The
first time I ever heard of Vampyros
Lesbos (1971), I was eighteen years old. It was a time of awakening for me
in many ways. In the fall of 2008 I was
starting my Bachelor’s in Music, planning to make my career out of my guitar. But even as I was devoting myself academically to the art of music,
I was awakening to something else entirely. This journey had nothing to do with
my schoolwork, and if my friends and family had known the extent of this
burgeoning passion they may have been less than understanding.
I was
just beginning my first true exploration of cinema, but my tastes were nowhere
close to refined. I’ve always loved movies, ever since my Dad showed me Star Wars (1977) when I was six. Every
Saturday night was another classic blockbuster. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Back
to the Future (1985), and even Flight
of the Navigator (1986) passed before my unblinking eyes. When I saw Jaws (1975) at the age of seven, I was
terrified that the shark was going to bust through the drain while I took a
shower. But this first experience with a ‘horror’ film ignited a perverse
little fire inside me. I wanted more.
From that point on, the scariest
parts of movies were always my favorite parts. In E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982) it was watching Elliot frozen with
terror as the titular alien emerged from the shed in the backyard. Laura Dern
discovering Samuel L. Jackson’s severed arm in Jurassic Park (1993), and Kirk Douglas battling to save the
Nautilus from the giant squid in 20,000
Leagues under the Sea (1954). As a kid I was always unable to completely
follow my desire for horror (my parents warned about the dangers of such films!), but when I could I would sneak downstairs
late at night to try and find some new cinematic terror being aired (albeit edited)
on television. In high school I was able to eventually track down a few
classics here and there, such as Frankenstein
(1931), Psycho (1960), and Alien (1979).
It was
finally as a teenager enrolled in college that I was able to view all of the
taboo features I had only dreamed of before! Friday the 13th (1980) had always been glimpsed on the
shelves at Blockbuster, and I would have to have been living under a rock to not
know of Halloween (1978), The Exorcist (1973), or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). I
consumed every single one of these films that I could readily find. But soon,
the famous ones ran out. I took to the internet to find communities that loved
the same genre that I was discovering. There I learned about the great Italian
masters such as Dario Argento (Profondo
Rosso [1975]; Suspiria [1977]) and Lucio Fulci (Zombie [1979]; The Beyond [1981]). The blood was redder, the
shadows were darker, and everything was sexier. But even their filmographies are
limited. The search always continues, and that is where I found Jess Franco.
(Note: For those wanting a more complete
overview of Franco’s work and their themes, check out my earlier essay ‘Venus
in Furs: Jess Franco and Sexuality in Cinema’.)
Vampyros Lesbos is the quintessential
Jess Franco film. It is a quasi-retelling of the Dracula story set in the
modern Mediterranean city of Istanbul. The twist is that the vampire is female,
and she takes female victims! The film is a synthesis of everything good about
Franco’s directorial style. The obsession, surrealism, ambiguity, and erotica
finally achieve a perfect unity, thanks largely in part to the star Soledad
Miranda playing the vampire who is at turns seductive, subdued, and sympathetic.
Other hallmarks of Franco films, such as poor acting, sleaziness, and terrible
special effects are thankfully absent. Like Tobe Hooper, whose success with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was due
less to what it got right than what it didn’t get wrong, Franco’s direction of Vampyros Lesbos mostly avoids the
pitfalls that sink some of his other pictures, such as the laughably bad gore
effects in Devil Hunter (1981) or the
hackneyed boredom of his Nazi living dead flick Oasis of the Zombies (1982).
Soledad
Miranda is perhaps the film’s single greatest strength. Words cannot describe
her screen presence. She was born Soledad Rendόn Bueno on July 9, 1943. By her untimely death in a
car accident at the age of 27 on August 18, 1970, she had acted in over thirty
films. But the roles she is most remembered for were only released after the
tragedy.
Her
allure is impossibly magnetic. Her dark, penetrating eyes give a cold grip to
her beauty, but she is far more than a visual fixture as her acting talent goes
far above and beyond any of Jess Franco’s other actresses. Her movements are subtle,
masking the stoically deliberate performance she is creating. She becomes a
rare thing in cinema, someone you would watch even if they were doing nothing
at all.
Miranda
gave gutsy, show-stealing turns in other Franco works like Nightmares Come at Night (1970) and the excellent She Killed in Ecstasy (1971), but Vampyros Lesbos is by far her best and
most essential performance. Alongside Ewa Strömberg as her willing victim, Miranda commands the screen
from the very first frame, where we see her in a flowing, blood red silk scarf,
reaching her slender hands directly towards the camera as if she is trying to
reach the audience and bring them into the hallucinatory world she inhabits.
Jess
Franco seems to inherently understand the peculiar pull his starlet has and
exploits it in every way, to great success. While Strömberg’s character drives the bare-bones story
forward, not much really happens in Vampyros Lesbos. Mostly, it plays out as
a psycho-surreal fever dream. The majority of the screen time is devoted to
simply watching Soledad Miranda. We are in the bar audience that stares with
rapt attention as she does a smoky striptease with a mannequin. Then we become
flies on the wall as she hypnotically recounts the tale of how exactly she came
to be the vampire. And finally we begin to slip with her into her delirium as she
inwardly struggles with the soul-crushing despair of falling in love with her
own victim. Throughout all of it, the actress manages to hold on to our
attention with a vice-grip. If she hadn’t fallen victim to tragedy, I am
convinced that Soledad Miranda would be a household name.
The
other facet that makes Vampyros Lesbos
work as a film is Jess Franco’s comparative restraint. In most of his other
exploitation features he packs the screen full of gratuitous nudity, graphic
violence, and taboo sexuality. Here however, he manages to avoid the worst of
all three. It’s not as though these elements aren’t present. It is called Vampyros Lesbos after all. It is simply
more tasteful and less forward.
Gory violence
has always been Franco’s Achilles heel. Just look no farther than his take on
the slasher Bloody Moon (1981), where
the fakest looking decapitation scene in the history of cinema takes center
stage! It may be that his productions never had the money for decent special
effects, or it may be that he simply couldn’t figure out how to shoot them
convincingly. Honestly, it’s probably a bit of both. In any case, Franco is at his
best when bringing to the screen violence that is subtle and understated. And
here he does so admirably. Vampire bites are limited to bright red lines of blood,
and much of the violence has a slightly more erotic than evil bent. Even the
director’s cameo as a sexually frustrated serial killer is more implied than
anything else. This restraint serves to bolster the ambient, dream-like
atmosphere that is core to the film’s success.
There is
of course a significant amount of nudity, but it is all presented to us in a
much more artistic manner. Scored with a jazzy Euro-pop soundtrack, we are
entertained with psychedelic moments of Soledad Miranda baring herself to the
screen. But rather than graphic or leering, the scenes are almost baroque.
There is an art-house sort of tone to the film, with shot compositions reminiscent
of the best paintings of the Renaissance. As a result, they can hardly be
considered scandalous. Instead, we are drawn in to viewing the film as art. It
demands appreciation.
In
addition, the taboo nature of the lesbian central relationship ends up being
glossed over because the sexuality of the characters involved just isn’t really
the point. Miranda’s centuries-old vampire is not so much seeking sexual
fulfillment from her victim, or even blood for that matter, as she is
desperately searching for a connection with someone that can end her profound
loneliness. This obsession with companionship drives her to the edge and causes
her to act in ways that eventually lead to her downfall.
Throughout the film, Miranda
appears to be the least dangerous vampire ever conceived. She does very little
to hurt others, only becoming violent when threatened. Even so, when her
existence is revealed she is hunted down because her being is incompatible with
the world others have created. The resulting symbolism could be unpacked in a
million different ways, but one is obvious: being unique can often be
dangerous.
When I at last saw Vampyros Lesbos for the first time, it
was on a low quality internet bootleg with poorly translated subtitles. But to
be honest, I hardly even noticed that it was in German! What I did notice, in
spite of the pixilation and frequent pauses for buffering, was Soledad Miranda.
This is her film and her legacy. Her presence here is one of cinema’s great
performances, and it deserves a place beside the likes of Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972) and Orson Welles in
Citizen Kane (1941). Anyone who
claims to love movies owes it to themselves to check this one out.
So let’s enter this dream, shall
we?
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