Directed by: Emilio Vieyra

Release date: 1967

Contains Spoilers

Not to be mistaken with The Blood Demon, which was also sometimes called Blood of the Virgins and was produced the same year, this is an Argentinean sexploitation flick by the director who brought us the Curious Doctor Humpp and was actually banned in its home country for seven years due to explicit sex and violence. All told, by today’s standards, it isn’t that bad but there are plenty of boobs to be watched through the film.

It is curious for many reasons – including the twist at the end, which I will spoil due to its unusual substance – and in itself does much right as a vampire movie. It also does a lot wrong unfortunately and the bad outweighs the good. However the prologue is rather nicely done.

Gustavo (Walter Kliche) and Ofelia (Susana Beltran) are in love. Unfortunately her parents want her to marry Eduardo. They have met in the woods and admit they do not want to lose each other. Ofelia goes to her parents to ask them to reconsider (and I must admit that the lodge looked too modern for the period dress) but Gustavo will not even meet them. Eduardo arrives with a portrait he has painted of her – we note the creepy butler.

Ofelia asks Gustavo to meet her parents and he refuses, so she marries Eduardo – though she falters with her vows as Gustavo looks in on the ceremony. That night the newly weds enter the marital bed. We see a seagull on red background (I’ll get to that) and Gustavo enters, fangs apparent. He stabs Eduardo through the neck and then eye mojo’s and bites Ofelia. Later we see a grave, the ground opens up and Gustavo helps the newly undead Ofelia out of her coffin. Cut to some quite spectacular artwork over credits.

It is a great opening and, other than the anachronism of the lodge (which as a building will come into the film again), the most you can say is that it is atmospheric and sucks you in. However there was the seagull… For some reason Vieyra had seagulls, against red, rather than bats (though bats do come into this). It was probably a cost thing but one cannot help think of other Spanish language films. Franco occasionally throws a seagull into his films, Paul Naschy is working on a film, Empusa, where the Empusa* is said to be a “cross between a vampire, a snake and a seagull” and, whilst not vampiric, Night of the Seagulls from the Blind Dead Series has seagulls who are said to be the anguished souls of the maidens who have been sacrificed. One wonders at a deeper cultural meaning to the seagull perhaps lost upon me?

Things then go downhill. We get establishing scenes of a group of young people. We know there is Raúl (Rolo Puente), a man who remains unnamed and the man credited as ‘man of group with beard’ played by Orestes Trucco – who seems to be the, mercifully underused, comedy relief. There are also four girls. Laura (Gloria Prat), Gloria, Beba and another unnamed one. As you can see they are not developed as characters really and the establishing shots are such things as skiing, topless go-go dancing and other activities. These shots seem to go on and on… actually about 7 minutes but it is a good stretch of a 72 minute running time.

Driving through the mountains they suddenly stop, the bearded man has run out of petrol. He knows of an abandoned lodge nearby… Okay, I know this was shot back in 1967, but how many vampires would have starved over the years if it wasn’t for convenient breakdowns near their lair? Anyway they go to the lodge, which seems empty, but then Raúl meets the creepy butler. He shows him a table full of food. Raúl gets the others (eventually, there is some meaningless prating around) and the butler drugs the wine before vanishing.

Raúl points out that there are seven glasses and seven of them… spooky that… until one of the girls breaks a glass (against the portrait of Ofelia) and so Raúl doesn’t get to have a drink. After the meal everyone falls asleep except Raúl. Now, you’d think that he would then be able to save them from menace. Not so, he goes exploring and finds the fanged Ofelia. She sees him as Eduardo for a moment and beds him – no fangs just rumpy. In the meantime Gustavo does some biting of slumbering boobies.

The next day all the girls are missing, though the men are none the worse for their ordeal. They cannot find the girls anywhere so go to the police but it is all somewhat of a mystery. Then, for no good reason (though there was perhaps a ham-fisted intimation that Ofelia let her go) Laura turns up and in shock. Gustavo attends her once as a doctor for reasons that are pointless story wise. Laura babbles in her sleep about blood, and the fact that Beba mustn’t drink it, and her brother Tito flies in from Buenos Aries. Raúl notes the fang marks on the neck, identical to those on Beba’s neck when she later turns up (odd, actually, as the only bite we saw was elsewhere). However, in fairness the young people (or swingers as the DVD box refers to them) are actually not that important.

Vampires seem to have an affinity with seagulls, have eye mojo and can stand sunlight. Our main vampiric aspects, however, come at the end of the film and it is here that I spoil the ending and twist. Ofelia hates her life and has asked Raúl, already, to set her free. She calls her turning a betrayal and hates Gustavo for it. When Tito investigates the lodge she beds him (she is a randy little minx) and then sees the ghost of Eduardo. He gives her the knife used to kill him. Telling Tito to stay where he is, she goes to the building where her and Gustavo’s coffins are kept and stabs him – killing him.

She then turns the knife on herself, plunging it through her ample bosom and committing vampiric suicide. Why this couldn’t happen before is beyond me. Presumably any object through the heart would have done – rather than the knife that killed Eduardo. The presence of the swingers does not even seem to act as a catalyst but is just a coincidental event. However, in a coda, the bodies are taken and cremated. The creepy butler sneaks in and opens the furnace allowing two examples of crap bat syndrome to fly out… then we get seagulls again… which almost says ‘There was no deeper cultural meaning, we just didn’t think anyone would tell that seagulls weren’t bats…’

The film looks marvellous, bosomy women, fangs and blood with, in certain scenes, an atmosphere I’d describe as chunky and yet… there is no substance. The Ofelia and Gustavo story could have been told in half the time (or less) and there was a lot of milling around with a story that had no substance and a plot so well hidden it was impossible to find.

As a piece of cinema, poor, as a sexploitation vampire piece, essential. On balance 3.5 out of 10. Incidentally, with reference to the title it does seem wholly inaccurate as there doesn’t appear to be a virgin in sight.

The imdb page is here.

* Empusa, incidentally, was the name of the ship that transported Count Orlock in the original German plates for Nosferatu.

Tags: bats, beba, blood, butler, creepy butler, eduardo, empusa, fangs, film, girls, gustavo, laura, lodge, ofelia, seagull, seagulls, stabs, swingers, tito, vampiric

Directed by: Do-Cheol Noh

First aired: 2005

Contains spoilers

Little known in the UK, Hello Franceska was a situation comedy that took its native Korea so much by storm that, I understand, there was a spin off animated series and musical. I have mentioned this before in an article For those we can’t review (in which I used the name it had been advertised on e-bay under, ‘Hi, Francesca’). The article was about some of the non-subtitled, non-English titles I had, and I had the first 12 episodes of this in Korean only, but in a very nice coffin shaped box. Some sourcing later and I have been able to watch this subtitled.

The series, as I watched it, wasn’t technically perfect. Some of the outside shots noticeably had visible boom mikes (on one or two occasions) – though as they started to deconstruct the series in a very Monkees like way, with characters commenting on the scripts, crew appearing to comment on acting ability and even the script writer appearing as himself playing a character, that became less of an issue. There was also the concept of a laugh track (mercifully removable on DVD) that for the first few episodes had a “Whooo track” if I can call it that, with a whoop going up (canned) when something exciting or shocking was supposedly happening. Luckily they quit with the Whoops eventually. However, I was nearly – at first – underwhelmed with the vampire aspect. Let me explain.

The first episode begins with a castle dominating the Romanian landscape. A voice over tells us how their 2000 years of history is at an end, how humans no longer fear vampires and want to see them become extinct. The castle is their last sanctuary but that is no longer safe and so they have to go to vampire safehouses around the world. The voice is that of Great Andre and we then see a group of vampires land in Korea, thinking it is Japan. They are Franceska (Hye-jin Shim), Elizabeth (Ryeo-won Jeong) and Kyeon (Kyeon Lee). Kyeon drags a coffin.

Meanwhile perennial loser Du-il (Du-il Lee) is proposing to his girl. She turn him down due to his lack of prospects and, when he suggests she might keep the ring, she refuses that also. He throws it into some trees as, if she won’t have it no woman shall. Later he is in the trees trying to find it as it cost a fortune. He sees it in branches and tries to get it, falls and badly twists his limbs in the fall. The vampires come past and he asks for help, Franceska feeds upon him.

Suddenly Du-il is whole and up but a rumbling disapproval is coming from the coffin. We had earlier seen the hand of Great Aunt Sophia (Seul-gi Park) emerge and grasp Franceska by the throat when they told the coffin they had got on the wrong boat and ended up in Korea. It becomes clear that Great Andre has forbidden feeding upon humans, much less turning them. The coffin explodes open and Sophia is a 16 year old looking girl… the problem is Du-il is now a vampire, however he does have an apartment.

Here is where the lack of vampire activity kicks in. They obviously can develop fangs – Du-il has fang marks on his neck – but we do not see a fang for the majority of the show at least. As they are not feeding on blood, they eat normal food (nor does Du-il develop the thirst for blood that one would commonly associate with a new vampire). We discover later that holy objects have no effect on them and Du-il opens his curtains to discover that sunlight does not effect them, nor does garlic. They can, however do funky things with their eyes.

Their eyes will flash red, very occasionally. There is an early joke with eyes flashing red and the show entering a flashback. The implication as it happens is that it is some sort of telepathic sharing of memory but it becomes apparent that only the one remembering is seeing the memory, it was a nice play with conventions. Kyeon can produce laser like light from his eyes but it is completely harmless and gives him a headache.

These are just not very vampire like vampires (at first); they might have been anything not fitting in to society and the programme seems more like Third Rock from the Sun with Addams Family chic. Comment is made about their Western names being unusual (Elizabeth uses the name Ryeo-won at one point, being of course the actress’ name) but the reason why a Romanian would look Korean is simply ignored. The characters, being ‘non-human’ are able to be parodies without the audience losing faith in the show. Great Aunt Sophia poses as a child but is a harridan at times and it is without a doubt a great performance all the way through by Seul-gi Park. Elizabeth is a self-absorbed fashion aficionado.

Franceska is a gambling addicted, axe wielding scary woman – with a heart of gold and a habit of cooking anything that moves. Kyeon is stupid, often referred to as chicken-head he was fed on chicken blood as a fledgling vampire, due to a shortage of human blood, and has suffered the curse of the chicken. He has a snaggletooth (I think it was natural to the actor) that looks like one fang never withdrawn. Du-il is obviously the humanising factor, the newly turned who has to work to support the other vampires and is shocked by their unconventional behaviour.

There is a range of human characters that come into the show. The main one is Park He-Jin who becomes their landlady at first. A self-absorbed gold digger with five ex (dead) husbands and a habit of using the word ‘situation’ (in English) as a catchphrase. She falls for Kyeon – due to his stupidity – and is involved in the lives of the vampires one way or another right through to the series finale. Other human characters recur occasionally but consistently and gain their own sub-plots.

Other vampires that come into this are Victoria, a vampire warrior, and Andre. The leader of the vampires can see into the future (3 seconds ahead), is a little short and keeps blowing any money they gain on failed bets. Once again we see little in the way of vampiric activity but the show is absorbing. Some of the humour was lost on me as it was clearly cultural or involved cameos by those famous in Korea but unheard of in the UK but, for the most part, the crazy characters took this forward.

It was, however, going to be little more than an honourable mention until the last ten episodes when the vampiric activity was turned up a notch. It began with a vampire wedding, and all the guests were vampires (actually they were almost zombie like but we’ll let that pass). In fact there was a play with fang lore at this point when the bride puts in rubber fangs (at first) to be traditional but is talked out of it as no-one does that anymore. Then Kyeon is run over. All the way through the vampires have stated they can’t die (I am sure there are ways but that is not explored). Kyeon is broken but suddenly fixes and, for a second, actual fangs appear.

At this point a vampire secret is mentioned (it has been hinted at previously) but not revealed. The show keeps it hanging over the finale episodes, and we know its substance is the reason for the vampire doom. I did think it was going to be much of a nothingness, but actually, when finally revealed, it was quite good (probably a little light under scrutiny but in the run of things an interesting twist) and I’m not going to spoil it. Perhaps it pushed the last couple of episodes towards sentimentality but over-all it worked.

These last episodes pushed this to review and despite being vampire light I really did enjoy this as a running show – I enjoyed it enough to watch the whole run – and this was down to the characters more than anything. I also want to quickly mention the soundtrack, which was a hotchpotch but had some shining moments – especially the (twice used) lounge version of The Prodigy’s Breathe. The series is out there, available, with subs but it is one to really search for. The Third Rock from the Sun simile probably works best, but bear in mind it is uniquely Korean and thus quite different to Third Rock in many ways, and I give this, overall, 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here

Tags: andre, blood, characters, coffin, elizabeth, episodes, fang, fangs, franceska, korea, korean, kyeon, series, show, sophia, third rock, vampire, vampires, vampires come, vampiric activity