Female Vampire

What does a title like Female Vampire suggest? I'm thinking literally we'll get treated to a sexy lady vampire sucking the blood from hapless male victims that fall under her spell. Well, Franco's Female Vampire does some sucking, but she doesn't live on blood. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me set the stage. 

The movies opens with a sexy lady (played by Lina Romay, a Franco starlet and also his common law wife) wandering through the woods wearing a black cape, a belt, and knee-high black boots and nothing else. She comes upon a house in a clearing in the wooded area and there's a man there. He approaches this mysterious woman, notices her appearance, and asks if she's in need of assistance. They then begin to make out and she goes down on him, and of course, obviously, she bites his penis during his moment of orgasm, which provides her sustenance. Then cut to a guy taking off and putting on sunglasses and writing in a journal. 

Then we are told through some narration (come to find out later this particular female vampire, Countess Irina, is a mute, as is her male assistant), that she hates her station in life and wishes in so many words, she didn't have to live off of love juice. It must be said here that her male assistant looks like this guy that my dad's sister brought to my brother's wedding. This guy is strait-up seventies looking and so is my aunt's boyfriend. My aunt's boyfriend is also a bisexual chiropractor who she met while she was selling real estate when she showed the guy and his boyfriend a house. Then she ended up dating him and working in his chiropractic office. Anyway....

After the Countess sunbathes (sunlight, what sunlight?) in a white dress, we learn she's the last descendent of her family, the Karlsteins, who have a bloody, murderous past. A bikini-clad reporter, Ana, comes to interview Irina (even though she's mute) and tells the audience most of the details of Irina's family's past while Irina nods. Ana knows Irina is a vampire and apparently doesn't care much about it, until later when Irina telepathically summons Ana to her bedroom, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself. There is so much (sex) in a Franco picture, I can't keep all the (sex) scenes straight. 

Before Irina summons Ana back though, she has an encounter with a male massuese in her hotel room. But instead of providing a massage, she provides him with a blow job. There is some real tension built up here (haha, not that kind of tension, perverts) on Franco's part. Irina goes down on the guy and you think, Chomp! here she's at it again, but she doesn't, she has sex with him first, then goes down on him again for awhile, then, does her thing that she has to do. This was interesting viewing for me, because normally when there's a blow job scene (usually in a hardcore movie, I wouldn't necessarily say FV is hardcore, it's close), I'll fast forward through it. Here, I want to see the whole blow job because I know how it's gonna end and it's gonna end badly for the guy. Not that I have anything against said guy that Irina's engaging with, we don't know anything about him, it's just somehow satisfying (although not sexually), as a female viewer. I'm not getting all feminist about FV, I could, I'm just saying, it's the first time in a long time where I was actually watching a blow job scene and enjoying it. 

Moving on, the police (the lead investigator is played by Franco) are investigating the first of Irina's kills since she's been back in town, and they suspect vampirism. Well, duh. Everyone in town apparently knows of Irina's family's history, yet they do little to apprehend or be afraid of Irina, because then that would cut all the sex short. And it only gets sexier when Ana returns to Irina's room. Ana comes back and she's a little confused as to why she's been drawn there (Irina isn't there at the moment of her arrival) so she does the natural thing, which is to take off all of her clothes, lay down, and smoke a cig. Irina enters and they touch themselves and then Irina turns into a bat (off camera) and flies out of the room. Then Ana cries and Irina comes back and they rub around on each other and give each other some kisses then we learn that it's not just male orgasms Irina can live off of. I assume this kills Ana, because afterwards, Irina masturbates enthusiastically all over the corpse but then there's a quick cut and Ana is wandering after Irina in the woods wearing only fabulous white platform go-go boots. Is she a vampire now too? Who knows. 

Irina eventually meets a mustachioed poet (the journal writing sunglass wearer in the beginning) who understands her situation but wishes to be with her. They have some energetic sex together, but of course. Irina also visits the house of a sadistic lady in a bad wig and Irina lets this lady whip her then turns the tables on her and takes off her clothes and does what she does best. There's also a scene where Irina rolls around in a bathtub full of blood. Nice. In typical Jenn fashion, I think I must have passed out towards the end because I don't particularly remember it. Hey, I always watch movies late and this one was damn near two hours long and was essentially plotless. You don't watch this movie for vamp action, no, you watch it for the sex. The characters take a million years to do anything, deliver a sentence, walk from room to room, get the sex action going. Perhaps Franco is trying to show us how lonely and long the life of a vampire is with the character's taking their sweet ass time to do anything at all? Nah, he's probably just trying to pad the running time. 

There are apparently three bazillion versions of FV and some alternate titles. This is the version netflix sent me so I'm actually unsure what exact version I watched. The alternate titles I like a lot better than Female Vampire (which just sort of sounds generic). The Bare Breasted Countess, The Black Countess (sounds blaxploitation-y), Erotikill (my favorite), and the apparently much racier version, The Loves of Irina are a few. 

Those looking for energetic and sometimes weird sex (Irina licks and humps a bedpost for several minutes for no reason) and kind of an interesting take on vamp mythology (orgasms instead of blood - which reminds me of a short story I read one time that I can't recall the name of but it was in Love in Vein, a Poppy Z. Brite edited anthology of erotic vampire tales about a vamp who lived off of newly conceived fetuses, so she would cast a 'glamour' on a couple, force them to fuck, then immediately following, would eat the embryo), look no further. However, I know Lina Romay has hundred or more Franco films to her credit, and it may just have been the nature of the character of Irina, but she's so expressionless, in her sex scenes and in her I'm walking around supposedly looking sexy. I find her kind of unalluring. She's in every sex scene in the movie, but she doesn't seem to enjoy any of it. Like I said, I suppose it is just Irina's nature, she's unhappy with what she has to do in order to survive, but why the bedpost? Once and awhile, if you look closely, you'll see a sly smile on the corner of her lips (like during the S&M scene with the bad wig wearing lady), and I would have liked to see more of that, more of her sexuality. Yes, she's a sexual creature, but that slyness could be conveyed to up the appeal here. 

And I know it was the seventies, but be prepared for some serious pubic hair in this movie. Also, be prepared for music that is wilding inappropriate, oftentimes even romantic. And the overdubbing is often atrocious, at least in the copy I watched.