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Rating: First of all, Soledad. Soledad Miranda.
This film, certainly the most famous work of the prolific filmmaker Jesus Franco (as someone said... a twice-blasphemous name...), is primarily the beauty of this young woman, who died the same year the film was released; thus, her beauty will remain untouched over the decades. Slim, petite, with long brown hair, large melancholic hazel eyes, a delicately sensual jewel that the Spanish director knew how to highlight to the fullest, transforming the previously somewhat chubby girl with permed hair into a stunning dark lady, impossible to resist.
And it will be impossible for Linda: the female Jonathan Harker, she travels to Turkey with her fiancé to sell a house to Countess Nadine Karody. Linda Westinghouse has a recurring dream; she dreams of a scorpion underwater, a butterfly caught in fishing nets, blood sliding down glass. And she has an unsatisfying sex life. In fact, she's under analysis: but naturally, the analyst can't get to the bottom of it. Because Linda needs other remedies to know herself. And as always happens, it will be a vampire to make her surface. And, naturally, it will be about unleashing lust.
Nadine Karody is obviously the legend of Carmilla, the lesbian vampire who entices her victims with sweet drowsiness and an unrestrained desire for sex. Contradiction, of course, since vampires, as is known, cannot feel such urges, but rather provoke them. Countess Karody is also the queen of a Turkish venue where she stages an extremely sensual strip-tease with a mannequin, in front of a mirror. A mannequin actually made of flesh and bone that succumbs to the fall of the last bastion of modesty. A splendid flesh-and-blood mannequin, of course.
Linda, upon arriving in Turkey, obviously starts to encounter shady figures, starting with the caretaker (played by Jesus Franco himself), whose wife never returned from the countess's island. Then she will meet a vampire expert, Dr. Seward, who, under the pretense of hunting vampires (he is treating a patient, Agra, who rants and raves in the throes of heat, waiting for the return of the beloved countess) wants to possess their powers. Then there's Morpho, the countess's loyal assistant, always lurking behind Linda Westinghouse.
The characteristic that stands out about "Vampyros Lesbos" is that, defying the darkness, it is a film overexposed by the incandescence of Istanbul's sun. The heat rising from the asphalt, the scorching beaches, the almost white skies due to the harshness of the sun's rays are paradoxical for a vampire film. But in reality, the sun is the perfect setting for the explosion of Linda's senses, whose journey with Nadine will be therapeutic. The highlight of these circumstances is when Linda arrives on the island: sun, blue sky, and, defying all rules, a splendid vampire in an orange bikini and huge sunglasses lounging in the sun on a deck chair.
Incongruent, comic-like, with its zooms (of which Franco is a specialist) in full view and its budgetary constraints, "Vampyros Lesbos" also gains appreciation for its narrative confusion, as if it were a delirium. We manage to overlook even the dull moments (and there are some) just to see Nadine again, her splendid form, her invitation to get lost in the tunnel of sensual moods. Against rules, God (a significant absentee in this film, another peculiarity for a vampire film), others, to find oneself in a healthy, indispensable egoism of pleasure and flesh.
Soledad Miranda will make another film with Franco before dying: "She killed in ekstasis." Following in the footsteps of 'Vampyros Lesbos', with clips from the same film, with her always beautiful and Eva Stromberg a criminal and lesbian doctor, almost a reborn and cruel Linda. Certainly less successful, more mundane (but the sapphic relationship between Soledad and Eva is definitely memorable), it sees the protagonist embody the archetypal figure of the black widow. Stunning music by Manfred Hubler, Sigi Schwab, and David Kuhne (Franco himself under one of his many pseudonyms). Tarantino (uff... I didn't want to mention him, but I cannot avoid it) used the theme of this film, "The lion and the cucumber", in "Jackie Brown".
I hope and wait every night for Nadine to come and see me...
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