Hello, perverts! How the fuck are you? Me, I'm wonderful. Just got back from Chicago after seeing Motorhead and Megadeth and my wonderful girlfriends from grad school. It was epic and cold and drunken and amazing and I wish I never had to come back. Except that the snow is not for me. Can't stand it. I like it cold, but not that cold. I just don't look as cute under twenty million layers of clothes.

I've been watching and reading all kinds of crap and non-crap. It has all been making me pretty happy. I read Adam Blomquist's novel, TRIBESMEN, and loved that shit exponentially. If you love Umberto Lenzi's cannibal movies, you will love the hell out of this. Murder and mayhem and cannibalism and hot chicks (use your imagination, as it is a novel), and blood and all sorts of horror in-stuff, you'll fucking love it.

Bizzaro fiction is the shit and I've recently read Andersen Prunty's HI, I'M A SOCIAL DISEASE, which aside from having an amazing cover, is a great fucking collection. I'm also mid-way through D. Harlan Wilson's THEY HAD GOAT HEADS, which is freaking me out because it's so on point and in tune with everything that I deem awesome, so word.

Movie-wise, just as good, non-good. TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL was charming, my second viewing of FRANKENFISH was everything I hoped for, and I'm patiently awaiting the arrival of HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2.

I changed all the cats' names to Todd and I need more wine. I love you all, you perverted fuckers. Look for my reviews of some Jean Rollin and some stupid SyFy stuff coming up in the next couple of days.

Requiem for a Vampire

Normally, despite my appetite for weird world cinema and my penchant for hot ladies doing despicable things in the nude, I'm not the connoisseur of Jean Rollin's films, at least, not like you think I would be. But the stars and the planets aligned the other night and I wasn't drunk as monkey and I managed to sit through what is described as Rollin's most palpable fair, REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE. And I wasn't disappointed. There might be something to this French dude after all. And after YEARS of suffering through his stuff. Well, not complete suffering, because I do keep coming back to his oeuvre, but maybe you know what I mean. I usually get 'it' right away, here, it's taken some time.

The film opens with two female clowns and a male counterpart in the midst of a high speed car chase/shootout in the French countryside. Dude man gets shot and the trio escapes on a dirt road. Exiting the vehicle, our two lovely clown ladies light the car on fire, leaving their male friend inside. They're fleeing from something, but what? There's some great shots of the car burning, hearkening my love the Divine aka Babs Johnson's trailer burning in PINK FLAMINGOES. It's that slow burn, filmed from many angles with only the sounds of the flames lapping at the metal that reminds me so of my beloved John Waters film.

After having dispatched with their 'friend,' the clowns walk across a field and find a stream to clean their makeup off. It seems almost like a purification ritual or a rebirth, a theme that will make itself apparent as the film wears on. They soon find an abandoned farmhouse and make use of it to change from clowns into regular sexy girls. They find their motorcycle safely hidden within a grain silo and off they head to seduce a hot dog stand owner in order to rob him.

After the robbery, the girls, a brunette, Michelle, and a blond, Marie, flee to a cemetery to cuddle with one another underneath their clown garments as two gravediggers approach to dig a grave. The wind howls, a cat meows, and Michelle falls into an open grave as they attempt to flee a second time for no real reason. Marie watches in horror as her friend is buried alive, however, the gravediggers, being a lazy sort, don't fill the whole grave before quitting time and Marie is able to pull Michelle out virtually unscathed. Although it is filmed very dramatically, with her hand reaching out of the grave and the score edging the whole thing on.

A storm begins and Michelle recovers to faculties on a grave (there is nothing sexier than some pretty girls amongst Gothic looking tombstones) and it's time to flee again, this time to a castle. And did I mention the bats? They assault the girls and they are glorious. Almost as big as fruit bats and I didn't think fruit bats made their rounds to the French countryside. These fuckers are huge! And glorious! You know how I am about bats!

So the ladies find a castle and decide to explore it wearing their clown suits, until they find a bed ensconced in furs and decide to disrobe. If you were thinking Michelle and Marie were a couple up until this point, the next scene confirms it for you, as they get all nakey and kissy with each other on top of the fur bedspread. Don't get your hopes up too long, perverts, as the softcore lesbian action doesn't last too long because the girls are distressed by a creaking sound off in the castle somewhere and get up to investigate, wearing clothes, unfortunately.

Much to their dismay, they find a hanging corpse in the basement (the film's only real gross-out gag) and decide the time has come to flee again. But they can't. They enter a chapel where some robed skeletons are presiding over a funeral while eerie organ music plays in the background courtesy of a fanged red head dressed in androgynous foppery. She pursues the girls into a dungeon and emerges from the floor in an great green filtered light. Into another chamber they run where three burly male guards rough them up - and this is pretty heavy stuff just shy of rape - but the vampiress 'saves' them and tries to drink their blood.

Up until this point, and this is where the 'action' really starts, it's virtually free of dialogue. There's no motives, no explanations, and Michelle and Marie are experts at running from something, anything. But the whole damn thing is so damn good looking, you can't help but look away. There's bats, tombstones, crypts, crazy lighting, androgynous vamps, sexy clowns, I mean, who needs an explanation, right? The atmosphere is so heavy and the girls are so attractive, we can just let go and let that take us where it needs to.

Which is nightfall. The girls have 'escaped' and are wandering once again around the cemetery when the vamp and her thugs catch up to them and introduce them to the count, a pathetic excuse of count if you ask me. Christopher Lee he ain't. And he's whiny. He puts some bats on each of them, to mark them I guess, and lead them back to the castle (they're in a trance?). They are shackled to the walls with some other sexy ladies who have seemingly been there awhile.

Here's where you get your boob fix and there's a little bit of ex-sanguination from the lovelies chained up in the dungeon and we also get a bit of back story on Michelle and Marie, finally! Seems they were at a New Year's party when they picked up dude that was in the car with them at the beginning, but they had to kill him because he was, at their phrasing, annoying. Since then, they've been roaming about the countryside tyring to escape the law. It's honestly welcome because it makes it one of the more linear Rollin films I've watched, and I've watched my share. But I'm totally enthralled at this point so it wouldn't matter if the vamp demanded back story or not.

So what happens next, in brief, is that the girls are forced to become the vamp's bitches. They are to lure unsuspecting travelers to the castle by day so the vamp and the count can feed and eventually, since they are both virgins, depending on what your definition of the word virgin is, they will become vampires if they do a good job. Well, Michelle's down, but Marie's not, and she gets turtleneck wearing Frederick who just happens to be passing through, to deflower her outside the castle's gates so she won't have to become a vampire after all.

So come time for their initiation, aka the rape aka the rebirth, the vampires realize Marie is no longer a virgin and get pissed as holy hell. There's a great scene in here where Michelle is 'forced' to whip Marie as she's chained to the ceiling, a total scene for the perverts and I loved it. Michelle doesn't want to whip her friend and lover, but her vampire nature is taking over and she relishes it as much as she reviles it. And it's filmed in that great green filtered light again. Beautiful! Well, as beautiful as a gorgeous brunette French woman whipping another gorgeous blond French woman chained against her will can be, which is very!

Turns out though, the kindly count is sick of his lot in life and doesn't want to be a vampire any more. He's dying and wants to deny his nature. The count takes the vampiress, and another lackey with him (I couldn't ever discern if this other older woman was an actual vampire or just someone who played the piano and wandered around the castle kind of like a house mother) into a tomb and they retire and the girls run off into the woods and FIN.

Now, this ain't perfect, but it is exquisitely gorgeous, the lighting is grand, Michelle and Marie couldn't get any sexier and the landscape is superb. Not to mention, these are some tough women in this story. Not only in the vampiress androgynous and drag-queen-esque, she's powerful and demands respect. Michelle and Marie are awesome in their own right, as they fight for what they want, flee when they feel the need, and dispatch with an annoying male for the sole fact that he was 'annoying.' I love it. The poor count - he hates what he's become and basically is at the mercy of the women around him. I found this whole element to be quite great.

As mentioned previously, I think this is one of Rollin's more accessible works and while I hate to cater to the masses or lump myself in with them, I must say this was one of my more enjoyable romps into Rollin's filmic endeavors. Here - watch the trailer and perhaps decide for yourself.

Fourth of July Weekend

So last year, I posted about drinking vodka and watching Mill Creek box sets over Fourth of July weekend so this year, I"m gonna post about drinking wine and watching Jean Rollin vampire movies over Fourth of July weekend. I'm most of the way through a 1.5 of pino noir and have already fell asleep to Rollin's REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE twice, so the weekend is shaping up nicely. Holidays are so dumb, no one even realizes what the fuck they're celebrating anyway and it's just an excuse for the masses to act like more of idiots than that they are already. That, and traffic through my restaurant is slow, slow, slow. So have fun, drink one for me, and watch horror movie after horror movie. Like you don't do that shit already.

Fiancee of Dracula

In case you were wondering what Jean Rollin's been up to the last five or seven years or so, you can stop wondering because he was obviously hard at work toiling away at making the masterpiece that is Fiancee of Dracula (2002). (I'm always wondering what people are doing right at the moment I think about them. Like I wonder what Michael Jackson or David Lee Roth are doing right now. I wonder the same about Jean Rollin, like what is he doing right this very moment? I don't really have a lot going on.)

Fiancee of Dracula is like most of Rollin's oeuvre - it's disjointed and surreal and features some lesbian vampirism, as well as some over-the-top situations involving nuns (not that a lot of the other work I've seen by Rollin has to do with over-the-top situations involving nuns, but that's what sets this one sort of apart, amongst other things, I suppose.) The film starts suddenly when we see two men, an old professor type and a younger curly-haired leather-jacket wearing gent, peering into a cemetery. We'll find out later that the professor is a professor who really wants to meet Dracula and the young man is Eric, his assistant. As they look into the cemetery, they see a dwarf in a jester outfit and his vampire lady friend traipsing about. The vamp gets nakey and drinks the dwarf's blood and as they are about to do sex to each other on top of a crypt, the Professor grabs the dwarf and demands to be taken to his leader, Dracula. He's pretty fearless in the presence of the vampire, perhaps he's done this sort of work before? He is a professor, I guess. The dwarf says he doesn't know where Drac is but if they go talk to this insane woman in the nearby village, she can tell them where to go.

Satisfied with this, Prof and Eric go off to find the village idiot. They meet her by a silo or a tower or something, and she rambles on about sharks, opium dens, and the Queen of Shadows, who is really the HBIC if you want to talk to Dracula. She also tells them that the Queen of Shadows is kept by the Sisters of the Order of the White Virgin and they should go to their convent if they want to talk to the Queen. She tells them all this while humming and dancing around foolishly, and none of it makes much sense, but the Prof trusts her, I mean, why not?, and they head off to wherever the hell the convent is.

Upon arriving at the convent, they meet Sister Pipe and Sister Cigar (an attempt at some kind of Freudian allusion?), who welcome the men into the convent because it's been awhile since they've seen mens. These are not your ordinary nuns - they make out with each other, lift up their habits to show the Prof and Eric their underwear, perform ritualistic gypsy pagan exorcism dances, and have oil paintings of naked ladies all over their ornately decorated convent. Oh yeah, and they also take care of Isabelle, the aforementioned Queen of Shadows, who we are told later is going to become Dracula's bride. When we meet Isabelle for the first time, she's wearing a sequin and tassel number and spouts all manner of nonsense about Jesus filling our hearts with whatever and then she retires to her jungle themed room for the Prof and Eric to come interview her. She's as crazy, if not crazier than the village idiot, and tells them all manner of things about how Dracula lives inside a clock and how he speaks to her telepathically and fills her with darkness.

The Prof tells her to get the eff outta dodge, but don't let anyone stop her so Eric and him can follow her to this clock where Dracula lives so they can talk to him about important Dracula stuff, I guess. He then casts a spell on her so she'll sleep until midnight, the appropriate hour to go see Dracula. Then two weirdos stop by the convent to talk to Mother Superior about claiming Isabelle as their daughter or relation or cousin, who knows. After Mother Superior lights a cig on an ornate light-up singing Crucifixion lighter, she tells them hell to the no, they ain't getting Isabelle. The weirdos vow revenge and take their leave. It's all very theatrical.

Meanwhile, the dwarf takes Isabelle to some castle ruins in the sidecar of his motorcycle with a white lacey bassinet on the back. They meet up with an Ogress (the same actress that played the village idiot - only now she's an Ogress, which there is no real indication of her Ogress-ness, except the fact that she tells us "I am an Ogress." She's got on a lot of eye liner and a sexy dress and she eats the baby in the bassinet. So we're, of course, supposed to believe she's an Ogress, then.) She tells the dwarf and Isabelle she'll eat up their bones but then Eric shows up and shoots her, which is awesome, because she talks waaaaay too much. They navigate through the castle to a courtyard and the dwarf and that weird revenge swearing couple bring out a coffin. A woman in a blue dress shows up and plays a violin. The the beautiful (subject to opinion) She-Wolf shows up, and much like the Ogress, we're merely told she's a She-Wolf, although she does have long fingernails and wears a red dress, two She-Wolf qualities if there ever were two. She's the MC for this unholy night and tells everyone that the nuns gotta be killed as the sacrifice to bring Drac back to life. She, like the Ogress and the vamp, aren't particularly frightening. At one point, the She-Wolf and the vamp make out, but in about the least erotic way possible. Some other stuff happens like a nun gets her heart ripped out and the vamp gets thrown off a stone wall by the dwarf, but none of that really advances what attempt, if any, at a plot.

We finally get to meet Drac at about an hour in, and he does indeed rest inside a clock, like one of those big grandfather clocks that could actually fit a human inside. I know this because when I was a kid my mom inherited a clock like that from her grandmother and I loved that clock because it was really ornate and had all these animals intricately carved into the wood. I was like seven then and I could fit inside the clock if I really smooshed myself in there. My mom caught me doing it and yelled at me because the clock was an antique. I wonder if she still has that clock, I haven't thought about it in years, but I would love to have it in my own house. Anyway...Drac presents himself, and checks out Isabelle in her wedding attire, which consists of some white netting and red flowers placed over her boobies and crotch. The Professor and Eric are still hanging around, as are the nuns who are carrying human skulls and wearing funnels on their heads (seriously), and now the Prof can apparently communicate telepathically with both Eric and Isabelle. The dwarf is still running around somewhere too, but now instead of being dressed like a jester, he's dress like a skin, with combat boots and a bomber jacket and braces.

Eric decides somewhere along the line that he's got to save Isabelle from Drac's clutches, because all this is a bunch of mumbo jumbo anyway, and he doesn't believe in it. Then why is he the Prof's assistant in the first place? The Prof looks into Isabelle's mind and sees terrible darkness and evil and the whole thing dissolves into a cacophonous craziness that I'm not really entirely sure I understood.

Christian said Fiancee of Dracula was as bad as Alien Blood, which also featured some non-threatening, non-vampire-acting vamps, but I'm not convinced. Yeah, it was bad, but in a pretty okay, kinda alright way, because it's just so damn surreal. It's like what were you thinking, Jean Rollin or guy that wrote this, did you really think this made sense? And then we're watching the credits role and I said something like, do you think that out of the hundreds of people that worked on this movie, not one person was like, hey, this doesn't make any sense? It's not nearly as erotic as Rollin's stuff from the seventies and it has a lot more dialogue, which isn't necessarily a good thing. But seriously, what other movie are you going to get an Ogress, a jester and skinhead dwarf, a vampire, a dracula that lives in a clock, a she-wolf, a random violiness, a Van Helsing, psychic connections, and some totally silly nuns? Where? Yeah, I though so.

The Demoniacs

I swear to you I didn't have a single cocktail last night while I was watching Jean Rollin's The Demoniacs (1974). Not one. Not even a glass of wine. I don't have a fever or anything, don't get too worried about me, I was just hungover from Sunday night and decided to dry out for a day or two. I'll be back to my regular shenanigans by at least Wednesday. So it wasn't liquor, it was Rollin that left me with that stoned, nonsensical huh? feeling normally wrought by substance abuse. Allow me to explain.


As the movie opens, we meet the shipwreckers, a group of rough and tough dirtbags that purposely draw ships to the coastline so they'll wreck and they can salvage the goods. Hey, it's a living. Amidst a background of a burning ship, we are introduced to the Captain (John Rico), Le Bosco (Willy Braque), Paul (Paul Bisciglia), and the absolutely gorgeous Tina (Joelle Coeur), the most ruthless and naked shipwrecker of them all. One dark and stormy night, the shipwreckers are out on the coast going through some booty when they see white-nightgown bedecked blonds wandering in the wandering. Rather than help them, they rape and brutalize them while Tina and the Captain get into some naked situations on a giant rock. Why the stunning Tina fucks that nasty old Captain is beyond me, I know he's their leader and all, but really, Tina should be the leader, she's the most charismatic, mean-spirited, and energetic of every character, but whatevs.

We don't find out much, if anything, about the two blond girls - like who the hell are they? What the hell are they doing in the water in their nightgowns in the middle of the night? What's going on? It's around here that I started to feel like I might have a buzz. And then it gets more convoluted. Do the shipwreckers kill the girls? It would seem so - they are brutally assaulted and hit in the heads with rocks after they are raped. Christian and I were divided on this issue - he kept saying the girls were still alive, while I was certain they were dead.

Case in point - after the cut it's the next day and the Captain and crew are enjoying some hookers and spirits in brothel/bar decorated in a most macabre fashion. Seriously, I would drink at this bar every day of the week - think baby doll heads with wings on each booth, a giant taxidermied bat on the wall, some sort of weird black glowing mothman type statue, monkey skeletons, and papier mache sculptures of women giving birth. And it has a nautical type theme running through it as well. I think I might be redecorating my house to look just like this. Anyway...Captain and crew are getting loaded and the Captain sees (?) hallucinates (?) the blonds with pale faces and blood all over them. Is he cracking up or are the ghosts of the girls they killed back for revenge? Hard to tell because no one else seems to see them, but the bar proprietress, Louise (Louise Dhour) is also some sort of prophetic and alludes to the Captain's illegal activities and some of sort of village curse. After that, the Captain goes on a fucking tirade and challenges the ghost girls to a duel. Then Louise composes a piano piece about the situation and a devil gets released form the haunted ruins because of all this madness.

My notes keep saying Are the girls still alive? I still don't know. Why Christian and I argue about that, the shipwreckers go the abandoned ship ruins and try to flush the girls out with a fire but they escape and set back out to wander through the water. They seem afraid of the fire and cough as noxious smoke fills their lungs, but I still think they're dead. Tina almost meets her fiery death and then decides she really wants vengeance on the girls. The Captain tries to calm her, but with no use.

Okay, I know this all seems pretty tame, if not sort of jumbled and confusing, but then it turns another shade of WTF when the girls wander into a garden the next day after the ruins fire. They happen upon a red-wigged hippy clown who leads them down an ancient stone staircase and through another garden to a bearded fellow while a pan flute plays. Beardo admonishes the clown for bringing the girls here - she wants to keep them and take care of them - and he instructs her to find them a place to rest and he'll deal with the situation later. Seems Beardo has a devil incarnate locked in a cell with whom he discusses the girls' innocence with and also discusses an apparent destiny which will be fulfilled. The devil dude kinda looks like a seventies version of Criss Angel meets Siegfried and Roy mashup and is every definition of sleazy gross. More on him in a sec.

The clown, who is dressed like a clown to keep villagers away (that's what Christian said anyway, I think I was up feeding a cat or getting a glass of gingerale or something when she explained why she was done up like a clown, which is seriously lame, because I would have rather just had her as a clown, no explanation, nothing, because it's just better that way - to have an arbitrary clown), gets the girls some new tunics and lets them draw skulls and crossbones in the dirt. Then we see the Captain back at the bar starting to have sweaty revenge fantasies while Tina models some lingerie for him. Non-plussed, he thinks the girls are back from the dead to haunt him and he yells at Tina, 'you don't believe in ghosts! You're nothing but a trollop!' Then he strokes a taxidermied seagull while Tina cups her breasts. They then have energetic sex on the bed but the Captain fails to actually remove his pants.

The girls get nakey (funny, they don't look nearly as identical when they're not wearing those nightgowns or tunics) and the devil guy tells them he'll give them his powers for one night to take revenge on Captain and crew. Guess how he gives them his powers? Go on, guess! You get three; the first two don't count. I'll give you a hint - it involves seeing his naked hairy ass. Yep! He has the el sexo with them. Then it turns into a bad joke with no punch line. Two blonds with all the Devil's power walk into a bar...and stare at the patrons 'til they all leave. Louise sees them and offers them some grenadine and Tina comes down some stairs and sticks Louise with a hatchet and the girls and Tina both leave. The girls and Tina find themselves in a statuary garden and the girls telepathically get a marble Jesus to fall on Tina to smother her? Fuck her? I'm not sure what the point is, because Tina gets away and runs off into the night. The clown staggers in for an epic death scene but doesn't really die (Who dies?! Who is really dead!? Someone offer me an interpretation I can comfortably accept!) and there's another heaping dose of convolution, some more rape, then a few monk types show up and everyone drowns.

The dead(?) girls are troopers, I have to give it to them. In practically every scene, they are tortured, beaten, forced to walk around either naked or at least without shoes, half the time in water - they've totally got the beautiful women in peril thing down to a science. The bar is decorated in the way I've always wanted my local watering hole to look, and all the guys are effectively skeezy and gross. Once you get passed being annoyed that nothing really makes any sense and the fact that I never figured out who was dead when where and why, this ain't bad. In fact, it's hilarious and weird and all the girls wear fabulous blue eyeshadow and red lipstick that don't go together at all. As much as I like being drunk as a monkey when I take in my usual cinematic fare, this one is drunkening enough on its own. I actually felt with all the stuff that Rollin left out, that I was watching it at least in a half-stupor.

The Living Dead Girl

Perhaps Jean Rollin's most commercial (?), accessible (?), well-known (?) film, 1982's The Living Dead Girl, is a gory combination of vampirism, lesbianism, and zombie-ism. While pre-dating Dan O'Bannon's punk zombie epic, Return of the Living Dead, perhaps Mr. O'Bannon culled a bit from this when writing his opus. Christian and I both couldn't help but be like, damn, this seems like Return of the Living Dead, although Christian got Part I and II confused. Quick to always be right, as is my way, I corrected him thusly. EEEEEnnnnyway....what we have here is a slow moving, kinda boring and annoying, bloody, tragedy on a grand scale. Yes, something can be boring and grand at the same time, if you're Jean Rollin.

The Living Dead Girl (try to say this title without lapsing into the Rob Zombie song of the same title, although since most of Zombie's songs all sound the freakin' same, I'll find myself starting out humming Living Dead Girl but wind up humming Dragula) begins with three dudes dumping some toxic waste in a cemetery vault. They know of a corpse or two buried there and decide to do a little grave robbing on the side. Leaving one guy out by the van, two descend into the vault, put the chemicals in a corner and spy two coffins. They each grab one and get to work. One coffin holds the remains of Catherine Valmont, a young blond who died only two years ago, the other houses the remains of her mother, dead some time now. The bodies are quite remarkably preserved, which Christian noted could be due to budget constraints involving procuring believable looking fake corpses. Just use real people!

An earthquake and some bats disrupt the chemical barrels resulting in Catherine's reanimation, chemical burns to one grave robbers face, and Catherine's subsequent eye gouging of the other guy and fingernails to the throat of the one outside by the van. Then cut to an American couple, Barbara and Greg, well, Barbara has a bit of an accent, but they both speak English, Greg is undoubtedly American as they refer to his American-ness throughout, who are on holiday in the village where Catherine has been reanimated. They try to eat at their inn but when told the earthquake upset things and they'll have to wait, they go to a field where Greg draws some stuff and encourages Barbara to take up photography. They have a bit of spat and Barbara wanders off and runs into Catherine wandering the field barefoot and in white and takes her picture.

Catherine then wanders back to her childhood castle, in a ramshackle state, but elaborately furnished inside, where a real estate agent is showing the house to another American couple. They narrowly miss each other and the couple leaves to take some time to think about purchasing the home. Meanwhile, the real estate agent gets a phone call from her lov-ah and leaves to engage in sexy times. Catherine continues wandering about and has some bittersweet flashbacks of when she was a child and she and her best friend Helene would romp throughout the castle playing with a music box. The two young girls become blood sisters and tell each other, oh, I love you, oh, I'll never leave you, then play with the music box some more. You would think that living in a castle and all, Catherine could afford more interesting playthings. I'm sure the music box is a symbol of a young girl's innocence captured or memories held onto because remember, tragedy of epic proportions, ya'll.

Cut to Helene, the young friend of Catherine, now all grown up. She's kinda hot in an eighties way but has really big hands, and she randomly decides to call the castle. Catherine answers, but having been mute up until this point, just plays the music box music for Helene, which causes her to make quick passage to the castle. While she's on her way, the real estate agent brings her boy toy back to the castle for some more of the el sexo. They waste no time and quickly get down to it, when Catherine begins playing the piano creepily so lover man goes off to investigate. One quick crunching sound later and his throat's ripped out. He gives the real estate agent a blood facial when Catherine comes in and rips her throat out as well, and dines upon their blood. Real estate lady runs outside and expires on the steps. Helene drives up and this point, doesn't seem at all disturbed by the dead girl on the steps, and proceeds inside to find dude dead in the floor and Catherine dead yet playing the piano. Helene is more incredulous at Catherine's being alive than the dead bodies and there are some intimations of lesbianism here. Let it be said that intimations of lesbianism is all you will receive as far as lesbianism goes here. Helene gives Catherine a sponge bath in the moonlight, puts her to bed, and puts the dead bodies in the vault.

Catherine basically figures out that she has an insatiable bloodlust that she may or may not really enjoy. She seems to like drinking the blood while she's doing it, especially if she's feeding off Helene's wrist (Helene is in no danger, seemingly from Catherine killing her), but that may be in that it only eases the pain of being dead, the fact that she must consciously kill likely bothers her a bit. Helene, realizing Catherine cannot be fed on her blood or the blood of dead doves alone, takes on the role of familiar and lackey, providing Catherine with fresh, mostly female, victims. Helene is a natural in this role, we know nothing of her previous life, although by her business suits and professional apartment interior we see when we first meet her, she's likely a successful normal person. However, once back in the arms of Catherine, she becomes just as bloodthirsty and ruthless, stopping at little to procure victims for Catherine. Yet, upon pushing one lovely lady down into the vaults to sate Catherine, Helene has a hard time hearing the actual screams that accompany the feeding. At one point, dissatisfied with herself as an undead blood drinker, Catherine swears off blood, only to have Helene bring home another girl and slice her herself to entice Catherine. Catherine sets the girl free and tells her to expose the secret of the vampire living in the castle to the village and goes off to the inevitable - she feeds on Helene in the grossest, goriest vampire feeding I've seen in a long time.

There's another whole deal concerning Barbara and Greg and their subsequent ends, but I'll let you discover those death scenes on your own. They're pretty funny, do nothing to satisfy Catherine, which is the point of most of the killing in the movies, and say a lot about what sort of woman Helene has become over the course of having to deal with Catherine's vampirism.

Get over the weird pace, plot holes, lack of softcore lesbian sex, and no real rules for vampirism or zombie-ism, and what you have is a melancholy, almost Shakespearean portrayal, of a dead girl's attempt at making sense of her floundering station in un-life. Catherine and Helene are beautiful and their love for each other seems genuine. Sorry, if I walked in and my BFF was nakey, covered in blood, and playing the piano having just murdered two unsuspecting lovers to drink their blood, my first reaction would not be to give her a moonlight sponge bath. My second reaction would also not be to lure unsuspecting victims to the burial vault underneath my chateau for my BFF to feed upon. I just don't have a connection like that with anyone, which is likely my problem.