Vampyres

Two beautiful vampires lure unsuspecting travelers back to a deserted mansion.

Vampyres is the epitome of an exploitation film. Packed with sex and gore, the story and plot are afterthoughts as the movie segues from one sex scene to the next.

Taken for what it is, however, Vampyres isn’t all that bad. The sex scenes play more like amateur porn than professional cinema, but that actually works to the film’s advantage.

Instead of the same polished, sterile, cinematic love scenes viewers are used to, Vampyres delivers raw, sometimes ugly visuals that give it an edge over similar exploitation films. Sure, there’s the gratuitous lesbian shower scene, but there’s also several shots of Murray Brown’s tongue, which couldn’t have been considered sexy by anyone.

The violence is also amped, even by today’s standards, and required severe edits to be viewable in the United Kingdom. In one light, Vampyres can be viewed as a bridge from the old Hammer movies of the 50s and 60s to the slasher pictures of the 80s. By combining the traditional vampire with the knife wielding sociopath, the film is perhaps, more than anything else, a sign of it’s times.