Review: Vampyres (2015)

By Ben Bussey

I should probably open this with an NSFW disclaimer. Of course, if you’ve already clicked into this page, then you’ve seen the photo above. Sorry. Hope you didn’t just lose your job. But it serves you right for reading about a lesbian vampire movie in the workplace.

Anyway… I’d almost completely forgotten that this movie was on its way. It had been announced way back in 2014, not too long after the death of director José Ramón Larraz, that his 1974 erotic horror classic Vampyres had been remade. Reports that Larraz had been directly involved with the project from director Victor Matellano went some way to reassure fans of the original, but an early trailer which indicated something cut-price and TV movie-ish rather scuppered those hopes. Audience reaction is sure to vary according to familiarity with the original; though revered among 70s horror fans, Vampyres has never necessarily been one of those movies classed as essential viewing for all. That said, if you haven’t seen the original, I’d say you’ve missed out; and in this particular instance, I suspect that those who don’t know the original are probably less likely to take much enjoyment from this remake. If you know the original, you’ll go in understanding that the film is aiming for a surreal, dreamlike feel, and as such won’t be too taken aback by a multitude of scenes which – to the uninitiated – will just seem, well, a bit dumb.

Don’t get me wrong: this remake of Vampyres is, under any conditions, a very dumb movie. But of course, dumbness has never been a barrier to entertainment value, especially when it comes to low-rent T&A-driven horror. Happily, the Vampyres remake isn’t one of those all-too common contemporary takes on trash cinema which make a concerted effort to be silly, and deliberately draw attention to their own silliness in a nudge-nudge wink-wink way. No, this is entirely sincere trash, and given that it’s the work of a production company named Artistic Films (I LOL’d as soon as that name came up in the opening titles), it really would seem that most if not all the key players on board have gone into this fully intending to make a serious, cerebral movie – and these are the conditions under which the very best trash is made.

For the most part, the film is a very direct retread of what went before. The main thrust (heheh) of the film is identical: smoking hot vampire lovers Fran and Miriam (Marta Flich and Almudena León filling in for Marianne Morris and Anulka) live in a dilapidated Gothic mansion, where they lure unwitting men back to their victims by posing as hitch-hikers on the largely deserted country road. However, when Fran picks up her latest boy-toy Ted (Christian Stamm taking over from Murray Brown), she seems to take a particular liking to him, and opts to keep him alive longer, messing with his head and draining him that bit further night by night, whilst she and Miriam continue to bring more strangers home and drink them dry. However, some nearby campers start to suspect that something untoward is going on.

In these sequences, Matellano’s Vampyres is as good as a direct facsimile to Larraz’s original, right down to the largely identical dialogue – which comes off more than a little stilted and unnatural here, which one suspects is largely down to the fact that English isn’t the first language of most of the cast (unlike the original, this film was shot entirely in Spain with a largely local cast, which rather begs the question of why they didn’t just shoot it in Spanish). However, Matellano’s take embellishes matters by changing the victims-in-waiting from a couple in a caravan to three studenty friends sharing a tent, with frequent allusions to them being there in search of artistic inspiration in the vein of Byron, Polidori and the Shelleys at Villa Diodati. It’s fair to say the caravan couple are the least interesting aspect of the original, in which case it would probably have improved matters to leave them out of the remake altogether; beefing their roles up further only makes them less compelling, particularly with the addition of a half-arsed will-they-won’t-they love story which utterly fails to be of any interest whatsoever.

A more notable addition is the occasional cuts back to the local hotel, run by the movie’s one big genre star, Caroline Munro. Her presence is always likely to bring a smile to the face of any fan of 70s/80s cult fare, and she seems to be having fun as the wise and enigmatic woman who clearly knows more than she’s letting on, dropping constant warnings of the otherworldly dangers in the woods. The scenes don’t add a great deal to the mix, but unlike the scenes with the campers they’re at least an enjoyable distraction.

The 1974 original is noted for its pretty full-on scenes of sex and violence, particularly by comparison with similar themed movies made in Britain at the time (Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy is more or less family friendly by comparison). As such, there’s obviously the expectation that this new version will take a similar approach, and sure enough it does boast plenty of flesh and blood presented in an eye-catching manner. A slight problem, however, is that it doesn’t do anything particularly new; not content with regurgitating the dialogue, some of the sex scenes are also more or less direct facsimiles of those in the original right down to the positions. As for the violence; in attempting to up the ante there, the film makes some lamentable side-steps into torture porn territory. This feels particularly stale as Matellano opts to throw some Elizabeth Bathory references into the mix, a subject which was already delved into somewhat by Hostel Part 2; and, as may be evident from the top photo, the literal blood bath scene is more than a little reminiscent of the most famous moment from Eli Roth’s 2007 sequel.

It’s easy, then, to dismiss this new take on Vampyres as nothing more than another misguided remake which pales by comparison with the source material, and fails to build on it in any interesting ways. All things considered, though, I can’t deny I had fun with it. A bit of sexed-up vampire action is always a potent cocktail for simple, undemanding entertainment, and while Matellano’s movie might not quite match up to the power of Larraz’s original, it packs a good bit more sex and gore than a lot of similar movies do these days. No, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but that’s no prerequisite for 90 minutes of fun, is it?

Vampyres is available now on UK DVD from Soda Pictures. In the US, Artsploitation Films will release it to DVD on October 18th. Alternatively it’s also available on VOD from Vimeo now.

Vampyres from artsploitation on Vimeo.