Marilyn - and for a reason! - but it was Jean Peters heroine whose beauty impressed me as a little girl. A brunette with complexion of Technicolor roses, she is brimming with purity and good heart - idealized but never irritating. I thought Marilyn would have looked even better with different trademark look than bleached hair, "wet" lips, a beauty mark etc. But then I am not a man!
I found Cotten's character both unnerving and sympathetic. When he accuses his wife of adultery - she is not only younger, but looks like, well, Marilyn Monroe! - I mentally prepared for violent outburst of domestic abuse. On the other hand, he has mental illness for the Korean War, his wife and her lover try to murder him, and he has no intention to harm the innocent.
Valerie a týden divu (1970)
Fantasies of a young girl
Richly dressed images are fabulous and perverse, fittingly to the Gothic and the fairytales; instead of purity and innocence, they are fantasies of rape, degradation, and jealousy. 13-years-old Jaroslava Schallerova manages to look constantly sly and malevolent like she was going to burst to laugh at some unfortunate soul. Love it!
Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (1985)
Fun 1980´s trash
It doesn´t really bear the thought, but no, this isn´t one of the worst films of all time. Yes, it´s full-blown 80´s trash. Christopher Lee looks mortified, Sybil Danning in big puffy hair shoots lasers (?) from her finger tips, werewolves nuzzle air in their in human form (?), there´s messy SFX effects etc etc.
It´s also mercifully free from the mucky digital hell of horror which passes entertainment for nowadays. There´s candlelit churches, graveyards, dangerous forests, Transylvanian (actually Czech) scenery, and the castle of the werewolf queen, which summarizes the film´s visual style. Both tacky and grand in equal measure, Stirba's bedroom has sumptuous velvet drapes and candles, which clash not too subtly together with cheaply garish red sheets and ridiculous (albeit mercifully tame) werewolf orgy. Nothing to do with short novel Howling II by Gary Brandner - another trashy but entertaining effort - and dismissed by pretty much everybody, Brandner included.