VOD Review: Vampyres (2016) #31daysofhorror

"This is a very naked remake."

*SUBMITTED BY: Artsploitation Films, who sent us a handy screener.

Female Vampires are a sexy and terrifying thing to behold. They're usually gorgeous and scantily-clad, which is great and all, but knowing that they're only using their feminine wiles to lure unsuspecting men like us to some dark place so that they can drain them of their lifeblood is just terrifying. As a man, let me tell you that we're just not strong enough to resist that kind of thing. We're simple creatures.

In the 70's, there were all kinds of vampire flicks that featured sexy female vampires. They all had that spooky, 70's Gothic vibe about them, and some of them even pushed the boundaries of good taste by offering gratuitous nudity, sex, and lesbianism. Back then, that was some scandalous shit.

One of the most famous of those exploitational vampire flicks was Vampyres (1974), which featured the stunningly gorgeous Anulka as one of the Devil's whores, and maybe even offered more graphic lesbianism on film than any other movie ever had before.

Now, it's been remade. We're not sure exactly why, but it has.

Vampire lovers Fran and Miriam live in an old house in the woods where they have sex with each other, and lure unsuspecting travelers back home so that they can drink their blood. Maybe even bathe in it. When a group of dimwit campers decide to set up their tents nearby, they get pulled into the erotic and blood-soaked world of the two sapphic vampires, which doesn't end well for most of them.

I'm not trying to be vague or anything here, that's really all there is to the plot. This isn't a very deep movie.

THAT'S THE LOOK OF LOVE.

This remake of Vampyres isn't a great movie. The acting is uneven across the board, which has a lot to do with most of the movie's stars speaking English when it's not their native language, which is always distracting to me; the story, while being rather faithful to the 1974 version, drags on with a lot of exposition that did nothing for the movie; and although the movie boasts plenty of attractive ladies, none of them had that special "it factor" that Anulka did in the original. Anulka was special.

But...

This remake does boast plenty of nakedness, lesbianism, sex, and a liberal amount of bloodshed that makes it a fun watch, at least on a visceral level.

"I... I LOVE YOU?"

The vampire ladies feed on plenty of victims throughout this one, and it gets messy. There's even a scene where the two vampiresses have some lesbian sex in a bathtub, while blood pours down on them from above, courtesy of a slit throat. Felt a lot like that scene from Hostel 2...

THEY SURE ARE HUNGRY. AND HORNY.

I'm pretty sure that this movie exists only to showcase a bunch of naked girls kissing each other. We can respect that.

BLOODY HOT.

If you're in the mood for a movie with an exploitational level of blood and gore (and let's face it, sometimes we're all in that mood), then Vampyres will probably give you your money's worth.Just turn off the part of your brain that craves substance, and you'll be fine.

C

Vampyres will hit VOD and DVD on October 18th.

The lovely ladies of Vampyres.

Blu-ray Review: The Toolbox Murders (1978)

"The first 30 minutes of this movie is an exploitational classic; the last 60 feels like an episode of The Hardy Boys."

I'm not sure what prompted censors in the UK to be so uptight about Horror movies in the 70's and 80's, but they really liked labeling movies as Video Nasties back then, and telling people what they could and couldn't watch, all in the name of decency.

Of all the titles that they gave the censorship treatment to, The Toolbox Murders might be the most baffling. There's plenty of gratuitous nudity to be had here, and I'm sure the violence was shocking for its time, but for the most part, this movie is fairly tame and even cheesy for most of its running time. We still dig it though, probably because we have a warped sense of taste.

After having a flashback of a girl dying in a car accident, a masked man and his toolbox work his way through an apartment complex, killing any whore (because they're all sinners, you see) unlucky enough to be "home." First, some old rummy gets drilled to death; then, the hot, supple Deborah is hammered to death; then, the unlucky Maria shows up to find out what Deborah is up to, and gets gutted with a screwdriver. From Deborah's window, the killer spots two more potential victims, and sets out to see about tooling them to death too. Lucky for them though, someone discovers the last two bodies, and scares the killer off before he can wreak anymore havoc.

POOR DEBORAH.

The next night, after the Cops have come and gone, the killer returns to wreak some more havoc, setting his sights on the girls he missed out on the night before. The first of those girls is the sexy, apparently horny, Dee Ann; while she's taking a long, slow, soapy bath, the killer breaks in, and ends up shooting her with a nail gun. As his grand finale, he creeps upstairs to the home of sweet, fifteen-year-old Laurie, and instead of impaling her with a level or something, he knocks her out, and takes her off into the night. Presumably to his tool shed.

DID NO ONE LOCK THEIR DOORS IN THE 70's?

With the Cops clueless, and his baby sister missing, it's up to dutiful brother Joey to track down the killer. With the help of the super-odd kid from Land of the Lost, he aims to unravel the mystery of The Toolbox Murders by talking a lot, and doing plenty of action-less investigating.

Psychological intrigue ensues.

"FAR OUT, MAN. IT'S A CLUE."

The main selling point of this movie is its level of exploitation. The first 30 minutes of The Toolbox Murders involves a masked killer going from apartment to apartment, killing nubile young women in a variety of nasty ways, with his tools. The kills are fairly bloody, if not overly-graphic, but it's really the excessive and shameless amount of nudity in those scenes that provide most of that exploitation.

This movie is pretty different, and it's 70's-cheesy in more than a few places, but it's got a certain charm about it that makes it an enjoyable watch overall. 

AWWW, SHE'S 70'S CUTE.

After the 30-minute mark, the visceral thrills disappear, and the rest of the movie is a Psychological Thriller devoid of any sort of boobs and blood whatsoever (except for a tiny bit at the end.)

Now, that dramatic switch in tone and mechanics may make this a better movie for breaking from the normal Slasher mold, or it may make it an uneven mess that should have stuck to the guns that it fired from the very start, but that's going to differ from person to person.

For us, it was a bit of both. The beginning of the movie had us on the edge of our seats, but then everything seemed to go still when the "action" stopped. Some of the events later in the movie were alright, but the script (most notably the dialogue) just wasn't strong enough to support what basically became a talky character study.

Make up your mind, movie!

WTF WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?!?

There were parts of this movie that didn't make much sense. For instance, when the killer happens upon his second victim, she's leaning out of her apartment door, looking at a package. Instead of pushing her inside and killing her, he knocks her out, takes her around the corner to the stairwell... the very public stairwell... and then brains her with a hammer. Then, he picks her up, carries her back to her apartment, and lays her on the floor.

What kind of sense was that supposed to make?

AND THE MOTIVATION FOR THE KILLINGS...

For this movie being banned, edited, and labeled as a Video Nasty, it's not nearly as bloody or nasty as you'd think. It had it's bloody moments early on, but even in its "Unrated" form, it felt like a lot of the good kill shots were lost to quick-cut editing.

The nail gun bit was pretty good though.

NAILED IT!

Kelly Nichols, the 80's Pornstar, was all kinds of naked in this, and helped create one of the best bath scenes in Horror History. Marciee Drake had a nice naked moment too.

USE YOUR SEDUCTIVE CHARMS TO SURVIVE!

Sometimes, the legendary status that a movie achieves is not very telling of its content. Also, this movie was based on a true story. Sure.

RIGHT.

This is a passable 70's Horror flick that may put some people off due to its dualistic presentation; if you tune in to see a gritty, bloody Slasher flick, you'll only get that for about 30 minutes before the movie becomes a talky movie-of-the-week type of Psychological Thriller.

For fans of 70's Horror though, it's definitely worth a watch.

C+

The Toolbox Murders is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

It's not easy finding good pictures of The Toolbox Murder girls, so you'll just have to settle for some pics from the movie itself.

Blu-ray Review: What Have You Done To Solange? (1972)

"No one did anything to Solange. She did it to herself!"

Italian for "Yellow," Giallo movies are Italian Thrillers that are rife with gratuitous violence and nudity; shadowy, black-gloved killers; absurd plots; bad dubbing; and intense atmosphere like no other. The Gialli films of the late 60's/early 70's helped give birth to the Slasher film as we know it.

Krimi films, which are lesser known than Gialli, are German Thrillers that are based in some way on the books of Edgar Wallace. They're usually set in England, and are essentially murder mysteries, with some random sex and violence thrown in for good measure.

What Have You Done to Solange? is a Giallo/Krimi hybrid, which may be why it feels so different from the standard Giallo fare, and may be why it was so entertaining overall.

While sexy Professor Enrico Rosseni and his 16-year-old lover Elizabeth are floating down the lake in a rowboat, inappropriately kissing and fondling, Elizabeth notices the flash of a blade on the bank. Enrico assumes that despite his magnificent beard, that she's just trying to spurn his attempted statutory rape, and so he gets all pissy about it, and they leave.

HOW COULD ANY UNDERAGE GIRL RESIST THE SEXY APPEAL OF THAT BEARD?

The next morning on the news, Enrico hears that the body of a girl was discovered on the riverbank, and he races to the scene only to discover that his little Lolita wasn't just trying to avoid sex with a much older man after all; she really did witness a murder, and one where a girl was stabbed to death in the vagina. Like it always happens in these films, Enrico begins to investigate the murder, which the Cops have no problem with at all, despite him being a civilian.

HE'S ABOUT TO SEND HER TO DETENTION IF SHE DOESN'T LET HIM FINISH.

As more girls show up having been stabbed to death in the vagina, Enrico becomes the prime suspect, because he dropped his pen at the scene; his wife learns he's a cheating man-whore who like little girls; and he must work frantically to discover who is murdering his potential lovers, before it's too late... which he'll do once he discovers just what happened to Solange.

VAGINA KILLER.

What Have You Done To Solange? might be the classiest Giallo that we've ever seen. As much nudity and murder as there is in this movie, it's not really all that gratuitous or sleazy, which isn't exactly par for the course for the average Giallo movie. It feels almost sanitized in a way, and yet even with that level of restraint, it doesn't lose any of its bite.

All of the familiar trappings of the standard Gialli are here: A shadowy, black-gloved killer that is out for some sort of retribution; shocking, gruesome murders; an ordinary guy who has no business investigating the murders who is forced/compelled to do so; sexually promiscuous girls; plenty of nudity; and that feel... that Italian Horror movies of the 70's feel. We have to give Solange? credit, as it didn't feel anywhere near as cheesy, melodramatic, or non-sensical as most Italian Horror movies of its time did.

This was also Camille Keaton's (I Spit On Your Grave) first movie, and she did a good job playing the troubled Solange. The gorgeous Karin Baal was also good as the wife of the cheating Enrico. Despite her husband's adulterous, age-inappropriate assholery, she was a down ass bitch to the end. We liked her.

WHOSE HAND IS THAT?

The accents in this movie were atrocious. Were we really supposed to believe that they were all British? And the black dude... could they not have at least dubbed him better?

"DON'T JIVE ME, MAN!" REALLY?

I'm not sure how things work in Europe, but here in America, if a teacher has sex with his underage student, people don't just call him a "Sex Maniac" and give him stern looks. No, they fire him, and then he goes to prison.

Bravo, Europe, for not putting such silly restraints on lust true love!

SURE, HE MAY BE EYEING THEM LIKE A HUNGRY WOLF EYES A FLOCK OF INNOCENT, VULNERABLE SHEEP, BUT THAT TRACKSUIT IS FANTASTIC.

A bunch of girls get killed in this one, and the scene that gives the movie its title is fairly disturbing, but none of it is very graphic.

THAT IS JUST WRONG.

This movie is full of naked young girls having sex, taking showers together, and being murdered. One of those situations is of course as un-sexy as it gets, but hey, naked is naked.

NOT ROMANTIC AT ALL.

Arrow Films just doesn't know how to make a bad disc, and in fact, their releases are consistently excellent. This 2K restoration is visually stunning, and it's amazing how great the movie looks compared to every other release that its had. The Italian Language Audio track is stronger than the English one (the former has a better mix, and the latter sounded tinny to us at times), but it didn't bother us all that much.

It's also got plenty of Supplemental Material for fans of the film to sort through.

Overall, this is an excellent disc.

HER PUSSY LOOKS SOFT AND CUDDLY.

What Have You Done To Solange? may not be a typical Giallo film in many ways, but it certainly is one of the best of them that we've ever seen. It's above average in its storytelling and its characters, and it retains its nasty edge despite being mostly blood-free. We'll even go so far as to call it a poignant story about the loss of innocence.

It's a great movie, and one worth checking out, especially in its current Arrow Video Blu-ray form.

A

What Have You Done To Solange? is available now on Blu-ray.

There are so many gorgeous ladies in What Have You Done To Solange?, that we've even given them their own Retro-Hottie post HERE.